Typically, The Playlist doesn’t like to mix movie news with politics, but sometimes, that’s just impossible. Sometimes, you have a social media trend that is so ridiculous and tied to a movie plot that can’t ignore it. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the latest anti-vaccine news using the plot of “I Am Legend” to explain why people shouldn’t get the COVID vaccine. It’s bonkers. So much so, it drew the ire of the film’s screenwriter.
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Without getting too far in the weeds, this all started with a New York Times article about people who are not opting to get the COVID vaccine. And in the piece, one person cites the plot of “I Am Legend” as the reason to avoid the vaccine. The woman is passing on the vaccine “because she thought a vaccine had caused the characters in the film ‘I Am Legend’ to turn into zombies.”
Yes, people actually believe the COVID vaccine might turn people into zombies. Ugh.
This led to a viral moment on Twitter, where people were becoming worried that the world was going to truly end because people are stupid enough to believe a vaccine was going to turn them into a zombie because they saw it in a movie. Well, they didn’t see it in the movie because the actual story is about a genetically engineered virus turning people into vampire-like mutants. Not zombies. But I digress.
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All this led to Akiva Goldsman taking to Twitter to shut down all this “I Am Legend” talk because he’s the screenwriter for the film and wants everyone to remember it’s just a movie.
“Oh. My. God. It’s a movie. I made that up. It’s. Not. Real,” tweeted Goldsman.
Yes, sometimes it takes an adult explaining that fictional stories in Hollywood blockbusters are actually not real to get people to listen. Hopefully, for the sake of humanity, enough of those anti-vaccine people are going to see these words and understand they’re acting like complete idiots.