Resident Evil: A Real Video Game Movie?

Ever since Lucasfilm Games’ 1987 title, Maniac Mansion, heralded one of the first uses of cut scenes, video games have veered towards the cinematic. With this similarity to films and the almost “interactive movie” nature of many popular video games today—Metal Gear Solid series, Final Fantasy, GTA, and Resident Evil 4—there’s no doubt that the game industry is making the transition to film, not just the other way around. We know the Resident Evil Hollywood movies. But what happens when you take the classic “zombie movie” rubric and base it on a video game based on the undead? Somebody gets confused, and—perhaps—magic happens. More on Resident Evil: Degeneration after the cut.

From Capcom and Sony Pictures, the Resident Evil: Degeneration trailer has many of the classic, perhaps overdone elements of a big-budget Blockbuster: a buff and dreamy gun-toting hero (Leon Kennedy) who moves his lips very little when he rasps, a cute sidekick heroine (Claire Redfield) who’s also good with guns and makes well-timed, clever comments, the fate of humanity lying in one man’s hands. And most of the zombies are your typical fare: slow-moving, decomposing, and stumbling with their arms out.

So what do the video game origins add to the movie at all? One biggie: a monster straight out of a video game, that would never have spawned purely from the imaginations of Hollywood writers. If there is one thing video games can bring to the cinematic world, it’s imagination. With the endless rehashing of comic books, mythology, and literature, the leathery, gigantic monster with an eyeball for a shoulder, a dinosaur tail, hipbones exposed, and what seem to be plates on its back is refreshing. Set seven years after Raccoon City, Resident Evil: Degeneration is completely distinct from the Hollywood movies that have made mediocre the Resident Evil storyline.

My first worry about this movie was that it’d be too literal, too much like the real world, from the first mention of terrorists and the boring news reporters in cardigans. If they wanted to make something like the first trilogy, I would have expected them to stick with the live-action strategy. But if you throw an eyeball monster or two in there, we are once again returning to video games, and more elements from the video game world are all we need.