Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Paul W.S. Anderson. 2016. ⚀

Yup. As usual in the Resident Evil movies, the cliffhanger from the previous movie is basically… just ignored?

And Anderson has adjusted to the times: The action scenes that used to be fun to watch are now basically just millisecond-cut montages of total confusion.

I’m guessing that’s just to cover a lower-than-usual budget: If you can’t actually see what’s on the screen, you don’t have to use as much money on it. Let’s see…

Here’s the 2012 movie:

And here’s this movie:

Wow. A much smaller budget, and a much higher cum gross.

That’ll learn em.

This movie is kinda painful to watch:

It gave me motion sickness 20 minutes into the movie. Every action sequence has 3-4-5 cuts every other second The camera is shaking even when all the characters are static.

I find myself looking away from the screen all the time — the editing and shakycam is indeed sickening.

Well, that wasn’t so bad…

Oh god. It’s not enough with the zombie drama? You gotta gin up this sort of fake drama, too?

I wonder whether Anderson was told to make it young and happening, and this is what he came up with? I mean, it was successful — you can’t argue with that cum gross on that budget. Perhaps the next movie will be all people standing around shouting at each other for two hours?

Saves money on zombie makeup.

This is really bad. I would normally ditch a movie this awful, but I’m morbidly curious as to how they’re going to end this. One thing’s for sure — this isn’t the final chapter of anything, but the endings of these movies are sometimes amusing. Even if the next movie completely ignores it, and I think they all did?

Resident Evil: Retribution. Paul W.S. Anderson. 2012. ⚁

Huh. This one starts with a recap of all the previous movies. I don’t think any of the other ones have?

Yeah, it’s getting a bit repetetive? In every movie, they defeat the evil corporation, but then in the next movie, it turns out that no, the evil corporation has more resources. I mean, I get it, but it does show a certain lack of … planning?

Then again, it’s a video game movie series, so whatevs.

Stonks!

Anyway, it’s like Anderson heard what I was kvetching about — so far, the movie has been all recreations of scenes from previous movies, so it’s really leaning into the “repetition” thing, only in a meta way.

Jovovich seems to be trapped in a simulation or something? It’s fun.

But then… a bunch of exposition… and…

… it seems like the world isn’t as affected by the virus as the previous movies led us to believe?

*sigh*

It’s totally lost all tension in just a couple minutes. That’s an amazing feat.

I like do action movies that are all action — not having to think about a plot can be liberating. But this one is… kinda plotless? But still has a lot of boring scenes (“character development”) in between the fun action scenes? The pacing is all wonky, and the feeling of tedium carries over from these scenes into the action pieces.

It’s just badly put together, and I expected more from Anderson. This is definitely the worst one in the series. Well, so far.

Such athletic!

I’m not sure why the Wesker (?) character is CGI now?

Perhaps we’ll find out in the next episode?

I mean, movie. But I’m not really expecting much here — half of the movies have ended this way, just for them to er forget in the next movie.

Paul W. S. is back? Cool. I mean, he’s not … you know, good, but he knows how to make a video game movie.

An army of Milla!

New-form zombies! More like Parasyte horrors, I guess?

Hey! It’s that guy from… Legends of Tomorrow.

Anyway, this started off really fun: High energy and snappy scenes. And then it conveniently dialled back the Milla Superness, so that she’s now more conveniently fabulous. Which is cheaper, special effects wise, I guess.

But now there’s all this… character development… Who wants that!?

Weapons!

OK, it’s not a perfect popcorn movie — but it’s pretty good? I mean, I was entertained… most of the time.

Resident Evil: Afterlife. Paul W.S. Anderson. 2010. ⚃