Would you rather...

1. Would you rather marry someone who is truly selfish or truly insane (i.e. they have diagnosed psychological/cognitive disorder like schizophrenia, psychosis, etc).
2. Imagine you have two choices for a pet and you have to make a choice. Both pets have the ability to speak and understand English. One is a sarcastic and depressed cat and the other is a fun-loving and compassionate dog. If you choose the cat, you will be paid $200/week. If you choose the dog, you will have to pay $200/week. The cat will most likely complain about everything and be a burden on your professional and social life. The cat is also prone to violent outbursts. The dog on the other hand, will not only be energetic, witty, and smart but will also provide you a warm friendship. Once you make the choice, you have to keep the pet for a minimum of one year.
3. You visit a strange travel agency that has in its possession advanced technology. You have two choices for your vacation: (1) A trip back in time or (2) a memory implant of anywhere, ever (i.e. anywhere in the galaxy). Both options cost the same. The trip back in time allows you to visit any time period and location on Earth (except for when the Earth was first forming as it is too unstable). However, to protect the space-time continuum, you can not move from a specified travel area, which is a circle with a 250-foot radius. If you leave this travel area, you will be killed. The trip lasts one hour. The memory implant allows you to "remember" vividly a trip that you hypothetically took. This trip is completely made-up and did not happen. But it will feel like it did. You will remember tiny details and sensory input. It's the same thing in Total Recall. This trip lasts (or feels like it lasted) two days. And you can go anywhere. You can orbit Saturn. You can chill in a cabana in Maui. But it never really happened. Which do you choose?
4. You are about to die. When suddenly, a mysterious stranger appears and gives you two options, both of which will save your life. The first option is to imbue you will magic powers. The magic option will save you from whatever is about to kill you and return you (if you're old) to a youthful age and grant you a multitude of powers. The second option converts your consciousness into a digital format and uploads it to the Internet. But there are some side effects to both options. With the magic option, in order to survive, you have to use magic (i.e. throw fireballs, teleport, turn invisible, etc) which ages you; the more magic you use, the older you become. In the second option, you lose your physical body and can never return to it. While in a digital format, you gain all the benefits of other digital files (speed, duplication, storage, communication, etc). You can visit friends and family (as long as they have a computer or smart phone). You can even upload yourself to games and live in the world of the game. The digital self option renders you nearly immortal. The magic option, depending on how addicted you become to the power of the magic, could kill you quicker than you think. Which do you choose?
5. You are a journalist who has just uncovered a terrible secret about American society: for the past twenty years, aliens have been living amongst us. They plan to overthrow the government and name of their own as the leader. You don't know how many aliens are impersonating humans but you estimate it at around 400,000. The aliens have powerful technology that they are saving for the overthrow. You also know that certain members of the government (at the local, state, and federal levels) are aliens, but you don't know exactly who. Also, there are others like you, who know about the impending invasion. Knowing all this, do you (a) spread the word publicly with verifiable proof or (b) build a secret underground resistance made of people who know the truth?

Revisiting I Am Legend

I find I Am Legend to be a fascinating film. Its really broken up into two sections: the first 80 mins and the last 20 or so. The first 80 minutes are brilliant, intense, and heartbreaking. Robert Neville is living a lonely existence in a ruined New York City. Much of this section is about his day-to-day; scavenging, hunting, eating, bathing his dog, while also searching for a cure for KV, the virus that ended civilization. This might sound banal but its got this quiet intellectualism to it. He acts strange but in the context his behavior makes perfect sense and Will Smith performance is elegant and minimal.

There is a great scene in the beginning where Neville is hunting deer through a verdant Times Square. He comes across one in a cross street and just as he takes aim to bring it down, a lioness pounces on the deer and drags it to her mate and their cub. Neville just looks on, continuing to aim, as this family eats, I'm assuming, their first meal in quite some time. At this point, it becomes clear that Neville is no longer human, but simply a living thing trying to survive. He lets the lions have their prize and he returns home.

Then, to cement this idea of Neville dehumanized, after he captures a female dark seeker to experiment on, a male exposes himself to sunlight in anger. Neville comments on this behavior in a video log. He describes it as irrational and notes how the infected have lost any semblance of humanity. Its clear that Neville is actually the lost one; he doesn't even see that the female is the dark seeker's mate, which is fairly obvious.

Neville's only friend in the world is his dog, who he has to kill when it turns into a vamp. This is a bit manipulative but whatever I like being manipulated sometimes. Neville speaks to mannequins, hoping for one to talk back and when he realizes there is no hope, he tries to kill himself.

However, his suicide attempt is thwarted by Ana, another survivor who rescues him just before he is eaten by a dark seeker. They drive off together and Neville wakes up in his flat with Ana and Ethan eating breakfast. Neville tries to adjust to normalcy and finds difficultly with it. And rightfully so, he hasn't spoken to another human in over three years.

After a short adjustment period, he explains the philosophy of Bob Marley to Ana. This marks the end of the first section and beginning of the second. This second section sucks. I really do not like it. I get the impression that production stopped for a week or so, the director Francis Lawrence was fired or left, was replaced, and they decided to make a completely different movie. The second section finds Robert Neville a nearly different person when he describes Marley and how mankind should "light up the darkness". Then dark seekers attack his pad and he sacrifices himself so Ana and Ethan can escape with the cure. The tone changed drastically from this intimate and dark character study to a bombastic actioner with a messianic hero and happy ending. I just don't buy it.

I've read that the special effects takes over toward the end of the film. This is true as the attack on Neville's house features digital dark seekers and copious amounts of gunplay. But this switch is minute to how Neville's character changes. Granted that characters are supposed to change during the course of a film, but Neville's change appears to be arbitrary. He goes from a dehumanized calculated survivor to an optimist of a childish degree with little more than the movie Shrek to piece it all together.