Jan 25 2009
RESIDENT EVIL
The next franchise I am going to review is the mediocre RESIDENT EVIL series. This franchise based on a popular 1998 video game deals with zombies, evil corporations, marines and genetically altered woman who is the only hope of well, anybody she’s with. The first film is the best of the whole series. It stars Mila Jovovich as Alice and Michelle Rodriguez as a marine. Mary wakes up in a mansion that is nothing but a front for an underground installation that houses a dangerous virus known as the “T-Virus.” The “T-Virus” turns any living thing into a walking nightmare bound on eating and devouring human flesh. Jovovich and Rodriguez’s team of marines invade the installation in hope of destroying the virus. What they encounter instead are monsters beyond belief and former human beings who disperse the team one by one. I did enjoy this film and feel it was a strong popcorn film, you got what you paid for, sexy woman fighting disgusting monsters, gore, blood, explosions and an actual interesting character twist. The film was enjoyable, although not memorable or something you would want to purchase and place on your shelf, but it’s a good rental or something to watch at midnight at home on television. My gripe though is I wish they would have stayed true to the video game. Not many video game films actually do (SUPER MARIO BROS., DUNGEON SIEGE, ALONE IN THE DARK), and that’s understandable because making a comprehensible film from a game is hard work. Most video games barely have a story you just have a premise and a series of actions to perform. However, movie, television and video game novelist actually wrote a very good cinematic version of the first RESIDENT EVIL GAME. Check out the novel by S.D. Perry, it’s called RESIDENT EVIL: THE UMBRELLA CONSPIRACY and it actually makes the video game even scarier and had a lot of potential to almost be a film script. Just wish Hollywood would actually read a book sometimes. Pick it up from Amazon.com or your local library. Also floating around on the Internet was the purposed George Romero shooting script for the film, which again I found more interesting than what was actually made on film. Try Drews Script-O-Rama.com for that. This franchise has been surprisingly successful given it’s unfaithfulness to the video games, this film grossed over 100 million alone and spawned three sequels, two live action and one completely computer generated. S.D. Perry’s book http://www.amazon.com/Umbrella-Conspiracy-Resident-Evil/dp/0671024396/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8
