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Resident Evil
The latest in a line of video game adaptations, Resident Evil was released over the weekend. While past conversions such as Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter were box-office flops, Resident Evil has the chance to break the game-to-movie-flop habit. While the movie is not a straight port of the game, it can still offer a good viewing experience.
The movie takes place in Raccoon City, USA, within a secret underground research lab called The Hive. The lab's work on a cell regeneration medicine ("the T-Cell serum:) for the Umbrella Corporation has a very negative side effect: it reverts the donor into a creature with basic instinctive needs. A lab experiment causes the virus to be released in the air circulation system and, after a logic snafu from the Red Queen (The Hive's AI), this AI quarantines the lab and kills everyone who may have been exposed to the virus.
A SWAT team (not STARS, for the Resident faithful), is sent to find out what's going on. After finding Alice (Milla Jovovich), they break into the HIVE. The Red Queen's traps have fun with the troops, and one they figure things are going their way, the dead scientists of the HIVE are released. On top of that, they're all thirsty for blood.
From here, it goes into a Night of the Living Dead shoot-and-scream-a-thon. There are some genuine scares, but most of them are peppered with shouting and running. There wasn't enough time to get to know the characters before they start getting killed off. The movie tries to be like Aliens in some respects, and sometimes it works.
Plot notwithstanding, the movie still offers a good viewing. It is a shame that George Romero didn't take the project, as was the original plan. Instead, it was taken by Paul Anderson (Soldier, Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat), whose influences show with strobe lights, dark passageways, and a loud soundtrack. Go and see it during the matinee, or wait for it on video. AfterThought: For those who are also fans of anime, here is a video you may wish to download: Resident Eva . It uses the trailer's audio track and makes good use of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Heh Heh. It shows her boobs and there is even a nice crotch shot in one scene. Definately a movie for those milla fans. :) :) :)
MOOLTIPASS!!!!
What a wonderful little action flick.
Of course I had reservations that Capcom had
pulled another Street Fighter the Movie, and
soon we'd see a Resident Evil the Movie The Game,
but thankfully it was really enjoyable.
Maybe I'm in a lone minority here, but I don't
have to have a complex plot and character
development to enjoy a hack and slash action
movie. I don't need to have twenty minute long
monologues detailing the philosophical
ramifications of the reanimated dead wanting to
eat BRAAAAIIIIIINSSSSSSSSSS. All I need are
sexy actors, sexy scenes, and a few good jump
scenes to make me happy. Sure, I'd LOVE to see
a video-game movie (I feel dirty refering to
them all like some sort of mutant sub genre) that
really makes me think and has some lasting
impact on society or some other sweeping hope,
but let's face it, despite how passionate many
of us are about various video games that we
think are genious, the widest audience for these
games, and thus the movies based after them,
probably just want to see things blown up
and a little T&A. So what happens? They go with
the lowest common denomonator, where the money
is. I think the Final Fantasy movie might be a
good example of what happens when you don't.
I, like several other people I know, absolutly
loved this movie. I enjoyed the odd concepts and
veiled hints of what was really going on. To me,
it felt alot like one of the bizzare plot lines
in some random Final Fantasy game that you just
want to attribute to a translation error.
Alot of people didn't like that. Those people
probably expected something a little bit
more base. Now Square Pictures is selling off
all their assets to try and make up for the loss.
Resident Evil however will appeal to a much
wider base. It works off a proven formula for a
good movie, one that I alluded to earlier--
Attractive cast, attractive sets, jump scenes,
and motivation toward a goal. Sure, it's overly
simplistic, but we can all think of movies that
followed this formula that did well enough in
their own right to be considered successes.
Maybe I'm not asking enough of the motion
picture industry when I go to be entertained,
but like most of everyone else, I'm only thinking
about what I want to see. And what I saw, I liked.