LET’S GE
YOUR SAY MOVIES
The video game movie is a strange thing. Last year we saw Assassins Creed, Angry Birds, Ratchet & Clank and Warcraft grace our silver screens, none of which lived up to the hype. It seems the video game movie is cursed, something that simply can’t be done well. That’s the popular opinion anyway. There have been many over the years from Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Need For Speed, Hitman, Silent Hill, Max Payne, Tekken, Prince of Persia even Far Cry got a movie. Nearly all of these films have been failures (Silent Hill is pretty good though... Right?) So for all of these poor attempts to bring the stories from our gaming consoles to the big screen there has been one franchise that for all its flaws seems to have worked, none other than Resident Evil. So why did Resident Evil spawn a six film franchise that has grossed over a billion dollars worldwide when so many others have failed? Well I think there are two answers to this question, one is writer director Paul W.S. Anderson and the other is star Milla Jovovich. This impressive husband and wife combo is the reason this series which started in 2002 is still going, with 2017 seeing the release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter in January this massive fifteen year saga came to a close. We may never see something like
it from the video game movie world again.
In 2002 Resident Evil hit cinema screens with a bang. I remember as a young lad in high school when this movie came out. I’ll be honest; it had an effect on me. It had a slick shine to it. It is glossy yet gritty. It contains all the trademarks of the conventional gory zombie movie yet the hyper action of an Asian martial arts film. It had a seedy corporation whose motives were horrific and added an element of corporate espionage to the film. A strange cast of characters that are for the most part hyper masculine army types with the few cowering civilians thrown along to be eaten one by one. It also gave us Alice. Milla Jovovich burst off the screen as the ultimate action babe. She was shooting hordes of zombies, fly kicking dogs in the head. As a child in the midst of puberty there is no doubt that this gorgeous action woman thrust me into some form of sexual awareness. She was beautiful yet powerful, I think every teenage boy I went to school with fell in love with her. She has a grace and real presence on screen that I feel rivals any of the 80’s action stars. Not only that, she is a woman of power in an industry dominated by men with large muscles. Not even the likes of Marvel have given a woman this much respect in film.
Alice saves the world again and again and any man who gets in her way usually gets a swift kick to the crotch or bullet to the head. She’s just a badass character. Paul W.S. Anderson is one of those oddities in the directing world for me. The way I explain it best, is that I have a rare medical disorder I call “Paul W.S. Anderson syndrome”. I know he doesn’t make the best movies, but I love them all anyway. He could key my car and I would think it was a masterpiece. There is something about the way he shoots action and horror, this hyper gloss that is just so visually appealing to me. He seems to be the kind of guy who makes a movie he wants to watch. He is there to make great, silly, escapism cinema. While it may not have the artistic merit a lot of people look for, sometimes all I want is to see guys in cars that have machine guns on them (Death Race). Or see the Three Musketeers fight on giant flying ships (The Three Musketeers). He knows how to make great popcorn films that always seem to be fun.
Regardless of why I think he is talented, it seems his love of horror, over the top action and so –badits-good dialogue have obviously grabbed the public because these films have certainly made money. The other main reason why An-