What's scarier here...

isn't the fact that "I Am Legend" did $76 million.

It's the fact that the fucking CGI Chipmunk abortion did $45 million, thereby guaranteeing that Jason Lee will further destroy what little respect I had left for him by doing a sequel.

People, there are better movies to go see out there. Please, don't encourage Hollywood. Please.

Chalk up two movies in two months...

that I was really hyped up to see until I found out they changed the endings.

SPOILERS AHEAD. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING OF "THE MIST" OR THE NON-ENDING OF "I AM LEGEND"!

So, as some of you know, I read, and I like the horror. So I was pretty jazzed up to hear that Frank Darabont was making a version of "The Mist". The trailers looked really good. Then I read an interview with Stephen King where he discussed the fact that Darabont changed the ending, and he really liked it.

Shit, I thought, this is the man who thought his junky miniseries version of "The Shining" was better than Stanley Kubrick's classic. This can't be good.

Now, mind you, I haven't seen the movie. But apparently, Darabont decided that the ambiguous, tenuously hopeful ending wasn't any good. So he decided to turn "The Mist" into a Twilight Zone episode instead. Basically, the novella ends with the protagonist, his son, and a few others driving south through the mist, trying to get to Hartford, or at least to get out of the mist.

The film ends with Thomas Jane and his survivors running out of gas, Jane shooting the others, including his 10-year old son, then going into the mist to get eaten, only to have the Army save him moments later in a fit of ironic pique. BULLSHIT, says I. As a result, a movie I really wanted to see, I might watch on DVD instead. Maybe.

As for I Am Legend, apparently they've chucked Richard Matheson's admittedly TZ-esque ending for some semi-biblical end of days nonsense. From the reviews I've read, it sounds like the movie's really great for the first 90 minutes and then sort of falls apart. Of course, this is the third(fourth if you count the Asylum Entertainment mockbuster "I Am Omega") version of I Am Legend, and they still haven't gotten it right, so there you go. I would have been interested to see how Will Smith played the vampire(er, zombie) bogeyman of Matheson's story.

Guess I'll go and see The Golden Compass after all. I know they've screwed that one up too, but it's not a book I hold in high esteem.

Somebody help me here.

What is this supposed to be, exactly? Is it camp? Is it supposed to be relatively serious? Emile Hirsch seems to be in it for seriouses, but John Goodman as Pops Racer? Christina Ricci channeling the girl from Lazy Town as Trixie?

Maybe it will look better on the big screen, but it looks terrible on my computer. Offhand prediction right now: either the biggest hit of the summer, or a bomb for me to cherish right along with The Apple, Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper, and Battlefield Earth. There doesn't seem to be any room for middle ground here.