After years where Hollywood has massacred video game adaptations, becoming a joke within the industry. Uwe Boll turned Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, or Far Cry into a poorly told joke, and since that moment gamers have turned their backs on cinema. But their problem wasn’t that they were bad adaptations: it was that they were bad movies that took the original saga lightly. They looked down on video games, believing that just because they came from that medium, they could be complete trash without any pretensions. However, over the years, games and cinema have made peace, reaching the opposite point: now, all movies are direct adaptations of games, leaving nothing to creativity or imagination. And, it seems, there is only one saga that can change that: Resident Evil.
Zach Cregger, the nemesis of gamers
Over time, Hollywood has found a way to shake hands with the video game industry: basically, doing a copy-paste with a bunch of references for the fans. Fallout, Uncharted, The Last of Us, or Super Mario Bros practically revere the original material, without any of them leaving their world open to the personality of their creators (if anything, The Last of Us with its special episodes that show alternative stories). Everyone was delighted: gamers, because it validates their tastes. Those who don’t pick up a controller, because they discover new stories. But in all this, where does auteur cinema stand? Is it not possible to tell anything new?
Zach Cregger, director of Weapons and Barbarian, is not manipulable. You cannot demand from him, in any way, to make the movie you want to see, because he is going to do what comes from his creative soul. The first trailer for Resident Evil is, in fact, the best possible news for fans of the saga: Cregger is taking it seriously, but that doesn’t mean he will return to Leon, Umbrella, the T-Virus, and that stuff. Precisely out of respect for the saga, he has decided that he wants to expand it and tell something more but without leaving aside the key elements: the keys, the weapons, the eerie atmosphere. This is not Capcom’s Resident Evil, but Cregger’s, and that’s how it should always be.
I think the same every time I see a live-action remake from Disney: What is the need to retell the same story with the same shots and in the same way? Are we so obsessed with nostalgia and so afraid of having our dreams shattered that we are doomed to see the same thing over and over again? I would appreciate it if, from time to time, an undeniable author would do whatever they wanted. Steven Spielberg directing Moana; Martin Scorsese making his version of The Rescuers; Emerald Fennell perverting Frozen. If we don’t mix, investigate, and destroy to recreate from the ruins, what do we have left? A continuous refrain of tranquility that gives us nothing but constant calm.
I don’t know if Resident Evil will be good or bad, but the trailer is certainly striking: we have already had a few adaptations that have ranged from the grotesque to the faithful, with little success. Now, finally, a steady hand has decided to do whatever it wants using only the foundations to evolve from there and, frankly, I can only support it. We should all do it, because keeping the movies we like stagnant and in an ether is a sign of laziness, little imagination, no adventure, and a desire to repeat ourselves. And that is exactly the opposite of what Resident Evil is.
