Jessie Gambardella - Christ in "I Am Legend"

Brandon brought up a good point in his blog about “I Am Legend” and I want to explore it a bit more. I had not really thought about comparing Will Smith’s character, Robert Neville, to Christ but the similarities are everywhere in the movie. Humans found the cure for cancer that ultimately turned into a deadly disease that only 1% of the human population was immune to. For starters let’s say the disease/virus is sin which really was brought onto earth by people. In the movie it was a woman who created it which parallels with people believing Eve to have brought sin into the world (although Adam was standing right there but that is a different dispute).

Robert wanted to begin his research in finding a cure at what he called “ground zero” because that is where the outbreaks began and where thousands were infected. Christ constantly put himself in similar situations constantly surrounding his self with sinners in attempts to “rescue” them from their selves. Because the infected zombies/vampires are the sinners or non-believers of the world then the remaining 1% who are immune represents the believers. They are persecuted (and/or eaten) by the sinners (or zombie-vampires) and yet Christ (aka Robert/Will Smith) still tries to save them even though they do not realize it.

In the end (spoiler alert) it is blood that is the cure; although it is not Robert’s blood ultimately he did create it and is the reason for its existence. Robert ultimately sacrifices his life (major Christ parallel here) to save those that are trying to kill him. Brandon points out a line in the movie saying, I believe by Robert that “the sure is in the blood.” It is then up to the remaining 1% (believers) to spread the cure (The Message) using the blood (representation of Christ’s sacrifice) around the world to save people from the virus (sin).