Good movie endings can do so much – they can make up for the film's other flaws like Be Kind Rewind or send you into a productivity-sapping four-hour Google hunt for the term "I'm finished" like There Will Be Blood.
But bad movie endings feel like a cheat. And Will Smith's I Am Legend had one of the worst endings in living memory. We won't spoil the entire thing for you, but needless to say it may as well have been replaced with five minutes of a cigar-chomping movie producer in the shower sponging himself down with fistfuls of your money.
However, an alternative ending to I Am Legend has hit the internet. It's certainly different to the original – a bit less 'Will Smith is basically Jesus' and a bit more 'zombies have feelings too'. We're not sure if it's better or worse than the original I Am Legend ending, but that's only because the ideal I Am Legend ending involves Will Smith getting mauled to death by that lion 20 seconds into the movie.
Imagine a world populated only by Will Smith, his dog and a host of blood-sucking Gillian McKeith lookalikes. Oh and it's all Emma Thompson's fault!
That is the nightmarish vision set out in I Am Legend, directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine). Part sci-fi horror, part art-house stroll, the film is based on Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic 1954 book about the last man alive on earth.
I Am Legend – the movie where slightly-too-loud to be completely sincere man of the people Will Smith plays the saviour of all mankind – is number one at the weekend box office.
That's not exactly a surprise, since Will Smith could film himself puking down his chest into his underwear and it'd still top the US weekend box office. But the weekend box office success of I Am Legend proves that Will Smith can carry a movie completely by himself now – something that will come as a relief to his next two movies, the provisionally-titled Will Smith Pukes Down His Chest Into His Underwear and Will Smith Stares Unblinking At A Cinema Audience In Close-Up For Three Hours While The Word 'Obey' Flashes Constantly Underneath.
Will Smith's new movie I Am Legend is a huge risk, since it mostly seems to be about Will Smith cowering fully-clothed in an empty bath for two hours.
So what Will Smith needs to do for I Am Legend – more than with any of his other films – is sell it. Sell sell sell. Promote the movie as a thrilling romp that the whole family will enjoy. Exclude nobody in its appeal. And that's why Will Smith has decided to promote I Am Legend by giving a lengthy television interview all about how much Tom Cruise has taught him about the benefits of being a fully paid-up member of the Scientologists.
