Also based on a popular novel, Spielberg's sci-fi horror blockbuster turns the well-intentioned villain of its source material into a misunderstood hero. In Michael Crichton's original Jurassic Park book, the character of John Hammond, founder of the titular attraction, is an arrogant, self-centered, and lethally short-sighted businessman. In the 1993 movie version of Jurassic Park, Hammond is changed to a kindly old man — a wealthy yet generous backer of scientific research and literal grandfather figure who simply has an impossible dream. Crichton's novel serves as a cautionary tale of Hammond's sense of superiority overriding human decency, yet Spielberg's adaptation ironically makes that rather villainous character out to be one of the movie's heroes.
I Am Legend similarly turns its source material's morally ambiguous protagonist, Dr. Robert Neville, into a benevolent scientist trying to save mankind from a terrifying threat. The big twist of Matheson's novel makes it clear that the vampiric creatures are the real victims, and it is Neville’s myopia that causes him to see himself as the one under attack. The ending of the 2007 I Am Legend movie mistakenly changes this by cutting a scene of Neville communicating with the "monsters" and realizing they are sensitive, sentient beings, replacing it with one where he blows them, and himself, up with a grenade. Only the novel version of I Am Legend reveals that the creatures have feelings and are actually horrified by Neville's murderous attacks on their community.
For both I Am Legend and Jurassic Park, the original sci-fi novels implicitly criticize their protagonists for turning off their humanity and using science as an excuse to play god. But the I Am Legend adaptation instead demonizes the film's creatures, while the Jurassic Park movie blames Dennis Nedry — Hammond's worst sin being that he trusted his employees to enact his vision, rather than the fact that he bullied, blackmailed, and underpaid his staff to the point that they inevitably double-crossed him. Both changes result in their movies delivering a fundamentally different message from that of their source material.
Making I Am Legend's Neville an un-ironically heroic figure and turning Jurassic Park's proprietor into a sweet, well-meaning idealist simply reinforces the idea that these characters should have been given free rein to do as they please, shouldn’t have been questioned for their moral choices, and shouldn’t have faced any negative consequences of their actions.
In the movie version, the failure of Jurassic Park at the end has nothing to do with Hammond’s hubris and everything to do with one bitter employee. Similarly, in I Am Legend’s movie ending, the hero would prefer to die than listen to the perspective of another, and this is presented as evidence of his heroism. In its adaptation of a successful sci-fi novel, I Am Legend takes a text that originally warned readers against pursuing scientific goals without a moral com and, like Jurassic Park before it, the movie instead offers celebrations of singular super-geniuses.
