Note:
The views expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect those of
Phantom Troublemaker, Needless Things, or its parent company Needless
Troublemaker, Inc. We love the Resident Evil franchise, Paul WS
Anderson, Milla Jovovich, and Michelle Rodriguez.
Especially
Michelle Rodriguez.
I
love Resident Evil. The games, the half-assed anime, and even the
movies. Since my first (if somewhat late) exposure to the T-Virus
I've been infected with zombie fever. And seemingly the only cure was
more zombies.
I
really did like the first movie. It didn't have much to do with the
games, but it was pretty good. Decent story, well done zombies, and I
got to see Michelle Rodriguez get chomped (I just don't like her).
Yeah, a lot of the dialogue was silly, the CGI was questionable, and
Michelle Rodriguez lived way too long (I don't know why I dislike her
so much). I enjoyed Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass, and the
supporting cast were all pretty good. Yeah, the whole Alice in
Wonderland theme was out of place when you already had a bunch of
games with a story you could have drawn from, and both of her love
interests were a little heavy handed, but all in all I enjoyed it a
lot. I guess the fanboys didn't like the movies ignoring the source
material because 2 years later we got...
Resident
Evil:Apocalypse. I love a good apocalypse, zombie or otherwise. This
wasn't much of an apocalypse though. Raccoon City being destroyed is
hardly the end of the world now is it? They did incorporate a bunch
of game characters, but that wasn't enough to keep this thing
together. I also really hate zombie movies where the dead rise out of
their graves. I know it's fiction and all, but if someone is dead
and buried how can a virus infect their body? You need a working
circulatory system for that. Anyway, this is the beginning of the
character of Alice going from simply a bad ass to becoming a super
human zombie killing machine. I know that the main character isn't
going to die, but I at least like a little vulnerability. If she's an
unstoppable mega powered monster destroyer then there's not much
tension is there? As dumb as this one was I do sometimes like to
watch it on network TV due to the fact that they overdub the pimp
character to say “bad motivator” in place of his saltier
language. And hey, it had Jared Harris so that's pretty cool. I
thought that this was bad enough that they would just stop, but lo
and behold 3 years later we had...
Resident
Evil:Extinction. Or maybe now it's an apocalypse. Maybe they thought
that throwing in one or two more game characters would make up for
the fact that this story is just pointless. Alice now has psionic
powers or pyrokinesis or she's Jean Grey or something. Who knows, and
who really cares? Her powers and her poor post-apocalyptic clothing
choices are just ridiculous by this time. I guess dudes want to see
Milla Jovovich riding a motorcycle through the dessert wearing thigh
highs, but women know better than that. No woman is really going to
dress like that for the end of the world. There's clones, and zombie
crows, and just all manner of silliness. I mean yeah, there's Iain
Glen, but that's it. The production value is still good (better than
it deserves really), and the acting is pretty good for a zombie
movie, but the dialogue is still terrible. So now, I thought, they
really will call it quits. It was left open for another, but I really
didn't think they would. How and why would they? Oh yeah, money. The
desire to make more money brought us...
Resident
Evil: Afterlife. I had hope for that they were trying to salvage
something from this series when, early in the movie, all the clones
get destroyed and Alice gets injected with a serum that takes away
her super powers. I thought just maybe they were trying to make it
believable again. Okay it's a zombie movie, but you know what I mean.
They tossed in just one other game character so it wasn't like they
were busy trying to distract the fanboys again or anything. Alice
goes out looking for her buddies from Extinction, but ends up trapped
in a prison instead. We've all read The Walking Dead, thanks Paul
Anderson. It is in the prison though that the series makes its
biggest mistake. It stops throwing out game characters, and starts
throwing in game monsters. If you're not going to explain how we went
from zombies to a giant guy with an axe that looks suspiciously like
the Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2, but is actually a monster from
the game RE5 then why do it at all? Las Plagas parasite infected guys
pop up from the ground looking nothing like the zombies or other
creatures we've seen so far, and you're not going to talk about it. I
think one character says something about the creatures changing or
mutating, but not enough to go from this:
to
this:
without
something more than “they're mutating”. And can I just say that
there is a shocking amount of amnesia used in this series? Two or
three characters in this movie alone have it, but overall there's
more amnesia in Resident Evil movies than in your average soap opera.
Stupid as it was I knew from the ending that we'd soon be seeing...
Resident
Evil: Retribution. The “just throw everything in” of the series.
More game characters, more amnesia, more ridiculous story and
dialogue. I liked the inclusion of Ada Wong and Leon Kennedy, but
that's about it. And I'm sure they did it just for people like me,
hoping to dupe us into liking it with the inclusion of characters we
liked. But then they had to bring back Michelle Rodriguez. Bastards.
But they don't just bring people back. They bring back good and evil
clones of them, and play them against Alice in some Umbrella facility
that has a holodeck I guess. Now they finally talk about the Las
Plagas parasite (a little), but whatever happened to the good old
fashioned T-Virus? Was that really not enough? Now we've got to throw
in everything ever used in any Resident Evil game. I half expected
someone to have to fight El Gigante at some point in this movie.
There's way too many clones and versions of people to keep up with,
and for some reason they tossed in a kid. I guess every Ripley needs
a Newt. Sadly, at the end Alice is re-infected with the T-Virus so
she gets all of her dumb powers back. So I know that means we're in
for another one. Probably somewhere around 2015 we'll have...
Resident
Evil: Just Whatever. Whatever they haven't used yet. Any character
they haven't already put in will be there. I guess Hunk, Krauser, and
Sherry Birkin are about all that's left to use. I vote Hunk. There's
still plenty of virus mutated snakes, spiders, and sharks they could
have Super Alice fight. And you do so rarely get to see a zombie
shark. I'm sure I'll go see it no matter what, but that's simply
because it's the best looking zombie series out there. They do use
the enormous budgets well. And yeah I like fun and stupid movies, but
they really have gone too far now. They're so committed to it all
that there really isn't any way for them to pull back. Alice has to
be a bad ass super hero, Wesker has to keep talking like he needs a
Ricola, and they have to keep throwing in crap the fanboys will
recognize. Because we're the ones that are keeping this shit going.
And we're also the reason that the just need to start over. I'm not
normally a fan of reboots, but in this case I think you can get what
I'm talking about. We need, nay deserve, a fresh start. It's our
payback for sitting through this gradually increasing level of
silliness. And maybe with a reboot we can get some stuff that
actually creeps me out a little bit. Stuff that is actually kind of
cool and scary. Stuff like this:
-Beth
Phantom
Troublemaker vs. 31 Days of Halloween
I’m
changing the format a bit this year in order to more accurately
portray SyFy’s schedule and also to preserve my sanity. I had the
genius idea to cut and paste the schedule directly from SyFy’s page
rather than typing it out in my own format. This has saved me an
awful lot of time and also means that individual episodes are listed
rather than blocks of programming like previous years. So what I’m
going to do is provide commentary where I feel it is needed rather
than posting next to every single entry. Don’t worry – you’re
getting the same amount of hilarious, then kind of funny, then
labored, then thoroughly disenchanted Phantom content. Just in a
different way.
Like
last year, I am covering the programming from the time this posts
until the time of the next post. That means that on Fridays you are
going to be treated to a shit-ton of this stuff.
Let’s
do it!
Oct
17 11:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Dragonwasps
I’m
not a fan of SyFy’s habit of showing bug movies during their
Halloween schedule. I mean, bug movies are the second scariest kind
of movies, but they’re just not all that Halloweeny. I want
monsters and crazy people and demons. I’ll even go ahead and say
that Gho…
Okay,
I can do this.
Ghos...
(Deep
breath)
Ghost
Hunters
is better Halloween fare than bug movies.
Yeah
– I said it.
Oct
17 01:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Camel Spiders
This
one actually isn’t bad (by which I mean it is,
but it’s fun). The ESW crew was at the Phantom Zone watching the
awful The
Power of Three
and after it mercifully ended I switched to SyFy; my default channel.
Camel
Spiders
was on and we couldn’t help but watch it. What I saw was enough to
compel me to check it out, and Director Faber’s son even went out
and bought it.
Oct
17 03:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Vipers
I
don’t have snake fear. I don’t want a bunch of them crawling all
over me or anything and I’m not going to try and pet a cobra, but
they don’t freak me out. Not like bugs do. My point here is that
this might as well be a nature documentary. Not very Halloweeny. If I
was scoring this year, Vipers
would get a 2.
Oct
17 05:00 PM Syfy Original Movie Anacondas: Trail Of Blood
I
still love the original Anaconda.
John Voight is weird, Jennifer Lopez is crazy
hot, and it’s a true delight to hear Ice Cube call a gigantic snake
a bitch while he punches it in the face. Everything that came after
that first one might as well be one big wad of giant snake movie.
I’ve seen them all, but I can’t remember what happens in which
one. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’re all enjoyable to
one degree or another depending on your tolerance for CGI that ranges
from bad to unbelievably bad.
Oct
17 07:00 PM Syfy Original Movie Piranhaconda
I
recorded this last year and never got around to watching it. As a
matter of fact, it might still be on the upstairs DVR. I am totally
down with this concept, provided they took it far enough. I don’t
just want a giant anaconda with a piranha head. I want a giant
anaconda that is made
of piranhas.
Every inch of its hide is covered with quivering piranha faces,
making it a slithering, gobbling, murder machine.
Oct
17 09:00 PM Syfy Original Movie Arachnoquake
This
has got to be a direct result of the “success” of Sharknado.
I admit – I contributed to the Sharknado
frenzy by posting about it. I posted that it was the most
incompetently made, incoherent, insulting jumble of a movie I had
ever seen. It defied everything I have ever learned about movie
making and storytelling. Sharknado
outright shit in the face of logic.
Sometimes
at this point I do the hacky old swerve where I said, “And I LOVED
it!”
I’m
not doing that. Sharknado
was a piece of shit that should never have happened. But I was
fascinated by it. Wondering every second how that abortion became
reality. As such I will be watching Arachnoquake.
I can’t help it. Normally spiders freak me out something terrible,
but these will be awful-looking CGI spiders and I can handle those.
Oct
17 11:00 PM Syfy Original Movie Ice Spiders
Oct
18 01:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Camel Spiders
Oct
18 03:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie In The Spiders Web
Despite
my plans to watch Arachnoquake,
I do not normally even bother watching spider movies. I seriously
hate spiders. I do like Arachnophobia
and Eight-Legged
Freaks,
though.
Oct
18 05:00 AM Ghost Whisperer Home But Not Alone
Just
as a challenge, I am going to see if I can find a picture of Jennifer
Love Hewitt looking like Kevin from Home
Alone.
I don’t want to sit around looking at pictures of her for what
could end up being hours. I do this for you, the Phantomaniacs.
Oct
18 06:00 AM Paid Programming
Oct
18 08:00 AM Being Human (dead) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Oct
18 09:00 AM Being Human The Teens They Are A Changin'
Oct
18 10:00 AM Being Human I'm So Lonesome I Could Die
The
only way I’ll ever get into this show is if I end up sick in bed
during a marathon. As much as I would like to be sick in bed
tomorrow, I’ll be at work. And you’ll be reading an all-new Best
Cartoon Ever (of the month) from Kalan!
-Phantom
No comments:
Post a Comment