Hollywood does not understand Resident Evil. And I'm not just talking about Mary Sue OCs
constantly showing up the game cast, bizarre alternate takes on the established characters,
race swapping, or that the games are actually good and the movies should
probably try copying that at some point. What I mean is, Resident Evil is not The Walking Dead.
A mistake made with both the Anderson movies and the Netflix TV series (rot in hell,
you worthless piece of crap) is that the story reaches the point of a
worldwide zombie apocalypse. Or, in other words...
Wesker: "Complete global saturation."
To full understand where I'm coming from here,
let's compare the escalation of the outbreaks between the early games and early movies.
In the Anderson series, there is an outbreak in the lab under the mansion in the first film.
The second film sees the zombies get out of the lab and spread the virus down into Raccoon City,
which is then destroyed with a nuclear bomb. The third film reveals that the virus managed
to spread beyond the the city limits before that, resulting in a worldwide apocalypse.
The first game is about an outbreak in the lab under the mansion as well. Then,
the second and third games are about an outbreak in Raccoon City, caused by rats eating the
infected flesh of soldiers killed by G-Birkin, and then getting into the city's water supply. Then,
Code Veronica is about two outbreaks on a remote island and a facility in the Antarctic. Each
event is completely separate and distinct, even if the virus being released is the same
each time. The only instances of two outbreaks in the entire series being directly connected
are the two in the Arklay Mountains seen in Resi 1 and 0, evacuees from Rockfort Island
spreading that outbreak into the Antarctic base, and the Spencer Rain outbreak spreading
to the Atlantic facility. And the latter two cases occurred in a single game each.
But the games never had a single worldwide zombie apocalypse. And this decision has
two major effects on the games that make them the superior experience to the films,
and highlights how the films have consistently failed to carry the spirit and feel of the
source material they are relying on the name of to sell their dogshit scripts. It's not
just that they don't copy the games 1-1 and it never has been, so stop using that as an excuse.
First, we have variety. By having standalone, isolated outbreaks, the games can have variety in
what virus or parasite or fungus is spreading: T-Virus, Las Plagas, C-Virus, mutamycete,
etc. - each one comes with its own set of infected and monsters that have their own unique feels. T,
C and T-Phobos may all make zombies, but each strain brings unique properties to the base
zombie unit. And that's to say nothing of the vast distinctions between the more intelligent victims
of Las Plagas and the Cadou. And in addition, each new infection brings with it a unique host
of non-human monsters of varying sizes, shapes, intelligence levels and even super powers.
This allows the series to remain fresh, despite how many games there are. Across just the games,
there are around sixteen distinct outbreaks and outbreak groups,
with around a third being the T-Virus. And even then,
the monsters featured add enough spice to make each new entry feel somewhat fresh.
In the films, though, it's just basic bitch zombies, until it came time to crib Majini
from Resi 5, with only the occasional monster thrown in to spice things up. It all feels
so monotonous when viewed as a whole, while the games continue to introduce new common monsters,
even with similar strains - such as the enemies in 7 and 8 coming from separate
offshoots of the same source mold, leading to vastly different enemies between the two.
The other major effect is on the tone of the series. In the films,
each new entry continued the story deeper and deeper into the apocalypse until only
a small number of humans were left by the end of the six film series,
making for a very bleak and depressing note to end on. And the Netflix show jumps back
and forth between a full-on apocalypse and the inciting events fourteen years prior.
But in the games, each outbreak being isolated means that, once the game ends and the clean-up by
the BSAA or Blue Umbrella or whoever else is going on, the nightmare is over for another day. And
yes, there will continue to be outbreaks for as long as the series goes on; but if Capcom stopped
making these games forever as of tomorrow, we could rest easy knowing that our heroes won in
the end. They ended bioterror forever and their world is safe. In the movies, though, not only
would the apocalypse still be going on after the abrupt end, it's still going on after the cure
is released at the end of film 6, meaning there really is no end to this. And as for the show,
it did get cancelled without any resolution, so you can actively see what I mean here.
Maybe this ultimately comes down to a difference in eastern and western philosophy on the subject
matter but, in the games, there is hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel that Chris,
Leon, Jill, Claire and the rest can strive for and potentially one day reach. Each outbreak is
self-contained enough to feasibly put a complete stop to it. Not very realistic? Neither are
zombies, so fuck you, it can happen. But with a full-on apocalypse, how can it realistically end?
This is an issue The Walking Dead faced, where the only way the series could end was everyone dying,
the heroes reaching a point of relative comfort with the threat still out there, finding a
cure, or some deus ex machina to end the zombie threat forever. Every zombie apocalypse story is
like this. That's why the Romero Dead series never has any real conclusion. And it's why emulating
that kind of story just inherently does not feel like Resident Evil. One might think productions
made in countries that call it "RESIDENT Evil" instead of "Biohazard" would understand that.
But alas, even after Resident Alice ended, new live action adaptations continue to slap the
Resi name onto unrelated zombie shlock because it won't sell otherwise. It's a sad state of affairs
when Welcome to Raccoon City is the only one that has a real Resident Evil vibe, in spite
of it pulling a Battle of the Realms and trying to do too much with too little time. The story,
for all its many faults, is about a self-contained outbreak in Raccoon and the surrounding forest,
meaning that the sequel that will likely never happen could retain the spirit of the series
by continuing with separate outbreaks. In fact, the director has expressed interest in adapting
Code Veronica, Resi 4, 7 and 8. While it could easily be smaller parts of a larger apocalypse,
I suspect that, looking at how much more Resident Evil this adaptation was
than anything else done in the west, it would likely stick to smaller outbreaks.
As sad as it is when "Welcome to" is the most accurate live action take,
let's hope that the next adaptation takes a few pages from this film's book and doesn't
think it's clever by being about another generic zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for Covid or some
other such fart-sniffing, pretentious, "I make real art" Hollywood bullshit.
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Today's recommended video is Residecember Evil by Matt Draper,
a recently concluded theme month on the games and movies, including those that never were.