Humans: Their Own Worst Enemy

Although much changed in the adaptation of “I Am Legend” from print to film, many thematic aspects remained similar. Particularly interesting is the changed cause of the disease; in both the film and book, humans are the original cause of their own demise, albeit in different ways. In the film, I found the cause of the disease, a mutated cure for cancer, to be a kind of cop-out, relying on a fear mongering, progress-will-be-our-downfall cliché. I preferred the book’s cause of the disease – that humans were the cause of the disease is not unreasonable, and that it would be caused by humans at war (again) seemed much more poetic as well. That war would end our society and be the beginning of the next society (once the last human finally stopped fighting) was a good transition between the human and vampire societies. The cancer cure causing our demise seemed like too much – of course, it has to be the cure for cancer that kills us all, what’s next, our vaccines?