Resident Evil Adaptations Explained: A Licker’s Guide to 20 Years of Films and TV Shows
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The post Resident Evil Adaptations Explained: A Licker’s Guide to 20 Years of Films and TV Shows appeared first on Consequence.
The history of video game adaptations is replete with failure, Hollywood attempting to glom the thin characters, ropey storylines, and innately gamified nature of popular game franchises to the big or small screens. Some work better than others (Mortal Kombat ’95 good; Mortal Kombat ’21 bad), but few franchises have tried as often as Resident Evil.
Capcom’s flagship action-horror franchise has been a staple for decades, with dozens of games under its umbrella (eh?). It’s a series with deep, convoluted mythology, with the evil Umbrella Corporation and its attendant T-viruses and G-viruses. There’s also a host of grizzled protagonists, slimy beasties, and helpless young girls your characters are forced to rescue. But adapting the material to film or TV becomes tricky: Do you lean into all that mythos for something that’ll keep the fans happy? Do you try something totally different and hope the spirit of the games will come through?
Hollywood has been making Resident Evil adaptations for 20 years(!) now, from the long-running Paul W.S. Anderson-directed films to the 2021 reboot to, most recently, Netflix’s new live-action series. And in that time, they’ve run from one end of that aforementioned spectrum to the other, alternating between full-on in-universe fanservice to wild swings at new stories.
With the franchise’s flexibility in mind, we thought we’d look back at the Resident Evil adaptations we’ve seen thus far, and whether any of them match the spirit of the series at its best.
The Milla Jovovich Resident Evils (2002-2016)
Paul W.S. Anderson’s six-film Resident Evil series (as producer and overall creative head, at least; he handed off the second and third films to other directors) is quite the odd duck as an adaptation of the games. The first film in the series was a barely-connected Aliens riff, chucking most of the characters and settings in favor of an unrelated cast of gruff Umbrella commandos (including Michelle Rodriguez) and an amnesiac protagonist (Milla Jovovich’s superpowered Alice). It clearly showed Anderson’s passion for the source material but largely felt like a self-contained companion piece to the games.
But as the series continued, it threw in one character after another from the games, its cast growing alongside its scope until it became an apocalyptic mishmash of video game references and cinematic hagiography of Jovovich as the ultimate female action hero. Anderson, who married Jovovich in 2009, clearly loves how she looks and fights on screen, making the films charming as cinematic love letters to his spouse’s incredible talents.
Storywise, the Anderson Resident Evils play out like a zombie-meets-Mad Max soap opera, with amnesia, evil clones, and resurrected characters galore. But there’s something (figuratively) infectious about the chaos, especially as the series reaches its later self-referential installments. Resident Evil: Retribution, with its cartoon physics and meta references to characters and films past, maybe the most innately cinematic one of the series.
These films, messy as they are, feel like true products of adaptation, a filmmaker taking what he likes about the source material and doing his own thing with it. The later decision to retroactively work in characters and events from the games makes the mess even more charming: This is especially clear in entries like Afterlife, which just plop in the Matrix-inspired version of Albert Wesker from the games and set him loose in dorky slow-motion kung fu fights.
The Anderson films aren’t the best adaptations of a video game by any stretch, but they feel the most faithful, unique, and — if you’re in the right mindset for some schlocky action cheese — entertaining.
The Japanese CG Animated Films (2008-2017)
Meanwhile, as Anderson and Jovovich were having fun in the States, Japan decided to make a trilogy of CG-animated films that hewed much more closely to the games’ look, aesthetics, and vibes. Degeneration (2008), Damnation (2011), and Vendetta (2017), respectively, notably take place as canonical, Capcom-approved events within the world of the games, and follow Resident Evil 2 game protagonists like Leon Kennedy, Chris and Claire Redfield, and Ada Wong as they fill in adventures between the games.
For what it’s worth, the decision to go full photorealistic CG is interesting, even if the overall effect makes it feel like you’re watching particularly long cutscenes. It’s also purely for game diehards; you’ve got to be already invested in Leon et al. as characters if you have a prayer of caring about what’s happening on screen. Still, it has its moments of endearing excess, like this hilariously close-quarters gunfight from Resident: Evil Vendetta:
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021)
Another installment of the CG animated films (of sorts), Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is a four-episode anime that also takes place within the games’ timeline, fitting somewhere between 4 and 5. (Definitely after 4, since characters simply refuse to shut up about the time Leon rescued the president’s daughter.) But it’s mostly its own standalone story, as both Leon and Claire investigate the source of a zombified hack attack on the White House and its connection to an incident in the fictional Middle Eastern country of “Panemstan.”
The animation’s better than ever here, but it feels just as vestigial as the other CG pictures, more committed to keeping the canonical wheels spinning than to delivering truly satisfying zombie action.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Johannes Roberts’ redo of the live-action film series, released theatrically, was billed as a faithful return to the games for fans who didn’t want any of that Mary Sue, canon-breaking, Milla Jovovich stuff. And to its credit, it does its best to re-adapt the events of the first and second games, playing them out simultaneously as both casts of characters from the games (now played by Canadian TV’s finest day players, like Kaya Scodelario, Robbie Amell, and Neal McDonough) play out the events of the T-virus’ inaugural assault on Raccoon City.
Roberts’ decision to filter the story through a heavy sheen of John Carpenter homages (from its Assault on Precinct 13 vibes to cribbing Carpenter’s signature Albertus font) lends it a lot of atmosphere, granted. But the film loses any sense of charm or thrills in a sea of familiar Easter eggs intended squarely for eagle-eyed obsessives of the first two games. No need for interesting, non-expository dialogue when you can just recreate the cathedral-like police station from the second game, or have Leon shoot the bulging eyes protruding from the film’s end monster (those are his weak spots!).
Where Anderson took big, endearingly dumb swings (many of them, to be fair, falling flat on their face), his work is at least more vivid and interesting than watching Roberts and a flailing cast go through the motions.
Netflix’s Live-Action Resident Evil (2022)
But sometimes, reinventing the wheel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as Netflix’s Resident Evil series shows us. This new series, helmed by Supernatural‘s Andrew Dabb, chucks the existing canon totally out the window, keeping only Umbrella, the T-virus and Albert Wesker (now a concerned father figure/scientist played by Lance Reddick, hardly the sinister T-1000 of the games and films).
Instead, we see two ends of the zombie apocalypse as filtered through the perspective of Jade Wesker; first, as a teen (Tamara Smart), we see her trying to fit in at a new school while daddy Albert toys with the T-virus to appease the money-hungry execs at Umbrella; then, as an adult (Ella Balinska), she struggles to survive the chaos of a world after zombies.
To its credit, the bits with adult Jade are pretty great; Balinska is a mighty successor to Jovovich, and the show offers up some suitably creepy creatures (including a giant caterpillar in the premiere and a giant spider in Episode 3). But in its zeal to cut costs and appeal to a younger audience, the YA half sends the story screeching to a halt, and breaks up the pacing of either story.
Plus, at the end of the day, it barely feels like Resident Evil. If you changed Wesker’s name and the evil company’s name, this could be any old Netflix original zombie series. But as is, it feels more like To All The Zombies I’ve Loved Before. (Not that that doesn’t sound amazing.)
Twenty years of Resident Evil adaptations, and Capcom is still looking for the formula to keep the series alive beyond its games. The game series is constantly shifting, much like its virus-addled antagonists: creature feature horror turns to arcade action, then back again; third-person shooters become first-person tales of gritty survival. The films and shows seem to be experimenting in much the same way, toying around with ingredients to see what will work best. Who knows what new mutations the next adaptation of the series will bring?
Resident Evil Adaptations Explained: A Licker’s Guide to 20 Years of Films and TV Shows
Clint Worthington
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