Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City

[Ikawaru]

I still think they should have gone with a shaky camera, dense fog, and ultra sensitive sound effects.

 

[Fishcakes]

Guys, I gotta say it: despite the cast hardly looking like the characters and the "cheap" CG (it ain't that cheap, especially if they got the collisions right - I lensed a couple of projects with very cheap VFX and they looked way worse than that), this movie seems to have the right style. I remember when the first Anderson movie was about to get released: the poster was pretty sterile and uninteresting (Jovovich and Rodriguez with some wireframe graphics in the background: it could've been anything) and the trailer had its only bloody shot (the zombified J.D.) badly altered so that the blood was blue. This thing at least is trying to be a real horror movie: maybe we'll get a half-decent flick this time around.

Nah it'll definitely still be good, yea there's the one tiny thing of half the actors looking like they were pulled of the street. But their all great actors who're very interested in the franchise themselves, so you know they put 100% effort into it. And the similarities between the set and the actual games are pretty awesome I reckon. It'll be different for that's who're used to seeing similar looking characters but it'll still be a good film

 

[Hardware]

I still think they should have gone with a shaky camera, dense fog, and ultra sensitive sound effects.

I think it will have its fair share of handheld camerawork - you can spot a few moments in the trailers where the camera is definitely not on a dolly\steady\gimbal rig. It probably won't be as shaky as the RE1 intro (which is not that shaky anyway - it's not nausea-inducing like some movies from the mid-00s) because they have better equipment than just a camera and tripod. The fog in that video always felt cheap to me: it was put there to make the dark background less dense (i.e. less dark) and empty since they were shooting on a riverbank and had no trees to use for background. But it was obviously coming from a cheap fog machine off-camera and it would look terrible today - even horror movies in the 80s were a bit more sophisticated (most of the time, at least). I am pretty sure the sound effects will be good: it's almost mandatory for horror movies these days to have good sound design and editing. Have you heard the sound of Lisa stretching out? Now imagine that thing being part of the full mix instead of being so much in-your-face for the sake of the trailer (which is what it will be - in the trailer, they almost cut out any other elements for those shots - that's not how actual soundwork is done in movies).
The cinematography in the mansion seems pretty good too - they are definitely going for the usual Alien\Aliens-style vibe (strong backlighting to create volumes, little fill, and flashlights to actually illuminate what is needed to be seen), but you can't go wrong with that - especially with early-RE games having been so much influenced by those movies.
RE1make had some excellent lighting design, but expecting them to replicate it in a movie would be dumb (not impossible, but that kind of lighting doesn't bode well with action sequences). Actually, as a cinematographer, I was in awe of some of the stuff they did in RE2make - which has the same approach (the light is always coming from some source within the room), but more extreme...I particularly loved the flashlight left on a bench in the corridor to the STARS office.

 

[Bran]

Guys, I gotta say it: despite the cast hardly looking like the characters and the "cheap" CG (it ain't that cheap, especially if they got the collisions right - I lensed a couple of projects with very cheap VFX and they looked way worse than that), this movie seems to have the right style. I remember when the first Anderson movie was about to get released: the poster was pretty sterile and uninteresting (Jovovich and Rodriguez with some wireframe graphics in the background: it could've been anything) and the trailer had its only bloody shot (the zombified J.D.) badly altered so that the blood was blue. This thing at least is trying to be a real horror movie: maybe we'll get a half-decent flick this time around.

Yeah, its at least keeping the tone. I'm planning to just turn my brain off that it's a Resident Evil movie, and instead go in that it's an 80's style horror film and allow myself to enjoy it that way. I don't wanna give it high expectations, nor do I want to be distracted by every single deviation from the source material. But, I think structurally and tone-wise it seems like it should be a good movie.

 

[Hardware]

Yeah, its at least keeping the tone. I'm planning to just turn my brain off that it's a Resident Evil movie, and instead go in that it's an 80's style horror film and allow myself to enjoy it that way. I don't wanna give it high expectations, nor do I want to be distracted by every single deviation from the source material. But, I think structurally and tone-wise it seems like it should be a good movie.

My dreams were crushed by the very first RE movie (which is not even that bad when you really look at it - it's just more concerned with being a high-tech thriller than a dripping horror movie) and turned into fine dust by the following ones: my interest in these projects is more instinctual than anything else. I am not that bothered by them deviating from the source material either: people on the Internet are going crazy because Claire and Chris grew up in the Raccoon City orphanage and she met Lisa as a child. Quite frankly, I don't care: as we discussed many times over, movies and games have different narrative necessities and devices. Also, after RE2make, I think Lisa is more fit for the orphanage than the mansion. But that's my two cents.

 

[Hardware]

Interesting featurette on the production design...although the most iconic locstions (mansion front + main hall, RPD front + main hall etc.) are clearly either digital backgrounds or have been enhanced with CG. Get used to them though, as they are bound to become more and more the norm and COVID has given them a big boost. The tech used for "The Mandalorian" is also slowly becoming more available (even though a lot of people are buying cheap stuff).

 

[Ikawaru]

Wow. That mini documentary or "Production Vignette" struck me as better than any official trailer released so far xD

 

[Hardware]

At 0:46 you can see Lisa helping Leon and Claire - I can already hear the fanbase howling in anger.

 

[Bran]

At 0:46 you can see Lisa helping Leon and Claire - I can already hear the fanbase howling in anger.

I don't believe the T-002 is in this either. Could have sworn I saw Birkin attacking Chris.

 

[Hardware]

I don't believe the T-002 is in this either. Could have sworn I saw Birkin attacking Chris.

I think most of the bestiary from RE1 and 2 won't show up: there are probably going to be a few surprises (hunters?), but most of these games have too many enemies for horror movie standards - unless we're talking about stuff like "Cabin in the Woods". One of Romero's mistakes (provided he wasn't forced to like De Souza was with "Street Fighter") was to try and cram almost every character and creature from RE1 into the script (if I am not mistaken, it had dogs, sharks, Plant 42, Yawn, hunters, and the Tyrant). Most hardcore fans are going to get angry, but it's next-to-impossible to make all hardcore fans happy when you're working from one medium to the other.

 

[Ark2000]

I think most of the bestiary from RE1 and 2 won't show up: there are probably going to be a few surprises (hunters?), but most of these games have too many enemies for horror movie standards - unless we're talking about stuff like "Cabin in the Woods". One of Romero's mistakes (provided he wasn't forced to like De Souza was with "Street Fighter") was to try and cram almost every character and creature from RE1 into the script (if I am not mistaken, it had dogs, sharks, Plant 42, Yawn, hunters, and the Tyrant). Most hardcore fans are going to get angry, but it's next-to-impossible to make all hardcore fans happy when you're working from one medium to the other.

Romero's script also included Crows, which look like will also be in this film. I think only ones which weren't included in his script were Spiders, Wasps and Chimeras, although Romero's descriptions of Hunters made them sound like they were mixed with Chimeras, and weirdly enough, Spiders and Wasps were some of the only creatures included in McElroy's script.

Just to give my own opinion about this, i think having all monsters from the original game or remake in the film would have been fun, but there is always a possibility that depending on the tone or story of the film/adaptation, some of those maybe wouldn't work in it. I mean, let's just say that the film is supposed to be more of a serious, creepy and suspenseful horror than action. It probably wouldn't make sense if all of sudden giant zombie sharks and snakes start showing up, specially in Deep Blue Sea or Anaconda-like action sequences, despite this being video game adaptation and all. On the other hand, maybe having just mostly humanoid monsters like Lickers, Hunters, Chimeras and Crimson Heads would work better.

 

[Ikawaru]

Just to give my own opinion about this, i think having all monsters from the original game or remake in the film would have been fun, but there is always a possibility that depending on the tone or story of the film/adaptation, some of those maybe wouldn't work in it.

Thing is though it's hard to do that on a 1 hour 47 minute film without coming off as "all over the place", and would probably seem silly. You kind of need a strong focused narrative to make a short film like this work.

I'm not defending their actions or anything. I still think they should have at least gone with a trilogy like Lord of the Rings, which actually you know, worked out well (despite the films having more in common Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated films than the actual books) but I can imagine that literally no producers around of any kind would want to spend the 300+ million or so to create Resident Evil Saga rather than a film, because game series like this are seen as too risky for that kind of thing I guess.

 

[Hardware]

Thing is though it's hard to do that on a 1 hour 47 minute film without coming off as "all over the place", and would probably seem silly. You kind of need a strong focused narrative to make a short film like this work.

I'm not defending their actions or anything. I still think they should have at least gone with a trilogy like Lord of the Rings, which actually you know, worked out well (despite the films having more in common Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated films than the actual books) but I can imagine that literally no producers around of any kind would want to spend the 300+ million or so to create Resident Evil Saga rather than a film, because game series like this are seen as too risky for that kind of thing I guess.

Nobody would ever spend that much on RE - or any horror-related property for what matters. If you spend 100 million dollars\euros, you need to take in one billion or close to make it worthwhile - that means that almost everyone in the industrialized world has to see the movie. That's impossible with horror movies. Since when do 107 minutes make a short movie? Although we live in a world of over-bloated blockbusters that can run for 3 hours (that's the length that was reserved for stuff like "Apocalypse Now" in the old days), most horror movies have an average running time of 90 minutes or less. Paul WS Anderson's 2002 RESIDENT EVIL is 1 hour and 40 and you have to wait more than 20 minutes to see the first zombie. 20\30 minutes is more than enough to set up the main characters and the story's premise. That means 70 or 80 minutes of zombies, monsters, and some plot twists. If you only keep the cutscenes (the only narrative elements you can 100% translate into movie-form), the average classic RE game is about 40 minutes long or less (including alternative cutscenes from different routes and scenarios).

 

[Ikawaru]

Nobody would ever spend that much on RE - or any horror-related property for what matters. If you spend 100 million dollars\euros, you need to take in one billion or close to make it worthwhile - that means that almost everyone in the industrialized world has to see the movie. That's impossible with horror movies. Since when do 107 minutes make a short movie? Although we live in a world of over-bloated blockbusters that can run for 3 hours (that's the length that was reserved for stuff like "Apocalypse Now" in the old days), most horror movies have an average running time of 90 minutes or less. Paul WS Anderson's 2002 RESIDENT EVIL is 1 hour and 40 and you have to wait more than 20 minutes to see the first zombie. 20\30 minutes is more than enough to set up the main characters and the story's premise. That means 70 or 80 minutes of zombies, monsters, and some plot twists. If you only keep the cutscenes (the only narrative elements you can 100% translate into movie-form), the average classic RE game is about 40 minutes long or less (including alternative cutscenes from different routes and scenarios).

1) Peter Jackson was in fact a niche horror director from New Zealand and they gave him the go-ahead for LOTR and was a commercial smash hit.

2) 107 minutes is quite short for a single film on a massive game franchise.

3) I'm sorry but Resident Evil is a bit more than a simple horror film to someone who has been a fan since 1997

4) Anderson films are not seen as a model of success in the eyes of the vast majority of fans

5) Cutscenes aren't the basis of gauging video games on a thematic basis.

 

[Hardware]

1) Dude, what does Peter Jackson having directed Bad Taste and Braindead have to do with people spending millions on Resident Evil? PJ proposed an adaptation of Lord of the Rings (only one of the most popular works of fiction in the world), not some splatter movie costing 300 million. BTW, despite the fact it got downplayed a lot to create the myth of the guy from NZ who suddenly directed a major motion picture trilogy, he had stepped up from being "just a splatter guy" (although I still consider Braindead his masterpiece) a few years earlier with "Heavenly Creatures" - which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (it also won at the Toronto Film Festival - but it wasn't that prestigious back then - as well as a ton of accolades in the UK). That put Jackson on the map as an auteur. Then he did "The Frighteners", which was produced by Robert Zemeckis with Hollywood money and was essentially the test he had to pass to show he could work within the studio system. Had he remained the guy who did the goriest movie ever made, nobody would've taken him seriously for one second when he was shopping LOTR around.

2) WTC is the first movie and it's not adapting the whole franchise...which doesn't even have a very thick plot when you think about it (it just has a lot of characters - but, depending on which category they fall in, they all do the same stuff.

3) You've been a fan since '97? What a coincidence: so do I. What advantage do I get? And RE is still horror in my opinion - more like SciFi-horror ("Aliens" meets "Dawn of the Dead"), but still firmly horror. 107 minutes to tell a story that is a mix of RE1 and 2 are enough - it will just be the highlights of the games, but we live in a world where teenagers cannot hold their attention for more than 10 minutes.

4) Who said Anderson's movies are good? I just pointed out his movie is actually 7 minutes shorter than WTC. 7 minutes can make a lot of difference in movies if used properly.

5) I honestly didn't understand this point. Cutscenes are the only thing you can 100% copy when transitioning from game to movie - because the game is actually using movie language in those moments. You cannot have the diaries and letters for the audience to read (which are the core of classic RE storytelling IMHO) - best-case scenario, you can have the characters listen to an audio log or watch a video (Claire is watching an old 16mm reel in the trailer), but you can only do it once or twice (it'd become repetitive otherwise). And you cannot show the characters just go from room to room while looking for media to playback either (which is what you do in a lot of games). So, all you can take from the games are the cutscenes and write some sequences illustrating the lore you pieced together by exploring the games - but it ain't gonna be the same and can be streamlined pretty easily.

 

[Ikawaru]

1) Dude, what does Peter Jackson having directed Bad Taste and Braindead have to do with people spending millions on Resident Evil?

It proves that you can do something strange like put a horror director in charge of a huge costly fantasy project and still chime in. The idea that "Horror" and "Big money" don't mix could be rendered moot by that point.

I proposed earlier doing something similar with a huge RE project. Give a director with not much of a track record with horror, someone hesitant to do a big horror project, like Oliver Stone for instance, 300mil for a RE trilogy and I think we would see satisfactory results, both qualitatively and commercially.

I think there's a science behind picking the right people for the job, and producers need to look above and beyond algorithms and "playing it safe" to get better quality and commercially successful films.

 

[Hardware]

It proves that you can do something strange like put a horror director in charge of a huge costly fantasy project and still chime in. The idea that "Horror" and "Big money" don't mix could be rendered moot by that point

...Peter Jackson was not a "horror" director anymore (he never actually was one, but that's another story) by that point, as I already said. "Horror" and "Big money" very rarely do go along in the movie industry: "World War Z" is one of the very few exceptions. Why do you think Guillermo Del Toro couldn't get his adaptation of "At The Mountain Of Madness" by HP Lovecraft off the ground despite Tom Cruise willing to star and James Cameron acting as producer?

I proposed earlier doing something similar with a huge RE project. Give a director with not much of a track record with horror, someone hesitant to do a big horror project, like Oliver Stone for instance, 300mil for a RE trilogy and I think we would see satisfactory results, both qualitatively and commercially.

...and do you think someone like Oliver Stone (or any other name movie director - pick your favorite) would do something like RE only because someone is offering him a ton of money? If an established filmmaker (especially those who are considered artists and not just hired guns) hasn't made a movie in a certain genre, more often than not is because he\she doesn't want to do that kind of stuff.

And again, nobody would ever throw 300 million at RE. A 300 Million dollar project needs to bring in about 1 billion at the very least: you don't need to be a beancounter to realize RE cannot move that much money, even with movie tickets being as expensive as they are. One of the most successful horror movies in recent years was the 2018 Halloween movie (which I thought was terrible, but whatever): it brought in 200 million worldwide on a 10 million $ budget. Ask any movie director working in the horror genre today and they will all tell you that 10 million is already a LOT of money for them. Most horror movies are done for 2\3 million or less.

I think there's a science behind picking the right people for the job, and producers need to look above and beyond algorithms and "playing it safe" to get better quality and commercially successful films.

Yeah, whatever. Why do you think they went for Johannes Roberts then? Because they are all dumb?

 

[Bran]

...Peter Jackson was not a "horror" director anymore (he never actually was one, but that's another story) by that point, as I already said. "Horror" and "Big money" very rarely do go along in the movie industry: "World War Z" is one of the very few exceptions. Why do you think Guillermo Del Toro couldn't get his adaptation of "At The Mountain Of Madness" by HP Lovecraft off the ground despite Tom Cruise willing to star and James Cameron acting as producer?


...and do you think someone like Oliver Stone (or any other name movie director - pick your favorite) would do something like RE only because someone is offering him a ton of money? If an established filmmaker (especially those who are considered artists and not just hired guns) hasn't made a movie in a certain genre, more often than not is because he\she doesn't want to do that kind of stuff.

And again, nobody would ever throw 300 million at RE. A 300 Million dollar project needs to bring in about 1 billion at the very least: you don't need to be a beancounter to realize RE cannot move that much money, even with movie tickets being as expensive as they are. One of the most successful horror movies in recent years was the 2018 Halloween movie (which I thought was terrible, but whatever): it brought in 200 million worldwide on a 10 million $ budget. Ask any movie director working in the horror genre today and they will all tell you that 10 million is already a LOT of money for them. Most horror movies are done for 2\3 million or less.


Yeah, whatever. Why do you think they went for Johannes Roberts then? Because they are all dumb?

Yeah, At the Mountains of Madness is another one of those passion projects that I wish had been done. The early draft was actually really good. Very bleak. Like a combination of Prometheus and The Thing. Would have been great under Del Toro.

I believe it was Prometheus that killed it. Expensive rated R movie that only made $400 million off a $130 million budget. That definitely put the dampers on Universal spending $150 million like Del Toro wanted.

I don't think we will ever see Resident Evil ANYTHING with a $300 million price tag... even for an entire trilogy. Not that it would ever need that much.

 

[Hardware]

Yeah, At the Mountains of Madness is another one of those passion projects that I wish had been done. The early draft was actually really good. Very bleak. Like a combination of Prometheus and The Thing. Would have been great under Del Toro.

I believe it was Prometheus that killed it. Expensive rated R movie that only made $400 million off a $130 million budget. That definitely put the dampers on Universal spending $150 million like Del Toro wanted.

I don't think we will ever see Resident Evil ANYTHING with a $300 million price tag... even for an entire trilogy. Not that it would ever need that much.

Did you actually get to read the script for ATMOM? If so, care to PM me some of the juicy bits?

They keep saying Prometheus killed it, but for multiple reasons: some say it was because it was too similar (aside from aliens creating life on Earth, I don't really see the similarities - especially since the Elder Things are not albino Dr. Manhattans and do have their own mythology - but I've only read the novella), others because it bombed. More recently, Del Toro has come forward saying it was because ATMOM was too bleak and he didn't want to compromise - someone had told him to lie to the studio executives and maintain it was going to be family-friendly to get it greenlit, but, in his own words, he is too much of a boyscout to do something like that.

Yeah, I cannot see a RE movie costing 100 million myself.

 

[Hardware]

It seems like, despite all its flaws, the film ain't bad

https://www.relyonhorror.com/review...DcHNMQ_VQ1QvA8QMhe5xMp4uaz2DfKh7FHj4xlcQpGF7g