Post by Spark Doll King on Oct 10, 2022 23:32:20 GMT
Resident Evil...
Ok I'm a big fan of the Resident Evil games, or I should say Resident Evil games prior to 2005 (oh the f*cking irony) and the select few that tried recapture that era. Sadly, all attempts to bring the games to the big or small screen have ended in nothing but disaster.
The first Resident Evil tells the story of an elite police force, S.T.A.R.S., investigating a series of cannibalistic murders in the forest surrounding Racoon City. Unfortunately, a series of unfortune events drives them to the old Spencer Mansion. Believed to be long abandoned, the team find it's interior well kept and it's halls crawling with zombies and other abominations. As they fight to survive, they discover that in reality the place was a in fact a secret laboratory of the Umbrella Cooperation, who conducted illegal bio-weapons research in a laboratory below the mansion's grounds. The primary focus of the research was the T-Virus (Tyrant Virus). I highly infectious agent that could infect all forms of life, it had somehow breached containment, infecting the mansion and the surrounding forest. The team eventually are able to escape the place, blowing up the lab in the process. Sadly, that was only the beginning of the nightmare...
The first Resident Evil is, in essence, an evolution of the haunted house trope. An old building filled with monsters, but this time born of a scientific origin rather than supernatural. While mistakenly viewed as corny due to its English dialog, the result of the games Japanese creatures directing any white person they could get to speak English lines regardless of their actual ability to speak English, the reality was a very scary f*cking game even for it's time. It's honestly the first time I remember ever being scared of anything. It also crafted a much deeper narrative thanks to things like diaries and scraps of paper, which had both a practical and world building purpose. Most of it's sequel games, prior to 2005, build upon and captured what made the original great.
The films... not so much.
The first Resident Evil movie is ok but clearly only interested in the most bare bones aspects of the series. We go from a reasonable set up in the games, with a hidden lab connected to an abandoned mansion, to a hidden facility bigger than the f*cking city it's built under. We have none of caste from the game, instead we have group of new character, who were originally intended to be inspired by the cast of Alice in Wonderland. It's why the main character is now called Alice, yet apparently this idea was dropped at some point, and as a result all of them a pretty much nothing characters with the most bare bones characterisation. Michelle Rodriguez is the only one to feel anything like an actual human being, but then it's Michelle Rodriguez being Michelle Rodriguez in a movie. Milla Jovovich's Alice is probably the original terrible feminist icon in these films. Having lost he memory at the start of the film, she spends much of it confused and without direction, and thus lacks any form of actually character development, with plot armour flashes of her "original self" when the film needs her to kick ass. I wouldn't mind but as her memories return she dose not change as a person, no dose she develop any kind of goal other then what was already set out up by the other characters. To give credit were it's due the Zombies are all ok, though the Zombie Dogs look like shit in some shots. The Licker... yes it's an iconic monster of the games yet it dose bugger all throughout the film until the end, by which time it's lost it's ionic appearance and become a generic monster. There are a few good moments here and there, but it really dose little to fix the fact that films a generic action/horror with a bare minimum RE coat of paint.
Resident Evil Apocalypse is about as good as it got for these film. With the proper setting of Racoon city, the inclusion of the one of the real main characters from the franchise in Jill Valantine and the hulking presence of Nemesis, arguable the franchises most iconic monster, things are instantly looking up. I'd even go so far as to say the film has a much better plot, much better characters and is just a lot more fun then it's predecessor. Sadly it has the misfortune of being a sequel to the first film. Alice is back, now with super powers and wondering around aimlessly. Once again she has no real motivation of her own, latching onto whatever the plot needs her to care about and her presence generally robs scenes of any tension, devolving into Micael Bay style set pieces. She feels far less interesting then Jill, who is at best a secondary character. The biggest insult is her defeat of Nemesis in a fist fight, acting as almost a physical manifestation of how these films think themselves superior to the games their leeching off.
As bad as things were, Extinction was the herald of the dark times. Now in a Mad Max style wastland, it's painfully obvious that Paul Anderson had lost interest in even trying. This film has even less to do with the games, and could literally be a generic zombie movie is just a select few things were removed. Not content to rip-off Mad Max, one of it's sub-plots is basically the same as Day of the Dead. Alice is even more boring then before, wandering the wasteland with no goal of her own and being a generic, post-apocalyptic protagonist stereotype, only now with even more broken super powers. She's a borderline Mary Sue by this point. With a generic villain and a cut and paste story, in hindsight I only enjoyed this because I'd not watch the films it was ripping off.
Afterlife was the point of "None Gives A f*ck". Back tracking on the apocalyptic events of the last f*cking film, we now have the series devolving into generic zombie movies of no substance and the odd character named after the games, sole there to trick idiots into hoping things would get better. Purchase the thing to piss me off the most is the inclusion of monsters from later Resident Evil games that have bugger all to do with the T-Virus, while what happens to the zombies can be explained away as new mutations, fine whatever, I can never get past the executioner.
The reason is because the Executioner is not a zombie or a bio-weapon, it's a member of a cult possessed by a parasite. It has literally no legitimate reason to be in this film, yet there the c*nt is, bold as a pair of brass balls. Then there's the inclusion of the series primary human antagonist Wesker, and he's a f*cking pointless as the rest.
Retibution was the last film I saw, and it was the last because some how it was even worse and even more nonsensical. It's so bad I struggle to even remember what the f*ck it was about beside more of the same bullshite.
I refused, and maintain that refusal, to ever watch Final Chapter. Having had my time wasted by one turd after another I just f*cking gave up.
I never watched Welcome to Racoon City or the Netflix, because it's blatantly clear none's learned anything from these shit film.
Ok I'm a big fan of the Resident Evil games, or I should say Resident Evil games prior to 2005 (oh the f*cking irony) and the select few that tried recapture that era. Sadly, all attempts to bring the games to the big or small screen have ended in nothing but disaster.
The first Resident Evil tells the story of an elite police force, S.T.A.R.S., investigating a series of cannibalistic murders in the forest surrounding Racoon City. Unfortunately, a series of unfortune events drives them to the old Spencer Mansion. Believed to be long abandoned, the team find it's interior well kept and it's halls crawling with zombies and other abominations. As they fight to survive, they discover that in reality the place was a in fact a secret laboratory of the Umbrella Cooperation, who conducted illegal bio-weapons research in a laboratory below the mansion's grounds. The primary focus of the research was the T-Virus (Tyrant Virus). I highly infectious agent that could infect all forms of life, it had somehow breached containment, infecting the mansion and the surrounding forest. The team eventually are able to escape the place, blowing up the lab in the process. Sadly, that was only the beginning of the nightmare...
The first Resident Evil is, in essence, an evolution of the haunted house trope. An old building filled with monsters, but this time born of a scientific origin rather than supernatural. While mistakenly viewed as corny due to its English dialog, the result of the games Japanese creatures directing any white person they could get to speak English lines regardless of their actual ability to speak English, the reality was a very scary f*cking game even for it's time. It's honestly the first time I remember ever being scared of anything. It also crafted a much deeper narrative thanks to things like diaries and scraps of paper, which had both a practical and world building purpose. Most of it's sequel games, prior to 2005, build upon and captured what made the original great.
The films... not so much.
The first Resident Evil movie is ok but clearly only interested in the most bare bones aspects of the series. We go from a reasonable set up in the games, with a hidden lab connected to an abandoned mansion, to a hidden facility bigger than the f*cking city it's built under. We have none of caste from the game, instead we have group of new character, who were originally intended to be inspired by the cast of Alice in Wonderland. It's why the main character is now called Alice, yet apparently this idea was dropped at some point, and as a result all of them a pretty much nothing characters with the most bare bones characterisation. Michelle Rodriguez is the only one to feel anything like an actual human being, but then it's Michelle Rodriguez being Michelle Rodriguez in a movie. Milla Jovovich's Alice is probably the original terrible feminist icon in these films. Having lost he memory at the start of the film, she spends much of it confused and without direction, and thus lacks any form of actually character development, with plot armour flashes of her "original self" when the film needs her to kick ass. I wouldn't mind but as her memories return she dose not change as a person, no dose she develop any kind of goal other then what was already set out up by the other characters. To give credit were it's due the Zombies are all ok, though the Zombie Dogs look like shit in some shots. The Licker... yes it's an iconic monster of the games yet it dose bugger all throughout the film until the end, by which time it's lost it's ionic appearance and become a generic monster. There are a few good moments here and there, but it really dose little to fix the fact that films a generic action/horror with a bare minimum RE coat of paint.
Resident Evil Apocalypse is about as good as it got for these film. With the proper setting of Racoon city, the inclusion of the one of the real main characters from the franchise in Jill Valantine and the hulking presence of Nemesis, arguable the franchises most iconic monster, things are instantly looking up. I'd even go so far as to say the film has a much better plot, much better characters and is just a lot more fun then it's predecessor. Sadly it has the misfortune of being a sequel to the first film. Alice is back, now with super powers and wondering around aimlessly. Once again she has no real motivation of her own, latching onto whatever the plot needs her to care about and her presence generally robs scenes of any tension, devolving into Micael Bay style set pieces. She feels far less interesting then Jill, who is at best a secondary character. The biggest insult is her defeat of Nemesis in a fist fight, acting as almost a physical manifestation of how these films think themselves superior to the games their leeching off.
As bad as things were, Extinction was the herald of the dark times. Now in a Mad Max style wastland, it's painfully obvious that Paul Anderson had lost interest in even trying. This film has even less to do with the games, and could literally be a generic zombie movie is just a select few things were removed. Not content to rip-off Mad Max, one of it's sub-plots is basically the same as Day of the Dead. Alice is even more boring then before, wandering the wasteland with no goal of her own and being a generic, post-apocalyptic protagonist stereotype, only now with even more broken super powers. She's a borderline Mary Sue by this point. With a generic villain and a cut and paste story, in hindsight I only enjoyed this because I'd not watch the films it was ripping off.
Afterlife was the point of "None Gives A f*ck". Back tracking on the apocalyptic events of the last f*cking film, we now have the series devolving into generic zombie movies of no substance and the odd character named after the games, sole there to trick idiots into hoping things would get better. Purchase the thing to piss me off the most is the inclusion of monsters from later Resident Evil games that have bugger all to do with the T-Virus, while what happens to the zombies can be explained away as new mutations, fine whatever, I can never get past the executioner.
The reason is because the Executioner is not a zombie or a bio-weapon, it's a member of a cult possessed by a parasite. It has literally no legitimate reason to be in this film, yet there the c*nt is, bold as a pair of brass balls. Then there's the inclusion of the series primary human antagonist Wesker, and he's a f*cking pointless as the rest.
Retibution was the last film I saw, and it was the last because some how it was even worse and even more nonsensical. It's so bad I struggle to even remember what the f*ck it was about beside more of the same bullshite.
I refused, and maintain that refusal, to ever watch Final Chapter. Having had my time wasted by one turd after another I just f*cking gave up.
I never watched Welcome to Racoon City or the Netflix, because it's blatantly clear none's learned anything from these shit film.
