the Resident Evil movie thread! (possible spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

well, as to there hasn’t been one yet, and i just saw the movie a few hours ago, i decided to start a Resident Evil thread.

now, though i went in thinking that the movie would be a horrible bastardization of the game, ala Super mario Brothers- the movie, it actually turned out to be quite a good generic zombie movie, and it kept to the plot of the games quite well. it ws quite fun, and i think i might want to see it again with someone. since i don’t really have that much to say, let’s just open the floor.
so, what did you think of Resident Evil?

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I don’t know the games very well, but I liked the movie a lot. I kept thinking of Leeloo Dallas multipass though. She’s supposed to have bright red hair and a funky accent dammit! Actually she played the part well, it’s just that I’ve seen 5th Element a bunch of times. Kinda the same thing with Agent Elrond in LOTR. At my theatre there were large packs of teenagers who screamed at the stupidest times. “Oh my god, she’s got a drawer full of guns! Aaaaahhhh!” I don’t think a lot of them were 17.

3

Why do people make bad movies from good games? It’s really not that hard to come up with a decent story.

What I’m afraid of is if the great game suffers from this garbage. Do you guys think it will?

4

SPOILERS

I was thoroughly pleased. A very fun movie, and I thought they brought in plenty of elements from the games. Of course… the Nemesis project! hehehehe, I was chuckling mighty hard at that. It was sort of strange, though… I felt the movie closely related RE2. We had the licker (though no super-lickers, rats! and no real hunters, double rats!), we had Umbrella labs, we had a little girl, we had a female lead who wasn’t wimpy, we had Umbrella troops… very much like RE2, I think.

The biggest disappointment to me was the end… damn if I didn’t want to see Leon come crashing into the wreckage to make me ready for a sequel!

But good. I can’t remember a character’s name in the thing to save my life, so that means it wasn’t so much story. The dogs were cool as hell, the zombies were done really well… gah, I was just really happy with the whole thing.

Being a huge fan of the games, though, perhaps I am a little biased. But I hope this means we’ll get a sequel. Good old Racoon City: I know thee well.

And for those who might be griping about jimmying the keycard door with an IV needle: chicks always get the lockpicks. :smiley: It’s their special ability. Though I must say, the whole movie I was waiting for the Zippo-style lighter to make a cameo. Double damn.

OK, I guess I did have a few complaints. There were two times in the movie where they were totally surrounded and they “somehow” managed to escape. Admittedly, the second time they moved up onto those steam pipes (but no zombies in the ceiling grates? there sure were plenty in the other grates), but in the original room where we first meet our lovable zombies it seemed like they were completely trapped, and then suddenly they had a way out. I would have rather seen some deus ex machina than just have them just get away somehow. Truly, this makes it more like the game, whereas in a movie it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I was also somewhat upset about the lead’s ability to mysteriously kick ass. Was she supposed to be a high-level Umbrella soldier or what? I don’t get it. But she did kick some major ass. And wow, is she attractive.

I would have also liked more shooting and looking for ammo to do some more shooting. Seeing as RE2 could be played straight through, including all the CG cinemas, in less than two hours I was really hoping for a more intense time.[/color]

END SPOILERS

But really, that would have just been icing on an otherwise delicious cake. This was a good old fun action movie with a few jumps in it and dead people waling around trying to eat the main characters. Which is exactly what I wanted. And exactly what I got. Yay!

My final complaint: I had to pee so bad from the damn movie-size soft drinks. Damn them! I don’t think I missed anything, but how could I tell? I went alone to the damn thing.

5

I’m not a video game player, so I approached RE as a good ol’ zflesh-eating zombie movie. While it had great-looking zombies, I didn’t care for it. The main reason for that is that the director and writer completely missed the elements that made Dawn of the Dead such a great horror classic. In DotD, the focus is not on shooting the zombies, but on the reaction of the four protagonists to their situation. RE didn’t give us interesting characters to root for or despise.

Liked the ending, though.

6

Never seen down of the dead, but the original NotLD is probably my favorite movie ever. But that is more of a drama about zombies, where RE is like an action/cheese-drama that happens to have zombies in it.

The zombies are incidental, IMO, but better than drug dealers or something else with some lame message. If I wanted real life I’d watch the news. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

I saw Resident Evil today. I have to say that I enjoyed the adaption of this better than I did, Tomb Raider.

I was pleasantly surprised by much of the trueness to the VG series that this film had. It was entertaining, fun, and exciting.

I have to agree the characters were pretty thin.

My only real complaint about RE the movie is, it was not gory enough!!! I wanted a blood & guts splattering hurl fest, like the games, and “Dawn of the Dead.” Also, I don’t think CGI should replace Tom Savini style makeup effects, in this kind of movie.

The zombies were alright, but I didn’t think they were as scary or nearly as tough as they are in the games.

They might be deliberately leaving us with parts left to desired, so they will have bigger and better scares in the sequel. I am hoping that’s the case.

Come to think of it: in the games, the zombies in the city are often scarier than the ones inside Umbrella HQ. That’s probably because one “expects” to find zombies inside Umbrella, whereas they are always “out of place” in the city.

As far as video game flicks go, I give Resident Evil a score of 3½ out of 5. Tomb Raider got a straight 3 out of 5, in my book.

FWIW: Lara Croft Tomb Raider was good. I just didn’t care for the storyline too much. It was too “far-off” from the original concept. Angelina rocks as Ms. Croft. drooool

8

I saw it today. I’ve never actually played the games, so I can’t comment on that aspect of it. I thought it was a pretty decent zombie flick, although my grounds for comparison is somewhat limited. I’d probably see it again after I’ve been drinking (I know a movie’s bad if I won’t watch it once I’ve been drinking!). All in all, I was satisfied. And that soundtrack rocks!

9

I liked it a lot. My friend Liz and I saw it last night with a few other friends, and the two of us are both really into zombies and played all but the first game, so we had mixed reviews. The trailers made it look like crap, so we went in with pretty bad expectations, but I was VERY impressed. I actually found the lack of gore made it even more impressive. The scenes of zombies swarming over the poor bastards that managed to get dragged down seemed more terrifying than those old shots from DotD where intestines are pulled out and limbs torn off. The swarms just really made me squirm. And I found the plot rather true to the ideals of the RE games.
My complaints? The jumping and kicking the dog in mid air bit, the slow motion bullet from the chamber shot, and the incredibly bad CGI licker. I liked it’s inclusion in the film, but it could have been done a lot better. That, and the way they killed off four of the characters with that laser thing. The first one, okay. The second guy where he tries to jump the beem and gets cut in half, that was pretty cool. The dicing of the fourth guy, really nice, but by then, I was “Yeah, we just witnessed three people die from the thing, let’s move on.”
I LOVED the bit with Rain bleeding over the pit of zombies. That was absolutely wonderful. And I liked the way the zombies looked. For once a movie that doesn’t make the zombie look blue or green or all pimply right after death. How those few zombies that first showed up had lost bits of thier faces, I don’t know seeing as how everyone pretty much died from suffocation got me, but that was alright. And the ending got me, what with the scientists suddenly showing up and carting them off. I liked it. Overall, as a big zombie fan, it made me happy, and it wasn’t nearly as shitty as I thought it would be.

10

For my money, you just can’t go wrong with blood sucking zombies.

The only problem was they tried to bite off too much. Meaning evrything seemed like it was too big. Especialy the ending(which I liked). They made Racoon City look like freaking New York.

There will be a sequel, and it will be cool.

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CRASH!!! ::::thundering footsteps in the distance:::: :::deep hollow voice:::: “STAAAAAAAAARS! Mwaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!”

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I caught in one of those CGI info screens that the population of Racoon City was 853,000 or so, which ties in OK with the development level. Bigger than in the games, I think.

I really liked it. I think we have a candidate for ‘Best Movie Based On A Video Game’ here. I give it 3 out of 4 stars. Yeah, it had it’s weaknesses, but nothing that’s inexcusable in an action/horror flick.

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BTW, if you are one of those bizarre parents who thinks it’s OK for your kid to see violence but not nudity, Resident Evil will punish you for thinking it’s OK to send your kids to an R rated horror movie.

Ms. Jovavich shaves her nether regions, and it’s very apparent in one scene.

14

Not necessarily about the movie, but was anyone else in a theatre surrounded by sixteen year olds? It always amazes me the number of times I’ll be sitting next to a group of kids during an R-Rated movie. When I went and saw “Ghosts of Mars,” the guy next to me had his two year old son with him. They didn’t stick around long.

While I’m here, I just wanted to reiterate that I liked the movie. One of my friends thinks it was crap, and the only real criticism I got was “It was predictable, I knew who was going to die from the very begining.” My question is, who didn’t know who was going to die from the very begining? It’s been my experience that in Zombie movies, well, EVERYONE dies. If anything, two people survive (one man, one woman), but they’re fucked, and the movie makes it a point to show that. I don’t see how that fact could make the movie crap. Anyone?

15

I’ve never played the game, so it was all new to me. It was a good, bad movie-- the only major flaw in it was that there were WAY too many instances of, “…and then they got away.” Group’s surrounded, things look hopeless… cut to the next scene! Wha?

I also wasn’t clear on how physically far apart the characters were. One or two would wander out of eyesight of the rest of the group, get attacked, slam a bunch of doors, and then magically find their way back to the group again. I didn’t get it.

Other than those things (and the annoyingly obligatory Matrix-bullet shot), it was decent fun.

16

I loved it!!!
First off to answer a question yes she was an Umbrella agent. They explained that is why she woke up in the shower that the house had a defense and she was gassed and forgot who she was and what she did.
She kept having those flashbacks.
I had a friend tell me that she had heard that the movie wasn’t very good because it was nothing like the game.
Well, if he was as into the game as she claimed he was he would realise that the movie wasn’t about the games really, but everything that lead up to what the games are about.
The last scene shows that because it is the opening scene to RE2.
We had a few small children in the theater with us and that kind of bothered me.
But I think that is why the movie people kept alot of the gore out. It was implied but you didn’t really see it.
I actually jumped a few times during the movie. But for me that is a throw back from locking myself in my room and playing the game for days.
Even in the game I get myself so wound up about what is going to jump out next that I jump myself when it actually happens.
But I did feel like a fool in the first scene where Rain is getting power to the train and hears that noise and the guy pops his head in. I damn near jumped out of my skin.

17

What I want to know is why in the game the main character don’t go all Buffy on the monsters, and just shoot at them instead. Kind of like Lara Croft <sigh>

18

Yeap, I’m the kind of player who finishes Diablo2 with my fighting character barehanded.

19

It was ok…and the nakey bits did not hurt as well (yum yum…who knew hospital wear looked THAT good)

As a wide player of all the RE games, it did not have much to the game but of course the game did not have much going for it (the voice acting was atrocious). Story could have carried a movie such as this but with major revision.

Action was good but MAN WAS IT CLICHED. Just once, once I would love to actually hear one guy slap the others in the head and go “Sheesh dont you watch movies. Shoot em in the melon!”

The licker looked great but I was suprised they did not invoke the traditional end boss, who I thought was menacing enough.

Hopefully they follow the sequal up with mass zombs, the original chars coming in (Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine) and include the menace that is Mr.X and his scary ass brother Nemesis.

Want to go for a good intro to scare the crap outta people in the next one? Use Resident Evil 2’s intro movie (with the mass of zombies overpowering the cops and Umbrella mercs in widespread chaos). Great beginning to a game.