I am Legend

In the movie, I am Legend, I see a validation of the American exceptionalism in which the US tries to rectify mistakes it has made, but the rest of the world is just a pack of inarticulate beasts who seek nothing the destruction of the US. There is also a question about science versus faith.

Towards the end of the end of the movie, there is the racist dog-whistle:

The answer is in the blood.

The good doctor is portrayed as a heroic individual struggling against the tsunami of darkness and savagery. He is the only one to walk in the light. He has sacrificed everything for the cause: wife; child; companionship. He works relentlessly but methodically.

He has no ethical concerns about experimenting with animals and infected humans. However, he does keep a gallery of the faces of the humans he had failed to cure. This would make him a serial killer, but he would claim a higher cause to justify this slaughter.

He is blind to the intelligent adaptation of the infected humans:

• The ability to survive three (3) winters in New York;
• The ability to live in harmonious communities;
• The ability to domesticate animals (especially infected dogs);
• The ability to plan ahead;
• Scat and garbage management to conceal locations of the hives;
• Concept of modesty (all of them are clothed);
• Ability to make clothing;
• Ability to execute a complex plan (invasion of the doctor's house) at short notice (less than a day);
• Ability to innovate quickly in the battle at the wharf;
• Ability to set an effective trap for the doctor.

My alternate theory about why the others wanted to kill the doctor is that they saw him as a predator, and it was in their interests to kill him in order to save themselves.

Of course, the doctor does see it that way because he is only doing good in order to return them to normality. He wants to cure them of their inabilty to be a normal human.

He sees himself as a rational individual but is unable accommodate deviations from expected behaviours by the infected humans. He is unable to overcome the blind faith of the normal woman sees the hand of God in everything. Yet it she who survives and arrives at the gates of paradise.