Test audiences weren’t crazy about seeing Robert Neville make peace with the Darkseekers after the creatures had been portrayed mostly as mindless monsters throughout the film. In an interview with Screen Rant, “I Am Legend” director Francis Lawrence said of the originally planned ending, “We tested it twice and it got wildly rejected, wildly rejected, which is why we came out with the other one.”
Not only would the intended ending have been more thematically in line with the 1956 Richard Matheson novel the movie is based on, but it also would have made the title of the film make a lot more sense. Neville was meant to realize that the Darkseekers aren’t the thoughtless killing machines they’ve been made out to be the whole run time. In the first cut, we see that they show compassion and care for one another. To them, Neville is the bad guy. He is a monster of legendary proportions. He is legend.
While retroactively changing a movie’s ending like this will inevitably confuse some viewers, the fact that Smith is still interested in a sequel all these years later is proof of his passion for the project. His return is evidence that, much like his antagonists in “I Am Legend,” Robert Neville doesn’t die easily.
