By 
The following was written by Jaime Vasquez:
With Zach Cregger’s new Resident Evil movie coming to theatres, it’s a good time to look back at the six-film Milla Jovovich franchise that came before it.
By the time Resident Evil: The Final Chapter arrived, Resident Evil had become the highest-grossing film series based on a video game. Critics and audiences haven’t always agreed on the quality of the films, but one thing is certain: it’s been a bumpy ride of near-deaths, supposed deaths, clone deaths, revivals, promises that never came through, and so much more. And at the center of all six films is a character who never even appeared in the games: Alice. Along the way, some familiar faces joined her, some disappeared without explanation, and some probably should’ve stayed pixelated.
So how did Alice become the face of Resident Evil on the big screen? How well have the films held up? And what’s been consistently inconsistent throughout the six films? Let’s head over to Raccoon City and learn why the Resident Evil movies are insane.
The six Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies follow Alice as she battles the Umbrella Corporation, the T-Virus and increasingly bizarre experiments. Along the way, the series brings in game characters including Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira, Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield, Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy, and Albert Wesker, while repeatedly complicating its continuity with clones, amnesia, revivals, and characters who mysteriously disappear.
Resident Evil (2002)
The Umbrella Corporation is Resident Evil‘s version of Skynet. An anonymous person steals the tube containing the deadly T-Virus and purposely contaminates the underground facility called the Hive, where Umbrella employees work. The Hive has its own artificial intelligence known as the Red Queen. Because she’s designed to have the appearance of a little girl, the information she communicates can sometimes be creepy. And sometimes she’s just annoying.
The Red Queen locks down the building and traps everyone inside, killing hundreds of people. There’s a bit of a gray area because, yes, she was trying to save the rest of the world, but she killed hundreds of people to do it. But I guess if there was some sort of weeding-out process, it’d probably take too much time, and we probably wouldn’t have a movie.
Enter Milla Jovovich as Alice, who wakes up in a mansion without remembering who she is or what she’s doing there after the Red Queen releases a gas that gives her a strong case of amnesia. Alice and a man named Matt are seized by a commando team and taken to the Hive, where we discover that the little AI girl is up to her old tricks. She launches a laser grid to kill the commando team. While the CGI hasn’t held up, the shocking moment has. The team’s unsuccessful attempt to survive and the silent aftermath feel coldblooded.
And then we have zombies. Or, since so many zombie movies insist on sidestepping the word, we have the infected. Either way, they appear, and it’s a gradual build toward mayhem.
Michelle Rodriguez as Rain Ocampo comes off as a hardened officer who’s not going to play by anybody’s rules but her own. While this doesn’t make her particularly likable, all that is reversed when she’s bitten by a zombie and slowly dies as a result. Her willingness to push through and her intended sacrifice prove her bravery. But the infection takes over, she mutates, and Matt kills her. And the movie also makes us care about Matt.
Matt’s sister was one of the people killed in the Hive. He also gets bitten and clawed by a Licker, basically a super-zombie with exposed muscle and a long, reptile-like tongue. The clawing begins the transformation process, and while Alice tries to inject him with the antivirus, he’s taken by scientists who turn him into an enhanced human/creature hybrid called Nemesis.
Nemesis originated in the video game and was actually influenced by the T-1000. So Matt doesn’t even get the chance to be a non-sentient zombie thirsting for human flesh. Instead, he’s a monster with vague feelings still lingering underneath, basically just another product of the Umbrella Corporation. Just another experiment.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
In the direct sequel, Apocalypse, Alice wakes up in an abandoned hospital and walks out into evacuated Raccoon City, which is above the Hive. Scared and alone, she looks for clothes and survival supplies. Meanwhile, Jill Valentine, a popular video game character, enters the cinematic equation and steals the movie. She’s competent without coming off as arrogant, and she knows how to handle her weaponry. We also meet L.J., who is actually pretty effective and necessary comic relief.
They hide out in a church and meet Alice, who understandably has her guard up. However, her Batman-like moodiness is a little much, especially since this is only the second movie. Girl, pace yourself.
They’re joined by Terri, a news reporter who records their journey, only to get eaten by a swarm of zombies. Her camera catches the whole thing, which is brutal.
Dr. Charles Ashford is an Umbrella scientist who goes rogue from his employers and sets out to find his daughter, Angie. Wheelchair-bound and unable to search for her himself, he promises Alice and her crew a way out of Raccoon City if they find the girl and bring her back safely. The group retrieves Angie from her school, but then they run into a whole lot of mutated creatures, as you would expect. Not just zombies, but zombie Dobermans.
Able to escape with the help of Umbrella soldier Carlos Oliveira, they take Angie to her father. But barrel-of-sunshine Major Timothy Cain requests that Alice fight Nemesis to determine which is the stronger and more useful experiment. When Alice refuses, Cain shoots Dr. Ashford. I guess it was inevitable that Ashford would die, but the quick and cold moment was a bit much, especially since we’ve spent the entire movie tracking down his daughter. The father and daughter reunite for about a minute before lights out. A nice twist occurs when Ashford turns into a zombie and eventually eats the hell out of Cain, but it’s bittersweet nonetheless.
Alice ends up fighting Nemesis, who still has traces of Matt underneath. While she nearly triumphs over the gigantic creature, she can’t bring herself to kill him. Then the film’s thank-you to him is that he’s killed while trying to protect Alice, who’s subsequently impaled on a metal pole and taken by Umbrella.
Carlos, Jill, L.J., and Angie rescue her, and it almost feels like the reunion of an unconventional family and the assembling of a team that’s off to do great things. Until it doesn’t.
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Extinction lives up to its title. Not because the human race is extinct, but because the ideas they had to move forward with at the end of Apocalypse were totally wiped out. Instead, we get Alice in the desert with little to no explanation of what happened to the rest of the group, at least not at first. Angie, who the plot was centered around in Apocalypse, never reappears. In the novelization for Extinction, it’s written that a mind-controlled Alice shoots and kills Angie. So this franchise has a bunch of characters like Chucky’s Nica Pierce, whose fate just gets progressively worse to the point of wondering why these people even exist.
Extinction moves unnecessarily slowly. If you’re going to ease into the mayhem like the original movie, fine, but at least fill it with something interesting. Alice’s desert life feels like the B-roll accidentally made its way into the final cut. Our gal runs into a group of men and an older woman who try to kill her. In a post-apocalyptic world, do you really want to kill a presumably fertile woman?
We meet a convoy under attack by a flock of infected crows. The scene would work on its own, but thrown into the sluggish early part of the film, it really emphasizes how much nothing is going on.
One thing this sequel does have going for it is the team feeling that the ending of Apocalypse promised, although maybe less interesting. Ali Larter as Claire Redfield is a good replacement for Jill, and it continues the two-alpha-female dynamic that Alice and Jill had going in the previous film. It’s also another smooth transition of the video game characters into the films.
Kmart, who gets her name because they found her in a Kmart, is a likable character. And lucky for her they didn’t find her at a Target because that would’ve been very confusing. “Shoot, Target, now!” “Not that Target!” “Target, you got your bulletproof vest on?”
L.J. is back, still serving as comic relief but to a lesser degree since he’s dying throughout the movie. And that chemistry between Carlos and Alice in the last movie turns into one final goodbye kiss before he sacrifices himself in an exploding gas-tank truck. To be fair, he was bitten, but there could’ve been more of a tragic-love-lost angle here. The quick last kiss wasn’t it. It was like your parents forcing you to date the neighbor because they think you guys would make a cute couple.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Afterlife gives Jovovich a very non-apocalypse makeover. In Extinction, Milla sports a very short ‘do, she’s covered in layers, and pulls off the minimal-makeup look. In Afterlife, she’s been to Sephora and the salon, and suddenly it’s Resident Evil: Extreme Makeover. I don’t blame her for wanting to look good while murdering zombies, but she looked more believable in Extinction, and it was a more respectable choice. But alas, she really does look great, so I’ll shut up now.
Afterlife follows the trend of Extinction, with a lot of downtime before the bigger payoffs. Admittedly, the payoff is bigger here.
Alice flies to Alaska in a two-seater airplane and runs into Claire, whom she fights because of a spider-like device attached to her chest. The device, featuring Umbrella’s signature colors, is removed. Suddenly Claire stops fighting Alice, but she also has amnesia. Totally unsure of what’s going on, like the audience, Alice ties Claire’s hands together and brings her aboard the plane. They arrive in Los Angeles, where they find survivors holed up in a prison.
Claire reunites with her long-lost brother Chris Redfield, played by Wentworth Miller. Luther West is a welcome presence. A natural leader, he seems more confident without being bossy or grouchy. He just acts like, “We got this. I got you.” He stays. Oh, wait. I don’t make that call.
But I’m sort of back and forth on the rest of the newer characters in this chapter. Some characters, like Angel, are likable enough that their deaths hit like a gut punch rather than making you think, “Who’s that again?” Bennett, the Hollywood executive, shoots Angel after the poor guy says it’s going to take a week to fix a plane engine. How about maybe dropping the gun and picking up a wrench and helping instead of jumping to murder?
Bennett then steals Alice’s plane and flies off, but since it can only seat two people, he offers his former intern, Kim, the chance to flee. Kim does the noble thing and decides to stay with the other survivors, leaving Bennett on his own. Which doesn’t matter anyway, because the Nemesis equivalent of this movie, simply credited as “Axeman,” axes Kim in half in a split second, leaving Alice and Claire to kill him in slow motion.
While trying to get everybody out safely, Luther is attacked by a zombie. Alice, Claire, and Chris are the only ones to make it out alive.
The trio finally makes it to Arcadia, where they come across Albert Wesker, who’s got Bennett in his corner. So it’s our remaining survivors versus Wesker, Bennett, and a lot of zombie attack dogs. Wesker repeatedly pulls a Neo and dodges Chris and Claire’s attacks.
After spending most of the movie absent, we see Kmart, freed from Umbrella captivity. I don’t know how much we’re supposed to care about her, but she’s still a welcome sight somehow. Another welcome sight is Luther, whose disappearance was a fake-out and who survived! Victory is theirs! Only it’s not. Wesker weasels away.
A blonde woman wearing the same Umbrella spider device that Claire had on before talks to the camera and gives exposition. I later found out it was Jill Valentine from Apocalypse. Of course, the different hair length, hair color, and head-to-toe skin-tight purple didn’t help me identify her. But the music and the fact that it comes mid-credits means it has “Important Scene” labeled on it.
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
While the first four films offer varying degrees of quality and insanity, Retribution feels like the first movie where it’s not worth it.
Luther returns and he’s still likable, but this time he feels more like a background player. Leon makes his first and only appearance, and I wanted to like him. But between short moments of throwaway dialogue and a nonexistent character arc, I kept feeling shafted. He feels very much inserted for fans of the video game. Ada Wong was a delightful surprise. She’s tough as nails without being a cheeky MCU-like hero. No quips, just pure kickassery. She’s always ten steps ahead of Umbrella, and she’s the best thing about Retribution.
Alice and her alternate life as Michelle Rodriguez’s friend is a weird detour. Carlos Oliveira returns and is now married to our leading lady. However, he dies pretty quickly anyway, so who cares. Oded Fehr has a good performance in him, but these movies aren’t allowing him to show it.
Alice grows attached to Becky, the daughter she’s never met before. They have a nice little connection that raises the stakes. Even though it’s established she’s only the daughter of an Alice clone, it’s still interesting to see the effects on regular, everyday people who aren’t battle-worn. Becky’s terrified reaction to the zombies walking around makes the movie feel less like a video game and more like a horror film.
Wesker has returned, and again, the previous film’s lead-in to the sequel has been abandoned. Wesker himself has abandoned the Umbrella Corporation and teamed up with Ada in an attempt to team up with Alice. Fortunately, Ada kicking ass does the trio of unwilling participants a lot of favors. Too bad she gets sidelined in the third act, leaving Leon and Luther to fight not just Rain, but Rain to the tenth power.
Alice fights Jill. Luther dies, and Ada might as well die because she basically never returns. The movie ends with Ada, Jill, Leon, Wesker, and Alice on top of the White House. Wesker explains that the Red Queen is trying to wipe out humanity. I don’t even know what the Red Queen’s motivations are at this point, as she helps Alice out in the next movie. So Resident Evil: The Final Chapter should’ve been called Resident Evil: Men in Black, because these people seem to have had their memories erased.
Jill had the Umbrella spider removed from her chest and she’s back to her old self. But again, forget about that idea because she never comes back for the rest of the series. And Ada fell off the White House from posing too long with the others? I don’t know.
The movie does end with the clear message: “THIS IS HUMANITY’S LAST HOPE.” But it is not.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter makes up for anything boring in Retribution, but it still mishandles the story by throwing too much in Alice’s way. The obstacles mostly work individually, but altogether it just feels like more stalling.
The Red Queen appears and tells Alice she has 48 hours to get to the Hive. Recurring villain Dr. Isaacs is now some sort of religious cult leader. Claire Redfield returns and is actually a welcome presence. She’s actually Claire Redfield. Not a clone, an evil version, or an experiment gone awry. Just Claire.
Ruby Rose and William Levy bring their star power just long enough to die. And while Levy’s Christian is sadly a waste, Ruby Rose’s Abigail is actually smart, helpful, and a breath of fresh air. Unlike Christian, her death hurts.
Commander Chu is so good at being unlikeable that I was disappointed his death wasn’t longer. Meanwhile, Dr. Isaacs takes too long to die, enduring a lengthy battle with Alice and Claire. The fight is cool until it goes on for too long. Suddenly he’s a clone, and we’re never sure what the final word is in this allegedly Final Chapter.
Three generations of Alice appear, and it’s revealed that the Alice we’ve followed for six movies isn’t even the original Alice, which explains her lack of memory regarding her own life.
Wesker’s head is spinning from being evil yet again. Old Alice implants Young Alice’s memories into Our Alice, who should’ve been taken out by the T-Virus but survives because it’s Alice. And luckily she’s not the only one left standing because that would be too depressing. Claire survives too.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
In 2021, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City was released to a mediocre box office and an unenthusiastic critical response. The overall critique seemed to be that while the film was a faithful adaptation of the video game, it didn’t translate well onto the big screen. So maybe, after all the criticism Alice got for being shoehorned into the franchise, that criticism wasn’t exactly justified.
Zach Cregger, director of Weapons and Barbarian, is bringing a new Resident Evil reboot to theatres soon. Like the Jovovich era, it will focus on a new character who isn’t tied to the source material.
The first six films had their share of inconsistencies and loose ends, to say the least. But there’s something to be said for their consistently strong box office numbers, totaling $1.2 billion, with The Final Chapter grossing the most of the six films worldwide. So it’s not like they were running out of steam with viewers.
Wherever you land on the series, it’s easy to see why it had such a large audience. There’s something interesting about a beautiful woman surviving the apocalypse with tons of resilience and no room, time, or patience for nonsense.
The post The Resident Evil Movies Are Insane appeared first on JoBlo.
