Resident Evil Movie Franchise

We all have our guilty pleasures and there’s no shame in that, after all we all prefer good food but we still like going to our preferred fast-food chain. These are my McDonalds. There’s no doubt these are bad films, they make no sense but they entertain me so much, I could watch them all back-to-back with a six pack and a batch of junk food and enjoy Milla Jovovich fighting zombies and monsters with over-stylised action, her interchangeable sidekicks, pretty locations and bad one-liners. And the day would be over before I know it.

To make it clear, I've never played the games; therefore I look at these as just movies in their own right and not as video-game adaptations. It certainly doesn’t matter if you played the games or not since the films all focus on a character, Alice, whom doesn’t exist in the games, and the characters from the games appear as supporting roles to Alice’s story. I’m sure those characters are more fleshed out in the games.

All six entries star Milla Jovovich as Alice, a woman who knows nothing about her past other than she headed security for the Umbrella Corporation whom she attempted to take down after discovering their evil secrets. She lost her memory when the T-Virus breaks loose, however throughout the franchise she continues to fight against Umbrella and the monsters they created.

These certainly aren’t just zombie movies, there are various monsters such as Lickers, Nemesis, Axman and many others. We also get zombie dogs and crows, the zombies themselves evolve as the films go on they start off slow and get faster and some even grow tentacles out of their mouths. However it’s not the zombies and monsters that are the true enemies it’s Umbrella themselves with their crazy experiments and inventions; the clones, the simulations, the laser corridors, the AI Red and White Queens, the mind controlling scarabs. With all that the biggest threats to Alice are the humans behind Umbrella particularly Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glenn) and Wesker (Shawn Roberts).

In each film Alice is supported by a group of characters, however her main ally in each is always female. In the first film we have Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), the second film Jill (Sienna Guillory), the fifth film has Ada (Li Bingbing) with Rain and Jill returning in villainess roles, her most frequent ally however is Claire (Ali Larter) who appears in the third, fourth and sixth installment. What I like so much these female allies is that I never feel like they hold back Alice’s character or try to one-up her, they support her just as she supports them. It’s also refreshing to have a mostly female-lead franchise where the women don’t talk about dating or even men in any sense.

Alice does have her share of male allies too such as Matt (Eric Mabius) in the first film, Carlos in the second and third, Chris (Wentworth Miller) in the forth and Luther (Boris Kodjoe) in the fourth and fifth. Out of all the male allies only one of them serves as a sort of love interest, Carlos, and even then they only share one moment in that regard which does not feel out of place at all, there’s even a bit of an alternate reality scene with them as married couple in the fifth movie which was kind of sweet. Apart from that however this far from a dating franchise.

Here are brief synopses of each film along with my opinions on them.

Resident Evil (2002)

A special military unit fights a powerful, out-of-control supercomputer and hundreds of scientists who have mutated into flesh-eating creatures after a laboratory accident.

Excellent start to the series. I like the mystery aspect as it keeps you guessing what’s happening and who should be trusted. The underground Hive is a great setting, offers many locations for some cool action scenes i.e. the laser corridor, and at times offers a claustrophobic environment.

Milla Jovovich does keep you invested in a character that is essentially a blank-slate, although it does also help she spends the whole film in that hot red dress. Michelle Rodriguez is a great support as Rain, a commando who tough as nails, full of sarcasm and whom you’d never want to cross paths with.

I love the little nods to Alice in Wonderland, not just the name of our protagonist but the name of the mansion is called “Looking Glass House”, Alice goes underground through mirrored-doors, we see a white rabbit being experimented on and of course we have the Red Queen who actually succeeds in cutting someone’s head off. Also the Red Queen being an AI is clearly a reference to Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And there’s also direct homage George Romero’s (the king of zombies) Day of the Dead with the “The Dead Walk” newspaper headline.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Alice awakes in Raccoon City, only to find it has become infested with zombies and monsters. With the help of Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera, Alice must find a way out of the city before it is destroyed by a nuclear missile.

After spending the first film entirely underground, it was a refreshing change of pace to take place in a city as it makes the locations limitless such as a church, a school and also freedom to use motorbike and helicopter stunts.

The title is very fitting as this is the only entry where the apocalypse play out, the first film was pre-apocalypse and the following four were post-apocalypse. It was great to briefly see the normal city suddenly decay as the zombies become loose and the whole city is in panic.

Sienna Guillory is a good support as Jill, not that I’m complaining but it’s very questionable why she’s dressed to fight in mini-skirt and tube top. Oded Fehr is great as Carlos, he and Jovovich have great chemistry with the very little dialogue they share. Jared Harris is very good Dr. Ashford as well as young Sophie Vavasseur as his daugher Angela. Iain Glenn is also great in his brief role as the evil Dr. Isaacs.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Survivors of the Raccoon City catastrophe travel across the Nevada desert, hoping to make it to Alaska. Alice joins the caravan and their fight against the evil Umbrella Corp.

Cool idea setting this movie in the desert, which leads to the ruins of Las Vegas.

This is definitely the coolest look of Alice, with her scruffy tied-back hair, her duster coat, brown shorts and holster straps. This is also the only film where we get to see "Super-Alice" in her full glory and it was awesome to see. 

Oded Fehr reprise his role as Carlos and still has great chemistry with Jovovich, and has even more to do. Iain Glenn is also back as the evil Dr. Isaacs and also gets to more with the role. Here we are introduced to Ali Larter as Claire who leads a convoy of survivors with Carlos, she’s a welcome addition and would go on to be Alice’s most frequent ally. Which I’m glad as I feel Larter is a stronger actress than Guillory and Claire is just a more well-rounded character whom I wouldn’t mind leading a spin-off movie. Another nice addition is Spencer Locke as a teenage girl who calls herself K-Mart because that’s where Claire found her.

The infected crows scene is one of the best moments in the franchise, and clearly an homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

While still out to destroy the evil Umbrella Corporation, Alice joins a group of survivors living in a prison surrounded by the infected who also want to relocate to the mysterious but supposedly unharmed safe haven known only as Arcadia.

I will say this is the most visually stunning out of all films in the franchise. From the Umbrella facility in Tokyo, the lakes in Alaska, the prison surrounded by the cities in ruins to the Arcadia ship. With some glorious action scenes like the Alice clone attack and Claire vs Axeman, all done in glorious slow-motion.

Alice in this film loses her powers, which I did miss but they needed to add some vulnerability back to the character after she basically became indestructible. Ali Larter as Claire is back, who is also at a vulnerable state as she has memory loss and her convoy is missing. It was great to see these two women give each other the strength they need and also put their trust in each other. Wentworth Miller joins as a prisoner in the jail, Chris, who is Claire’s long-lost brother whom of course she doesn’t recognise. Sadly they don’t share much dialogue, which is a shame I could imagine Larter and Miller making a great duo, they at least get a cool action scene as the siblings take on Wesker.

This used to be my favourite of the franchise but I have to admit not much really happens story-wise, there are some revelations sure but not so much progression. Still style-over-substance is not always a bad thing and there are plenty of show-don’t-tell moments that make up for it.

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Alice fights alongside a resistance movement to regain her freedom from an Umbrella Corporation testing facility.

This is the weakest entry to the series sure, but it’s certainly no less entertaining than the others.

It was nice to see many cast members from the first two films return, all playing against their original roles. First we have Sienna Guillory back as Jill looking completely different (although dressed no less skimpy) who is under mind control by Umbrella. Then we get Colin Salmon, Oded Fehr and Michelle Rodriguez return as evil clones of One, Carlos and Rain. Rodriguez and Fehr along with Jovovich get to play clones as regular people living in the suburbs, with Alice and Carlos as a married couple with a deaf daughter.

But just like my problem with Afterlife nothing really happens to push the story forward apart from a cool setup for the Final Chapter at the end. While the visuals are pretty I will it looks a little too clean for a post-apocalyptic movie, it makes sense since the whole movie takes in the Umbrella facility with simulated locations but personally I wanted to see more of the outer locations. 

Many of the additional characters such as Leon (Johann Urb) and Ada (Li Bingbing) were clearly there just as fan-service for the game players, being a non-gamer myself it was still very noticeable to me. They’re not awful additions but I didn’t like that they came pretty much at the expense of Chris and Claire. 

Alice’s relationship to her ‘daughter’ Becky is clearly supposed to be an homage Ripley and Newt from Aliens. There’s a scene that’s a direct homage which kind of feels out of place, where Becky is captured by a Licker and which traps he in goo for pretty much no reason and Alice is rescues her with ease. But for what it’s worth Aryana Engineer is pretty talented for a young actress, so much so that they rewrote the character as partially deaf as Engineer is in real life.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

Alice returns to where the nightmare began: The Hive in Raccoon City, where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike against the only remaining survivors of the apocalypse.

Saved the best for last, what a way to end a series! This is the most intense and gritty out of all the films. Forget all the colourful visuals and slow-mo action from the last two films, this film is dark and the action is so much faster. Even Alice is looking rough, spending the whole film dirty and scratched up. This is really the first time in the franchise we get to properly experience the post-apocalyptic world, since Extinction is set entirely in the desert, Afterlife we only see bits of it and Retribution is set entirely in Umbrella facility. So it's great to see Alice in the ruins of the White House heading back to what is left of Racoon City.

Ali Larter makes a very welcome return as Claire, her absence from the last film was noticeable. Although she has slightly less to do this time, she’s still very much in on the action and offers the emotional support Alice needs. Iain Glen reprises his role as the evil Dr. Isaacs and almost steals the show. He does almost come at the expense of Shawn Roberts as Wesker, who is back but feels severely wasted this time. The additional cast aren’t that special, Eoin Macken as Doc is the strongest of the bunch and Ruby Rose does have a lot of presence with the very little she has to do, the rest are pretty blink-you-miss. Paul and Milla’s real life daughter Ever Gabo Anderson takes over the role of the Red Queen and she is very good and the resemblance to her mother is uncanny.

This really delivers on a lot of nostalgia for the first film and brought closure to the story it setup. Alice discovering the ultimate truth was pretty emotional and Milla Jovovich put her heart and soul into this. What an amazing moment seeing Alice side-by-side with the Red Queen and Alicia, also played by Jovovich in age makeup.

The frequently asked question is this really the end? I think so. The film does end with Alice’s narration saying that it could take years for the anti-virus to spread across the world and her work is not done, which suggests sequel-bait. I don’t see that however, Umbrella is no more and she has no more human enemies to fight. I think Paul WS Anderson and Milla just wanted end Alice’s story with her still fighting because that’s what she does best. Another big suggestion this the end, all the previous films ends on a cliffhanger with the camera zooming out while this one ends with a close-up of Alice’s face and zooms in on her eye.

So the real big question that this film leaves us with is what happened to the other characters; Angela, Chris, K-Mart, Jill, Leon, Becky and Ada? Well it’s kind of implied that they’re all dead. It’s believed Alice killed Angela when she had no control of her powers, that’s why she isolated herself all that time between the second and third film. K-Mart was most likely killed along with the other people during the Arcadia attack. When Claire said she got captured after the Arcadia attack, she got into a helicopter crash that implies Chris had died. And of course it’s highly possible Jill, Leon, Ada and Becky were killed during the attack on the White House after being betrayed by Wesker. Since many of them are characters from the game, I guess they didn’t want to upset the fans by killing them especially off-screen. Could be possible they’re still alive and are having their own survival adventures like they do in the games (since I don’t play the games I don’t actually know if that works continuity wise, but it’s a theory). Like I said at the start, these characters are only there to serve Alice’s story. Also technically we don’t really get closure on Claire, sure we see her alive and well at the end but then we see Alice ride off on her own, so where’s Claire now? Maybe she’s gone off to find Chris and K-Mart, and maybe Alice going off to find Becky and the others.

Here’s a summary of what has been revealed and a tie-up of loose ends. Dr. James Marcus was the creator of the T-virus while Dr. Charles Ashford was the creator of the anti-virus. Alicia Marcus had progeria which inspired her father to create the T-virus to reverse the effects and he recorded her likeness and voice before her condition worsened, however Dr. Marcus discontinued his research on the T-virus after an incident occurred and was murdered by both Dr. Isaacs and Wesker for disagreeing their proposal to mass produce the virus for power purposes. Dr. Isaacs used the likeness and voice of young Alicia Marcus to create an artificial intelligence known as the Red Queen that was programmed to ease his workload by giving her the responsibilities of controlling Umbrella. Dr. Charles Ashford took the T-Virus to experiment on it for his daughter Angela to cure her disability and doing so created the anti-virus. Alice’s clone army delayed Umbrella’s development because they caused a great deal of damage at some headquarters. Claire was abducted during the Arcadia attack but escaped when the plane crashed. Wesker faked his betrayal of Umbrella and the Red Queen’s mass kill to lead Alice to a trap so he could personally kill her and the gang. Wesker injected Alice with a fake serum to make her believe that she regained her powers so he could gain her trust and kill her when she was caught off-guard. Umbrella’s true agenda was biblical-inspired "Noah's Ark for the rich" as they say and Dr. Isaacs was the mastermind from the very beginning. Umbrella developed an airborne version of the anti-virus to use it to destroy the infection after humanity has been wiped out. The Hive housed thousands of rich and powerful Umbrella employees inside cryogenic chambers waiting for the cleansing to finish and then repopulate Earth. Alice is in fact a clone of Alicia Marcus, not just any clone but the first clone that represented Alicia as the woman she could never become as her progeria aged her rapidly from a little girl to an old woman. The Red Queen granted Alice with Alicia’s memories of her childhood memories so Alice could go on to live a full life that Alicia never could.

So all in all, I love this franchise. I’m so glad I stuck with this franchise over the years, patiently waiting for the next not when or where they were going to end and to get six entries of a complete story. Not art or the best films ever made by any means but my ultimate guilty pleasure.