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Open your map, those heat signatures? That's us. We need to get from here to the computer core to disable The Red Queen and avoid as many Lickers as possible along the way.
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 (2002) [auto-generated transcript]
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Andrew: [00:00:00] 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.
Erich: Yeah, my name is Eric and I've only watched the movies and never played the games.
Andrew: Welcome to the show. This is very exciting. It's yeah, it's spooky season also. So the timing worked out great for this little something new for 12&24. Yeah. This is obviously a a mini series. We're not gonna this isn't a years long endeavor. And I really liked that a lot.
Erich: You might want to explain for people who are just joining us and don't know that you watch a lot of movies.
Andrew: Yeah. I've made one of my hobbies a jobby if you will. And I don't know how I feel about no, it's fine. I really like watching movies. If this is your first podcast, you can visit us at 12and24.com where we have other ones. And thus far, we have an [00:01:00] established track record of picking an actor and chronologically watching and reviewing all of the films that they've done.
And we have Keanu Reeves complete up until the recording of this so far. And we are in the process of doing Kurt Russell. So this is something a little bit different, a little bit cooler. You'll hear Eric on many of those episodes for both Kurt and Keanu, but we both have this kind of shared love of zombies.
And maybe this franchise question mark, I guess. We'll see. So we figured why not? Let's do some, let's do a little short show and it'll be great. I should note if you want to email us, this is just the housekeeping part. So we'll just get this out of the way you can email us. hello@12and24.com, and you can hit us up individually on Twitter.
We're not going to create a whole thing for this, but I'm @darkdriving. Eric is @platypusjones and you can agree with us or debate us, do all sorts of stuff like that. So if we get enough feedback later on, we'll probably do like a listener mailbag episode, but we're just [00:02:00] kind of having fun revisiting these films, I think.
And that's, that's good enough if you if you feel so inclined, we have a discord you can join. That's 12and24.com/discord. You can listen live to this show to other shows we do. And then finally, if you want to support us with just a moment of your time you rate and review the show on iTunes, there's only going to be at, at maximum seven episodes of this, which is actually pretty nice.
So the six that we have, and then come this November, think late November will be the new moon. Which may kick off another franchise in which case Eric and I will have to continue this, but a much more time in between though, so much less of a backlog.
Well, that's you signed up, buy the ticket, take the ride.
Yeah.
Yeah. If you like this, this, this kind of mini series situation let us know. We might make more, these are a little bit more contained, a little bit easier. [00:03:00] So let's get into this, Eric. Yeah. I want to start off by asking you about your bone a few days, right? Your history. Let's get you set up as an expert with zombie films and, and, and the likes.
So my first question is, you know, top, top three zombie films, if you, if you can.
Erich: Yeah. I mean, that's, that's tough, huh? There are so many so I'm going to go with the obvious answer, but night of the living dead is just an all time classic. Yeah. If you check out the criterion collection they don't, they don't do much with the film of course, but the, the extras are amazing on that.
I really love return of the living dead. Okay. Which is it is ostensibly a CQL tonight of the living dead, but not you can read all about the leg rights issues around that return of the living dead is really kind of a punk [00:04:00] rock zombie comedy. And I highly recommend it.
Andrew: Let me pause, because you said that.
And I I remember, I feel like I remember seeing this movie. All right. So like just a quick, like potentially embarrassing story. I'm going to ask you about a specific thing that may or may not happen. And if that's, if, if it does then, okay, I'll go into the story. If it doesn't. That's fine. Is there a woman in that film who often removes her clothing and begins dancing full, fully naked?
Is that the one that's correct? Yes. Yeah. So I like watched that with my parents when I was 12. It was one of those, it was super uncomfortable. But yes, I do remember that film. Well, so if, for no other reason than that, yeah.
Erich: It's I would recommend going back as an adult. It is, it is very funny. It has a kick ass soundtrack.
It's just, it's a lot of fun. We usually [00:05:00] watch it on July 4th because that's when the movie takes place. All right. So and then my third, I'm going to go with a cheat. It's a, it's a modern movie called one cut of the dead. Oh, so good. I loved it. And I can't, I don't want to go any further if you haven't seen it.
I know you have Andrew. But it's a huge recommend for anyone listening. Just it's it's a love letter design B movies. I can't, I can't go much further
Andrew: here. Can I, can I give them, I don't want to give them, it's not a spoiler for one kind of the dead, but I know so many people who have never even heard of it and I've tried to preach the gospel of it.
But like, again, this is not a spoiler, but like, I hate when people say this too, but like, you have to give this movie the time, the whole runtime. It absolutely requires it because if you watch the first 10 [00:06:00] minutes, you might hate it. And I guess I just, just hang in, just hang in. That's all, I'll say,
Erich: it's, it's the kind of movie that rewards your attention, right?
So don't be like on your phone, whatever. Just write it out. And if you don't enjoy the ride by the end of it, Email me. I don't know if you're
Andrew: a husk of a human being. Yeah, you're dead.
Erich: I didn't want to say that. I don't know mail in an eight people right off the bat, but yeah.
Andrew: I mean, I've never had a movie turned me around almost on a, on a dime, you know, I've never, I was saving when it's fine.
Just, I don't want to say anymore. Just go dead. Okay. Yup. Those are great. Those are great, great choices. Very classic. I like
Erich: it. So I know I'm a horror fan. Yeah. Do you [00:07:00] have three favorite topping movies? The top three? You know,
Andrew: I was, I, I had thought about this and mine are. Quite a bit more modern, but the, I think, I think it's okay.
I think it's a good, I think we have a good balance of things, right? Sure. So if you know me, this, this first one makes total sense when I think of zombie movies. Okay. I actually think of Shaun of the dead, which is 100% on parody that actually became one of the best films in the genre, I believe. Right. It transcended parody and became excellent.
Yeah.
Erich: I mean, it's probably number four on my list. There you go. All right. Perfect.
Andrew: Fantastic. Yeah. The other one is one that I've seen pretty recently. I missed it, like when it w I, I'm not even sure when it first came out, but I had watched it recently when it came to Netflix, that's trained to Busan, which is just so it's operating on [00:08:00] another level than most kind of zombie movies.
And I really, really had a lot of fun with that. Have you ever seen, have you seen that one shame to
Erich: admit? I haven't watched it yet. Okay. I recommended one of those things just sitting on my queue and I know I'm going to love it. And I just haven't gotten around to watching it. I
Andrew: think, I think you would really love it.
A lot of people, you know, subtitles for a lot of people is just like an audit, like a non-starter and I, again, I recommend just go just power through really, really good. And then another. Kind of more modern one and you could argue if it's BS or whatever, but like, I really enjoyed Danny Boyle's 28 days later.
I think that's like, I like fast zombies too. It turns out. So I like your traditional Shamblin and the fast boys, you know, I could go I'm I'm a little bit more flexible with my zombies, I guess.
Erich: Yeah. I'm not one of those traditionalist that's gonna split hairs as to whether the 28 days later som [00:09:00] bees are zombies or, you know, rage, monsters or whatever,
Andrew: you know,
Erich: and I think, yeah, I think I, depending on how they're using.
Fast and slow zombies can be equally frightening. So, yeah.
Andrew: There's tension in both just like the night of living dead. It's the overwhelming number of the sheer volume of zombie
Erich: is just, oh no, people get too hung up on that. Bullshit. You have fun where you scared, like yeah. That's it. Get over it.
Andrew: That's it. All right. I think that's pretty great. I think our choices pretty much reflect are indicative of our personalities as well, which is great. I think that's, you know, it says a lot about a person, their, their preferences. Sure. So let's talk resident evil specifically real quick. Before we get into this when was the last time you watched these movies?
What's the general, I guess, general. Did you see them [00:10:00] in theaters? Like what, what's your experience of these. As of right now.
Erich: Yeah. I definitely did not see them in theaters when they started. I wasn't, I, as we've previously mentioned, I didn't play the video games. Yeah. I was of course, like familiar with them.
They had a fairly large cultural footprint, but like when this movie came out in 2002, I, it was probably wasn't even on my radar. Right. Yeah. I think I noticed it because it started Milla Jovovich and I was, you know, like sh fifth element fan, like she'd done some work that I'd liked. But other than that Wasn't really noticing it.
And it was by Paul Ws Anderson. So like 2002, you're catching me in my leg, heavy film, fanboy phase. And when I say fanboy, I usually mean like obnoxious a-hole guy. So like, if I saw a [00:11:00] movie was directed by the same guy that directed mortal combat, I probably like scoffed and was like, I don't need to see that kind of thing.
Push Shaw. I say, yeah. You know, I mean the late nineties were, were confusing for everyone and I chose, I chose to be a jerk about film. Hey that's okay.
Andrew: How, how far after they released? Are you, are you seeing these? Is it like when they come to DVD or, or HBO or something like that? Are you, are we talking like years and years after the fact what
Erich: probably, and, and like, my recollection is, is not.
Super strong. What probably happened is I probably caught a sequel on TV, like HBO or something like that. And I was like, oh, these are fun. Yes. Like they fall firmly in like B-movie status. Like if we still had movie classes like that, like they are just fun, [00:12:00] little like horror action movies. And then I went back and pick them up on DVD.
I want to say I started with maybe like the third one.
Andrew: No one knows what it's called. You'd never be able to, if you, if you put all five in front of me or six in front of me, I'd be like, after
Erich: one of the things I was going to say, what's interesting about these movies since we're just starting off.
All run together. No
Andrew: idea. I couldn't tell if you were like, which one is character XYZ and I'd be like, oh, they weren't in.
Erich: Yeah. Their titles are just super vague. Yeah. You know, they largely feature roughly the same character of characters. Although people drop in and drop out you know, they, they kind of all run together, which is why, like you and I were talking before we started this podcast, like, we love these movies.
[00:13:00] It's very interesting that like, you can't tell them about this. It's
Andrew: it's a little wild actually.
Erich: Yeah. Like once you get me going, I can be like, oh, that's the one where, but if you just shouted a title at me, I have no
Andrew: idea. That's I will say that that is quite the opposite feeling. That you get with the games.
So if you called out, if you were like resonate for, and the let's be clear, the games are just numbered. Sequels. Sometimes they'll have a subtitle, but for the most part, the main line series, there's like Fresnel four, reds, the navel five. And they're currently on eight. I could you just tell me the number and I'm T I tell you the plot start to finish.
That is not true of these films
Erich: at all. Yeah, I know. We're going to talk about it after we talk about the film a little bit, but I'm really curious to see sort of how these two things mesh, [00:14:00] right. How they come together.
Andrew: I don't know about this first one. Yeah, it is interesting. I can say this. I can say that all of these films, and I think, I don't know if Paul Ws Anderson directs all of them.
I think there's like one or two that he ducked out of.
Erich: Yeah, there's, there's kind of a couple in the middle and then yeah. Seven with somebody else. Yeah,
Andrew: he, I think he was the writer though of has the writing credit on every one of them. Yeah. It's clear that the dude played and loved the games. Cause there are Easter eggs all over the place, like just floor to ceiling, Easter eggs, which is great.
But it's also like a kind of a fever dream situation. Like what the hell is this dude? Just swung drugs and playing these games and then wrote his own. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. We'll get there. We'll get there. Alright. So that's us. That's resident evil. That's [00:15:00] our experience of it. I saw these I'll just say really quickly.
I saw the first two in theaters. All right. And then I, I knocked out. I was like, wow. I think I, I think I was a little bit more hard on them. I might've been. Close to you in my film snobbishness in the late nineties, early aughts. And after the second one, I was like, Nope, this is garbage. But, and I still watched them all just not, I didn't pay the ticket and go to the seat.
No, no. So, but again, you know, they are very fun. If nothing else, I just want to stress. These movies are very fun,
Erich: you know, for whatever of our snobbishness, they, they do really well. It's
Andrew: kind of ridiculous when, when you and I were tossing this around, that was like, let me just see how much, cause we know that this was a franchise and Milla was the star of all [00:16:00] six.
And again, Paul Ws Anderson. It was involved in at least some capacity of writing and directing all of them. It's a billion dollar, it over a billion dollar franchise. And we're talking in like, when did this start in? Oh two, 2002, which is very impressive for, you know, now everything's a billion dollar franchise, but it's stuff that feels kind of like a flash in the pan almost back then, especially for an R rated zombie movie.
It's pretty nuts.
Erich: Yeah. I mean, I don't have all of the sort of facts and figures around this, but this feels like one of the movies that really opened up in the international market. Right? Yeah. I think we have the numbers on this. Like it had a $33 million budget. Domestic gross was 40 million. Right. So it like makes its budget back, but no real multiplier.
Yeah. It does 103 million worldwide. That is some leg. [00:17:00] Yeah. So like, I think, I think this is the start of like, not just trying to hit a four quadrant movie and obviously this isn't a four-quadrant movie, but like trying to hit like an international audience. I mean, these movies are interesting in the same way that like the fast and the furious is interesting, right?
Like, yeah. They have multicultural casts. They have a very like distinct formula. They have remained, they have somehow managed to keep it as authentic and tonal consistency through like seven films. Yes. It it's, it's kind of fascinating the,
Andrew: the fast and the furious. That's like dead on, I think, cause you know, that also kind of lends itself to why it's very difficult to distinguish these movies sometimes have late.
Right. What's happening here? This didn't we
Erich: it's didn't we do this. It's the one with the cars. It's the one with the [00:18:00] storm,
Andrew: with the zombies. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, that's great. So we talked box office and budget, and we obviously talked about Paul, Wes Anderson and Milla Jovovich the cast of this movie.
No one else. So I don't know any, I really don't know any of these other folks except Michelle Rodriguez in here also doing the Lord's work as a bad-ass female protagonists. I love this. I
Erich: love it so much. I mean, she is, it's funny because like, I hit a point with the fast franchise where I'm like, she just playing herself.
And I think she's just always played herself. Right? Like, like she, she breaks out in 2000 with girl fight. Yeah. You know, in 2001, she's in the fast and the furious in 2002, she's in resident evil, like in 2003, she's in SWAT, like, oh, she's just playing herself in all these movies. [00:19:00] And it's amazing. Like, I am here for this character that she plays in every movie.
Right.
Andrew: I'm just happy. She's getting paid to play herself, you know, for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And she is quite a presence on screen throughout
Erich: Hough in a smart ass, but like a little bit sexy, like a hundred percent I'm on board.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.
Erich: The one person that doesn't really get shouted out and I don't know, like.
I'm not sure why, like, I didn't, I didn't write down the crediting, but like Collin salmon. Okay. All right. I don't know if he pronounces it. Salomon is the, like, he's like the leader of the commandos, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy's, that guy's done a bunch of work and is like solid and everything he does, but like, I don't know.
It doesn't seem like he gets shouted out very often. So here's my shout out for Collin. I'll let you know, I'm [00:20:00] a big fan. He appeared in a bunch of like middle tier movies and TV, but he is like always great. Anytime he shows up, you know, he's like, he's a cop. Punish or a war zone. Like it's just like Punisher, Punisher war zone.
This was the good part, right?
Andrew: The second, the rare sequel that far surpass the original. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I agree. He, he turned into a good, a pretty good performance for the time that he was in this one.
Erich: Sure. Like it's a horror movie, right? So like not, everybody's going to make it to the end. He at least gets we'll get to that.
Yeah.
Andrew: There was a fee. Yeah. Right. I feel good. All right. This is great. I love, I love where we're going. I think we should probably get a little more free form. Oh, okay. [00:21:00] So we, we covered the cast and the crew, which is great. We covered the, the budget and the box office, all that's box office, mojo. It's all widely available.
You go check, you know, double-check our work. If we, if needed. Before we just get into it. Yeah. I want to talk about the critical and audience reception, which is something I, I I don't necessarily always use this as a metric of whether I will personally enjoy a movie. And this is a prime example of, of that being true.
Okay. Yeah. If you go on rotten tomatoes, right, right now, today, as, as of this recording, critics gave this a 36%, which is not great. No, it's not. Audiences gave it a 67%, which is like for an audience score, you know, audiences tend to be a bit more generous with their scores. Yeah. I, I kind of would have anticipated this being even a little bit higher for the audience.
Erich: I wouldn't be surprised as we go through the franchise, if they don't climb a little bit, at [00:22:00] least the audience climb.
Andrew: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't anticipate the critical, but the one thing of note here is that this, this. And it's sequel, which I don't, I don't know the name of, because again maybe it's in the it's apocalypse.
I have it later in this evil apocalypse. Right. They're both on Roger. Ebert's most hated list. No. So all press is good press, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I don't always agree with this guy anyway, so let's, let's, let's turn the screws on this Ebert character. Let's
Erich: go any problem with, with Ybor, you know, putting it on his hated list.
I think those lists are dumb. It's not for him. Like he's entitled to his opinion. I mean, like it's not didn't he write like returned to valley of the dolls. So like, [00:23:00] Or beyond valley of the dolls. So like I, and, and that's not even, that's not even a criticism. I'm not saying like, eBird is suspect. I'm saying like, there's something for everybody.
Exactly. I'm not really sure. Like, I'm not sure this movie deserves a 36. But you know, that's fine. I think the 67% audience I'm, I'm closer to that. Right? Like I spoilers, I enjoyed this film. I wouldn't have agreed to do a podcast about all seven of them, unless, well, I guess I could be a masochist, but I'm not some degree.
Yeah. Yeah. So like, I don't know, like, it's fine. Everybody can hate whatever they want. But you know, I think, I think that might be a little harsh. I haven't read the reviews. Maybe they have some salient points, but who
Andrew: knows, I'm not going to read them. It doesn't matter. [00:24:00] I, I there's, I, I feel like the act of trying to criticize this.
Most zombie things, right. Have very, are very siMillar thematically and it may be an even from an execution standpoint. So really it's just like did you bring anything fun or unique or novel to your vision of, of this? Right. I, and, and even as I say that, I don't know if these movies did, but I still really enjoyed
Erich: them.
I mean, you know, there, you could also get into like, it's a video game film, right? So less, is it, are they attaching any baggage from that? We're going to talk through the plot in a second. And there, there is a lot that happens. There is very little plot. There's very little character development, right?
There is some like, sort of. There is [00:25:00] a vague attempt at social commentary, but not really. Right. So like, like, is it socially redeeming Roger Ebert? No, I'll probably not, but like a lot of fun, you know?
Andrew: Yeah. The social commentary. It's interesting. You bring that up. It feels a little shoehorned in, but I'll, you know, I'll allow it.
I, you know, my eyebrow went up with like two lines in this film and I'm like, are we gonna, oh,
Erich: there's corporations. There's like a really good one when they're like talking about it. We'll get to it. Anyway.
Andrew: I'm loving the energy of this. This is very exciting. I'm like, this is, it energized me for the remaining films, which is it's great.
So the way this is going to work, hopefully I think this is, I think we kind of settled on this right before we pressed record. You'll handle the plot stuff. Yeah. I defer to you as the [00:26:00] expert in all things zombies I defer to you. Sure. And then we'll talk a little bit about some of the production stuff, which is may, you know, a little bit of trivia here and there.
And some of the things I caught from like, behind the scenes, like the very few behind the scenes, things that I watched and then we'll like kind of tie try. I will, I will do my best to tie this back to the games, which I probably will not be able to land on all the time, but it'll be fair. It'll be a hell of a fun try.
So fair enough. All right. So look when you're ready
Erich: for, so, I mean, this movie starts right off the bat with opening voiceover, which is usually never a good sign at the beginning of the 21st century, the umbrella corporation and become the largest commercial entity in the United States. Nine out of every 10 homes contain its products, its political and financial influence is felt everywhere [00:27:00] in public.
It is the world's leading supplier of computer technology, medical products and healthcare unknown even to its own employees. It's massive profits are generated by military technology, genetic experimentation and viral weapons. And right off the bat, we kind of jump in with some action. You know, the, there is a lab, somebody is packing up some materials and like tosses one of the vials aside clearly intentionally and there is, you know alarms go off, right?
This is, this is clearly an attack of some type type, right?
Andrew: Those, those vials were cool as shit will say, though, if you take away nothing else from this movie, it, what was the budget? We S $33 million. So much of it went into the production designer, this movie and his unbelief. Clearly none of it went to the CGI none, zero into the visual effects.
Fortunately, [00:28:00] all of the tactile things that they interact with. Look awesome. So
Erich: good. I agree. It is a like well-designed movie for sure. There's in the midst of this, there's a great, we meet Indra obey, who is this is the beautiful woman with the light eyes who I fully thought was going to be a character.
And then she gets in the elevator and there's like a great, a tense moment. Basically, the facility is going nuts. Right. And at one point, like one of the other, other elevators just drops to the ground. Yeah. And there's just, there's a great tense moment in this elevator. And there's a, there's a wonderful, fake out.
She gets her head like halfway out and like, you're like, oh, I know how this movie ends. Right. Like, I know what's about to happen. And she crashes to the floor and the elevator stops right before she gets there and you're like, [00:29:00] oh, okay. And then it goes back up and cuts her head off. It's wonderful. Fake
Andrew: out this isn't this is an R rated movie.
Yeah. But this movie feels very. Judicious about what it chooses to show and not show in terms of gore. Like it cuts away before we see her head removed. And I I'm sure that's that's solely based on the budget of the film, but I thought it was very smart. Like they didn't do anything corny. It didn't look terrible.
They were just like, whatever you imagined is probably what happened to her head.
Erich: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it feels like they were shooting for a PG 13, potentially. Yeah. So like most of the gruesome violence you see is done against like the creatures right. Or zombies. But yeah. Yeah. It's. There's always that like that counter or interplay where like, is it better to show it or not show it?
And in this case it's it's just well-played. [00:30:00] Yeah. We, so I want to be clear up front. We never fully meet anyone. We go through this whole movie. Never actually learning Milla Jovovich, his character's name, but we meet a character. Whose name is Lisa? She's played by Haika McCosh from love actually. Oh yeah.
Like seems to know something and something is going on. And then we cut to black and what we come back up on is Milla Jovovich naked in the shower. She is passed out. And we learn through through like various visual cues that she seems to have amnesia. She doesn't know where she is, who she is, what she's doing there.
She does one of my favorite movie tricks that I've never heard an actual person do, which is she picks up a note and she writes the same thing under it to see if the handwriting matches. Yes. I've only ever seen that in movies. [00:31:00] Like, like it's, it's wonderful. It's one of those weird, like little particular
Andrew: tropes forces, the amnesia in an, in a quick, like a very short, quick, like, quick way.
You're like, yep. Okay. Yeah. It's not her. The
Erich: visual shorthand here is on point, right? Like there's no dialogue. She doesn't say, who am I? Where am I? We just see her encounter a couple of things and we put it together. She throws on this dope ass dress that was laid out for her. It's got like an asymmetrical cut to it, and then she puts a pair of shorts under it.
And I only bring that up a because it's a cool visual in this movie. Yeah. But it's interesting to see her, her wardrobe change throughout the films
Andrew: significantly more like bulky. Wow. It gets bulky for a little bit. We're talking like tactical vests and stuff for a little bit, and then it, and then the pendulum swings back the other way towards something, not quite
Erich: this.
Yeah. And at that point there's kind of a[00:32:00] an attack on wherever she is. Some she's in some sort of Villa and a bunch of like massive, special forces guys come in. There's this like random white dude who identifies himself as a cop will come to learn. His name is Matt. And they, the basically.
Sort of scare Milla. They're like, you know, you should report. She has no idea what the hell they're talking about. So they move on, they opened a secret passage to the first thing that seems really video gaming to me, which is under this Villa is a train, right? So they go, you don't have a train under your Villa.
I don't understand. Go down this secret passage and get on a train. This feels. So much like a video game that I really want to ask you later if it's in one of the games, right? Oh, we'll talk about they, they they have on the train there's a, there's a jump scare, like kind of [00:33:00] our first big jump scare of the movie and someone literally calls it out, which I appreciate it.
So good. And then there's another one in a moment where we meet another random white guy who might be married to Milla Jovovich. Everybody has amnesia. Nobody's sure what the hell is going on. We will learn his name is Spence and he's played by James pure for. We get the, they take the train through the cut scene and, and up at like their, their gates.
Right? And this is where we get our first like big exposition dump. The top secret
Andrew: research facility owned and operated by the umbrella corporation. The hive houses over 500 technicians,
Erich: scientists, and supports that they live and work underground. Their research is of the highest importance its nature is classified.[00:34:00]
Our position
Andrew: on the map is indicated by heat signature. These heat signatures represent us. It's like, oh, of course
Erich: it's also super video gamey, right leg. It's like, here is your map, right?
Andrew: Yeah. You objective, it's like, here's the objective flashing. You got 100%.
Erich: So what we learn is of course they're doing all kinds of shady shit down there.
Something happened. Nobody knows what we know what we saw it in the cold open of the movie, but they don't know what the whole place went on lockdown. And these commandos are in there to like find out what is, what, right. Yeah. So they, they enter the building and make their way through the complex. And the very first thing we see actually, when they get in the complex is the room with the elevator where we saw the woman get her head chopped off.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:00] And like they explained to us that those, those windows that we saw in the background are fake. It makes people feel better about working underground. I don't know who came up with this idea. I've seen it in like three or four scifi movies. It's real weird to being, but maybe it's something people actually do.
I don't know. I guess like, it's come up on more than one, like scifi story. I
Andrew: remember, I seem to remember when I saw this, like in theater as I was like, wow, that's pretty novel idea. But I mean, I guess it's like a psych out it. Yeah.
Erich: It's a great storytelling fake out, but I'm not sure if that holds up, like from the science holds.
Andrew: No. Yeah, it's cool. It's actually cool. A little bit later on in the movie when things go to hell and you, you you're, you're like looking at those windows and it's all messed up. Like. Like the lights don't quit. You don't see, you see, like the illusion is broken a little bit. It's like a cool thing that they just happened to have in the background also.
It's nice.
Erich: They go from the [00:36:00] elevators through the hallway where the labs were. The labs are all flooded from the first scene. We see the there's a, a woman floating in there. There's a little jump scare from that. And as they walk away, we get the classic Joan scare of somebody presumed dead, opening their eyes.
Oh, I thought it was handled pretty well. It was pretty
Andrew: quickly speedy. Yeah. Like, you know, like they did some speed ramping or something, but yeah,
Erich: it was good. They make their way through another chamber where there's just a bunch of like large industrial boxes full of frozen some things. And like, we all know this is going to go horribly wrong.
So like clearly the frozen somethings are bad.
Andrew: Yeah. As this dining hall B we're in, I think they
Erich: exactly. It's such a, it's such a weird [00:37:00] choice. Like again, well, I wondered if that was in the video game.
Andrew: That wasn't no, that was just a weird
Erich: show. Okay. As we make our way through they, there's a little more exposition about the red queen, right?
So this movie leverages a little bit of like Alison Wonderland imagery. It'll come up a couple of different times. Yeah. Weirdly the protagonists name is Alice and they never tell us that. But one thing I didn't point out that that happens very early in the movie is we're constantly getting a.
A video camera view of events with like readouts and that sort of thing. If you watch enough, Saifai you, you've probably already established that. There's probably some sort of malevolent intelligence behind it, but they establish that here. Right? The red queen is an AI. She's the one that shut [00:38:00] everything down.
So now we have to go turn her off so we can get to the bottom of things, right?
Andrew: Yeah. She killed everybody killed. No,
Erich: Y yep. We get our first set piece here. It is the hallway of lasers.
Andrew: So I wrote down here a level five weapons system activated is the screen that pops up when the lasers, are you
Erich: worried?
Like what level six is or,
Andrew: yeah, I mean, w is level five the end, right? Could there be anything more ridiculous or extreme than this safety? Is really what I'm worried about.
Erich: I'm thinking it goes one to five and like five.
Andrew: Yeah. It escalates
Erich: quickly. It does. It does. So they're, you know, walking through a hallway to get to the red queen, the doors lock on them and then there's lasers.
So, you know, I like the escalation, [00:39:00] like I, I just think it's like, it's, it's a weirdly beautiful scene, right? Like they figure out what's going on just a little bit too late. And the first person gets to capitated the next laser's coming and they're like, okay, we know what's going on. The guy jumps to jump over it.
The computer just moves the laser up and cuts him in it. Oh,
Andrew: my God, it was such it, he did that guy so
Erich: dirty, man. Yeah. Like it's good. Right? Like was,
Andrew: he was like, I'll jump it. I got
Erich: this, this, this challenge in a video game would be all about timing, right? Like, yeah. Okay. This one's coming. So I jumped up and then I duck and then I jumped and then I duck and the computer's like, nah, fuck that.
I'll just Lao. I'll still kill it. Yes. And then poor Colin salmon meets us in here. You know, he's like. Trying to figure out what his move is, right. He jumps up and, and, and misses one. It just cuts off like [00:40:00] his, his knife jumps down and he's ready for the next one. And the grid just rotates into a giant piece of like laser graph paper and to add like tension to the scene.
On the other side of the door, some of the heroes that are left are trying to stop the machine. And they're almost there. We've got a little countdown clock, right. And they get it stopped, but it's too late. Colin salmon has been julienned in the middle of this hallway. It's
Andrew: another one of the times where they, they use, like, I think is very judicious use of your imagination.
You see him kind of crumble in almost like a reflection. And you're like, that's disgusting. He's just a pile of this around on the floor, but you never see it. Like, and it was like, well done. Well done.
Erich: Yeah. I mean, like they even have to go back through that hallway. Right? Like they still, they decide they still have to finish their mission [00:41:00] and you don't really see like piles of blood and guts.
Like it's just implied. They get the doors open, whatever they shut down the level five security system and they make it into the computer room. The computer talks to them. It is again a favorite trope of mine, which is like creepy ghost girl. In this case, she's a hologram, but like she's a creepy ghost girl, right?
Like that, that's what it is.
Don't miss anything. She says she's a holographic representation of the radio. You have to get out modeled after the head program, his daughter tried to deceive us confused.
Andrew: I wouldn't advise this to saving me more. So Tim, lots of primary
Erich: power, anything to stop us from shutting her down,
Andrew: please. You're all going to die [00:42:00] down here. Kids are creepy. I don't trust them. I don't trust a goddamn word. This. I say
Erich: we, we get the, the trailer line. You're all going to die down here, which is just even creepier coming from a small child. It's great. They shut down. The computer, they use like an EMP, right?
So like everything shuts down and then it reboots. Right. And we cut to various places in the facility where like, oh, the doors are unlocking and the rooms are draining and whatever, like, isn't that great. But like, it's a horror movie. We know this probably wasn't a great idea. Right? It's a little bit like turning off the containment grid and Ghostbusters, like this was, this was probably bad, right?
Yeah. They make their way back to the, the room where all of the frozen boxes of whatever are, and now it's a [00:43:00] zombie. Right. Like, correct. Thus far, it's kind of been like an action-y heisty type of thing, right? It is a straight up zombie movie right now. Like a couple come in and then a lot come in and then we have like a big ass music queue.
I forgot to mention Marilyn Manson as a composer in this movie, there is a lot of like new metal happening in 2002. And they, they put it right in this movie.
Andrew: Right. It's right in the mood right in the movie.
Erich: So there's, there's like a bunch of like, you know, fight scenes and whatever through all of this.
And I, I failed to mention this earlier. Alice is like slowly getting her memory back. She keeps having these like sepia toned flashbacks where she's remembering bits and pieces of things. Yeah. They always seem to be at an opportune times. Like she has one in the [00:44:00] middle of this. Yeah. Just
Andrew: zoning out. They are literally being flooded with zombies.
She's like, it's time first
Erich: to remember, you know, there's a, there's a point where they're like trying to get a door open and they use one of my favorite zombie movie tropes, which is like break the door open, open it up. Nope. It's already full of zombies. Love that. Yeah. The other side
Andrew: is what have we got here?
Oh, more zombies.
Erich: So we lose a couple of people there. I mean like this movie, isn't big on character. They're kind of red shirts. I honestly couldn't tell you which ones we lose at this point.
Andrew: Yeah. I think it's worth noting. This is our first bite, right? I mean, literally again, you're right up until I think I have this written down roughly 40 minutes before we get like a hoard of zombies
Erich: zombies confirm it was 40 minute.
Into the movie. Yeah.
Andrew: One of our lovely protagonists has bitten. It's trenches. You hate to see it. [00:45:00] It's Michelle Rodriguez. Character rain. Yeah. I'm like,
why now? The rules now the timer, now we have another timer. Well,
Erich: we do. And we don't. Right. Like we don't know enough about it yet. Yeah. So we just, we know she got bitten, right. And the audience knows these are zombies. They haven't fully established that in the world of the movie. Right. So there's some walking around, we cut away after they leave this room and CGI monstrosity breaks out of its cell.
Andrew: This is the worst CG in the movie. A lot of the other CG of this same exact monster. Is covered by like the fact that they're like in a dark hallway or it's like up on a roof or like cutting through the train or whatever. Yeah. This just looks like ass. I don't know if you experienced that too, but I was watching.
I wasn't [00:46:00] like watching a 4k version or anything, but I mean, I was like, wow, this did not
Erich: hold up. It's and your point, like, they, they work with it later, but like, this seems to be like the hero shot, like, Hey fans, here's that thing you were waiting for. Right. So they show it in its entirety and it, it just looks like garbage.
And like, it does, it is 2002. And this is true of a lot of early 2000 movies. How did we like take us step back in CGI? Right? Like Jurassic park was 1993. Like how, how did CGI go downhill before it came back up again? I don't want
Andrew: this thing, this thing specifically. So I could say that this is, this is a creature in the games and it's not like in this movie, they made it seem like.
This is like, I don't know if every one of those tanks had one of these in it, but this, this creature is lovingly referred to as a liquor due to its very long tongue. Very original. [00:47:00] Sure. And given like the environment that we were in this really could have benefited from an approach that like Ridley Scott had in alien, you know, like it's this muscly slimy fucking thing.
And it's like, they should have just kept this thing in shadow until later. Like I think it, it was like a missed opportunity, but I kind of also get where they're like, it totally makes sense. Like this is, these are the stakes
Erich: now, you know, I feel like if. Got 40 minutes into the movie and hadn't like showed you a monster from the game.
Like the fans might have rebelled. I don't know
Andrew: who is this for? I get it.
Erich: Milla is wandering around. She wanders into one of the labs. She kills a human zombie and has another one of her flashbacks in this flashback. She realized that she's a bad ass. So she like [00:48:00] steals the dead zombies gun. And when she, she is confronted by zombie dogs, this movie has zombie dogs, which is great.
Yeah, it does. One of the things that I remember from my very limited. Information about resident evil is that these zombie dogs are from the game.
Andrew: Yeah, they are Larry early in the first game. Yeah.
Erich: B Dobermans and they were clearly like test subjects in the lab and they've been infected by the T virus.
Well, I'm sorry. We don't know that yet. There's
Andrew: ALS right. Here's what I'll say. I th I don't know if you agree with this right. When we see the first dog, it's kind of a cool, you hear like clicks happening and we don't know quite what it is, but it's, you're, we're in the kennels or whatever. So, you know, you're like, oh, probably going to be a dog.
And when it comes around, I think that was an actual dog. And they just covered him in some crazy, like, it looks like they just draped, prosciutto all [00:49:00] over him. Like, yes, That looked great. Like it looked like practically the
Erich: dogs are a hundred percent practical.
Andrew: Yeah. It's such a jar. Like we just saw the liquor and now we see these dogs and the dogs look amazing and the liquor look like absolute shit.
It's just
Erich: wild to me. I did have, I did happen to catch like some movie trivia. It would not surprise me at all that apparently the dogs kept trying to lick off all the stuff that was apparently that problem. But yes, the dogs
Andrew: that's the hardest. Yeah. That was the hardest problem they had to fight that day.
Like, come on, focus,
Erich: focus. Just another random dog story. Sorry. Apparently the St Bernard's used in Cujo. They had to tie their tails down because you could see them wagging and all the shots. Cause they were having so much fun. So never work with dogs.
Andrew: We talked about this with the thing with their they're like, they're [00:50:00] happy.
They're so happy that they're doing such a good job that they're, you know, they're like, I'm going to get a snack
Erich: for them. Yeah. Yeah. So now that Millen knows she's a bad ass. She like shoots down like six dogs and the last dog she does like a full-on matrix, like wall runs, spinning kick. Right.
Andrew: Kicks it right in the
Erich: head right in the face.
So like we, we now know she's a bad ass. She knows she's a bad-ass. She still hasn't gotten her full memory back yet. But she knows that like she can kick some butt. We switch over to Matt, the cop who turns out not to be a cop. He's just looking for his sister, Lisa. That's the one when we saw at the end of the cold open, who like looked like she might know something was going on.
Turns out she was trying to expose the umbrella corporation and through flashbacks we learned she was working with [00:51:00] Milla's character. I don't know if this is like a twist, they play it as one. I don't really give a shit, but like I T
Andrew: who cares? Yeah. There were no stakes for this
Erich: lady at all. Exactly.
Like, and then she sh w so yeah, as all of this happens, she shows up and Milla has to kill her with a paperweight or something. Right. So like, yes, Matt not only just learns his sister is a zombie, but then the zombie is killed with a paperweight and he mourns not at all. Right. He's like, this is he's like, but here's, what's going
Andrew: on.
I know this thing happened, but corporations are bad.
Erich: Yeah. And this, this is the, the aforementioned, like weird sort of social stuff, which leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the film, which is, there's no way I could train it. So you say your sister.
Andrew: We needed [00:52:00] something
Erich: concrete, anything to expose umbrella to the press proof of the research
Andrew: that was going on down there.
Erich: Illegal
Andrew: illegal.
Erich: Right. All right.
Andrew: Sure. I guess,
Erich: yeah. In this sequence, we also get one of my favorite rhetorical questions that people will ask in movies. And that is, do you have any idea how much blank would be worth on the open market, which is just such a fucking random question, because they're usually talking about some sort of like weird MacGuffin that has no market value.
That makes any sense. But I love every time somebody asks us that
Andrew: question, you, you literally just learned about its existence,
Erich: no other objects of this type exist. Right. Right. Michelle Rodriguez, this character reveals this. They have a time clock. The doors are sealing in an hour, right? [00:53:00] Yeah. And they know that it's kind of a bit of a maze, so decide to go back and turn the red queen on because maybe now she'll help them, which is a, just a wild decision.
But back to the wet red queen, who's wired up with like a final kill switch. And we get like a kind of our, you know, final info dump, which is some science gobbledygook about why the T virus creates zombies. Yeah. We confirm classic zombie trope, which is you have to remove the head or destroy the brain to kill them.
And she sends them on their way with like a sort of general promise to help. We go through some random shit, Dre, I mean, it's just like a tunnel escape and like, we lose some more guys, like there's, there's a glare, the pipe walk the pipeline I block. Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. So [00:54:00] there's the tunnel thing. All I got to say is if you find yourself in a zombie movie you know, if you find yourself in a zombie situation, that is anything like resident evil, never give up, because I wrote this down, both rain and Kaplan, who is one of the only other he's like another random white guy who just happens to survive.
He was also bitten. At one point, they are literally overrun. They are under zombies. And then you see a scene later. And it's just like, how did this happen? Yeah, it was Kaplan. Okay.
Erich: That Kaplan thing like is just a bad fake out and feels a little bit like a rewrite, right? Like Kaplan is under some zombies.
He does the classic pullout, my bullets. And I only have one left. Obviously he is going to take his own life rather than getting eaten by zombies. We, we [00:55:00] cut away. We hear the gunshot. And then when we cut back, we find out that Kaplan fired his gun at the zombies. Apparently one bullet was enough to get rid of most of them and has like climbed back up the pipe.
He's like, you're going to have to work for your dinner. Right. Like, yeah.
Andrew: And he was like, that was after he tells these like, guys leave me go. And not even like, if he just climbed up the pipe behind him, it was just like another vent. He, he could have just been like, I'm going to climb up here. Ma I'll go left.
I'll meet you guys. Like, no, he just gave up too easy. I just gave up too
Erich: easy, little bit of a trope in zombie movies. They like someone sacrificing sales. Right. And that's not even just a zombie movie. It's like in aliens, like, you know, Gorman sacrifices himself, like those kinds of things. So like. That's why I feel like that was how that scene was supposed to end.
And then they were like, wait, how do we get [00:56:00] them out of this thing later? Oh, he's still alive.
Andrew: Paul WS Anderson was like, oh shit, Kaplan had the thing the thing that we need, right,
Erich: exactly. You know, through all of this, you know, we get various bad CGI shots of the thing, stockings through the facility. But Alice has another flashback, which conveniently has some exposition about the virus.
She has a flashback where she realizes there is an antivirus that was tested on a wait for it. White rabbit. That's right. right. And then also part of this, like flashes on sprints. Blah, blah, blah. Spence reveals that like he was the one that stole and released the virus. Right. He was gonna sell it. It was dueling flashback.
It was like,
Andrew: what is happening? [00:57:00] She had one of this and he walks up to her and some, and then it triggers on of his
Erich: flesh. Exactly. They touch and she transfers the flashback.
Andrew: And then it's like Mr. And Mrs. Smith. That's basically what
Erich: it was. Yeah. Like you learn more about their backstory. None of it matters.
Right? Like it doesn't. Yeah. Spence's monologuing. And as it's up behind him, very quietly, I don't know why this one zombie is quiet. But no one tells him of course, and it attacks him, but he gets away and he locks them in this room. At this point, the red queen chimes in. And literally like day of sex, Mokena kills Spence.
She's like I've got this and somehow sends the liquor to kill him at no point. Have we seen her controlling the liquor? Right? Like [00:58:00] she just like, let them out. I'm not even sure she let
Andrew: him out. No, he like broke out because of the gunfire in the, in the frozen box room, like 40 minutes ago, you know, I don't know.
I don't know. The
Erich: liquor kills Spence. We learned that once they taste fresh DNA, they mutate, I don't know what that doesn't seem germane to anything. But it, it mutates into bad CGI. Oh, The, the, our like main crew is still stuck in this room. They watch Spence get killed on a monitor. Our crews stuck in this room and the red queen promises to let them out, but they have to kill Michelle Rodriguez, which I thought it was.
Like I thought the red Queen's motivation, might've been the most consistent thing about this movie. Like she is just trying to prevent the spread of spread of the T virus. Right.
Andrew: It really is that simple
Erich: it's, which is
Andrew: interest to directive [00:59:00] is keep it
Erich: contained. Yeah. Because like, I remember her as the villain of this movie and she's reading.
No, not at all. Like
Andrew: at all, they, they called it like it was, I do remember now that you had mentioned it, even in, I think vaguely in the trailers, but even in this movie, they're like, it's a homicidal AI and it's like, no, not really. All of these people were already going to die. Like
Erich: yeah. Like it is literally just doing like containment procedures.
Oh, So the red queen requires them to kill Michelle Rodriguez. Milla says no, but with her act like she smashes the monitor and surprise Kaplan is, well, we knew he wasn't dead. We saw getaway, but like key fries, the red queen with their like leftover EMP. Yeah. And the door opened bastard. Yeah. And they get to the train and Spencer's a [01:00:00] zombie of course.
And Milla gets to like kill him in a satisfying manner.
Andrew: So good.
Erich: And
Michelle Rodriguez gets the antivirus, but it's too late. No, wait. No, it's not. She's okay. It's like the weirdest, like 15, second fake out where you think she's dead and then she's not, but of course the CGI monster attacks the train, right. There's a pretty good train fight. Although the CGI is really noticeable in here.
It's bad. The monster like scratches, Matt, and there's a fight and, but, oh wait. Nope. Michelle Rodriguez is dead now and she's a zombie. They, they kill her. Well, Milla kills her. They dropped the CGI monster out of the bottom of the train using like a, [01:01:00] there's no reason for this thing to exist on a train, except we saw it earlier.
The bottom of the train just completely opens for it's a fucking train. You're not dropping bombs out of it, but right. It's like a bomb door. For some reason the monster catches fire. Like I could not figure out why, but it
Andrew: did. He touched the third rail probably, I guess
Erich: it was a subway accident.
They get back to the house. And Matt like starts changing. But before we can like really see what's happening, like scientists like take over the house and they, they take Matt and Milla way. They make mention that Matt should be in the nemesis program, which I assume is some more fan service.
Andrew: I want to stop you.
I'm glad you brought it up. Oh my gosh. Let me just say the for resident evil fan. When you say the word nemesis [01:02:00] program, that's essentially like Nick fury showing up at the end of iron man. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's what we're talking about here. I want them in the nemesis program. It's a thing that pays off much later.
Erich: I remember. Pays off in the films, but like not really. No, not particularly.
Andrew: Yeah. It's just like, I thought it was such, in retrospect it was such a confident calling of the shot. Like, I can't believe that Paul Ws Anderson was like, this is going to be so good. They're going to give me a sequel where I can do.
Erich: Oh yeah. I mean, like so weird, so weird. Sure. And then we like flashed to Milla wakes up naked again in a testing room. It's very fifth element. You know, she's like wearing nothing, but like bandages kind of thing. There's like a shot where we sort of discovered that seem to be zombies wherever she is.
And like, [01:03:00] at this point, like there's five, move it minutes left in this goddamn movie, like what is happening? Yeah, she is sort of like wanders out. We, we sort of through context clues, realize she's in a hospital. She goes out the front door, she's in a city. There is a, I think a raccoon city news or something like that newspaper that says the dead walk.
I will tell you right now that is a clear Amash today of the dead. Of course. Yeah. And then like, she like realizes that, you know, the apocalypse has happened and she takes a shotgun out of a cop car and she cocks it in the middle of this apocalypse. And then we cut to Slipknot over the end. Credits, slip, not
Andrew: takes us, play us out, Slipknot, you know, play us out.
I
Erich: mean, to be fair, it's the song, my plague, which is a, it's a good choice
Andrew: thematically. Okay.
Erich: We get it. [01:04:00] Like, there's a, I said there's a lot of new metal in.
Andrew: Ooh, it's tough. Yeah. I think again, those, the re the resolving, you know, five, maybe eight minutes of this movie is it's, it's got a lot of confidence because if this were to stop after this movie, terrible, it's a terrible ending to them.
You're like, well, I guess, I guess she's in this world now we know
Erich: nothing, like, like relating it to a video game. It feels like the cold open of a video. Right. Yeah. Like we really, if you, if you've played a AAA game in the last 10 years, one of them probably started with like your character waking up somewhere and wandering outside and discovering everything went wrong.
Right? Yeah. And then the title hits, they don't roll credits at that point.
Andrew: Right. That's how the [01:05:00] walking dead starts, Rick, you know, like we get it. It's cool
Erich: though. So yes, it is very ballsy. Like he, he felt very sure of himself, which good for him. It turned out to be true.
Andrew: Yeah. I don't it's it's it's it's, it's it's a lot.
It's a lot. Yeah. I want to dive into a quick segment really quickly. I think I know what it is, right. This segment's going to be the best kill these movies as they go on. Have ridiculous. They get increasingly more ridiculous. The kills. Yeah. But in this movie, I think it's pretty clear, but I'd like to hear what you believe the best kill in this movie is.
Erich: I mean, it's, it's definitely the laser hallway. Like it's gotta be the laser it's novel. We hadn't, we hadn't really seen something like that before. Like we, we had, if you're like a horror fan, but like [01:06:00] in just a straight up kind of actiony movie like this, like yeah, Nicole,
Andrew: it was that's it that's the one.
Yeah. I would say the only other cool particularly cool thing was the thing that you mentioned with the dog, where she runs up the wall and kicks it in the head, but that's like. There were a lot of moments of her being a bad-ass throughout this movie, but they're sh they're like short bursts. It's like, here's a Kik.
Here's like a run up the wall, you know, that sort of thing. But the laser hallway come on.
Erich: Oh, given an honorable mention to that, that elevator fake out that was really well done.
Andrew: You know, they, they got that door open about eight inches maybe, maybe. And she's like, I can squeeze through. It's like what?
Erich: Yeah. Like you're an insane person. I don't have any personal fears of elevators, but like, yeah. I'm never going to like crawl out of a broken one unless there's a fireman involved. Right.
Andrew: [01:07:00] Like, absolutely. Yeah. You got to give me some assurances and we've seen that in like, you know, th the elevator speed also had that kind of elevator thing happening a little bit, you know, You know, I think movies have conditioned me to fear exiting what egressing an elevator that is caught between floors, I should say.
So that's all. I don't think I actually fear it. I just, as the movies
Erich: have spoiled me. Oh, for sure. I mean, there's an entire horror movie Dutch called the lift and it's just about a killer elevator.
Andrew: I'm going to add it. I've never heard of it. I love it deeply already.
Erich: I think there might even be an American re so check it out.
Ah,
Andrew: the lift. Okay. I wrote it down. It'll probably be on Plex tonight. So I, so this is, this is going to be interesting. Yeah. I just want to run down some of these production notes. These are just things that I found [01:08:00] across the internet. Some of it's from INDB, some of it's from Wikipedia and then other parts.
I found an article on a very old article on Fangoria. And a couple of other sites about this movie, because I was just super fucking curious how this came to be. It's the, the inceptions wild George Romero, George Romero, you know, night of the living dead. He was going to write and direct this movie, which is just bonkers to me.
It's just absolutely bunkers. Do you
Erich: know how they brought him in?
Andrew: I don't really know. I mean, I know that the original game, they were highly inspired by night of the living dead. You know, a lot of that,
Erich: like George Romero is sort of the godfather of the contemporary zombie movie, right? Yeah. Everybody sort of owes a debt to him.
You know, Shaun of the dead is riddled with Romero references like a hundred percent George Romero, however, directed a [01:09:00] commercial for Bioshock or for. Resident evil two in Japan. Oh, okay. Yeah. So before they came to him for the film, he like, they had a mutual admiration kind of thing. And she was like, I'll shoot a commercial for in Japan.
It's called biohazard. It's not called resident evil. Yeah. Yeah. So if you go on YouTube and look up like George Romero, biohazard to commercial, you couldn't see his live action commercial for the video game.
Andrew: Absolutely wild. We'll link it in the show notes. I'm excited. I have another thing to watch now much shorter in Romero's version game fans would know his version had Jill Valentine, who was the PR one of the protagonists of the first game as the lead.
And then some of the casting that we're about to get into is beyond me. Joel Valentine was originally screen tested by Jennifer Love, Hewitt, Kiersten, [01:10:00] Dunst, and Natasha Henstridge. And they said the big problem that all of those actresses had was the level of violence and nudity. I just could not see Jennifer Love Hewitt or Kiersten dones in these roles in these
Erich: films.
Yeah. I mean, I guess Jennifer Love Hewitt had done some harder at that point. So like, yeah, there's probably like a short list, right? Like of like, well, you know, she did, I know what you did last summer and that kind of thing. It is, it is wild to think of this movie with her in it. Maybe she pulls us, Sarah, Michelle Gellar, and turns into a bad-ass who knows, you know,
Andrew: but, so in other news here, I said the reason, the main reason she wanted to do this movie was because her brother Marco loved the video games, which I think is very sweet and maybe not the best reason to get into a franchise, but also cool.
I guess it worked for me, at least it worked[01:11:00] and speaking of Sarah, Michelle Gellar, she was originally supposed to be Alice, but the violence in the nudity was kind of the the stumbling block for her as well.
Erich: I mean, that tracks, it is, it is weird to me that the nudity would be a stumbling block because it seems like something that could have been so easily removed.
Yeah. It's
Andrew: It might as well, not even be there really.
Erich: I don't know if like Anderson had final cut and he was like, no, it's absolutely state.
Andrew: I had to have had fun. I don't know. It just
Erich: feels weird. It's just a weird thing for negotiations to break down on it and like violence, like, I don't know the video game existed.
So you kind of knew what you were getting in for there,
Andrew: but yeah, Michelle Rodriguez she had informed her agent before the script was ever written that if a resident evil movie was to happen, that she wanted to be a part of it, which [01:12:00] is very, very cool to me. Like I know that her and VIN are like huge nerds, you know, fast and furious.
So that's very cool.
Erich: Yeah. I mean, I think everybody like has their leg. I don't want to call it a passion project, but just like something they're really into. And they're like, Ooh, I want to be a part of that. Like, I'm a fan of you, so yeah, totally makes sense.
Andrew: This kind of ties into something you had mentioned Sony pictures that hope to make the film PG 13, but like Paul Ws Anderson was like, no, it has to be harder.
Like he, he insisted and I, I don't know. I guess at the time maybe he had enough clout to insist to a studio, but just feels wild now too, to have that, like, no it's going to be an, are
Erich: you? Yeah, like, I mean, at this point he had done mortal combat, [01:13:00] which made a lot of money for everybody. Yeah. And then he'd done event horizon and soldier, which are two movies.
I like adore. But I don't recall them doing particularly well. So really it is a little wild that like, he would have any kind of, of clout when it came to production. But he, he clearly did. Right. Was somebody, he knew something, you know, people were turning it down because of plot elements. And he was like, Nope, it stays.
So we don't
Andrew: need them. You don't
Erich: need them. No. Who made this movie? Was it like independent or was it, I feel like it was so many to put these out. It looks like it was a German production for the first one though. I think Sony pins,
Andrew: but yeah, maybe yeah, that checks out. Maybe
Erich: he did have that kind of clown.
Okay.
Andrew: This movie, Paul and Milla, became engaged [01:14:00] a year after this movie. So there you
Erich: go. Sure did. They're still together and they just made another video game. They made monster
Andrew: hunter. Yeah. 20, almost 20 years later, still, still at it back at it like a bad habit, as they say. And then finally the successful opening weekend among spike it spiked V like people started buying a video game properties.
Now again, let me just revisit our notes here. $17.1 million opening weekend, which is more it's, it's basically half the budget in the first weekend, which is that's quite good. So studios bought up properties like doom, silent hill and max Payne. And none of those were good in my opinion. So silent hill, there might be a case for it.
Erich: I mean, yeah, like we still haven't. I would argue haven't gotten a really good video game [01:15:00] movie, right? Like it, yeah,
Andrew: I know. That's, it's sucks to say. Right. The closest we've come is like Sonic the hedgehog, which was pretty funny and mostly forgettable, but it wasn't outright terrible. So I guess
Erich: like there, there are some that I like but like they, they never seem to be able to figure out sort of like what, what the balance or where the line is, right.
Like, yes. I don't know. It it's a weird thing because like, as video video games, as a, as a medium have become more like films, you know, like I was joking the other day that like, I had been awhile since I'd played a metal gear game. So I put in metal gear, solid five here. Like, why don't you [01:16:00] play that game for like three hours?
And you're mostly watching that game. Yeah. Kajima basically wrote a movie that you get to walk around. So like, it's funny to me that we haven't been able to make the transition to the other direction.
Andrew: Right. It's like, they're borrowing just a high level concept. And then they're, they're not taking the actual DNA of what makes it, of what people connect with.
Yeah. Not to get off on too much of a tangent, but we are right on the verge, not right on the verge, but we are close to seeing some, maybe a trailer or something for HBO's adaptation of the last of us, which I am very excited for, but also. Cautious about because it is an incredible game, but, and in fairness, I think [01:17:00] a video game, like that is actually best adapted to a series rather than trying to like smash it all into two hours or three movies or whatever.
We might be on the cusp of like them finally figuring it out like, oh, you know, it's the characters and the environments and the set pieces. It's like, you know, I don't want to say rip it off whole cloth, but like the, the, the source material is quite good.
Erich: So just go, even, even that is an outlier, right?
Like there aren't a ton of games, like last of us. Correct. Yeah. And it, and it's not really like an action game. Like last of us was kind of interactive storytelling. So like, Like, yes, I am excited for it as well, even though I could never finished that video game because the goddamn part where I have to start up a generator run around, I can't see the beat it, but like, but like, yeah, like I am excited [01:18:00] for that.
I'm not sure, like, it's interesting that it had to go that far. Right? Like we had to choose a video game that was almost already a movie, but maybe that's what it takes. We'll see.
Andrew: Yeah. I think they could backfill some, some franchises they've chosen, unfortunately. You know, they'll have to rest a while.
I think Assassin's creed is a great series. It's got some great ideas, but they, that Michael Fassbender thing that happens is not, I don't know what happened, so we can't, we can't go back to that. Well, so there's that. Yeah.
Erich: I hadn't seen that movie, but it sounded like most of the movie took place in the part of the video game.
You didn't like. And I was like, well, that's a weird choice. Yeah. It's like,
Andrew: it's the simplest thing. It's the, it's the thing we go to the game for. And they're like, How about we? How about we put it in the present? You're like,
Erich: I didn't even know that framing device existed, to be honest with you. People were like, so when you play the [01:19:00] game, here's how you get to the past.
And I was like, oh, who gives a shit about that? You're just in the past killing people. They're like, yeah. Yeah. That's why you play. That's not what the movie's about. I'm like, oh, okay.
Andrew: Let's look let's. W why go to, why go to Mesopotamia? Who gives a shit? No. Well, actually
Erich: let's see. Depressed prisoner.
Michael
Andrew: Fassbender. Yeah. Marion could tell your can't help either. It was sad. I was sad to watch that movie made me real sad.
Erich: So we've talked about the film, but I've never played a resident evil game. And I mentioned some of the parts where I like, it felt very gamey, right? Like there were, there were things that like, felt like a mission felt like, you know, your HUD and your map and those kinds of things.
Yeah. But like how much of this movie actually ties into the game universe?
Andrew: They it's some broad strokes. Let me tell ya. [01:20:00] I think he does a good job of establishing a world. So I'll give him props for that. Like, it's very clear to me that he played the games at least like the first three. And he was like, I love these games.
Let me try. So at a very high level, let me say that Alice Milla, you have a vitreous character does not exist in the games, in any of them and never has so. Yeah, that's kind of a cool thing. I think we're not treading familiar territory there. It's like, I liken it to Daryl than the walking dead. Like that dude did not exist in the comics, you know, which is kind of cool.
It's like a wild card, this movie and the first game, they, it does take place in raccoon city, which is just described as like a Midwestern town. Right. We don't really have a sense of, we know that there are like some [01:21:00] mountains nearby and some forests, so it could be like, maybe some people are like, maybe it's like middle Pennsylvania could be like, we don't, we don't really know for sure.
We just it's like nebulous on purpose. The first game takes place in a place called the Spencer mansion. So I'm guessing Spencer is a callback, the character named Spencer as a callback to that. And there is a mansion in this, but it's not quite right. Okay. Yeah. There is an underground lab in the mansion.
Yeah. It's not what, it's not what we experienced. It's not this huge underground city. It's literally like, you know, a couple rooms with some puzzles to open the doors. That's all. Okay.
Erich: Yeah. Puzzles, wait, there, aren't a lot of puzzles in
Andrew: this movie. There are no puzzles as far as I, as far as I could tell no puzzles.
Sometimes you have a lot of cranks, a lot of cogs and feature of
Erich: the game,
Andrew: right? Oh yeah. It's always like. You know put these, put, stay, you know, organize things in a particular way, or [01:22:00] there'll be like paintings that are missing on the wall that you'll have to retrieve. And it's very kind of esoteric, puzzling that that happens.
It's sometimes you're rerouting power to different parts. You're always looking for different keys to open different doors. It's a lot, they kind of just like, they're like, fuck that.
Erich: I mean, I don't think this movie needs a lot of that, but like, it would be nice if they like, oh, this I have to do this.
Yeah. But no. Okay.
Andrew: I want to say that later movies have like little Easter eggs that are nods to those things, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. All right. In the games, umbrella is indeed the shady organization behind all of this and their role is, is siMillar in that they are a pharmaceutical company.
Front-facing that also has this shady R and D department that develops like bio weapons and stuff like that. So that, of course that tracks that tracks and the F and the T [01:23:00] virus that is featured in this, in the vial is also the virus in a majority of the resident evil games. We're going to get into some other ones, but it's like T virus is your standard zombie the dogs.
And then there's this thing called the tyrant, which is a subject that responded very well to T virus conditioning. It's a much larger kind of thing.
Erich: I have a big question about the T virus hit me no way. Why T
Andrew: it's does it stood for Tyron? Yeah, the T stood for Tyron. Oh, okay. All right.
Erich: Well, that's no
Andrew: fun when we played those original games back in, let me say like 94, 95, something like that.
They have since remade those games and. We have remade. We have remakes of resident evil, one, two and three, which have done an excellent job of taking the source material, building it out in interesting ways and making the story a bit more cohesive. So if you're into [01:24:00] the games, I highly recommend skipping the originals, unless you have some wild nostalgia for them just going for the remakes.
They are excellent, excellent games. Okay. The zombie dogs, what we talked about, the staple of this game franchise, I think they might be in every single game in various permutations. They get more or less disgusting depending on their environment, which is great.
Erich: Even the one in like the weird swamps that came out recently.
Andrew: Yeah, there are dogs. Oh, you know what? There might not be dogs in that one. You might be right. That's a total. Separate kind of story though, that one's a weird one. Right. But
Erich: I knew it was like an outlet. Yeah. I feel like a character shows up like at the very end or something. Yeah.
Andrew: A reboot, a reboot of sorts.
But within the same universe, it's very weird. It's very convoluted, such as resident evil.
Erich: It's
Andrew: one of those can't go on this long and not get confusing when they give you an [01:25:00] exposition dump during the loading screens to tell you like what's happening, you know, in the band. So the liquor we talked about they made him out to be like the big boss in this.
Yeah. Those sh those fuckers are everywhere in resident evil, two, three, and five. Like you, I mean, there is common almost as common as zombies and they're real bastards to kill. And then two cool things. There's a super quick shot of the newspaper headlines. I think you mentioned it right as like the dead walk, right?
Yeah. And if you look a little bit further down it mentioned stars as an acronym and then on the hood of some of the police cars, it also has the emblem for stars. So that is the name of the team that you're on in the first two games. It's special tactics and rescue squad. They're like they're like the SWOT of the raccoon police department.
So that's why that, that's kind of their quick shorthand way of saying, oh, these are the bad-ass people. [01:26:00] That's why they're able to handle this situation better than everyone else. And it's great. That's really it, not a lot of connective
Erich: tissue. So in the first couple of games are there. Other Munsters, are they mostly dissolved beginnings?
Andrew: Zap, you have zombies and the dogs we have liquors in resident evil too. So I'll, I'll refer to the original one. Resonate. Well, two introduces a character that is very, how do you put this? He's he's a persistent bastard. Mr. X, you might've seen some, some shots of this guy. He's unstoppable, right?
So all you can do is kind of. All it is, is triaged. You can make him, you could stagger him and then you run that's it. There is no killing this creature. So there's that the original resinate two also had a giant alligator, which was a little bit of a weird choice. He lived in the [01:27:00] sewers.
Erich: Okay. So they're not as monstery as I thought.
I don't know why I thought these things were full of like crazy monsters. Some
Andrew: of the, I mean, there are certainly Mr. X is indeed. If you think of like, so, you know, mild spoilers for our future movies, they mentioned the nemesis program. Nemesis is also a creature. He's also mostly unstoppable. You can unload an entire clip into this guy.
Headshots doesn't matter. You will not stop him. Right. We have like these weird plant monsters, you have the liquors, there's all sorts of crazy shit in these games. The first game had sharks. It's like weird. It's like but yeah, suffice it to say. Zombies through and through almost every one of them has had some incarnation of a zombie, which is great.
Erich: I love it. Oh, for sure. It's just like, for some reason in my head, they were like, they were more monsters than zombies, but like I'm, I'm on board for all of the, the above.
Andrew: Yeah. They have, yeah. [01:28:00] These are your typical standard. Shambling zombies up until around resident evil four or five, then things get a little weird and we're going to see that reflected in the movies as well.
Again, Paul Ws Anderson, who says he's like catching up to the games and he's like just incorporating the ideas that he likes. It's pretty weird, but I guess it works, works for him, so right.
Erich: Yeah. Now.
Andrew: So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. A good first attempt I'll say.
Erich: Yeah, like I watching the film and its structure and the way that it progresses, I wouldn't have been surprised if you said, oh, this is what happens in the video game.
Right? Like, I'm sure they took some creative liberties, but I would not have been surprised if you were like, you wake up in this house and you ride this train and you fight your way through this thing. Like that would not have surprised me at all.
Andrew: I mean, it is weird. So like the [01:29:00] train thing, I don't know why they do that in a lot of the games.
There is almost, there is a train often there is a train in resonate with zero, which is a pre-call. There is a train and resident evil two that you take to an underground lab. So like the, these things are not unprecedented. He didn't just he didn't just come up with like a train that leaves three,
Erich: right.
Because otherwise it's fucking stupid. What is happening now? Why does this train have Bombay? Yeah.
Andrew: That, you know, the the, the move at the end where he pushes a thing of pipes into the liquor. Yeah. There are a lot of things in the game where like, you know, it's a quick time event where you have to like, press a button at the right time and a crane will swing into the enemy that you're fighting.
You know, it's like, there are a lot of that stuff is like seated here in the movie. You're like, okay, I get it. That's fun. That's fun. So the
Erich: games aren't really like shooters that need there.
Andrew: Oh, I would say you're pro I mean, they're shooters more often than not, but they do have, they have a surprisingly [01:30:00] long amount of time of, of, of puzzle solving as well.
So there is a lot of, like, you can clear an area, so like, You know, if you find, if it's all about resource management, they never give you enough bullets upfront to kill everything. So it's like, oh, I've got to be a little bit judicious when I go into this room about what I'm going to do, but eventually you'll clear it.
And then it's more about like, well, what do I do now? So they're
Erich: fun. Gotcha. I highly recommend. Okay.
Andrew: All right. Here's a question. If someone was listening well, Godspeed, if you've listened to this long, congratulations, you've done it. Would you recommend this film to somebody? Like, I don't even want to say if it's like, it doesn't necessarily even the zombie genre in casual conversation, we're talking about monster movies or maybe zombie movies.
Are you, is there any time that you're recommending resident evil to
Erich: somebody like, [01:31:00] yeah. Okay. But like with caveat, right? Like this. I mean, it is firmly a B move. Yeah. Like I wouldn't tell someone, this is a, like a good movie. I would tell someone, this is a fun movie. Right. Like, and that's, that's how I tend to approach, like, you know, like John rhe movies that like have some, some blatant flaws, but like, I still love I'm like, did I have fun?
Right. It's funny because like Paul Ws Anderson makes a lot of these types of movies. I mean, I mentioned a couple that I love in, you know, event horizon and soldier. Yeah. Like they are, they are flawed. They are not perfect, but they are just a lot of fun to watch. So, yeah, I would recommend this to someone [01:32:00] as we get further into the list.
I would recommend some more than others, right. We like, like we talked about sort of my love for the fast and furious franchise. And like, if I know that, like, if I know someone is not a completist and just wants to be along for the ride, I recommend people start with fast five. I skipped the first four movies, you know, it's it.
I happen to love them, but they, they are those movies grow and evolve as you go through the franchise. And I think we're going to find that here, like, as I'm remembering things get bigger and weirder and crazier as we go along So like, you know, maybe when we get three or four movies in, I'll say, yeah, maybe I wouldn't recommend people start with this one.
Right,
Andrew: [01:33:00] right. Then you will be wildly confused about what's going on. If you start with this one,
Erich: I mean, will you though, like it's a self-contained story. No, no. It is clear. There's no confusion. You know, the, the problems that it has are like terrible CGI, absolutely. No character work whatsoever, right?
Like, like these people are video game characters. Like you, you get, you get very little like backstory, you get very little motivation. Like through this entire film, we learned that. Going to help Lisa steal the T virus. We have no idea why. Right. Like just apparently, because it was evil, like that's all we know.
Andrew: Yeah. Bad stuff doing bad stuff.
Erich: So that was a very long answer, but I just, I would recommend these, this with caveats, a
Andrew: qualified recommendation, [01:34:00] but a recommendation, nonetheless. Yeah. I think I'm right there with you. It's almost like give me a couple zombie movies to watch it. I mean, this isn't in like the top 1520.
Yeah. I was good. I was being a little more generous, but yeah, it's not.
Erich: We were talking before, before we jumped on air. I'm not even sure I tag this as zombie movie. Right, right.
Andrew: This is something it's got, it's a zombie zombie adjacent movie.
Erich: Yeah. Like it's an action movie with zombies in it. Yeah. I don't know.
But yeah.
Andrew: So I would, yeah, I would say yes, you know, it's, it feels like a no-brainer if you have watched or have played the games to at least check this out, maybe like the next two also, when you get some familiar names and potentially faces in front of you. But yeah, I had a good time. I didn't, I watch a lot of movies as we established upfront.
[01:35:00] A lot of the time I end up just kind of, when will this be over with, and I didn't feel that for this. I was like, oh, I forgot about that. Oh yeah. There's that? Oh, that looks terrible. Oh, that's great. You know, it was nice. It was
Erich: a nice it's paced. Well, and it's a tight 90 minutes, right? Like you get in and get out, which is always been my feeling of like most genre movies should be 90 minutes.
Right? Like comedies Saifai westerns, like a good 90 minute movie. Perfect. I a. I am looking forward to watching a few more of these.
Andrew: I love it. I love it.
Erich: So what's next.
Andrew: Oh, let me tell you what's next. We have resident evil apocalypse, which okay. I totally didn't have to read again. Oh, our notes, but yeah, this is a, as I understand it, I didn't watch, I didn't watch your head.[01:36:00]
I have them all queued up. I was going to take them one at a time. Cause I didn't want my one. I didn't want it to blur together and then wanted in one accidentally referenced something that may happen later. Again, it's been a minute since I've seen any of these. So this is kind of nice. I believe apocalypse picks up right from the final scene of this with the she's in the street with a shotgun.
I think that's how it starts, which is pretty cool for continuity at least.
Erich: I mean, yeah, that, that feels right, right. Like I, I was saying. That ending feels like a cold open. The title card comes up so that it makes sense. Yeah. So
Andrew: that'd be great. That'll be great. I think we did it. I think we're done. Yeah.
Erich: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm excited. This is a good first
Andrew: episode. I, yeah. Where are we at here? Wow. We're our 45. We w we, I think we ran longer than the movie, which generally we're trying to save you time, but we got to cover so much ground, you know?
Erich: So I'll try to keep my recap [01:37:00] shorter. No, no,
Andrew: no. I think because we go through the video game stuff, we go through the production notes.
There's a lot, it's a lot of value in one episode, you know, it's all free. So come on, come on. Yeah. Come on. People get to the parts that you like. If you don't want to hear me talk about the other podcasts we do up front. Oh, we want it to do that either after this too. That's nice. All right, there you go.
Thank you for joining me. If people wanted to listen to you on other things or hear what you have to say elsewhere on the internet, where could they, where could they do that? Yeah,
Erich: I'm on all the social medias as platypusjones, all one word. So you can find me there usually on Twitter or Instagram.
And as we mentioned at the top, there is a 12&24 Discord and oh yeah. I like to pop in there regularly. We talk about, you know, Keanu and, and Kurt, but we also have some threads for, you know, all kinds [01:38:00] of stuff. So just check it out there.
Andrew: Yeah, I guess I will make another channel for this.
Sure this isn't fully launched yet. So as of recording this, we don't have the trailer or anything put together, but if you go to 12&24, that's the numerals one, two, and two, four. It'll be in the show notes. 12and24.com/discord. Join us chat live. It'll be awesome. And in addition to that, you can find me @darkdriving.
Most places on the internet, Twitter and Instagram are the best. I was thinking as a companion piece to this, I might stream the games on Twitch. I'm also at dark driving on Twitter. That's a little bit of an endeavor. I think the games are about six to 10 to 12 hours depending, but it might be fun to revisit these.
So I'll consider it as we move into the spooky season and have some fun games going on here could be cool.
Erich: Right?
Andrew: That's it, there probably be some music playing here. Again. This is very rough, [01:39:00] but we're going for it. Thank you all for joining us. And remember just one bite. One scratch from these creatures is sufficient.
Stay safe out there. .