Resident Evil: Extinction - JoeMDesign Review

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2007)

My personal memories of the games to films experience began back when the first Mortal Kombat movie came out. I still stand by my opinion that the fighting game film was excellent entertainment and well worthy of the franchise license. Tomb Raider had the one and only Angelina Jolie in it... Enough said... And even the much lamented Doom movie had some nice moments which made it a fun popcorn-movie blast.
In between all of the movies in this category the Resident Evil series, now the first Hollywood game-to-movie trilogy, has been the most controversial in the eyes of fans and movie-goers everywhere. Fans either love it or hate it. It's that simple.
Now some of the film versions of game story lines are very close to their source material while others take huge liberties to make it a more cinematic experience. No-one wants to watch Master Chief running into a room and shooting people over and over and over... but that's what seems to be on my TV these days... anyway... This relationship with the source material is an essential element with any game to film project but it's one that the Resident Evil series has flirted with on a very casual basis.
The first Resident Evil movie was a very liberal use of the license to say the least. It featured none of the characters of the games nor the memorable environments or situations. It was however a nice little zombie movie with a style all of it's own. It was not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it did well enough to warrant a sequel...
While the first movie had only a passing resemblance to the games, the second was based very heavily on Resident Evil 2 and 3 with characters and environments taken straight from those titles. One scene (and you know which one I'm talking about) was lifted directly from the Code: Veronica game which was the cause of celebration for longtime Resident Evil fans (or at least this one). As much as fans may have enjoyed these elements, most people would agree that sometimes you can go too far. I don't care what anyone says, Jill's Resident Evil 3 outfit shouldn't have made the film. It just looks... silly! I think that's enough background info so now on to the third film, Resident Evil Extinction. Finally the movie series has reached it's stride and decided on what it's relationship with the game series actually is. The movies all revolve around Alice played by Milla Jovovich and her very rough life as the secret test subject for the Umbrella corporation's evil T-Virus project. While events in the film have a relationship to the games the film has it's own story to tell and for the first time in the series history, is actually quite good.
The main difference between this movie and it's predecessors is all to do with the pacing of it's scenes. The film links together a number of imaginative action set pieces, bloody zombie battles and story-progressing dialogue with a lot more subtlety than before. Now, some of the people who have seen the first two films will be thinking something along the lines of "Well that's not that hard" and I agree with you but this particular Resident Evil film has the best pacing and story of the three movies.
Instead of over complicating the series further with more conspiracy theories or the secrets upon secrets nonsense the movie concentrates on the livelihood of a small band of survivors. The situation is pretty dire as humanity faces a global zombie epidemic and it's up to Alice to help Sarah Connor wannabe Claire Redfield's refugee convoy reach a place where they'll be safe from people trying to eat their brains. Stranded in the Nevada desert with basic resources such as food and petrol becoming more scarce by the day they decide to make one last journey to reach a distant destination in Alaska where they hope salvation awaits them.
Not to spoil the movie but it has a great variety of action scenes involving killer crows, smarter zombies and an old Resident Evil monster variant for Alice to contend with. Additional threats come from the first, and long-overdue, appearance of one Albert Wesker. Fans of zombie films will certainly get their fill of gore and other hacking violence while characters drop like flies during the more action-filled sequences.
The acting is typically cheesy but you aren't going to see this film expecting Shakespeare so it would be unfair to list that as a serious criticism.
Perhaps we've finally seen the maturity of the Resident Evil series. The game and film complement each other very well now. Extinction actually goes some way to explain why the zombie enemies of Resident Evil 4 appear to be smarter and less blood thirsty than other games. Conversely the fifth Resident Evil game looks set to take place in a scorchingly hot desert location which seems to be inspired by the setting of the film.
Films that are based on games should appeal to fans of both formats. Resident Evil: Extinction actually succeeds in doing this. Finally another example of good use of a license that manages to please all sections of the Resident Evil fan base...
...unless you see the ending.