The recent release of theResident Evil 3remake brings a classic game in the series to an updated medium. However, despite some ambiguous naming conventions, this is not the first time the game has been adapted. The six live-actionResident Evilmovies all take aspects of the video games and adapt them to the big screen.
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Of the six, the film most directly analogous to a game is Alexander Witt’sResident Evil: Apocalypse. This one more or less straight adaptsResident Evil 3, whereas the other films are a bit (read: much) looser with the source material. While the films might skew more towards “cult favorite” rather than “critical darling,” they’re not completely off the mark. Here are five things the movies got right aboutResident Evil 3, and five they got wrong. Spoilers for both the games and the movies to come!
10Right: Insane Action
The most obvious shining aspect of the film series is its action. InApocalypse, Milla Jovovich’s Alice rides a motorcycle through a stained glass window in a church and proceeds to kill a few lickers and zombies along the way. 2012’sRetribution, the fifth in the series, dials the action up to 11 as the characters fight their way out of a treacherous underground Umbrella bunker.
While several games in the series are more focused on survival rather than action, the remake ofResident Evil 3, as well asResident Evil 5&6,lean into the B-movie action vibe that the films emanate.
9Wrong: Nemesis’s Identity
In the game, Nemesis is a formidable, albeit one-note, villain. He’s a blank canvas of terror that also happens to be armed to the teeth. Beyond that, however, there’s not much to be said about him other than “run.”
Apocalypse, however, takes Nemesis and turns him into a tragic villain. At the end of the first movie, we see Eric Mabius' Matt Addison get captured by Umbrella and experimented upon. InApocalypse, we see the result of that, as Matt is turned into Nemesis. This gives the character more of an arc but is still a departure from the game itself.
8Right: An Uphill Battle
In most of theResident Evilgames (save forRE 6), the characters are fighting an uphill battle against not only a horde of zombies and monsters, but also an evil megacorporation. The movies capture that same sense of peril, as the threats only increase and the monsters only get more grotesque.
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Sure, they get more powerful weapons—and, in some cases, psychic powers), but, at the end of the hallway, there’s always a bigger monster or an angrier corporate tycoon. Even small victories in the games & movies usually result in a bigger failure along the way.
7Wrong: Protagonist
Perhaps the chief difference between the movies & games is the choice of main character(s). In the games, it varies depending on which game you’re on; it’s Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine in the first, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield in the second, etc.), but the films all follow one character: Alice.
Milla Jovovich performs her heart out as Alice, but that doesn’t change the character from being an original creation for the films. As cool as it would be to see her pop up in a game one day, there’s a good chance that’ll never happen—as long as Paul W. S. Anderson is busy filmingMonster Hunter, anyway.
6Right: Umbrella Gonna Umbrella
Umbrella is a shadowy, almost comically evil megacorporation in both the games and films. You can always rely on them to have some big, grandiose science experiment go horribly wrong and go about cleaning up the mess in the most nefarious way possible.
While in the films Wesker might be (slightly) more megalomaniacal than he is in the games, it doesn’t change the fact that the Umbrella Corporation remains the big bad behind most—if not all—of the horrible things that befall the characters and the world around them.
5Wrong: No Puzzles
Aside from the pulse-pounding survival and action elements, puzzles have always been a big part ofResident Evilgames such as the one pictured above from last year’s remake ofResident Evil 2. Even though they usually just boil down to finding the right key or the right code, there’s still an element of thinking that goes into them.
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In the movies, however, most, if not all of the conflicts, are solved with explosions, kicking, gunfire, or a combination of the three. While slowing down the pace of an action movie to watch our heroes solve a puzzle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it does remove itself from theResident EvilDNA.
4Right: The T-Virus Is Destroyed
At the end ofResident Evil: Apocalypse, the heroes are dealt a mixed bag of victory and failure. Raccoon City has been destroyed in a nuclear explosion—deployed by Umbrella, of course—thus eradicating the virus. Umbrella manages to cover up their involvement, however, and is free to keep doing evil science behind the scenes.
This lines up with the ending ofResident Evil 3, in which the nuclear blast seemingly eradicates all traces of the virus. And, while the ending coda of the movie goes in a different direction, the general ending remains consistent.
3Wrong: Wait, Actually, No, It’s Not
A common theme of theResident Evilmovies is retconning the ending of the previous installment at the beginning of the sequel. For example, the ending ofApocalypsesees the T-Virus eradicated. The beginning of its sequel,Extinction, features Alice explaining via voice-over that itwasn’tdestroyed, and instead caused the world to devolve into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Even though the virus and various strains of it come back in the games, it’s not even close to the level of destruction it causes inExtinction. Las Plagas has nothing on the plot devices of Paul W. S. Anderson!
2Right: The Human Moments
On the surface, both theResident Evilfilms and games are about surviving terrifying onslaughts from zombies and other monsters in increasingly creepy settings. That does a disservice, though, to the small human moments that are packed into both. InRE 3, the relationship between Carlos and Jill makes those characters feel more developed.
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Similarly, the relationship between Alice and Carlos in the films, as well as other characters that pop in and out of the franchise, echoes that same sentiment. Underneath all the blood and viscera, some people genuinely care about each other.
1Wrong: So Many Clones
One of the bigger reveals in the film franchise is that Alice actually isn’t Alice, but ratherProjectAlice, a.k.a. one of several hundred—maybe thousand—clones produced by Umbrella to test their various viruses on.
While this is a cool revelation in the films, it doesn’t have many roots within the games. Clones never really feature into those plots, and, once again, this only distances the narrative, characters, and world of theResident Evilfilms from the games themselves. Unless, of course, you count clones of the games themselves!
