Residential Care

"It wasn't me, guv"

With the latest instalment of the bafflingly popular Resident Evil movie series set to impose itself on our screens this “summer”, I am once again given cause to think of what might have been.

As a fan of the game series, I anticipated the first movie eagerly. With its pre-rendered visuals, recorded dialogue, constrictive controls and locked cameras, the original Playstation game that sparked off the famous survival horror series always played more like an interactive movie than a game. The upside to this was a deeply engrossing plot, endearingly awful quotability and spectacular set-pieces. So it was with some anger that I left the cinema after the credits rolled on a movie so loosely based on the game that it was barely recognisable.

This was Resident Evil in name only (a point I understand was conceded in the subsequent sequels with the addition of cameos from some of the series’ well-loved protagonists, though I am unable to confirm this, as the damage done by the first movie ensured my distance from the series) and that fact presents a conundrum: how far should a movie stray from its source material?

Invested audiences can be peeved by the most minor of alterations in an adaptation; I myself was mystified by the changes made to Walter Tevis’ triumphant novel The Hustler when I watched the overrated Paul Newman movie of the same name. By the same token, a movie can be derided for sticking too closely to its source material, as was the case with the loving Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and the ambitious but messy Watchmen. Still, with a reputation for making largely bad videogame licences secured firmly under his belt, one might have imagined that landing Resident Evil with its rich mythology and cinematic structure would have been a dream come true for director Paul Anderson*, but what we get is a 28 Days Later/Matrix mash-up cum shoot-em-up which throws out not only the plot of the game, but also its popular and recognisable cast, as well as side-lining its infamous setting.

Now I can see the need for a movie to differentiate itself from its source material, be that a game or a novel. The way the audience experiences each format is, of course, vastly different. But for a studio to buy a licence, only to veer so violently from the integral spirit of its source seems not only an unconscionable waste, but a block on more faithful iterations.

It has long been my (vague) dream to see the franchise rebooted under its original name Biohazard, resurrecting those infamous scenes and dialogue either with conviction or irony as the need presents, and servicing both old and new fans in a manner more befitting both them, and the series.

“Don’t open that door!”

*You may be aware that there are two directors named Paul Anderson currently working in Hollywood, and that the expanse in quality between their respective works is a lovely irony; Paul W.S. Anderson is the man who shat Resident Evil on the starry boulevard, as well as such other examples of gratuitous slow motion as Mortal Kombat and Alien vs Predator. Paul Thomas Anderson on the other hand brought us the well received There Will Be Blood and the rather good Boogie Nights and Magnolia. I may institute a sliding scale of Paul Anderson when reviewing movies in the future.