Zach Cregger's Resident Evil was... okay. Decent. As a fan of the games and horror cinema I was kind of mixed on it. I don't like some of Cregger's changes and some of the decisions, but it is enjoyable. Go see it. 😎
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil was... okay. Decent. As a fan of the games and horror cinema I was kind of mixed on it. I don't like some of Cregger's changes and some of the decisions, but it is enjoyable. Go see it. 8)
I already have, and had a great time! Not my #1 film of the year by any stretch, but possibly the one I most thoroughly enjoyed.
As a fan of the games as well, agreed. It was good-ish. I actually really like the way Cregger's taken the RE world, Racoon City setting and various zombies (mostly from RE 4) and threw them all together while making a coherent story and (what's less important to me tbh) stayed true to the lore. The costumes, props and CGI were excellent. I also loved the way guns were handled in this movie, finally a movie which actually resembles a survival horror game and a real life situation. Various fun camera angles and generally camera work which tried to replicate the gaming feeling worked like a charm. Humour was fine, most of the jokes landed, but it was excessive overall. The fatherhood themes were shoehorned in imo and didn't really connect with anything else thematically, except maybe the maternity ward sequence (which was the coolest setting in the movie, it's a shame it was somewhat underutilized). I'm still not too sure about the ending either. _________________ Overall chart Fake overall chart
I loved the games. I played 1-5 before adulthood kicked in and didn't have enough free time to keep up with videogames thereafter 😕 Still I saw the nods and homages to the games. The brief shot of a typewriter, and the mentions of Umbrella and Raccoon City. My favorite homage to the games was the weapons. He begins with a pistol he took from the cop, then finds a shotgun in the rural home, and finally has an automatic rifle when he gets to the city. And of course, the shotgun itself is nowhere near the ammo, because gun safety is important that's kind of how the games go. Anyway, it seems like nobody has been addressing the fact seven RE movies came before this one. Why aren't they well-liked? Why aren't people comparing them to this reboot? I think it's because there's not much of a comparison. The previous RE movies try too hard to be like games...implausible over-the-top action, little character development, lots of world-building, generally boring stoic energy, etc. That works for videogames because your experience as a gamer is simply just surviving and riddle-solving, while the story and characters are secondary. But in movies, stories and characters come first, and Zac Cregger understood that. This film works because it's primary objective is to be a movie, not a movie based on a game. He chose not to have any named characters from the games in the movie. He chose not make the main character a badass who already knows how to use whatever weapon you hand him, who shoots his/her way through hordes of monsters and treats it like a random Tuesday. Instead, the new RE is simply about a random dork caught in the midst of a zombie outbreak. His acting feels natural. And man, this movie is laugh-out-loud funny. It's more of a comedy than a horror. Go see it
mickilennialThe Most Trusted Name in NewsProfile Detroit
See, this is one of the things I did not care for. This is early in the Outbreak, we shouldn't have these kind of BOWs yet.
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The brief shot of a typewriter, and the mentions of Umbrella and Raccoon City.
These felt like shoehorned references that weren't used in a meaningful way to me.
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Why aren't they well-liked? Why aren't people comparing them to this reboot?
Because outside of the first two films they are not films with much substance.
Quote:
The previous RE movies try too hard to be like games...implausible over-the-top action, little character development, lots of world-building, generally boring stoic energy, etc.
You mean the games that have constantly used mood and character development with characters that are more than stoic? What are you talking about?
Quote:
This film works because it's primary objective is to be a movie
You could remove "Resident Evil" from the branding and change little to nothing from this. That's a problem.
The brief shot of a typewriter, and the mentions of Umbrella and Raccoon City.
These felt like shoehorned references that weren't used in a meaningful way to me.
They are indeed shoehorned, and I found they weren't meant to be meaningful. They were just quick nods to the games, nothing more.
mickilennial wrote:
Quote:
Why aren't they well-liked? Why aren't people comparing them to this reboot?
Because outside of the first two films they are not films with much substance.
None of them are films with much substance.
mickilennial wrote:
Quote:
The previous RE movies try too hard to be like games...implausible over-the-top action, little character development, lots of world-building, generally boring stoic energy, etc.
You mean the games that have constantly used mood and character development with characters that are more than stoic? What are you talking about?
I'm talking about the flaws of the other RE films. I'm talking about how some aspects of the games don't translate well when adapted to cinema. I didn't get the impression from RE 1-5 the playable characters had much of an arc, or depth. And it's not like they had a wide range of emotions outside of reacting to their situations. I mean, they're videogame characters. The few times they "act" during the games were in the tedious, wooden cut scenes, which frankly I wanted to skip most of the time (especially the PS1 titles). Granted maybe this has changed in the more recent games and the remakes. I saw of the gameplay on YouTube, and if I'm not mistaken they added backstories to some characters and made the cut scenes more realistic and cinematic.
mickilennial wrote:
Quote:
This film works because it's primary objective is to be a movie
You could remove "Resident Evil" from the branding and change little to nothing from this. That's a problem.
Agree to disagree but I don't think that's a problem at all. I like the idea of a Resident Evil game series and movie series that share little in common, play to the strengths of their medium, and are both quite enjoyable in their different, respective ways. Unless you're saying the problem is the movie even had the "Resident Evil" branding to begin with, as a criticism against the film industry overusing pre-existing IPs. In which case, yeah I understand that. But I still liked this movie a lot.
mickilennialThe Most Trusted Name in NewsProfile Detroit
I don't like using IP in a shallow way. It tells fans there isn't actually respect for the series they care about. I don't find most of your argumentation sound, either, as someone who has played every single Resident Evil game in the franchise (even the crappy handheld games).
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