Legion of Legends

The #1 movie of the weekend, come Monday, will have been I Am Legend, the third adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 last-man-alive novel.

Or should that be the third major adaptation? It's been chronologically bumped to #4 by a likely culprit. Putting aside Soy Leyenda, a 15-minute Spanish adaptation from 1967, it's been almost a month since those rascals over at shyster studio The Asylum beat Will Smith to the punch with their direct-to-video entry I Am Omega. Clearly, the title's a pretty workable amalgam of adaptations #2 (The Omega Man) and #4 (I Am Legend), but I'm disappointed they couldn't work #1 (The Last Man on Earth) in there somehow.

No statement on quality from me, as I haven't seen it; it's hard enough for me to muster enthusiasm for I Am Legend, since I very much enjoy both Last Man on Earth and Omega Man. I don't want to promote any stereotypes, but I will mention that it was written by a stuntman and former pro dodgeball player. He also happened to clash with I Am Omega star Mark Dacascos in Kickboxer 5: Redemption – maybe he did Dacascos a favor on set, and finally called it in?

That's overly snide; Dacascos seems pretty un-stuck-up, willing to put an honest day's sweat into anything from the lowest Codename: The Cleaner-type material to the highfalutin' genre-confounder Brotherhood of the Wolf. The son of two respected martial artists, Dacascos has legit action skills, good looks, and not-embarrassing acting skills, though come to think of it, I can't think offhand of any scene in which he's been asked to use a facial expression.

Who knows what could have become of Dacascos if his scenes hadn't been cut from Wayne Wang's Dim Sum (a career in indie film?), or if potential breakout Double Dragon hadn't been a complete and miserable failure?