Yesterday we finally got to see the first trailer for the Resident Evil film reboot, known as Resident Evil Welcome To Raccon City for a while, and people aren’t exactly going gaga for it.
Color me not surprised, since fanbases are notoriously both easy and fickle to please, and years of Paul W.S. Anderson brand of action have clearly rotted some people’s brain overtime, i haven’t seen them all, but i did witness the vomit inducing unwatchable mess of Resident Evil The Final Chapter in theathers, and that already should set the stage for things to go inevitably up. Or at least avoid triggering motion sickness in moviegoers.
Aside from the usual gut reactions and bullshit, you can see why most people aren’t exactly being pleased by the trailer, since the previous film interpretations of Resident Evil had very little to do with the games in term of story and characters, but actually channelled pretty well the B-movie vibe the games themselves incorporated, so they didn’t feel tonally disjointed from the nature of the cheesy source material.
This new reboot is being directed by Johannes Roberts, better known for the 47 Meters Down movies and The Strangers Prey At Night, so already we known the project is in some competent hands, making the idea to pull off a more serious take on the Resident Evil stories seem a lot more doable than most people would care to admit.
I mean, why not, we already had plenty of bombastic, very cheesy action horror flicks based on RE, makes sense to try go the other route, even more since this one sets out to be a lot more faithful to the games. It also seems to have a less budget than the Milla Jovovich & husband zombie movie escapades, but the CG for the monsters doesn’t look like ass as people claim (though, it could look a bit better), people that claim the older movies had way better effect are just going by hazy memories, and of course crucifying the entire movie by a trailer.
What worries me is that the trailer seems to imply them trying to compress the story of Resident Evil 1 and 2 in a single movie, not sure it’s a good idea, but on the other hand this actually seems to be interested in adapting the games in a more faithful manner, definitely worth a shot at the very least, Capcom can call back Paul W.S. Anderson back anytime to reboot the other RE film series, clearly they could due to the recent Monster Hunter movie adaptation with plans for its sequels.
It’s also a bit unfortunate this is set for a very late november release, at least in the United States, but i doubt it will be released within October anywhere in Europe as well, i don’t think this is a deliberate choice, but it might be, and it could turn out for the better, avoiding the fierce competition all together… even so launching it in mid-November instead would have been better, a better compromise i feel.
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