One common critique of the Terminator franchise is that after the first two films, each subsequent terminator model (the T-X, T-RIP, T-3000, and REV-9) feels less threatening despite being more technologically advanced than the T-800 and the T-1000.
Why is this? Perhaps it’s because in the first two films, the characters are under-equipped to take on the terminators, and even those who are trained and know about their opponents (Kyle, the T-800) are aware that they aren’t going to win in a one-on-one fight and act accordingly. Their goal is to stay alive and not fight unless there is absolutely no other choice. They’re underdogs, and there’s a very real sense of danger every time they face the T-800 and the T-1000.
Starting with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, though, the characters become more willing to fight and are better equipped: in T-3, John, Kate, and the T-850 gain a large cache of weapons. In Salvation, humanity knows about terminators and has the weaponry to take them on. In Genysis, Sarah and Pops have built up an arsenal of weapons over several years and are unfazed to take on the T-3000. And in Dark Fate, Sarah and Grace are battle-hardened warriors unafraid to take on the Rev-9. As a result, the sense of danger is largely gone. The underdogs are no longer underdogs.
There are many ways for the Terminator series to make the terminators frightening again, but I think one important lesson is to take inspiration from, of all places, 1993’s Jurassic Park: the park’s game warden, Robert Muldoon was a big-game hunter armed with shotguns and decades of hunting experience, but even he was scared of facing velociraptors, only doing so when he had to. If the Terminator franchise gives its protagonists and robotic killers the same relationship, that can help restore the sense of danger and terror that’s faded since 1991… that, and stopping the terminators from just throwing everyone around instead of snapping necks and punching out hearts.
To close out my analysis and summary of the Resident Evil movies, here’s my own personal ranking of each film in the series, starting from the least enjoyable and working its way up to the most enjoyable.
It has threegoodscenes and twogreatmusical pieces, but no amount of production values, music, or cool sequences can save a generic zombie film with the Resident Evil brand slapped onto it at the last minute. This is a Resident Evil film in name only, and is the most disappointing overall.
The Final Chapter feels like the first draft of a script written by someone who wants to end the series on their terms without caring about what came before. Not only is the story filled with retcons that don’t work, it also suffers from disposable characters and awful editing that makes the movie physically painful to watch. However, the film does have some good ideas, some gorgeous post-apocalyptic scenery, and the surprisingly effective ending saves the movie from being a complete failure.
Favorite Scene: The ending, where Alice is given Alicia’s memories and sets out to continue fighting the undead.
Of all six films, Apocalypse is the one that feels like the most faithful adaptation of the games, due to following the basic story of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, complete with corresponding characters, monsters, and Nemesis himself coming to life via fantastic practical effects. Plus, LJ – while a walking stereotype – is a welcome source of comic relief. Unfortunately, Alice is at her worst here, acting like a smug high schooler who thinks she’s the toughest girl around and doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself, going out of her way to steal everyone’s thunder for her own glory.
Favorite Scene: Nemesis attacking the STARS members and sparing LJ
Retribution is in the unenviable position of being a commercial for The Final Chapter, and rewatching it knowing that all of the plot points it sets up will never be fulfilled makes it a bittersweet experience. However, it does has a lot of funactionsequences, the greatest variety of locations from any of the films, and the ending is still the best in the series.
The most original film of the series, Extinction is a satisfying, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style daylight horror film set almost entirely in a desert wasteland, a setting that has never appeared in the games. Coupled with good action sequences, a fantastic third-act fight against Dr. Issacs, and agreatsoundtrack, it’s a fun film that succeeds at carving out its own identity while staying true to the Resident Evil spirit.
The best film of the series is a blast, starting with an exciting assault on Umbrella headquarters before turning into a perfectly-paced siege film with plenty of memorable action sequences, including a fight against the Axeman, who’s my favorite monster from the games, and like Nemesis, was brought to life perfectly, and finishing with a duel against Albert Wesker, the most memorable character in the series. While the cliffhanger ending does prevent the movie from being self-contained and acting as a satisfying series finale, the rest of the film is a great watch, and I always enjoy watching it again and again.
Favorite Scene: The battle between Claire and the Axeman, which is my favorite scene of the entire series. The water, that massive axe, the music, all of it is just perfect!
Imagine that the year is 2001, and you’re off to see Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. You love the books and can’t wait to see them brought to life on the big screen! You get your popcorn, take your seat, eagerly wait as the lights go down… and then watch a movie that follows a bunch of characters you’ve never heard of as they infiltrate a fortress never mentioned in the books. None of Tolkien’s characters appear, and while a few monsters do menace the heroes (orcs, uruk-hai, and a warg), the story ultimately has nothing to do with his books.
How would you feel after the movie was over? Probably infuriated that you got something that has a passing resembles its source material but is more interested in showcasing the writer’s own ideas than the story you paid to see. That’s what the Resident Evil films feel like: a series of movies that had a mountain of material to take inspiration from, but chose to go its own way for better or worse. And while the films were critical failures, they were financial successes, going on to become – for a time – the most successful live-action video game movie franchise, and the most financially successful horror film series in history.
But no matter their financial and critical success, the Resident Evil films were always destined to be B movies meant to provide lots of action and thrills with little to no philosophical musings about the human condition or discussions of morality. And by that criteria, the films largely delivered on what they set out to do, thanks to three things:
1. All the films have simple stories with clear, achievable goals for the characters.
2. They take the basic idea of the games (zombies get lose and have to be stopped before they infest the world) and expand on it (zombies get lose, take over the world, and have to be stopped before the human race is wiped out) in a way that feels true to the spirit of the series, allowing fans to see characters and monsters from said games in new and unique scenarios.
3. They have lots of unique action sequences featuring monsters and characters from the games, sometimes re-created shot for shot.
Yet, for all their success, the films don’t quite reach the height of what they could have been; they suffer from an overarching story that feels disjointed and held together with staples, duct-tape, and Elmer’s school glue when viewed back to back, due to said story being made up film-by-film as the series went along. And while all the elements for great action movies are present, the biggest obstacle holding the films back boils down to one thing: Alice, the main character.
For all the anecdotes listed above, the Resident Evil films have another, unofficial distinction: they’re the most expensive fan-fiction story of all time in that they follow an original character throughout her adventures in the Resident Evil universe. And like poorly-written fan-fiction, said character is a black hole sue whom the entire universe revolves around. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is either:
1. Trying to kill or capture her.
2. Taking orders from her or trying to save her, often at great risk to themselves.
3. Admiring how awesome she is.
Furthermore, Alice is extra-special in-universe because she’s one of only two people in the world to successfully bond with the T-virus without any side effect, the other being Angela from the second film. But then Alice gets a one-up on Angela by becoming the only person on Earth to get psychic powers, and then she gets an army of clones who also has psychic powers, and then she defeats the Umbrella corporation and saves the human race from extinction, sacrificing her life in the process, only to return to life, making her a modern-day Jesus (if Jesus went around killing zombies with guns and psychic powers, that is).
But did you notice something about that description? The established characters from the games – Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Carlos, Albert Wesker, etc. – have almost no part to play in the fight for humanity. While they may shoot guns and kill zombies, they’re reduced to supporting characters, only existing to help Alice accomplish her quest. If they get a moment to do something cool that has nothing to do with Alice, she’ll swoop in and steal that moment (see: Jill trying to save Becky, Claire trying to defeat the Axeman, etc.).
While she has her sympathetic moments, and ultimately goes from being an unlikable jerk to a heroic clone trying to save the human race, there’s no escaping the fact that Alice is the biggest problem with the Resident Evil films. If she had been replaced with, say, Jill Valentine, and not gotten any special powers, we would have gotten a series that went like this:
Jill Valentine – a cop with the Raccoon City police department – teams up with her allies to fight off a zombie apocalypse, only to learn that their employer, the Umbrella corporation, is responsible for the outbreak. Armed with nothing but guns, their wits, and their determination, Jill, Claire, Chris, Barry, Carlos, Nicholai, Sergei, Leon, Ada, and newcomers Luther, LJ, Rain, Chase, and Betty roam the apocalyptic wastelands, trying to stop Umbrella and save the human race, eventually having to team with their arch-nemesis Albert Wesker in a final, desperate assault that leaves them just narrowly managing to save the human race and destroying Umbrella once and for all, allowing Jill and her friends to begin rebuilding a ruined world.
Doesn’t that sound like a great story? If we had gotten that, it’s my belief that the series would have been better recieved by both fans and critics. But instead, it was foiled by a newcomer who shoves everyone else aside so she can be the messiah. And in that lies the one lesson the ‘Resident Evil’ films offers to writers:
When adapting a franchise from one medium to another, stay true to the spirit of the source material while keeping the focus on established characters instead of newcomers.
While things will inevitably be changed in any adaptation, writers need to still present the story fans come to see. Tell the story from the original book, show, or game, respect said story, and use new ideas and new characters to compliment and support the original, not overshadow it.
Viewing the Resident Evil films years after the series concluded was a fascinating experience for me: I can’t think of any other series adaptation that has good production values, a real sense that the filmmakers were trying hard and learning from their mistakes, but still runs the gauntlet from awful to fantastic (in a B movie way). Most frustrating is that there was always the feeling that the films were always a few inches away from reaching their full potential, and it does happen a few times! Most of the action sequences – save those from the last film – are a lot of fun, the post-apocalyptic world is well done, the monsters are mostly great, and, despite all the changes made, it really does feel like a Resident Evil story come to life… it’s just not the one we should have gotten.
In the end, despite its missteps, the Resident Evil film series mostly accomplishes what it set out to do, in my opinion. It started weak, gradually got better, reached its zenith, then fell flat on its face at the end, but managed to get to its feet and cross the finish line. If you’re a fan of action movies, zombies, horror, and video games, I believe they’re still worth a watch. But most of all, they’re an important reminder that when we, as writers, are adapting someone else’s work, we’re stewards for that story. It is up to us to faithfully adapt it as best we can and respect it, even when we have to make changes. If we deliver a faithful and respectful adaptation, we’ll not only delight long-term fans, but introduce others to a world that they’ll want to explore, guiding them towards the original books, games,and stories, ensuring that a beloved story will earn a new generation of fans and be kept alive for years to come.
It’s the evening of January 26th, 2017. Five years have passed since ‘Resident Evil: Retribution,’ and two friends and I leave the theater, where we were the only people to watch the premiere of ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.” As we enter the lobby, one of the theater employees asks us how it was. I tell him about the film’s ludicrous mistakes, continuity errors, and how it wants us to care about all the newcomers, like Bearded Man, Blue Shirt Girl, That Guy With The Skull Sword, etc., and how it so desperately wanted me to feel sad when Blue Shirt Girl is chopped into mincemeat via a giant fan, despite the fact that she had been on screen for maybe two minutes and I knew nothing about her.
The longer I talk, I realize just how absurd everything is that’s coming out of my mouth to the point where I laugh at realizing I’ve watched one of the worst films in recent memory. Now, having watched the film for the first time in six years, I’m surprised to find that the passage of time has softened my views and made me realize that ‘The Final Chapter’ isn’t bad: it’s hilariously awful.
Join me now as we take a look at the comedic masterpiece that is ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.’
What does the film do well?
It has a cool armored vehicle
Post-apocalyptic films frequently show humanity creating wicked-looking vehicles to help them survive in the wastes, and ‘The Final Chapter’ features a particularly cool mobile command tank equipped with missile launchers, miniguns, hidden compartments for storing motorcycles, nasty spikes, and the ability to communicate with Umbrella headquarters. Granted, all this firepower can’t kill someone driving away from it in a straight line, but it’s still a cool design that almost single-handily destroys the tower Claire and her fellow survivors have taken in, and is a worthy adversary for them to take on in a fight.
It has two memorable villains
Despite being sliced to bits in ‘Extinction,’ we get not one, but two Dr. Issacs in ‘The Final Chapter’: One is a clone who’s an insane religious fanatic, and the other is is the original Issacs, the calm, collected CEO of Umbrella ultimately responsible for the T-virus outbreak, making him the main villain of the entire saga… and unlike other greedy CEO’s, he’s a shockingly good fighter who can hold his own against Alice thanks to some nifty implanted computer technology that lets him dodge bullets, predict what his opponent is going to do, and even heal him after a grenade blasts out his torso, and would have killed her if she hadn’t used her wits to win.
It has the triple-barreled shotgun from the video games
The post-apocalyptic world is a great place to utilize awesome weapons, and what’s better than a sawed-off shotgun? A sawed-off shotgun with three barrels! It may not survive past the movie’s halfway point, but it’s still a cool gun that gets a decent amount of use.
It goes back to where the saga started
‘The Final Chapter’ takes place almost entirely within Raccoon City and the Hive, the locations of the first two movies. For the final film in the series, coming back to where the story began not only gives the story a chance to revisit old locations and reveal new areas within them (such as the cryogenic chamber and that sweet office located beneath the Hive), but to also let the audience reflect on how much has happened since Alice woke up in that shower stall so many years ago, and how she’s changed since her quest to destroy Umbrella began.
It brings back one of the characters from the previous films
Aside from Alice, Wesker, and Issacs, the only returning character from the previous films is Claire Redfield, who is now the leader of the survivors based in Raccoon City. She may not have much to do other than run, shoot guns, and accompany Alice into the Hive, but it’s nice that Alice gets at least one ally from the previous films to help her out, including helping her take on Issacs at the climax.
It gives the Umbrella Corporation a clever motive for everything they’ve done
The biggest revelation of ‘The Final Chapter’ is that instead of the viral outbreak being the result of corporate sabotage and greed, the outbreak was done on purpose: After realizing that Earth was heading towards global catastrophe due to climate change and societal breakdown, Issacs decided to release the virus to ‘cleanse’ the planet so that Umbrella could repopulate it afterwords.
While it may fall apart upon closer inspection (see the entry below on retcons), this revelation not only shows how cold and heartless the Umbrella corporation really is, but also reveals that Issacs is the main villain of the entire series, a man responsible for the murder of billions of people. And shockingly, the plan is… logical. While it’s a horrific, immoral plan that no sane person would dare go through with, it does make sense on a cold, logical level. The best villain plans are ones where the viewer pauses and wonders if they might have a point, and this revelation is an excellent example.
It concludes the series, yet still has an open ending
Unlike so many other franchises (especially horror) that claim to have final chapters, ‘The Final Chapter’ actually follows through on this promise in a clever way: Alice manages to release the airborne antivirus, which will cover the globe and destroy all the zombies, monsters, and undead, saving humanity. The only problem is that it will take years for this to happen, giving Alice plenty of time to continue roaming the earth and killing monsters.
This is a great example of the ‘And the Adventure Continues’ trope: It concludes the series’ story, but lets our imaginations run wild at all the adventures Alice will have as she roams the world (assuming she isn’t eaten by those three bat-things seconds after the screen cuts to black).
What could have been done better?
It could have edited the film so it didn’t look like a 2000’s music video
Here on Imperfect Glass, the focus is primarily on story and characters instead of production values and the physical aspects of filmmaking, but I’ll make an exception to say that the editing on ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’ is awful.
If there was ever a film to showcase why ultra-fast editing with handheld camera shots should be permanently done away with, ‘The Final Chapter’ is it.
It could have not made so many retcons (that don’t work)
Beyond the awful editing, ‘The Final Chapter’ is most notable for featuring numerous retcons that alter the saga’s storyline all the way back to the first movie. While retcons are not a bad thing in and of themselves and can add new and exciting ideas to enhance past events, none of ‘The Final Chapter’s retcons work. At all.
1. In ‘Retribution,’ the Red Queen had taken over Umbrella, gone homicidal, and wanted to wipe out all life on Earth. But in ‘The Final Chapter,’ she still works for Umbrella and wants to help Alice save the last remaining human survivors by bringing Umbrella down.
2. The Red Queen states that she cannot harm an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, forgetting that she killed everyone in the Hive in the first movie. (maybe they were independent contractors?)
3. In ‘Retribution,’ Wesker made it clear that he broke Alice out of Umbrella Prime in order to give her back her psychic powers so she could help him defeat the Red Queen and save humanity. But in this movie, the Red Queen tells Alice that Wesker only pretended to give Alice back her powers, and that his plan was actually a trap in order to kill her and everyone else.
This plan makes no sense. If Wesker really wanted to kill Alice and everyone else who could stop him, then here’s what he needed to do:
-Go with his strike team to Umbrella Prime.
-Plant the explosives and follow team into Umbrella Prime.
-At the first opportunity, abandon the strike team and head back to the surface.
-Detonate the explosives to destroy the facility and kill everyone in it, including Alice.
-Head back to the Hive, enjoy alcoholic beverages, and play Mario Kart 64 to pass the time while waiting for the T-virus to finish wiping out all life on Earth.
4. The aforementioned retcon of Umbrella purposefully releasing the T-virus is a great idea… but the first film clearly shows that it was released in the Hive as an act of sabotage, and subsequently released into the open by idiotic Umbrella operatives. ‘Extinction’ showed that Umbrella was trying to find a way to control the zombies and stop the outbreak instead of just waiting for the virus to do its thing, ‘Afterlife’ had Umbrella kidnapping survivors to use them as test subjects to make even more powerful zombies, and ‘Retribution’ had the Red Queen-controlled corporation trying to wipe out all life on Earth (despite the Red Queen wanting to save humanity).
To be generous, it is possible that while Umbrella high command knew of the plan, their underlings and armies of clones didn’t and were trying to contain and control it, but why make all those clones in the first place? And why would Issacs make not one, but two clones of himself? And if Wesker is part of Umbrella high command, why would he stay awake for the apocalypse and run around instead of staying asleep with everyone else? Wouldn’t Issacs have wanted to keep him under instead of risking Wesker betraying him?
5. The second film established that Charles Ashford created the virus to save his little girl from dying, but this film says that it was actually a man named James Marcus who discovered it to save his daughter from dying. So who was it that ultimately created the T-Virus?
6. Alice says that the US government nuked Raccoon City when it was clearly the Umbrella Corporation that fired the nuke in an attempt to keep the virus under control (and again, if they had purposefully released the virus, why bother trying to contain it?).
7. It’s stated that the T-virus is airborne and infected the world in days after escaping Raccoon City… but at the end of the film, it’s said that it will take the antivirus years to spread to every corner of the globe via the same method. Yes, it traveled faster with jet planes, but it’s still airborne. Furthermore, it’s been established in every film so far that the T-virus is spread via bites from the undead; if the T-Virus is airborne, everyone in the series should have been infected by the end of the second movie and turned into zombies.
It could have brought back the characters from the cliffhanger ending of the last movie and removed all the new ones
Arguably the most exciting idea from the end of ‘Retribution’ was the thought that Wesker, Alice, Leon, Jill, and Ada would join forces to save humanity in ‘The Final Chapter’ after an awesome fight at the White House.
It doesn’t happen, and the battle we want to see is already over when the film starts. Like ‘Alien 3’ and ‘Terminator: Dark Fate,’ which both killed off some of their most important characters in the opening minutes, ‘The Final Chapter’ kills Leon, Jill, and Ada (and presumably, Becky) before ‘The Final Chapter’ even starts. They’re never seen, never mentioned, and Alice doesn’t even mourn Becky, who she fought so hard to save in ‘Retribution.’
Now, while killing off beloved side characters can and often is a bad idea, it can work: Focusing a story entirely on the main character and their attempts to overcome grief and loss while trying to save others is a powerful story idea and give us even more reasons for us to care for them. That could have worked with ‘The Final Chapter,’ had it focused mainly on Alice. Problem is, the film introduces a horde of new characters to work with Alice, and none of them are memorable. We have:
1. Doc, the group’s medic, Claire’s boyfriend, and a traitor who works for Umbrella
2. Post Apocalyptic Leather Guy Who Hates Everyone And Has A Goofy Skull Sword
3. Blue-Shirt Girl
4. Bearded Guy Who Never Talks
5. Guy From Issac’s Tank
6. That Other Guy
The climax of a story is not the place to introduce hordes of new characters: You don’t have time to do it well enough to get the audience to care about them, and the purpose of a climax is to see the characters who have gone on a journey reach its end. We’ve invested time following them and want to see how their story ends. Introducing one or two new characters can be pulled off (Denethor from The Return of the King, for example), but writers need to focus on resolving the journey of those who have come this far.
It could have made Wesker the main villain
As if things couldn’t be more disappointing, Wesker, the suave, smug, and oh so fun to watch villain from ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Retribution,’ is butchered in ‘The Final Chapter.’ Instead of being the ultimate bad guy who everyone has to work together to even stand a chance of defeating, he’s an incompetent adversary who spends the movie giving the Red Queen orders, preparing alcoholic drinks like a James Bond villain, and eventually resorts to waking Issacs up to stop Alice, all because Wesker failed to close a door hours before Alice got even close to Raccoon City.
It’s hard to imagine Wesker dying any more pathetically, short of choking to death on a pretzel; as a refresher, Wesker survived getting his brains blown out in ‘Afterlife,’ and then survived an explosion powerful enough to destroy a city-sized subterranean complex. Having him die in such a laughable manner is insulting to the character. To be fair, killing off such a powerful villain is always a hard task, doubly so if writers have had them survive impossible odds in the past. But while a memorable death scene can be the most satisfying moment of a story, a laughable death scene is memorable, too, but for all the wrong reasons.
It could have had a more memorable final boss fight
The finale of ‘The Final Chapter’ has Alice fighting Issacs to get the antivirus, then running to the surface to release it. While it works fine as it is, it would have been more gripping if Issacs had been replaced by Wesker, and their final fight wasn’t in the laser hallway, but something similar to how Wesker is fought and killed in Resident Evil 5. While putting a volcano underneath Raccoon City wouldn’t make sense, having it take place in an area similar to one of the final boss fights of Resident Evil 6 would work equally as well.
Plus, if the film had brought back Chris, it would have been an opportunity for him to punch a boulder into lava. Goofy, yes, but it would have been a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. But most likely for budget reasons, the final fight is a simple fistfight in the laser hallway from the first film. It works, but feels like a missed opportunity.
Conclusion
Even now, all these years later, it’s still shocking to see how the final chapter of Anderson’s saga fell flat on its face. While it does have some good ideas, and manages to have a good final few minutes, it’s not enough to save the film as a whole. But what about the series as a whole? Join us next time when we examine all six films at once and see what conclusions can be made about the series and the lessons it offers to writers about writing video game movies.
‘Resident Evil: Afterlife,’ could have – with a few minor changes – worked as a satisfying end to the Resident Evil film series. But with the cliffhanger ending of Alice, Chris, Claire, K-Mart, and other survivors facing a fleet of Umbrella VTOL’s while armed with nothing more than handguns, shotguns, and the power of positive thinking, it was inevitable that we’d get another followup (that, and earning 300 million at the box office). Sure enough, we got ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ two years later.
Let’s take a look and see what the fifth entry in the series does well and what could use some improvement.
What does the story do well?
It has a memorable title sequence
It has no ultimate impact on the film’s story, but ‘Retribution’ features the most unique opening of the series, depicting Umbrella’s assault upon the Arcadia, but played in reverse.
It’s a great way to get the viewer’s attention by showing Alice’s defeat and the end of the battle first, and then depicting how it got to that point. Having a great soundtrack helps, too!
It has a great cold open to grip the viewer
After the Umbrella attack and Alice’s defeat, ‘Retribution’ cuts to Alice waking up in a suburban home where she’s married to Carlos (who blew himself up two movies ago) and has a deaf daughter. Unfortunately, her suburban bliss is interrupted by a zombie attack that ends with Carlos becoming a zombie and then killing Alice.
Much like the opening to ‘Extinction,’ this is a great sequence because the audience is trying to figure out just what’s going on because it flies in the face of everything we know about Alice: is it a dream? A hallucination? Something from a parallel universe? As a bonus, it also lets us see different versions of Alice, Carlos, and Rain, all three of whom have no combat skills or fighting experience, making their fight to survive all the more gripping. It’s a great way to get our attention while setting up the reveal about the cloning facility later on
It has a great setting
Although the film’s tagline is ‘Evil goes Global,’ ‘Retribution’ actually takes place almost entirely within Umbrella Prime, an underwater Umbrella facility off the frozen coasts of Russia, which houses recreations of famous global cities that are used to test the T-virus. Now trapped inside, Alice and her allies have to fight their way back to the surface before everything is blown to pieces. It’s a great setting for an adventure story that allows the characters to visit a large variety of locations instead of a single environment like the previous films (an underground lab, a city, a desert, etc.).
It has the best ticking clock yet
‘Retribution’ continues the series’ tradition of having a great ticking clock to keep the plot moving, and this is arguably the best one: Alice and her friends have just an hour and a half to escape from Umbrella Prime before it’s destroyed, taking them with it. That countdown gives every action they take and every delay extra weight.
It has more characters from the games
‘Afterlife’ was one of the most entertaining films in the series due to having more elements from the games (Wesker, Claire, Manjini zombies, the executioner, triple-barreled shotguns, and Chris Redfield). ‘Retribution’ continues that trend by having series regulars Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong, Barry Burton, and everyone’s favorite, Sergei Vladimir (you remember him, right?) joining returning faces like Wesker and Jill, the latter of whom gets a much bigger role here as the main antagonist. While these newcomers may not have great characterizations or much to do besides mowing down zombies, it’s still fun to see them on the big screen,
It shatters the status quo
One of ‘Retribution’s best scenes takes place at the end of the first act, where, in a little over five minutes, the narrative of the series is expanded and changed in interesting ways that shatters the status quo.
Among those changes are:
1. The Red Queen has taken over Umbrella and seeks to destroy all life on Earth.
2. Because of this, Wesker has defected from Umbrella and now fights against the corporation.
3. Wesker, Alice, and everyone else must unite to stop the Red Queen, or humanity is doomed.
These changes mark a turning point for the story of the Resident Evil film series, and smartly lays the groundwork for the series finale. We’re not there yet, but we now know what’s at stake and this helps wet the audience’s appetite for said finale.
The main antagonist is now an ally
I’m a sucker for enemy mine stories, and having Albert Wesker now working with Alice and the others against Umbrella has incredible storytelling potential: There’s nothing quite like having an antagonist deciding to join the victims, and seeing their different outlooks, personalities, and histories clashing against each other, which has endless opportunities for not only drama, but the possibility of the antagonist achieving redemption. And one little touch about Wesker’s turn is that he’s now effectively the leader of the United States. In other words, the series’ most awesome villain is now the president of the United States! Awesome!
It brings back the coolest enemy
It’s always a risk to bring back fan-favorite characters, especially if there’s not a good narrative reason to do so, but thanks to Umbrella’s cloning powers we get to see the Executioner return from ‘Afterlife,’ and watch not one, but two of them battle Alice and Ada in the streets of (fake) New York.
While the scene ultimately doesn’t contribute to the story, it’s still great fun to see a great monster come back for an encore performance.
The final battle is different from all the others that came before it
In all the previous films, the climaxes involved defeating a single, overpowering monster or escaping an explosion, often with a hefty dose of CGI. ‘Retribution,’ however, features a massive melee battle between Alice, Jill, Rain, Leon, and Luthor in a snowy field where they have to rely on their fists and hand-to-hand combat abilities and find a way to stop an almost unkillable Rain without relying on guns.
Unlike previous battles where Alice had the upper hand or won fairly easily, she is resoundingly beaten by Jill and would have died if not for freeing Jill from Umbrella’s mind-control at the last second. And as a bonus, it’s satisfying to see Jill – who has always had her thunder stolen by Alice in previous films – get her revenge. Or, rather, her retribution, if you will.
It has the best ending and the best cliffhanger of the series
Cliffhangers are an inherently risky storytelling trope, but when pulled off well they leave the audience excited and eager to see what comes next. ‘Retribution’ does so with flying colors, ending with Alice, Jill, Ada, Leon, and Wesker joining forces in the ruins of Washington DC and preparing for their last stand against an army of undead sent by the Red Queen. Freaking. Awesome.
What could the story have done better?
It could have removed the opening flashback
Though it’s a tradition for each Resident Evil film after the first to recap what happened in the previous movies, it is starting to wear a little thin. And after four movies, it’s safe to assume that people who are coming to watch ‘Retribution’ are fans who know what happened already, making the flashback summary unnecessary.
It could have removed Alice’s bleeding
At two times in the film, Alice looks down to find herself bleeding from a wound in her side… but nothing ever comes of it. Cutting these shots out would have freed up thirty seconds that could have been invested in character moments.
It could have eliminated the cloning aspect
‘Retribution’s biggest draw was the return of several deceased characters from the past films, including Carlos, Rain, and One, via the magic of cloning. However, the film doesn’t do anything with them: the characters show up, shoot bullets, and then get killed. While it’s a stretch to imagine that a zombie action movie would explore the moral delimas of cloning, it doesn’t use the cloning idea in any meaningful way: Pacifist, anti-gun Rain never meets her cold, heartless self, for example, and at one point Ada talks about how Umbrella uses clones and how they’re all disposable; you’d think it’s setting up some interesting moral ideas that will be explored later on (such as Alice seeing clones as people instead of disposable test subjects), but nothing comes of it. In hindsight it might have been better to remove the cloning aspect entirely and perhaps have all the test subjects at Umbrella Prime be prisoners that Umbrella has captured, which would force Alice and the others to decide if they could risk spending the time to save them or continue on and leave them to die to ensure Alice’s survival.
It could have removed the Las Plagas parasite and the enhanced zombies
Another selling point for ‘Retribution’ was that the Las Plagas parasite would make an appearance from the fourth Resident Evil game, which allows zombified people to keep their intelligence and the ability to use weapons and tools. As such, we’re given scenes of Russian zombies using assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, chainsaws, and even driving cars and motorcycles.
The problem is, zombies are supposed to be mindless killing and eating machines who are dangerous because of their resistance to physical injury, immunity to pain, and sheer numbers. By giving them guns and vehicles, they’re essentially normal human enemies with bad teeth and rotting skin. A good solution would have been to have the T-virus continue to mutate, giving zombies more abilities and intelligence, which could have been followed up on in the next movie. But the Las Plagas parasite doesn’t return in the final chapter, and aside from making Rain impossible to kill with bullets, it ulitmitly has no impact on the story.
It could have given characters time to breathe
‘Retribution’ is the most action-packed film in the Resident Evil series, with a breakneck pace that never lets up. While this – in conjunction with the ticking clock – is great for keeping the film moving, it would have been nice if the story took a few moments to breathe between action scenes and invest in letting us get to care for the characters, or develop their relationships between one another. It would have been nice to have Luthor and Alice have a longer reunion, given their shared experiences from ‘Afterlife,’ but they only get a few seconds to speak before we’re off to the next action sequence. While well-done action scenes are fun, caring about the people in those sequences is more important.
While ‘Retribution’ exists to set up the final chapter of the series instead of being a standalone story, it at least offers some good action, has a story that is never slow or dull, and while it doesn’t do anything meaningful with the cloning aspect, or giving characters much to do beyond shooting guns, it’s still an enjoyable entry in the saga. More importantly, it sets the stage for the final film; come back next time, where we’ll take a look at how the series ends. With all the elements in place for a truly epic grand finale, there’s no way the series could mess it up!
The third entry in the Resident Evil film series, Extinction was supposed to be the end of the franchise: by the end, we saw how Alice was going to go wipe out Umbrella’s last remaining executives, had learned that a cure for the vaccine could be created, and realized that there was hope things would finally turn out well… but box office money has a funny way of undoing even the most conclusive endings, three years later we got Resident Evil: Afterlife, kicking off a new trilogy of movies.
Taking place a year after Alice awakened all her new clone buddies, Afterlife follows their assault on Umbrella’s Tokyo headquarters and Alice’s subsequent quest to find her missing friends. Let’s see what worked – and what didn’t – in our fourth journey into the world of the undead.
What does the film do well?
It’s closer in spirit to the games
By the time Extinction arrived in theaters, many fans of the video games complained that the film series had little to do with them aside from having characters and monsters, and the most bare-bones interpretation of the plots. ‘Afterlife’ seeks to remedy this by bringing in more elements from the games, such as having Wesker be much closer to his video game counterpart, having more monsters (the Manjini, Axeman, and zombie dogs from Resident Evil 5), as well as bringing back Claire and introducing her brother, Chris Redfield, and including a location from the game as well (the ship from RE5, albeit highly modified for the film). Though the film still follows it’s own story, it deserves credit for bringing in more elements from the game.
The opening act is an excellent introduction to the villain
While the assault on Umbrella’s headquarters acts as an action-packed way to get the story and showcase Umbrella’s well-deserved beatdown, the sequence also serves as an excellent introduction to Albert Wesker, chairman of the Umbrella corporation, and the only individual in all of Tokyo who can face off against Alice and her clones and win. And not only that, but he escapes, kills all the clones by destroying Umbrella’s headquarters, and then takes away Alice’s powers, leaving himself free to continue frolicking about and do Umbrella-related shenanigans. And all of that within the first 18 minutes of the film!
It’s a great way to show how dangerous and powerful Wesker is, setting up the film’s final confrontation.
It takes away Alice’s psychic powers
One of the main problems with the previous two Resident Evil films is that Alice becomes too powerful, easily overshadowing everyone else in the series – including the villains and people from the games – and making her a god-mode sue. Thankfully, Afterlife remedies that by having Wesker take away Alice’s powers before the end of the first act, making her (in theory) a normal human again. In the words of TVTropes: “Wesker beat the Sue out of Alice. And for everyone who wanted to see that moment? It. Was. GLORIOUS.”
It has a celebrity survivor who doesn’t have an ego
Like the films before it, Afterlife features a large cast of new characters who mostly exist to become zombie fodder, and among them is Luther, a former pro basketball player. But despite his pre-zombie fame, he doesn’t expect any special treatment or privileges because of it, and even laughs it off at one point. He’s a nice guy, and a great example of a celebrity character who doesn’t let fame get to their head.
It gives the characters a concrete goal
Afterlife continues the series’ trend of giving the characters a clear and concrete goal to strive for: in the first, it was escaping the hive before it was permanently sealed, in the second it was escaping Raccoon City before it was nuked, in the third it was reaching Arcadia, and here it’s… to reach Arcadia. So while it may be repeating what came before, the revelation that Arcadia is a boat and not a town is a nice touch (and then the further revelation that it’s a mobile Umbrella research lab is another nice twist, too, so that just reaching the finish line doesn’t mean everyone is automatically safe and sound).
It has two ticking clocks
Like the previous films, Afterlife once again gives the characters a ticking clock, but ups the ante by having two of them: after we’re introduced to the prison where most of the film takes place, we see a zombie digging around underground, telling us that this seemingly impenetrable fortress won’t stay that way for long. Then the Axeman shows up, and now Alice and the others not only have zombies to deal with, but a monster who’s immune to bullets and can break down the doors keeping zombies from rushing in. Twice the pressure, double the drama!
It has a funny expletive
As I’ve written before, cursing can be funny when it’s done sparingly. ‘Afterlife’ has a particularly amusing moment where Bennett steals Alice’s plane and flies away, only to seemingly plunge to his death, leaving Luther to yell, “That’s right, bitch! Fuck you!”
Not only does Boris Kodjoe do a great job delivering the line, but it’s darkly funny that no one is sad to see Bennett face his seemingly imminent demise.
It has an awesome monster fight
Afterlife brings in one of the most memorable monsters the Resident Evil games in the form of the Axeman, a towering monstrosity of a man who wields a freakishly huge axe that can cleave someone in two with a single stroke. Not only does this guy look exactly like he does in the game (a big plus), but he’s also reinvented to make him more threatening: where the Axeman from the game is a slow, lumbering brute who can take a ton of damage, the movie makes him a monster who can not only kill you in one hit, but also run after you as well! To balance this out, the Axeman doesn’t have the durability his game counterpart has, meaning that if you get the right weapon – such as a shotgun – and hit him in the right spot, you can take him down with a single shot, giving the characters a fair chance in a fight against him. To further sweeten the deal, his big fight takes place inside a shower room drenched with falling water.
The slow-mo can be cheesy, but it’s an awesome fight with an awesome monster (and awesome music).
It gives Wesker a counter to his superpowers
Wesker is the easily most powerful character in the movies, even moreso than Alice: he’s not only an expert hand-to-hand combatant, but can dodge bullets, survive wounds that would kill a normal person, and even survive a nuclear bomb blast a point-blank range! But while his power level approaches that of a god, Afterlife wisely balances this out by forcing Wesker to constantly consume human flesh to keep his T-virus under control, making his abilities a case of powers at a price: he can do incredible things, but if he slips up, it will cost him everything.
It brings one of the best scenes from the games into the movie
It may be pure fan-service, but it’s fun to see one of Wesker’s fight scenes from Resident Evil 5 become the final fight of Afterlife.
Say what you will about just copying something from one medium to another, but it’s still a great way to show how hard Wesker is to put down. And to top it off, the end features Chris and Claire pumping Wesker full of lead by shooting him approximately 17 million times. It’s not enough to kill him, but boy is it satisfying to see villains get reduced to hamburger to ensure they can’t come back
It spares Luther
Luther is the most likable character in the film, which makes it a shame to see him get dragged away by zombies in the sewers… which makes it a treat when Afterlife decides to be merciful and spare him at the very end. In a series full of interesting side characters getting killed off left and right, it’s refreshing to see one survive to the next movie.
It gives Bennett a moment of sympathy
Bennett is not a sympathetic or likable person. He’s selfish, rude, and arrogant, willing to kill and abandon his companions to save himself, making his final comeuppance very satisfying. But before he becomes Wesker chow, his selfishness and smugness melt away for just a moment when, in the face of death, he whimpers that he just wants to go home. In this moment, we see that beneath all his arrogance and selfishness, Bennett is a sad, tired man who just wants things to go back to the way they were before the T-Virus outbreak. It’s not enough to redeem him, but it does make him just a little more human, and a little more relatable.
What could have been improved?
It could have turned Alice into a truly normal person
One of the best things Afterlife does is have Wesker take away Alice’s powers. The problem is that Alice is still capable of taking on crowds of zombies, jumping over six feet high to kick a monster in the face, swing through the air like Tarzan, scoring hits on zombies with revolvers while falling to the ground, and kicking falling shards of glass into zombie dogs. While it makes sense that Alice would still have the knowledge and experience gained from the previous three films, it would have been more better to see her struggle with the limitations a normal person would have facing zombies and undead monsters, which would make her victories all the more satisfying.
It could have explained why the world is no longer a desert wasteland
Extinction made a big deal about how the T-virus was turning Earth into Tatooine by killing vegetation and causing bodies of water to dry up. Yet here, a little over a year after the events of the previous film, there are giant glaciers, sprawling forests, and enough water to solve all of the southwestern United State’s drought problems. While this could be hand-waved by saying that Alice was able to create the antivirus the White Queen had mentioned from the previous film, it’s still a huge stretch to go from a world that’s a barren desert to a world that looks pretty normal.
It could have dropped the video logs completely
After escaping Tokyo, Alice starts recording video logs as she hunts for Arcadia and other survivors. But after arriving at the prison, she stops making them and they’re never mentioned again. It would have been better to drop them completely and invest the freed-up time in more character moments.
It could have had a better reason why the prison group doesn’t trust Chris
In the film, Chris is kept locked up in the prison because nobody trusts him and believes that he’s there for a reason. Problem is, that flies in the face of all logic. If you have a man who says he knows a way out of your safehold surrounded by thousands of zombies, and you’re trying to get to your one refuge from said zombies, it makes more sense to see what he has to say. Besides, the other survivors outnumber him and have guns in case he tries anything.
It could have given Bennett a better reason for his betrayal
When Bennett learns that the APC – the group’s would-be escape vehicle – will need at least a week to fix, he responds by pulling out his pistol and killing Angel, and then stealing the plane to fly to Arcadia. The problem is, this makes no sense. Bennett is a selfish jerk no doubt, but he has a way out of the prison, and a path to safety. Killing the one man who can repair the vehicle is too much; perhaps if he had lost patience and demanded that Angel have them all draw straws and fly away in the plane, and then get turned down, it would have made sense for him to snap and kill Angel. As is, Bennett’s decision to murder someone feels too sudden and too illogical to accept.
It could have let Claire kill the Axeman instead of Alice
One of the more egregious moments in Apocalypse was when Alice stole Jill Valentine’s victory against the zombie dogs in Racoon City’s grade school, and here she does it again: after Claire struggles against the Axeman and almost kills it, Alice literally runs in and delivers the killing blow. Having original characters steal canon character’s moments of glory is a big no-no.
It could have had a more conclusive ending
As like all the films that came before it, Afterlife ends with a cliffhanger: Not even a few minutes after stopping Wesker, freeing all the prisoners on the Arcadia, and having a moment to just relax and feel safe, Alice and her allies now have to contend with a fleet of Umbrella VTOL’s bearing down on them, led by a brainwashed Jill Valentine.
Unlike the three cliffhangers that have come before – which were hopeful or promised that our heroes would do something awesome – here the odds are so heavily stacked in Umbrella’s favor that there’s no way Alice and the others could possibly stop them. A cliffhanger implying that things will eventually work out for the heroes is acceptable, but one that implies that the bad guys are going to win is just an unpleasant way to end the story, as it gives the audience a feeling that everything the protagonists went through was ultimately for nothing. It might have worked out better to have Alice broadcast her message of hope, and then end the film there, leaving us with a satisfying conclusion, and moved the arrival of Umbrella’s forces to the next film.
Despite just pointing out how many flaws Afterlife has, it still remains my favorite of the series: the action is engaging, the visuals are great, the pacing is pretty much flawless, the elements from the games are well-translated to the screen, and there are no slow or tedious moments. It’s an action film that delivers on what it sets out to do, and I’d be happy to rewatch this one again and again. In my opinion, it’s the best film of the series… but unfortunately, it’s not the last. We still have two films to go, so check back in next time when we take a look at Resident Evil: Retribution.
With the conclusion of 2004’s, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the Resident Evil film series was in a unique position: because of Apocalypse’s open ending, future movies could either stick to the story, characters, and settings of the games, or forge a new path that wasn’t tethered to its source material. While the safest option was the former, the series went with the latter, but with a twist: it would take characters, monsters, and ideas from the games, but explore what would happen if the T-virus escaped into the wider world instead of being stopped time and time again.
The answer? Disaster.
Picking up five years after the events of Apocalypse, Extinction drops us into a world where the T-virus escaped Raccoon city and spread worldwide, causing billions of people to turn into zombies and turning the planet into a barren wasteland on the brink of total collapse. Now, Alice and the few remaining survivors struggle not only to escape the undead, but end the pandemic once and for all (and presumably struggle to find toilet paper). It’s a great setup for (what was supposed to be) a series finale, so let’s see what worked, and what didn’t.
What does the story do well?
It has an opening that sucks the viewer in right away
If there’s one thing that Extinction does truly well, it’s getting the audience’s attention from the very start by having Alice wake up in the shower from the mansion from the first film.
But this can’t be; the mansion was destroyed when Raccoon City was nuked. And then when Alice leaves the main room, she enters the famous laser hallway, and then a hospital hallway, leaving us to wonder if this a dream, a flashback, or something else… only to discover that Alice is actually a clone going through a murder training simulation run by Dr. Issacs.
By showing the audience something familiar, yet mixing up to play with expectations, the movie gets their attention immediately and makes them want to see more.
It has a unique twist on a zombie virus
Most zombie movies have their respective virus turn people (and the occasional animal) into zombies; Extinction mixes things up by having the virus affect water and vegetation as well, something I don’t recall any other zombie film doing.
Granted, this idea is retconned out in future films (and it does bring up the question of if there are undead plants that desire to eat the flesh of the living), but it’s a fascinating idea that makes the T-virus a truly diabolical threat to humanity: by wiping out plants, then herbivores, then carnivores, and eventually the entire food chain, it means that humanity will inevitably go extinct, lending even more urgency to find a cure.
It has a clearly defined goal for the characters
Extinction continues the Resident Evil film series’ tradition of giving the characters a clear, concrete goal to work towards. Here, it’s to reach a settlement in Alaska that’s free of infection, a safe haven in a world that’s dying. By making the film’s goal have a clearly defined finish line, it gives both the characters and the audience something to focus on instead of just meandering around.
The comic relief character has become more mature
While Apocalypse had it’s share of problems, one of the most egregious was making LJ little more than a walking cliche of the trash-talking, sassy black gangster. Thankfully, Extinction corrects this; while LJ is still the story’s comic relief and cracks a few jokes, he’s much more serious this time around, focusing on doing his part for the convoy, trying to save people, and mourning his girlfriend after she dies. You really sense that LJ has gone through a lot in five years and has grown as an individual… which makes it all the sadder when he (and we) realize that his death is inevitable after being bitten by a zombie in the first act.
The post-apocalyptic convoy gets along with each other and has a good leader
One small thing I like about Extinction is the lack of conflict among the survivors in Claire Redfield’s convoy: there’s no infighting, squabbling, or backstabbing. After countless post-apocalyptic tales where everyone is at each other’s throats, it’s a welcome change to have a similar story where people can get along and work together. This also extends to the convoy’s leader, Claire, who – instead of being a tribal warlord who rules through threats and fears – treats those under her care with respect, is honest with them about difficult decisions they have to make, seeks their input before making those decisions, and works hard to keep everyone safe, even if it means charging into battle instead of letting others fight for her.
It has a unique monster that relies on numbers instead of strength
Aside from the zombies themselves, the Resident Evil film series likes to focus on individual monsters to antagonize the heroes; while Extinction does feature a Tyrant at the climax, it is unique in all the films in that it has monsters that rely on sheer numbers to win instead of being bullet sponges, and that’s the undead crows.
While it would be fairly easy to kill a single crow in a fight to the death, having hundreds attack the convoy makes them a much bigger threat that’s impossible to stop with bullets or conventional weapons, making them into a truly unique enemy in the series.
It has a great setting for the final act
Compared to the dark, gloomy settings of the two previous films, Extinction spends most of its runtime in the desert during bright, sunny days. But at the end, Alice has to got into another underground facility to face off against a heavily-mutated Dr. Issacs and save humanity. But it’s not that the facility is deep underground that makes it so compelling: by the time Alice arrives, the place has been wrecked and torn apart by Issacs. There’s no one left alive, all the lights are flickering on and off, and evidence of Issac’s rampage are everywhere. Alice knows that Issacs is somewhere in the facility, and it’s just her against him. And, smartly, the film holds off on showing him as long as it can, letting our minds race and wonder just how grotesque he must look after mutating and inflicting so much carnage.
This buildup is surprisingly suspenseful, and arguably the tensest sequence in the entire series. Having the final battle take place in a replica of the mansion from the first film is also a clever way to end the series where it began (sorta), and using the laser hallway to finish off Issac once and for all is a great example of why bringing back fan favorites to save the day is always a win.
It tones down Project Alice
Compared to the previous film where Alice was an arrogant Mary Sue who could take on anything that came her way with ease, Extinction learns from those mistakes and tones her down considerably, making Alice more subdued and getting rid of her ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude. And unlike the last movie, the other characters have more opportunities to have their own action scenes and moments to shine without Alice coming in to steal her thunder.
While she’s still the main character and still the focus of this film’s universe, Alice feels more like a normal person, and that’s a welcome change from the previous film.
What could have been improved?
Issacs could have had a more logical plan throughout the film
Dr. Issac’s plan of domesticating zombies to create a loyal work force to rebuild the world is not only silly, but flies in the face of all logic: Considering how the T-Virus has brought humanity to the brink of extinction and turned the world into an uninhabitable wasteland, you’d think that Issacs would realize it makes more sense to destroy the T-virus and everything it’s infected instead of creating zombie butlers, zombie farmworkers, and zombie retail employees, which could have led to an interesting conflict between him and Alice: both groups would want to save the world, but Alice and her companions wouldn’t trust Umbrella or Issacs, a relationship that could have had all sorts of compelling drama. That’s also not factoring in the nonsensical ‘tests’ he has the Alice clones go through. (Why not just grow one and regularly extract her blood instead of wasting an unimaginable amount of resources putting dozens of them through unwinnable deathtraps?)
This point could be negated, however, if we theorize that Issacs is actually using his research as a mask to create an army of super-zombies that he alone will be in control of, allowing him to overthrow Umbrella and become the sole ruler of Earth. It’s still a silly plan, but a bit more logical and reinforces his sociopathic nature.
LJ’s inevitable death could have been explored more deeply
Near the end of the first act, LJ is bitten by a zombie while investigating an abandoned motel and hides this from the others, progressively becoming sicker until he finally succumbs at the end of the second act and bites Carlos before being killed. And while it’s depressing to see the admittingly charming LJ die an undignified death (In the original script LJ actually accompanied Alice into Issac’s underground compact), the movie misses the opportunity to have LJ confess to the others that he’s been bitten, and the drama that would come from that: perhaps the convoy would have decided to let him live long enough in the hopes of finding an antidote, with LJ determined to do as much as he can to help the others before he succumbs. But instead, we get him hiding his zombie bite, which makes the other characters look quite dumb for not realizing that he’s getting progressively sicker and weaker.
The secret facility could have been guarded by more than a single chain-link fence
This has little impact on the story, but it’s improbable that Issac’s super-secret, camouflaged underground fortress is protected from billions of zombies by a single chainlink fence. How it hasn’t been breached after five years of zombies banging against it is beyond me!
It could have cut down on the number of characters
It’s a tale as old as time: a zombie movie comes out, and it’s filled with lots of expendable characters who are only there to be killed off by the undead, and Extinction makes the same mistake of introducing lots of new characters without giving us reasons to care about them. K-Mart, for example, is a teenager who was found in a K-Mart and… that’s all we know about her. Similarly, all we know about Betty is that she’s the group’s medic, LJ’s girlfriend, and the two care about each other.
To the film’s credit, it doesn’t try to make us care about everyone, instead letting most of the convoy’s survivors be nameless masses to be eaten, but it would have been better to cut down on the new characters. Instead of a multi-vehicle convoy with dozens of people in it, perhaps it could be a three-vehicle convoy with a dozen people maximum, giving the story a bit of breathing room to let us get to know them better.
It could have removed the cliffhanger ending
When originally created, Extinction was billed as being the final installment in the Resident Evil film franchise, complete with Alice learning that she can wipe out the virus for good near the end of the movie. Yet, instead of cutting to ten years later where the undead are gone and nature is healing, Extinction ends with Alice waking up her clone buddies in preparation for an assault on Umbrella’s Tokyo headquarters. While this ending would have worked if the series had ended (the main conflict is resolved and Alice has everything she needs to wipe out the virus and bring justice to Umbrella), Extinction doesn’t feel like the end; the story clearly isn’t over, and there’s more to come (an idea that would be revisited later in the series to better effect).
Personally, I find Extinction to be the best of the original trilogy: it manages to achieve a respectable balance between plot and action (along with somereally greatmusic), as well as trying to tell it’s own unique story while being faithful to the spirit of the games. It doesn’t do anything overly well, but neither does it falter too much, making a solid, respectable B movie, and would have made a satisfying end to the series… but the truckloads of money it got at the box office ensured that it would rise once more and continue on. Come back next time, where we’ll head into the franchise’s second half with ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife.’
While 1995’s, ‘Waterworld’ can be seen as a parable about industrialization vs. sustainable living, I realized the other day that it can also be viewed as – believe it or not – a spiritual film.
First, let’s consider the film’s setting: a wild, desolate world where people struggle to survive and constantly fight each other for food, resources, and housing, much like our own.
Secondly, consider the world’s inhabitants:
1. The Smokers, who represent the darker side of humanity: unmatched cruelty, out-of-control egos, stupidity, self-righteousness, inability to plan for the future while satisfying immediate, short-term goals, etc.
2. The Drifters, who are neutral and focused sorely on survival. With only one exception (an elderly man in the extended cut) all of them are selfish and greedy.
3. The Atollers, who represent the more enlightened side of humanity: cooperation, law, living close to the land, etc.
Seems simple enough, and it’s easy to guess who the good guys are supposed to be. But a closer look reveals the Atollers to be xenophobic, closed-minded, judgemental, prejudiced, paranoid, and isolationists with no interest in helping others unless there’s something in it for them. If the Smokers are the uneducated masses who are religious fanatics, then the Atollers are the science-oriented elites who see themselves as superior to everyone else who will let you drift away to your death unless you have something of use for them.
Now, both the Smokers and the Atollers want safety and security: the Smokers seek the mythical Dryland to rip up and use as they please, while the Atollers see it as superstitious nonsense and hide in gated communities. But in the end, neither get what they want: the Smokers are all killed, and what few Atollers are left are stuck out at sea. And while Dryland exists, only a few people make it there:
*Helen, who tries to persuade the Atollers to change their ways, and devotes her life to protecting a child.
*Enola, an innocent (if annoying) child.
*Gregor, a kind man of science and learning who accepts the Mariner, despite him being a mutant.
*The Enforcer, a firm, but fair lawman who assists Helen and Gregor in saving the Mariner and Enola.
*The Mariner, who starts off as a selfish Drifter, but learns to care for Helen and Enola and risks his life for them.
And if that’s not enough, all five of them make it to Dryland by flying through the clouds, like souls flying up to Heaven. Heck, the events of the movie begin (offscreen) with Enola’s parents – the only inhabitants of Dryland – sending off their only child to give humanity a way to Paradise. While anyone can still find Dryland, taking the time to learn and understand the message Enola brings will make it much easier and quicker.
When we combine all these elements, ‘Waterworld’ can be seen as a spiritual parable for life: We are all drifting through the world with various levels of comfort and privilege, and while everyone wants something better beyond the life they have, only those who are willing to change and help others freely will make it to Paradise.
If you take the 1995 film, ‘Waterworld’ and flip the protagonists and antagonists, it becomes fossil fuel propaganda about a group of brave industrialists struggling to restart civilization after the apocalypse, and it’s only their willingness to do whatever it takes – and their oil-powered jet skis, boats, planes, and other vehicles – that can make it happen! But then some water-hippies recruit a terrorist who kills all those courageous industrialists and dooms humanity to be stuck forever as hunter-gathers instead of a society with lots of leisure time and a high-level of technology that only oil-powered machines could have brought.
Armageddon. Ragnarok. The end of all things. Almost every culture and mythology has its version of the moment when everything ends and the human race is wiped out.
But what if someone survived?
A few days ago, I came across the above music video, which tells the story of a Chinese astronaut who devotes his life to making it to the Moon, only for it to be all for nothing. Though only a little over three minutes long, it’s a gripping story, so let’s take a look and see what it does well.
You audience admires determined, focused characters
Though he gets no lines, or even a name, the astronaut in the video gets our attention thanks to his strength of will: Thanks to a very efficient montage, we see him devoting everything to accomplishing his dream of getting on the Moon, sacrificing joy, happiness, or even love. Yet, we still root for him to succeed: How many of us wish we could devote every waking moment of our lives to accomplishing our dreams? Sadly, many of us can’t, which makes us envious and (begrudgingly) admiring of those who can. The same goes for fictional characters. Perhaps your character wants to become president, or go into outer space, or win a spelling bee. Seeing them striving to accomplish a dream makes for compelling drama as they learn whether their dream is really worth everything they’re sacrificing.
It’s important to note that determined, focused characters don’t need to be heroes. Consider the T-800 and the T-1000 in the first two Terminator films, Sauron from ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ and the Thing from the 1982 Universal film of the same name: All three have solid, achievable goals (kill John Conner, take over the world, and take over the world by assimilating everyone on it), and stop at nothing to achieve those goals. Both antagonists and protagonists benefit from laser-like focus, and when their strength of wills clash, it can make for some of the most compelling drama ever put to page or screen. Need proof? Consider Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in ‘Return of the Jedi’: The former wants to redeem his fallen father, and the latter wants to convert him to the dark side. Neither will budge, and their duel of wits becomes what is arguably the most dramatic sequence of any Star Wars film:
Consider exploring what would happen to the lone survivor of a world-ending event
What would you do if the world was destroyed, and you were the only survivor? What would you do? How would you live? Would you even try to, or let yourself succumb to despair and throw yourself out the airlock? In the case of the music video, the astronaut realizes that what really mattes to him most is achieving his second chance of experiencing love, and he stops at nothing to make it happen.
While destroying the world shouldn’t be done lightly in any medium, doing so has the advantage of forcing a character to confront reality without all the masks that they put up to protect themselves from other people and society at large. Do they go nuts and indulge their every whim? Succumb to despair and meaninglessness? Or do they defy the odds and refuse to give in, searching for others who might have survived, or chronicling everything for whatever sapient life form comes after them? There are countless possible answers, and wanting to see what happens to isolated, vulnerable characters will keep an audience engaged in our stories.
Consider having your character escape/navigate/survive the fallout from a world-ending event
When something big – like a building, a city, or a planet – is destroyed, it creates a lot of debris and wreckage. In some situations, it gives us an opportunity for a unique action scene of characters having to escape said debris. ‘Let’s Go’ has the astronaut fighting to reach the space station before it gets out of reach, but to do so, he has to go through a debris field consisting of wreckage from Earth, making it extremely difficult for him to reach his goal, and with the promise of certain death if he fails.
When writing our own stories, having to navigate the ruins of a wrecked mega-structure can lead to some exciting action scenes that we don’t get to write very often. If the opportunity arises, embrace them and milk them for all they’re worth. One of my favorite examples comes from 2016’s ‘Independence Day: Resurgence,’ in which David Levinson and friends have to dodge falling debris sucked up from all over the Earth that subsequently rains down on London.
Consider having your character/s decide to accept death and pass the time as best they can
In disaster movies, it’s very common for the survivors and main characters to either find a way to stop the disaster, or start rebuilding afterwords, hopeful and upbeat that one day, things can return to normal.
But what if they couldn’t? What if they had no chance at all of rebuilding, or surviving, and death is inevitable?
One type of story we don’t see too much of these days is the disaster story where there’s no way for the characters to survive in the long run. It’s easy to understand why: Audiences want a happy ending, or a hopeful one. A story where everyone is going to die, won’t leave them feeling good after leaving the theater, closing the book, or turning off the game console. But if we choose this path, writers have a unique opportunity to explore what characters might do if they only have a little time left to live. Will they weep? Try to make peace with their god? Resolve any lingering conflicts with their loved ones? Or will they accept it and try to have fun before the end? Both astronauts choose the last option in ‘Let’s Go,’ deciding to play video games together as they drift off into the void.
Choosing the path of inevitable death need not be dark. It can be sad, but it also gives characters one more chance to enjoy themselves, or to choose how they will spend what little time they have left. And if they go out having fun, or healing long-simmering hurts, that can be just as uplifting as a happy ending.
The Takeaway
Our audience will always admire a protagonist or antagonist who has a goal and obsessively pursues it, even at a cost of personal happiness. They’ll be even more interested if that individual is the only survivor of a world-ending event, and applies that determination to surviving or continuing on, no matter how bad things get. But if they are doomed, those characters can become their most interesting selves when they have to decide how to spend what little time they have left.
Imperfect Glass 