If
you haven’t read one of my movie reviews before, just know that
there may or may not be spoilers and what I write here may or may not
be a recap or make any actual sense.
(All pictures from the excellent Resident Evil: Retribution movie site, which makes reviewing their movie easy by having pics readily available. Thanks, Sony!)
I
saw two movies in the theater yesterday, which is a record for me.
Not
an all-time record. I think that would be four. I used to meet up
with a buddy of mine from time to time on Fridays and we’d just go
and see a bunch of movies. I think we only hit four once, but it
happened. Now, with a family and a horrible work schedule that is
more like a form of psychological torture than an actual rotation of
shifts, I don’t even get to go and see one movie all that often.
But
yesterday, sensing I was more broke than King Kong Bundy’s old
recliner, the family decided it was a great day for movies and dining
out.
When
we got to the counter to buy our tickets, the lady said, “Resident
Evil 3D,” and I sort of went, “Um.” I hadn’t remembered to
make sure the time was for a 2D showing. Crap. We turned around to
leave.
You
see, I have not traditionally been able to see 3D effects in movie
theaters due to my vision problems. Not only did the 3D not work, the
visuals were blurry and not even worth looking at. But I had Lasik
surgery back in January and my optometrist had speculated that it
might clear up my 3D issue. We’ve actually had a lot of
conversations about it. I just hadn’t tried it yet because, like I
said before, I don’t get out to see movies like I used to and I
didn’t want to screw up one of my rare opportunities.
But
this time due to our time constraints it was either try the 3D
experiment or just skip the movie entirely. I consulted with Mrs.
Troublemaker and we decided to go ahead and give it a shot. So we
went back to the counter, ordered our food, and were issued our 3D
glasses, which I would refer to as “goofy” if they didn’t
closely resemble the sunglasses I actually wear.
The
first few trailers were regular. Well, I can’t really call the
trailer for Skyfall
regular because it was fucking amazing; but they were all 2D. Then
the screen filled up with this wondrous and somewhat nerve-wracking
phrase:
PLEASE
PUT YOUR REAL3D GLASSES ON YOUR FACE PARTS NOW
(or
something like that)
I
was all tingly. I had no idea what was going to happen. Would I be
able to partake in the movie magic, the cinematic sorcery that
everybody had been talking about? Would the effects not work, but
maybe I could still watch the movie? Would it be all blurry and give
me a migraine and make me bleed out of my eyeballs? This was fucking
exciting.
And
then the trailer for the new Silent
Hill
movie started playing and a bunch of snow or ash or something started
falling out of the theater ceiling.
Holy.
Fucking. Shit.
While
I was still adjusting to the absolutely amazing things I was seeing
not on the movie screen but in front of it, a fucking horrible demon
monster the size of the Chrysler Building walked in front of the
screen and I shit my pants. I was not ready for that.
I
did not blink once during that trailer. I was bolted to the very edge
of my seat, totally transfixed by the miracle of technology I was
witnessing. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the
coolest experiences of my life. Part of the reason I hadn’t tried a
3D movie before now was that I honestly didn’t want to find out I
couldn’t
see the 3D. I was more comfortable not knowing, because once I knew
for sure that would be it. I know it sounds stupid to be so concerned
about such a silly, gimmicky thing; but movies have always been such
an integral part of my life and who I am. I didn’t want to discover
that I couldn’t be a part of this new facet of the media that I
have always loved so much. It would be like finding out you weren’t
capable of using the “Hover” feature on your new Hovercar.
So
anyway, seeing that Silent
Hill
trailer was a singular and amazing experience that will stick with me
for a long time.
But
we’re not here to talk about the trailer for a movie that I will
totally be seeing in 3D as soon as it comes out. We’re here to talk
about the latest entry in one of the most polarizing and divisive
movie franchises I can think of.
I
love
the first Resident
Evil
move. But I think I might need to go a bit further than that. I also
love Mortal
Kombat and Event
Horizon.
People – I am a full-on, bona fide fan of Paul WS Anderson. I know
he gets mocked a lot. I know his movies are simple, good-time,
popcorn fun. I like that. I like the fact the he straps his wife into
ridiculous costumes that look more like fetish gear than tactical
battle dress and has her run around doing somersaults while kicking
zombies in the face. I like that his movies don’t give you a whole
lot of time to think about how silly they are because everything is
go, go, GO! I like that he often does things simply because they are
awesome. There was no reason to bring Oded Fehr, Michelle Rodriguez,
and Colin Salmon back for this movie except for audiences going,
“Hey! That’s that person from the other one! Neat!” So he did
it.
I
like the guy and I like his movies. I was stoked about seeing RE:
Retribution
and so was the missus.
The
movie opens with a familiar figure floating serenely in the water.
Well, sort of serenely. It’s Alice and she’s sort of slowly
rotating. And then all of a sudden she pops up out of the water and
you realize everything is playing in reverse. Our heroine ends up on
the deck of the huge barge from the end of the last movie doing the
sort of things she does – shooting guns, wearing super-tight
clothes, and grimacing while stuff blows up around her and people
die.
If
you recall, the closing scene of Resident
Evil: Afterlife
was of all the happy people Alice had rescued frolicking about on the
deck of a large ship, thrilled to be headed for somewhere that wasn’t
an awful, zombie-infested shithole. I can’t remember who these
people were or why they thought there was a zombie-free utopia
somewhere, but it doesn’t matter because they’re all fucked now.
The Umbrella Corporation has shown up in a bunch of helicopters that
look like the GI Joe Tomahawk and the COBRA Mamba had babies. And
those babies are spitting bullets and Umbrella Soldiers all over
Alice’s nice, clean boat.
Also
in attendance is Alice’s former pal, Jill Valentine, who has been
turned into an evil mega-bitch by a ruby robot spider that Umbrella
stuck to her cleavage. Jill Valentine consists mostly of a skintight
purple jumpsuit and said cleavage. Quite frankly I’m not even sure
she had a head. Oh, wait – she did have a head because that’s
where all of her terrible, wooden dialogue came from. I just meant
she might as well not have a head.
The
scene rewinds all the way to the actual end of the last movie where
everybody was sort of happy, then starts playing normally. That’s
when the Umbrella Doom Copters show up and we see the past few
minutes in their natural progression.
Alice
manages to kill about 4,352 of the Umbrella troops (but not Jill, of
course), but then gets exploded into the water, which takes us back
to the opening.
I
thought this was all unspeakably cool. To be fair, part of the reason
I liked it so much was that this was my first exposure to this
“REAL3D” or whatever and I really got to savor every little thing
since we first saw it all in reverse slow motion, then at normal
speed going the right way. If anybody ever needs a clip to convince
somebody that 3D is rad, I would recommend this one. Totally awesome
opening that got the adrenaline pumping and reassured you that, “Yes
– we are still making big, ridiculous, explodey movies here. Don’t
worry, my lamb – there will be much violence in the next ninety-six
minutes.” It was like getting a hug from the Murder Fairy.
So
Alice is floating down into the depths of whatever body of water that
was supposed to be, when all of a sudden she wakes up. In a bed. In a
house. In the suburbs of Raccoon City. Lookin’ good. And hey –
here’s her husband, Todd! He’s being played by Oded Fehr, who was
killed two movies ago. This shit is weird, but we’re going along
with it because Alice deserves a break and also because Resident
Evil.
Alice now has longer blonde hair and very small panties.
It
turns out Todd and Alice have a deaf daughter whose name escapes me
because the last
thing I wanted out of this movie was a prepubescent protagonist. But
– as tends to happen – I don’t have much time to consider it
because zombies attack and rip Oded Fehr’s face off. Alice grabs
her daughter and all of a sudden this thing turns into a fucking
escort mission. Boo.
I’m
going to make some fun of it, but this whole suburbia sequence was
actually really cool. It was standard zombie movie fare stuck in the
middle of the far more sci-fi tone of Resident
Evil,
but with the flair of the franchise. It was a neat change and a nice
display of just how different the Resident
Evil
movies are.
So
Alice and Alice, Jr. manage a harrowing escape from the zombies and
make it outside where they find Michelle Rodriguez driving a car that
might as well have “I AM A GIANT LIBERAL STINKING HIPPIE” painted
on it with pink tofu (dyed with natural vegetable extracts). I
honestly believe this movie was in danger of breaking down the
fundamental laws of cinema and causing a massive, galaxy-ripping rift
that would have swallowed all of existence because Michelle Rodriguez
was not playing a tough girl with a heart of gold. She was playing A
GIANT LIBERAL STINKING HIPPIE. It was weird.
So
Rodriguez picks up our hero and her burden
daughter, but manages to flip her stupid little Prius within about a
minute and a half, right in the middle of some exposition that didn’t
matter anyway because Resident
Evil.
Alice and Lil’ Alice straight-up abandon Hippie M-Rod, leaving her
to say, “Oh, shit,” as a bunch of zombies surround her fruity
car.
Our
not-very-thoughtful ladies make their way to a house, which is a
terrible idea. They corner themselves in a closet inside where of
course Zombie Oded Fehr shows up and eats Alice’s face with his
All-New Monster Mouth action feature. If you don’t know, Resident
Evil
zombies have these four toothy tongue things that unfold out of their
mouths to make eating your face easier for them and about fifty times
as gross for you.
Oh,
and forget my recommendation for that first scene. The next scene
features Milla Jovovich regaining consciousness in a prison cell that
looks like an Umbrella-themed Tiffany lamp, wearing two pieces of
paper smaller than what people use to print TPS reports. This
is the scene that will sell 3D. Unfortunately she’s being aurally
tortured by her not-friend Jill, which for me is a total
boner-killer.
I
was going to take a moment to ponder the thought process behind
taping two pieces of paper to Ms. Jovovich-WS Anderson rather than
just sticking her in a hospital smock or something, but that would be
dumb. Obviously the thought process was, “I’m 36 years old, I’ve
given birth, and I still look like this – tape them fuckin’
papers on me.”
Anyway,
through a series of events that may or may not make sense Alice ends
up clothed in her latest battle/bondage gear, ready for hardcore
zombie action. After being chased down some brightly lit hallways by
the same laser net that diced that black guy in the first movie,
Alice bursts through a portal to find herself in Tokyo. Because
Resident
Evil.
Before
Alice can even get her bearings, it becomes apparent that there is
something sinister in Tokyo. No – I’m not talking about a dirty
old businessman trying to get his hands on some used panties. Alice
clearly isn’t even wearing panties. No, here there be zombies! Some
chick goes all nuts and jumps on this dude and starts eating him up.
Then some more zombies show up and start eating people and before you
know it Tokyo is CRAZY-GO-NUTS!
But
Alice has been through four movies worth of this shit already and
knows just what to do – she busts out the window of a cop car and
relieves it of its armory. She also gets a long chain with a lock or
something on the end, which makes for some awesome visuals later.
Seriously – don’t poo-poo the chain weapon. When you’re in the
midst of crazy zombie time, you’re going to want at least one
weapon you don’t have to reload. There’s a even a little callback
to Alice’s larceny a couple of minutes later. Once downtown Tokyo
is engulfed in a full-on zombie rampage, we get a shot of a cop
running to the looted cop car and stopping, looking at the window and
being all, “What the fuck happened to my gear?”
Alice is long gone by then. Following the dubious logic of the
Resident
Evil
franchise, she is headed towards a massive, obviously
Umbrella-operated doorway that just opened up for no good reason.
Luckily it stays open long enough for a shit-ton of zombies to follow
our heroine inside, so before you can really think about it you’ve
got RAD SLOW-MO FIGHT SCENE.
Trying
to recap this fight scene would be like trying to recap a wrestling
match between Rey Mysterio and a howler monkey, so I’m not gonna
bother. Just know that there were a ton of flips, kicks, swinging
chains, and some total gun badassery. This was another scene that
could sell the 3D. It’s also worth noting that white backgrounds
make the effects pop like mad and this movie thus far has had a
lot of
white backgrounds.
Once
all the zombies are dead, about a thousand more zombies start running
into the hallway where Alice just ruled ass. This chick knows her
limitations (especially after that dirty dastard Albert Wesker stole
her super-science T-Virus powers last time) and hauls ass out of
there.
Naturally
she emerges into the Umbrella Corporation’s Main Control Room,
which is only slightly less ridiculous than Noomi Rapace just
happening across the room where they were hiding that ancient dude in
Prometheus
(which I cannot wait to see again).
Side
Note: Which science fiction undergarments do you prefer? Alice’s
pieces of paper or Noomi and Charlize’s gauze? I like the papers,
but they’re both pretty nice and equally implausible.
A
bunch of control consoles pop up out of the floor, each manned by a
couple of dead folks. Not zombie dead, just dead
dead.
Then
Wesker and Ada Wong show up and brother, Ada Wong cannot act for
shit.
The interesting counterpoint to this is the fact that the guy playing
Albert Wesker might be the very best actor ever in the universe,
because he is terrible.
Not terrible in the way that Ada Wong is terrible, but terrible in
exactly
the same way acting in video games is terrible. It’s astonishing. I
can’t imagine what sort of talent it takes to do… that.
Heck, I can’t even quite describe what that
is. It’s just this weird, stilted, emotionless delivery that video
games have and you accept because it’s a video game. Except it’s
not emotionless – it’s almost like there’s a ton of emotion,
but those digitized characters just don’t have quite the means to
express them. That’s exactly what the dude playing Wesker does.
It’s like he’s just an ass hair shy of screaming and yelling and
giggling all the time.
Whereas
Ada Wong sounds like she’s reading a telephone book and just knows
that nobody’s paying attention.
It’s
worth noting that Ada Wong is not the worst actor in this movie.
So
Albert Wesker isn’t actually in the control room, he’s just a big
video display like Max Headroom. Actually, I was kind of hoping he
had downloaded himself into the internet or something, but this was
not the case. It turns out Wesker and Wong are good guys now and
Wesker is in charge of an anti-Umbrella group of people. He tells
Alice that the Red Queen (the creepy little girl hologram from the
first movie) is no controlling all of Umbrella’s operations. Alice
is not actually in Tokyo, she is in an Umbrella testing….
Hey.
HEY!
Pay
attention! I know this is, like, three minutes of exposition and it’s
hard to pay attention because you want more hardcore zombie action
ASAP; but this is where the entire rest of the movie is explained.
Just listen for a couple of minutes and everything else will almost
make sense. Yeah, I know it was a poor decision to have Ada and Alice
just stand there listening to Wesker. They should have been doing
nude yoga or something.
So
our current setting is deep under the Arctic Circle (or maybe
Antarctic – who knows?) in an Umbrella facility where there are a
bunch of different domed environments – Tokyo, Moscow, New York,
Toronto (which doubled for other cities because as Hollywood knows,
Toronto looks like everywhere),
and Dubuque. Okay, not really Dubuque. But the largest and central
dome was “Suburbia”. The original purpose of these environments
was to allow the Umbrella Corporation – which seems to get
progressively more evil with each movie – to demonstrate the
capabilities of its T-Virus to various countries so that they would
buy it as a biological weapon. This worked so well that Earth is now
covered in zombies. I was actually relieved to hear this, as I
thought we were going to find out everything from the last four
movies had been happening in these domes somehow. I am relieved to
know that everything in the Resident
Evil
movieverse is still thoroughly fucked.
There’s
some vague explanation for why these environments are still active
even though there pretty much aren’t any countries left to sell
biological weapons to; but it pretty much amounted to because
Resident
Evil.
Wesker
tells Alice and Ada he has dispatched a team of terrible actors that
look like video game characters to rescue them from the Umbrella
facility. They have two hours to get to the chopper or… well,
something. Also, the Red Queen has dispatched Umbrella troops so they
need to move.
Then
the Red Queen has some sort of silly battle with Wesker for control
of the video screen and tells Alice, “None of you are getting out
of here alive,” and Alice is all like, “I’ve heard that before,
bitchcakes.”
Side
Note: I find it amusing that Spellcheck recognized “bitchcakes”
as a word, meaning I have used it before.
As
Alice and Ada boom it out of the control center, we move up and out
of the facility to the frozen wastes above. Yet another extremely GI
Joe-looking vehicle is moving across the ice and it is chock full of
hunky brosephs, one of whom is unmistakably Leon Kennedy. Like, to
the point where even if you’ve never even played a Resident
Evil
video game, you’d look at this guy and go, “Oh, that’s supposed
to be Leon Kennedy.”
There’s
another guy that I thought of as Asian Ryan Reynolds, but Mrs.
Troublemaker told me he wasn’t Asian and didn’t look anything
like Ryan Reynolds. But he was clearly filling a role meant
for Ryan Reynolds. Like, in an alternate universe where Green
Lantern
did what it should have done to Reynolds’ career, he was totally in
this role. I was surprised to find out later that this actor played
Jonah the dog-faced boy on Dark
Angel.
And I’m still calling him Asian Ryan Reynolds.
The
only other guy that matters is Suave Black Guy. There might have been
four or five other dudes, but they’re just around to get killed.
So
Team Axe Body Spray parked their GI Joe Snow Cat beside some
generators that look exactly like the ones that I thought the Empire
blew up on Hoth and take a big, circular elevator with flags painted
on it down into the Umbrella facility. On the way down they dispose
of their heavy winter coats because it’s not like they’re ever
going to need them again and also MUSCLES.
The
guys arrive in Fake Moscow and the Red Queen sends Las Plagas after
them. I’m assuming Las Plagas is something from the games. I dunno.
The last Resident
Evil I
played was 4 and I only got to play it for, like, ten minutes. The
third one is still my favorite. Anybody know if 6 is going to be any
good? I skipped 5 because it looked like it was one big escort
mission and I fucking hate
escort missions.
Oh,
sorry.
In
the movie, Las Plagas is a bunch of zombie soldiers with lots of big
guns, rocket launchers, and jeeps with big guns and rocket launchers.
There’s even one with a chainsaw because Resident
Evil. I
don’t know why they’re in Russia because “Las Plagas” sounds
Spanish to me, but again – Resident
Evil.
Team
Axe Body Spray does alright against the horde of armed undead, at
least until the one with the chainsaw gets through and cuts one of
the bros in half. Only then do they decide that maybe they should
just keep moving and find the hot ladies they were sent to rescue
rather than stand around shooting at hundreds of zombies.
Meanwhile,
Alice and Ada are in fake New York where they fight two gigantic
dudes with axes and bags on their heads that I, quite frankly,
thought were from silent
Hill.
And when I say “gigantic dudes” I mean literally giants. Like,
fifteen feet tall or something. And they looked great.
I had no sense whatsoever that these guys were CGI or superimposed or
anything. The battle between the ladies and the giants was slick and
entertaining. The giants moved through and interacted with the
environment so well that I wasn’t taken out of the movie for even a
second. Well, at least not until Alice and Ada blew up a car whole
standing about two feet away from it. That was pretty stupid, but it
did look awesome, especially when the car exploded backwards into the
two giants, propelling them into another
explosion, causing a third explosion. Triple explodery negates
defiance of physics. Because Resident
Evil.
Ada
and Alice escape from New York (see what I did there?) only to emerge
into the Suburbia dome, which looks an awful lot like the Raccoon
City from Alice’s dream. As a matter of fact, it is
the Raccoon City from Alice’s dream. A lingering shot on a crashed
helicopter – crashed in precisely the same manner as one in the
earlier sequence – proves this. Alice spots movement in a nearby
house and the pair enter to check it out. That’s not even logic
specific to Resident
Evil,
that’s just good horror movie logic.
Alice
finds the room where she and her daughter were hiding in her dream
and approaches the closet.
Now,
we all knew her stupid daughter was going to be in there. My thought
here was, “How awesome would it be if instead of her daughter being
in that closet a zombie busted out right before she opened it?” and
then a zombie busted out right before she opened it and it actually
made me jump because as much as I thought that would be a cool thing
to happen, I never thought it actually would. Good job, Paul WS
Anderson. After a brief fight Alice dispatched the undead surprise
and then
her daughter showed up. Dammit.
Alice
is all confused and torn because she doesn’t actually have
a daughter and the daughter is all confused because all of a sudden
Mommy is a brunette and wearing really
tight clothes with lots of buckles all over. I thought it was a nice
touch that they took a second for that rather than just going with
because Resident
Evil.
As
soon as Alice gets back downstairs the Umbrella Clone Squad shows up
with a bunch of troopers. They might have been clones, too for all I
know. But they had masks on. If you’re thinking too hard this part
could be really confusing, as the Clone Squad consists of Michelle
Rodriguez (not the hippie one), Oded Fehr (not the husband one), and
the black guy from the first movie (no longer diced). Alice’s
daughter is all like, “Daddy!” and Alice goes, “That’s not
your daddy,” and then everybody starts shooting. Ada Wong may not
be much of an actress, but she handles her action scenes really
well. There’s this one spot where the movie has to explain that Ada
Wong has a grappling gun like Batman’s, but rather than have her
explain to anybody that it is a grappling gun, she shoots it through
a dude from across the kitchen and yanks him into the counter to kill
him. That way, when she gives it to Alice a minute later you know,
“Oh, Alice is going to need to go upwards later,” and they don’t
have to waste time talking when things could be bleeding or blowing
up.
The
reason Ada gives Alice the grappling gun is because she is going to
stay behind and keep the Clone Squad busy so Alice and Alice, Jr. can
escape. There’s no real reason for this self-sacrifice other than
because Resident
Evil
(though later on we kind of find out why – I’m telling you, there
is a logic to a lot of this that I think people miss).
Alice
and her daughter make their way to a subway station where they meet
up with Hippie Michelle Rodriguez. She immediately punches Alice in
the face and shoves the kid on the ground, all like, “Why the fuck
did you assholes just leave me in the car after I saved your lives?”
I’m
just kidding. She’s just happy to see them and then Alice shows her
how to use a gun, which Hippie M-Rod uses to shoot the both of them
because, holy shit,
how could you just leave her in that car?
No,
no – kidding again. Alice leaves her daughter with this complete
stranger and goes off to find Team Axe Body Spray. There are a couple
of hideously awkward lines after this that made me wonder if this
movie actually had dialogue written in the script or if it was just
descriptions of a series of events and explosions with “Alice says
stuff here” or “Wesker explains plot” written in places. M-Rod
says, “We need to find a place to hide,” and then immediately
follows it up with “Let’s see if we can hide over here.” It’s
just weird and unnatural and I wonder if it was maybe ADR so she
isn’t just silently walking Alice’s daughter away with a gun. I
was kind of hoping they were both going to get killed anyway, so I
didn’t care too
much.
I’m
gonna be honest – I don’t totally recall the next sequence of
events. But somehow Alice and her daughter and Hippie M-Rod meet up
with what remains of Team Axe Body Spray and they make their way to a
huge chamber with a submarine in it. Somebody – maybe Leon, but who
cares? – explains that this used to be a Russian submarine factory
and that Umbrella used the sub to transport the T-Virus to the
purchasing nations. The group gets to the giant circular elevator,
but then a Licker shows up and kills Hippie M-Rod, slashes Asian Ryan
Reynolds, and steals Alice’s daughter. There is an absolutely
hilarious segment here where Alice says she is going after her Fake
Daughter and Leon tries to talk her out of it. This is easily the
worst scene in the whole movie because nobody – not Alice, not
Leon, not the audience – believes for a second Alice isn’t going
after that girl. And the actors don’t even try
to sell it. I shit you not – Leon is almost laughing through the
whole scene, like the actor is thinking, “This is so dumb. Nobody’s
going to buy this.”
Milla
Jovovich is not a bad actress. Yeah, she’s punched, kicked,
grimaced, and slinked her way through five of these movies now; but
she’s always convincing and her performance never seems fake or
phoned-in. And we’ve seen her in other movies where she
successfully portrayed emotions other than “kill zombies”. But
man – this scene was just a dud.
Alice goes off to find her daughter – which is honestly kind of
dumb anyway, because the Lickers are these huge, animalistic monsters
that have never been shown to have any motivation other than to
murder or at least mutilate and I can’t imagine why Alice thought
her daughter would still be alive. And it’s not even her real
daughter, anyway. There’s also a Significant Moment between Suave
Black Guy and Alice, but she’s got shit to do. Maybe he’ll get to
be Dream Husband in the next movie.
So
Alice follows the rabbit up the hole and Team Axe Body Spray stay
behind to fix the elevator.
It’s
about that time when Jill show up with the Umbrella Clone Squad, who
have captured Ada Wong. There’s some talking here, but it really
doesn’t matter because there are bullets that need to be fired.
Asian Ryan Reynolds lets himself get shot to pieces so that Ada and
Leon and Suave Black Guy can get away and this part was totally
stupid.
Right as he steps out to surrender he throws his gun up in the air
and everybody shoots him. He falls down, but then sits back up and
catches his pistol and shoots Clone Black Guy From The First Movie. I
think it would have been cool if Actual Ryan Reynolds had done it or
maybe if they had expanded on this guy’s character, but it just
seemed weird.
Alice
has wandered into an entirely different movie at this point. I say
this because if it wasn’t clear before that things were being
lifted rather heavy-handedly from Aliens
it becomes undeniable when Alice finds Newt… er, her surrogate
daughter encased in a giant, gooey sac thing. She tells Alice that
they mostly come out at night – mostly, then the Licker shows up
and Alice says, “Get away from her, you bitch!” and shoots it out
an airlock.
That’s
actually sort of what happened.
On
their way to meet up with the remnants of Team Axe Body Spray, Alice
and Sort-Of-Newt stumble into a huge room that looks like some kind
of futuristic dry cleaners with massive hanging conveyors spiraling
down from above. Except rather than suits and button-up shirts, there
are people hanging from the conveyors. Thousands of clones are being
moved through the room and a ton of them are Alice. Alice, Jr. is
understandably freaked out by this, but Alice explains that she’s
her real mom and is going to take care of her.
Side
Note: At some point earlier in the movie it was explained that
Umbrella had a certain number of template human beings it cloned to
use in its simulations. They are simply imprinted with a certain set
of memories and sent about their business in one of the environments
until the Biohazard of choice was unleashed. I liked that they used
the term “Biohazard” several times in the movie to describe the
outbreaks or viruses since that’s the Japanese name of the Resident
Evil
franchise. All of this clone business might seem hard to swallow, but
the idea of Umbrella being proficient cloners was actually introduced
two movies ago when it was revealed they had created hundreds of
Alice clones in an attempt to find another subject that could bond
with the T-Virus in the same way that Alice had. This led to Alice
discovering a huge ditch full of dead Alices. It was a pretty
impactful visual.
Speaking
of impactful, right after the touching mother/not-daughter moment the
giant Licker leaps out and lands right in front of the pair.
I guess
it didn’t get shot out of an airlock, after all. But that’s okay
because Alice drops a bandolier full of Umbrella grenades on the
ground and uses the GRAPPLING GUN to zip out of the clone storage
chamber while HUGE EXPLOSION happens below.
Back
at the elevator Suave Black Guy and Leon have finally gotten the
thing working. They’re ready to bail, but know they can’t leave
without Alice. Fortunately she shows up just in time. As the elevator
moves up to the surface, the explosives that Team Axe Body Spray set
way back when they first showed up (I think I forgot to mention that)
went off, flooding the facility and giving us some really awesome
visuals. It’s not often you get to see New York, Moscow, and Tokyo
covered in billions of gallons of water all at the same time.
The
surviving protagonists reach the surface and pile into the GI Joe
Snow Cat, which then drives off across the ice.
Of
course that’s not the end.
The
ice starts shaking and rather than speeding up or driving in a
different direction, our heroes stop and GO CHECK IT OUT. As soon as
they get outside the ice starts cracking and buckling and the top of
the Umbrella submarine thrusts up through the ground. Jill and Evil
Clone M-Rod emerge with a handcuffed Ada Wong in tow. Alice is all
like, “Oh, shit – I totally forgot about the Big Showdown,” and
Jill goes, “I know, right?”
Alice
squares off with Jill to determine who has the sexiest jumpsuit and
M-Rod injects herself with Las Plagas (it turns out Las Plagas is a
parasite that gives you super abilities) and starts fighting Leon and
Suave Black Guy. Both of these fights are totally
rad.
Seriously. Alice versus Jill>Bane versus Batman x10. For real.
And
then M-Rod straight-up kills Suave Black Guy with a single palm
thrust to the chest and the camera goes all Mortal Kombat and shows
his sternum cracking and his heart just stopping. It was awesome
except for the fact that Suave Black Guy was pretty cool and it was
kind of a bummer he died.
Meanwhile,
after two whole movies, Alice finally realizes all she has to do to
release Jill from Umbrella’s control is rip that ugly ruby spider
off of her cleavage. So she does and then shoots it to pieces and
Jill is weakened but good again. Just in time for Alice to have to
fight M-Rod.
This
fight is also good, but not as good as Alice versus Jill just because
Alice has kind of already had her ass kicked a lot. M-Rod uses the
same palm thrust on Alice that she did on Suave Black Guy, but I
guess it doesn’t hit quite right because it just makes Alice
breather in a really sexy way. Well, pretty much everything Alice
does is in a sexy way, but she does it harder. As our heroine falls
to the ice, she sees a hideous face beneath and gets an idea. Jill
tosses her a gun and Alice shoots the ice out from underneath M-Rod,
where a shit-ton of Las Plagas soldiers grab her and pull her below.
This was an awesome
visual because it was a long distance shot of Rodriguez struggling at
the top of this massive pyramid of zombies, slowly being pulled into
their midst.
Then
a chopper shows up and rescues the survivors.
Get
ready, because this shit is not over. The next scene is unbelievable.
Alice,
Alice, Jr., Leon, Jill, and Ada arrive at the White House. Yes.
Seriously. That
White House. It is clear from the conditions inside that it has been
turned into the base of operations for some sort of military
campaign. Alice is escorted into the Oval Office, where – of course
– Albert Wesker is waiting for her. Without so much as a
how-do-you-do he injects her with the T-Virus. Alice is
understandably pissed, but Wesker explains that the Red Queen has
decided to wipe out the human race and that super-powered Alice might
be their only hope. You might be inclined to disbelieve Wesker or
think that he is overstating the situation, but then everybody goes
out to the roof of the white House and witnesses the CRAZIEST SHIT I
HAVE EVER SEEN.
As
the camera pulls back (in a fashion very similar to the “Holy
Shit!” reveal of the first movie) it is revealed that the White
House is surrounded by tanks and military vehicles which are, in
turn, surrounded by walls which are, in turn, surrounded by trenches
which are, in turn surrounded by BILLIONS OF MONSTERS AND ZOMBIES.
There are machine guns firing and flamethrowers belching flames into
the hordes. Winged monsters are flying around everywhere (in and out
of the screen, thanks to the excellent 3D). It looks like the cover
of a Sepultura album.
And
then the credits roll.
I
totally dug that movie. Sure, there was a lot of stupid and a ton of
the acting was wretched; but the bulk of the responsibility for
entertainment was placed on Milla Jovovich and the visuals and both
of those delivered big time. If you hate Paul WS Anderson or the
Resident
Evil
franchise itself, Retribution
won’t change your mind. I’m sure you’ll enjoy that Ang Lee
movie about the kid in the boat.
Resident
Evil: Retribution
is no classic. It’s not genius filmmaking and it isn’t going to
revolutionize Hollywood. But it isn’t trying to. Paul WS Anderson
just wants to entertain us with zombies, explosions, and his hot wife
and for me it all totally worked.
4
out of 5
Yep.
And in case you’re curious, here’s the franchise in order of how
much I like them from worst to best:
Resident
Evil: Apocalypse
(the only one I actively dislike)
Resident
Evil: Afterlife
Resident
Evil: Retribution
Resident
Evil
Resident
Evil: Extinction
I
am totally stoked about 3D movies now. I should have a review of
Dredd
sooner than later.
-Phantom
OMG I loved this 'summary' of the movie. Love the names especially lol, suave black guy and team axe body spray almost made me piss myself. lmfao. and I agree the white house scene was EPIC and I think the oly thing saving these movies is milla jovovich, great actress
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed it! Now I'm pissed that Walmart didn't do a special edition metal case to match the rest of the series.
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