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The goal of an expendable asset is to not be... expended.
In anticipation of the coming deluge of Resident Evil shows and films coming to theaters and streaming platforms, Andrew and Erich revisit the original franchise—starring Milla Jovovich and written by Paul W.S. Anderson—and dissect what makes them so memorable, the inspiration they drew from the games, and much more.
Resident Evil Apocalypse [auto-generated]
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Andrew: Hello, and welcome to REwatch a short series where we revisit the billion dollar zombie movie franchise, resident evil. My name is Andrew and I have watched every movie and played every game in the series.
Erich: My name is Erich, and I've only watched the movies and never played the games.
Andrew: Maybe we could change that after all this is said and done Erich
Erich: well, we'll see.
I'm not sure the movies are recommending the games, but
Andrew: we'll see potentially there's enough crossover here that will get you interested. All right. I want to start with a question really quickly. As I was watching this movie, some thought occurred. Okay. Okay. [00:01:00] People in the apocalypse, they're always getting bit by, by zombos and based on what they're wearing, sometimes it's just not practical.
My thought is this. I'm just going to throw this out there. Chain mail. What are we thinking in the apocalypse chain mail. Goodbye.
So, yes, potentially, right? Like we, we experimented with chain mail for sharks and that seemed to work pretty well. The problem is it kind of slows you down. Yes,
I had considered that,
Erich: so I highly recommend if you're at all interested in like, Taking this zombie apocalypse thing, even a little bit seriously, max Brooks is, uh, the zombie survival guide.
Um, and he also wrote world war Z, like the book, not the Brad Pitt movie. And he did a lot of like actual research about like the best things to do. If there [00:02:00] were a zombie apocalypse, nobody in this movie follows any of them. Correct. Um, and a lot of his research is predicated on like, knowing that zombies are there.
Right. So we'll get into it. But like, this is technically the start of the zombie apocalypse. And like, we kind of have a social contract that like people don't bite each other. Right. I think everyone was taken a little bit by surprise when people just started biting each other. Yeah. Yeah. You can't prepare for
Andrew: that.
Can't prepare for that. Yeah. My thought was. Maybe 80% of people in this movie get bit in the, like the neck or the arm area. And I was like just a L clothing that was a bit more practical would solve. This problem would solve true. So many people lose useful people losing their life. That's all I was chainmail.
I was like, it's the halfway point. It's a, it's not a full suit of armor, which would certainly be [00:03:00] cumbersome. And it's not essentially like a tube top that Jill is wearing. It's like a happy medium.
Erich: Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. All right. I think it would, it would be better than regular clothes. Maybe a bit more prohibitive than, you know, like maybe police body
Andrew: armor.
All right. Fair enough. I just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah. The tactical tactical armor, probably easier to come by and. Uh, potentially just as much in, in the way of benefits there. But yeah, when I watch these things, I'm always like, God, I'd be solving these problems left and right. I mean, as soon as someone got bit in the arm, once I'd be like, okay, we got to fix this arm thing.
Everyone cover your arm.
Erich: I'm telling you that is where I'll be. Survival guide is, is it's really interesting. The amount of work he put into it. I think I
Andrew: recall that, but I, I don't know if I read it or I just cut an excerpt. Was there, [00:04:00] if, if, if I'm remembering the same thing, did he not create like a weapon that was like a shovel ax thing?
Like, it wasn't there, like, it was like a shovel or a spade rather, I guess, but the sides were like enough to like remove a head.
Erich: I think that actually shows up in world war Z more, um, where that becomes like an, an, a weapon issued to like the infantry, right. Is like your shovel is also an ax is also a pic.
Like you have like three different ways to behead a zombie, but yeah.
Andrew: Alright. Alright. Sound be survival guide. All right. I'm at, if I don't, if I haven't read it, I'm going to, I'm going to check it out. I might've, it's been so long since I've read a thing. We're not here to read things. We're here to watch.
That's right. Let me get some housekeeping out of the way. And we will get into this proper as always. You can find this and all of our other podcasts of which there are numerous podcasts now at 12and24.com. You can [00:05:00] email us hello@12and24.com or hit us up on Twitter. I'm @darkdriving
Eric is @platypusjones and you can agree with or debate us or whatever. Uh, if we get enough feedback, Maybe we'll create a listener mailbag episode, or as we move along here, we'll kind of address feedback live on each episode or maybe after, I don't know how it works. Exactly. This is like a mini series.
So I don't want to like date it necessarily. Um, but still get in touch. You can also join us on discord and chat in real time. That's 12and24.com/discord. There is a dedicated channel now for all things, resident evil, which is very cool. And then finally, if you want to support us with just a moment of your time, share the show with your friends, with your enemies living or dead, it does not matter.
And then rate and review us on iTunes super-helpful and, uh, if people like this in the mini series thing, we might try to tackle this further. Franchises. I think it's, it's worth exploring at least. So we're not dedicating [00:06:00] years of our
Erich: lives. There's a couple of like interesting franchises that I think we could, we could do some mini series on.
Andrew: That's awesome. Some I've seen some I haven't. So I would love to revisit some more if every year you and I, or you and I and another person get together and rewatch a horror franchise or something in October, I would be fucking like that. That sounds like a dream to me is like Friday, the 13th is up next or nightmare on Elm street or Halloween, whatever we talked about Halloween.
That's crazy mess. Anyway,
Erich: you got, you got a lot of movies. You start tipping into some of those franchise. I know that's the right.
Andrew: That's the real problem. At some point, if you did Friday, the third. At some point you would have to watch Jason X and I don't know who would do would do that to themselves
Erich: willing though.
I don't know. I kinda liked Jason. So I'm on board.
Andrew: Hey, I like the nano-tech suit that he gets or whatever. He's basically iron man before iron man. [00:07:00] I've seen it. Don't get me wrong. I've seen it the number of times. I just, I don't know if listeners would be into that. We'll see. All right, let's get to the show.
Proper. Eric, are you ready?
Erich: I am ready. We are. We're moving on to the second film in the resident. Evil franchise. Apocalypse
the pursuit of human perfection accidents will happen. There's been an incident. How bad is it? We're reopening the hive. I want to know what went on down there, sir. There's something in here.
Infectious planning, faster than anyone could have anticipated. The gates are still out there.
We're expendable last it's just been expended. Now those left behind[00:08:00]
must battle in the enemy that will not
die. They all have completely generic names. So if you would have said to me, which one is the second, I had no idea.
Andrew: The only one. Th the only two that are easily discernible is resident evil and then resident evil the final chapter. But that will be broken in late November when another resident evil film is released.
Erich: So, I mean, in their defense, they are restarting the franchise. Like I'll, I'll allow it, right? Like we have a problem. You were talking about the Friday, the 13th franchise and number four is the final chapter. And they went on to make 11 of those. So at least they didn't do that here.
Andrew: It wasn't too long after the final chapter that that dude went to Manhattan, you know, so exactly.
It's just a weird place. It's a weird place. So resident evil apocalypse, this was written by Paul [00:09:00] Ws Anderson, but it was not directed by Paul Ws Anderson. Which is
Erich: interesting. Yeah. And I, I mean, I don't really think about how these films are directed. Um, I think the, the story is a bit messy, but we can put that at Paul WMS.
Anderson's Veet um, so I, I'm not sure changing directors made, uh, made a huge impact on the series.
Andrew: That's true. But for the sake of, uh, being thorough, I will say this was directed by Alexander Witt or VIT. W I T T I'm not quite sure how he pronounces that. So this is his first feature film as a director, but this dude has either been a second unit director or a camera person for some absolute banger movies.
I'm going to list a few of them right now. His first second unit directing job was on a movie called [00:10:00] speed. And if you know, This guy is he's, he's already like shot up at the top of my list of favorite people.
Erich: Wow. And second unit on speed had to be intense. Yeah.
Andrew: Second unit on anything, any of these movies just listen.
So it's twister, gladiator, Hannibal, the Bourne identity, the Italian job. That's the 2003 version, obviously casino Royale, American gangster, the town fast five, one of Eric's favorites, Skyfall, Avengers, infinity war, and most recently, second, second unit director on no time to die, which is like, that's insane.
Yeah.
Erich: Although it does say something that he was director and ended up going back to second unit.
Andrew: I will say there is something to that,
Erich: but yes, that is a, that is a great resume.
Andrew: Yeah. The second unit, if you're not familiar is [00:11:00] a totally safe. Director and T I mean, obviously everyone is under the umbrella of the director, but second unit commands his own team.
And they're usually off shooting action sequences, green screen, working with the stunt doubles, doing establishing shots, all in service of the main story. So they very rarely on that. Very rarely, but they don't work with the primary, uh, actors as much as, you know, first the unit, I guess it's typically, yeah, it's still an intense job.
Don't get me wrong, but a different set of problems.
Erich: I mean, arguably more intense. Yeah. I mean, depending on how you're approaching it.
Andrew: Yeah. So I think that'll, that'll be interesting as we, as we talk about this movie, this guy is the guy you hired to shoot action, which his resume backs up. All of those movies have an insane amount of action and stunt work.
So that'd be
Erich: cool to talk about. It's not unheard of. I mean, Yonda Bon who [00:12:00] directed speed started as a second unit director. So like, it, it is not unheard of for a second unit director to move up, but it's interesting that I don't know how much more he did after this
Andrew: two movies. That was it. One show, one more movie and one short film.
And then he was like, you know what?
Erich: I'm going to go back to stunts.
Andrew: No thyself.
Erich: No, he did a kick ass job. I mean, fast five is great. Has some great crazy stunt work sky falls. Another one of my favorites. Yeah,
Andrew: I didn't, yeah, I didn't mention, I mean, every of the contemporary Daniel Craig bond films, this guy was second unit on director, second unit director.
So that is a very impressive. Uh, pedigree of, you know, dudes worked on a lot of stuff. Good for him. Costarring alongside Mila is Sienna Guillory, Odette fair. Sophie, Aveva sooner. Maybe I'm going to go with that. Sure. [00:13:00] Resoc uh, Dottie, Jared Harris, Sandrine Holt, and an outstanding bit of comic relief from one Mike Epps.
Erich: Yeah. Really up to the comedy in this by a hundred percent, it was like no comedy. The first month,
Andrew: zero, there was some snark man. In the first one, this one has some straight up laugh out loud moments. It's as if, for me at least,
Erich: I mean, there's one whole scene that I have no idea why the hell it's in the movie, but we'll, we'll get to that.
It's just a Mike, Mike app's comedy beat. And I'm like, what was the point of that?
Andrew: Not to bury the lead or, I mean, I, I want to try to work this stuff in and not like dedicated to a whole section. The role of Mike Epps was originally cast as Snoop dog. Right? Snoop dog was signed on to play a part of this movie, the mic.
And, and left for some reason. It's not, as far as my research goes, it's not clear. And I, you know, as, as good a job as Mike [00:14:00] did with the material, I really would love to see Snoop's take on this.
Erich: Yeah. That's probably a slightly different character, but Snoop can be funny. I just don't think Snoop was funny when this movie was made.
Like he has grown into his comedic.
Andrew: Yeah. He wears it well now, but again, yeah, we're talking 2004 ish, 2003, if it was filming. Yeah. So yeah, no let's talk budget and box office for this one is very impressive. Um, according to box office, mojo film had a $45 million budget, which is up from 33 million for the first movie, which is substantial.
That's a lot. Yeah. Uh, 23 million opening weekend up from 17 million for the first. 51.2 million domestic gross up from 40000129.3 million worldwide up from 103 million. [00:15:00] So
Erich: in there it is like, there's your number? Right?
Andrew: Like screen jams or whatever sees this. They're like, yes, yes. More please.
Erich: Yes. They're domestic gross is still not like setting the world on fire, but that worldwide.
Yeah. People just love these movies.
Andrew: They're showing up. They're showing up. We have critical and audience reception. Boy, the critics were not kind to this movie. Uh, let me just as a reference here. Okay. The critical score for the first movie was 36%. I just referenced our old notes. Critical score for this film is 19%, which is bad.
Erich: Yeah, that's, that's pretty bad.
Andrew: Audience is up around 60%, which is pretty good. 60 doesn't sound like a lot, but rotten tomatoes has like this weird curve to it. Uh, 60%, you know, that's like a, it's a pretty decent audience score for something in this [00:16:00] genre. I think.
Erich: Yeah. I mean, I, to extensively that's still fresh, right?
I
Andrew: think, yeah, they, they have, uh, yeah, it's not rotten, not the little splat icons. There you go. It might just be like the tomato, not the glowing tomato or whatever the, the ranks are, but yeah,
Erich: this is so Andrew, are you closer to the critics or the audience on this one?
Andrew: Here's what I'm going to say. All right.
I'm closer to the audience. And maybe even beyond the audience, I had a lot of fun with this movie because despite some of the problems. They did what I needed them to do, which is just like lean in to the ridiculousness. Give me more explosions, give me more set pieces, give me more hero shots. And for me, they, it felt a little bit smarter about the visual effects.
There are still some ones in here that are [00:17:00] pretty rough, and they're almost exclusively about the liquors, which was rough in the first time too. And I'm like, what the hell? They still didn't fix
Erich: this? I mean, it got better. I thought it got
Andrew: better. It did. And they were, again, they were hiding those with like darkness as well.
And I think that's, they're stalker type creatures. So it makes total sense. And then, like we said, in the first movie, the practical effects are great. When you see nemesis, which is a weird character design granted, um, that's a practice that's practical. And so it still holds up now. Like it's all.
Disfigured and has, you know, weird face stuff going on, but like, Hey, it's a practical suit. The dude is moving and walking. It's not, it's not terrible. No. Agreed on
Erich: that for sure.
Andrew: The comic relief I enjoyed, I thought that was pretty great. And then some of the choreography which we'll get into, I think we'll just touch on some of the points that I really liked about the choreography as we get to them.
But like, [00:18:00] I think during this point, Paul, Wes Anderson and Mila were married according to our, you know, whatever. And I think he was just like writing. He was like, oh, she's gonna look. Bad-ass when this happens. You know, it's like, yeah, the dude really loves his wife. He's given, he's given her so much to, to work with here from an action standpoint.
Again, the story is basically non-existent, but I think as we established, not really, I'm not really coming to these for like the deep, deep story, uh, arcs. But, uh, how about you? What are you thinking?
Erich: I mean, I would, I would say I'm somewhere between critics and audiences. I'm probably in the like 50% area.
Um, and while like your final point was you don't come here for the story and I agree, however, it is. So the actual, like [00:19:00] plot points and exposition are so fucking convoluted that like, this is where the franchise. Loses me great is where they start to get into some real, like, it's not even like dumb Saifai right.
Like I'm a hundred percent here for dumb. Saifai, there's just some things that come up in this film where I'm like, what is the point of that? Like hoot what she can do what now? Right? Yeah. So honestly, like I was missing the stripped down, like here's the mission structure of the first movie, because this movie is just all over the place, you know, like you're following a couple of different plot points and, or a couple of different plots rather until they converge, it takes way too long for everybody to get together.
And like, like I said, they're just, w we'll talk, we're going to get into the pull-up plot in a second, but there are a couple of points where you're just like, wait, [00:20:00] what now? Like what just happened? Yeah.
Andrew: I think they were trying to do the. Parallel storylines of like you're you're with Jill and that group.
And then you're with Alice and either she's solo or with a smaller or different group, and trying to write them to a point where they meet and it's bad ass, but maybe if they just started, if they like met earlier and they were all as a unit that might've been, I don't know. Yeah.
Erich: I would've, I think I would have been more interested if each of those individual plots had something to do.
Like, I feel like the Jill storyline is just meandering until they meet Alice. Right? Like they're not sort of vaguely doing something until they meet Alice. Right. So like, I think that was what was frustrating for me is like they were clearly individual plots because you wanted to bring them together later.
And you didn't [00:21:00] give one of them something to do. I mean, arguably didn't give him like apps, anything to do either, right? Like they're just waiting to meet out.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. I think I probably bring a little bit of game of the I'm filling in my own little gaps with pre-existing knowledge and that, and a lot of it is not even necessarily true.
Like he skips, I mean, we'll get into it in a minute, but nemesis, the, this whole Jill is a character, uh, Carlos, as a character nemesis as an enemy, that's from the third game, they completely skip over most of the second game for the, for the most part, which is an interesting choice. Cause that's like the that's like the darling of, if you were to ask 10 people, 10 resident evil fans, what their favorite one is, uh, you'd probably have a pretty equal split between two and four.
So. It's interesting that he [00:22:00] was like, nah, we're just going to skip that one, three.
Erich: Maybe he'll bring it back in a later movie who
Andrew: knows some of the characters from, to do, I can confirm they do appear in, in later films. And the reboot that they were working on is a combination of resident evil one and two, like the games, the characters that you see in that trailer for welcome to record and city that's from resident evil one and two.
So it'll be cool to see how they, this new director and these new actors approach it, but pretty neat. Pretty neat. Let's talk plot. Are you ready? I
Erich: am ready. I have, I think less pages of notes this time, but like, we'll see how it goes. All right. Take us away. Uh, so this movie starts instead of a scroll.
This time we get a recap of the first movie via video. Alice is like telling who she is and what happened in the first movie. Uh, [00:23:00] we shift to like a news cast. We get a friendly news reporter telling us how everything is fine. It's even low pollen out there. People. Uh, you know, they, they sort of transition into suburbia and then do one of those shots where like, we just go right underground.
And we discovered that there's a bunch of scientists reentering the hive, right? They are there at the gate. We saw in the first movie, um, they get about five feet in the door and discover like the T virus contamination is off the charts and they get swamped by. By zombies. Right? So presumably this is not good for everybody.
Uh, the next thing we get is like a bunch of umbrella, black, black SUV's, and they just start collecting a team of science-y people. Um, the primary one is Jared Harris. Uh, we know he's a scientist cause he wears very small [00:24:00] glasses.
Andrew: He has a computer at all times. He has a computer
Erich: at all times. Um, and he absolutely like has to, they need to get his daughter to write and that's going to be important when we meet his daughter, we realized that, uh, it is the little girl that they modeled the red queen on.
Yeah. Um, and. As sh as they are like driving away with his daughter, they get in a car wreck, the movie completely shifts to 13 hours later. Uh, we're in, uh, uh, someone's apartment and they're taking off high heels turn on their police band radio on their television. And we learned that like all hell has broken loose.
Right. Full-on zombie apocalypse. Um, people are like biting each other, live on the air, whatever. Yeah. So this woman gets dressed in a pair of shorts and a tank top. Uh, and walks into the police station and just fucking start shooting [00:25:00] people because that would go over
Andrew: and personnel are required to report for duty assignments.
Immediate.
wait a minute. It's just Valentine and everyone. Yeah. Right.
Erich: Like, oh, it's Valentine. So apparently she's done this before. I don't, I'm not really.
Andrew: I mean, it is a hell of a character entrance to be fair, but it is absolute. Like, I, these are the most inept to cops I've ever like the, every it's total chaos in the precinct, people are getting murdered by actual zombies.
Why aren't these people? Why aren't they in a cell somewhere?
Erich: Uh, so she's like, we we've got to leave town and she just fucking leaves. She's just Y right. Like she's a cop. Uh, I I'm, [00:26:00] if I'm understanding correctly, she's on the stars team, which is like, she is special weapons and tack it's SWAT basically.
And she's like, Nope, I'm outta here. Got to go. We skip to like, Another view on the umbrella people and, uh, somebody initiated project Dallas, right? And we basically jumped back to the last five minutes of the first movie chase still say would be a better cold open, um, where we see Milla Jovovich, wake up, stumble out of the hospital and discovered that there's been a zombie zombie apocalypse right now.
We know they call her Alice. So somehow completely unexplained umbrella is able to completely quarantine the raccoon city leaving only one exit on a bridge out of the city. I don't, this is the most poorly planned city ever [00:27:00] or umbrella just dropped a dome like in the Simpsons movie, like.
Andrew: It seems that way.
It seems that they, the response is incredible. I try not
Erich: to get bogged down in details like this, but it is, it is like a fundamental trope of zombie movies that they get out and they like. That the number of zombies expands exponentially. Right. And they cover that here, but like, it is very confusing that like they've managed to quarantine this whole city somehow.
Anyway, we meet some umbrella commandos, uh, Oliveira played by Odette fair. Who I'm, I'm curious in this watch through, I've always argued that he's the lucky charm of the franchise. The good movies are the ones that he's in. Not sure that that holds true now that I've watched two again, but we'll see. Okay.
Okay. All right. So, uh, they [00:28:00] see a woman getting like overrun on a roof. So he does this, like, bad-ass jump out of a helicopter thing. Uh, we get, uh, what is almost a new metal music cue, but you mentioned earlier, they've kind of backed off that part. Marilyn Manson is not scoring this one. It's a little different.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so he does all this like crazy, awesome shit. And this woman jumps off a building anyway, cause she was bitten, right?
Andrew: Yeah. Pissed. If I was him, I was like exactly how accurate I was at terminal velocity. Look at me. I was free falling head shotting on the way to.
Erich: Yeah, it's incredible. Uh, we cut back to the gate where Jill has arrived, cause she's leaving.
Um, and one of the infected has gotten through an umbrellas like hell no, we're just shutting it all down. Right. Close that, sir. Just do
Andrew: it.[00:29:00]
this is a viral
Erich: quarantine area due to risk of
Andrew: infection. You cannot be allowed to leave the city. All appropriate measures are being taken. The situation is
Erich: under control.
Andrew: We turn to your homes, you have five seconds to turn
Erich: around and return to the city
Andrew: use of live condition has been
Erich: authorized. So like at the gate we have Jill.
Partner. I was never really clear what their relationship was. I might've looked away for a second.
Andrew: Um, it's not, it's not super clear. He's not from the games either. He's like a, a movie character,
Erich: so, okay. Yeah. Uh, and the, the television reporter that we met earlier, so they're, they're like a [00:30:00] team, right? Um, at this point we're like 15 minutes in, right.
I feel like I've been talking forever, but like, it's pretty quick. This is literally just the intro. Right? And like now we have a zombie movies, so we get like cops and umbrella fighting the zombie, hordes, whatever, um, like umbrellas, trying to get everyone out. And Jared Harris is like, not without my. Uh, w who they can't find.
Right. He does one of my favorite bits of movie hacking, which is he enters a password. It doesn't work. So he enters a different password and he's in, right.
Andrew: It's the
Erich: fast is the dumbest bit of like hacking I've ever seen. Like he does. Uh, just wild that hack gets him access to a 3d map. That's also tied to like every CCTV camera in the city.
And this is like, from a like movie standpoint, this is going to sort of become our like [00:31:00] transition slash establishing shots for the rest of the film. Like, like they don't use fades or wipes. We just sort of move between camera feeds, which is a very video, gamey thing to do. So like, I get why they did it, but like, I don't know, it gets old fairly quickly.
Right. It's pretty,
Andrew: to me, it's like, we got to open the map to see where, you know, it's that, it's that exact feeling.
Erich: He finds Alice who has conveniently discovered the military surplus store from Terminator. And like, she. Right. And like gets all of her stuff. We get our first Alice flashback of the movie because of course we're still doing that.
There's no reason Alice has amnesia this time. Well, I guess she woke up in the hospital, but they never explain it, whatever. Uh, and all we get from this flashback is umbrella did something to her, which we knew. Cause she woke up in the hospital, Jill and her team, uh, hide in a church. [00:32:00] Uh, they find one of my favorite classic zombie movie tropes, which is the person that's feeding people to a loved one.
That's turned into a zombie.
Andrew: They're sick, they're sick, Eric.
Erich: She just, just adore that true. Plake I don't know if I love Eddie one that much, that I couldn't let them go if they turned into a zombie. Right.
Andrew: And the guy he's a man of God, who's doing this. So you got to assume that. If he didn't kill the person he's feeding, you know, he, he was somehow complicit in dismembering them, which yeah.
Cooley
Erich: troubling. Now the part I don't like about the scene as it literally goes nowhere, like it goes badly. Of course. Yes. But that that's, it they're like. Consequences. There's no, whatever. Then, then we discover liquors are in the church. Um, we get liquor vision for the first time in this movie. I don't recall.
I don't remember in the first movie that we saw through [00:33:00] their eyes. Oh, you know what maybe,
Andrew: or, oh, it's awesome.
Erich: We saw from the red Queen's perspective, but not the liquors perspective. That's what it was very similar. Uh, yeah. It's like predator vision, but, but red, not that it matters, but there was like a whole other guy in the church, so he gets eaten so we can see how bad-ass the liquors are without killing any of our main characters.
Uh, they try to shoot their way out. There's I think three or four of them in there. And as we discussed a little earlier, like the CGI is a little better this time. Yeah. Had a little more budget, spent a little more time on it. They also are not like in a bright light. Laboratory, they can, they can hide them a little better.
They're doing a lot of like wall climbing and that kind of thing. So yeah. Looks better then. Crazy shit happens. Alice jumps a motorcycle through a stained glass window, [00:34:00] throws her motorcycle at a liqueur and then shoots it in the air to blow up. The liquor gets out a nother set of guns, like machine guns this time and shoots a cross so that it falls onto a liquor.
Yes. Then she kicks a church pew into a liquor and shotguns it in the head and it ends with the great comedy button of, oh the
Andrew: fuck. Are you totally delightful? That is one of the moments. So when she literally like revs it, it runs into a liquor who picks it up and jumps in the air kills it. There's like a two seconds.
Silhouette like explosion of her, of Alice air, like that's bad ass. This guy loves his wife. I can tell, you know, I'm like, oh, the whole
Erich: scene
Andrew: is like very kinetic. It's got a lot of great energy to it, but it was one of those shots where like, they probably could have held on. For [00:35:00] another three or four seconds.
And it was just like, like here, let's just throw this in just for shits and giggles. And it was, it was like a very effective shot. I liked it a lot.
Erich: I mean, they could have cut out the speed ramping video. The show is the bullets were made by the umbrella corporation. Like
Andrew: they do
Erich: everything. Like what is the point of that?
We get it. But anyway, here is like gratuitous comic relief that I mentioned earlier that I do not understand the point of, we, we circle back to Mike apps who we met in the police station, Jill freed him. Right. So like they have met, he is just driving around, running over zombies while shouting GTA
Andrew: video games,
Erich: right.
Video game reference. And then he gets into a car accident because there some topless.
Andrew: Yeah, zombie strippers potentially, or we don't really, we don't really know. Sure. You know, the nature of [00:36:00] why they are exactly.
Erich: They were unclothed when they were bitten. It happens. I've seen the movies, zombie strippers.
It's very plausible. And that's the whole scene. That's it? That's it. Yeah. That's it. I, I don't understand. It's not that funny. It's not at least I didn't think it was that funny, but there you go. Right. So I just thought it was a wild inclusion. Like when you're cutting down a movie, I feel like that could go, but I guess they were like, we need to check in on Mike apps.
What has he been
Andrew: doing? We'll get him free. It doesn't get him from like a, to B. It's not how he, you know, the crash. Uh, like indicate his presence to other people. It's literally just
Erich: absolutely pointless. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. ODed fares team gets overrun. Um, they're like calling for help and the umbrella corporations, basically just like now you're on your own.
Um, so they're [00:37:00] kind of turning, um, there's a really cool shot after this. It is completely out of place in this movie, but it's beautiful with like a raccoon police department helmet on the ground and like there's burning around it and there's zombies reflected in the helmet and it's like, it's like a, like a teaser poster shot.
Like it's just a really great shot. I have no idea how they let that go in this
Andrew: movie. I'm happy to tell you that it is lifted whole cloth from the game that shot, they recreated the shot and it looks, I mean, If you watched the first game is a PlayStation one game. So if you watched the original, you'd be like, oh, it looks like it's a 20 year old thing, but then, you know them remaking.
It was like, wow. That is very good.
Erich: Yeah. Yeah. That's super cool. I was like, I don't know. That is way too creative for this movie.
Andrew: Yeah. It's like, so they live, there are, there are a handful of shots and you could probably [00:38:00] pick them out and be like, oh, this was a good shot. And you're like, yes, because thank you.
Cap com. Thank you for the direct inspiration.
Erich: So, so our team of Jill, her partner. Alice and the news reporter wandering into a graveyard. Um, we have another classic zombie moment where one of them is bitten. Jill's partner's bitten. An Alice wants to kill him, but Jill says no. Okay. Uh, of course
Andrew: I got to chat about this though.
Eric, come on.
Erich: No, go ahead.
Andrew: What, what are the rules? What are the goddamn rules? Why are the dead rising from their graves? I was about to
Erich: say after this scene, all of a sudden zombies come out of the ground and it is the first time we get like full on classic. Like shambling George Romero's zombies, [00:39:00] right?
Yes. And I don't know where that comes from either. Yeah. Like the, the, the idea was that the T virus reanimated dead tissue. Yes. Right. And I guess that makes sense, but I don't know why, what brought the T virus to that graveyard? Right? I mean, I guess that one guy is bitten. I, I, I
Andrew: don't know. Right. For how, for the it's it's not like it's not the proximity of where they are.
It's literally like the whole graveyard decides to get up at the same time.
Erich: Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's no, there's no logic to it, except I'll accept.
Andrew: Like, you'd like, you know, uh, I think one of the living dead films, it, uh, uh, zombie was burned and maybe there was like some rain or something that put it into the soil.
Right. But [00:40:00] realistically, those people there they're long dead and buried. And I will say again, this same shit happened in . And I didn't understand that then either I'm like, I don't now I don't understand the rules. And it made me upset then to where I'm like, are we dealing with living people that die because of it?
Or is it, is it like the walking dead where we all have the T we're all in the TV? Like what,
Erich: what are the rules? I mean, that, that is what they're implying, right? Like just everybody gets it, but. And like, to be fair, there was no way to show that in the first movie. Right? Cause they were wrecked. They were just underground the whole time.
But like w the timing of this is very confusing. Like is city appears to have been overrun hours ago. Yeah. I have no idea why suddenly people are coming out of graveyards. I
Andrew: don't like it. I don't care for [00:41:00] this. I want to cut this part. And Mike, these two parts back to back need to go
Erich: well, and once again, it doesn't, it doesn't go anywhere, right?
Like is just a scene. And Alice kicks ass, like it's, it's a good setup for a fight scene. They're overrun. Blah-blah-blah but like, it doesn't go anywhere. There's no moral implication. There's no plot point. There there's nothing comes out of this
Andrew: particular scene. Unfortunate.
Erich: Meanwhile back at umbrella, uh, they activate the nemesis program, which, uh, we heard about at the very, very end of the first movie.
And we're, we are guessing it will be confirmed later, but that this is Matt from the first movie. Yeah. And he is a giant, uh it's like, it's like gospel pinhead from hell raiser, but on like human [00:42:00] growth hormone, it's like, like a really giant Sena bite is basically what this is. You're crushing it,
Andrew: dude.
The description is incredible. Yes.
Erich: Yeah. Uh, we will learn later that this is like a weapon. Platform. Right. So a umbrella drops a bunch of weapons for nemesis and that leads oh, fares team to the hospital. Um, which, okay, good for them. Meanwhile, we find out that, uh, the raccoon city police, the stars team yeah.
Is holed up at a movie theater. I love the trope of people that are excited for the Giambi apocalypse because they get to shoot stuff,
Andrew: the
Erich: sniper, because there's a sniper in this and, um, in the [00:43:00] remake of Dawn of the dead. Yeah. Um, they like play a game where like they named it. Celebrity a zombie looks like, and then they shoot it with a sniper rifle.
Like it's just, it's one of those like weird things that like is probably true, right? Like there are probably some gun nuts out there that would be super stoked if they like, just got to shoot stuff with impunity. And that's what this sniper is doing. Yeah. Uh, saves Mike app's who walks in as a little bit of like comedy gold, because he's like a, a, a street smart black man surrounded by white cops.
Yes. But that doesn't last because nemesis shows up with his Terminator vision and the mini gun from predator.
Andrew: He literally, it really has a HUD, like remaining bullets remaining rockets. Like all he was missing was like a health bar and it would have been like a [00:44:00] full as resident.
Erich: And he has this wild thing where like, We got to stop, listen, sound design Hollywood.
But we know he's big because he makes a huge noise when he, who walks. And I'm like, that's not how footsteps work. Maybe that's what he sounds like in the game.
Andrew: They stole that exactly. Like, because the games were originally fixed angles. So like you would move from screen to screen and the camera's fixed.
It's not like fall, it's not over the shoulder or anything. So the only way to let you know that something is in the area was with sound cues. So you would hear these duh, duh, duh. And you'd be like, oh shit, I don't see him, but he's here,
Erich: Mary. I found it real annoying, especially like. Well, we'll get into sound cues in a minute.
Yeah. Uh, we go back to Alice's team and phones keep ringing around them. It's weird. So they [00:45:00] answer it.
Andrew: Hello, God. I thought you'd never answered who is this? I can get you out with a city. All four of you. Her first, we have to come to an arrangement. Are you ready to make a deal? Do we have a choice if you want to live beyond tonight? No. So his name is Dr. Ashford and he runs the advanced genetics and viral research division of the umbrella corporation.
What's he want? Or this starter, Angela is trapped in the city. . She didn't make it. She's hiding out in her school. We find her heel up escape the perimeter, according to Ashford umbrella. No, they can't contain the infection. So at sunrise this morning record city will be completely sanitized. What do you mean by sanitized precision?
Tactical. Nicholas,
Erich: we got our ticking clock. We got an [00:46:00] actual mission finally. Right. And like, you know, I guess this is our act too, right? Like we, we have something to do as they are making their way to Jared Harris's daughter's school. Alice can sense nemesis. This starts a weird fucking like spidey sense.
She has. That really annoys me. Yeah. Where like, she can just like smell the T virus or something. I have no. Nemesis kills the partner who was already bitten anyway. So like low stakes, we knew he was gonna die. Uh, she takes off and Alice runs straight at nemesis. Um, this seems like a bad tactical move. Is this how you have to fight them in the video game?
It's
Andrew: mostly running from him to be honest, because he does have a rocket launcher in the game. It's not a, it's not a wise maneuver to take him on. He will [00:47:00] at least early in the game. He will wreck you. It's not great.
Erich: Uh, then it makes even less sense. Uh,
Andrew: You hear him? You run. It's not good. Yeah.
Erich: Uh, chase ensues.
We learned the nemesis despite being so heavy that he makes loud footsteps can just hop over a fence. Alice just escapes. Um, and then like, nemesis just leaves. Like I was a little bit confused because like they're setting this character monster, whatever to be sort of a Terminator, right? Like, doesn't stop until everyone is dead.
And like she escapes down a tunnel is like a garbage shoot or something and he fires a missile down. I was just like, well, I guess I got her, so I don't know. It just, our work here is done. Yeah. Like weirdly convenient. Um, we get one of my favorite, uh, weird movie shorthands for toughness, which is [00:48:00] the hero resets, their own broken bone.
Like, I love this move and movies. It's so stupid, but like, Ooh, like she, like, I think she, she broke her finger or something and she said her finger, Jill and the reporter are the only two that are left from that team. They get attacked by a jump scare. This movie seems to have a lot more jump scares than the first one.
Oh yeah. And a lot more like fake out jump scares where like they build the tension. You open the door. Oh, it's fine. And then, oh wait. No, it's not. One or two of those I'll give you, but they do that several times in this movie, they all meet up at the school at Angela. Sorry. Angela is Jared Harris, his daughter's name, the red queen.
Uh, they all meet up at her school. They're looking for her. There is some foreshadowing because for some reason, a raccoon PD canine unit was at [00:49:00] this school. Um, so I wonder what that means. We get the jump scare. That's not a jump scare. That is that a jump scare with Mike gaps, but he is saved by ODed fare, who at some point in the film.
We never see was also called by the doctor and told to go get his daughter.
Andrew: Right. He's calling
Erich: everybody. So by wild coincidence now we've got the whole team together. The, the group has of course split up to look for Angela because these are idiots in a horror movie. Um, the reporter finds a kid. She thinks is Angela turns around.
Of course it's a zombie, but here is one of my least favorite tropes in monster movies. And that is that the zombie hoard is as loud as fuck until they want to be sneaky. Right. This woman is like in an empty room. And then all of a sudden, like [00:50:00] 50 zombie children show up and eat
Andrew: her. They're so little.
That's why you making your
Erich: new noise. Yeah. Like I just, uh, I'm like just make your rules and go with them. Right? Like. Uh, anyway,
Andrew: I get it. I get it. It's like the riser from the grave thing. I can't stand it. Why did that happen? Why are these kids? Zombie kids would probably be either. More noticing terrifying.
Well, certainly more terrifying, but probably like just the pit, the timber, the pitch of their voice. They're like, you know, I think it was just, I it's it's it's disturbing on all levels too. Don't
Erich: like it. Um, the great thing about Angela is she still talks like the red queen. Yes. So like at one point she's just like, you can tell her, like, I was fully expecting her to tell them they were all gonna die down here,
Andrew: again,
Erich: uh, escaping from the school.
We get finally get our zombie dogs. Um, you mentioned in the first episode that they're like a [00:51:00] staple of the franchise, so I'm here for it. That's fine. Zach ward, who has been in this movie, he's Farkas, he's the bully from a Christmas story is doing a Russian accent for some reason. Like, is this a character from the game?
Andrew: I'm happy you brought this up. Kyle is, is, is the character. So that's the umbrella there, Carlos and McHale, who would be his boss is ostensibly. They are on the umbrella essentially like the counter measurements quad. So like umbrella has their own private army. They send in to take care of, I guess, shit.
Like this always happens to the point where they have their own army as you do. He's he's the villain of the third game. He is not the good guy. And it's just weird to me that they're like, all right, he's just a good guy in this one too.
Erich: That's fine. Okay. All right. So he is a real Russian character. Yeah.
He's certainly a Russian with
Andrew: [00:52:00] ginger. He was a legitimately, very Russian looking, sounding character in the, in the original game. Uh, he was not, you know, there is a disconnect. I I'm with you when you look at this guy and he begins to speak, it is a little jarring when you're like, wait a minute, the accents to come out of the mouth.
Russian was pretty low on the list. That's all I said,
Erich: all of the actors you could have picked like, surely I don't know. Surely someone looked more Russian, but so we get our info dump here.
Andrew: You two know each other.
She's infected, she's infected on a massive level. How can you know that? Because she is too you're infected. When are you going to tell
Erich: us that? But we learn a bit more about the T virus. It was created to [00:53:00] cure Angela from crutches disease. They don't actually say what was wrong with her. She
Andrew: didn't have long.
My daddy, I thought he made it for me. He's sick. I someday I'll get sick too. He just wants to stop that. When I was, I taught him crutches. I said, I'd never get past just worse.
He found a way to make these.
It took some veteran away from him. He thought a Batman, he didn't mean for any of this.
Erich: She needed crutches and she was dying. So Jared Harris, uh, gave her the T virus, which fixed her, but only if she regularly took the antidote to keep it in check. So she just has that in her high-tech lunchbox. Right.[00:54:00]
Andrew: Which begs the question, where is this little girl's actual lunch? If it's not, what is she eating?
Erich: So like, this is the kind of plotting where I'm just like, this is, it's just unnecessarily convoluted, right? Like, and, and really wanted to sit down with you and be like, is this from the game? Like, this is just fucking wild plotting.
This is like, First draft high on
Andrew: weed
Erich: plotting they're like needed a second
Andrew: pass. The T virus is V it's very simple. Uh, it regenerates cells, right? Sure. So if you take it at face value, um, it will just begin regenerating cells, right. But left unchecked, it produces at such a rate that will in the original game, it usually ended with, like, you got a fever, the fever was so bad that you died, then [00:55:00] the cells continued to re animate.
So you regenerate and you become back as a zombie. And that's, it's like, okay, great. Yep. So the precedent in the games is that like, there are certain people that have had the T virus and if they administer X amount of antivirus, they get some of the benefits and none of the drawbacks of. Maybe what we're seeing with Alice, like some super strength, some of that kind of stuff.
But again, I wish they just would have, like, this doctor should have just laid that out. Like, look, if, if, if you have this or your bit, or you've taken the T virus and you don't course correct it, then you'll die. Like you'll die, you'll be a zombie, but it can be managed essentially.
Erich: And like, I think I got most of that.
Right. But like, I don't know it, like, they're overthinking it just, yeah, you're overthinking [00:56:00] it in
Andrew: the game. It was like a way for the guy, the Ashford is from the games as well. Like he did. He's the founder of umbrella. I don't think he's the founder of umbrella. He, I think he's just like a scientist in this, but he is the founder of umbrella from the game.
The T virus is essentially his gambit to live forever as like an old rich white dude, like just never, ever die. Uh, so that, that was the initial goal, all of the project.
Erich: Gotcha. Uh, so once they've got her, they call Harris and he's like, all right, the last chopper had a raccoon cities in 47 minutes, but oh, no.
Umbrellas has been following Jared Harris the whole time. Um, as they're going to the helicopter, Alice records, the video that we saw in the opening school, which is just a weird stylistic choice, but, and I don't know if it was meant to be that, or if they were just like, Hey, we have this video, let's use it in the opening scroll.
This is [00:57:00] very
Andrew: helpful as a recap.
Erich: Yeah. Um, they find the helicopter, you know, Alice does some like cool-ass shit. She does like. Uh, rad, reverse repel run down the building. Like it was good. Messes up a bunch of
Andrew: dudes. There's a cool camera move. Like the camera falls off the building with her as I just like little touches were really, really
Erich: nice.
It was, it was a great little action before. Sure. Like this whole sequence coming up is like pretty cool. Yeah. One of my favorite parts of this is none of these guys are wearing tactical helmets. They're all wearing motorcycle helmets. It's all we could get. And I was like, did we not have the budget? Like it was $35 million you couldn't get, but I'm sure somebody felt they looked cooler.
Yeah, certainly they get in the chopper. Alice has a flashback, which I'm not even clear what this flashback is supposed to tell us. This is a medical chopper for nemesis, [00:58:00] which okay. Yeah. Um, umbrella. Shows up then they've been waiting for them. They take everyone hostage. And we learned that this whole thing at this point, a umbrella has decided that since everything went haywire, they might as well let nemesis and Alice fight to see who's the best.
Yeah. It's I'm like, what is happening now? Kicks nemesis, but nemesis like pools out a piece of sculpture to use it as a sword, but she like kicks them into the rest of the sculpture. And that's when she has her flashback and realize this nemesis is actually Matt. Yeah. Someone in this movie actually says finish him.
Andrew: Yes. I'm so happy. You
Erich: mentioned that enough with the video game shit, but I kind of liked it.
Andrew: It was funny. It was pretty funny.
Erich: Nemesis of [00:59:00] course remembers her. So like. He kind of has a good guy turn umbrellas leg. All right. Well, we're going to launch the nuke in five minutes. Now. Forget the clock. There is a wonderful action beat that I don't understand.
I don't understand where Alice was going or what she was doing, but she like runs around the curved atrium of a building while a helicopter shoots out all the windows, which is like a beautiful shot. And like, you know, if we learned anything from diehard, it's like, shoot the glass, right? Like it's just, it's, it's a great shot.
I don't understand enough of the geography of this scene to figure out what the hell she is doing. Yeah.
Andrew: I just, uh, really, uh, just to put a pin in button that one up. Thank you. Cap com that's from the game. Okay. All right. It's literally not this it's actually not even from the game that this is based off of.
It's just in the [01:00:00] opening sequence of a resident evil game. Not sure it's not Alice. It's not Jill. It's not anyone. We will even meet for a few movies. Still it, Paul Ws Anderson. Must've just really liked. This opening scene. It's literally the first three minutes of one of the games, right on. All right. So that's another thing, you know, when you're like, I don't really understand, or why is this such a beautiful shot?
It's like, there it is
Erich: because we had help. It was already storyboarded for them. It's true. It's true. No, uh, so nemesis saves her, he shoots a helicopter with his missile launcher. Uh, he gets killed. She's knocked out. Oh, by the way, zombies are back. Like, that's another slow. They're just so slow. You know, it's another thing in this film where they're like, zombies are everywhere and everyone gets overrun until we don't need them to do that.
Oh, by the way, zombies are back. So they throw the bad [01:01:00] guy off the helicopter, little poetic, fun, poetic justice, Jared Harris, who was killed as part of all of this, eats him, the nuke arrives to some, like what I found disturbingly heroic music. Like there is a
Andrew: queue,
Erich: right? Like they are duking a town and it's like, yay. I'm like, all right. Someone screams, hang on to something because this is that kind of movie. Sure. Um, and then Alice gets impaled on some debris, like just straight up killed, right. In this helicopter crash. We flash forward umbrella finds the helicopter crash.
Uh, we, we fully meet Dr. Isaacs, who I assume is from the game. I don't know. Uh,
Andrew: okay. Yeah. It's just, and it's Ian Glen shows up. Yeah.
Erich: It's Jorah, Mormont like, wait a minute. The evil scientists and. [01:02:00] You know, so, okay. They find the crash, uh, we flash forward again, like this movie ends like more times and fucking return of the king.
Um, we find out that umbrella has covered the whole thing up, right?
Andrew: Yeah. Echoes of fake news back, even back then. Yeah.
Erich: Alice's video got out, but they were like fake news. It was just a hoax. Uh, what really happened was a nuclear reactor meltdown, which I don't know how that's better, but okay. Sure. I mean, I do know how it's better, but still ending.
For, I think we're on two or three. Uh, Jorah Mormon has Alison uh, back to tank where Alice is weirdly hearing the red queen. They let her out, they talk about her powers. Like, you know, it's clearly they're revisiting the experiment. That is Alice. Um, but also apparently [01:03:00] like she's a child that doesn't know what a pen is.
Um, and then there's like a crazy flashback overload. She remembers everything, including her name kicks a mass, uh, and escapes. And now her new power is like, she sees a security guard through a camera and causes that guy to bleed out
Andrew: what are the rules again? And
Erich: that's, that's what I mean, right. Is like this movie.
Has like real bad sequalitis right. Where it's like, we have to amp everything up and I'm like, okay. But I don't understand, like you have to, you don't have to give me the scientific explanation, but like maybe that person discovers, they can do it. Like she just does it. Like she knows she can do it. Right.
It's yeah. It's just very jarring. And then ending number five, Jill and Odette fare. And Mike's apps [01:04:00] show up pretending to be umbrella people and escort her out. And there's a big tense moment where they get to the security gate, but Jorah Mormons like, no, let them go. And he activates Alice's program, which give her matrix eyes.
Uh, she starts seeing in binary. It's real weird. Like clearly someone had seen the matrix and they have that like green font, but it's just ones and zeros. And then we fly out to an umbrella satellite, which. I don't understand why that was important, but that is the end.
Andrew: We did it. We got through, we
Erich: did. So I, this isn't, this isn't one of my favorites.
I feel like they were, they were doing a lot of weird video gamey table setting. I don't know. Right. Cause I don't know enough about the video game. Like I just think it was over. [01:05:00] I don't want to say overwritten because that implies like it's applied. Like I just feel like it was too complicated for its own.
Good.
Andrew: I am inclined to agree with you about this movie overall. I really did have fun with it, but it is a mess from the word go, essentially. And it's not one of those things where like it clarifies a lot. It actually makes things a little. Less clear in terms of like, what, again, if I have to ask what are, what are the rules more than once then?
I think that's a failure of the, of the writing. It's not really hard with zombies either. It's like, if there's a, if you have a Bible, a zombie Bible that you're basing your stuff off of, let's just go with that.
Erich: Yeah. And, and again, I haven't watched the whole series in a while. I feel like it gets more and less complicated, right?
Like really the [01:06:00] complications become what are Alice has powers, right. Or who is Alice? Or like, what is Alice doing? Right. Um, Which is weird, especially because she's not even in the games, like, like it's not like you have a video game protagonist that you have to explain why they can double jump or why, you know what I mean?
Like some sometimes when they, when they converted a video game into movies, they're like overthinking the things in the movie that like, she's not even from the games. Yeah.
Andrew: That gives them, I understand that, that part of it giving them freedom to not have to be like bound to a character, which is cool.
Right. But then I just, I know personally, like there is wild consistency in at least what the characters can do in the world of the games. Right. [01:07:00] It's not like all of a sudden. We meet Jill, and now she can just jump in eight foot fence and you're like, wow. She is a bad ass. You know, she's like still just a person.
Yeah. Jill is like a highly trained, essentially like SWAT operative. So it makes sense that she can like carry a gun and do badass shit and spin, kick your face off or whatever. So like fine. I get it. Uh, the thing with Alice is really like, I don't know, it's it's baffling now. And this is the last movie. I have a very clear memory of like, once we get into the next part, I just, I know the movies get like very brown and that's, that's really, my it's like a brown.
Cloud is essentially my memory of the, of the next four films. So
Erich: yeah. Yeah. Uh, I'm trying to remember is the next one, Las Vegas seems right. And it's super brown. It's like, [01:08:00] it's just khaki colored the
Andrew: whole movie. Yeah. I seem to remember. There's like, we're on a rooftop for one of them. That might be the Vegas one.
Oh, I think that's LA maybe we're on a ship at one point, I think in wa like either I, I, again, I re it's like, so it's fuzzy, you know, I'm Alison this, I don't remember everything yet. It's all vivid flashbacks to what's happening here. This is going to be fun. Alright. I'm excited, Eric. Yes. What was the best kill in this movie?
Erich: So the best kill in this movie, which is a problem because it wasn't a kill by the zombies. The best killing this movie is Alice killing a liqueur with a cross. It was just genius. I was like, did that just happen? Like she just defiled a church and kill the liquor while doing it, but yep. Yes, she did.
Andrew: I'm going to have to agree with you.
It's if it wasn't [01:09:00] that one, it's the motorcycle liquor, but they happen in such close proximity. You might, I wouldn't be mad if you were like, they count as one kill because it's all just one fluid movement that she does.
Erich: I mean, there, there are three in that one, right? It's like the one with the motorcycle, then the one with the cross, then the one with the pew and the, and the shotgun.
So yeah, totally.
Andrew: Yeah. So it's the liquors, you know, you take your pick. So
Erich: again, less of a horror movie, like we are counting action beats here. Like it's not the zombie kills. It's it's the ALIS
Andrew: kills. Yeah. That's yeah, you're right. That tracks, that tracks, I think, as we get into the later ones where there are more creatures, I think that the creatures that we have seen thus far are essentially like liquors and nemesis.
And I seem to have a memory of ligaments and the gate. Oh, the dogs. Yeah. In the games, there are a [01:10:00] wide array of creatures that we encounter. Uh, and I seem to remember some of them popping up in the later films when they probably had even more budget to, to pop them in. So I'm excited for the potential there, but I also remember like the cast not being, you know, I think the whole world ends, right?
So the cast, the amount of people we can kill off without consequence. Almost to zero. So
Erich: Andrew it's it's right there on the 10, this was the apocalypse and we hit it. Are they called? They called
Andrew: it, but they did this isn't the, well, they contained it though. So like, it was like a print. It was like a, they preeminently called it apocalypse.
Cause like not only were they able to put a wall, like a oh, unscalable wall around a whole city and nuke it without consequence, they seemingly got often looking like the heroes at the end. They were like, the response from umbrella has been [01:11:00] wonderful and unprecedented. I
Erich: don't remember any of these movies, a dressing on screen that the world ends.
I think we come into the next movie and the world has just asked just yeah, like off screen.
Andrew: Yeah. You have to assume that some of those people that got out. In the F as they, weren't only one exit. Yeah. Something like that. They weren't letting people out. And they, you know, I don't know what the temp, I don't know what the accuracy, they have, like a bespoke devices to test for the T virus that they just hold up to your, like your neck or something or your head I'm like, one of them could have been miscalibrated or I don't know.
It's well, we'll see what we get.
Erich: I don't know that we ever find out, but, okay.
Andrew: All right. Let's talk about some fun production notes and trivia and stuff like that. I'm just going to bang through these pretty quickly. I think some of them are worthwhile, so [01:12:00] it is as we expected or suspected. However you want to phrase that, that Paul WSA Anderson started on this screenplay immediately after the first movie.
Like he was so confident about getting picked up for a second. That he didn't even wait for like the green light. Like he just like, yes, I'm gonna this one's in the can. I'm going to start writing the next one. This one,
Erich: he does the same thing with this one. Like, I, I don't mean, I don't know whether he wrote the next one right away, but like the ending of this movie is clearly setting up a sequel.
Like he has, he is just going
Andrew: for it. It's wild. Again, this would be the case of like, if this was it, if this movie flopped, this is a terrible ending for a movie, it is not as it's not, it means it's nothing. So there is that, uh, Mila, she was in training for three months to get in shape for this film to do the things that she was doing.
I think [01:13:00] probably at the time that's a, that's a pretty decent amount of time to like, be dedicated to getting into this. We've heard stories of. Uh, for like the matrix and stuff, like years. Right. I think that's a kind of an edge case. Uh, but like, you know, it is cool to see the people putting in the work for
Erich: sure.
Yeah. And like, she's got a lot more to do in this, right? Like the first movie, like she is, she doesn't find out she's a bad ass until like act three. Right. And this one she's just kicking ass and taking names from the jumps. So that makes sense.
Andrew: Yeah. Uh, despite all of the work she put in, she said she was disappointed with this film at, and that is due to the studio wanting more action and explosions.
And as a result, the story was swept under the rug. Now, all she had to do was go into their study. Right. And tell her husband, Hey, Hey fella.
Erich: I mean, I like. [01:14:00] I could see studio notes in a couple of places, right? Like that Mike Epps scene that I talked about really feels like a studio. No, like those kinds of things, right?
Like this needs more comedy, this needs more boobs. Well, let's put a bit in one scene, right? Like, yes. Um, but I, I would disagree with her about the jewelry, um, confused what she means by that.
Andrew: Yeah. Likewise, you know, it's fair. I don't know. I don't know what it was. Uh, I had looked up the deleted scenes for this movie to see if that was, if there was anything there, but the entirety of the deleted scenes that are available in the Blu-ray is eight minutes of footage.
Erich: I mean, who knows, like if the studio jumped in and pre-production and like demanded rewrites, right? Like I, who knows, but. I can't imagine that there was more to this story that was missing.
Andrew: That's true. [01:15:00] And we're also having a, uh, first, essentially ostensibly, a first time director versus Paul not being there, maybe it would've gone a different way.
A studio at that point would have probably been less likely to have an effective bully against Paul. He would have been like, no, because as we discussed in the last one, either like maybe PG 13 and he essentially was like, fuck you, it's an R rated movie. And they, they were like, okay, I guess it's absolutely not.
Erich: Yeah. My wife is going to be naked. I don't care what you say.
Andrew: Yeah. How dare you? Have you seen my wife? So there's that to prepare for her role Sienna, Jill bought a PlayStation and a copy of resident evil three nemesis and played the game and she modeled her movements after Jill's movements. Uh, which I think
Erich: was pretty cool.
Uh, I mean good for her. No, that she's much of an actress, but again, like, I don't know how much of this [01:16:00] character is based on the video king. Like, that's one of the problems with movies like this, right? It's like, I'm not really sure what she's trying to do. So like, Jill doesn't feel like a fully fleshed out character, but I'm guessing Jill's not like a fully fleshed out character in the games.
Right. She is a bad-ass every time we see her, she is doing something bad ass. Yeah. So I wasn't impressed by the performance, but again, don't know what was asked for.
Andrew: Again, there, there is a remake of resident evil, two and three that are more recent, complete ground up kind of rewrites of the story to bring them more in line with traditional.
Concepts and game design. And in the remake, Jill is a fully formed, realized character with motivations and goals. And in the first game, in, in the F in the first version, the 19 97 [01:17:00] 98 version resonate with three nemesis, that just was not the case. There was not a lot there in my opinion. Yeah. And you can tell that just by looking at her outfit, like the outfit in this movie is the outfit from the game.
It's like, well, okay, well, I know what you're going for.
Erich: She's, she's a Laura cloth Croft clone. Like that's what it feels like. Exactly. Exactly. We need Laura Croft in this game.
Andrew: Okay. Yeah. Which is a turn from Jill was in the first game and in a full in full police gear, like just in my opinion, a much more capable, appropriate.
Yeah. Like more appropriate attire, more capable. Seemed, I don't know, more focused in, in the first game, it was like a regression to see her in such a way in the third one. That's all. Yeah. All that to say is Sienna probably could have skipped the game and the PlayStation and been absolutely fine. And I
Erich: [01:18:00] literally don't remember if that character comes back, so maybe she does better.
And the next one we'll see fingers
Andrew: crossed fingers crossed. Uh, this is a cool thing. The, uh, the suit for nemesis was like roughly 60 pounds and the Gatling gun, which was real, uh, not, I mean, obviously not a real Gatling gun, but, um, you know, substantial. It was 65 pounds and the dude had to hold it with one arm.
Right. Uh, so he could only go for about 15 minutes at a time before he was in like a state of complete exhaustion, which is. Not pretty good for him. Just like cool to know that the dedication,
Erich: I mean, as we said, it's, it's a great practical effect. It feels like maybe they learn their lesson a little bit with the liquor in the first one.
And we're like, if this thing's going to be on screen, as much as, as in the script, we need an actual physical thing. Yeah. They did it, it looks great. The design is such that like the normal things you [01:19:00] notice on a suit like that, like the articulation of the face and that kind of thing, the design just avoids all of that.
Right? Like the face doesn't move because a nemesis face wouldn't move. It's like all stapled together.
Andrew: So yeah. It's pretty neat. It's pretty neat. Yeah. Uh, as the, just like the first film, I don't know if we even touched on this in our first set of production notes, all almost all of the zombies are professional dancer.
Which is, which is neat. That's kind of the way that they wanted them to be very bendy and flexible. Okay. And they went to like an undead bootcamp and the two rules, only two rules don't drag your feet. And none of the outstretched arms, like you would see in a kind of a classic zombie film, you know, they don't lift the arms until they're close enough to grab, which
Erich: I think is fair.
Cool. Yeah. I feel like that was, you know, and there was always a little corny, right. So I get it there. They're hyping it up a little bit.
Andrew: Sure. They're not expending [01:20:00] nearly as much energy, you know, just keeping your hands at your sides and shambling around exerts way less energy. Here's the cool thing, Eric.
I did not realize this, but I went back and I verified it as you can see. And I have verified truth. The weather map at the beginning, it clearly shows raccoon city where Philly would be because. You can, you can plot it based on the other towns that are listed on the map. So selling's Grove Hazelton and Pottsville are on the map.
And I pulled up a map and I'm like, selling's Grove. And I'm like, okay. And then I followed it across. I'm like, okay, here's Pottsville and here's Hazleton. And I'm like, if I follow it this way, it's like, holy shit.
Erich: It's Philadelphia. Okay. It's
Andrew: weird. Because again, I remember seeing another map maybe in the outro credits when they're talking about the cleanup and clearly labeled is somewhere in [01:21:00] Illinois.
Like here's where the container, here's where the nuclear thing. And it's like Illinois, but in that weather map, we're in Pennsylvania. Again, it just goes to show, we don't really ever know where record insidious. It's very ambiguous.
Erich: Yes. And like intentionally. So I T I totally get that, but it's.
Interesting that it would be in Pennsylvania and not be Pittsburgh just as a Romero. Um Omaj but Hey, all right,
Andrew: sweet. And then this is a final little nerdy thing. Uh, resident evil, this, this one apocalypse was the last title to be released on VHS, which I'm thinking I'm like, what the hell were they still releasing?
VHS is in 2008, I guess. And it was the first to go to Blu-ray Sony and in their infinite wisdom, I think Sony picks this franchise up towards the back half. I think it's saying gyms now. And then [01:22:00] Sony, either buys, screen gems or acquires the franchise or whatever. Yeah. Sony in their infinite wisdom.
Whenever they come out with a new format, first movie, always 100% the fifth element, it just works. It's a grind and I buy it every time. It does not matter.
Erich: I'm due for a new copy. Right. I got
Andrew: that 4k Blu-ray transfer. Let's go for sure. It's just, it is very funny that, you know, we can very clearly date this to say, like this was on VHS.
I hate that. I hate that. I
Erich: feel, I mean, that's interesting, right? Cause it speaks to that this franchise, uh, I don't want to call it a cult classic because I don't think that's the case, but like picks up more of a following. In home video. Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious to see if the domestics of the subsequent films go up as like people have seen one, two or even three at home, and they're like, oh, I want to see the new one, [01:23:00] uh, in the theater.
Yeah. Cause I'm sure that's we discussed in the first one. I'm sure. I was like, I'm not going to see that in the theater, but I definitely saw the last one in the theater.
Andrew: I would not be surprised, you know, and listener, it's not coincidental that we're doing this podcast now on the, on the verge of a new resident, evil movie, it will be interesting to see how this franchise, you know, if we see like a little bump in sales on, on like iTunes and stuff like that, it's just like, why are the resident evil movies back in Vogue?
It's like, oh, people are prepping. You know, it's like one of those situations. Oh, for sure.
Erich: Yeah. Yeah. Got to do my
Andrew: marathon. Yeah. Yeah. We're just getting it done weekly and taking extra time to chat about it.
Erich: So Andrew, we talked a little bit going through plot and some other things about how these games tie in or sorry, how the movies tie into the games.
Yeah. Again, it sounds like not very
much.
Andrew: It's not, [01:24:00] it's not really,
Erich: it's really weird, but like, for example, I knew there was a game called resident evil nemesis. Yeah. So like, was that the second game? Like how does this all tie together?
Andrew: So nemesis is your third game, right? It's the residential one, two and three has the subtitled nemesis two and three in the timeline happened at the same exact time.
You're just at different parts of raccoon city and playing as different characters. So there are some direct references in this movie, several to resonate. Well three and maybe one, maybe one reference to resident evil.
Erich: Okay. So wait, the second and third video game are like concurrent in the timeline. Yes.
Yeah. And you're just like filling in blanks from the other game or something
Andrew: kind of, yeah. They're, they're separate, they're kind of separate stories, but like, uh, I will say like the [01:25:00] nuke, right? The nuke is a thing that is imminent, that everybody knows is going to happen. So the two characters that you would play as Leon and Claire in resident evil, two are aware that a nuke is en route.
And then Jill, who is in a different part of raccoon city doing other shit. Sure. Also is aware because she's with Carlos and Mikhail. And so like, it gets a little, it's just like, it's pretty cool that that's the route they took with it. And that's, it also lends to why they remade two and three almost in tandem because.
We're able to reuse a lot of the same assets and it looks awesome. Gotcha. But yeah, they almost 100% skipped the, the, the plot of two, which is the better game. So there you have it, nemesis from the game is, is visually [01:26:00] exactly what we see here down to like, uh, like I said, he has a rocket launcher, I think in the game, he may have also had a flame thrower.
I don't know if he ever had a Gatling gun that seemed like it would be way overpowered. Cause you are just regular human being in the game. A rocket launcher is also way overpowered. Don't get me wrong, but that's, that's true. Uh, his whole directive is hunt and kill stars. Right. Uh, and the only line he ever says in the game is stars, which he says one time in this and it's super fan servicey.
It's exactly. If you told me they lifted the audio from the game. Him saying stars and put it in the movie. I'd be like, yeah, that tracks, it sounds identical. Makes sense. All right. This is very unclear to me. Even as someone who's played many of the games, I'm not sure how they control this thing. Uh, I just know that like the ultimate goal is to have a bio weapon that is controllable.
It gets into a lot of other weird shit later on from four resonate before onward [01:27:00] about like what they're doing to control these things. But this looks like it, like you said, he's just like a Terminator. Like they put a chip in his brain and they send directives to him. I don't understand it, but there, there it is.
He's supposed to, you imagine dropping three or four of these into a, an enemy thing. And you know, that's what it is that tracks all that is to say there might be more nemeses. That we see in later movies. I don't, I don't really remember that Messiah MSI. Yeah, that sounds better actually. Sure. Uh, the sequence with the police officers are surrounded completely overrun, right from the game that's like, and the, even, even the angle of the shot is almost identical.
I think when you're that crowd control should have been happening with grenades and not bullets, but I digress. That's fine. Sure. Let's see. I'm going to skip over some of these. The Jill's outfit is the same. We talked about that. The zombies rise from the grave that also happens. Jill uses a gas stove [01:28:00] to create an explosion to kill, uh, in the first game, it was to stop nemesis briefly in this one.
It's does kill the dogs. I just thought that was pretty funny. Nemesis shoots down a helicopter in the game. With the rocket launcher. He does that in this movie too. You're like, okay, there it is. That's the same exact thing check done. All right. Yeah. Uh, like I said, Ashford is the name of the guy who created umbrella in the games, but it's not, I think this is just an Omaj he's, he's not like really, he wasn't a S this guy, our Ashford looks just kind of like a scientist.
And he also dies where the other Ashford lives to
Erich: a very, very old age. It's this guy just seems like a cog.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. He's nobody there. They shot him. Like he was. Yeah. So it's fine. You know, Alice, his abilities at this point, mirror somebody in the game named Albert Wesker, who we may or may not run into in later films.
Erich: We definitely run into them in later films. I definitely remember that name. I'm [01:29:00] just like, what? Now there's another person with these abilities, but okay.
Andrew: The, the, the story of Wesker in these games is. Absolutely wild. I don't it's it's it doesn't, it does not make a whole lot of sense, even in the very tenuous game narrative.
You're like, oh, I guess maybe we'll see. So, uh, like I said, the running down the glass hallway shot from a helicopter, that whole sequence that's taken from a game called code Veronica, which is the fourth game. Even though there is a resident evil four, this was like sequentially, the fourth game that was made.
It's a little side story. Pretty cool. He literally grabbed the scene from the first three minutes. And as you see the new coming into town, it's a pretty cool camera shot at the end. Where the camera's like upside down. It like tracks the [01:30:00] nuke across. Oh yeah. It's hard to describe. It's like a 180 pivot kind of like the camera goes from one side to the other.
That's directly from the game, which I thought was a cool shot back then you believe it is a cool shot here as well. So fair. And then the final thing, and this is just a, maybe this is a stretch for me. Uh, when Alice visits her, as you described it's, uh, the gun shop, what did you, was it the, um, uh, I think I said from Terminator.
Terminator. Yeah. Yeah. In resident evil two and a little bit in resident evil three, you do visit a gun shop called Ken dues. It's a pretty, he's like a pretty iconic character in the series, despite dying almost, almost immediately in the original. All right. And that's where you go get your first. You, you, you gear up there before you start off.
Into the game proper in resident evil too. So that might, that might be it, but that's like, it's kind of cool. Like her first stop is kind of, you know, here's where I go to get my gear to start the mission [01:31:00] as a gearing up, for sure. So that's how it, that's how it ties into the games. I, there, there might've been stuff that I missed or I just stepped over if that's the case, you reach out and let me know.
But it seems like they very much just cherry picks things that look cool or sound cool, or our fan servicey. I mean, I'm,
Erich: I'm okay with that to a certain extent, um, as a video game fan, I think I would be frustrated, um, like not having, I think that's one of the reasons that like, I like this franchise way more than my gamer friends is because I've never played the games, so I don't have any stake in it.
Yeah. You know, like I, I don't have any horse in this race. Um, So I think of that, it's fun to be able to do that. Right. But like, I could also see somebody being like that isn't even this game, right? [01:32:00]
Andrew: Yeah. That happens a lot to me. I'm like, wait a minute. I thought we were in resin, evil three. And what are we doing over here in code Veronica?
It doesn't it's it is like an initially like a shell shocking moment for it. And then I'm like, you know what, though? It's clear to me that the dude plays the games, which is more than can be said about a lot of other video game, movie writers where it's like, did you even, did you, did you even turn it on the system?
Right. For someone like, you know, I
Erich: guess the equivalent for me would be like comic book movies. Right. Where like, I'm like, that's not how that happened. That's not how that works. Right. Like, so I, I can definitely see it for.
Andrew: Yeah. That's that, that that's, that's perfect. You know, it's Marvel taking liberties with how XYZ happened or, uh, it's probably more likely Sony with [01:33:00] their alt Spider-Man universe.
That's happening. Like you're like, what is this?
Erich: Well, they, they tend to be a little more reverent, but then you get like three different flag, fantastic. Four movies. And you're like, what is going on here? So how
Andrew: did you fuck this up three times that yeah. Or, uh, I think I've online. I've made my thoughts very clear about how I feel about Zack Snyder's interpretation of the DC.
You sure. In that I don't it's bad. Don't stop. What are you doing?
I think that's, yeah, that, that is, that is a very good analogy of what it's like. Yeah. Yeah. The games to comic books analogy works really well. So it makes sense. All that is to say, Eric, would you recommend this movie? It's hard to say, like on its own. I, it almost begs to be in the context of the films [01:34:00] that bookend it, but someone's like, Hey resident, beautiful.
You're doing a rustic Knievel podcast. Should I rewatch that?
Erich: I'm going to say no. Okay. I don't think there's enough leg fun, interesting stuff here. To to recommend it. It's just kind of a mess all over the place. Yeah. Um, we'll see. As we go through like how it holds up compared to others, I didn't recall this being quite so disjointed.
So I was kind of surprised on my recent rewatch. Um, I had remembered bits and pieces and it felt like a much more straight ahead narrative. Right? Like they had a goal, the nemesis was stalking them and BS. Right. Like that's what I remembered. And this is, this is a lot more convoluted than that. Uh, and it, I don't think it like pays off.
[01:35:00] Uh, so now I wouldn't recommend this one. What
Andrew: about you? I'm going to reserve the right later to unrecommended however, for right now, I, I do recommend it because I think later movies explained some of this stuff, but. That's also realizing that a later movie shouldn't have to explain shit about what we're watching right now.
Cause we never knew if that was going to come. So I liked the set pieces. Uh, I thought there were some for better or worse. There were some laugh out loud moments for me. And it's all apps. It's all apps. It's nothing else was funny about this movie, but what they gave him to do, I thought was, you know, it was, it was funny necessary.
No, but funny. Sure. So it is a recommend for me, but realizing that later I might be like, you know what? No, maybe at the end [01:36:00] we'll do a full recommend. We'll come back to it then. Yeah. And our other podcasts, we have this thing called the reckoning where we come back and we revisit with, with clear eyes when we're in it, it's sometimes tough to see.
It's only after you've gone through the journey. Can you look back. Uh, hindsight. So for right now, I'm going to say yes for set pieces alone. Uh, which I thought were really, really nice.
Erich: All right. Well, let's, let's see how it goes. Are you ready
Andrew: for the next one? Uh,
Erich: uh, I don't know what it is, but sure. As we discussed, they have super generic titles that don't remind you of anything about the movie.
So I think this is the desert.
Andrew: The next one is me. It's extinction. I just, yeah, I can't remember anything. So. We'll see,
Erich: I'm looking forward to it.
Andrew: That's it. We did it another one in the can, as they say no. Right. If, uh, if people want it to find a, keep up with you on the internet, some of your other shenanigans and stuff, where would they, where would they look?[01:37:00]
Erich: Am on Twitter and Instagram @platypusjones. Yeah. But also the 12&24 Discord is a good place to find me. I hang out there pretty regularly.
Andrew: Great. Yeah, you can, uh, you can catch me on there as well. It's 12and24.com/discord 12and24.com just in general. My podcasts. Cool breeze over the mountains.
You'll also hear Erich on there. The Kurt Locker, you will also hear Erich on there. We have a huge backlog of stuff. If you like what we do here, you're going to like what we do there. It's probably an even more structured show. Honestly. I like to play this one a little fast and loose. I think we have fun.
So, uh, And I'm on Twitter @darkdriving. And I guess Instagram, but Twitter is going to be the place where I am the most. So
Erich: not using the 'gram anymore.
Andrew: I get to this point where I'm like, do I, I, I don't care. Like, do I want to exert the energy? I don't [01:38:00] know. I feel like, I mean, like, this takes a significant amount of time, but at the end I have something right.
It's true. With, with Instagram, you just put stuff out there and you're like, w what, what did I do? It's, it's shorter. It takes less time, but does it mean anything? I don't know. It's a very existential thing. I'm going through. This is great. I love, hopefully you work that out. Yeah. It's me and Instagram, you know, real existential crisis.
So that's great. All right. That's it. We're done. Thank you all for joining us. And remember just one bite. One scratch from these creatures is sufficient. Stay safe out there.[01:39:00]