People who bought the rights kept rejecting Romero's adaptations back when he was interested but when shlockman arrived after making one good shlock movie they were like YES this is the guy we need for our movie
tl;dr film producers are fricking moronic
>People who bought the rights kept rejecting Romero's adaptations back when he was interested
Romero got fired because they were making a direct to video German movie and they needed him to cut back the violence, and Romero kept fricking them around. So they fired him and were planning to cancel the movie, but then they caught wind of a spec script called "Undead" which was a loose ripoff of the first Resident Evil. They talked to its author, Paul W.S. Anderson, and told him to rewrite it into an RE adaptation and they would see if they liked it. The rest is history.
It in and of itself wasn’t bad, but there was a huge cliffhanger at the end of 5 (my favorite one) where Whesker gives Alice her full power back and Leon and Claire and everyone is there and it was gonna be awesome
then the last movie retcons it all and makes Alice go back into the place they were in the first movie with the lasers because there’s a cure in there then releases the cure and it’s over it was awful, I would recommend stop watching at the penultimate movie and pretend that’s the end and they won.
It in and of itself wasn’t bad, but there was a huge cliffhanger at the end of 5 (my favorite one) where Whesker gives Alice her full power back and Leon and Claire and everyone is there and it was gonna be awesome
then the last movie retcons it all and makes Alice go back into the place they were in the first movie with the lasers because there’s a cure in there then releases the cure and it’s over it was awful, I would recommend stop watching at the penultimate movie and pretend that’s the end and they won.
I rewatched the last Resident Evil movie and it's sort of frustrating because there's some really good stuff there. The dialogue and characterization feels like a return to the style of the third movie. It's a lot less over the top. The set designs are amazing. All the actors are doing a pretty solid job. But the movie itself clearly got fricked sideways, possibly at multiple points. I have my suspicions than when they had a horrific accident that maimed their main stunt double for Jovovich it completely threw the shooting schedule out. I think that's the root reason why the Wesker fight scenes were cut, why they cut the scenes explaining what the frick is going on with Wesker, and various other scenes. The third act of the film changed completely between the leaked draft summary and the finished product. And a lot of plot points that don't make sense don't make sense because they were last minute changes.
For instance, what the frick is with the anti-virus? Well originally that was the anti-virus the White Queen was working on. Alice flew to Nevada and fetched it. But she needed a device to disperse it into the atmosphere and only Umbrella had that, in the ruins of the Raccoon City facility. Originally Doc wasn't a traitor. Originally Angie Ashford was a failed Alicia clone. Originally Alicia was evil, and the real version of Isaacs was a good guy. Originally Wesker shot Alicia in the head and then Alice fought him to the death (pic related were the mutated arms they made for Wesker), and Claire shot an RPG into Wesker, and he fell to his death, but Alice had been mortally wounded, and died.
I think it gets unfairly hated, but it's peak "not what they set out to make". I do wish they'd make another movie and just undo TFC and redo it with a better script and expanded cast.
She's an film original character. Truth be told, better than the new RE protagonists they created. She should be made canon but the Japs are too petty to admit she's a better MC than most, barring Leon and Chris.
Because you didn't play it. I can tell because they aren't alive anymore for you to be complaining about but one is and she could be the new Alice for all you know.
Besides, if they made 5 more games about them you'd remember them too.
I just think Alice is an established and cool character that could be great in a game. Although, there may be rights issues I guess. I would like for a new RE game to be as bombastic action horror as the movies just for a change. I did play Village thoughever.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I would like for a new RE game to be as bombastic action horror as the movies
This is just what the re4 remake was. They even remade the laser sequence to more closely resemble the movie.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Good idea. I'd wager that fricking laser room is scarier than most of the things in the franchise. It always stuck with me how the black guy was cut up in RE1. The movies clearly are viewed with reverence and liking by the studio but there's this autists that view them as sacrilege and ruin all discussion about them.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>It always stuck with me how the black guy was cut up in RE1
all he had to do was literally take one step backwards
5 months ago
Anonymous
I was under the impression that he was backed up to the wall
5 months ago
Anonymous
>character doing kung fu and shooting things
Um, the Devil May Cry thread is thataway
5 months ago
Anonymous
True but I still like her.
They didn't make a single good movie. They were all universally dogshit movies.
The first one was great and the others, barring the last one, were very watchable flicks.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I like the movies too but I'm okay with her not being canon. I think they did whatshisface from 6 dirty. Chris' buddy that turns into a powerful BOW sentai dude. They should keep a character like that so they can make Resident Evil action games every other year and puzzle horror on the other years and have the main story veer back and forth and side characters could get play time.
>Truth be told, better than the new RE protagonists they created
RE protagonists aren't particularly deep but they're likeable at least, Alice is a charisma vacuum le strong action womyn that doesn't even really have slight hints of womanly vulnerability and charm that Jill or Claire had. Frick outta here with that.
The first one is the only one that passes as a real movie but they made five more anon. And all of those were shit. If they stopped at the first one I wouldn't be as critical.
Alice is absolutely a likeable character. One of the reasons the character Jade Wesker didn't work in that TV show was that she was basically Alice, but she was a complete butthole who had none of Alice's sympathetic qualities. Alice gets a lot of people killed, but she's genuinely sorry about it. She tries to do better, and fricks up again, but she did try.
Also what does "womanly vulnerability and charm" mean? And how does Alice lack it?
>who is Mila's character in the video games?
They realized during early production that if they used Jill as a main character this would paint them into a corner when making sequels. So Jill was rewritten into a new character named Alice. This proved very important because when the shit hit the fan in terms of creative disagreements they were able to effortlessly write out characters like Jill and Leon, and just keep going with Alice.
She's an film original character. Truth be told, better than the new RE protagonists they created. She should be made canon but the Japs are too petty to admit she's a better MC than most, barring Leon and Chris.
It's not an issue of pettiness. It's an issue of ownership. Alice belongs to Constantin Film/Sony. Capcom have to pay to use her, and they don't want to do that. It's very similar to how Ubisoft don't include any Prince of Persia stuff in Assassin's Creed because they guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP, so they'd rather stick to things they exclusively own.
>It's very similar to how Ubisoft don't include any Prince of Persia stuff in Assassin's Creed because they guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP, so they'd rather stick to things they exclusively own.
This isn't an issue for Ubishart since they're about to release a new PoP game and have a remake of Sands of Time in the reworks.
Both those projects require them to pay royalties to Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft have the exclusive rights to make PoP games, but PoP itself belongs to Jordan Mechner. This is the entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years, and why they have zero interest in including PoP within other franchises. If they had the Prince show up in an AC game, they'd have to pay royalties.
To use an example, this is why the Monster Hunter World film DLC was timed. Because in order to use Artemis from the movies, Capcom have to pay royalties to Constantin/Sony. This is why the laser corridor in RE4 Remake still doesn't match the one from the movies. The ceiling is different, the floor is different, the wall designs are different. If they used the film design they'd have to cut a deal.
Capcom once described the situation as being "unable to use any finished product".
>This is the entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years
I don't know where you got this head-canon idea from since Ubisoft has publicly stated multiple times that AC is a far more popular franchise and this is why they get the Lion's share of the development budget.
>I don't know where you got this head-canon idea
Some years ago a Ubisoft employee went on Cinemaphile and leaked a shitload of details about AC: Origins. >Forget Prince of Persia. It will never come back. The reason why AC exists at all is because PoP meant Ubi has to pay for license, since they don't own the IP. AC is Ubi's own IP, so merchandising and all that shit is theirs to keep. PoP is financially not worth it. >Ancient Egypt. They want the least amount of historical documentation to get freedom. The story is set before the Assassins and Templars even existed. This is basically a prequel to all ACs. >"Egypt. There won't be an AC in 2016. You may screencap this and refer to it when nothing is shown in E3 2016. You'll have to wait until 2017 for it. The reason: It will be a complete revamp of the series. The game is going for a Witcher feel, with player progression, freeform combat system. Horse is back, and boats too. It's made by the Black Flag team. You may leave any question you want answered."
Incidentally, this is the same reason why Ubisoft's version of Rainbow 6 doesn't have any book characters or organizations. They don't wanna pay the Clancy (book) estate when they can just make their own OCs. This goes all the way back to Patriots where Rainbow magically had new leadership and Ding and the others were nowhere to be seen. Ding is never coming back because Ubisoft don't own him and most people won't miss him.
>I don't know where you got this head-canon idea
Some years ago a Ubisoft employee went on Cinemaphile and leaked a shitload of details about AC: Origins. >Forget Prince of Persia. It will never come back. The reason why AC exists at all is because PoP meant Ubi has to pay for license, since they don't own the IP. AC is Ubi's own IP, so merchandising and all that shit is theirs to keep. PoP is financially not worth it. >Ancient Egypt. They want the least amount of historical documentation to get freedom. The story is set before the Assassins and Templars even existed. This is basically a prequel to all ACs. >"Egypt. There won't be an AC in 2016. You may screencap this and refer to it when nothing is shown in E3 2016. You'll have to wait until 2017 for it. The reason: It will be a complete revamp of the series. The game is going for a Witcher feel, with player progression, freeform combat system. Horse is back, and boats too. It's made by the Black Flag team. You may leave any question you want answered."
Incidentally, this is the same reason why Ubisoft's version of Rainbow 6 doesn't have any book characters or organizations. They don't wanna pay the Clancy (book) estate when they can just make their own OCs. This goes all the way back to Patriots where Rainbow magically had new leadership and Ding and the others were nowhere to be seen. Ding is never coming back because Ubisoft don't own him and most people won't miss him.
Of course Ubisoft have since changed their minds, but you'll of course notice that the new Prince of Persia is a much lower budgeted game, so they feel more comfortable spending that money.
As a general rule, videogame publishers don't like working on IP they don't own because they could make their own version where they get all the profits. For example, Techland could have grovelled and gotten the Dead Island IP from Deep Silver, but instead they made Dying Light, which is literally Dead Island but they own it.
>hey guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP
Both those projects require them to pay royalties to Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft have the exclusive rights to make PoP games, but PoP itself belongs to Jordan Mechner. This is the entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years, and why they have zero interest in including PoP within other franchises. If they had the Prince show up in an AC game, they'd have to pay royalties.
To use an example, this is why the Monster Hunter World film DLC was timed. Because in order to use Artemis from the movies, Capcom have to pay royalties to Constantin/Sony. This is why the laser corridor in RE4 Remake still doesn't match the one from the movies. The ceiling is different, the floor is different, the wall designs are different. If they used the film design they'd have to cut a deal.
Capcom once described the situation as being "unable to use any finished product".
>he entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years
Anon, if a company thought they could make millions from an IP they wouldn't give a shit about paying s percentage to the owner. There are TONS of IPs that are managed by corporations and they pay royalties to the owner. Ubisoft is just focusing on their more popular game series.
There weren't that many accidents on the RE films aside from minor burns and stuff. The shitshow on The Final Chapter was a freak accident. Apparently Paul W.S. Anderson broke down crying when the stuntwoman was maimed (Milla said she'd never seen him cry their entire relationship, and he was sobbing over the phone) and he almost walked off the project. The accident happened on DAY 2 of filming. They had essentially shot nothing. They were doing stunt rehearsals. (With a clearly irresponsible and inexperienced team, IMO.) The shoot was cursed because then a few months later in November, one of the crew members was killed when a platform collapsed. Wasn't even during filming. Was just setting up some props.
>1 > 4 > 5 > 3 > 6 > 2
2 and 3 lose something by not having PWSA in the director's chair. 6 is moronic enough to drag it below 3. I don't love 2 because they did Nemesis dirty. Rather, it's stupid to have Nemesis in the film before we see something considered an actual "Tyrant," as Nemesis in the games was an improvement on Mr. X who was himself an improvement on the first Tyrant. I also think Apocalypse is directly responsible for RE5 by making it so the perfect bioweapon is a flat-chested Ukrainian rather than an 8' monster guy, leading to Wesker in RE5 not having a proper transformation like Birkin, Nemesis, Alexia, or Simmons.
Jill is great. I like her in whichever later one she's in as well.
For me, Apocalypse is better when it's an Outbreak-tier story of people surviving in Raccoon City. It just unfortunately uses Jill as a character, and gives Jill's own escape story to Alice.
The guy who directed 2 is a very good second unit director named Alex Witt, which means he's the guy who shoots action scenes usually while the main director does talking. If you've loved an action scene in a Bond film in the last decade or so, you've loved his work.
I personally welcome the idea of different directors tackling Resident Evil with Paul to keep the films tonally similar via the script and producer Jeremy Bolt to stop things imploding. The problem with Afterlife and Retribution is that Anderson stops making proper movies and starts making these weird meta experiments. And it's interesting, but there's a clear disconnect between Extinction and everything that follows, although The Final Chapter is a little bit of a return to form in terms of story presentation.
The thing is, that idea was already cemented by Code Veronica. Things like Mr. X are failures. The idea of big giant monsters is moronic. The purpose of all this research (in both games and films) was to create a normal looking human with godlike abilities. Not to create a big lumbering freak. But of course what Umbrella actually wants isn't super clear in Apocalypse because then in Extinction they're like, "Okay, so we could use Alice's blood to cure zombies... she's a zombie but she didn't turn into a braindead zombie, ergo... we could use her blood to turn zombies into barely coherent wagies... that we don't have to pay." (I'm not exaggeration, that's the pitch.)
I'm starting to think that RE fans are neurotic. For example, I saw someone b***hing and moaning about Alice not allowing other characters to shine, but it seems like in every movie another character has to step in to save her. In Afterlife, in the showers, Alice is knocked out and Claire does the slide thing with the shotgun. It's like... I think that some people just resent that Alice is the main character, and there's this b***h eating crackers mindset. Everything that she does that is normal for a main character is seen as a problem because they don't want her to be the main character.
the fourth snake on youtube does this, he hates her because its not about Jill but do these people really think Capcom is gonna let their characters get beaten and sliced up and almost raped on camera?
Come back to when the villain in an RE game has a fridge full of decapitated Jill heads. When he holds Jill down and cuts three fingers off her left hand with a laser.
Because Alice herself is a clone, the other Alice clones are all, effectively, Alice. So that's why her being violently murdered in the opening scene of Extinction and dumped in a pit is also a "Capcom would never agree to this happening to Alice" kinda thing.
Bad things can happen to RE characters in a non-canon sense. Ada can get sliced up by the lasers. But these characters are brands, so they cannot have any lasting damage. And that means they remain in a kind of narrative and even appearance stasis. Jill's magic anti-aging means she looks basically identical to RE3 Jill in the modern day.
It’s weird that they’re fine with extremely violent and graphic game over screens like leon getting put into a meat grinder, getting decapitated with a chainsaw, Jill getting parasite vored, but are so anal about other things.
I think that Capcom really lost the plot when they pussied out on Chris dying in RE6. That caused those characters to become institutions. Chris should have turned into a monster and died in agony, but instead he's in this weird limbo where he has to die (if he ever dies die) in some cool action hero sacrifice.
Another weird thing is sex. I don't think any of the OG characters are allowed to explicitly have sex. I noticed this in The FInal Chapter with Claire and Doc. Instead of actually talking about their relationship, they almost speak in euphemisms. It's like, okay, they're obviously fricking, but why does nobody actually say it? Claire is like, "Him and me..." And Alice replies "I know." And that strikes me as Capcom not liking the idea of Claire getting taken to pound town being explicitly expressed in dialogue or worse, ever seen onscreen.
In the first RE film, Alice is seen having sex in flashbacks. No other RE character ever has this. They're almost like K-Pop idols. Perpetually available.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Didn't I see somewhere Japanese don't like their waifus being sullied? Something like if it happens in the movie then that's how their daydream fantasy goes too but if they aren't with anyone they're also not with anyone in the daydream and they don't have to compete with someone for them.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Otaku audiences lose their shit if they discover that best girl has had sex with men. That's one of the reasons why Jill's apartment in RE3 Remake doesn't have anything that would imply she has sex.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Fricking losers the lot of them.
5 months ago
Anonymous
What's interesting about Ethan is that because he's not one of the OGs, they can injure him like Alice, let him get married, and generally his image doesn't have to be protected.
I do think that they should revisit the idea of trying to do an RE7 based movie.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>K-Pop
if my kpopfu was kissing or worse having sexo on screen i'd lose my shit and renounce my paypig card right there and then
As someone who's only played the first couple of Resident Evil games on the original Playstation the rhetoric that games started to do really weird and stupid stuff and that justifies the weird and stupid stuff in the movies is really weird to me. In the end, everything today gets Marvelized I guess.
>I think that some people just resent that Alice is the main character
>GUYZ! I think fans of the video game series want the video game characters to be the main star and now some OC hag that is propped up because she fricks the director
No shit, anon?
Imagine watching The Mario Bros Movie and they made the main character Steve and Mario and Luigi were his sidekicks (that get killed off screen) because the actor playing Steve was fricking the director.
I bet you are also shocked that people didn’t like Cole Young in Mortal Kombat?
Alice is literally Jill with rewrites to avoid using game characters. So in your scenario they cast an actor as Mario, then realized that they don't own Mario and don't want to deal with Nintendo's possible interference, so they pull a Mission Impossible and introduce a new main character who kills Mario in the first movie.
The entire reason Alice exists is to stop Capcom controlling the movies. That is why the game characters are not allowed to be leads. They are supporting characters who can be written out at any time.
The idea of taking Jill and basically telling Alice's story using her (think Bourne Identity where the character Bourne is a completely new character who just has the same name as the book character) -- that wouldn't fly because Capcom would meddle. By making rewriting Jill into Alice they created a way to control the franchise.
I know they can't kill Mario, I'm just using the example of Mission Impossible where they introduced a new lead character, Ethan Hunt, and then had the beloved co-lead of the TV show, Phelps, exposed as a traitor. This made fans of the original LIVID, of course, and coincidentally it is rumoured that Capcom shot down a proposed idea that Jill would be revealed as Wesker's double agent in the final movie. She would betray Alice in the hive and reveal that she'd been working for Wesker since Apocalypse. (Because remember in the movies the Red Queen was controlling Jill, not Wesker, so you could see how they were maaaybe setting up the twist that Jill was a voluntary ally of Wesker's.)
5 has a surprising amount of recognition on Letterboxd. My only criticism of 5 is that I think the suburbia shootout has some flaky VFX, and I would like to see the original cut before they added the exposition. Basically the original draft didn't explain what was going on until later. So for example, Alice escaping from her cell was just enigmatic. The door creaks open. What is going on? She enters the endless white hallway, and then the lights start going out. Looking at the scene, I believe that they added the lasers in post. What is actually happening is the lights are going on, and Alice is going to be trapped in pitch darkness, so she's running for the light. (The screenplay matches this, too.)
But yea, RE5 is a really cool action film on its own merits, which is weird because at the time it got the worst audience scores. A lot of people really don't like RE5. It made 60 million less than Afterlife at the box office despite (IMO) being a huge improvement.
the fourth snake on youtube does this, he hates her because its not about Jill but do these people really think Capcom is gonna let their characters get beaten and sliced up and almost raped on camera?
>do these people really think Capcom is gonna let their characters get beaten and sliced up and almost raped on camera
That would neeeeever happen!
Jill has no lasting injuries from that. The team who made the CG film Death Island weren't allowed to give Jill scars from the mind control device on her chest in RE5. Capcom are SUPER protective of those characters. They're not allowed to die -- Jovovich has confirmed this explicitly in interviews, and things like Alice getting her fingers cut off in The Final Chapter is an absolute "frick no" injury for Jill.
Also, Capcom mandated that Jill have the same backstory she does in the games. So their plan was always for the main character to turn out to be a clone of an Umbrella executive, and that her amnesia wasn't what it appeared to be. But with Jill, Capcom would have vetoed that immediately. That's why Jill isn't confirmed as a clone in Retribution. Carlos is, but they don't care about Carlos.
it must be really nice being a Capcom character in anything that isn't made by Capcom, they're a protected class. Jokes aside I can see how no one in their right mind would want to try to write a story with those kinds of limitations.
If you wanna write a one-off movie, it's okay. Welcome to Raccoon City did its best, and it's okay. But the real danger lay in sequels. What happens if they make Jill the main character in the 2002 movie, then they try to make the sequel and Capcom are like, "Look we don't want you using Jill." You're fricked. That risk of losing access to your lead character, and on top of that having Capcom possibly change their mind about backstory or any number of things made it a huge pain.
Also Alice conceptually can be anyone. That's what suburban Dawn of the Dead housewife Alice was about. They could make a new RE film if they wanted about a housewife in the suburbs of Raccoon City, and it would still work.
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I understand game fans wanting their favorite characters from the games to be main characters. But if you think about this from a filmmaking perspective, Alice is one of those "I'd do it again in a heartbeat" creative decisions for most filmmakers. Look at what happened to the James Bond movies when they lost the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE. We got that insane bullshit that was the film SPECTRE where they bent into a pretzel to explain that every previous movie was actually Blofeld fricking with Bond. It made no sense. But it came to that because for years they lost the rights to Bond's nemesis. If they movies had created their own nemesis for Bond they wouldn't have gotten trapped like that.
Alice was gonna be Jill in the first movie but because Capcom told them to eat ass, they kept her nameless. It’s why they had the Nemesis sting at the end, they were setting up RE3 as the sequel.
I don't have a source for this but I did once hear that Capcom actually blocked Jill being in the first movie. Is that true? Thinking about the sequence of events might have been: >They try to make Jill the main character. >Capcom say they can't use her. >They rewrite her into Alice in the short term, but having Capcom piss on their parade like that makes them think about how Capcom could pull that stunt with a future sequel, so they decide to focus on Alice in prospective sequels.
That does make some sense.
Resident Evil: Retribution cost 65 million dollars, and features New York, Tokyo, Moscow, and several other locations. The suburbia scenes were shot on location, but everything else was sets. They purchased the 3D scans made for I Am Legend and used them for New York. They never shot in New York because who the frick has the money for that? This cost 1/3 of what I Am Legend cost. Every one of these movies was a fight against severe budget constraints, and it's kinda weird how some people nitpick the VFX like these were huge budgeted movies. They're low budget movies where everyone is pulling 110% to make 60 million feel like twice that. The Final Chapter had a budget of 40 million, which is why so many planned locations had to be cut from the script. In Retribution, too, they scrapped the planned Berlin test sequence, because again they just didn't have the money. When making Afterlife they didn't have the money for Wesker regeneration CG. That's why there's no scene of Wesker regenerating after the plane crash. They trusted in the Wesker actor to give a physical performance that would sell the idea of him fighting for control -- originally he was supposed to have leeches crawling under his skin (which would have cost money).
It worked for Mission Impossible. And historically several popular film or TV versions of properties had completely different casts. For example, the Stargate TV show firstly completely contradicts the film lore-wise, and it has a different cast of characters, and a different lead character. The main difference between Alice and someone like Jason Bourne is that Jason Bourne in the Matt Damon films is an OC who has the same name as Jason Bourne. But to avoid legal tangles Alice dispenses with the facade of being called Jill Valentine. There is no functional difference between the approaches, although fans can get really upset when they realize that your adaptation's main character bears no resemblance to the original work. He or she is a completely new character with the same name as the old one. This is SUPER common, BTW.
It worked for Mission Impossible because you had Tom fricking Cruise heading it. Anyone else and it wouldn't have become as big. James Bond is also a perfect example of this although it's supposed to be the same guy (up to Brosnan's era, at least) and Daniel Craig is a wildly different character who only has the same name. They're all pretty different characters under the same banner with some similar features to fit them into a mold otherwise. I think RE movies are kino, I like the games and that's about it. I don't hate the movies nor think they taint the games, the studio likes the movies and references them so why are the fans such hardasses about them? Alice, Jill, it's the good kind of variety and the movies carved their own path in a very cool way. I'd love if this was done with Silent Hill.
It worked for Mission Impossible because you had Tom fricking Cruise heading it. Anyone else and it wouldn't have become as big. James Bond is also a perfect example of this although it's supposed to be the same guy (up to Brosnan's era, at least) and Daniel Craig is a wildly different character who only has the same name. They're all pretty different characters under the same banner with some similar features to fit them into a mold otherwise. I think RE movies are kino, I like the games and that's about it. I don't hate the movies nor think they taint the games, the studio likes the movies and references them so why are the fans such hardasses about them? Alice, Jill, it's the good kind of variety and the movies carved their own path in a very cool way. I'd love if this was done with Silent Hill.
Honestly, I think half of the weirdness comes from the fact that the people making the RE movies really like the games and really like the characters from the games, so they were always trying to find ways to include the characters from the games in some way even though they didn't need to. And that attempt at homage, at respect for the franchise -- they have scenes set in Japan for no other reason than "RE is a Japanese franchise and Japan has never been represented in the series properly before", which is indicative of the mindset. I think in a few years all this stuff is going to be history, and people will be like, "So what was the controversy over Alice, again?" If you step back from online fanboyism, and I'm sure that it was very stressful for the people making the movies to get so much hate, none of it will matter in the end. They made the movies they did, they worked hard, they did their best, sometimes things went wrong. End of the day, fanboys don't decide anything long-term. Fan favorites are forgotten decades later when completely new people engage with media without any context.
Yeah, I get what you mean. The most enjoyable one was the first - it's not a thought-provoking masterpiece by any means, but neither were the narratives in the games - partially because it's telling its own story with the elements of the Resident Evil franchise implicit within.
The movies were great and enjoyed and successful. The only hate they got was from genuinely psychotic chronically online weirdos who never bothered to watch them and just parroted whatever their echo chamber was saying. Online fandom and fandom period these days are just insane people in a circlejerk.
The movies were fine, but after the first few they didn't seem like RE anymore because they made a hard deviation from the games in terms of story. Lore autists couldn't handle an outside source making a storyline that wasn't connected to the games aside from characters.
I would point out that mainstream critics didn't like the RE films either. They didn't even screen RE Extinction for critics. But to be fair, RE Extinction was by Russell Mulcahy, and have you read the reviews of Highlander? Critics fricking hated Highlander. And they didn't care for Extinction very much, either.
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/highlander/
The writer's strike put a halt to everything. I assume that Constantin Film has hired some writers to pitch movies to them. We will probably find out what they've settled on next year. There are a few approaches they could take. Try another videogame adaptation like WTRC was. Try another Alice movie, bring back Jovovich, etc. Or try another RE film that is a big reinvention. Don't copy the old movies, don't copy the games, just come up with something fresh, which IMO is probably the better idea.
I also think, and I'm not saying this'll happen, but I would wager that the idea of remaking the first RE movie has probably crossed their minds.
[...]
The CG films are largely a Sony-endorsed SEGA joint. And they make basically no money.
[...]
Constantin had been trying to get a Netflix RE show made for years. Originally it was going to be made with Sony, but the two parties got pissy over some other TV show being cancelled -- was it Shadowhunter or something? And they went to Netflix.
They had two pitches for Netflix. One was a spinoff of The Final Chapter, which hinged on getting Jovovich back. They would set the story after the movie with a new group of survivors and these survivors would do some stuff but when the shit hit the fan Alice would come and save them. Sorta like Extinction but a TV show basically.
The other pitch was for a more YA-oriented show about two girls in a town where Umbrella controls everything and there's a dark secret.
Netflix liked the YA oriented version thinking it would fit with their Stranger Things audience. Constantin preferred the TFC spinoff. So they ended up making a new pitch that combined both. Dual timelines. But they no longer had Jovovich. And this was written and rewritten and evolved into the final show.
The final show is basically two stories. The Ginger Snaps-style story in the modern day, and the "we have RE Extinction at home" story in the 2030s.
Oddly, the RE Netflix show has the best critic ratings of any of the live action projects. I think it's a sort of sad situation where it's not as bad as some people make out, but it has no understanding of tone or how to write characters the audience will sympathize with.
I'm reminded of how in RE Retribution there's the vegan meat is murder gun-hating ("I marched against the NRA!" version of Rain. And she is brave and selfless and doesn't deserve what happens to her -- dying protecting Becky. And nobody thinks she deserved to die. But in the TV show Billie Wesker is just kind of a selfish butthole even if she is a teenager. Her veganism ends up being cringe, and the older RE films were never cringe. Even the movies with a lot of swearing weren't cringe. The swearing in the TV show is cringe. Because they just don't understand how to write these characters in a way that people outside their bubble will say, "Hey, I don't agree with this character but I respect them."
Speaking of Milla Jovovich and her career, this is the stunt team from her new movie. Found this on Instagram, posted Christmas 2022 when they were shooting the film. They're obviously in plain clothes, but Milla's stunt double is wearing the final (stunt) version of Gray Alys's clothes underneath her jacket. I'm just wondering when they're going to drop the trailer and stuff. This movie is kind of a big deal for Jovovich's career as a lead actress. If it's good and does well, she's back. Sequels will immediately be put into production, and they'll be SERIOUSLY considering asking her to do another RE because she's a hot property.
In The Lost Lands. It's an adaptation of a George R.R. Martin short story about a witch named Gray Alys who grants wishes, basically. She is hired by The Lady Malange to find the secret to becoming a werewolf. But her knight Jerias, who brings the request, pays Gray Alys extra to not perform the request. Alys (Milla Jovovich), and yea, the name is pronounced Alice, takes both their money. And she waits, and a man named Boyce appears (Dave Bautista). He is secretly A: a werewolf. B: planning to murder Alys. C: one of Lady Melange's loves, and her motivation for wanting to be a werewolf, so she can be like him.
It's only like 10 pages long. But at the of the story, Alys kills Boyce after he tries to murder her. She flays him alive for his pelt and buries his corpse. She returns to Jerias, and says that he has what he wanted.
The Lady Melange is grief striken when she sees the pelt because she recognizes it. But she puts it on, and from then on, Jerias has the queen's love, but she transforms into a werewolf and stalks the halls hungry for blood.
So everyone gets what they asked for, but nobody gets what they wanted.
The film version is written by a German indie director named Constantin Werner who bought the rights from GRRM. But he couldn't get the film off the ground, so Paul W.S. Anderson stepped in to cowrite and direct.
The entire film was shot in Poland, using greenscreen soundstages, and it uses Unreal Engine virtual production. All the backgrounds were made in a full year of preproduction, then they shot the movie. Its the first feature film shot like this, and it will either look amazing or fricking suck.
The movie is going to absolute take liberties with the story because the story is 10 pages long. But I fully expect the beginning, middle, and end, to basically be like the short story. I hope it's good. I'd love to PWSA to make a great fantasy film. (It may or may not also have some sci-fi elements, it's not clear.)
I'll watch it. Mila and Paul make fun movies that are incredibly entertaining. They know movies are media meant to pass the time pleasantly and not gay struggle sessions. I'll definitely watch this. I am intrigued by their approach and it could prove visionary as RE5 was. Anderson was always ahead of this time, with EH and RE proving as much. I feel like if the budget isn't out of control, it'll make it's money back through a nice theatrical turnout and the obvious VOD market since Mila and Paul's movies have a very good reputation in that market and I'm not a snob so their opinion matters.
I like all of Paul's work but I believe he can make much better films than what he's made the past few years. Monster Hunter is watchable enough, but it's so mediocre compared to the kind of movies he used to make, especially his 90s stuff which was awesome. I feel the same way about seeing Zack Snyder slide into mediocrity with Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon. I'd love for the stars to align with In the Lost Lands the way they did for Snyder and Justice League. Good reviews, good audience scores, and just a good, memorable movie that displays his filmmaking at its best. I would hate for this movie to not just underperform but be mediocre and unremarkable. It would be so sad to watch a career peter out with a whimper.
So, after the 2019 flop with an Indian Leon and the fricking disastrous Netflix series, what is the future of RE in movies and TV? Is it over for a good while?
The writer's strike put a halt to everything. I assume that Constantin Film has hired some writers to pitch movies to them. We will probably find out what they've settled on next year. There are a few approaches they could take. Try another videogame adaptation like WTRC was. Try another Alice movie, bring back Jovovich, etc. Or try another RE film that is a big reinvention. Don't copy the old movies, don't copy the games, just come up with something fresh, which IMO is probably the better idea.
I also think, and I'm not saying this'll happen, but I would wager that the idea of remaking the first RE movie has probably crossed their minds.
2021 CG miniseries, 2023 CG movie, that’s clearly the road they’re staying in from now on
The CG films are largely a Sony-endorsed SEGA joint. And they make basically no money.
Who let the Netflix series happen? Has Capcom no one to fricking check if their license is used correctly? What the actual frick happened there.
Constantin had been trying to get a Netflix RE show made for years. Originally it was going to be made with Sony, but the two parties got pissy over some other TV show being cancelled -- was it Shadowhunter or something? And they went to Netflix.
They had two pitches for Netflix. One was a spinoff of The Final Chapter, which hinged on getting Jovovich back. They would set the story after the movie with a new group of survivors and these survivors would do some stuff but when the shit hit the fan Alice would come and save them. Sorta like Extinction but a TV show basically.
The other pitch was for a more YA-oriented show about two girls in a town where Umbrella controls everything and there's a dark secret.
Netflix liked the YA oriented version thinking it would fit with their Stranger Things audience. Constantin preferred the TFC spinoff. So they ended up making a new pitch that combined both. Dual timelines. But they no longer had Jovovich. And this was written and rewritten and evolved into the final show.
The final show is basically two stories. The Ginger Snaps-style story in the modern day, and the "we have RE Extinction at home" story in the 2030s.
WTRC is one of those movies that feels competent enough, and it's watchable, but it just comes screeching to a halt. I don't fully understand why they didn't grab the actors and shoot some extra scenes of them walking down the railroad tracks talking about what comes next. The movie's current ending which was a product of having to restructure because they didn't have money for more CG monster fights is so truncated. The movie goes from the train leaving to the credits in about 2 minutes. The original RE film goes from the train leaving to the credits in like 10 minutes. It has a proper flow, pacing, etc. And audiences feel annoyed when a movie ends like hitting a brick wall.
I do like WTRC, and I wish it didn't cop as much shit as it does. It's a serviceable attempt at an RE film, and a decent enough zombie film. There are a lot of shit zombie movies, and I think people judge mediocre ones too harshly sometimes. It sorta feels like the people who are most hostile towards WTRC are game megafans upset that Jill is black and Leon is a bit of an alcoholic washed up Jessie Pinkman type, but because the movie doesn't have a devoted fanbase like the Anderson ones do there's nobody to really defend it. And it does deserve a bit of defense. It might be wannabe John Carpenter but it's quite nicely shot. The music isn't bad. The VFX are wonky in places, but again, not terrible. And the actors are clearly doing their best. I respect the clear effort on display.
re faboys also lose their shit with the shitty nonsensical cgi fests by crappcom, or just the anderson ones? i have played almost all games and id rather pretend not so i wont be part of their circle jerk.
RE fans either ignore the CG films or exaggerate their quality. You see something similar with that so-so animated Monster Hunter movie. It's not good, but people act like it's good because it's 60 minutes of bland fan service.
It's the same thing you see with people praising mediocre fan movies that are just a bunch of fan service and nothing else.
The CG movies, IMO, are not bad exactly, but they suffer from the "this doesn't feel like a real movie" problem that a lot of animated CG videogame based movies by Japanese companies. The Final Fantasy XV tie-in movie and Advent Children had this same problem. The plot makes no sense if you're not an existing fan, and the characters sorta assume you're a megafan of the games who has previous engagement with them.
So for example in RE Extinction, the film assumes that you have no idea who the frick Claire is. It focuses on trying to make her a character the audience will engage with and care about. The CG films don't do this. In Death Island the characters just show up and you're sorta expected to clap because Becky, Claire, Jill, Chris, and Leon stood in a line. The storylines are very flat, nothing much happens most of the time. It's very status quo oriented.
As far as movies go, I do think that Resident Evil Damnation is well worth watching. Of all the RE CG films, I think it's the most coherent, It's the most that feels like a genuine contemporary to the live action films and other action movies, even if non-fans are going to be left a bit "huh?" in places.
the reason the beloved characters get to die really violently in game over screens is to encourage the player to not get them killed by making them distressed from seeing characters they love get fed to meat grinders.
They're hackneyed garbage.
Even the first one. Lame rock music, lame jumpscares, lame LE EVIL COMPUTOR plot it's so fricking trite and lacking class and this contrarian push for making RE movies seem like they're better than people think has got to stop.
The Red Queen isn't a stereotypically evil computer. She's sympathetic, but has a sadistic streak that makes her impossible to trust. "I've been a bad, bad girl."
Also, the Red Queen died in the first movie. (EMP surge with her circuit breaker removed.) Her being "alive" in the sequels is a jarring retcon. Basically, The Red Queen in Retribution was meant to be a fake. (Alicia Marcus using the Red Queen as an avatar to take control of Umbrella, hence Wesker going rogue.) That's why the RQ in Retribution acts so out of character. She's like a parody of the Red Queen. That had to be scrapped due to all the problems with the production of The Final Chapter. Also, the White Queen was meant to play a more prominent role in the films, but she sadly only appears in Extinction. All her scenes in The Final Chapter were given to The Red Queen.
I know that Batman v Superman absolutely copied this car chase (the warehouse scene also copied the suburbia fight with the grapple hook through the shoulder), but I was watching John Wick 4, and I remember thinking some of the shots in that film were very similar to this, particularly Wick using the car door to clip people and stuff. I find the way this film looks to be very refreshing compared to other 2012-era stuff. It's crisp and colourful and clean. No shaky cam, no desaturation, no attempted grittiness. It's bright and punchy.
>What the frick were they thinking?
"I like to force people to watch my wife taking her clothes off"
People who bought the rights kept rejecting Romero's adaptations back when he was interested but when shlockman arrived after making one good shlock movie they were like YES this is the guy we need for our movie
tl;dr film producers are fricking moronic
>People who bought the rights kept rejecting Romero's adaptations back when he was interested
Romero got fired because they were making a direct to video German movie and they needed him to cut back the violence, and Romero kept fricking them around. So they fired him and were planning to cancel the movie, but then they caught wind of a spec script called "Undead" which was a loose ripoff of the first Resident Evil. They talked to its author, Paul W.S. Anderson, and told him to rewrite it into an RE adaptation and they would see if they liked it. The rest is history.
“Time to make kino. Except the final movie, let’s make that one ruin the entire series.”
Kino, is what they were thinking.
How did it ruin the series? I forgot about that one.
>I forgot about that one.
lucky basterd
It in and of itself wasn’t bad, but there was a huge cliffhanger at the end of 5 (my favorite one) where Whesker gives Alice her full power back and Leon and Claire and everyone is there and it was gonna be awesome
then the last movie retcons it all and makes Alice go back into the place they were in the first movie with the lasers because there’s a cure in there then releases the cure and it’s over it was awful, I would recommend stop watching at the penultimate movie and pretend that’s the end and they won.
They didn't make a single good movie. They were all universally dogshit movies.
I bet you enjoy Scorsese and A24 slop.
I rewatched the last Resident Evil movie and it's sort of frustrating because there's some really good stuff there. The dialogue and characterization feels like a return to the style of the third movie. It's a lot less over the top. The set designs are amazing. All the actors are doing a pretty solid job. But the movie itself clearly got fricked sideways, possibly at multiple points. I have my suspicions than when they had a horrific accident that maimed their main stunt double for Jovovich it completely threw the shooting schedule out. I think that's the root reason why the Wesker fight scenes were cut, why they cut the scenes explaining what the frick is going on with Wesker, and various other scenes. The third act of the film changed completely between the leaked draft summary and the finished product. And a lot of plot points that don't make sense don't make sense because they were last minute changes.
For instance, what the frick is with the anti-virus? Well originally that was the anti-virus the White Queen was working on. Alice flew to Nevada and fetched it. But she needed a device to disperse it into the atmosphere and only Umbrella had that, in the ruins of the Raccoon City facility. Originally Doc wasn't a traitor. Originally Angie Ashford was a failed Alicia clone. Originally Alicia was evil, and the real version of Isaacs was a good guy. Originally Wesker shot Alicia in the head and then Alice fought him to the death (pic related were the mutated arms they made for Wesker), and Claire shot an RPG into Wesker, and he fell to his death, but Alice had been mortally wounded, and died.
I think it gets unfairly hated, but it's peak "not what they set out to make". I do wish they'd make another movie and just undo TFC and redo it with a better script and expanded cast.
who is Mila's character in the video games? where's chris, Leon, Jill, etc
She's an film original character. Truth be told, better than the new RE protagonists they created. She should be made canon but the Japs are too petty to admit she's a better MC than most, barring Leon and Chris.
>better than
No.
It's true though. She's more memorable than whoever the new ones were in Village.
Because you didn't play it. I can tell because they aren't alive anymore for you to be complaining about but one is and she could be the new Alice for all you know.
Besides, if they made 5 more games about them you'd remember them too.
I just think Alice is an established and cool character that could be great in a game. Although, there may be rights issues I guess. I would like for a new RE game to be as bombastic action horror as the movies just for a change. I did play Village thoughever.
>I would like for a new RE game to be as bombastic action horror as the movies
This is just what the re4 remake was. They even remade the laser sequence to more closely resemble the movie.
Good idea. I'd wager that fricking laser room is scarier than most of the things in the franchise. It always stuck with me how the black guy was cut up in RE1. The movies clearly are viewed with reverence and liking by the studio but there's this autists that view them as sacrilege and ruin all discussion about them.
>It always stuck with me how the black guy was cut up in RE1
all he had to do was literally take one step backwards
I was under the impression that he was backed up to the wall
>character doing kung fu and shooting things
Um, the Devil May Cry thread is thataway
True but I still like her.
The first one was great and the others, barring the last one, were very watchable flicks.
I like the movies too but I'm okay with her not being canon. I think they did whatshisface from 6 dirty. Chris' buddy that turns into a powerful BOW sentai dude. They should keep a character like that so they can make Resident Evil action games every other year and puzzle horror on the other years and have the main story veer back and forth and side characters could get play time.
>Truth be told, better than the new RE protagonists they created
RE protagonists aren't particularly deep but they're likeable at least, Alice is a charisma vacuum le strong action womyn that doesn't even really have slight hints of womanly vulnerability and charm that Jill or Claire had. Frick outta here with that.
You clearly haven't watched the movies or at least the first one.
The first one is the only one that passes as a real movie but they made five more anon. And all of those were shit. If they stopped at the first one I wouldn't be as critical.
Alice is absolutely a likeable character. One of the reasons the character Jade Wesker didn't work in that TV show was that she was basically Alice, but she was a complete butthole who had none of Alice's sympathetic qualities. Alice gets a lot of people killed, but she's genuinely sorry about it. She tries to do better, and fricks up again, but she did try.
Also what does "womanly vulnerability and charm" mean? And how does Alice lack it?
Calm down Paul
>who is Mila's character in the video games?
They realized during early production that if they used Jill as a main character this would paint them into a corner when making sequels. So Jill was rewritten into a new character named Alice. This proved very important because when the shit hit the fan in terms of creative disagreements they were able to effortlessly write out characters like Jill and Leon, and just keep going with Alice.
It's not an issue of pettiness. It's an issue of ownership. Alice belongs to Constantin Film/Sony. Capcom have to pay to use her, and they don't want to do that. It's very similar to how Ubisoft don't include any Prince of Persia stuff in Assassin's Creed because they guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP, so they'd rather stick to things they exclusively own.
>It's very similar to how Ubisoft don't include any Prince of Persia stuff in Assassin's Creed because they guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP, so they'd rather stick to things they exclusively own.
This isn't an issue for Ubishart since they're about to release a new PoP game and have a remake of Sands of Time in the reworks.
Both those projects require them to pay royalties to Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft have the exclusive rights to make PoP games, but PoP itself belongs to Jordan Mechner. This is the entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years, and why they have zero interest in including PoP within other franchises. If they had the Prince show up in an AC game, they'd have to pay royalties.
To use an example, this is why the Monster Hunter World film DLC was timed. Because in order to use Artemis from the movies, Capcom have to pay royalties to Constantin/Sony. This is why the laser corridor in RE4 Remake still doesn't match the one from the movies. The ceiling is different, the floor is different, the wall designs are different. If they used the film design they'd have to cut a deal.
Capcom once described the situation as being "unable to use any finished product".
>This is the entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years
I don't know where you got this head-canon idea from since Ubisoft has publicly stated multiple times that AC is a far more popular franchise and this is why they get the Lion's share of the development budget.
>I don't know where you got this head-canon idea
Some years ago a Ubisoft employee went on Cinemaphile and leaked a shitload of details about AC: Origins.
>Forget Prince of Persia. It will never come back. The reason why AC exists at all is because PoP meant Ubi has to pay for license, since they don't own the IP. AC is Ubi's own IP, so merchandising and all that shit is theirs to keep. PoP is financially not worth it.
>Ancient Egypt. They want the least amount of historical documentation to get freedom. The story is set before the Assassins and Templars even existed. This is basically a prequel to all ACs.
>"Egypt. There won't be an AC in 2016. You may screencap this and refer to it when nothing is shown in E3 2016. You'll have to wait until 2017 for it. The reason: It will be a complete revamp of the series. The game is going for a Witcher feel, with player progression, freeform combat system. Horse is back, and boats too. It's made by the Black Flag team. You may leave any question you want answered."
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/Cinemaphile-rumor-no-assassins-creed-in-2016-2017-in-egypt-witcher-inspired-update.1165890/
Incidentally, this is the same reason why Ubisoft's version of Rainbow 6 doesn't have any book characters or organizations. They don't wanna pay the Clancy (book) estate when they can just make their own OCs. This goes all the way back to Patriots where Rainbow magically had new leadership and Ding and the others were nowhere to be seen. Ding is never coming back because Ubisoft don't own him and most people won't miss him.
Of course Ubisoft have since changed their minds, but you'll of course notice that the new Prince of Persia is a much lower budgeted game, so they feel more comfortable spending that money.
As a general rule, videogame publishers don't like working on IP they don't own because they could make their own version where they get all the profits. For example, Techland could have grovelled and gotten the Dead Island IP from Deep Silver, but instead they made Dying Light, which is literally Dead Island but they own it.
>hey guy who owns PoP gets money anytime they use PoP
>he entire reason they stopped making PoP games for so many years
Anon, if a company thought they could make millions from an IP they wouldn't give a shit about paying s percentage to the owner. There are TONS of IPs that are managed by corporations and they pay royalties to the owner. Ubisoft is just focusing on their more popular game series.
Ubisoft created AC in the first place because they wanted a version of PoP they owned. AC began as a PoP game.
>where's chris, Leon, Jill, etc
They're in the sequels
Resident Evil was WOKE
>"lets kill and maim as many crewmembers as physically possible"
There weren't that many accidents on the RE films aside from minor burns and stuff. The shitshow on The Final Chapter was a freak accident. Apparently Paul W.S. Anderson broke down crying when the stuntwoman was maimed (Milla said she'd never seen him cry their entire relationship, and he was sobbing over the phone) and he almost walked off the project. The accident happened on DAY 2 of filming. They had essentially shot nothing. They were doing stunt rehearsals. (With a clearly irresponsible and inexperienced team, IMO.) The shoot was cursed because then a few months later in November, one of the crew members was killed when a platform collapsed. Wasn't even during filming. Was just setting up some props.
>a freak accident
He killed another crew member like three months after that.
No he didn't. The jeep collapse accident happened completely randomly when the crew was setting up stuff. The director wasn't even there.
They were thinking, “we want to make a shitload of money”, and they did
These movies weren’t for le heckin kinophiles, simple as
What is his fricking problem?
You just know this lunatic is going to be directing his daughter’s nude scenes the minute she turns 18
They were thinking her name is Alice and this was her story.
I prefer the sequel, Attending Evil.
>1 > 4 > 5 > 3 > 6 > 2
2 and 3 lose something by not having PWSA in the director's chair. 6 is moronic enough to drag it below 3. I don't love 2 because they did Nemesis dirty. Rather, it's stupid to have Nemesis in the film before we see something considered an actual "Tyrant," as Nemesis in the games was an improvement on Mr. X who was himself an improvement on the first Tyrant. I also think Apocalypse is directly responsible for RE5 by making it so the perfect bioweapon is a flat-chested Ukrainian rather than an 8' monster guy, leading to Wesker in RE5 not having a proper transformation like Birkin, Nemesis, Alexia, or Simmons.
I love Anderson’s style so it’s disappointing he didn’t direct 2, but I still rank 2 highly purely off Jill being S+ tier
Jill is great. I like her in whichever later one she's in as well.
For me, Apocalypse is better when it's an Outbreak-tier story of people surviving in Raccoon City. It just unfortunately uses Jill as a character, and gives Jill's own escape story to Alice.
The guy who directed 2 is a very good second unit director named Alex Witt, which means he's the guy who shoots action scenes usually while the main director does talking. If you've loved an action scene in a Bond film in the last decade or so, you've loved his work.
I personally welcome the idea of different directors tackling Resident Evil with Paul to keep the films tonally similar via the script and producer Jeremy Bolt to stop things imploding. The problem with Afterlife and Retribution is that Anderson stops making proper movies and starts making these weird meta experiments. And it's interesting, but there's a clear disconnect between Extinction and everything that follows, although The Final Chapter is a little bit of a return to form in terms of story presentation.
The thing is, that idea was already cemented by Code Veronica. Things like Mr. X are failures. The idea of big giant monsters is moronic. The purpose of all this research (in both games and films) was to create a normal looking human with godlike abilities. Not to create a big lumbering freak. But of course what Umbrella actually wants isn't super clear in Apocalypse because then in Extinction they're like, "Okay, so we could use Alice's blood to cure zombies... she's a zombie but she didn't turn into a braindead zombie, ergo... we could use her blood to turn zombies into barely coherent wagies... that we don't have to pay." (I'm not exaggeration, that's the pitch.)
you're out of your mind ranking 2 that low.
It goes
>1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6
honestly
4 > 1 > 3 > 5 > 2 > 6
but unironically
I'm starting to think that RE fans are neurotic. For example, I saw someone b***hing and moaning about Alice not allowing other characters to shine, but it seems like in every movie another character has to step in to save her. In Afterlife, in the showers, Alice is knocked out and Claire does the slide thing with the shotgun. It's like... I think that some people just resent that Alice is the main character, and there's this b***h eating crackers mindset. Everything that she does that is normal for a main character is seen as a problem because they don't want her to be the main character.
the fourth snake on youtube does this, he hates her because its not about Jill but do these people really think Capcom is gonna let their characters get beaten and sliced up and almost raped on camera?
>do these people really think Capcom is gonna let their characters get beaten and sliced up and almost raped on camera
That would neeeeever happen!
uuuuuhm, uuuuh,.. to be fair this was after the movies.
Come back to when the villain in an RE game has a fridge full of decapitated Jill heads. When he holds Jill down and cuts three fingers off her left hand with a laser.
Because Alice herself is a clone, the other Alice clones are all, effectively, Alice. So that's why her being violently murdered in the opening scene of Extinction and dumped in a pit is also a "Capcom would never agree to this happening to Alice" kinda thing.
Bad things can happen to RE characters in a non-canon sense. Ada can get sliced up by the lasers. But these characters are brands, so they cannot have any lasting damage. And that means they remain in a kind of narrative and even appearance stasis. Jill's magic anti-aging means she looks basically identical to RE3 Jill in the modern day.
It’s weird that they’re fine with extremely violent and graphic game over screens like leon getting put into a meat grinder, getting decapitated with a chainsaw, Jill getting parasite vored, but are so anal about other things.
That's because those are "You died" screens not "Leon is dead so we erased your saves and blocked all future RE games with Leon from booting."
I think that Capcom really lost the plot when they pussied out on Chris dying in RE6. That caused those characters to become institutions. Chris should have turned into a monster and died in agony, but instead he's in this weird limbo where he has to die (if he ever dies die) in some cool action hero sacrifice.
Another weird thing is sex. I don't think any of the OG characters are allowed to explicitly have sex. I noticed this in The FInal Chapter with Claire and Doc. Instead of actually talking about their relationship, they almost speak in euphemisms. It's like, okay, they're obviously fricking, but why does nobody actually say it? Claire is like, "Him and me..." And Alice replies "I know." And that strikes me as Capcom not liking the idea of Claire getting taken to pound town being explicitly expressed in dialogue or worse, ever seen onscreen.
In the first RE film, Alice is seen having sex in flashbacks. No other RE character ever has this. They're almost like K-Pop idols. Perpetually available.
Didn't I see somewhere Japanese don't like their waifus being sullied? Something like if it happens in the movie then that's how their daydream fantasy goes too but if they aren't with anyone they're also not with anyone in the daydream and they don't have to compete with someone for them.
Otaku audiences lose their shit if they discover that best girl has had sex with men. That's one of the reasons why Jill's apartment in RE3 Remake doesn't have anything that would imply she has sex.
Fricking losers the lot of them.
What's interesting about Ethan is that because he's not one of the OGs, they can injure him like Alice, let him get married, and generally his image doesn't have to be protected.
I do think that they should revisit the idea of trying to do an RE7 based movie.
>K-Pop
if my kpopfu was kissing or worse having sexo on screen i'd lose my shit and renounce my paypig card right there and then
As someone who's only played the first couple of Resident Evil games on the original Playstation the rhetoric that games started to do really weird and stupid stuff and that justifies the weird and stupid stuff in the movies is really weird to me. In the end, everything today gets Marvelized I guess.
>vidya fans are deranged lunatics
This should not surprise you.
>I think that some people just resent that Alice is the main character
>GUYZ! I think fans of the video game series want the video game characters to be the main star and now some OC hag that is propped up because she fricks the director
No shit, anon?
Imagine watching The Mario Bros Movie and they made the main character Steve and Mario and Luigi were his sidekicks (that get killed off screen) because the actor playing Steve was fricking the director.
I bet you are also shocked that people didn’t like Cole Young in Mortal Kombat?
Alice is literally Jill with rewrites to avoid using game characters. So in your scenario they cast an actor as Mario, then realized that they don't own Mario and don't want to deal with Nintendo's possible interference, so they pull a Mission Impossible and introduce a new main character who kills Mario in the first movie.
The entire reason Alice exists is to stop Capcom controlling the movies. That is why the game characters are not allowed to be leads. They are supporting characters who can be written out at any time.
The idea of taking Jill and basically telling Alice's story using her (think Bourne Identity where the character Bourne is a completely new character who just has the same name as the book character) -- that wouldn't fly because Capcom would meddle. By making rewriting Jill into Alice they created a way to control the franchise.
Can't kill Mario. Are you reading the thread at all?
I know they can't kill Mario, I'm just using the example of Mission Impossible where they introduced a new lead character, Ethan Hunt, and then had the beloved co-lead of the TV show, Phelps, exposed as a traitor. This made fans of the original LIVID, of course, and coincidentally it is rumoured that Capcom shot down a proposed idea that Jill would be revealed as Wesker's double agent in the final movie. She would betray Alice in the hive and reveal that she'd been working for Wesker since Apocalypse. (Because remember in the movies the Red Queen was controlling Jill, not Wesker, so you could see how they were maaaybe setting up the twist that Jill was a voluntary ally of Wesker's.)
Was just teasing you.
5 is one of the best action movies of the century, legitimately forward thinking filmmaking
True. These movies are basically the passion project of a loving couple. SOVL overload.
5 has a surprising amount of recognition on Letterboxd. My only criticism of 5 is that I think the suburbia shootout has some flaky VFX, and I would like to see the original cut before they added the exposition. Basically the original draft didn't explain what was going on until later. So for example, Alice escaping from her cell was just enigmatic. The door creaks open. What is going on? She enters the endless white hallway, and then the lights start going out. Looking at the scene, I believe that they added the lasers in post. What is actually happening is the lights are going on, and Alice is going to be trapped in pitch darkness, so she's running for the light. (The screenplay matches this, too.)
But yea, RE5 is a really cool action film on its own merits, which is weird because at the time it got the worst audience scores. A lot of people really don't like RE5. It made 60 million less than Afterlife at the box office despite (IMO) being a huge improvement.
Jill has no lasting injuries from that. The team who made the CG film Death Island weren't allowed to give Jill scars from the mind control device on her chest in RE5. Capcom are SUPER protective of those characters. They're not allowed to die -- Jovovich has confirmed this explicitly in interviews, and things like Alice getting her fingers cut off in The Final Chapter is an absolute "frick no" injury for Jill.
Also, Capcom mandated that Jill have the same backstory she does in the games. So their plan was always for the main character to turn out to be a clone of an Umbrella executive, and that her amnesia wasn't what it appeared to be. But with Jill, Capcom would have vetoed that immediately. That's why Jill isn't confirmed as a clone in Retribution. Carlos is, but they don't care about Carlos.
it must be really nice being a Capcom character in anything that isn't made by Capcom, they're a protected class. Jokes aside I can see how no one in their right mind would want to try to write a story with those kinds of limitations.
If you wanna write a one-off movie, it's okay. Welcome to Raccoon City did its best, and it's okay. But the real danger lay in sequels. What happens if they make Jill the main character in the 2002 movie, then they try to make the sequel and Capcom are like, "Look we don't want you using Jill." You're fricked. That risk of losing access to your lead character, and on top of that having Capcom possibly change their mind about backstory or any number of things made it a huge pain.
Also Alice conceptually can be anyone. That's what suburban Dawn of the Dead housewife Alice was about. They could make a new RE film if they wanted about a housewife in the suburbs of Raccoon City, and it would still work.
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I understand game fans wanting their favorite characters from the games to be main characters. But if you think about this from a filmmaking perspective, Alice is one of those "I'd do it again in a heartbeat" creative decisions for most filmmakers. Look at what happened to the James Bond movies when they lost the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE. We got that insane bullshit that was the film SPECTRE where they bent into a pretzel to explain that every previous movie was actually Blofeld fricking with Bond. It made no sense. But it came to that because for years they lost the rights to Bond's nemesis. If they movies had created their own nemesis for Bond they wouldn't have gotten trapped like that.
Alice was gonna be Jill in the first movie but because Capcom told them to eat ass, they kept her nameless. It’s why they had the Nemesis sting at the end, they were setting up RE3 as the sequel.
I don't have a source for this but I did once hear that Capcom actually blocked Jill being in the first movie. Is that true? Thinking about the sequence of events might have been:
>They try to make Jill the main character.
>Capcom say they can't use her.
>They rewrite her into Alice in the short term, but having Capcom piss on their parade like that makes them think about how Capcom could pull that stunt with a future sequel, so they decide to focus on Alice in prospective sequels.
That does make some sense.
Resident Evil: Retribution cost 65 million dollars, and features New York, Tokyo, Moscow, and several other locations. The suburbia scenes were shot on location, but everything else was sets. They purchased the 3D scans made for I Am Legend and used them for New York. They never shot in New York because who the frick has the money for that? This cost 1/3 of what I Am Legend cost. Every one of these movies was a fight against severe budget constraints, and it's kinda weird how some people nitpick the VFX like these were huge budgeted movies. They're low budget movies where everyone is pulling 110% to make 60 million feel like twice that. The Final Chapter had a budget of 40 million, which is why so many planned locations had to be cut from the script. In Retribution, too, they scrapped the planned Berlin test sequence, because again they just didn't have the money. When making Afterlife they didn't have the money for Wesker regeneration CG. That's why there's no scene of Wesker regenerating after the plane crash. They trusted in the Wesker actor to give a physical performance that would sell the idea of him fighting for control -- originally he was supposed to have leeches crawling under his skin (which would have cost money).
>Let's make Resident Evil movies without the main fricking protagonist of the franchise
and I thought the Doom movies were bad
It worked for Mission Impossible. And historically several popular film or TV versions of properties had completely different casts. For example, the Stargate TV show firstly completely contradicts the film lore-wise, and it has a different cast of characters, and a different lead character. The main difference between Alice and someone like Jason Bourne is that Jason Bourne in the Matt Damon films is an OC who has the same name as Jason Bourne. But to avoid legal tangles Alice dispenses with the facade of being called Jill Valentine. There is no functional difference between the approaches, although fans can get really upset when they realize that your adaptation's main character bears no resemblance to the original work. He or she is a completely new character with the same name as the old one. This is SUPER common, BTW.
It worked for Mission Impossible because you had Tom fricking Cruise heading it. Anyone else and it wouldn't have become as big. James Bond is also a perfect example of this although it's supposed to be the same guy (up to Brosnan's era, at least) and Daniel Craig is a wildly different character who only has the same name. They're all pretty different characters under the same banner with some similar features to fit them into a mold otherwise. I think RE movies are kino, I like the games and that's about it. I don't hate the movies nor think they taint the games, the studio likes the movies and references them so why are the fans such hardasses about them? Alice, Jill, it's the good kind of variety and the movies carved their own path in a very cool way. I'd love if this was done with Silent Hill.
Honestly, I think half of the weirdness comes from the fact that the people making the RE movies really like the games and really like the characters from the games, so they were always trying to find ways to include the characters from the games in some way even though they didn't need to. And that attempt at homage, at respect for the franchise -- they have scenes set in Japan for no other reason than "RE is a Japanese franchise and Japan has never been represented in the series properly before", which is indicative of the mindset. I think in a few years all this stuff is going to be history, and people will be like, "So what was the controversy over Alice, again?" If you step back from online fanboyism, and I'm sure that it was very stressful for the people making the movies to get so much hate, none of it will matter in the end. They made the movies they did, they worked hard, they did their best, sometimes things went wrong. End of the day, fanboys don't decide anything long-term. Fan favorites are forgotten decades later when completely new people engage with media without any context.
Yeah, I get what you mean. The most enjoyable one was the first - it's not a thought-provoking masterpiece by any means, but neither were the narratives in the games - partially because it's telling its own story with the elements of the Resident Evil franchise implicit within.
The movies were great and enjoyed and successful. The only hate they got was from genuinely psychotic chronically online weirdos who never bothered to watch them and just parroted whatever their echo chamber was saying. Online fandom and fandom period these days are just insane people in a circlejerk.
The movies were fine, but after the first few they didn't seem like RE anymore because they made a hard deviation from the games in terms of story. Lore autists couldn't handle an outside source making a storyline that wasn't connected to the games aside from characters.
I would point out that mainstream critics didn't like the RE films either. They didn't even screen RE Extinction for critics. But to be fair, RE Extinction was by Russell Mulcahy, and have you read the reviews of Highlander? Critics fricking hated Highlander. And they didn't care for Extinction very much, either.
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/highlander/
Oddly, the RE Netflix show has the best critic ratings of any of the live action projects. I think it's a sort of sad situation where it's not as bad as some people make out, but it has no understanding of tone or how to write characters the audience will sympathize with.
I'm reminded of how in RE Retribution there's the vegan meat is murder gun-hating ("I marched against the NRA!" version of Rain. And she is brave and selfless and doesn't deserve what happens to her -- dying protecting Becky. And nobody thinks she deserved to die. But in the TV show Billie Wesker is just kind of a selfish butthole even if she is a teenager. Her veganism ends up being cringe, and the older RE films were never cringe. Even the movies with a lot of swearing weren't cringe. The swearing in the TV show is cringe. Because they just don't understand how to write these characters in a way that people outside their bubble will say, "Hey, I don't agree with this character but I respect them."
>IMG
FRICK. OFF.
Speaking of Milla Jovovich and her career, this is the stunt team from her new movie. Found this on Instagram, posted Christmas 2022 when they were shooting the film. They're obviously in plain clothes, but Milla's stunt double is wearing the final (stunt) version of Gray Alys's clothes underneath her jacket. I'm just wondering when they're going to drop the trailer and stuff. This movie is kind of a big deal for Jovovich's career as a lead actress. If it's good and does well, she's back. Sequels will immediately be put into production, and they'll be SERIOUSLY considering asking her to do another RE because she's a hot property.
If it's another Monster Hunter, she's fricked.
What's this movie?
In The Lost Lands. It's an adaptation of a George R.R. Martin short story about a witch named Gray Alys who grants wishes, basically. She is hired by The Lady Malange to find the secret to becoming a werewolf. But her knight Jerias, who brings the request, pays Gray Alys extra to not perform the request. Alys (Milla Jovovich), and yea, the name is pronounced Alice, takes both their money. And she waits, and a man named Boyce appears (Dave Bautista). He is secretly A: a werewolf. B: planning to murder Alys. C: one of Lady Melange's loves, and her motivation for wanting to be a werewolf, so she can be like him.
It's only like 10 pages long. But at the of the story, Alys kills Boyce after he tries to murder her. She flays him alive for his pelt and buries his corpse. She returns to Jerias, and says that he has what he wanted.
The Lady Melange is grief striken when she sees the pelt because she recognizes it. But she puts it on, and from then on, Jerias has the queen's love, but she transforms into a werewolf and stalks the halls hungry for blood.
So everyone gets what they asked for, but nobody gets what they wanted.
The film version is written by a German indie director named Constantin Werner who bought the rights from GRRM. But he couldn't get the film off the ground, so Paul W.S. Anderson stepped in to cowrite and direct.
The entire film was shot in Poland, using greenscreen soundstages, and it uses Unreal Engine virtual production. All the backgrounds were made in a full year of preproduction, then they shot the movie. Its the first feature film shot like this, and it will either look amazing or fricking suck.
The movie is going to absolute take liberties with the story because the story is 10 pages long. But I fully expect the beginning, middle, and end, to basically be like the short story. I hope it's good. I'd love to PWSA to make a great fantasy film. (It may or may not also have some sci-fi elements, it's not clear.)
I'll watch it. Mila and Paul make fun movies that are incredibly entertaining. They know movies are media meant to pass the time pleasantly and not gay struggle sessions. I'll definitely watch this. I am intrigued by their approach and it could prove visionary as RE5 was. Anderson was always ahead of this time, with EH and RE proving as much. I feel like if the budget isn't out of control, it'll make it's money back through a nice theatrical turnout and the obvious VOD market since Mila and Paul's movies have a very good reputation in that market and I'm not a snob so their opinion matters.
Another RE film would be a treat, for sure.
I like all of Paul's work but I believe he can make much better films than what he's made the past few years. Monster Hunter is watchable enough, but it's so mediocre compared to the kind of movies he used to make, especially his 90s stuff which was awesome. I feel the same way about seeing Zack Snyder slide into mediocrity with Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon. I'd love for the stars to align with In the Lost Lands the way they did for Snyder and Justice League. Good reviews, good audience scores, and just a good, memorable movie that displays his filmmaking at its best. I would hate for this movie to not just underperform but be mediocre and unremarkable. It would be so sad to watch a career peter out with a whimper.
Milla's comeback as "Grey Alys"
It's like pottery, it rhymes
So, after the 2019 flop with an Indian Leon and the fricking disastrous Netflix series, what is the future of RE in movies and TV? Is it over for a good while?
2021 CG miniseries, 2023 CG movie, that’s clearly the road they’re staying in from now on
Who let the Netflix series happen? Has Capcom no one to fricking check if their license is used correctly? What the actual frick happened there.
The writer's strike put a halt to everything. I assume that Constantin Film has hired some writers to pitch movies to them. We will probably find out what they've settled on next year. There are a few approaches they could take. Try another videogame adaptation like WTRC was. Try another Alice movie, bring back Jovovich, etc. Or try another RE film that is a big reinvention. Don't copy the old movies, don't copy the games, just come up with something fresh, which IMO is probably the better idea.
I also think, and I'm not saying this'll happen, but I would wager that the idea of remaking the first RE movie has probably crossed their minds.
The CG films are largely a Sony-endorsed SEGA joint. And they make basically no money.
Constantin had been trying to get a Netflix RE show made for years. Originally it was going to be made with Sony, but the two parties got pissy over some other TV show being cancelled -- was it Shadowhunter or something? And they went to Netflix.
They had two pitches for Netflix. One was a spinoff of The Final Chapter, which hinged on getting Jovovich back. They would set the story after the movie with a new group of survivors and these survivors would do some stuff but when the shit hit the fan Alice would come and save them. Sorta like Extinction but a TV show basically.
The other pitch was for a more YA-oriented show about two girls in a town where Umbrella controls everything and there's a dark secret.
Netflix liked the YA oriented version thinking it would fit with their Stranger Things audience. Constantin preferred the TFC spinoff. So they ended up making a new pitch that combined both. Dual timelines. But they no longer had Jovovich. And this was written and rewritten and evolved into the final show.
The final show is basically two stories. The Ginger Snaps-style story in the modern day, and the "we have RE Extinction at home" story in the 2030s.
I liked both WTRC and the Anderson Movies.
WTRC is one of those movies that feels competent enough, and it's watchable, but it just comes screeching to a halt. I don't fully understand why they didn't grab the actors and shoot some extra scenes of them walking down the railroad tracks talking about what comes next. The movie's current ending which was a product of having to restructure because they didn't have money for more CG monster fights is so truncated. The movie goes from the train leaving to the credits in about 2 minutes. The original RE film goes from the train leaving to the credits in like 10 minutes. It has a proper flow, pacing, etc. And audiences feel annoyed when a movie ends like hitting a brick wall.
I do like WTRC, and I wish it didn't cop as much shit as it does. It's a serviceable attempt at an RE film, and a decent enough zombie film. There are a lot of shit zombie movies, and I think people judge mediocre ones too harshly sometimes. It sorta feels like the people who are most hostile towards WTRC are game megafans upset that Jill is black and Leon is a bit of an alcoholic washed up Jessie Pinkman type, but because the movie doesn't have a devoted fanbase like the Anderson ones do there's nobody to really defend it. And it does deserve a bit of defense. It might be wannabe John Carpenter but it's quite nicely shot. The music isn't bad. The VFX are wonky in places, but again, not terrible. And the actors are clearly doing their best. I respect the clear effort on display.
How about a 2D anime for once.
I love Milla
re faboys also lose their shit with the shitty nonsensical cgi fests by crappcom, or just the anderson ones? i have played almost all games and id rather pretend not so i wont be part of their circle jerk.
RE fans either ignore the CG films or exaggerate their quality. You see something similar with that so-so animated Monster Hunter movie. It's not good, but people act like it's good because it's 60 minutes of bland fan service.
It's the same thing you see with people praising mediocre fan movies that are just a bunch of fan service and nothing else.
The CG movies, IMO, are not bad exactly, but they suffer from the "this doesn't feel like a real movie" problem that a lot of animated CG videogame based movies by Japanese companies. The Final Fantasy XV tie-in movie and Advent Children had this same problem. The plot makes no sense if you're not an existing fan, and the characters sorta assume you're a megafan of the games who has previous engagement with them.
So for example in RE Extinction, the film assumes that you have no idea who the frick Claire is. It focuses on trying to make her a character the audience will engage with and care about. The CG films don't do this. In Death Island the characters just show up and you're sorta expected to clap because Becky, Claire, Jill, Chris, and Leon stood in a line. The storylines are very flat, nothing much happens most of the time. It's very status quo oriented.
As far as movies go, I do think that Resident Evil Damnation is well worth watching. Of all the RE CG films, I think it's the most coherent, It's the most that feels like a genuine contemporary to the live action films and other action movies, even if non-fans are going to be left a bit "huh?" in places.
the reason the beloved characters get to die really violently in game over screens is to encourage the player to not get them killed by making them distressed from seeing characters they love get fed to meat grinders.
They've made a billion dollars.
It can't be all that bad.
The 2nd one was unironically kino. Pure /k/ porn
These films were hideously bad
the first 3 are popcorn kino
It's sad that things have gotten so bad that the RE films are better than most action movies released nowadays.
They're hackneyed garbage.
Even the first one. Lame rock music, lame jumpscares, lame LE EVIL COMPUTOR plot it's so fricking trite and lacking class and this contrarian push for making RE movies seem like they're better than people think has got to stop.
The Red Queen isn't a stereotypically evil computer. She's sympathetic, but has a sadistic streak that makes her impossible to trust. "I've been a bad, bad girl."
Also, the Red Queen died in the first movie. (EMP surge with her circuit breaker removed.) Her being "alive" in the sequels is a jarring retcon. Basically, The Red Queen in Retribution was meant to be a fake. (Alicia Marcus using the Red Queen as an avatar to take control of Umbrella, hence Wesker going rogue.) That's why the RQ in Retribution acts so out of character. She's like a parody of the Red Queen. That had to be scrapped due to all the problems with the production of The Final Chapter. Also, the White Queen was meant to play a more prominent role in the films, but she sadly only appears in Extinction. All her scenes in The Final Chapter were given to The Red Queen.
the computer wasn't evil, you didn't watch the movie; bad bait.
I'm glad you didn't deny lame rock music at least, Paul.
I know that Batman v Superman absolutely copied this car chase (the warehouse scene also copied the suburbia fight with the grapple hook through the shoulder), but I was watching John Wick 4, and I remember thinking some of the shots in that film were very similar to this, particularly Wick using the car door to clip people and stuff. I find the way this film looks to be very refreshing compared to other 2012-era stuff. It's crisp and colourful and clean. No shaky cam, no desaturation, no attempted grittiness. It's bright and punchy.