If you’ve read my reviews of Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse, you know that I'm not a huge fan of the series. In fact, I find them to be pretty terrible. At best, they’re mediocre shoot-‘em-ups with some decent effects work. Most of the time, their weak grasp of filmmaking craft and lackluster storytelling techniques make them pretty painful to sit through. So I was not looking forward to Resident Evil: Extinction, the third installment in the film series based on the popular series of video games about a zombie infestation.
The plot takes place a few years after the previous installment, and finds Earth in a state that pretty much meets the definition of “post-apocalyptic” to the letter. The entire country is now a desert wasteland. It seems the vast majority of human beings have become ravenous zombies, and the remaining survivors have banded together into groups of outlaws and scavengers. Ass-kicking heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) has gone into exile, convinced her status as a fugitive from the Umbrella Corporation will put others at risk. Also, as hinted at in the second film, she’s now a fully-formed Jedi warrior with telekinetic powers. Don’t ask questions, just go along with it!
Meanwhile, Umbrella scientist Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) is holed away in a secret underground lab – without one of which it wouldn’t be a Resident Evil film – attempting to synthesize a cure for the virus using clones of Alice that he created from samples of her blood. And by “cure,” I mean it will turn them into docile simpletons that Umbrella can use as slave labor. Oh, those evil corporations, always looking at the bottom line, even when the world’s gone to hell. How cunning and sinister! Somehow his efforts lead to the creation of crimson-headed Super Zombies that are even more aggressive than before. With results like that, I think somebody needs to go back to mad scientist school.
The first Resident Evil film was decidedly mediocre, but it wasn’t a complete waste of celluloid. It also managed to pull in a decent amount of bank at the box-office, so it’s no surprise that a sequel would hit theaters two years later. Especially one in which Milla Jovovich flashes her boobs amidst scenes of zombie murdering. Bam. You just guaranteed that every serious male geek will come to your movie. It’s no surprise, then, that not much work was put into it. None was required in order to make a profit.
In case you missed the first one, here are the basics: the Umbrella Corporation has developed a virus that can bring the dead back to life. It was unleashed in an underground lab called The Hive in the first film. Alice (Milla Jovovich), former head of security, managed to fight her way out before being captured by Umbrella for unknown reasons. It’s not exactly rocket science.
The second film in the survival horror franchise finds the T-virus having spread to the surface, infecting the residents of Raccoon City. The Umbrella Corporation establishes a security perimeter around the entire city to quarantine the area, essentially meaning that anyone trapped inside is doomed, because as an evil film corporation their job is just to mess up people’s lives. As a result of experiments performed on her by her former employers, Alice now has superhuman strength and agility. That’s going to come in handy when she has to take down wave after wave of zombies, Umbrella security teams, and Matt in order to survive.
I managed to avoid this series for quite some time. It isn’t that I dislike zombie movies, video games, or Milla Jovovich’s, er, assets. It’s that video game adaptations typically suck. I’m sorry, that’s just the way things have always been, and probably will be most of the time. Most of what makes video games fun is the fact that the player is actively involved. Characters and story don’t have to be brilliant in order for players to enjoy them. By having to make constant decisions that affect gameplay, we are automatically actively engaged. Take away the element of control, and a great deal of the appeal is lost.
This is why the best video game movies are those that either merely utilize video game themes and style in crafting a larger film narrative (eg. Crank and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) or recognize the inherent superficiality of most video games and make that part of the fun (eg. DOA: Dead or Alive). To act as though video games and film are equal storytelling mediums and what works for one will work for the other is to ignore the strengths and weaknesses of each. That’s like saying that because both the fire department and police department are designed to serve the public good, trying to put out a three-story blaze with a billy club and a badge will totally work. They might have similar goals, but they achieve them through very different means.
Paul W.S. Anderson apparently didn’t get the memo.