Thinking about the new RESIDENT EVIL movie.
So Friday night, Rey and I went to see Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth installment in the ongoing adventures of Alice vs. Umbrella. It was, without spoilers, okay. I don't regret those two hours of my life. It wasn't as good as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, it was about on a par with Resident Evil: Afterlife, I didn't stick a pen in anybody, everybody wins.
Rey and I then spent roughly the length of the movie discussing the movie, which may be more attention to detail than was paid by anyone involved with the production. Because we are us, and this was an RE movie, and I am not rational where my RE movies are concerned.
See, this movie, like three, like four, focused on the fact that there are buckets and buckets of clones of Alice kicking around out there. We really don't know for sure that any Alice after the first movie was "original recipe" Alice, especially since we've seen evidence that the T-virus has granted the clones a form of cellular memory. Even the ones who haven't been implanted with the original Project Alice template seem to dream of being her.
For me, this series lives and dies on the details. Of the five movies, all except for number three have been incredibly consistent about their use of color and set dressing to establish when something belongs to Umbrella vs. when something does not belong to Umbrella. All five have opened and ended with Alice waking up. She is constantly on her way down the rabbit hole, and she really doesn't like it there.
Number three, on the other hand, is shaky. The color coding is inconsistent; the plot does not mesh with the rest of the series. The dialogue doesn't feel like any of the other movies, despite it having been supposedly written by the same man (Paul W.S. Anderson holds solo scriptwriting credit on all five movies). I really think that it was changed in production to the point where movies four and five became necessary just to get Alice emotionally, physically, and power-up-wise back to where she was at the end of the second movie.
I'm serious. Resident Evil: Afterlife mimics a lot of the beats of Resident Evil. And now we have Resident Evil: Retribution, which is mimicking the beats and emotional landmines of Resident Evil: Apocalypse (still my favorite in the series, so maybe that's why I'm being halfway charitable of this one). At the end of movie five, Alice is exactly where she was at the end of movie two in terms of her support team, her emotional entanglements, and her desire to kick Umbrella's ass. It's just that things have gotten worse while she was off undergoing a reset.
So where do we go from here? Well, I'm hoping we go to the obvious place:
It's time to do Code Veronica. More importantly, it's time to finally state that no, we have never met the original Alice, because there is no original Alice. Umbrella reliably refers to her as "Project Alice." Ada Wong makes a not-so-subtle "you are a clone, you idiot" reference in the latest movie. And Alexia Ashford really, really wants to bond with the T-virus on a cellular level.
I think Alice is a clone of Alexia Ashford. The last battle is going be Alice vs. Alexia. That could also explain where Matt went: if he's a clone of Alfred Ashford, his inability to bond with the virus properly could have caused them to stop bothering.
To quote the profile on Alexia: "Alexia sought to become an unstoppable world dictator by injecting herself with the T-Veronica Virus and freezing herself for several years in order to retain her own personality and allow her body to control the virus, rather than vice-versa."
Sounds like Alice to me.
If they do this, they can pull it out. They can wrap this whole six-movie run into one seamless story, signified by Umbrella red, T-virus blue, and sterile white.
I can't wait to see where it ends.
Rey and I then spent roughly the length of the movie discussing the movie, which may be more attention to detail than was paid by anyone involved with the production. Because we are us, and this was an RE movie, and I am not rational where my RE movies are concerned.
See, this movie, like three, like four, focused on the fact that there are buckets and buckets of clones of Alice kicking around out there. We really don't know for sure that any Alice after the first movie was "original recipe" Alice, especially since we've seen evidence that the T-virus has granted the clones a form of cellular memory. Even the ones who haven't been implanted with the original Project Alice template seem to dream of being her.
For me, this series lives and dies on the details. Of the five movies, all except for number three have been incredibly consistent about their use of color and set dressing to establish when something belongs to Umbrella vs. when something does not belong to Umbrella. All five have opened and ended with Alice waking up. She is constantly on her way down the rabbit hole, and she really doesn't like it there.
Number three, on the other hand, is shaky. The color coding is inconsistent; the plot does not mesh with the rest of the series. The dialogue doesn't feel like any of the other movies, despite it having been supposedly written by the same man (Paul W.S. Anderson holds solo scriptwriting credit on all five movies). I really think that it was changed in production to the point where movies four and five became necessary just to get Alice emotionally, physically, and power-up-wise back to where she was at the end of the second movie.
I'm serious. Resident Evil: Afterlife mimics a lot of the beats of Resident Evil. And now we have Resident Evil: Retribution, which is mimicking the beats and emotional landmines of Resident Evil: Apocalypse (still my favorite in the series, so maybe that's why I'm being halfway charitable of this one). At the end of movie five, Alice is exactly where she was at the end of movie two in terms of her support team, her emotional entanglements, and her desire to kick Umbrella's ass. It's just that things have gotten worse while she was off undergoing a reset.
So where do we go from here? Well, I'm hoping we go to the obvious place:
It's time to do Code Veronica. More importantly, it's time to finally state that no, we have never met the original Alice, because there is no original Alice. Umbrella reliably refers to her as "Project Alice." Ada Wong makes a not-so-subtle "you are a clone, you idiot" reference in the latest movie. And Alexia Ashford really, really wants to bond with the T-virus on a cellular level.
I think Alice is a clone of Alexia Ashford. The last battle is going be Alice vs. Alexia. That could also explain where Matt went: if he's a clone of Alfred Ashford, his inability to bond with the virus properly could have caused them to stop bothering.
To quote the profile on Alexia: "Alexia sought to become an unstoppable world dictator by injecting herself with the T-Veronica Virus and freezing herself for several years in order to retain her own personality and allow her body to control the virus, rather than vice-versa."
Sounds like Alice to me.
If they do this, they can pull it out. They can wrap this whole six-movie run into one seamless story, signified by Umbrella red, T-virus blue, and sterile white.
I can't wait to see where it ends.