Amph A Zombie-Dog-Jumpkickin' Good Time: RE, Apocalypse,Extinction, Afterlife,Retribution & Final Chapter

Well, Afterlife was a disappointing entry in the series- easily the weakest one so far, despite the previous sequels all being an improvement over the prior film.

The first segment of the film comes across as more "Ultraviolet 2" than "Resident Evil", and is basically just an excuse to get rid of Alice's superpowers and her clone army.

However, in a very dumb way, it kinda works as a literal translation of mid-range anime shows/films, in that it's set in Japan, in a massive underground hi-tech corporate fortress/base, with the super ninja(s) taking down armed soldiers serving under the command of the prototypical square-necked, sunglasses-wearing super-calm business suit villain.

Taken like that, it's enjoyable in a dumb-cartoon kind of way (though, oddly enough, the split-screen effects for the multi-Alices are kinda awful).

The primary middle chunk of the film, in the prison, is actually pretty decent and more in line with the previous films in terms of tone and style. A couple decent sequences, a Dawn of the Dead flair and the cool (if random) fight with the giant axe creature. The film producer character is an absolute waste of screen time, though- terribly written and played in the most cliched way possible. The use of Chris was a nice touch here as well.

Then the finale ties back to the intro and becomes a blatant "let's rip off the Matrix as much as we can- but in 3D!" sequence. It turns the previously-context-appropriate suit villain into a Mr Smith ripoff (they weren't even trying to hide to the similarities here) and just feels lacking.

But, as usual, they have a good cliffhanger. Which leads to...

Resident Evil 5 on the way

Milla: "This new Resident Evil is the first one to ever open at No. 1 worldwide. It?s the biggest movie in the franchise...
So we?re definitely going to make another one,? she said, adding that director Paul W.S. Anderson, her husband, already has some ideas for the fifth Resident Evil installment, and this time he wants the audience's ideas, too.

 

That actually reminds me- one other thing different about this 4th movie is that it's the first to not have some kind of gratuitous Milla micro-nudity shot in it.

 

You know, I didn't even make the connection to Prison Break (I didn't watch that show). That's great!

 

Sony Sets-Up RE5

Sony Pictures is planning to continue its "Resident Evil" franchise with a fifth entry in the series currently being targeted for a September 14th 2012 release.

Despite all the films receiving a critical drubbing, the franchise has only modest expenses (budgets of $35-60 million) and it has done increasing business with each entry.

Last year's "Resident Evil Afterlife" however, the first film in the franchise to be shot in 3D, surprised everyone. Domestically little changed with a $60 million gross up only slightly from the third film's $50 million haul.

Overseas however, the franchise suddenly jumped in significance with a $236 million gross - up dramatically from the previous franchise high of $97 million for the third film.

The new date means only two years will pass between entries, a shorter wait than the three year gap between the previous films.

 

So RE5 is almost upon us- though it seems more like Afterlife than it's predecessors, sadly (did they really have to turn the Agent Smith ripoff into a recurring mega-villain?)- but hopefully it can prove me wrong. On the upside, this one seems to have a more interesting concept behind it, with the various good and evil clones presumably) of all the past characters- so at least there's some new kind of dynamic they can play with that will be more interesting than Afterlife's "Paul Anderson Plays With James Cameron's Toys" 3D thrust.

 

Well, retribution was worse than Afterlife. The franchise is officially downhill. No doubt, that means it'll still make a ton of cash. On the upside, the cliffhanger implies the next movie will be the last.


So, this one is just kinda all over the place... it dwells on sequences it shouldn't (such as the suburbia sim that goes on way too long and brings the post-opening-credits to a crawl pace (despite what goes on), skips ahead of major focus/theme shifts from the last movie. And it blatantly misses even obviously character arc/development moments (so far as one can expect from the series).

The only thing to it's credit is that it's middle segment manages to recapture a bit of the first film's "B-movie Aliens reipoff" structure/setting (however this is weakened by the retread of the Red Queen and her obvious dialogue commands- who the hell is she speaking to/projecting at anyways? the words on the computer screen saying the same thing she's speaking are more than sufficient).

The actress playing Jill was obviously never cast with the intention of playing a badguy- she's terrible in this film. And is there some rule that Kevin Durand has to be cast in at least one bad movie every year as a kinda awesome character? He's by far the best thing in the film (much like he was a couple years ago in Legion).

Rodriguez is wasted here

Spoiler

as her bad guy clone is basically just present for a random fight (acting totally random in infecting herself intentionally with the other virus) and as setup as a main antagonist for the next movie) and her good guy clone has absolutely no point in the movie at all- it's like a random cameo.

Alice almost seems to have an arc here with her clone's daughter (and some of their moments together are actually pretty decent) with the payoff being her full acceptance as her mom... except that Alice kinda takes to her from the start as a Mom so there's really no progression. It's just affirmation of what we've seen all film long.

None of the other clones are used to any effect or character dynamic. Wasted cameos.

Agent Smith Rip-Off is thankfully at a minimum here, but he's shifted from Main Bad Guy to Frenemy at random with the Red Queen now suddenly being the Big Bad again. However, he's still bad in all his scenes- especially with him and the Asian chick having to deliver some painfully obvious expositionary dialogue.

And tell me those weren't Zerg Mutalisks at the end.

I think I'll be happy just pretending the series ended with the 3rd film. That way the series only gets better as it progresses and goes out on a high note.

 

The third one works the best, probably because it has the least to do with the games and is still somewhat grounded while being about groups of survivors. The first two were trying to be companion side-stories to the original games, while the 4th and beyond became anime-fests based more overtly around other movie concepts, dropping all pretenses with Alice as a superhero (though the 4th at least still provides something of a focused survival situation with the prison).

Plus the 3rd wasn't directed by Anderson.

 

Next film once again confirmed to be the last, with a tentative title of "The Final Chapter.". Anderson is currently writing the first draft.

At this point I'm just morbidly curious to see how it ends- the series clearly peaked with the third film but the last two have been pretty awful.

 

They've delayed the final film to accommodate Milla's new pregnancy.

 

A TV series based on the films is being developed. No word on if it's a reboot or continuation, HOWEVER.

This might actually be a good thing- the last couple films have been horrible often because they keep trying to bigger in scale and throw in all this anime Matrix stuff. Scaling the budget back to a TV scale might force them to focus on the smaller B-movie setups from the first 3 films that were often much more effective.

 

Tweaser released, full teaser goes online on the 9th.

 

Trailer:

(I'm not sure Milla could say the words "final", "chapter" or "Resident Evil" more in so few sentences during the intro)

Poster:


Are they mocking... Mockingjay? lol


Trailer is actually pretty fun- kinda reminds me of the trailer for the second film (the one with the Papa Roach track).

 

I loved 5's premise with the clones but the execution was so bad. 1-2 are still fun B-movies. 3 is still my favorite. 4 was half-decent but fell apart in the second half.

 

I think that was for the second film. That trailer had really good use of a Papa Roach song which kicked in around that moment, IIRC.

EDIT- yep: