RESIDENT EVIL: Apocalypse

[davi]

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/resident_evil_apocalypse/high.html

thoughts?

[R_M]

ha ha I love the way the preview plays like a loreal add , but I have very little hope for the movie itself...
the preview should have stopped before the woman turns rotten. it would have created more ambiguty. Resident Evil is a geek moovie aniway, we would have gotten the message.

Saw the first one, and didn't like it much. Not that I had great expectations.

[skrubbles]

man, i saw that preview a while ago.... I don't know if I'll go see it. I saw the first one with a group of friends and thought it was ok, and then I saw it with my gf at the time.... the sceond time I just noticed all the crappiness, like the movement of the zombies... GAH

[davi]

being that the first one was basicly a low budget movie, and i'm sure this one is going to be a bit more flashy. I'm going to go see it for the effects, but i'm not too sure it's going to be what i want it to be.


dawn of the dead looks pretty horrible too.

The zombies in the new dawn of the dead move SUPER fast... total rip off of 28 days later... the orginal was nothing like that at all.

[Happy Camper]

Originally posted by davi
I'm going to go see it for the effects
Yeah me too. But I'll mainly see it for Milla Jonavich :p.

[malicious]

i at least enjoyed the score of the first movie. very atmospheric. good for making family pets paranoid.

[jwo]

first time director ..who knows.

but its got Scut Farkus in it

[bRyaN]

Originally posted by davi
dawn of the dead looks pretty horrible too.

The zombies in the new dawn of the dead move SUPER fast... total rip off of 28 days later... the orginal was nothing like that at all.

I enjoyed Resident Evil...i thought it was relatively well done...

Davi this is gonna be one of the fist times i disagree with you about a movie, but i think Dawn of the Dead is gonna be awesome(crosses fingers and hopes)...

Too me people are just hating on remakes...For instance...Texas Chainsaw Massacre..the remake was not a great movie but most certainly watchable...

But i read here that people hated it and preferred the original...now....

I haven't seen the original movie in years, so i rented it, and it quite frankly sucked...i mean it was gorey as hell but rediculously so..and i used to like it
:rolleyes:

[davi]

well i mean, the whole point of dawn of the dead was that the zombies moved slow and they had the whole mall to themselves to screw around in, but if you slipped up... your screwed.

the zombies shown in the trailer jump around and growl...

[DanSTC]

I didn't like the first Resident Evil film. At all. In fact, I'd say that I thoroughly hated it.

Edit: Brace yourselves, kiddies! Here comes a rant!

Not only was it about as far from the spirit of the game series as you can possibly get (save for the presence of certain creatures and names) but they tried to turn it into a bit of a matrix ripoff.

Let me ask you something...does plodding through areas infested with zombies (and a few other creatures) and constantly feeling paranoid strike as something that needs to be made into a matrix-style action film? Probably not, but it's what the games were about, and aside from the zombie aspect, this movie didn't even come close to it. It's like the idiot director said "okay, hurr hurr...video game movie...whut, zombies? conspiracies? durr okay...let's put some martial arts in and a lot of loud music and some memory loss stuff and a child actor on a bluescreen and bullet-time. whut? whaddyou mean it does't have anything to do with the games and is too overblown? but its supposed to be its a video game movie hurr hurr hur!!"

They took what could've made for an interesting zombie flick and turned it into an overblown generic sci-fi crapfest. Throwing in convuluted and out-of-place plots elements all over the place. As if that weren't bad enough, they even had to go and rip off "the cube" for no readily apparent reason in one scene! (This was actually the point when the movie lost me for good. Suddenly it stopped being about zombies and instead about a...rogue computer system? Zuh?)

It also had quite possibly the most obnoxious soundtrack of any movie I've ever been unfortunate enough to watch. It would NOT FUCKING SHUT UP. The noodling experimental electronic cranked-up-bass shit that keep blaring from the speakers ruined just about any tension the film could've had, and helped to make the poorly edited action scenes all the more confusing.

Oh yeah, that's not the half of it; Capcom of America* actually turned down George A. Romero to direct, as well as his script for the film. I've read the Romero script, which is available online for your perusal. Not only is it faithful to the games, but it's good. It also has a bit of Romero's signature social commentary, which he's always liked to work into his zombie films.

*(note that the creators of the series the Biohazard team, who idolize Romero, and Capcom of Japan had nothing to do with this decision. Capcom of America doesn't actually make games; they just make stateside business decisions.)

So yes, I'm bitter over this film. Bitter over what could have been a good zombie film, and bitter over the complete fucknaut they chose to rape their franchise over the man who invented and perfected the zombie film. Hey, as long as idiots eat up this schlock, I suppose it fulfilled its purpose.

As for viewing it for the "concept design" stuff, I'm utterly apathetic towards that notion. Not only does the film rip off most of its conceptual designs from other better films *cough* Cube *cough* Matrix *cough* but stuff like the "licker" monster (a minor monster from the game series that was featured as the "final boss" of the movie for some reason) were already done better in the actual game series. For that matter, the blue-skinned zombies in "Dawn of the dead" were more convincing than the ones in this film, which is pretty sad when you consider that RE had the advantage of using all-too-visible CG to touch up the brutes.
If you're really keen on learning about creature design from the series, check out the gamecube Resident Evil games, both of which have awesomely detailed character art, and are both better "films" than the actual resident evil movie.
Meanwhile, if you're keen about digging zombie creature designs, check out films like "Zombie" "Day of the Dead" and the "Night of the Living Dead" remake. (which isn't all that great a remake of the original NotLD, but features some excellent creature makeup/design by Mr. Savini.)

Also, personally, I'm a little sick of hearing artists say "this movie sucks, but I'm watching it for the special effects/creature design/etc." Sure, it is very possible to mine a crapfest for a few diamonds of good ideas or designs, but a lot of people throw their good sense to the wind when doing that...in many cases, as I already mentioned about the Resident Evil movie, the concept designs you're viewing are just watered-down ripoffs of designs from something else. How much do you think you're going to learn from something that's basically just a poorly executed version of the original? (Aside from how NOT to do things.)
Really, this sort of practice reminds me of what I used to hear from other artists about how watered-down Frazetta clones were all ripping off of Frazetta, and then all the younger artists all copying from the Frazzata clones producing something that's even MORE watered-down than the Frazetta clones, and people learning from THOSE clones, and on and on.

In the end, it really pays more than anything to look around for films/art/games/whatever to see "where did that come from?" and "who did that better?" instead of purchasing the latest crapfest just to see shallow imitative concept designs that were done infinitely better elsewhere. In familiarizing yourself with enough good products, you can better avoid giving thoroughly bad products your money with a clean conscience, and still mine bad products for the few good or original ideas that they possess.

[DanSTC]

Originally posted by bRyaN


Too me people are just hating on remakes...For instance...Texas Chainsaw Massacre..the remake was not a great movie but most certainly watchable...

But i read here that people hated it and preferred the original...now....

I haven't seen the original movie in years, so i rented it, and it quite frankly sucked...i mean it was gorey as hell but rediculously so..and i used to like it
:rolleyes:

The reason why Texas Chainsaw Massacre is regarded as a horror classic of sorts is that it's actually a much more of a psychological thriller than its title lets on. (It was originally going to be called "Headcheese"-an ironic title which I feel would've been more fitting for what the film is about.)

But you remember it being "Gory as hell"? You really need to watch the original again...there was actually very little gore in the film. This was partially why it was so effective, being one of those films what what you don't see scares you a little more than what you do. (That, and the whole gimmick of it being a "true" story.) It really was and still is a darn good movie, even after all this time. It makes me wonder why anyone would even attempt to remake it, other than to throw a bunch of gore in it or whatever. But hey, they *tried* to remake Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" too, didn't they? To say nothing of the Dawn of the Dead remake in the works. I guess modern horror directors must be running out of ideas or something...

Also, just a minor pet peeve of mine:
http://home.san.rr.com/saintweb/danstc/ridi8ball.jpg