I Am Legend: Deeper Analysis

April 24, 2008

New Features Planned for StoryFanatic

The first quarter of this year has found me slowly but surely converting all my Wordpress and Tumblr logs into one ExpressionEngine “super-blog.” One of the major pains of having so many different interests (animation, story, technology, blogging, etc.) is the inevitable need to upgrade and maintain each and every one of those blogs. If I wanted to add tagging to my blogs or any other kind of extension or plug-in I had to do each blog separately. Under my new system, I’ll only have to do it once.

Beyond that though, my main reason for switching to ExpressionEngine is the power one has for manipulating data within that system. Instead of being locked into one approach for displaying posts (most recent first, reverse chronological order, blogrolls in the sidebar, etc.), one can basically serve up information any way possible.

One of the many features I plan on adding in the next version of StoryFanatic is a clickable foldout “in-depth” analysis feature to all my articles. If you notice, in my last article examining I Am Legend I never once used a “Dramatica” term. To be sure, the Dramatica theory runs rampant throughout that article, but I was really making an effort to make the theory more accessible by translating certain ideas and concepts into normal-people-speak.

The idea is that each analysis will strive for this ease of reading, while still allowing the option to click on a “deeper” analysis from within that post. It’s a relatively easy concept to implement within the new framework, I just have to find the time.

Until then, I’ll have to present these terminology-rich articles in separate posts. The old way.

Dramatica Analysis of I Am Legend

The following assumes you have a working knowledge of the Dramatica theory of story. While many writers and story enthusiasts will be able to follow along quite nicely, there may be some new terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar. The Dramatica Dictionary and the Dramatica Theory book are both excellent starting points for learning more about this theory.

Tales and Stories

It was my contention that the theatrical version was more of a tale, while the alternate version was more of a Grand Argument Story. Why? Because the alternate version had all four Throughlines while the theatrical version barely had two. The Objective Story and Main Character throughlines were present in both, but the latter was only fully realized in the second alternate version.

While Anna, the best choice for an Impact Character, appears in both versions she only really functions as one in the alternate version. To understand why, we’d have to define further what the two possible storyforms could be for each version.

Major Storyform Differences

The alternate version was a Change/Failure/Bad story. Change because he adopted a new way of thinking: throughout the whole film he was always trying to fix things, at the crisis he kind of “let go” and let things happen the way they naturally should. Failure because the Goal of stopping this Vampire plague was not met. I actually think the real Objective Story Goal is slightly different than that, but for now it’s enough to say things are not going to change. And finally Bad because he seems pretty miserable as he shlumps to the floor of his laboratory - that angst is still pounding inside his head.

The theatrical version was more of a Steadfast/Success/Good story. Steadfast because he held on to his resolve that he could fix everything; something he proved by running headlong towards the maurauding vampires with grenade in hand. Success because the Goal of changing the situation was achieved - he found the cure and was able to get it to the commune people. Good, not so much because I think he was happy about blowing himself up, but more because internally he seemed to have resolved his inner demons. He was finally “listening” and seemed content while he glanced over that rather convenient picture of his family. I think the ending narration was going for more of a Main Character Judgment of Good feeling as well, stating that his sacrifice was a “good” one.

And this is where the problem with the Impact Character in the theatrical version occurs.

If Neville is a Steadfast character then Anna has to be a Change character. And she really isn’t. She was the same person at the end of the film that she was when we first met her. This is why I felt the theatrical version was more of a tale than a story – there was no meaningful change by wish to appreciate the message of the story.

In the alternate version she works fine as a Steadfast Impact Character to Neville’s eventual Resolve of Change. It’s lightly painted but it is in there enough to work dramatically. As mentioned in the original analysis, the film is rather short by typical standards (104 min. vs the usual 120-140) and thus, if they were looking for something to add in there Anna’s throughline would have been a good place to start. Consequently by developing her character further they also would have naturally added in more of the Subjective Story. Like the Impact Character throughline, this one, while present, was not as fully fleshed out as it could have been.

Deeper into More Detail

The film was an action/adventure entertainment piece so I don’t think it was heavy on the Thematics. Still there are some interesting things that can be seen if we delve further into the storyform of the alternate version.

I felt Neville was more of a Physics character than a Universe character. He is definitely a Do-er, but I felt the problem that plagued everyone in the story was the situation revolving around the release of the Krippin virus. An argument could be made that because he was the “last man on Earth” he should be in the Universe Domain, but I felt that his personal problems revolved more around Understanding, Learning, Obtaining and Doing more so than the Past, Present, Future and Progress.

This would place the Objective Story in Universe and would therefore automatically apply the Stop characteristic to Neville’s Main Character Growth. For me that was a perfect fit: Neville needed to Stop trying to fix things all the time. In a recent email, Chris Huntley had an even more elegant explanation:

He seems like a Stop character because he has a HUGE chip on his shoulder that blinds him to direct evidence that the “vampires” are evolved beings capable of higher mental and emotional functions. Once he gets past that he recognizes the importance of the butterfly motif (and I imagine all the thematic significance of rebirth associated with it).

To speculate further and to continue the idea that he is a Physics character, I would say his biggest personal issue is that he is always Doing things that hurt the people around him (his daughter, his dog, the vampiress). Choosing that would place the Objective Story Concern in Progress, or How Things are Changing. I think that works nicely with the alternate version in that the central idea behind the whole story is that evolution is taking place and that these new “vampires” are replacing humans as the dominant species.

This would assign an Objective Story Goal of Progress which works well with the Objective Story Outcome of Failure. Neville, as a Protagonist, is trying to change the way things are going - he’s trying to find a cure to reverse the direction the world seems to have taken. He fails and thus, things are going to continue along the way they have, if not worsen.

To go even further, and this is really stretching it, my guess would be that his Main Character Problem is one of Effect. Mainly because it works nicely to have an Objective Story Problem of Effect (the effects of the virus, etc.), but also because there is a nice correlation between what would be his Symptom and Response. Outwardly he might say that while he has great Trust in himself, he has yet to prove it to others. In Response he constantly takes action to Test the validity of his notion that he can fix the problems around him.

In the end, he comes to realize that he is the Cause of all the problems around him and decides to give up doing things the way he always has.

It’s a stretch but I thought it was worth throwing out there for the sake of analysis. If they wanted to push the thematics, it would have been an easy thing to throw in there scenes of him having Issues with Skill vs. Experience. And it’s nice how his Benchmark, his measuring stick for determining progress, is Obtaining - whether or not he is able to find that cure.

I also like how in this storyform his Main Character Unique Ability is Experience while his Critical Flaw is Ability. When we first meet him, we get a sense that he has had a great deal of familiarity dealing with these creatures and should be able to figure out what is really going on with him. This Experience should allow him to create a Successful Outcome to the story. Unfortunately it is his natural talent, or innate Ability, to make things worse (the helicopter incident, fighting with the manikin, running his tests) that undermines this Experience and brings about a Story Outcome of Failure.

Conclusion

That’s about all I have on this story. The alternate version is not a fully realized story – it could have used some more development in the areas of the Impact Character and Subjective Story throughlines. Still, to me it came across as more emotionally fulfilling than the theatrical version and I think a large part of that is due to the fact that it stayed true to a single storyform as described above.