Will Smith, summer blockbuster king and the consummate smart talking good guy, was the world's most famous Sci-Fi hero in the new millennium. He has saved Earth and greater humanity more times than we can count, but this time, in 2007's I Am Legend, he has a more difficult job to do.

This big screen version of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 Sci-Fi tale (which has also been adapted in 1964's The Last Man on Earth and in 1971's Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man) stars Smith as Robert Neville, a military scientist who is immune to a virus that has transformed most of Manhattan into flesh-craving vampire-like zombies. Seemingly the last human survivor, he spends his days accompanied by his dog Sam hunting and sending out radio transmissions to see if anyone else is alive, and his nights barricaded from the city's infected - will they come out of the shadows? The abandoned, desolate New York landscape is oddly pastoral and beautiful - deer roam on Park Avenue, and Neville picks corn in Central Park. The apocalyptic sobriety and Smith's subtle performance gives I Am Legend its edge over what could have well been a blockbuster bore - what a surprising pleasure.

With an introduction by award-winning creative Jon Daniel, the man behind the Afro Supa Hero exhibition recently presented at the V&A Museum of Childhood.

We Need a Hero?

After the screening, join Afrofuturism season curator Dr Edson Burton and music journalist Adam Murray in an illustrated talk on black superheroes (real and sci-fi) as they chart the depictions in comic books and film.

Ticket prices: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.

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