Have you ever watched the Resident Evil movies? The video games industry is notorious for having naff movie conversions of its most beloved franchises stinking up theatres across the globe, as has been the case for decades now. However, whereas the likes of Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and House of the Dead fall into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category, Resident Evil is one particular series that is considered an outright travesty.
Masterminded by Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, The Musketeers), the Resident Evil movies, based on Capcom’s survival horror franchise, have generated millions at the box office and spawned numerous sequels since its inception in 2002. It also stars Milla Jovovich in usually skimpy clothing kicking undead arse.
That’s surely a recipe for success, right? Well, no. Here’s five reasons the Resident Evil movies are almost universally despised by fans of the video games.
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Alice? Who the hell is Alice?!
This is pretty much how most of us reacted after Alice made her debut in 2002’s Resident Evil, and continued to remain the central protagonist throughout the rest of the series. Milla Jovovich’s scantily-clad, martial arts wielding heroine remains possibly the most hated aspect of the series for hardcore fans, preventing any of the classic characters from the games taking centre stage, as many feel should be the case. But no, we have to put up with Alice taking part in outlandish set pieces, punctuated by cringe-worthy dialogue and ostentatious acrobatics. And if one wasn’t bad enough, they then went and made hundreds of clones of her in RE: Afterlife. It wouldn’t matter if she was a well-rounded character, but she’s too one-dimensional to care about in the slightest.
They’re not scary in the slightest
Resident Evil at one point in time was a genuinely scary series, having been partially inspired by George A. Romero’s ‘Dead’ movies. However, the resulting movies were anything but frightening, and were nothing more than glorified action flicks that just happened to feature zombies. The palpable tension and uneasiness that was part and parcel of the video games is nowhere to be found, and thus the movie series fails to do any justice to its horror-based source material. After all, it’s hard to be scared when your main hero has super powers and goes around kicking undead in the face without breakin a sweat.
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They fail to accurately adapt the source material
One of the biggest pet peeves is the fact the movies take the source material and deviate considerably, creating their own story that seems to become more and more disparate from the games with each instalment. The S.T.A.R.S. are no longer the focus; in fact, the first movie completely eschews the murders in Raccoon City and the investigation of the mansion with something completely different, with only a cameo of the mansion included, with the rest a completely original story. After that, Anderson picks bits and pieces of various games (the Redfields, Wesker, Crimson Heads, Barry Burton etc.) and puts them together to create a Frankenstein’s Monster of a movie series, which offers a completely cohesive tale riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies. Where did the Las Plagas parasite come from in the film? It just turns up and is casually mentioned by Leon as if it makes sense. How did the zombies transform into Plagas Undead after only being infected with the T-Virus? Who constructed the Axe Man? What happened to Angela Ashford? The list goes on.
George Romero could have helmed the movies, but was turned down
If you dig a little deeper into the history of the Resi films, you’ll find out that Romero himself was originally pencilled in to do the script. As a pioneer of the contemporary motion picture zombie, Romero’s pedigree needs no explanation as to why he’d be the perfect fit for adapting Resident Evil. And his script was remarkably close to the video game; Chris and Jill were in it, in fact, most of the S.T.A.R.S. team were, as was the Umbrella Mansion, zombies, and numerous other aspects from the game. Sure, there’s a couple of changes (Chris and Jill were lovers, and Chris wasn’t part of S.T.A.R.S.) but overall it seemed to do the game justice. Then it was canned for being too close to the game, and instead the filmmakers opted for Anderson’s approach. The phrased missed opportunity just doesn’t quite cover it, and fans lament the loss to this day.
The scripts are awful and a total rip-off of the games
Resident Evil is a series based on a game franchise with notoriously ropey dialogue, but that’s no excuse for churning out some of the toe-curling scripts that Anderson has done. The action sequences are totally overblown to the point of ridiculous, the one-liners are awful, and some of the dialogue has been ripped straight out of the games. Resident Evil: Afterlife’s Wesker vs the Redfields is almost frame-by-frame, word-for-word identical to Chris and Sheva’s encounter with the iconic baddie from Resi 5, only here, it looks woefully out of place, contrived, and just plain awful. Surely if you are going to change the plot so drastically you could at least come up with something original, or at least use the scene in the same context as the games. Similarly, a lot of the action sequences are merely a vehicle for Jovovich to be pushed to the front of the action, and feel completely out of place for something claiming to be a Resident Evil film. In short, they’re a mockery of the source.