Stephy Watched Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

 

Hi. Uh, sir, um... Uh, what's going on? 'Cause, um... Should we... should we call someone?

 

 

About/Summary

Claire Redfield returns to Raccoon City to tell her brother about bad things that are happening in the city. Leon Kennedy is having the worst first day on a job ever. Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are cops in Raccoon City who are sent to figure out what is going on at the local abandoned mansion.

Content/Trigger Warnings
Death

Gore

Betrayal

 

Tropes

 

Here be the full list on TVTropes. 

Adaptational Wimp - Leon is not as badass as he was in the games. And ya know what? I don't care. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I prefer bad-ass Leon, but this Leon was fun.

Eyes Do Not Belong There - Resident Evil is just full of eyes where there shouldn't be eyes. They are just everywhere. Ugh. I have issues with eyes now. Thank you, Resident Evil.

 

Love Triangle - Usually I talk about tropes I like, but I hate love triangles. They're boring. And this movie threw a very slight one in. And I hated it. Probably my biggest complaint about the movie, honestly.

 

Mythology Gag - There are a bunch of random nods to the video games, which are cool. Really liked the Itchy Tasty thing. Itchy. Tasty.

Characters/Casting 

 

Main characters from the games show up. Well, Claire, Chris, Leon and Jill. Oh, and Wesker. Though for the most part, not the same as their video game counterparts. Which is fine. I still liked them well enough.

Leon was sort of the himbo damsel in distress in this movie. And I fucking loved it. It was just great.

Casting was pretty good. No complaints from me.

Atmosphere/Setting

 

Some of the settings looked fantastic and pretty spot on to the settings from the games. In this, Raccoon City is slowly emptying out because Umbrella has left and most people along with it. The movie mainly focuses on the police station and Spencer Mansion. Both of which looked really good in the movie. The orphanage also plays a part. Again, looks great.

Adaptation?

 

As an adaptation of the video games, it's kind of shit. A lot of things changed that made me raise an eyebrow at. But, as a reboot type of thing, it was pretty good. Once I started to ignore the part of my brain screaming "That's not right!" I really enjoyed it.

Heavy spoilers for the rest of this section for both the games and this movie.

This movie tried to combine the first and second games. Which... if you know a bunch of Resident Evil lore, that doesn't work. But... Again... Stop thinking about the games. From a certain standpoint, trying to combine those games works well. Mostly so you could bring in the Resident Evil heavy hitters (Jill, Chris, Claire and Leon). Logically (from a fan of the games viewpoint), combining the second and third games together would have worked better. But, if you did that you wouldn't get Chris (could replace Carlos with Chris, I suppose, but that sounds horrible, Carlos is wonderful). You also wouldn't get Wesker. Which the movie just made him a dirty cop basically, while in the games he was a part of Umbrella since childhood.

Chief Irons is just a dick in this movie. Not a serial killer. Which, I guess he could still be a serial killer we just didn't find his journal in the movie.

I also assume people were angry about the change in Leon's character. Look. Leon is a badass. But also, he is not really the smartest Resident Evil character. The boy was told to stay away from Raccoon City and he just went anyways. And had the first day on the job from hell. And don't even get me started on the whole Ada thing. This movie just took his naivety up a few notches. Which I found humorous. And I need some humor in movies like this. Also, Leon isn't that badass when I'm controlling him. That boy sat in a corner for five minutes crying when I controlled him. And like Ryan said recently: "Feel like that man is alive because he accidentally succeeded a bunch". Which, yeah... Yeah...

 

Plot

Basic zombie plot for the most part. No complaints. Easy to follow, one slight twist which is obvious if you know what happened in the first game.

 

Costuming

 

Wesker was not wearing enough black. Nor was he wearing sunglasses. Fail.

Other costumes were fine.

How diverse is it?

Two characters weren't white. Other than that, not very diverse.

Overall Thoughts

I enjoyed it. Granted, it took me a bit to enjoy it cause I was sort of expecting a more accurate adaptation for some reason. But after I realized it wasn't going to be that, I was really enjoying it.

My recommendation? Don't watch this movie if you just want a shot by shot movie version of the game. If you want that go watch someone play the games on YouTube. I recommend CJUGames videos, if you don't mind some commentary. I made a playlist of his Resident Evil playthroughs. Which, that is how I have any knowledge of the games really. I do recommend watching this movie if you're a fan of zombie movies. Or if you like Resident Evil but don't mind big changes from the game canon.

 That's all for this one.

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