 |
| And by 'begins', they mean 'begins at the end of the movie.' |
So a half year later, I've finally caught up
with Resident Evil: Retribution. Now, truth be told, I don't really
care about the games. Outside of playing the first one back in the
90s, I've never really played them. (And that first one, the
Playstation froze on me before I even got anywhere interesting and I got bored.) So when they make changes to the overall story
and characters of the games, I'm not exactly broken up about it. I
enjoy these movies on their own merit.
I've made no secret that I love stupid
movies and Lord knows I love movies that accepts they're stupid movies even more.
There's just something so satisfying in a world where too many directors seem
to think the stupid crap they produce is gold pressed latinum, that
here's a slew of creators that knows what they're creating and does
not apologize for it. It's kinda like porn: No one's pissed off that
the director of the super-hero porn parody movie is making something
stupid, because the audience already knows it's stupid. We get more irritated when it
tries to take itself seriously as a form of social commentary or
something stupid like that, when all you're wanting is just to watch
two or three (or seven) attractive people do each other. The Resident
Evil movies are like that for me. They're stupid. Holy Christ,
they're stupid, but you know what? I love them. Now part of it is my
unrequited love for Milla Jovovich, who I've harbored deep unhealthy
feelings for since I saw her near naked years ago in her music video 'Gentleman Who Fell'. But another part
is that for some reason, I love her husband, Paul W.S. Anderson's
movies. They're stupid and he doesn't try to hide it... He's like a
lower-budgeted Micheal Bay. People are often surprised that he keeps
making movies, but there's a certain logical dynamic when it comes to
making movies. It's all about making money. He keeps his movies under
budget so that no matter what, unless it's a truly unwatchable piece
of crap, on a Ecks vs. Sever level of horrible, it's going to make a
profit. And unless you're a hardcore zombie puritan or just a dude with a stick up yer butt, the Resident
Evil movies have never been really outright horrible...
...Until now.
 |
| Seriously, the lady in the red dress? (Ada) Believe it or not, SHE'S the one wearing the out of place outfit. |
The RE movies are not so much a horror
movie as they're a science fiction/action movie. And I think a lot of
people forget that it's not meant to be on the same shelves as Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, or any Romero movie. The are about
superpowers, clones and advanced technology gone wrong... That just
happens to have zombies in it. Essentially the movies are a bunch of
action sequences of a pretty woman in a tight outfit, shooting and
kicking her way through hordes of oncoming enemies. Much like the
Fast and the Furious movies, it fills a niche that I'm glad someone
is doing. We've gone almost an entire generation without some fun and
simple action movies. For the longest time, whenever someone tried to
make an action movie, it couldn't just be a bunch of dudes with
machine guns shooting each other... Oh no, it had to be a James
Cameron level of movie-events. By default, action movies are stupid.
Many often like to say how when they were younger, action movies were
better, using stuff like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and an occasional
Arnold movie as an example. But what they're forgetting is that for
those movies were the EXCEPTION TO THE RULE. Seriously, for every
single Die Hard and Lethal Weapon movie there were two dozen
Missing in Actions, Invasion U.S.As, Red Dawns, American Ninjas, Red
Scorpions, Gymkatas, Delta Forces, Steele Justices, Strike Commandos,
Future Kicks, Iron Eagles, Megaforces and Firewalkers... And those
were the ones that were at least well known enough to get a Wikipedia
article! (That's not even counting obscure pieces of crap that makes
Eliminators look like True Lies!) So as stupid as the Resident Evil
movies are, I enjoy them, and I'm glad someone makes them.
 |
| I wonder if anyone's ever made a movie consisting of nothing but the "badass stroll toward the camera" shot. |
Having said that, I wish they hadn't
made Resident Evil: Retribution. I really liked the first movie, I
wasn't too hip on the second one, the third one was stupid but fun, and so was the fourth. But this one... Almost seemed like a
pointless addition to the storyline. All the movies are essentially
an “Escape from-” movie, and this is no exception. It's just when
you've gone all the way to a world spanning epic series, where we've
flown over destroyed metropolitan cities, with hordes of zombies
clawing at the walls... Just to go back to an “escape from a lab”
story, you just can't help but to feel that it's missing the point. I
know what I said earlier about just appreciating action movies for
what they are... And I stand by that. But you still have rules of
escalation in action movies you need to respect. Resident Evil: Retribution
ended where it should have began. It served no purpose other than to
introduce a few new characters (who we've never got to know, and who
I suspect were from the game) and to kill off surviving characters
from the previous film. (One who I really liked.)
 |
| I know the whole sexy hospital gown thing is pretty silly and rather impractical. But she's hot, and I'm a heterosexual male... So there. |
The movie begins picking up where the
last one left off. Alice is taken captive by the Umbrella Corporation
to an underground experimentation facility, where they put her in
that skimpy white hospital outfit from the first movie, that she
sadly doesn't wear for too long, before trading it for a black X-Men
costume. She's broken out by a bunch of mercenaries working for the
leader of the Umbrella Corporation, Arnold Wesker... Who is alive
after being blown up in the previous movie, and no longer in charge
of Umbrella. (Not sure how that works in the post apocalypse.) So
they're trying to escape the lab, which is a series of giant
simulation domes of various locations around the world, including
Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, Suburbia, ect. After four movies of the
Umbrella Corporation being the big bad guys, it's revealed that the
mastermind behind it all is the Red Queen, the little girl program
from the first movie that was shut down, but was reactivated and she
took over. And they're still running simulations of Zombie outbreaks
in a giant underground complex with clones for some reason. Arnold
Wesker, is now in charge of a human resistance movement against the
Red Queen and her zombie monster hordes. (Seriously, how quickly did
this happen?) And they needed Alice alive because she's the only
person the T-Virus had successfully combined with. So Wesker gave her
the superpowers back, after having taken them away in the previous
movie. They also ignore Wesker's superpowered abilities in the last
movie... And hand-waving his death. Of course he was pretty
resilient, and with armies of clones all over the place... It's not
like his survival was out of the realm of possibility. (But they
don't explain it either. And I don't think they'll try to either.)
 |
| Seriously, ever since I made the "X-Men outfit" joke in the previous paragraph, I've been sitting here thinking about which X-Man she'd be perfect to play. My answer? Domino. |
The biggest problem I have with the
movie is it introduces this really interesting notion that's involved
with cloning. And it doesn't explore it. Alice is one in a series of
clones used in experimentations for human reaction to zombie
outbreaks. A suburban version of Alice basically has a child, who
mistakes the Alice we've gotten to know as her mother. (The child is
also a clone, but with implanted memories.) There's a weak (really
weak) revelation later about it, and it had this really interesting
opportunity to explore the concept of genetic memory and well the
concept of 'self'. And it looked like it was about to... It looked
like it was the big revelation the movie was building up to... And
then it punts the ball. And it really NEEDED that exploration,
because the rest of the movie is so damn stupid. The very end of the
movie implies a conclusion of the series with the next movie. And I'm
more than okay with it, because the events of this movie could have
been told in a half-hour's time.
And before you say I'm nitpicking... I
LIKE and OWN the previous movies. (And when it gets marked down, I'll
get this one too just to have a complete set.) I still love Milla
Jovovich, and I still respect Paul W.S. Anderson's movies, but this
one just wasn't that good.
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