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| One of these things is not like the other |
I love the “Resident Evil” games. I really do. I basically spent my latter teenage years and early twenties obsessing over the RE series, its offshoots…I can even name specific voice actors for different characters and changes to canon throughout the years. What Simon Pegg is to Star Wars, I am to Resident Evil.
That’s why the vacuous writing of the “Resident Evil” blockbuster action movies hurts me so deeply.
None of these films deserve a full review, so here’s a brief breakdown of each film, their merits, and their many, many flaws.
Resident Evil (2000)
A new character played by the woman married to the film’s director wakes up with amnesia in a huge mansion and gets immediately tackled by a team of soldier boys. Right away, they take her into the secret laboratory in the basement, cutting past all the parts of the mansion from the game that created the mystique that made the setting memorable. At this point the main soldier boy explains that the Umbrella Corporation was experimenting with the T-Virus, which leaked and turned all the science boys into hungry boys.
They fight a bunch of zombie boys and almost all the soldier guys die. A handful survive, as well as the amnesiac woman, whose name is Alice.
None of the characters from the games are in it, the villain gets replaced by boring rogue AI character, and the final “boss” of the film is just a bigger version of a monster that’s commonly found in the games. Plus, at the end, the dastardly Umbrella Corporation gives Alice superpowers for some reason, so now in addition to being a boring, vapid character, Lilu Dallas Multipass becomes Lilu Dallas Mary Sue.
There’s a scene with some laser grids that’s kind of dope I guess.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
They fight a bunch of zombie boys and almost all the soldier guys die. A handful survive, as well as the amnesiac woman, whose name is Alice.
None of the characters from the games are in it, the villain gets replaced by boring rogue AI character, and the final “boss” of the film is just a bigger version of a monster that’s commonly found in the games. Plus, at the end, the dastardly Umbrella Corporation gives Alice superpowers for some reason, so now in addition to being a boring, vapid character, Lilu Dallas Multipass becomes Lilu Dallas Mary Sue.
There’s a scene with some laser grids that’s kind of dope I guess.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Alice escapes the creepy basement lab to find Raccoon City has been completely destroyed by the T-Virus outbreak. She befriends an Umbrella corporate soldier boy who, turns out, isn’t a complete bastard. His name is Carlos.
They go looking for a little girl whose blood is the cure or something. They meet a motley cast of characters including a racial stereotype played by Mike Epps, and Jill Valentine, who was one of the core protagonists from the games. She gets to do very little so Alice can hog the spotlight doing acrobatic bullshit for most of the movie. In essence, this makes the resourceful and tenacious Jill Valentine look like a chump by comparison. There’s also a scene that includes a shot-for-shot copy of the intro of Resident Evil Code: Veronica involving a helicopter and a hallway, but the stunt Alice pulls at the end of it comes off as lame compared to the original sequence in Code Veronica, which was done by a teenage girl with no military training or superpowers.
The game is primarily based on Resident Evil 3, so it includes the super zombie boy Nemesis…but in the film version, it turns out he has a heart of gold and actually squirts a tear when he remembers he wasn’t always a monster. Dumb.
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
The movies truly become their own disaster independent of the games that spawned them in the series’ third installment. “Extinction” drops all pretention of basing itself off the video game series and diverges into a unique story about how the zombie-spawning T-Virus killed literally almost everyone on Earth, and also made the world a desert somehow. The film opens with Alice introducing herself, as if you’re not aware who the character is that has had more screen time in this series so far than all the other characters AND monsters put together.
Jill and the other survivors besides Alice, Carlos and the gang’s token black stereotype are implied to have died. They meet Claire Redfield (also in the games), but unlike the spunky and likeable Capcom character, actress Ali Larter’s Claire is a boring Sarah Connor ripoff who, again, doesn’t really do anything of substance but growl like an angry mother panther about the safety of their group every once in awhile.
Extinction easily has the most creative action set pieces of the entire series up to this point. A slightly younger Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) plays an evil doctor boy who turns into a super zombie boy, a murder of zombie crows gets murdered by a giant flamethrower, and Alice f***s up a bunch of zombie boys with a pair of sweet kukri knives.
The gang flies off to the mystical land of Alaska, chasing after a radio signal vaguely claiming safety within a remote community, which totally isn’t a trap. Alice finds a huge stash of clones of herself (all possessing superpowers) and sets out to do unpleasant things to Umbrella’s board of directors.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Jill and the other survivors besides Alice, Carlos and the gang’s token black stereotype are implied to have died. They meet Claire Redfield (also in the games), but unlike the spunky and likeable Capcom character, actress Ali Larter’s Claire is a boring Sarah Connor ripoff who, again, doesn’t really do anything of substance but growl like an angry mother panther about the safety of their group every once in awhile.
Extinction easily has the most creative action set pieces of the entire series up to this point. A slightly younger Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) plays an evil doctor boy who turns into a super zombie boy, a murder of zombie crows gets murdered by a giant flamethrower, and Alice f***s up a bunch of zombie boys with a pair of sweet kukri knives.
The gang flies off to the mystical land of Alaska, chasing after a radio signal vaguely claiming safety within a remote community, which totally isn’t a trap. Alice finds a huge stash of clones of herself (all possessing superpowers) and sets out to do unpleasant things to Umbrella’s board of directors.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Alice channels “Blade”, “The Matrix”, and “Ultraviolet” in a stupendously overdone fifteen-minute introduction sequence wherein a clone of super-powered Alices storm Umbrella’s HQ and attempt to assassinate its Chairman, Albert Wesker (the game series’ former principle antagonist). He kills most of them because he also has superpowers. He injects Alice with the T-Virus cure, turning her human again. Their plane crashes and both somehow survive.
Alice tracks down Claire Redfield, and finds that most of the other survivors ended up on a boat, and also under mind control influence. They fly to L.A. and land on the top of a skyscraper when their crappy biplane runs out of fuel. There, Alice and Claire meet Claire’s brother Chris (another of the games’ principle protagonists), who has been locked up by a motley band of racial and ethnic stereotypes holed up in a prison at the top of a skyscraper in the middle of downtown L.A. (because logic is for nerds) to avoid basically the entire population of L.A. Though to be honest, zombies or not, I’d probably do the same.
The zombie boys have also grown tentacle mouths for reasons never adequately explained, and they’re faster and smarter.
There’s also a big guy with a hammer chasing them. He’s a miniboss from Resident Evil 5, which takes place in a village somewhere in Africa, but he’s here now in L.A. Sure. Why not.
They end up on a boat and fight Albert Wesker, saving everybody just in time for a fleet of Umbrella gunships to arrive.
I finished watching the film honestly wondering if writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson’s writing technique involves abusing amphetamines while blasting KMFDM and Slipknot with his speakers turned all the way up to 11.
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Alice tracks down Claire Redfield, and finds that most of the other survivors ended up on a boat, and also under mind control influence. They fly to L.A. and land on the top of a skyscraper when their crappy biplane runs out of fuel. There, Alice and Claire meet Claire’s brother Chris (another of the games’ principle protagonists), who has been locked up by a motley band of racial and ethnic stereotypes holed up in a prison at the top of a skyscraper in the middle of downtown L.A. (because logic is for nerds) to avoid basically the entire population of L.A. Though to be honest, zombies or not, I’d probably do the same.
The zombie boys have also grown tentacle mouths for reasons never adequately explained, and they’re faster and smarter.
There’s also a big guy with a hammer chasing them. He’s a miniboss from Resident Evil 5, which takes place in a village somewhere in Africa, but he’s here now in L.A. Sure. Why not.
They end up on a boat and fight Albert Wesker, saving everybody just in time for a fleet of Umbrella gunships to arrive.
I finished watching the film honestly wondering if writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson’s writing technique involves abusing amphetamines while blasting KMFDM and Slipknot with his speakers turned all the way up to 11.
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
The film opens with pretty much everyone Alice and friends saved at the end of “Afterlife” getting killed by a fleet of Umbrella gunships. Alice gets knocked off the deck of the ship and wakes up in Russia. Turns out Wesker is still alive, and he and his agent Ada Wong (she’s basically the Boba Fett of all things “Resident Evil”) need her help. They break her out of Umbrella’s testing chamber, which has a brainwashed Jill Valentine running security for the rogue AI from the first film, who’s apparently running the entire company now.
Alice decides to help them blow up an Umbrella testing facility in Russia with Leon Kennedy and Barry Burton, both protagonists from the games – both characterized as watered-down versions of their video game counterparts.
A little girl programmed to think Alice is her mom runs into Ada and Alice. Ada tells her she’s not really her daughter, she’s a vat-grown clone who could just as easily have been programmed to pretend to love her so she can stab her in the back later. Alice doesn’t listen, of course, and sets off to find Leon’s team.
One good thing I can definitely say is that “Retribution” actually has some really enjoyable fight scenes. Unlike the boring, awkward choreography of “Afterlife”, the batshit insane fight sequences in “Retribution” seem like they were written by someone who actually knows what this film series is supposed to be – ridiculous and fun, not to be taken seriously. There’s one scene where Leon and company are fighting intelligent zombies with guns, and a dude gets gutted by a Russian zombie soldier wielding a goddamn chainsaw. There’s also a cool sequence where Alice dispatches a crowd of zombies with a pistol and bike lock.
They end up fighting on a frozen lake, Alice helps Jill remember that she’s supposed to be on the good guy’s team, and the gang end up at the White House. They find out Wesker has somehow become President of the United States and what’s left of humanity is gathering in DC to fight off a gargantuan horde of zombies and monsters, ending with a cliffhanger more ridiculous than the ending of Indigo Prophecy. And I don’t say that lightly.
Conclusion
All in all, the “Resident Evil” movies aren’t about “Resident Evil” at all. The video game series is a well-known IP that Hollywood has been using as a vehicle to make silly, over-the-top action movies for decades, and in that they have been a huge success.
The truth is, I must acknowledge that the “Resident Evil” games are part of the horror genre, and the horror genre is a niche market. Most people I know who know anything about “Resident Evil” do so because they saw and loved the movies – not because they care about the plot or the characters. The zombie king himself, George A. Romero, once wrote a script for a “Resident Evil” movie, and having read it, I can vouch for it being pretty true to the source material, as well as a script that could easily have turned into a great slasher film. Thing is, it wouldn’t have required as big of a crew, or special effects department, or given the opportunity to have as many absolutely balls to the wall crazy action sequences as the Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich films. Despite my nerd rage, despite my objections to the films, I must admit…maybe the world is big enough for both the “Resident Evil” that I love, as well as the one that most people love.
Plus, if anyone from Capcom is reading – if there are any plans in the works for writing a reboot series…for real, hit me up though.
Alice decides to help them blow up an Umbrella testing facility in Russia with Leon Kennedy and Barry Burton, both protagonists from the games – both characterized as watered-down versions of their video game counterparts.
A little girl programmed to think Alice is her mom runs into Ada and Alice. Ada tells her she’s not really her daughter, she’s a vat-grown clone who could just as easily have been programmed to pretend to love her so she can stab her in the back later. Alice doesn’t listen, of course, and sets off to find Leon’s team.
One good thing I can definitely say is that “Retribution” actually has some really enjoyable fight scenes. Unlike the boring, awkward choreography of “Afterlife”, the batshit insane fight sequences in “Retribution” seem like they were written by someone who actually knows what this film series is supposed to be – ridiculous and fun, not to be taken seriously. There’s one scene where Leon and company are fighting intelligent zombies with guns, and a dude gets gutted by a Russian zombie soldier wielding a goddamn chainsaw. There’s also a cool sequence where Alice dispatches a crowd of zombies with a pistol and bike lock.
They end up fighting on a frozen lake, Alice helps Jill remember that she’s supposed to be on the good guy’s team, and the gang end up at the White House. They find out Wesker has somehow become President of the United States and what’s left of humanity is gathering in DC to fight off a gargantuan horde of zombies and monsters, ending with a cliffhanger more ridiculous than the ending of Indigo Prophecy. And I don’t say that lightly.
Conclusion
All in all, the “Resident Evil” movies aren’t about “Resident Evil” at all. The video game series is a well-known IP that Hollywood has been using as a vehicle to make silly, over-the-top action movies for decades, and in that they have been a huge success.
The truth is, I must acknowledge that the “Resident Evil” games are part of the horror genre, and the horror genre is a niche market. Most people I know who know anything about “Resident Evil” do so because they saw and loved the movies – not because they care about the plot or the characters. The zombie king himself, George A. Romero, once wrote a script for a “Resident Evil” movie, and having read it, I can vouch for it being pretty true to the source material, as well as a script that could easily have turned into a great slasher film. Thing is, it wouldn’t have required as big of a crew, or special effects department, or given the opportunity to have as many absolutely balls to the wall crazy action sequences as the Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich films. Despite my nerd rage, despite my objections to the films, I must admit…maybe the world is big enough for both the “Resident Evil” that I love, as well as the one that most people love.
Plus, if anyone from Capcom is reading – if there are any plans in the works for writing a reboot series…for real, hit me up though.
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