Resident Evil is possibly the most heavily adapted franchise in the now decades-long history of video game movies. There have now been seven live-action films, all of which have suffered from some pretty tragic downfalls, despite taking very different approaches with the source material.
Paul W. S. Anderson directed six Resident Evil films over the course of 14 years, some of which are better than others, but all of which took heavy criticism. This year, director Johannes Roberts brought the fans Welcome to Raccoon City, a very different film that has nothing to do with the previous series, but the public response has not been as kind as expected.
Anderson’s Resident Evil films star Milla Jovovich as Alice, a hero created for the film franchise. In the early entries, the films took place in the world of the games, but direct references were relatively scant. The first movie took place in an Umbrella Corporation lab and featured monsters ripped straight from the games, but the characters, narrative, and plot were all brand new. Gradually, ruined versions of beloved characters like the Redfield siblings, Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine made their way into the series.
Taking monster design from the games makes sense, but the fourth movie famously took an entire cutscene and put it in the movie frame by frame. These references become pointless because they’re entered into a broad, sloppy, and unfocused new narrative that has completely abandoned what people love about the franchise. These six Resident Evil movies aren’t scary or tense and bring none of the franchise’s trademark survival horror energy. Welcome to Raccoon City tried to bring these elements back to the cinema, but tragically, found its own monsters to struggle against.
Welcome to Raccoon City has received some praise, its got the highest audience score on Rotten Tomatoes except for the 2002 original and some reviews have been pretty positive. In stark contrast to the earlier films, this entry is a fairly direct adaptation of the first two games, featuring plenty of Easter eggs and references to the franchise’s illustrious history. Even the harsher critiques praise the film’s commitment to the source material and Roberts’ evident love of the classic games. Its clearly a better attempt at capturing the spirit of the games, but still falls flat when it comes to scares, writing and character development. Even a direct adaptation finds it difficult to translate what fans love about Resident Evil into the medium of film. Perhaps what works for a horror game; one that forces its players to feel the tension through the magic of interactive storytelling, just cant translate to a passive medium.
So if creating an over-the-top mess with thrown-together elements from the franchise didn’t work, and directly adapting the games into film didn’t work, what could fix this franchise? The best-recieved Resident Evil film is probably still the first one, and while that film still earns plenty of criticism, it provides a solid example for the future of the franchise. Direct adaptation isn’t the way forward, but a dynamic horror story set in the same universe could be the biggest success in the franchise. The trick is splitting the difference between broad disaster with the Resident Evil name slapped on and strict adherence to the source material. Resident Evil should make tense horror films, telling new scary stories in their beloved universe.
Video game movies have always been a tricky proposal, the overwhelming majority of them are terrible, creating a healthy cynicism that works against each new entry. Translating an interactive experience into film runs a number of risks, one of which is very well exemplified by Resident Evil. A lot of games were inspired by other works of art, like classic movies. This means that making a movie out of a game that is already heavily inspired by other movies often results in nothing more than an unoriginal film with a recognizable name. The Resident Evil games are inspired by the zombie horror of George Romero, but have evolved into a very unique narrative with its own world of characters and concepts. A Resident Evil film needs to find engaging horror stories within the most unique aspects of its surrounding universe.
There are only a handful of main characters who have remained central to the Resident Evil franchise, yet the events often throw the entire world into chaos. That implies that hundreds of millions of other people are hiding, fighting, and surviving in a world overtaken by one of various viruses. Umbrella is a global corporation, their influence must be felt everywhere, which means people across the world could be struggling against their unethical reign. The Resident Evil franchise leaves endless room for the films to explore, so long as they find a way to take the spirit of the games without taking its direct story. It would be silly to think fans have seen the last Resident Evil film, so when the franchise returns, it’s exciting to imagine what it’ll look like this time.
