But it isn’t just the games that are back in the spotlight. With the upcoming Netflix series that premieres in just one month on July 14, live-action adaptations are back in focus, especially after last year’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Although the Resident Evil franchise has gotten many successful video games, its movie adaptations for the most part have left many fans feeling ill. They haven’t been able to capture the unique experience of playing survival horror games and have for the most part just become generic monster action movies. But it seems that the franchise’s popularity is enough for studios and filmmakers to keep bringing it back to life to give it another shot.
After the release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, it wouldn’t have been surprising if studios didn’t want anything to do with Resident Evil movies anymore. The movie became a symbol of what a disaster the movies had become up to that point. A stunt woman was severely injured in a stunt, the movie did poorly at the domestic box office, and the movie was critically panned as the worst one yet, which is really saying something compared to its predecessors. It was the furthest thing to an exclamation point on the series of movies by Paul W. S. Anderson.
But 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and the announcement of Netflix’s Resident Evil series proved that studios and filmmakers still saw potential in a live-action adaptation of the survival horror game franchise. It even seemed promising with writer and director Johannes Roberts focusing heavily on the first two games and sticking to what made the original games so popular, the survival horror rather than the shaky-cam over-the-top action movies that Paul W. S. Anderson had created over the last decade. It focused on fan-favorite characters like Chris and Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy.
But it just became yet another critical failure for the now two-decade-long run of critically failed Resident Evil movie adaptations. Although Welcome to Raccoon City focused on horror and was close to the first two games, it showed yet again the disconnect between the studios, filmmakers, and fans. This time one of its biggest problems is the portrayals of the fan-favorite characters. For the most part, they were very little like their video game counterpart, and not for the better.
It seems that at every attempt to create a good and satisfying movie for fans, there is always a fan-loved aspect of the games that seemed to be thrown to the zombies. This brings Resident Evil’s already very convoluted history to its new live-action addition on Netflix. The series takes place over two timelines following sisters, Jade and Billie Wesker-surprise, surprise-after the move to New Raccoon City. The sisters begin to learn about their father’s possibly sinister secrets, with the second timeline taking place over a decade after with Jade Wesker in a T-Virus rampant world.
This seems on the surface to be an original take on the franchise while keeping some monsters intact. But history shows that fans should be cautious about it. From the trailers up to this point, it looks like it will attempt a tight-rope act with the survival horror of the first games and the action-packed later installments-although those aren’t looked at as fondly as the first games, it doesn’t seem that there is a confidence in sticking to only survival horror.
Although Showrunner Andrew Dabb has stated that the series has taken “all the games and shuffled them up,” that is not enough to create a good Resident Evil experience. Welcome to Raccoon City did the same and showed that a close adaptation of the games isn’t the answer to creating a great Resident Evil movie. Something that takes the heart of what the franchise is with survival horror with a bit of over-the-top story, while bringing something new to the franchise will be what resonates with fans.
Just look at what CAPCOM did with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The game brought the franchise back to lonely survival horror, but all the while introducing new characters, lore, story, and game mechanics. Although it looks and feels completely different from its 6 predecessors, it was greatly received by fans, so much so that it received a sequel with Resident Evil: Village. The new Resident Evil series does seem to somewhat be doing this. But a plot synopsis and trailers can only show so much, and from the fan reactions that it already has, it seems the bar is even lower than it was before.
More: Hardest Bosses In Resident Evil 4
