[0:00]Consider 2025 the year of Resident Evil on this channel, and while playing through all of the video games that I can get my hands on, I also did the unthinkable. I watched every live-action Resident Evil adaptation, and I'm here to talk about them. Truthfully, I'd already seen the first four Resident Evil movies in the Paul Anderson series when I was younger, and I liked them back then for what they were. But now I'm watching them having a much better understanding of the game series that they were based on, and oh boy, that makes it even more interesting to think about. So, we're going to talk about the six movies in that franchise, the Welcome to Raccoon City movie, and then Netflix TV series version.
[0:48]But let's start with the basics. For the uninitiated, Resident Evil is a survival horror action game franchise developed by Capcom that started way back in 1996 and currently has eight main installments with a ninth on the way, a variety of spin-off and side games, as well as a series of remakes of the originals. A property that blends the best of zombie horror, suspense, atmosphere, puzzle-solving, deep lore, gun blasting, spin kicking, plant mixing glory with an assortment of established characters that rotate depending on which game you're playing. It seems like the perfect recipe to make a movie series out of. Hell, all of the stories of the games are like movies themselves. But as common as video game adaptations are these days, I think the context of the first attempt to make a movie out of this is important. But real quick before that, did you know that legendary horror film director George Romero was actually going to make the first Resident Evil adaptation? Yeah, literally the guy that redefined and created what we now understand as a zombie movie with the original Night of the Living Dead. No other director is as synonymous with zombie cinema as George Romero. He directed a Japanese commercial for Resident Evil 2 the game when it came out, which led him to work on a full-length idea for a script of a Resident Evil movie. And it was rejected. Some studio numskull out there saw a George Romero Resident Evil movie script and said, nah, we could have had greatness. And if this movie was able to be made, we might be living in a very different world of Resident Evil adaptations. Recently, there was a documentary made about the potential George Romero Resident Evil movie. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but it is just crazy to me that they did not let this happen. Instead, we got this. So yeah, context is still important here. What you have to remember is that back in the late 90s and early 2000s, video games were not at all taken seriously by the mainstream. And adaptations of them were very rare to get made to begin with, and even more rare to actually turn out to be good. And Hollywood doesn't tend to invest in things that they think won't make them profit. But there was an outlier in this genre. That of the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie. A movie that I personally adore, and though I recognize it's not perfect, for the time period that it came out, it was actually a respectful adaptation. It gets the general gist of the story across of the first game, it had really good special effects for the time, a lot of memorable performances, and that soundtrack kicked ass. That movie was directed by a guy named Paul WS Anderson. He made a video game movie actually work, an incredible feat for the time period. And he was also a legitimate fan of the Resident Evil games. So, he was chosen to write and direct the film, which ultimately led us to the 2002 original Resident Evil movie. However, this is not a direct adaptation of the first Resident Evil game story. Instead, it borrows elements of the game, notably the underground Umbrella laboratory, the zombies, the dogs, and the liquor. Oh, and the scene of being stuck when you're trying to remember a code to open a specific door.
[4:26]Paul Anderson stated that the reason he didn't just do the first game story or include any of the game's signature characters, was because he envisioned the movie to be a prequel to the games, and I think this is important. With that in mind, I think a lot of the decisions he made for the film make more sense. Remember, this is before this became a franchise. And even though the movie was released the same year as the actual prequel to Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0, they wouldn't have had any knowledge about what Resident Evil 0 was about while they were making it. Only the first three games as well as Code Veronica would have been out at the time, so that's all he had to go on. And he also said that since the games star different characters, that he figured he would make new characters for this pseudo prequel, and that brings us to Alice. Alice is the main character of this movie, and of every other Resident Evil movie in the Paul Anderson series. She's played by Milla Jovovich, who is also the director's wife. She plays a former employee of Umbrella who wakes up with amnesia in a mansion after an outbreak that occurred in the underground lab. It's really cool to see the mansion aesthetic here and it's got a slow, mysterious atmosphere, and is probably my personal favorite part of the movie. But then it's over in less than 5 minutes as we introduce a team of generic soldier characters and immediately go down into the lab where the entire rest of the movie takes place. Now, truthfully, I don't really have a problem with Alice's character or Milla's portrayal at all. And considering he was thinking prequel mentality when he made this, I get having an original character. Also, this was 2002. Nowadays, I'm sure they would never adapt a video game into a movie and have the lead character not be somebody from the games. Never mind. But honestly, taking out any kind of one-to-one recreated events of the game, the 2002 Resident Evil movie, to me, is a legitimately fun zombie action movie. It feels so beautifully early 2000s, with it coming out right alongside 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake. It was the decade of the new wave of zombie media, and I was here for it. The soundtrack is filled with new metal and original tracks by Marilyn Manson, and the action, though low budget, is the kind of fast-paced, hectic filmmaking style with hints of slowmo as everybody was following in the wake of the Matrix at the time. The movie is simple. The zombies are the only real threat until the final boss, which is a liquor, not a tyrant, which is disappointing. But still, for the time it was decent CGI. And everybody remembers the grid laser scene. It's a classic memorable moment. When I was younger, I really enjoyed this movie and to this day, I still have fun with it. It's not offensively bad and it doesn't really disrespect the source material that much. Sure, it's not exactly accurate and it sucks not to see any of the classic characters like Jill and Chris, but if you just want a cheesy early 2000s zombie movie, this would be one of my top picks. It's only after this that we start to get into weird territory, because the movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel. But now we have an established main character that is going to be carried over. While at the same time, there were calls to incorporate characters from the actual games. So, with the second movie, Resident Evil Apocalypse that came out in 2004, we have this weird situation. As we begin the trend to add main characters from the games into these movies, but now they all have to take a back seat and become supporting characters in order for Alice to thrive. Made even more apparent by now having Alice infected with a strain of the virus that basically gives her superpowers. Alice is the one who gets to do all of the important and badass things, while the other characters stand back and all at her. This would get exponentially worse as the movies go on, but Apocalypse still manages to mostly be enjoyable to me, and I think balances it the best. The movie takes the premise of its story mostly from Resident Evil 3 Nemesis, and it focuses on the viral outbreak in Raccoon City. And incorporates Jill Valentine, Carlos and a couple of others, as well as the Nemesis. So now, gone was the idea of the first movie being a game prequel, because we are now in a brand new continuity. And once again, I will say, as just yet another early 2000s zombie movie, it works pretty good. This one isn't actually directed by Paul Anderson, instead by Alexander Witt, but it has the same vibe all the way through. Sienna Guillory plays Jill and she does a pretty good job here and takes the credit for being the first actor to really portray a Resident Evil protagonist on the big screen. The zombie attacks on the city streets are solid and fun, and as for the Nemesis, I don't think it turned out that bad. I think that the practical effects here are pretty cool and at least it actually looks like him. Sure, he's a lot slower and bulkier and can't do half of the attacks that he does in the game, but for 2004 with the budget they had, I don't think it's too shabby. That is until the terrible scene where Alice fights him in hand-to-hand combat. Like, come on, man. Way to make Nemesis not seem that intimidating. But again, when it comes to nostalgia for me, nostalgia can be a bitch, and this was my favorite Resident Evil movie when I was a teenager. And that might mostly be because of Jill, but I also love zombie movies that take place within the city streets. I'm a sucker for that kind of horror carnage. And I still love this movie both for the memories I have and I think it's a very entertaining film to watch today. I like the style, I like the aesthetic. I'm a fan of this one. But by the next movie in 2007, Resident Evil Extinction, this is where things start to get iffy. The Raccoon City outbreak in the games is solved Return of the Living Dead style where they nuke the entire city and destroy evidence of Umbrella's involvement. Well, that kind of happens in the movie universe, but now in the movie continuity, by only the third film, they committed to just having a full-blown zombie worldwide apocalypse. The third film drops us into an entire world that has been ravaged by the virus. So, there's not even a possibility of taking influence from any of the other games at this point that come out. At least story-wise, it's no longer possible because now everything has to be post-apocalyptic. And Alice's superpowers in this movie are reaching critical mass. She may as well just be Tetsuo from Akira at this point. She's basically unstoppable. This movie also starts a trend where it does not satisfyingly follow up on the events of the last movie. See, each movie ends with a kind of cliffhanger and from this point forward, that cliffhanger is either ignored or immediately done away with at the start of the next movie. And this movie, Alice starts separated from the group. Jill is just gone, which apparently was due to the fact that the actress couldn't come back, so I guess it's good that they didn't just recast her. In order to replace her, we get another character from the games, Claire Redfield, played by Ali Larter. But it drops us into a completely new scenario from where we left off. A compliment I will give the movie though, is I do like the chosen aesthetic. It all takes place in the desert and mostly during daylight hours. Which helps all three movies so far feel very distinct in their identities, and it's sort of in line with the games in the fact that they all have very different locations. The zombies look great here too, very decayed, looking like they've been out baking in the sun for a while. But this movie also starts a lot of the things that I hate, including the cloning aspect. This film's human villain, Dr Isaacs, is continuously cloning Alice to try to find a cure and control the infected, as well as having this Day of the Dead reference, trying to domesticate one of them. But besides the Mad Max vibes of the desert wastelands and some okay action, a lot of this movie will just have me scratching my head and wondering why. Alice's psychic powers are way too OP as she can block flamethrowers, levitate things, and even take out satellites. Like, what? Part of what makes the games exciting is that you're a regular human. Well, okay, you're a very well-trained human, but still, you have to manage your weapons, your ammo, your resources very carefully to survive. You would never be a character that can just use this immense psychic power to solve all of their problems. It feels very out of place. Isaacs turns into a tyrant for the final battle, and he looks pretty good at least. But the cliffhanger here suggests that Alice is going to unleash all of her clones and take vengeance on the remnants of Umbrella, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. And it was. Resident Evil Afterlife from 2010. Yeah, this is where we go off the fucking rails. As much as I can appreciate the first three movies from an action movie guilty pleasure standpoint, the next three movies are a totally different ballgame. Paul Anderson returns to direct this one and the remaining two, and what a return it was. They immediately take away the cliffhanger of the last movie here by having all of Alice's clones attack the underground Umbrella facility and all die except for the quote real Alice, who is then depowered thanks to some virus strain injection or something by Wesker, and then she's left to fend for herself. I guess to be fair, I wanted them to get rid of her powers and I didn't like the clone stuff, so I should be happy about all this, right? Well, I would be if the rest of the movie wasn't so obnoxiously absurd. One of the biggest issues in this movie is that it came out during the last wave of 3D movies and was one of the many victims of films at the time that were specifically shot for 3D, and now years later, they end up looking very dated and weird. Everything is flying at the screen, the shots seem so goofy without the 3D element, and the slow motion here, dear God, the slowmo in this movie. I don't mind slow motion in general. It can be a good way to increase dramatic tension and the emotion of a scene, but there is so much goddamn slowmo in this movie. I swear if the whole thing was regular speed, you would shave off at least 15 minutes of its runtime. Fights are in slowmo, people staring at each other in slowmo, you name it, it's probably in slowmo in this movie. And unlike the first three, this movie doesn't really have its own identity with its aesthetic and seems like a lesser version of what we've already seen. The main portion of the movie is in a big city, but it's really mostly inside of one building as Alice arrives here and they're trapped because they can't get the plane working. But she does find Chris Redfield. Yes, it took four movies, but they finally introduced the other main character of the first Resident Evil game. Wentworth Miller plays him and he does a pretty good job, and it's cool to see him alongside Claire, who does return in this film as well. But once again, we get this iconic fantastic character from the games, who all have to play second fiddle to the Alice show. Even the scene where Claire could have been the one to take down the big Axeman, it's Alice, who of course has to deliver the final blow. Like, come on, you couldn't just give that one to Claire. The back half of the movie is once again inside of a facility and the main villain here is Wesker. Wesker was actually introduced in the third movie, but he doesn't get a chance to shine until this one, and uh, shine he does. This movie came out a year after the fifth Resident Evil game, which prominently features a souped-up Wesker as the antagonist, and they did their best to adapt that version of him here. The result is this kind of mix of absolute corniness along with some genuinely fun moments in the vein of an exaggerated mustache twirling villain. But then, big surprise, Chris and Claire are taken out of the fight and it's Alice who has to be the one to put him down, at least for a bit. Wesker isn't fully defeated here and he shows himself to be so ridiculously powerful in this movie that he obviously has to be the main villain for the rest of the franchise, right? Right? Nope, it doesn't matter, because they're just going to radically shift directions once again. The movie ends with Alice, Claire and Chris being attacked on a boat from the sky from, Jill Valentine now under Wesker's control, again mimicking Resident Evil 5 the game. So does this mean that we're going to get Jill and Chris side by side in the next movie, the two main characters of the first Resident Evil game? No, in fact, I have no earthly idea if Jill and Chris in the movie universe even know who each other is. In the fifth movie, Resident Evil Retribution from 2012, the opening scene is the attack on the boat played in, you guessed it, slow motion. Except now, it's backwards. For some reason. Chris and Claire are both not in this movie whatsoever, and it's never addressed if they died or escaped. But wow, this movie, this could be the worst or the best Resident Evil movie, depending on how you want to look at it. Because it doesn't really have a semblance of a plot and it's pretty much just non-stop action scenes the entire way through with a huge barrage of fan service references. And if you're into that, you're probably going to have a good time. The first part is just Alice abducted by Umbrella, put through a series of scenarios that mimic previous movies, and then she meets Ada Wong, another character from the games. And I don't know if it's because they thought audiences wouldn't be able to make out her accent, but this poor actress's performance is completely overdubbed by somebody else, who actually happens to be Ada's voice actress from the games, so take that how you will. But this movie also has clones galore. Somewhere along the line, this whole movie series just became about clones. So previous characters return like Rain, Carlos and James, and it's just an excuse to get the past actors back into the movie because their real characters are all dead. Plus, the clones don't act anything like them, so they're not even playing the character they were before, they're literally just here as a body to point at the screen and say, hey, I remember that person. It's not like we actually get the real characters back. There's also a team sent in to rescue Alice, which features some other game characters like Barry Burton and Leon Kennedy. Which, sure, it's great to see Leon finally in a movie because he's one of the main characters of the games and a fan favorite. But of course, it's the Alice show, so he doesn't get to do much or have a chance to stand out, and honestly, if not for the costume that he wears in the movie and other characters mentioning him by name, you probably wouldn't even make out that he's Leon at all, because he could just be any random mercenary. There's nothing about Leon's actual character that shines through here. He's just a member of a rescue task force. There's one moment where I thought they were going to expand on his character, where Rain injects herself with a Plagas from Resident Evil 4 the game, in which Leon is the main character. And Leon mentions, that's the Plagas. And I thought, oh cool, maybe Leon is going to explain some lore about what it is or mention a mission that he went on to rescue the President's daughter or something. Literally any kind of indication that he's who we know from the games, but nope, he doesn't say anything else. Jill is also super disappointing in this movie because the entire movie, minus the last five minutes, she's just an evil character controlled by Umbrella, and not at all like she was in Resident Evil Apocalypse. Shockingly enough, Barry Burton gets a lot to do here. He's played by Kevin Durant and he does a really great job. Also goes down in a blaze of glory. He's probably my favorite character from this movie. But yeah, this movie is just action scenes. Alice and Ada fight scenes. Mercenary team fight scenes, infected soldiers with weapons fight scenes, Axeman fight scenes, giant liquor fight scenes, Mortal Kombat, ask X-ray damage fight scenes. That's the whole movie. So the reason I say this could be one of the best is if the only reason you watch these movies are for the action scenes and you just want to see the most amount of Resident Evil characters on screen at the same time. If you just want 90 minutes of pointing at the screen and saying, hey, I understood that reference and I know that character, along with non-stop gunfire and explosions, then this is the movie for you. But the ending will once again be completely retconned. Now Wesker wants Alice's help to defeat Umbrella's AI, the Red Queen, which is the real threat to humanity all along. So he gives her her superpowers back, and then her, Wesker, Jill, Ada and Leon, all stand on top of the White House, ready to take down, I guess, everything and everything coming at them. Except, none of this happens. Because next, we reach the final steaming center of the Resident Evil dog turd, the Final Chapter from 2016. And thank fucking God this movie that says it's the Final Chapter, actually was the Final Chapter. As much leeway and benefit of the doubt I can give any of these movies, this one is simply unforgivable. A train wreck of epic proportions. Once again, it starts with Alice just by herself. Yeah, Jill, Ada and Leon, they're all dead off-screen, nowhere to be found. Dumped into the same void that Chris went, I guess. The same place that all the characters we actually want to see end up going. But hey, Claire is back, I guess. Also, Wesker was like, JK, because apparently, he didn't actually give Alice her powers back, it was just a trick, and he betrayed everybody there off-screen in between movies. So, what was the point of having Alice rescued from the last movie supposed to be? What was the point? It literally makes it feel like you can skip Retribution entirely because none of the events of that movie matter at all, and none of the characters besides Alice are even here anymore. Also, there's apparently a cure that's been here all along somewhere deep down in the original lab, which is just so absurdly convenient. And since this is going to be the last movie, we need a big Resident Evil villain, right? So you would think it would obviously be Wesker. But no, instead, they bring back Isaacs from the third movie, explaining that the one that was defeated before was just a clone. But plot twist, this is just a clone too and doesn't know it because the real Isaacs is down in the laboratory. Everyone and everything is a clone at this point. Also, there was no reason to bring this character back other than the fact that the actor, Ian Glenn, was now more famous for being on Game of Thrones, so maybe they thought adding him back into the franchise would help the box office. I have no idea. But it's like Afterlife put such a huge, massive push on Wesker being the big bad. Retribution only had him on video screens until the very end, and in this movie, he's just sidelined for this movie original character Isaacs to take all the spotlight. And he's taken out like a bitch with a door falling on him. Are you serious? Even if you were a huge fan of this movie series, that's got to be one of the biggest fuck yous to the audience I have ever seen. Move over legacy character. We need to make room for the clone circus. It's also revealed that the viral outbreak apocalypse was supposedly deliberate and not an accident, which contradicts the original first two movies and there's tons more contradictions in this film as well. Because a big twist is that Alice is also a clone, the whole time, ever since the first movie, we've just been watching a clone. So what makes this clone so special compared to the others? Well, I have no fucking idea. But the original Alice is an old woman living within the lab named Alicia that was the daughter of Umbrella's founder. I don't even want to get into it, but I don't know why cloning became such a major plot point for these films. Every movie past the second one is just obsessed with the idea of clones. You get a clone, you get a clone, everybody gets a clone. Alice did have amnesia in the first movie, but she's also shown to have memory flashbacks of her life before then, which lead into events of the movie. So, were her memories just implanted? But her memories were things that actually did happen, so how can that be? I don't know, maybe I missed something. Maybe they were implanted or maybe they just didn't think it through. If all these movies had different creators, I would get it, but Paul Anderson directed four out of six of them, including the final three. So why couldn't he just follow what he was doing? Why did he constantly have to change every single major setup into something else and retcon every single ending? And why am I watching two movie original characters, Alice and Isaacs, be the final battle of a Resident Evil franchise, where all of the major characters from the games, minus Claire, got essentially one movie to appear in each. Chris got one, Leon got one, and yeah, technically Jill is in three, but she's just in a post-credit scene in one, and she's evil in another one, so really we only get to see her be Jill in one. And speaking about the action and CGI, this movie has the worst of all of them. The quick cut editing is just absurd as well as the whole film looking incredibly dark where you can barely see anything. Any visual flare these movies once had is now gone, and thankfully the 3D gimmick is gone too, but what's left is just a hollow empty looking movie that feels like it doesn't care about the fans of the games or even about the fans of the movie series itself. Is the finale you wanted really Clone High featuring Isaacs as the final boss? I have no idea what they were thinking with this one, and I can't find a single thing that I like about this movie. But it was the official end of the Anderson verse, or is it the Alice verse? I don't know. Is there an official name for this franchise? Overall, these movies are hit or miss. Some can be really enjoyable in the right state of mind, and I do get genuine entertainment out of the first three. They are not good or accurate representations of the games, and they feel more like exactly what they are, Resident Evil fan fiction with somebody's original character in the lead. And impressive that it lasted for six movies over the course of 14 years. So, clearly there was an audience out there for this somewhere. But now let's jump forward a little. Five years later in 2021, there would be a reboot attempting Resident Evil on film with some drastic changes from the previous incarnation. Resident Evil, Welcome to Raccoon City. It was written and directed by Johannes Roberts and conceptualized to be a horror movie with some action elements. And attempted to adapt basic story outlines of the first two video games, which may have been a little too ambitious in hindsight, making the movie feel a lot less focused, but I want to focus on my positives here first. I had a lot of people tell me this movie was terrible. But after watching the last few Alice movies, this one honestly felt kind of like a breath of fresh air. It's no masterpiece, don't get me wrong. And there's plenty of problems with it, but honestly, hate me if you want to, I kind of liked it. Mostly I liked the way it was filmed. The director said he was going for something like a John Carpenter's The Fog, a very spooky, dream-like atmosphere, longer, lingering shots, soaking in the surrounding areas, and I definitely felt that. It feels very much like a late 70s, early 80s film, minus the CGI that shows up. But it has a really good visual style in my opinion. One of the first scenes of Claire looking into the woods and seeing an infected, that's just good horror shit. And probably since I'm very much more a horror movie kind of guy, this movie resonated a lot for me. There's certain scenes of tension that I think are effective and give you time to live within a scene without a massive amount of just non-stop cut editing. Take one of the first zombie attack scenes, for example, how the camera is on Claire, it pans down to the kid, and then pans back up to her as you see a zombie break in from the background. You would never see a slow and controlled, structured shot like that from one of the Alice movies. And there's a lot of scenes that are just very well controlled like that. And yes, this movie's characters are the main characters from the games. Finally. Not all of them are as well realized as I would hope, but at least they actually got to be the focus and do things. Claire, Chris, Jill, Wesker and Leon are all the main characters and wait, why is Leon literally Beck from Victorious? I am not kidding. Uh, yeah, Victorious was a popular pre-teen Nickelodeon show that I watched growing up, mostly for Jade. But that's the only other thing I've ever seen this actor in, and I haven't seen him since those days. So seeing him suddenly pop up as arguably the best Resident Evil character was just a shock to my system. I did not expect to see Beck in this movie, especially as Leon. But does he do a good job as the character? I don't know. I guess if you ever imagine Leon as a sleepy and hungover person, then I guess. I mean, he's good at what he was told to do in the movie, it just, it just doesn't feel like Leon at all. Like I said, this movie isn't perfect. The movie takes place in 1998, which is canonically when the Raccoon City outbreak happens in the games. So the characters were all using technology that would have existed at that time, and it helps it feel more like the era it's supposed to take place in. The police station looks exactly like it does from the game. Unfortunately, they don't really explore it other than the main lobby. Also, Mr X never appears. The other main location is the Spencer Mansion, which again, at first looks incredible. But our time at both locations are severely limited. I think that's the biggest flaw of the film, is that it's trying to adapt two games at the same time. But Resident Evil 1 and 2 are very different in their setting and set completely apart. But it does feel like an attempt was made here, which I appreciate, and I like some of the actors' performances a lot, especially Robbie Amell, who plays Chris Redfield. He does a phenomenal job. If they just had focused on only the first game with him as the main character, put more budget into the mansion, then I think it would have been at least 10 times better. The battle with the zombies in the mansion, though short, is a spectacle, simple, yet effective. There's a lot of creative ideas like being in a dark room and having just the flash of the gun muzzle to light up to see the surroundings. Or moments where Chris has to keep a lighter lit to see, which is also a reference because the lighter is very important in the game. And we get that classic shot of the zombie eating the first victim and turning its head towards the camera, which is exactly how you meet the first zombie in the first game. But it's strange because the movie is jam-packed with material, but on the other hand, it also manages to kind of feel slow, and I don't know how that's possible. Like, the first real big zombie scene isn't until an hour into the movie, but somehow, the movie manages to add in both these locations from different games, all of the zombie stuff, a liquor, Lisa Trevor, who turns out to be an important piece to the film, Chris and Claire's childhood backstory, Wesker's betrayal, and the Burken family with William Burken becoming a tyrant at the end. I've watched this movie twice now and I still don't know how they jam-packed all of that stuff in under 2 hours, but also held off on the action for as long as they do. It's low budget forces it to not really show us a lot of Raccoon City beyond the police station for a few hours. We're told the outbreak is going on, but we don't really get to see much of it. We don't see the city bombed. We don't even really get a whole lot of info other than some brief scenes with Burken. It almost seems like you're meant to have prior knowledge of the games to really get everything out of what's happening here, and the movie itself doesn't explain it to you that well. And that's the double-edged sword of this movie, because it's absolutely clear that the filmmakers knew the games. Some people call this fan service the movie, and yeah, it is bleeding with references and locations and callbacks to the games. But it also feels like a jumbled compilation without much to ground it into its own movie. It's well made, but clunky.
[36:13]The characters are here, but not well realized. The horror is good, but it's too quick. The references are fun, but that becomes the entire film. It's constant back and forth. And I appreciate that they wanted to add a tyrant as the final boss, but the CGI is so bad, that it kind of makes the flash look good. And I kind of wish they just tried to do something practical. My overall thoughts is that it's a very flawed movie, but I did get enjoyment out of it. Oh, and since franchise movies can't be made now without a post-credit scene, Ada Wong shows up and gives Wesker his sunglasses because, I guess, we needed an origin story for the sunglasses. Unlike the last batch of movies, this one never got a sequel. But honestly, I didn't even know this movie existed until I looked it up. I never saw a single trailer for it. I never saw it when it came out in theaters, maybe it didn't play near me. It seemed like it went very under the radar. So maybe no shock that this was a one and done. Now we move on to the most recently made live-action adaptation, and holy shit did we save the worst for last. This is the Netflix Resident Evil series from 2022 that lasted eight episodes. Honest to God, I never imagined in a million years there would be a worse Resident Evil adaptation than the Final Chapter. I didn't think it was reasonably possible. But like many times in my life, almost constantly, I'm consistently proven wrong. Watching the Netflix Resident Evil series is a baffling experience, and I wanted to give up so many times, but forced myself to push through. Watching a 90-minute movie can be bad, and that's one thing, but watching eight hours of the butchering of a game franchise was so grueling, I felt like I was Lisa Trevor getting tortured. I don't even know where to begin. The series is not about any of the game characters, once again, and focuses on two original characters that are sisters. And it has two stories that are happening with them simultaneously. One of them is teenagers, and one of them as adults in an apocalyptic future. So yes, once again, we're jumping right into a full worldwide outbreak without even giving a chance to go through any of the story lines of the games. And it really feels like they were trying to make this feel like Stranger Things meets The Walking Dead. Because the present storyline just felt like two preteens going on an adventure, discovering secrets of their father and the Umbrella Corporation, uncovering conspiracies, and then the future timeline literally was just Walking Dead scenes of survivors. While at the same time, the show can't decide if it wants to have slow or fast zombies and feels like it goes back and forth even within the same episode. This show kind of keeps the canon of the games, but it's all off-screen. In this world, the Raccoon City outbreak did happen in 1998, just as the game lore says, but that's just the back story. And we're in the present time. Instead, we focus on the sisters who are the daughters of Wesker. Yeah, hold on to that thought for a minute. It's filled with teen drama, middle school antics, iPhone chats with boys. And I don't know why, but every single episode needed to have a pop song music montage inserted for some reason. And the whole show is focused on the family drama of these characters, but like, why are these the main characters of a show called Resident Evil? Did we not have six movies in a row that focused on an original character and people didn't like that? But at least Alice was pretty cool at times to watch, minus the superpowers. But she seemed like somebody that could potentially fit into that world. Making the lead characters two angsty teen girls in a game series that's protagonists are adults that are usually skilled trained soldiers, cops or special task force members is just a baffling decision. This whole idea that the game characters just aren't good enough to stand on their own. We need to keep making up new characters for audiences as if they wouldn't be able to attach to the game one. Well, maybe you would if you actually wrote the game characters correctly and gave them things to do and arcs to go on, instead of just having them be in the background, only there to service the fan fiction characters. Nothing in this show worked for me. I didn't care about these characters at all. But somehow the teen versions of them were way more interesting than the adult versions. Somehow, I don't know how they did it, but they made the actual zombie apocalypse parts more boring than the teen drama stuff. And I have to give a round of applause for that feat. And I don't know why they want to do this full-on zombie apocalypse idea anyway. It limits the potential of using other aspects of the games and we already had a whole movie series that did that, and they kind of shot themselves in the foot by doing so very early on. The only character from the game really, other than 30 seconds of footage of Lisa Trevor that's never touched on again after they see it, is Wesker, played by Lance Reddick. Except, this isn't really Wesker, because it's a clone. Yeah, we're doing cloning again. It honestly feels like the creator of this show only referenced for Resident Evil where the Alice movies. And they took every single idea from those films with the exception of any of the good stuff or fun action and put it into the series. Look, I love Lance Reddick as an actor, but he doesn't look, sound or act anything like Wesker. And I'm not talking about the race swapping, that's fine. I mean, they make him a scientist and a family man. That's not Wesker. And yeah, I get it, it's because he's a clone, but if you take that element out of the original Wesker, then yeah, there's really no point to call him Wesker. He's just a different character that bears the name. The actor does as good of a job as he possibly can with the material that's given, but the material, unfortunately, sucks. It really feels like this could have just been a standard zombie show, but they somehow managed to slap the Resident Evil branding on it, and they just changed a few things around, like renaming the corporation Umbrella, and Lance's character Wesker, and then bam. Now we got instant Resident Evil. Nothing about this show felt like the franchise at all. It is the furthest removed and most detached entity there could possibly be that bears the name. I didn't go into this show wanting to hate it. I didn't know anything about the show. I didn't know who the characters were going to be or what it was going to focus on, but not far into the very first episode, I knew something was wrong. And apparently, I'm not the only person who feels this way, because it was canceled just one month after the first season premiered. Which also made me think this had to just be a money laundering scheme by Netflix again. I mean, it just, it just doesn't make sense otherwise. And I wasn't kidding when I said it felt like half Stranger Things and half Walking Dead. It's like people in corporate offices somewhere were looking at what shows worked for them before and tried to match them together with a popular IP as the title. Anyway, I'll stop ranting now, but I hated this show just so, so much. As of right now, there is yet another Resident Evil movie reboot in the works. This one is set to be directed by Zach Cregger, who also did the movie Barbarian, which I thought was pretty good for the most part. And he's doing a film called Weapons that comes out later this year that I'm hearing very good things about. So I guess we'll just keep our fingers crossed for that one. A tentative release date for that film is September of 2026, so I guess we'll see. But please for the love of God, just adapt the first game into a movie and have the main characters actually be the main characters. No more OCs, please. But okay, how about we end this video with some rankings. Here are my personal opinions on the live-action Resident Evil worst to best. At the bottom is obviously going to be the Netflix series. Basically, has nothing to do with Resident Evil other than having the name Umbrella and some zombies in it. After that is definitely the Final Chapter, just an abysmal ending to a franchise that wasn't that amazing to begin with. But it's about as unsatisfying of a conclusion as you could have possibly forgotten if it forgets its own lore, and it fails to follow up on the promises of the previous movie. After that, I'm putting Afterlife, just a wacky slow-motion fest with really bad special effects. A couple of good action scenes here and there, but not up to par with the previous installments. Then I'm going to go with Retribution. The story or lack thereof makes little to no sense, especially where the next movie picks up. More game characters are shown here, as well as previous movie characters that are back as clones. The whole film is just one giant action sequence, and if you're looking for nonsensical spectacle, this is the one to go with. Now, after this, I would put the rest of the movies in the okay to good category. For as dumb as I think the Alice superpowers and the clone stuff is, the Desert Mad Max aesthetic is admittedly very cool. The zombies look great, and there's some solid action here. Now the top three are kind of tricky, but I think this is how I would rank them. At number three is going to be Welcome to Raccoon City. It's a bit of a mess of a film, cramming way too much in at once. But I do love the way that it looks and feels. It has some genuinely good horror scenes, and I was thankful to actually have the game characters be front and center. But yeah, now for the top two, and I have to admit that nostalgia plays a huge factor here, but I don't care. I like what I like. At number two, I'm going to put the first Resident Evil movie. The beauty here is in the simplicity. The characters are trapped underground, fighting zombies, classic, simple, effective, fun. And my favorite live-action Resident Evil movie is still Apocalypse. I love the Raccoon City outbreak, Jill Valentine being here, and the Nemesis looks pretty good. Yeah, it's got that early 2000s corniness and cheese, but to me, that just adds to the charm. I think this movie is incredibly fun from start to finish, and it's before the Alice series got way too up its own ass. To me, this was the perfect balance of continuing the Alice character, while also adding in more traditional elements of the game. Anyways, there you have it, guys. My quick opinions on the live-action Resident Evil movies and shows. And now that that's over, I'm going to be checking out the animated movies, which I hear are much better and also within continuity of the games, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also steadily working through all the games as well. My reviews for those are in the video game playlist if you guys are interested. And I hope that I can catch up through all of them, all of the story, and be at the best possible spot in preparation for Resident Evil 9, which is now confirmed to be releasing in February of next year. All the games will at that point be fresh in my mind, and I can experience this one alongside everybody else, actually at the time of its release. And if that new live-action movie does come out, that means that next year we could get both a new Resident Evil game and movie. Not that far apart from each other. So let me know your thoughts in the comments on the live-action Resident Evil stuff and give me your rankings down there as well, if you would like. What do you think about the Alice series, the Welcome to Raccoon City movie, and that Netflix show? Thanks as always for watching, guys, I really appreciate it. Once I finished the animated films, I'll make a companion piece video where I cover those. But until then, if you could like and comment on the video, it would really help me out. My channel is kind of suffering right now. So anything you could do to help out and get the videos out there, I would appreciate. If you want to support the channel on a deeper level, I've a Patreon channel memberships linked down below, as well as all the social media links where you can follow me. Other than that, guys, thanks for watching, and I'll talk to you next time.
