• Welcome to the Resident Evil Community Forum!

    We're a group of fans who are passionate about the Resident Evil series and video gaming.

    Register Log in

The Live-Action Movies: Good Films, Guilty Pleasures or Wastes Of Time?

ResidentDevil said:
It's funny how most fans think that the first RE movie is the best and yet the first one actually doesn't have any RE character at all.
Click to expand...
No movie is just automatically decent simply because it features a certain character or characters. That makes no sense at all - it's really the script that matters. The first movie has a coherent plot that's not entirely out of left field and convoluted like the following movies. At its core, it's about 'regular' people encountering a situation that hasn't been encountered before. They're skilled, but not at a superhuman level which I certainly appreciate because... I despise superhuman characters lol.

I see it as similar to Outbreak in being a 'side story' - few fans rejected Outbreak because it didn't have the main characters. Obviously I would have preferred if they had used game characters, but they didn't.
 
I've got to be honest - I hate the movies. :P I've watched up to... the fourth one, I think, and just couldn't watch them anymore. The problem for me is that I would want a Resident Evil movie to be about the actual characters in Resident Evil, with maybe other new side characters thrown in. Instead, it's the opposite way around, with the actual Resident Evil characters taking more of a back seat. I saw the movies years ago, though, and I've not seen all of them, so maybe my recollection is a bit off, but that's what I remember thinking when I watched them. That's why I much prefer the CG ones.
 
Maddy7 said:
I think that's actually why. They didn't include any game characters or the game's plot in the first one so they couldn't really mess them up, it felt like its own story almost. When they started adding things from the games, they just messed it up.
Click to expand...
La Femme Fatale said:
No movie is just automatically decent simply because it features a certain character or characters. That makes no sense at all - it's really the script that matters. The first movie has a coherent plot that's not entirely out of left field and convoluted like the following movies. At its core, it's about 'regular' people encountering a situation that hasn't been encountered before. They're skilled, but not at a superhuman level which I certainly appreciate because... I despise superhuman characters lol.

I see it as similar to Outbreak in being a 'side story' - few fans rejected Outbreak because it didn't have the main characters. Obviously I would have preferred if they had used game characters, but they didn't.
Click to expand...
It's true for most of other movie franchises, however for RE many complaints/negative reviews I've read was about how people don't like that the movies' script "aren't Resident Evil enough", too loosely based, Alice shouldn't be the main protagonist, too many missing RE characters, Paul W.S. Anderson should play RE games, etc. So I find it weird that the first one which again definitely "isn't RE enough"/"the least RE one", with Alice as main protagonist (as she's always been), and has 0 RE characters receives the best rating of all. But don't get me wrong, I like all of em, I think Afterlife is the best. And yes the quality of script matters, but so do the characters in it. I mean just imagine an Iron Man movie with a great script but doesn't feature Tony Stark as the main character, that would still cause fans outrage.

Anyway I also want to point out the fact that RE is the highest grossing video game-based movie series ever with combined worldwide grossing over $900M. It will likely pass $1B once the Final Chapter is released. RE also holds the record for the "most live-action film adaptations of a video game" in the 2012 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition.
image.jpg

I think no other game can dethrone this record for a long time even with the announced movie adaptation of Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and World of Warcraft.
 
Last edited:
Maddy7 said:
I think that's actually why. They didn't include any game characters or the game's plot in the first one so they couldn't really mess them up, it felt like its own story almost. When they started adding things from the games, they just messed it up.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this ^^^

If your going to start adding RE characters then you have to be ready adapt them correctly or risk turning longtime fans off very fast which is what happened from the RE2 movie on up.

To answer the topics question I am not a fan of the movie series at all, one thing I dislike about Resident Evil games these days is the emphasis on action over horror and to be frank the RE movies pretty much compounds everything that I dislike with the current state or Resident Evil and what I personally believe it should be which is respecting its horror roots.

Not to mention the story gets boring really quickly, everything is pretty much centered around Alice and even popular Resident Evil characters take a complete backseat and don't really get fleshed out much, the only one that seems to get a bit of love is Claire in the film verse and thats about it.

Over all the entire movie series is pretty lackluster to me and the only one I tend to go back and watch occasionally is the first one and even then its only as a way to pass time.
 
I feel like if they used a staggered story approach it would have made for a better series. And what I mean by that is having two or more stories happening simultaneously and switching back and forth for the audience to see, overlapping to the final climax. They toyed with that a little in the second one but if they were consistent with it I think it would have made a better trilogy.

I mean playing resident evil growing up there were always two character playthroughs at least for the first two games. So it would be neat I think to carry over that feel to the screen. Have two characters following the same story but different experience. Intertwined and leading to the climax.

Zombies though am I right?
 
I remember watching once two first RE live action movies in mine native language TV ( beside also they been very late night showed LOL) , and well later time i seen again them including RE Afterlife and Retribution in 3d version ( mine TV allows for that), well for guilty pleasure this can be as sometimes i rewatch them too
 
OK, so the general consensus so far is that the films are just plain bad, with the possible exception of the first (which I'll admit is the best of the bunch).

This has been a healthy, civilised debate so far, no slanging matches or arguments, which is a good thing considering it's both a divisive subject amongst the fanbase, and my first thread. So thank you all for for that.

Hopefully we can keep this thread going til The Final Chapter comes out. I would like to hear everyone's opinion on the film after its release.
 
JHJ said:
Hopefully we can keep this thread going til The Final Chapter comes out. I would like to hear everyone's opinion on the film after its release.
Click to expand...

Dude, that movie's been out for like thirty years.

crispin-glover-can-dance-o.gif
 
BREAKING NEWS!!

Leaked!! First trailer screenshots of RE the final chapter:
residentevil6_1.jpg

residentevil6_2.jpg

residentevil6_3.jpg

residentevil6_4.jpg

residentevil6_5.jpg

residentevil_7.jpg
and according to a rumor, the movie will be grittier, darker and no more slow mo scenes.
 
Sounds good. Hopefully it will be. Do you happen to know when the trailer will be officially released?
 
More like Guilty Pleasures.

I you're a die-hard fan, you'll hate those movies because they don't have to do anything in common with the game franchise ... Well except for a few characters, but even they feel thrown in.

Nevertheless, RE: Apocalypse is my favorite for being based off RE3 (my personal favorite)


Absolutely love this scene from the second movie

And my first reaction when I saw Jill Valentine
giphy.gif

Seriously, though her look is spot on :love:

But I'd like to point point out two things I like about the movies

1. Jill is far more consistent in the movies then in the video games, where her voice, face and personality gets changed with each game that comes out. Apparently Capcom doesn't seem to give a damn about consistency when it comes to Jill.
So kudos to Paul W. Anderson for not screwing up Miss Valentine in his movie adaptions.:happy:

2. Whereas Capcom seem to obsess over Chris and Leon, the movies focus more on the female protagonists. So, yeah Jill and Claire are more important in the movies than Chris an Leon. Which is pretty cool as I generally prefer female protagonists.

Just my two cents
 
I can't stand these movies and I'm being forced to suffer through them lolol

My thing is, Paul W. Anderson said he was going to do his own thing and if people wanted the game storyline they should play the games. So, why is he taking characters from the games and messing them up??? =/
 
I have mixed feelings for the live action RE movies- mostly negative ones. I've lost track of how many movies there are now with this new one coming out, but once 3D started to become a thing, that's when the series went from bad/cheesy to utter crap with storytelling.

The first Resident Evil movie was good despite not featuring any of the game's characters. It was an interesting take on how the outbreak in the mansion took place- right down to the Alice character being the bitch in the red dress trying to expose Umbrella (like mentioned in the mansion letter from the first game). I actually like it better than RE0's story as that game was over-the-top. However my biggest complaint for the first movie is the exaggerated design of the underground lab. Less is more and I would have loved to have seen a more older looking lab along with a bit more of the iconic mansion that conceals said lab.

Resident Evil Extinction would have to be the next best flick from the series- in my opinion. I actually love the desert look as well as the grungy feel to the characters. Obviously it's not perfect and there is plenty of room for improvements, but I remember thinking that some of the sets looked like fun and even the final boss fight was enjoyable and intense. Despite Claire not really matching Claire's appearance from the games, her personality at least sort of fit better than Jill's from Apocalypse.

I get that the source material is also a bit over-the-top to the point where it is ridiculous at times, but I was hoping for a realistic spin and better story development with the movie format. They could have easily done some new and creative things with the movies that the games have yet to even do (like a Chris and Barry team up or even Chris and Leon). But it all needs to be about ALICE. The CGI is over used (especially with this 3D nonsense) and the writing is even worse to the point where all of the characters from the games are suffering because they are an afterthought.

This wouldn't be the first time Paul Anderson took a great opportunity and crapped on it however- ahem AVP. He had a decent concept going for that film and, looking at Event Horizon, he had the potential of making a great sci-fi action/horror flick and somehow screwed that one up as well. But at least he made his money- that's all this means to him because it damn sure is not about creativity.
 
Last edited:
For me, all the movies save for maybe the first one feel more like a sequence of scenes that are supposed to be hyper-visual and 'badass' strung together to make a movie. It's like they made a list of all the scenes in the games (or in general) that they wanted to show on screen and deliberately wrote the movies around those scenes, rather than writing an articulate, neat plot with scenes that enhance and drive forward the story.
 
La Femme Fatale said:
For me, all the movies save for maybe the first one feel more like a sequence of scenes that are supposed to be hyper-visual and 'badass' strung together to make a movie. It's like they made a list of all the scenes in the games (or in general) that they wanted to show on screen and deliberately wrote the movies around those scenes, rather than writing an articulate, neat plot with scenes that enhance and drive forward the story.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what happened. Well said
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom