Welcome back to the Resident Evil retrospective!

…yes, you read that correctly. It’s been more than seven years now since I did my retrospective of the live-action Resident Evil film franchise. However, at that time the final film in the franchise, the aptly-named Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, had not come out yet and so it wasn’t included in the retrospective. I’ve mulled over the idea of doing a “Retrospectives Round-up” for a long time, covering the newest films in franchises that I’ve covered in the past and as we close in on our 300th blog post on IC2S we’re finally getting around to doing it. We’re going to start with Resident Evil today and then over the course of the week we’ll catch up on the new entries in the other retrospective series. Got it? Alright, let’s dive in and see if the Resident Evil franchise could go out on a high note…

Production

After the financial success of Resident Evil: Retribution, it was inevitable that the Resident Evil franchise would continue to shamble on. Early on the producers bandied the idea that there could be two more films in the franchise before it would be rebooted, but by December of 2012 Paul WS Anderson confirmed that the sixth film would be the final one in this continuity. Anderson signed on to direct, committing to the project after he was done work on his historical disaster-epic, Pompeii… and, well, we know how that turned out. Production was continually delayed on this film. Even when it looked like filming was about to begin in August 2014, they had to delay again for another year when it was announced that Milla Jovovich was pregnant with her second daughter.

For the cast, obviously Milla Jovovich returned once again to give Alice her last hurrah. For the other returning cast, Ali Larter reprised her role as Claire Redfield once more, while Shawn Roberts returned as Albert Wesker. Iain Glen was also announced to be returning as Dr. Isaacs, despite being killed off in Extinction. Disappointingly, these are the only characters who make their return. Despite being the grand finale, major characters like Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong and even freaking Becky (the surrogate daughter Alice was shoe-horned into adopting in the previous film) don’t return and are killed unceremoniously off-screen. I’d say it’s a middle-finger to the fans, but then again it would almost be weird if Resident Evil started caring about narrative continuity at this point. In their place, several new characters were introduced, played by Ruby Rose, Eoin Macken, William Levy, Fraser James, Rola and Lee Joon-gi.

Production was finally able to get underway in earnest in July 2015, with filming beginning in South Africa sometime in August or September. Unlike the previous two films, The Final Chapter was shot in 2D and then converted to 3D in post-production. Filming lasted just over three months and was wracked with disaster. Four crew members were injured during filming, the first being Jovovich’s stunt double, Olivia Jackson, who collided with a camera crane that failed to move during a motorcycle stunt. The accident crushed her face and caused half of it to be torn off, severed an artery in her neck, paralyzed her arm, broke several bones and tore five nerves out of her spinal cord (among many other injuries)! It was so bad that they had to put her into a medically-induced coma for two weeks and amputate her paralyzed arm. Then, near the end of filming, crewmember Ricardo Cornelius was freaking crushed to death by a Hummer, holy shit! Anderson, what the fuck is going on on your set!? Even worse, when Jackson sued the production in 2019 it came out that the producers’ insurance for stunt performers was wholly inadequate, not even providing coverage for medical care! Suffice to say, Jackson accused the producers of “elevating financial considerations over safety” and won the lawsuit. Apparently this isn’t new for the Resident Evil franchise, which has seen the hospitalizations of at least fifteen crew members over the years, a shocking number considering that most major franchises are able to get by with zero injuries, let alone fatalities.

If finances were all the producers cared about though, then The Final Chapter did not disappoint. While it grossed only $26.8 million domestically (significantly less than any previous Resident Evil film), its international haul was much higher, resulting in a worldwide total of $312.2 million, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise. Of this total, more than half ($160 million) came from the Chinese box office. Also worth noting is that the film’s budget was only $40 million – adjusting for inflation, this is by far the lowest budget for any live-action Resident Evil film.

Plot Synopsis

Like most of these films, The Final Chapter opens with a voice-over exposition dump by Alice, who reveals that the founder of Umbrella had a daughter named Alicia who was dying of progeria, a disease which caused her to age rapidly. He developed the T-virus to try to save her, but it is soon discovered that it has the unexpected side-effect of creating zombies. When the founder tried to shut down production of the virus, he was stopped by Dr. Isaacs, who had Albert Wesker assassinate the founder and performed a hostile takeover of the company.

Cutting back to the present, we find Alice in the ruins of Washington D.C. The heroes were betrayed by Albert Wesker at the end of Retribution (who saw that coming) and everyone except for Alice was killed. She encounters the Red Queen, who tells Alice that she wants to stop Umbrella but her programming prevents her from doing so directly. Therefore, she needs Alice to act on her behalf, as she estimates that there are only 48 hours left until the last pockets of human resistance are wiped out by the zombie hordes. She tells Alice that the only way to do so is to travel back to the Umbrella Hive in the ruins of Racoon City, where an airborne anti-virus has been developed.

Alice fights her way across the country, killing monsters and Umbrella soldiers on the way, until she is captured by Dr. Isaacs and his convoy of Umbrella tanks which are leading the zombies back to Raccoon City. Alice escapes on an Umbrella motorcycle and then makes it back to Racoon City first, where she encounters Claire Redfield and a band of survivors, including Claire’s new boyfriend, Doc. The group defend against the zombie onslaught, burning the zombie hordes and killing most of the Umbrella soldiers (although a wounded Isaacs manages to escape). The group then decide to break into the Hive to save humanity, dealing with more zombies and defenses as they go.

When they finally make it into the Hive, the Red Queen reveals that Isaacs has been planning on using the T-virus to cleanse humanity and create a new world on Umbrella’s own terms. To that end, the airborne anti-virus will be released once the rest of the human resistance is wiped out and the rich and powerful being kept in cryogenic storage in the Hive will be revived to inherit the Earth. She also warns Alice that Umbrella has an agent among the ranks of her companions.

After losing several team members to traps, Alice sets bombs throughout the facility and confronts the real Dr. Isaacs. It is revealed that the other two Isaacs we have encountered so far (as well as basically every other character who has been miraculously resurrected to this point) were actually clones who thought they were the real thing. It is also revealed that Doc is the traitor as Claire and Alice are captured by Wesker. Isaacs then revives Alicia and reveals that Alice is actually her clone (shocker). Before Isaacs can eliminate them, Alicia fires Wesker, which allows the Red Queen to attack and fatally wound him. Claire executes Doc and Alice chases after Isaacs, stealing the anti-virus from him and seemingly killing him by detonating a grenade in his pocket.

Alice escapes from the Hive and tries to release the anti-virus as the clock ticks down, but Isaacs appears out of nowhere and stops her. However, then the clone Isaacs Alice had fought earlier arrives and, believing himself to be the real Isaacs, kills him before being killed by the zombie hoards. In the confusion, Alice unleashes the anti-virus, which immediately spreads out in a cloud and kills all of the zombies. The bombs in the Hive detonate and kill Wesker, Alicia and the rest of Umbrella. Claire wakes Alice sometime later, who is thanked by the Red Queen by uploading Alicia’s childhood memories into Alice’s brain. She then rides out into the wilds, searching for any remaining pockets of survivors or T-virus holdouts.

Review

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting from The Final Chapter. It’s by far the highest-reviewed entry in the franchise, up there with the original (which is still, somehow, considered one of the best video game movies of all-time despite being crap). I guess I was hoping that it would be a fun but dumb experience, akin to Extinction or Afterlife, moreso than a mind-numbing ordeal like Retribution. Unfortunately, The Final Chapter is much closer to the mold of Retribution than anything else, providing a particularly loud, dumb and unsatisfying conclusion to the franchise.

The first big issue is that The Final Chapter is what it says – it’s the big finale and therefore it needs to feel suitably climactic. Unfortunately, its obvious that the plots of every single Resident Evil movie were made up on the fly, cockteasing us with amazing cliffhangers at the end of each movie, only to completely retcon everything by the time the next one rolls around. The Final Chapter is pretty bad for this. Oh wow, Retribution ends with a huge siege at the White House with a bunch of iconic Resident Evil characters, good and evil, in the mix? Well I hope you didn’t want to see how that goes, because everyone dies off-screen except for Alice (yes, even Becky, whose shoehorned surrogate daughter storyline was the entire point of Retribution, she gets dropped without a single reference to her). With the slate wiped clean again, Anderson sets about making up entirely new plot developments to bring this whole series to a close. Wow, Game of Thrones really took off, let’s make Dr. Isaacs secretly the main villain all along, even though he died! Oh, and let’s reveal this during a big exposition dump at the start of the film, perfect! Can’t forget to make it so that Alice was actually a clone of the Umbrella founders’ daughter… because reasons! Oh and we’ll bring back Claire Redfield as well, but we can’t let her actually do anything, because then Alice won’t be as special!

The Final Chapter also has the unenviable task of trying to plug holes that the previous’ films created (and even this film in some cases). Foremost amongst this is why the hell Umbrella are so stupid that they managed to wipe out their entire consumer base and yet are still operating all this time. The Final Chapter reveals that this was actually always intended, Umbrella has been trying to wipe out humanity so that their chosen few can repopulate the world and have all the resources to themselves. It’s idiotic, but it almost works… until you remember that the first film is all about Umbrella soldiers trying to contain the outbreak and subsequent sequels have Umbrella still trying to create bio-weapons for use in war (not to mention injecting themselves with the T-virus they’re going to wipe out soon), so it’s obvious that they’re just pulling this out of their ass at the last minute. The Final Chapter also reveals that everyone who has died and been resurrected at this point in the story? Secret clones! Considering what has been established in the franchise to this point, it kind of makes sense, but it just feels so much dumber. Around the mid-point of the film Alice tells Claire that Isaacs is alive, to which Claire says “I thought you killed him?” Alice just replies “I thought so too” and the scene moves on. It made me laugh, but that really should have been as far as they went with it, it’s the only explanation that is needed. Revealing that there are clones means that they actually put a bit of thought into this, but it just begs the question of why they would have a bunch of clones running around in the first place. Just go the route of The Fast & The Furious – with dumb fun you don’t have to dwell on the hows and whys.

Like most Resident Evil movies, the characters are also a big Achilles heel for this film. Alice is… Alice. Whatever you thought about her before, you’ll still feel it after this is over. I don’t care about her character at all, and it’s infuriating how everyone else gets kneecapped to make her seem cool, but six movies in it’s undeniable that Milla Jovovich has mastered the art of playing a badass woman, so it’s nice to see her get to ride into the sunset with her signature character. And as much as I love Ali Larter’s Claire Redfield, she gets nothing to work with here, to the point where she could have easily been written out entirely. Iain Glen’s Dr. Isaacs is also completely different in this film, to the point where I’m convinced they only brought him back because of his newfound popularity in Game of Thrones. He is now suddenly a religious fanatic, a trait which this film clubs us over the head every chance they get. He’s an okay villain I guess, but considering that he was a low-key, one-and-done villain in Extinction, he feels far less impactful than if, say, they had made the more over-the-top and slimy Albert Wesker the villain for this finale. As for the rest of the survivors… meh? They’re a bunch of personality-less nobodies. Hell, I was expecting Ruby Rose to get more of a role so when she gets minced early on in the Hive that was one of the few real surprises in the film, but that wasn’t because I had any sort of attachment to her character.

Being a Resident Evil retrospective, I feel duty-bound to point out some of the most ridiculous parts of this movie’s plot that I haven’t gone over already. First of all, the film’s literal ticking clock is ridiculous. The Red Queen tells Alice that she estimates that the last pockets of humanity will be wiped out in 48 hours by the zombies unless the T-virus can be stopped. So Alice releases the anti-virus but it’s at the last second… sooooo, umm, did the Red Queen get it wrong and everyone had died early? Even if she didn’t, that anti-virus is going to take ages to actually reach any of the disparate bastions of humanity, so odds are that it did jack-shit to save anyone outside of Raccoon City. Oh and what few humans we know for sure were alive died infiltrating the Hive and/or got blown up with the Umbrella executives. Good job, Alice! There’s also a whole action sequence which revolves around Umbrella having GI Joe tanks – Alice punches open an easily-reached emergency hatch on the exterior of the tank, which deploys a motorcycle she uses to outrun the Umbrella forces. Then there’s the scene where Ruby Rose gets sucked into a giant fan blade. This is hilarious because we literally just saw that the fan blades have no suction to them, but Wesker reverses their direction and suddenly they’re sucking harder than Superhead? The funniest sequence though is when Alicia and Dr. Isaacs start debating about who owns Umbrella… like, in this case I get that it’s to establish the twist that Alicia can fire Wesker (which begs its own questions about labour laws, but whatever), but it’s the freaking apocalypse, nearly every human has been wiped out, money doesn’t matter anymore, who cares who owns the damn company!? Seriously, it’s another moment which highlights the stupidity of Umbrella more than anything. And lastly, the movie makes a big deal out of including yet another laser hall sequence. This might have been a cool callback to the original film, especially since this takes place in the same location… if we hadn’t had laser hall call-backs in all but one of the subsequent sequels. Here I just sighed and said “Oh my fucking God, another one?”

Okay fine, the story sucks and I don’t care about the characters. That’s to be expected with a Resident Evil film, I’m just here for the action. Unfortunately, that brings me to the next issue with The Final Chapter, for a film which is almost non-stop action sequences, the action is really underwhelming. This is because the way the action is shot and edited is the worst we’ve seen in the franchise since Apocalypse. As much as I hated it, at least Retribution tried to replicate the gorgeous slow-motion action scenes from Afterlife. The Final Chapter instead feels like it’s trying to emulate freakin’ A Good Day to Die Hard of all things, with constant, rapid-fire editing which makes every action sequence incomprehensible, disorienting, annoying garbage. Seriously, I was watching for this and the average shot length in this film can’t be more than a second at most – the action sequences barely hold for half a second and even dialogue scenes cut constantly. It’s supposed to be exciting and fast-paced, but it’s just exhausting. The action is also let down by the fact that the film does nothing to establish geography and therefore you can’t build up any sort of tension (think Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is fighting his way up the convoy – we know where everyone in the convoy is and where the objectives are, so we can build up tension as Indy fights his way through to the Ark). The Cerberus chase is a good example of this – the heroes try to escape into the Hive while being pursued by zombie dogs. This could have been exciting if we knew how far away from the entrance they were, or what their escape corridor looked like, but instead were get a solid minute of incoherent running and shooting as people we don’t give a shit about die unceremoniously.

The only time that the action feels fine in this movie is during the big siege in the second act (yes, The Final Chapter features yet another skyscraper being overrun by zombies). The Final Chapter fires on all cylinders here, managing to get around several of its other missteps and it’s obvious that a hefty chunk of the budget went towards this one action sequence. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but Anderson does a good job of finding ways to add new dangers to the siege which need to be dealt with so that it’s not just a bunch of mindless bam bam pew pews. It probably would have meant more if we gave a shit about any of the survivors, but it’s cool seeing thousands of zombies get immolated at least.

What else can I say? The Final Chapter is yet another dose of Resident Evil, but it is loooong past the series’ stupid-fun days. Like Retribution before it, The Final Chapter is just loud and dull in addition to being stupid. I kept telling myself the whole time “Well… it’s better than Retribution at least… maybe?”, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that The Final Chapter really is the worst Resident Evil movie. It takes everything that makes these movies suck and dials it up, while simultaneously knee-capping the action sequences so that you can’t find anything to enjoy. The fact that someone died and another person was maimed to bring this movie to life just makes it even more sickening to me. Resident Evil is finally dead and thank God for that.

3/10

So… where does the series go from here? Well, a more faithful reboot of the series is already well underway and it was recently announced that the cast include such great young actors as Kaya Scodelario and Robbie Amell, which gives me a lot of hope for this attempt. Hopefully they take a cue from the recent Resident Evil video games and make this film less action more horror. I may cover this film sometime in the future and add it to the retrospective, but we will have to see. Right now I’m just burnt out on this franchise and the prospect of even more zombies is depressing, even if I am cautiously optimistic about this reboot.

Welcome back to part five of the Resident Evil retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the fifth (and thus far final) movie in the franchise, Resident Evil: Retribution! However, just before we get to that, I want to highlight a somewhat relevant article I read recently about how fanboys are ruining Hollywood. Considering that I’ve been criticizing Paul W.S. Anderson for deviating from the games, this might make me seem like a biased fanboy… but the truth is that I don’t really give a crap about the Resident Evil games. I’ve played a little bit of most of them, but they’re not really my cup of tea – gimme a Metal Gear, Battlefield or Splinter Cell game any day of the week. That said, I don’t think the authour of the article defenders their position very well – they call on fanboys to piss off because they can’t write off a movie for making deviations from the source material. In some ways I can actually agree with this, but the way they presented it is questionable. He seems to be writing this as a response to Man of Steel and World War Z, stating that (SPOILER) why should it matter if Superman kills Zod? In this respect, it is a betrayal of what the character stands for and also creates major scriptwriting issues in the future (if Superman is willing to kill, then why won’t he kill his enemies when the going gets tough from here on out?). The changes in Man of Steel change fundamental aspects of the character themselves, not the way that they’re presented. On a related note, World War Z has nothing to do with the novel beyond having some type of zombie in it – if you’re going to change the source material that much then you might as well just give it an original name. The only reason I can see them not doing so is because it will allow them to market to an existing audience. However, I did agree with some elements of the article, such as when the authour defends Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. I may not care for Resident Evil, but I’m definitely a Tolkien fanboy… and I actually quite liked The Hobbit in spite of its excessive length. It is extremely faithful to Tolkien’s book and appendices (with the only major exception being the stuff surrounding Azog), moreso than The Lord of the Rings was. On its own merits, The Hobbit was quite a good movie, and people who write it off due to it not sticking to the book solely or for being too long (I honestly found that it didn’t feel like 2 1/2 hours) are really missing out. All-in-all, the authour makes some decent points, but I can’t find myself in agreement with them for the most part.

Anyway, after Afterlife, the Resident Evil series was even more popular (and reviled) than ever. Inevitably, Retribution was greenlit and prepared to assault the intelligence of audiences worldwide for a fifth time. Thankfully, the series had somewhat gained its footing, as Extinction and Afterlife were both at least watchable… could Retribution carry on this streak and turn the franchise into a true guilty-pleasure? Read on to find out…

Afterlife raked in almost $300 million worldwide, making it by far the most successful entry in the franchise. While the series was basically a joke by now, it was still drawing in new audiences (especially internationally). This time around, Anderson seemed to want to draw back fans of the games, and so offered to introduce characters which had not been brought into the series yet. Based on a popularity poll, Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong and Barry Burton were written into Retribution. The marketing for the film also promised that the action was going to take place on a “global scale”, whereas previous entries were confined to the United States (barring the opening sequence in Afterlife). Also, since it performed so successfully in the previous film, Retribution was again shot and released in 3D… only this time they (thankfully) toned down the gimmicky usage of the medium. Crap almost never gets thrown at us to artificially hammer home the effect, instead it is integrated organically throughout.

Retribution features one of the largest main casts in the series. As usual, Alice is back in the lead. This time around she’s supposedly a regular human again, but you’d never know it – she displays impossible feats of athleticism and (sigh) dual wields so much that super-powered Alice would have said “Whoa, slow down girl!” Of course, at the end Alice does get all her super-powers back in the most convenient manner possible… bloody hell Anderson, make up your damn mind about how you want the character to “develop”! Actually, he and Milla did try to develop Alice in this entry somewhat by stealing a page from James Cameron. Alice finds a little girl who she becomes surrogate mother for, and then has to rescue her from the monsters near the end of the movie. It’s not even close to a stretch to suggest that this whole plot strand completely ripped off Aliens – hell, the rescue scene even uses identical framing and lighting to that film (not to mention that the kid is inexplicably cocooned as well). This whole subplot was ill-conceived in my opinion. Ripley is certainly one of the great heroines in all of cinema, and Aliens really drove that home… but ripping that off doesn’t suddenly make Alice a deep character. There’s no real established precedent at this point for Alice to be a surrogate mother to anybody, nor is it set up well at all. By throwing it in it just seems like Anderson and Jovovich just wanted to indulge their own family. To make matters worse, the relationship just makes no sense. The little girl, Becky, only follows Alice around because she thinks she’s her mother, but when she finds out that she isn’t she screams “You’re not my mommy are you?!?!” To that Alice simply quips “I am now!” As much as you’d like to be her mommy Alice, you really aren’t. Becky’s got a whole life that she can’t just forget because you decided that you should take care of her. Of course, the movie doesn’t address this because Alice has become a Mary Sue at this point, full-stop. She’s supposed to be vulnerable now, but she’s totally invincible in practice, and we’re never convinced that she’s in any sort of danger whatsoever.

Enough about Alice though, onto the other characters. Retribution actually got a fair bit of buzz by bringing back characters who had been killed off, namely Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and James “One” Shade (Colin Salmon). To that I say one thing: AWESOME. Carlos and James were easily the best parts of their respective movies, and a chance to bring them back to kick more ass is very welcome indeed… unfortunately they are given little more than overglorified cameos. Like, literally all that they do is show up every once in a while and look intimidating before they get killed off unceremoniously (and another clone of Carlos gets munched by a zombie at the start of the movie). Well how about Rain then? Since Resident Evil she had become one of the most recognizable action heroines in modern cinema, surely she got a good role this time around? Umm well no. There’s two versions of Rain in the movie, a good one and a bad one. The good one runs around and is kind of funny for being fairly useless (and dies of course). Bad Rain on the other hand is such a poor tertiary villain that it’s cringe-worthy. I thought Rodriguez’s acting was bad in the first movie, but she’s just awful in Retribution. This actually really saddens me because she’s proven that she can be badass in movies such as Avatar, so wasting her like this is just frustrating. So there you have it, 3 favourites from the film franchise are brought back to much fanfare… and then squandered so badly that you’d swear that the filmmakers were intentionally screwing with us.

How about the other characters then? Boris Kodjoe returns as Luther West, and while he was pretty cool in both movies, he doesn’t really get to do much before his own unceremonious death. Albert Wesker also inexplicably makes a return after getting blown to smithereens at the end of the last movie… like, literally no one questions how he could have possibly survived the explosion. They don’t even offer a half-assed hand wave. On top of that, Shawn Roberts’ acting is pretty bad this time around. For whatever reason, he emphasizes every damn word that Wesker says, making him seem a bit odd to say the least. Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) also returns in a full-fledged role once again, but her acting is still very bad. She certainly livens things up “physically”, but doesn’t do a great job convincing us whenever she has to open her mouth. Also, I’m kind of annoyed that they decided to emulate Resident Evil 5 for her appearance. Like in Apocalypse, her outfit is distractingly impractical:

Sure, it provides eye candy, but I can’t really take that outfit seriously. As a defense to Paul W.S. Anderson though, the game series is mostly to blame for that outfit, but that said he also bears the responsibility for adapting it. I actually am kind of disappointed that Capcom reinforced the “single male loser in the basement” stereotype when they worked Jill into Resident Evil 5, especially since she’s not generally a particularly sexualized character in the series. Sexism is a big issue in the gaming industry, and forcing one of the major strong, female characters to prance around with massive cleavage damages our ability to see them beyond that (on the flip side of the coin, Chris Redfield’s muscles are RIDICULOUS as well – you see angry Internet commenters, sexism works both ways!).

Bloody hell I’ve almost written a thousand words on the characters and still haven’t gotten through them all. Okay, picking up the pace slightly, the first new addition is Li Bingbing as Ada Wong. As she puts it, she’s Wesker’s top agent… and that’s basically all we learn about her. She’s given absolutely no development, and Li’s acting is atrocious on top of that. Similarly, Johann Urb’s Leon Kennedy isn’t given any development either… but that doesn’t really matter because he comes across as a massive, stupid douche. As I’ve said before, I haven’t really played much of the games, but is Leon always this much of a dork? I know he’s a fan favourite, but between this and Resident Evil: Damnation, my opinion of him is that he has the personality of a piece of plywood. The only bright spot among the characters is Kevin Durand as Barry Burton. Again, he isn’t given much to work with, but he goes out with style. Sadly, Chris and Claire Redfield are both conspicuously absent this time around… although considering how many damn characters are in this movie, that’s probably for the best.

As for the plot… well, you might want to sit down before you read about it. I did not think it was possible for the Resident Evil movie franchise to make a stupider, more plotless movie than Afterlife, but Retribution makes that movie look like a freaking masters thesis. The plot holes and contrivances are so bad that they retroactively make the plots of the previous movies worse. Yes, you read that right. Here’s a list of the problems I jotted down while watching the movie: How does it make any sense for Umbrella to produce clones and put them in a perfectly simulated world to simulate zombie apocalypses? The movie claims that they do it to try to gain control of the T-virus, but I don’t buy this (since they don’t offer any “solutions”, they just unleash the zombies and call it a day). Why does Umbrella bother to go to the detail of creating a whole world when they do this simulation? For example, Alice finds photographs of one of her clones’ marriage to Carlos, family vacations, etc… did Umbrella stage these photographs to make things more “real”…? Why does the Red Queen need humans to do her work? Why not just release chemicals to purge any intruders (y’know, like she did in the first movie)? Why can’t she lock the damn doors? Why are the Red Queen’s mind control scarabs so stupidly easy to neutralize? For that matter, if the Red Queen is in control of the scarabs, then why did they have them on the Arcadia (since this was controlled by Wesker, not the Red Queen)? If the zombies and clones aren’t all killed in a simulation, what happens to them (since Alice finds Becky hiding in suburbia)? How does Alice know sign language all of a sudden? How can Leon and Luther get the elevator moving if the Red Queen shut down the power? Why did Luthor come to infiltrate Umbrella HQ? He’s a basket ball player, not a special forces operative! And finally, a retroactive issue – if Alice bonded with the T-virus at a cellular level, wouldn’t getting bit by a zombie allow her to get her super powers back? I could go on and on, but I found the following image macros covered some of the problems pretty well:

If it sounds like they made the film too damn complicated, that’s not the issue at all here. In fact, Retribution‘s plot is so straightforward that you’d swear a kindergartner wrote it (hmm, I wonder if Paul and Milla’s kid has a writing credit on this movie…). The plot is as follows – Alice is captured by Umbrella, wakes up in their HQ, escapes and then has to fight her way out in under 2 hours or they’ll all get blown up. I think Scott at FEARnet describes it best:

That’s really the jist of it. The movie has nothing at stake and we’re never really left in suspense. We just watch action sequence after action sequence, but it doesn’t have the level of enjoyment which punctuated previous entries in the series, particularly Extinction and Afterlife. This movie features a fight against two Axemen – if you remember my previous review, you’ll remember that the Axeman fight was one of my favourite moments in Afterlife. While you’d think two Axemen equals two times the fun, you’d be sorely mistaken. The fight is actually boring, an adjective I could apply to most of the action sequences in the movie. The last 10 minutes are basically an extended fight sequence between Alice and Jill, and then Alice and Bad Rain… and it just feels like it goes on too long. Why do we care about Alice fighting Bad Rain? She hasn’t really bothered Alice all that much until now, and Alice just kicked the crap out of Jill. Shouldn’t that be enough for us? That’s not to say that the fights aren’t cool or are badly choreographed, they all just aren’t interesting. How do you get that interest back? Most movies needed a coherent plot and good characters to make the action engaging, if you don’t have that then the chances of failure skyrocket. In all honesty, I can’t believe how highly it was received.

Of course, Retribution is not all bad. The opening credits are epic, delivering on the promise that the ending of Afterlife held. The movie also does some interesting things, like FINALLY HAVING CHAINSAW ZOMBIES! Why did they not do that before!? Finally, as much as I disliked the film, the ending is totally epic. If the next movie actually delivers on the promise of mankind’s last stand that we were given at the end of this film then we’re in for a treat (even though I’m 100% certain we’ll get another shit-fest).

3/10

And that does it for the Resident Evil franchise at the moment. Of course, there’s a sixth and (supposedly) final film on its way, but what about after that? Well apparently plans are to then reboot the series from the start again. Ugh, well at least we can hope that they stick closer to the games this time… and please, PLEASE go back to horror and put someone other than Paul W.S. Anderson in charge for the love of God! Also, for those interested, this is how I would rank the franchise from best to worst:

1. Extinction

2. Afterlife

3. Resident Evil

4. Apocalypse

5. Retribution

Also, as I promised at the start of the series, I’ll cover the two animated Resident Evil movies briefly – Degeneration and Damnation. It’s been a little while since I’ve seen them so this is from memory, but it should suffice. Degeneration is a pretty standard fare – in the first half, Leon and Claire are at an airport when there’s a T-virus outbreak and the pair have to survive this. In the second half, they have to take down mad scientists responsible for all this. It’s pretty straight-forward, but surprisingly well-done all things considered. Damnation was just plain crap though. It was nice to see Umbrella bio-weapons actually being used in a warzone for once, but the story and acting were terrible. It also is more of an action movie than horror, basically just existing as a tie-in for Resident Evil 6.

And there you have it. That wraps up my third retrospective series! If you liked it, be sure to comment or share it so we can build up a bigger audience here! I’ve already got my fourth retrospective series lined up, and it’ll provide a bit of a change over the thus-far standard “bad action/horror” template I’ve been utilizing on the last three series. Continue to tune in and see you soon!

Welcome back to part four of the Resident Evil retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the fourth movie in the franchise, Resident Evil: Afterlife! Once again, the latest Resident Evil movie (Extinction) made even more money than the previous one (Apocalypse) – obviously this meant that the series had to shamble on another day. Despite Extinction being billed as the last entry in the series, Resident Evil: Afterlife was soon announced… in 3D (y’know, back when people still got excited when a movie was released in 3D)! Afterlife and the game it draws inspiration from, Resident Evil 5, mark a clear tonal shift to intense action for the franchise… would it work out in the end? Read on to find out…

After the surprisingly decent Extinction, the Resident Evil franchise finally seemed to be settling into a groove. After releasing his Death Race remake, Paul W.S. Anderson returned to the franchise once again, but this time he was taking the director’s chair once again (in addition to screenwriting of course). Entering production shortly before Avatar was released, Anderson and company believed that 3D was going to be the next big thing in Hollywood blockbusters – as a result, they decided to shoot Afterlife in 3D. I’m actually kind of happy with the way his was handled – rather than going for the cheap 2D-to-3D conversion cash-in, Anderson decided to shoot the film with actual 3D cameras. In my opinion, 2D-to-3D conversions are one of the major reasons why 3D has become a hated gimmick in the last couple years, because it just looks awful (as I can attest having watched Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Thor, Captain America and Clash of the Titans). On the other hand, all of the most visually stunning 3D movies I have seen have been filmed in 3D (Dredd, Life of Pi, etc). Sure it costs more to do, but the result is worth it if handled skillfully. So yeah, kudos to Paul W.S. Anderson for doing the right thing.

While I’m glad they filmed the movie in real 3D, I have to admit that I haven’t actually seen it in 3D. However, I can imagine how it would look because there are some sequences which are visually stunning even in 2D – Paul W.S. Anderson can really frame a good shot. On the negative side though, the 3D is often used as a gimmick. Crap is thrown at the audience throughout the whole movie: axes, coins, knives, bullets, hell even a pair of glasses at one point (as seen above). As I said in the restrospective for The Final Destination, this is just a cheap, gimmicky way to use 3D and just kills any sense of immersion. So… umm… kudos for filming in real 3D, but way to squander it in the end, Paul.

Moving onto the cast, the film stars most of the usual suspects – Milla Jovovich is back, obviously, and so is Ali Later as Claire Redfield (who thankfully gets to do more this time around). Sienna Guillory also makes a cameo appearance at the end, reprising her role as Jill Valentine. Spencer Locke also returns as K-Mart… but honestly, who cares? She didn’t do anything in either movie whatsoever so she’s hardly worth the mention. Anyway, the major new additions in Afterlife are Wentworth Miller as Chris Redfield and Shawn Roberts, taking over as Albert Wesker. I actually quite like Wentworth Miller in this movie, he definitely has a suitably badass air about him. Shawn Roberts is decent as Albert Wesker, pulling off the smug and imposing look although it comes across like he attended the Dick Dastardly school of villainy at times. Aside from the main cast, the movie also features a group of survivors in a prison, all of whom are just transparent as plot devices – there’s the useful black guy (thank God he doesn’t do street slang), the douche bag, the T&A and then the obligatory redshirts.

As for the movie itself, it opens on an exceptionally high note: the opening credits are absolutely awesome. The music, the cinematography and the slow motion all combine to make for a very memorable opening to the movie… and then the movie launches into even higher gear. Remember how Alice got ahold of an army of clones at the end of Extinction? I thought they would cheap out on this or handwave it away, but they actually go ahead and have an army of Alices attack an Umbrella Hive. This attack sequence is quite good and really opens the film on a high note… even if it’s only real excuse for existing is to conveniently get rid of Alice’s army and her super-powers to make the rest of the movie work. Yup, plot conveniences strike again, but at least we got an awesome first 10 minutes out of it.

As for the plot… well it probably makes the least sense of all the Resident Evil movies up until this point, which is saying a lot. It’s clearly just a thin pretense to support the action sequences. Put simply, Alice finds Claire (who has convenient amnesia) in Alaska – turns out Arcadia isn’t a safe haven after all. They then fly 3000 miles in a Yak-52 to Los Angeles, where they decide to land on a maximum security prison and help out the survivors there. Cue an hour of zombie action, culminating with them landing on the Arcadia (turns out it’s an Umbrella tanker) and battling Albert Wesker. In terms of plot, it’s absolutely brain-dead and the list of plot holes/conveniences I noticed while watching is just staggering. Why does Wesker carry a syringe on himself which can take away Alice’s powers (and his for that matter)… and how would that even work anyway? How the hell does a non-super powered Alice survive a plane crash unrestrained when it smashes head-first into a mountain? Why does Umbrella still want to experiment on people when they’ve already wiped out most of the world’s population? Who is Alice leaving her video blog for (it seems like just a lazy way to shoehorn in exposition)? Why is there a maximum security prison in the middle of down-town Los Angeles? How can zombies dig through solid concrete? How the hell does the Axeman make any sense? Why are the zombies suddenly Plagas? What are the chances that Chris Redfield happens to be at the same prison that Claire ends up in (not to mention that he’s apparently been locked up for about 5 years)?

While the plot is pretty much dead on arrival, that’s practically expected with Resident Evil by this point. What’s really important is that the action sequences are stunning. The latter half of the movie is littered with action and it is at these moments that the movie really kicks into high gear. The zombie attacks and gun battles are all pretty good, but the movie features three standout sequences. The first is the opening which I mentioned previously. The second is the cliffhanger ending, which is just epic and really heightens expectations for the sequel (even if you already know it’s going to suck). The third is the shower fight against the Axeman. This scene is jaw dropping… and pretty damn sexy too. Ali Larter really kills it here, and the slow motion and drops of water make the scene a visual feast. Paul W.S. Anderson should direct music videos. Seriously, just watch it:

Sure, the slow motion is gratuitous, but it’s done well (although the movie would probably be 15-20 minutes shorter if you cut out all the slow-mo in it). Resident Evil: Afterlife is a mindless guilty pleasure movie – the plot is pretty much non-existent, but the action scenes compensate for it for the most part.

5/10

Be sure to come back soon for the final entry in this retrospective, Resident Evil: Retribution!

Welcome back to part three of the Resident Evil retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the third movie in the franchise, Resident Evil: Extinction! However, before we get to that I want to speak briefly on critic-audience disparity, which has come to mind with the recent release of Man of Steel (and which can be applied to the Resident Evil film franchise by its fans). Superman Returns had a high critical reception (75% Tomatometer), but had a mixed reception with audiences (67% liked it). Conversely, Man of Steel has had a very mixed reception (56% Tomatometer), but is scoring well with audiences (82% liked it). One audience rebuttal to this I have read is that critics are not fans of the property in question, and therefore do not know what makes a proper franchise film. However, this makes critics look like robots, not to mention implies that they don’t have any personal interests of their own. For that matter, why should it matter if they’re a fan of the property? If they think the movie’s bad then that’s their opinion, and the one they give to a general audience who may not be fanboys either. For example, I love werewolves. I thought that The Wolfman remake was a great werewolf film, despite the movie’s very tepid reception (35% Tomatometer and 38% audience approval). Reviews are ultimately just opinions. However, I’m more inclined to trust a critic since they have seen a wider variety of movies and therefore have more to judge a film against than the average movie-goer. As a result, I’m expecting Man of Steel to be very middle-of-the-pack when I finally see it.

Anyway despite making even more money than its predecessor, Resident Evil: Apocalypse shit all over the best period of the Resident Evil games’ storyline. With the Resident Evil film franchise basically the butt of bad video game movie jokes, how could the film franchise hope to carry on? The answer was quite… surprising to say the least. How so? Read on to find out…

At the time that Resident Evil: Apocalypse was released, the Resident Evil video games had been stagnating: new games in the series either regurgitated the Racoon City time period (Outbreak), were prequels to the original games (Zero) or remakes of the original games (REmake, Code Veronica X). However, the games were given new life mere months after Apocalypse when Resident Evil 4 broke new ground. With the Resident Evil game series attaining relevance once again, it would be fitting if the film franchise could finally achieve some form of success.

Although Paul W.S. Anderson was once again given scripting duties, the actual directing of the film was passed off to Russell Mulcahy. Mulcahy was an inconsistent but well-established director, having directed a ton of music videos. As for his filmography, he was best known for directing the cult classic, Highlander. Unfortunately, his CV also contains epic turds, such as The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior and Highlander II: The Quickening (although budget and producer interference played a major role in these flops). Still, he was certainly a step up from Alexander Witt.

In terms of its cast, most of the (surviving) main characters from Resident Evil: Apocalypse return. The only major character who is missing is Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), because she was appearing in Eragon instead (ouch, bad move…). Taking her place as the secondary heroine was Retrospectives veteran Ali Larter, who was previously featured in my Final Destination series. She takes on the role of Claire Redfield. Considering that Guillory did a fairly poor job as Jill Valentine in the previous film, this was definitely a step up. Taking the reins as the main antagonist is a minor character who appeared in Apocalypse, Dr. Isaacs, played by Iain Glen (holy shit, Jorah Mormont!). The main villain of the video game series, Albert Wesker, also makes an appearance, played by Jason O’Mara… unfortunately, he isn’t given anything to do, and just comes across as very bland rather than cunning and sinister.

The cast actually does a decent job, especially compared to the other movies in the series. By this time, Milla Jovovich has really settled into a rhythm, totally convincing us she’s a cool and killer badass. I quite liked Oded Fehr as Carlos Olivera as well – his role is expanded a bit from the previous film and we actually become fairly attached to him (although the romance between he and Alice just comes out of nowhere). Ali Larter does a decent job as Claire Redfield, although she isn’t given a lot of material to work with (a common complaint, which also extends to the secondary characters). Hell, even LJ’s role gets expanded this time around and I actually found myself sympathizing with him… that said, I was still overjoyed when he died, just because of how annoying he was in Apocalypse. I also liked Iain Glen’s Dr. Isaacs, who really brings some much-needed campiness to the proceedings. He plays the usual mad scientist role, but he’s unpredictable – I mean, how unhinged to you have to be to be too crazy for even the Umbrella corporation!?!

As for the plot of the movie, Extinction is, in a lot of ways, a massive middle finger to the fans of the games. Why’s that, you might ask? Put simply, the movie goes post-apocalyptic, killing off 5/6ths of the world’s population, whereas the video games revolve around preventing another outbreak like Racoon City and stymieing bio-terrorism. Basically, at this point the franchise has even less to do with the video games than the previous two movies did. However, I think this is actually somewhat of a blessing in disguise – this allows the movies to go places the video games never did (sort of like what a video game tie-in for a movie would die). Furthermore, it gives the movies the freedom to do whatever the heck they want within the setting. Finally, it allows angry video gamers to finally divorce themselves from the franchise all-together. As a result, Extinction marks the first entry in the franchise where the opening of the film discards elements from its predecessors to make the movie work conveniently.

Resident Evil: Extinction owes its existence to two very obvious sources – the first being Day of the Dead. Let’s list some of the familiar elements, shall we? Extinction features scientists in an underground laboratory surrounded by zombies behind a chain-link fence. In this underground laboratory, they’re trying to domesticate the zombies, showing them objects from their previous life and using them as well. Hell, even the Umbrella soldiers complain about losing men because they keep having to go to the surface. The links to Day of the Dead are just too similar to be a coincidence. The second major influence is Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (in fact, when this movie came out I called it “Mad Max with a Vagina”). While the similarities are more cosmetic than plot-related, the movie revolves around a civilian convoy scavenging for resources in a post-apocalyptic desert, who are saved by a lone badass who is left behind as they head off to a safe haven. Again, the similarities are clearly there and hardly subtle.

Of course, as with any Resident Evil movie, the plot is just riddled with holes. Why does Umbrella run amnesiac Alice clones through an assault course filled with booby traps that she has no chance of avoiding? Why is she then a “failure” for not having completed their impossible course? For that matter, are they planning on releasing clones with amnesia into warzones? Hell, why bother with this testing when they’ve already killed off 5/6ths of the world’s population? How can the T-virus kill all of the world’s vegetation and dry up most of the water? Why would Umbrella want to domesticate zombies? And how many freaking super zombies were in that small container in Las Vegas? It looked like maybe a half dozen, but they must have killed about 50 of them in the ensuing shoot out… And while this isn’t really a plot hole, why the hell would Sony want to have product placement in the movie… for Umbrella!??!!

The usual Resident Evil-related gripes aside, I actually don’t hate Extinction by any means. Sure it’s a rip-off of The Road Warrior and Day of the Dead, but at least it picked two great movies to emulate. The story also features plot holes, but they’re far more minor than in any other entry in the series. In fact, Extinction largely succeeds in that it does a good job not screwing up. There’s no stupid attempts at humour, no major editing mistakes and far less issues with the plot than in previous entries. The movie looks extremely stylish due to Mulcahy’s direction, similar to The Book of Eli. Extinction also goes to some effort to actually set up the story, giving us over 30 minutes to get situated and meet the characters (most are left undeveloped, but at least they’re introduced… unlike in Apocalypse…). Unlike every other Resident Evil movie, Extinction also manages to be suspenseful at times, despite occurring entirely in daylight (feeling silly now, Apocalypse?). On top of that, it’s less of a cartoon than the previous movies – characters actually miss their shots and people die and it feels like it means something. Hell, even freaking Carlos, a character from the video games, dies – who expected that!? It was a pretty ballsy move in my opinion, especially after they gave him a far better role in the movies than he ever got in the game he appeared in (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis). Finally, the zombie make-up is absolutely spot-on – despite having identical production budgets, Extinction blows Apocalypse out of the water visually.

Most importantly though, the action scenes in Extinction are fantastic and really mark the point where the franchise became a full-on action movie series with minor horror elements. The early battle between Alice and the zombie dogs is pretty great, and the Las Vegas zombie shootout is a thrilling climax, but the real standout is the zombie crow attack. Seriously, the crow sequence is amazing and is probably my favourite sequence in the whole franchise. It’s also utterly unique – no other zombie movie is going to give you a sequence like this. It’s a truly suspenseful, exhilarating and frightening sequence and serves as a good introduction to Alice’s new powers.

Actually, speaking of which, Alice has gone full-on God Mode in this entry. In addition to her unbelievable accuracy, martial arts abilities and general super-powers, she now has telekinesis and an army of super-powered clones at her disposal… so yeah, she’s basically an over-glorified Mary Sue at this point in the series. Appropriately, she was pregnant with Paul W.S. Anderson’s child at the time so that goes so way to explaining why he’d be fawning over her so much (and maybe also explain why she’s naked for the third movie in a row).

The only major issue I have with Extinction is its third act, which is extremely weak. Alice infiltrates an Umbrella hive and then has to fight Dr. Isaacs, who has become a Tyrant. The fight just comes across as exceptionally hokey and isn’t anywhere near as engaging as the rest of the movie was. On top of that, Alice is just too powerful at this point – she beat the shit out of Nemesis before she gained telekinesis, what chance does a more minor Tyrant like Isaacs stand? Still though, Resident Evil: Extinction manages to be a fun (but mindless) action movie on the whole, which is more than I can say for the previous two films. It’s far from great, but I can think of far worse ways to spend an afternoon.

5.5/10

Be sure to come back soon for part four of this retrospective, Resident Evil: Afterlife!

BREAKING NEWS!!! Microsoft has reversed its position on used games and online requirements!!! This is somewhat surprising, but it’s good to know that they actually listened to complaints. I’m still a Sony fanboy for life, but I’m glad to see that the console war won’t be a curb-stomping.

Welcome back to part two of the Resident Evil retrospective! In this entry we’re going to cover the second movie in the franchise, Resident Evil: Apocalypse! Before I get into the meat of this retrospective, I just want to clarify something: I may not have left this impression when I was writing about the first Resident Evil, but I actually don’t fawn over Milla Jovovich by any means. I mean, she’s certainly good looking but she’s not an actress who I find myself particularly drawn to. That said, I know that there are a lot of people who would respectfully disagree with that opinion (and by respectfully disagree I mean screaming “WTF!?!? ARE YOU GAY!!?!!?” at me). Anyway, the first Resident Evil had been a minor financial success and ended with a cliffhanger setting up a sequel. While Resident Evil wasn’t a particularly great film, Resident Evil 2 was considered the best video game in the series at the time (Resident Evil 4 wouldn’t be released until the next year). The destruction of Racoon City is one of the most famous storylines in video gaming, being visited in two separate canonical Resident Evil games and revisited in at least a half dozen spin-offs. To stack the deck even further in the movie’s favour, it was going to use one of the greatest enemies in the franchise’s history – the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. With an attempt to go back to the storylines from the games, a more interesting setting and zombies gaining traction in the media, could Resident Evil: Apocalypse become a success? To find out, you’ll have to read on…

Just after completing Resident Evil, Paul W.S. Anderson began working on a sequel. However, Anderson chose not to direct this sequel – instead, his script for Alien vs. Predator was green lit and he was chosen to direct that movie. While Anderson stayed on as producer and screenwriter, Alexander Witt took over the reins of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Similarly to David R. Ellis and Steven Quale from my Final Destination retrospective series, Alexander Witt had been in film for a number of years as a camera operator and second unit director on a number of major films, but Apocalypse was his first (and thus far only) directing gig. Perhaps realizing that the original Resident Evil hadn’t lived up to the potential, more elements of the video game stories were worked into Apocalypse so that it would be more than just Resident Evil in name only. Interestingly enough, the movie was filmed in Toronto during the SARS outbreak, adding a bit of currency to the film’s premise.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse features an almost-entirely new cast of characters… which is appropriate, considering that basically everyone got killed off by the end of the first movie. The heroine is once again Alice (Milla Jovovich), who is no longer a passive bystander and occasional ass-kicker when the plot calls for it. In this entry, Alice is infected with the T-virus as an Umbrella experiment. Conveniently, this gives her super powers instead of turning her into a zombie. Apparently the whole zombie thing is an unfortunate side-effect, although none of this is really elaborated on in the movie (I had to check the Resident Evil Wiki to find that one out). The only other character who is technically returning is Matt Addison, although he is played by a different actor (and by “played” I mean that his dissected body is portrayed by someone else) and he is mutated beyond recognition into Nemesis… so yeah, basically just Alice then.

The new characters are a mixed bag. On one end of the scale, we have the characters from the video games: Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), both of whom are central to the action. Unfortunately, both are flatly characterized, trying to come across as “badasses” in basically everything they do. Carlos’ introduction is incredibly goofy as he bungie jumps out of a helicopter firing dual-wielded pistols, each round successfully headshotting a zombie. Conceptually it’s rather badass, but it just comes across as cartoony in action. An even worse offender of this is Jill Valentine:

As you can see, they transcribed her Resident Evil 3: Nemesis costume almost perfectly. However, this suffers the same adaptation problem as the original Judge Dredd did in the costume department – it just looks goofy. Jill Valentine is supposed to be a special forces agent, why the hell would she be dressed in a miniskirt and tube top? To hammer things home, Jill’s fight scenes were hampered because Sienna Guillory had difficulty moving in her costume. Could they not have picked something a little more practical… like, I dunno, her costume from the first Resident Evil? Unfortunately that’s not where the troubles end for Jill Valentine, because she suffers the same cartoonish, over-the-top treatment that Carlos is saddled with. In her introduction, she literally walks into a crowded police station and kills zombies (who, at this point, are still thought to be human). To make matters even more over-the-top, she shoots a guy’s handcuffs off. Furthermore, I felt that Sienna Guillory might have put in the worst performance of the major characters. This may not be so much her fault though, since she’s given nothing to work with on a script-level. The treatment of the video game characters makes them feel more like action movie caricatures rather than real people and really makes it difficult for us to have any real bond with them.

On the other end of the scale are the expendable and/or useless characters (of which there are many). Some are basically just transparent plot devices (Dr. Ashford and Angie Ashford), some are there just to die (the entire S.T.A.R.S. team and Umbrella special forces) and then some serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever (Terri and LJ). Terri and LJ are so useless that I have to rant about them to hammer home the point. Terri is supposed to be a professional reporter (who apparently uses a cheap camcorder for her job) who follows Jill Valentine around until she dies. She literally does nothing of importance but run around and then get eaten by zombie children. LJ’s even worse, being nothing more than an annoying, generically “pimpin'” black side-kick. Do you remember the secondary black guy in Event Horizon who suddenly turns into comic relief and helps destroy the third act of the movie? LJ and that guy must have attended the same school of gangsta slang. LJ just shows up in scenes and screams or makes really stupid gangsta quips which just distract from the plot. He’s thrown in here as comic relief, but all he really does is make you want to punch Paul W.S. Anderson in the face for writing such a useless character.

Moving onto the plot, the movie picks up right after the first Resident Evil ended. Umbrella goes into The Hive and stupidly allows all the zombies to escape. Soon after, Racoon City is overrun with zombies and quarantined by Umbrella. Meanwhile, Alice, Jill and company have to rescue the daughter of a high-level Umbrella employee if they want to escape the city before it’s sanitized. Finally, taking advantage of the chaos, Umbrella decides to test their Nemesis bioweapon against Alice in order to determine which program shows the most potential. As you can probably see already, the story is once again very thinly drawn (which is a shame because a movie set in the background of the Racoon City outbreak has ample opportunities for a great story). Plot contrivances absolutely abound. Why the hell would Umbrella open up The Hive when they know there are T-virus zombies loose inside? How lucky is it that Alice finds a fully-loaded shotgun less than 10 seconds after escaping the hospital (more lucky than the video games, I’ll tell you that much)? How does Alice know about what the Nemesis program is, considering that she was unconscious when it was enacted, and she didn’t link it to Matt Addison until later? How does Umbrella get away with dropping a nuclear weapon on Racoon City, especially considering that they let a bunch of people escape the city (and therefore spread the news about the zombie apocalypse)? How can Jill and Carlos pretend to be Umbrella Agents when there’s a televised national manhunt for the pair? Finally, why the hell do they get Alice and Nemesis to fight each other… with their fists!?! Do they plan on sending them into combat unarmed? And how would this really determine which of the two is “better”?

Obviously the story has more holes than Swiss cheese, but unfortunately I feel that Alexander Witt botched things from a directing standpoint as well. Being his first solo directing effort, I get the feeling that Witt overcompensated and ended up using directorial techniques in a really mish-mash sort of way. For example, half of the time the zombies are on screen, Witt films them at a low FPS setting, making their movements extremely jarring. Maybe Witt was going for extra terror or something, but it just comes across looking awful and overused. It’s techniques like these which make Resident Evil: Apocalypse look more like an amateur effort. I may give Paul W.S. Anderson a lot of shit, but I’ll admit that he can at least shoot a film and make it look like a very professional production. I think Witt’s inexperience also extends to making Racoon City feel like, well, a city. With very few exceptions, the streets of the city are completely empty unless the main characters are getting attacked by zombies, which is odd considering the whole zombie apocalypse thing.

The treatment of Nemesis is another major issue with this film. On the one hand, I’m glad that they went with an almost-entirely practical costume to portray him, since it looks far better than the CGI models used in the first film (although the CGI has noticeably improve significantly in Apocalypse). Unfortunately, this is a bit of a double-edged sword. Nemesis is supposed to be terrifyingly swift – I’ve played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and I nearly shit my pants when I saw how fast he was coming after me. However, the Nemesis costume they used is extremely bulky and makes movement very difficult. Nemesis is visibly bumbling about awkwardly and trying to slowly catch up to Alice despite the stiffness of the costume. Basically, Nemesis is turned into a big, slow enemy who’s easy to avoid… which is particularly bad for an enemy who’s major feature is chasing people. Even worse, Paul W.S. Anderson decides to turn Nemesis into an anti-hero near the end. If you remember AVP, that makes two Paul W.S. Anderson movies released in the same year where the big, strong villain gets turned into an anti-hero side-kick. This was really just a big middle finger to people who pissed themselves playing Resident Evil 3 and were expecting Nemesis to replicate at least a tiny fraction of those feelings.

However, there is one positive to Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and that’s the action sequences. Some of them are quite epic, especially Alice’s intro in which she drives a motorcycle through a church and shotguns Lickers to death. Owing to his experience as a second unit director, Alexander Witt is quite accomplished at filming an action sequence, and the film is generally at its best in these moments. If that’s all it takes to please you then you’ll find stuff to like in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but if you’re looking for a decent story or characters then you’re going to be severely let down. Hell, even Paul W.S. Anderson thought this film sucked. How bad do you have to get for that to happen!?

3/10

Be sure to come back soon for part three of this retrospective, Resident Evil: Extinction!

Welcome back! As promised, this is the kick-off of our next retrospective series! This time we’re going to tackle the live-action Resident Evil film franchise (as a result, the Capcom CGI films Degeneration and Damnation won’t be covered, although I’ll probably give them each a very short review at the end of the series). And since we’re going to be covering a video game movie franchise, I thought it was appropriate to mention some of the current events in gaming before we dive head-first into these retrospectives. First off, as I mentioned in a previous post, I thought that Microsoft was testing the waters by leaking the restrictions on used games and required internet connection to Wired rather than announcing them in their press conference. Turns out I was wrong (mostly anyway).

Most of you have probably already heard this by now, but it would seem that Microsoft have waffled and are now placing the used games restriction in the hands of publishers. The online verification thing is sticking as well, although it is a 24 hour verification (or every 1 hour if you’re logging into someone else’s XBOX ONE). This might be forgiven if the system was priced extra-cheap, but it’s going to be $499 (with Europe and Britain getting shafted by exchange differences). I hate to be an obnoxious fanboy, but right about now I’m extremely glad that I am a PlayStation lifer: my first console was a PS1 and I’m probably going to stick with them out of misguided brand-loyalty forever – even if the shoe were on the other foot in this instance. That said, the only real negatives I’m seeing about the PS4 right now are that online multiplayer requires a PS+ subscription and that the system is HDMI-only… both of which are features of the XBOX ONE anyway and so wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. In any case, I’m getting really freaking excited for the next generation of gaming consoles, enough-so that I’ll probably be pre-ordering a PS4 soon.

Alright, enough of that, time to get to Resident Evil. The Resident Evil film franchise is the most financially successful movie series based on video games, having brought in almost $1 billion between the (thus far) 5 films. With a 6th film in production it is likely to surpass that mark, which would make it one of the most lucrative franchises of all time. Of course, money isn’t everything – despite its successes, the franchise has a rather… uh… toxic critical reputation to say the least (which we will, of course, be covering over the next couple weeks). In this entry, we will be discussing the first film in the franchise – 2002’s Resident Evil. This film has frequently been labelled as one of the best video game adaptations of all time, usually being brandied about alongside Silent Hill, Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider. Are these accolades* justified? Read on and find out…

In the early stages of production, George A. Romero was in charge of writing and directing Resident Evil. Yes, that’s right – the man who invented the modern zombie in Night of the Living Dead and perfected it in Dawn and Day of the Dead was supposed to adapt Resident Evil into a film. Of course, the man was almost 15 years removed from those films at the time, but the prospect of him returning to the zombie genre was certainly an exciting one. At the time he had not returned to the genre in quite some time (and would not until the release of Land of the Dead in 2005), and so his involvement was one that generated much interest.  Romero was apparently planning on making a fairly close adaptation of the first game in the series, using characters from the game (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, Ada Wong, Barry Burton and Rebecca Chambers). For whatever reason, Romero was fired (apparently the hardcore gamers would bitch about deviations from the plot and newcomers wouldn’t be engaged) and the film went into development hell. If you’re interested, you can actually read the original draft here… I haven’t, but if you have/do then let me know how it was in the comments.

At some point, Sony approached Paul W.S. Anderson to work on the project. Anderson was almost certainly approached for his work on the relatively successful Mortal Kombat film, and soon was both locked as both the writer and director for Resident Evil. At the time Paul W.S. Anderson wasn’t quite the hack he’s considered today (he wouldn’t release Alien vs Predator for another 2 years, and he was still living off the good will of the first 2 acts of Event Horizon), and so the decision wasn’t too troubling. Oddly enough, Anderson decided to move even further from the original story than Romero, with only the Umbrella Corporation, the mansion and monsters connecting the film to the video game series. In his own words, “under-performing movie tie-ins are becoming all too common and Resident Evil, of all games, deserved a good celluloid representation”… which basically translates too “the best way to adapt a video game is to not adapt it at all”. I’m not entirely against this line of thinking, but the movie risks alienating the core audience if it fails to “feel” like the source it’s claiming to be an adaptation of. Of course, there has to be a balance – for example, how awful will the Uncharted movie be if it’s a direct adaptation of the first game? Just make a new, well-written adventure story starring true-to-character representations of Drake, Sully, Elena and Chloe. Similarly, Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy managed to be an awesome fan film just because it captured the fundamentals of the source without being a direct adaptation of it. Many video games have perfectly serviceable plots which can be translated to screen, and Resident Evil was one of them in my opinion.

Also worth noting is that Paul W.S. Anderson was gunning for the movie to get a PG-13 rating. Yes, you read that right – a movie about cannibalistic zombies and monsters with no skin butchering people sounded like a fun time for the whole family. This sort of ties into my previous point as well – the Resident Evil games are fairly violent. Each game has a screen which warns you that there’s violent content and therefore appropriate only for adults. Hell, the game’s ESRB rating is “M” (not that anyone seems to follow that). Luckily they ended up going with an R-rating (a fairly tame one at that), but I had the same sort of problem with the recent World War Z – how do you justify making a movie about people getting violently torn apart and cannibalized and make it PG-13? You end up having to sanitize it which just cheapens the experience and practically ensures a bad product. I’m not usually someone who pushes for R-ratings like some others I could mention (would The Lord of the Rings really have been improved with an R-rating? No, no it would not). However, zombie movies they really do require an R-rating because the staples of the genre involve visceral violence and gore – taking those out with discretion shots tends to not work.

Anyway, when production began in earnest, 2 fairly big names signed on in lead roles – Michelle Rodriguez (who had been making waves as a beauty in Blue Crush and The Fast and the Furious) and Milla Jovovich (at the time, probably most famous for The Fifth Element). There were some more minor male roles of course, but these were the big two, as evidenced by the poster for the film. As a result, the movie was marketed as “sexy chicks kill zombies”. In fact, I can actually remember seeing a commercial for the film as a little 12-year-old kid, where the crux of the marketing campaign was basically “see this movie because a girl in a slinky red dress slow-motion kicks zombie dogs in the face, Matrix-style”. Oddly enough, that’s actually more appealing to me now than it was back then…

Ahem… so we’ve got pre-production out of the way, but was Resident Evil any good? Well, let’s talk about the plot first… or lack thereof. Resident Evil (and its sequels) are notorious for their shallow, illogical plots and this fact became evident in the first film. Put simply, a zombie toxin (the T-virus) gets released in an underground facility owned by the Umbrella Corporation called The Hive. When The Hive’s AI unit, The Red Queen, locks the facility down, Umbrella sends in its own private military unit (plus a couple civilians they decided needed to tag along) to infiltrate The Hive and shut down The Red Queen… of course, this releases the zombies. Based on that short rundown, can you spot a few major flaws? Like, if the AI locked down the whole Hive, why do they have to send in a PMC to investigate? Can Umbrella not communicate with The Red Queen directly, or maybe check security footage? Don’t they have failsafes or something? When they reboot The Red Queen, why can’t she just lock down the facility again? Why can’t The Red Queen warn the Umbrella Corporation that there are zombies inside? And probably most importantly why would they take civilians into The Hive with them!?! Is their m.o. to reveal Umbrella corporate secrets to damn well everyone (especially since one of the civilians turns out to be an NSA agent)?! Basically, the whole plot’s just a thin pretense… like a video game, minus good gameplay to make up for it.

Then there’s Alice, Milla Jovovich’s character, who is basically just a convenience. When The Red Queen locked down The Hive, she also releases some sort of stun gas which causes amnesia… for some reason, she also releases this at the Umbrella Mansion (despite it being kilometers away from The Hive), causing Alice and her fake-husband Spence to lose their memories. As a result, this allows Paul W.S. Anderson to seed us new information and skills when it’s convenient to the plot, to add some “suspense” and to allow characters to spew exposition at her. Need to suddenly deal with zombie dogs? Oh goody, I just remembered that I know martial arts, now I won’t be just a bystander all the time. There’s also the fact that Paul W.S. Anderson seems to do whatever he can to get Milla Jovovich naked – there are 3 separate scenes where she’s either completely naked or almost naked (her introduction where she’s knocked out in the shower, a flashback sex scene and the end of the film where she wakes up in a hospital). You’d almost think that Paul W.S. Anderson had a thing for her… of course, we’ll get to that in good time.

Speaking of Alice, the characters in the film aren’t very well drawn, or acted for that matter. No one really has anything to work with, but I felt that Michelle Rodriguez did a particularly bad job (which is unfortunate because in her later films she is an effortlessly badass bitch). The one major bright spot in the acting department though is Colin Salmon as James “One” Shade, the leader of the Umbrella PMC. His character is AWESOME, but dies way too early. To be fair this was a fairly clever curveball on the part of Anderson, but considering how weak the other characters were it was a bad move to kill off his best character. There’s also the fact that his death scene is pretty badass and definitely a highlight of the film.

Partly because of the weak script, Resident Evil just plain fails as a horror movie. I know that Paul W.S. Anderson can create suspense and horror – Event Horizon was really successful in this regard, at least until the 3rd act at which point it went off the rails. Unfortunately, he just plain failed to do so here, thinking that he can scare us by kicking a can off-camera a few times (hint: it’s not working). In fact, the first 40 minutes are rather boring because we’re supposed to be getting connected to the characters and getting scared by what’s happening, but fails on both accounts. The movie also suffers from using CGI on some of the monsters. I can understand having to use CGI to represent a Licker since it’s a pretty grotesque, out-of-this-world being, but the effects are just really cartoony and plastic. To make matters worse, they’re intercut between shots of an animatronic Licker which just reinforces how bad the CGI is in this movie. Think I’m overstating just how bad it is? This is one of the first zombies we see in the movie (read: it’s supposed to make us piss our pants):

Yeah, we’re pissing our pants alright… pissing our pants laughing that is. Did they render that on a PS1 to remain authentic to the game? The Red Queen hologram’s pretty awful too, with horrid lip syncing and extremely stiff movement. In fact, Resident Evil might have some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen in a professionally-made movie… and don’t give me any “oh it’s 2002, the special effects weren’t good then” bullshit. Jurassic Park came out 10 years earlier and it looked phenomenal. The Matrix came out 3 years earlier and looked much better than anything on display here. The technology wasn’t lagging here, it was the guys who worked on the movie who are to blame.

Also worth singling out is the extremely shoddy editing, which might actually be the worst aspect of the whole damn movie. One two separate occasions, the characters get completely surrounded by zombies and then, one cut later, they’re safe with absolutely no explanation as to why this is. That’s like if in Saving Private Ryan the Americans had been getting shot at on Omaha Beach as soon as they land, but instead of showing everyone getting gunned down, they instead cut straight to them firing flamethrowers at the pillboxes. It’s very noticeable and just suggests that they probably just didn’t film the whole damn movie (because why would you cut out the exciting escape or last-second scramble to get onto the pipes…?). There’s also a point where Alice fires a 9mm pistol at the zombie dogs at least 18 times without reloading . Now I’m no expert (unless countless hours of video games factor into that), but the Beretta 92FS that Alice takes off the dead security guard doesn’t appear to have a magazine capable of carrying that many rounds (the standard size is apparently 15 rounds)… as a result, I figure it’s probably just bad editing… and really, did she need to fire that many shots to take out a half dozen zombie dogs?

All-in-all, I think you can gather that Resident Evil was a pretty bad movie. Barring James “One” Shade, the zombie dogs and some half-decent action sequences, the movie is not very well done at all. The fact that it gets name-dropped among the “best” video game movies is baffling to me – as far as I’ve seen, all video game movies have been unfortunately shitty, and Resident Evil is absolutely no exception to that.

4/10

Be sure to come back soon for part 2 of this retrospective, Resident Evil: Apocalypse!

*Of course, none of these are considered “good”. I’ve only seen Silent Hill out of these 3 movies, and while it captured the atmosphere of the town quite well, it really failed as a proper film. On the laurels of its atmosphere and cinematography alone, I’d have to give it a 5/10.