Video Games

Worst Movie Ever? Yeah, probably.

By Player 2 ⋅ April 26, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Ok, Tom, I promised you a blog about the Resident Evil movie/game cross over, and here it is.

When I first played Resident Evil, I lost my trash. I was jumping in my seat, squirming on the ground, covering my eyes, and doing my best to power through the dark rooms, just to make sure I didn’t have a heart attack. I was eleven, so back off, alright?

The concept of zombies roaming around a mansion eating police officers who are trapped inside the building by brain-crazed zombie dogs is priceless. Resident Evil invented a genre all it’s own for video games: Survival Horror.

The thing that I loved about the game was that it was basically a movie that I could control and work my way through. The length of the game, when played right was about the length of a movie. The game utilized the elements of lighting and cinematography as best it could. It even had live action actors for the biggest cut scenes. And while it all looks cheesy today, at the time it was cutting edge, inspired, and like nothing else ever done.

What makes the game cheesy isn’t the story line, however. What really killed the game was the horrible voice acting (like the classic, “Don’t. Open. That. Door.”) and the over the top cinematic clips full of the worst actors fresh out of community college. But if you look past all this, you’ve got a pretty good story.

I’m not going to go through the entire story. If you want to read about it go here:

Ok, so it’s not Shakespeare, but seriously, it was only a couple of tweaks away from being a good zombie movie. It has twists and turns and hot girls and dudes with big guns-sounds pretty much like a Hollywood blockbuster to me. So, when it was time to make a Resident Evil movie, why change it up?

I had a lot of problems with the movie. For one, the game was already a movie. Take away the element of being able to move the characters around yourself and OMG, Movie! Maybe the script could have used a few tweaks and there shouldn’t have been nearly as much running around alone, looking for pegs and what-not, but these are all little things that could have been changed over night. The game even mapped out the camera angles for the director. How much more do they want?

The second giant problem I had with the movie was the martial arts. I wanted to pull my heart out every time 5^thElement jumped in the air and kicked someone. There was never a punch or kick button in the game. There was an attack where you kick a zombie if it was biting you, but it was nothing like jumping off walls and doing back flips. It was unnecessary and ridiculous. There wasn’t even a jump button in the game. Resident Evil is known for its controls. They keep you grounded, the moves you make are very choppy, and they take a lot of getting used to. The movie didn’t fit the game what-so-ever, and only lead to more problems.

Like my third gripe. Where were all the guns? The shotgun, one of the games staples, was in the very last scene of the movie, and that’s it. The hand gun was there, and the knife, I think, and that submachine gun type weapon that’s usually in the games, oh, and the sniper rifle…wait, sniper rifle? Yeah, don’t remember that in the game. I don’t remember a lot of the weapons in that movie being in the game, actually. It’s not like the game didn’t have awesome weapons. Rocket launchers, grenade launchers, shotguns, magnums, it was pretty solid. So what they hell were they thinking?

One of the coolest things was pointing the shotgun up and blowing off 2 zombies heads at once. Why couldn’t they do that?

Let’s also talk about the characters. In the first movie they decided to not only leave out all the awesome characters from the games, they also decided to introduce 5thElement as some kind of T-Virus powered killing machine. Now, I’m not sure, but wasn’t Tyrant…well, never mind.

When part two came out I was happy to see they added some familiar characters…well…I was happy for about 3 minutes. I’ll just talk about two characters. First, there was Jill (a whole movie late, mind you) and then there was Nemesis. All I have to say about Jill’s character in the movie is “Wow.” She just kind of stood there and said a few little tiny things from time to time that didn’t matter at all. She was a total after thought. She was nothing like she was in the game and she was defiantly not worth having in the movie. All she did was cause headaches to die hard fans like myself who wanted to see her put her knee down on a zombie’s head.

Nemesis was probably one of the coolest bad guys in video game history. He was big, mean, scary as hell, and best of all- he came in a can. They had it right for the most part, but then at the end…was he crying? Oh, that’s right, they messed up the story and made him a former love interest of someone, I forget who, and he cries at the end. Why? WHY!? He’s a killing machine! He’s not supposed to cry.

Oh! Then he helps the STARS team and sacrifices himself to save the day. Have any of these people even heard of the original video game.

*Le sigh

I didn’t even see the third one.

What it all boils down to is that they had the goose that laid the golden egg, and they cooked it. I mean, all the games have been movie-friendly to the point where it shouldn’t have been hard to change mediums without changing the story too much. Really, the movie and the game were still very similar: zombies, big guns, all the characters were badasses, the evil umbrella corporation, , and giant monsters. Why not keep the places and characters we’re familiar with?

The stuff they added they didn’t even really need. The Resident Evil games were trying to recreate zombie movies. What great zombie movie had crying monsters and karate?

I remember Ebert reviewing the movie and saying something like it was a bad movie based off a bad video game. It was an amazing video game, you pretentious slob, and if you shut your mouth and did some research maybe you’d know it. The problem wasn’t the game, it was the movie.

Now, I hate Ebert and have for a while because he thinks video games will never be as serious an art as movies. He’s an idiot, but it’s not all his fault. If all he knows about video games is pong and these shitty movies, no wonder he thinks that way.

These movies are killing the industries reputation as art, and it’s definitely letting the fans down. So, if anyone out there can hear me that matters, PLEASE! Do something different. Please.

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