I AM LEGEND

I watched this science fiction movie a few years ago at the cinema and watched it again recently. As I mentioned in a previous post, I love this movie starring Will Smith.

Based on a novel, it tells the story of a virologist who lost his family to zombies, created by a human altering virus originally synthesized to cure cancer, and appears to be the sole survivor in the city of Manhattan. His immunity to the virus allowed him to live on to find a cure amidst the violent zombies and avoid detection by the zombies, who would perish under sunlight, by venturing out into the open in the day and seeking refuge in his hideout at night.

His demise happened after he saved a mother and son, who carelessly led the zombies to his hideout, but not before he finally found the remedy and passed it to them and sacrificed himself in order for them to seek safety in Vermont where the survivors converged. That was his legend.

A link on this movie is shown here, where an alternate ending was made:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend_(film)

Whilst I love this movie, I love the other British zombie movie '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later' much much more because they were way scarier and the virus was definitely deadlier. Any contact with the infected victims was all it took to transform a normal human being to a zombie within a matter of seconds. The first film starred Cillian Murphy who moved on to make more successful movies, including 'Sunshine', his role as Scarecrow in 'The Dark Knight' and the upcoming 'The Dark Knight Rises' to be released in 2012. There are 2 links shown below on the zombie movies. I was hoping for the sequel '28 Months Later' but from the 2nd link below, it seems they are not making it due to some production issues. How disappointing!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later

THE CRAZIES 2010

The Crazies 2010 was a remake of the 1973 movie of the same title. It tells the story of Ogden Marsh, a small town of Iowa, known to be the friendliest place on earth, with a population of 128,000, whose residents were slowly infected by a virus via their drinking water.

Within 48 hours of infection, the sane townsfolk all slowly but surely turned into blood-thirsty zombie-like killers, who went on a rampage to kill others in sight. The military implemented a containment protocol that involved killing everyone, including the infected and normal residents. The whole town was decimated in the end with a massive explosion. There were seemingly only 2 survivors at the end of the movie; the upright town sheriff David played by Timothy Olyphant and his doctor wife Judy played by Radha Mitchell. Unfortunately, the movie ended with a zoom-out view of the town that showed the words "initiate containment protocol" for the second time, which likely meant they would too be exterminated.

It was an entire cast of unknowns to me. When I first saw the trailer, the song Mad World haunted me so much that it had my full attention. I was completely mesmerized by the sad, distant song but it was not played throughout the entire movie. Anyway, at first glance, I mistook the male lead as Josh Duhamel.

Yes, there were a few frightening scenes but well, I didn't find it as scary as the other zombie movies like "28 Days Later", "28 Weeks Later" or "Legend". At least in "The Crazies", the virus was not contagious and could not be spread by blood or touching the victims. The latter movies were definitely a lot scarier. These were almost like end of the world or hell on earth movies and the notion itself freaked me out. Imagine being infected simply by touching the blood of the infected, who were almost everywhere, and within a matter of seconds turning into blood-thirsty zombies who go around eating and killing others. In such a world, it may be better off being dead than to be killed in the most frightening way. And I just read that they are or may be making the movie "28 Months Later". I am so looking forward to watching it.

CREATOR

I read with alarming interest in this morning's papers "the new paper" and "Today" that this genome and DNA researcher Dr Craig Venter synthesized an organism with man-made DNA, common microbes, a DNA synthesizer, a computer and 4 bottles of chemicals.

In simple terms, it seemed all beneficial and totally harmless. After all, the original organism that spawned this new "life" was a bacterium that causes mastitis, which is the inflammation of the breast tissues, in goats.

In all things, there are always boons and banes. There are always separate camps and schools of thoughts for and against it.

Those for it would cite all the medical and scientific breakthroughs and benefits it could potentially bring e.g. algae that could possibly remove excess carbon dioxide from air. They would claim it is no different from what humanity has done all along - to control nature e.g. domesticating animals for our use. They would blur the line and say this is not creation of life but just merely mimicking it. Afterall, this is just a micro-organism, they would say.

Those against it would ask if he is playing god and cite all the unethical issues? Has he opened the Pandora's box to unleash what would inevitably come as a result of such scientific work e.g. environmental calamities, biological weapons? Would this open the floodgates for more and bigger artificial organisms to be created?

I for one, is against this kind of DNA work. I applaud the genius and talent of Dr Venter but I guess there are certain things that we should never venture into. Usually, all these medical advances were carried out with the best of interests for mankind, but there is no denying the possibility of things going wrong in the end. No matter how remote it is, it can still go wrong. What Dr Venter did is now in the open. What about the other experiments and projects that were not thrown into the light?

First, there was Dolly the lamb that was cloned. Now this. What's next? Perhaps I have been watching too many movies, such as "28 Days Later", "28 Weeks Later" and Will Smith's "I am Legend", which by the way I loved very much. These movies and other similar ones struck fear in me. I know I don't and cannot live forever, but I don't want our world to be exterminated and our lives to be cut short because of some scientific experiment went wrong. In "Jurassic Park" and its sequels, we learnt what could go wrong when we play with nature. Whilst the above were just movies, they present possible scenarios that could occur just by accident or deliberate actions and the escape of these unknown organisms out of the laboratory could mean the end of some other lives. Micro-organisms are very capable of mutation for survival. Haven't we learnt of how the H1N1 mutated into several strains, with some being more potent than others? How would we know that this would not happen to this new single-celled organism?

They can deny all they want that they are not playing god, synthesizing life etc, but seriously, who are they kidding? Call me a skeptic because I don't have good feelings about such breakthroughs and I can only hope that our world would not be thrown into a spiral by the acts of man himself. Like what uncle Ben said to Peter Parker in Spiderman "with great power, comes great responsibility". Only time will tell whether we should be grateful or not to this brillant man behind all these.