| Andrew NDB |
02-06-2017 04:32 PM |
The "Resident Evil" movies. I swore I wouldn't, after watching part 2 many years ago (because it was so terrible, ghastly, and made my Top 5 Worst Movies of All Time list). But I figured hey, let's spend a sick weekend (last weekend) re-watching parts 1 and 2, and then seeing *all* of them to see just how far the rabbit hole of suck goes. First of all, while I'm aware the movies really have nothing to do with the games, I've only played Resident Evil 1 and 0, and they were too tough for me to crack.
Here goes:
1: Resident Evil (2002): I never minded this movie too much. I did see it when it came out. I remember the reports about George Romero attached to direct, then behind the scenes stuff happened... and Paul W.S. Anderson came aboard. It's not bad. There is legitimate zombie stuff, plus the Super Monsters of the games, too. Somewhat decent survival horror, even if Alice (Milla Jovovich) is clearly some kind of deus ex machina/kwisach haderach. It's serviceable.
2. Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004): I swore off the whole series when I saw this one ages ago. So terrible. A series of "how cooool can we make Milla look in every shot" (or Jill Valentine, for that matter... I still cringe at her intro at the Police station... it feels like an SNL or Key and Peele skit) with nothing in the way of scripting or making us care about or believe anything going on on the screen. With slow-mo. Oodles. Mike Epps was very annoying, which wasn't his fault (seems symptomatic of my problems with, say, "Bad Boys 2"... you know, very white Hollywood guys giving black comedian actors funny dialogue to read that plays flat). I thought maybe I was wrong in my memory, that every time you see a zombie in the movie, the camera just gets all blurry and slow-mo and you can't actually see any zombies. It's true. Watch the movie. I challenge you to find one un-blurried shot of a zombie in the movie. Now, I feel like maybe it was the editor masking some shoddy makeup or something, or maybe they didn't get the zombie extras to sign papers or something. I have no idea. But truthfully, I didn't mind the movie this much this go around. It's stupid fun, completely brainless, with an R rating they suspiciously didn't push. It also it the first time we see Iain Glen (Game of Thrones, before Game of Thrones) in the role of Dr. Isaacs.
3. Resident Evil: Extinction (2007): Seeing this one for the first time. Of particular interest to me, Russell Mulcahy directed it, who also directed the first two Highlander movies. Erm, I mean, he directed the first one. Actually not that bad! I think I like this one best of all the "Resident Evil" movies. Definitely a pseudo-zombie remake of "The Road Warrior"... until Alice becomes a Jedi and starts wiping out things with her mind. Weird. And ****. Little bit stuck on how Alice wandered from Raccoon City in the last movie all the way to Nevada... which just coincidentally happens to be right above Dr. Isaacs' huge underground Umbrella installation. Like, right there. Dumb. Still, I actually began to care about the characters unlike the last one. Mike Epps even was given an arc I cared about, and Ashanti didn't suck! Not terrible. Big confrontation with Dr. Isaacs that's cool, I guess. I also realized that the Albert Wesker in this is played by the guy who plays the current Director of SHIELD on Agents of SHIELD. He's recast in the next ones by a guy clearly given the direction of, "Act just like Agent Smith. Just do that." Unless that's how Wesker is in the games, I have no idea.
4. Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010): Oh god. Everything bad I've ever said bad about Resident Evil: Apocalypse? Times ten here. And soooo much slow-mo. I swear, if you sped every action sequence up in this movie to real time, it'd be a 50 minute movie. It's once again an exhausting study in just throwing action sequences out there making the leads look as coooool as possible. Something about a boat in Alaska that's just sitting there next to a building with survivors, yet it's a super secret Umbrella installation just waiting there to cryo-freeze people to... experiment on them? Kill them? Nothing is clear. Garbage.
5. Resident Evil: Retribution (2012): Even worse. Maybe. The s**t trophy goes to this one or the last. And a pretty clumsy "greatest hits" collection of scenes and characters from previous movies. By this point it's clones, clones, clones to explain everything and it just sort of runs with it. With a ton of more slow-mo. Excruciating to get through. I like that Paul W.S. Anderson literally steals his wraparound shot -- that everyone *hated* -- from AVP where the facehugger comes toward the camera in slow-mo and gets shot. He did that here exactly with Jill Valentine's chest crab at the end. Ends with Albert Wesker saving everyone, whisking them all away to Washington D.C. to do final battle with the undead. While a pretty transparent cribbing of Ripley's Newt in Aliens, I actually found a bit of heart in Alice getting a "daughter" from the clone she picks up in this. It humanized her for the first time in the whole series. When the little girl asked Alice, "Are you really my mommy?" and she said, "I am now," that was probably the most powerful moment in the whole series. Easily. And how quickly it's glossed over. Very embarrassing returns from all the old cast (actors and actresses who presumably wouldn't return in parts 3 or 4, but now many years later... don't have much going on) from previous movies as clones, clones, clones. Lamesauce.
6. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017): And it will be the final chapter... pretty horrifying box office so far. So everything the last one set up? Poof, gone. She wakes up in the White House talking about "it was a trap, Albert Wesker tricked us to kill us"... without offering even a single clue as to how or why this was. Further confusing is that if this was true, why would he bother to save them in the last movie? Just let them die in that underground Russian bunker or whatever. Or blow up the chopper before she regained consciousness. And by the way, this series is a constant series of sequences where Alice is knocked out and awakens in some kind of dire or new and scary situation. Oh, and this movie might as well be titled, "Resident Evil: Remember Dr. Isaacs from Part 2 and 3? He's back because Game of Thrones is hot." None of his motives from the 2nd or 3rd movie make any sense here. Also weird is Isaacs' ability to bark orders at Albert Wesker, who was pretty clear about his outranking him in 2 and 3 (to Wesker, Isaacs was just some pesky, meddlesome science guy, and he let him know in every scene in 2 and 3). Now, Isaacs is top dog, the CEO apparently. I feel like when they "got" Iain Glen from Game of Thrones back, they sort of rewrote all of Wesker's stuff for him. Fairly clumsy continuity in trying to make Alice the Red Queen, and suddenly she doesn't remember her life before "the mansion." When she emerged from her amnesia in the first one she remembered fine. She was a career woman running security at the Hive, and was pretending to be married to dude to keep a lid on the Hive's entrance. Simple enough. And apparently now there are only 4000 humans alive on the Earth, and Alice has 4 hours to unleash the anti-T virus thing into the air to save them (the Red Queen even pops up at times to remind Alice, "You have X hours to unleash the anti-T virus serum or the last survivors will be killed!")... yet the ending makes it a point to point out that it could take years for it to disperse enough in the air to spread across the world. In fact, just a few miles from the dispersion zone, there Alice is fighting zombie bat things at the end. Huh? It hasn't even gone like a block or two from where you let it loose a day ago? More disappointing is the whole lack of continuity between this one and the last one with Alice's "daughter." That was a huge thing in the last movie, and nary a single mention of her here, or Alice so much as indicating any care or worry or remorse (if she's dead) at all. About the only thing this movie succeeds at is retroactively castrating any possible momentum (or sense) or impact the last slew had. Awful. Just awful. Though truthfully not as bad as 5, 4, or 2. In tone it sort of tries to be 3 again, harkening back to the "Road Warrior" vibe. Failing, of course. The Umbrella armored trucks were kind of cool, though obviously borrowed from the Dead Reckoning in George Romero's far superior "Land of the Dead." And what's this about the Red Queen is unable to kill Umbrella employees? The opening 10 minutes of the first film, she sure does a great job of murdering about 50 of them. And Alice herself was an Umbrella employee in the first movie... and the Red Queen sure was trying to kill her at every chance. Every RE movie makes it a point to blow the first 5 minutes recapping everything that's happened before... I think the filmmakers needed that a lot more than the poor bastards watching these things.
In summation, I think the best, most relevant comparison between these brain-dead movies might be the "Fast and the Furious" movies. Both are somewhat empty-headed, full of cooool moments, energized action and big set pieces. The difference, though, (I think) is that the Fast and the Furious movies have an admirably slavish dedication to continuity, heart, and a genuine attention to "family." Each movie feels like a new chapter, each development feels earned. People come into those movies and go, but it always feels organic. No such luck in the "Resident Evil" movies. Just s**t. Pure s**t. I think 4-6 purely exist to keep a certain marriage alive and try to keep a certain someone still relevant in Hollywood who hasn't been since over a decade ago.
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