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  • 2021-01-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Was 'I Am Legend' Set in 2021? (de)
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  • A rumor widely circulated on social media claimed that the storyline of the Will Smith movie I Am Legend took place in the year 2021, and was centered on a zombie outbreak that was caused by a vaccine: It's difficult to find a claim with as many factual errors as this one. I Am Legend is not set in 2021. The movie is about vampires — not zombies — and the outbreak was not caused by a vaccine. The movie I Am Legend is based on a book of the same name by Richard Matheson that was published in 1954. Both works are set in the near future, but neither version takes place in 2021. In the book, the story takes place in Los Angeles in the 1970s. In the movie version, the story takes place in New York in 2012 (an earlier film adaptation called The Last Man on Earth and starring Vincent Price is set in 1968). Here's an excerpt from Reel Reviews that describes the setting of I Am Legend: In both the book and movie, there was an outbreak that turns people into darkseekers. While Matheson's 1954 book had an impact on how both zombies and vampires would be depicted in future horror books and films, the fact that the defining characteristics of these movie villains is that they cannot be in sunlight places them firmly in the vampire section of the monster Venn diagram. Regardless, the darkseekers were not created with a vaccine. In the backstory of both the book and the movie, a plague spread across the globe that gave people rabies-like symptoms before turning them into vampire-like creatures. In the book, the origin of the disease is unknown, and Robert Neville, the protagonist, spends much of the story searching for a cure. At one point, after examining a woman's blood, he discovers that the plague was caused by a bacterial infection, and dubs the germ vampiris. Matheson wrote: In the movie version, humanity has a little more responsibility for causing the plague. Still, the vampires weren't actually caused by a vaccine. They were caused by a genetically modified virus called the Krippin Virus that was meant to be a cure for cancer. Here's how Screenrant described the origins of the Krippin Virus in I Am Legend: Whether you are reading the book or watching the movie, I Am Legend does not take place in 2021, and the vampires (not zombies) were not created by a vaccine. Interestingly, this is at least the second rumor to circulate on social media claiming that some apocalyptic movie was set in the year 2021. Mad Max actually takes place sometime in the mid-1980s. (en)
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