RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY THOUGHTS

   Video game movies never live up to what the game were, everyone knows this. Yet when you see they are doing a movie for a game you loved, you get excited and want it to be as good as the game. You have a great story and characters. Everything is laid out for you to make a awesome movie. And everyone once in a great while you get a good one, the first Silent Hill for example. This movie...is not one of them.

   It's hard to believe with such great characters and story of Resident Evil that you could screw up and make a bad movie. Yet director and writer Johannes Roberts did that very thing. You would think before making a movie based on a video game, you would at least maybe played the game or even watch a play through on YouTube. Throwing in some nostalgia to the time period and some iconic game plots and items don't make up for just throwing the characters in this movie and calling it Resident Evil.

   This movie takes place in 1998, same as when the game came out. Here is the synopsis:

Welcome to Raccoon City, once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corp. The company's exodus left the city a wasteland, a dying town with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night. 

   I get when changing from game to movie you can go scene for scene, and I don't expect that. One of the issues with this movie is that they tried to cram in both Resident Evil one and two into one movie. That is a lot of lore to cover for one movie. In this movie they take story lines and twist them. 

   Without trying to get into spoilers, Chris and Clair in the game and movie lose there parent at a young age. The difference between the game and movie is that in the movie they have them living as orphans in Raccoon City. Chris becomes all about the town and is basically raised by Dr. William Birkin. Now Chris never meets Dr. Birkin, they are from two different games. Chris was not in the second game where he appears. 

   So many more different things, but my biggest problems is how they portrayed Leon S. Kennedy! Now you can say I am bias about this because he is my favorite character in the whole series. I hated the actor they chose for him, he looks nothing like Leon. I can look past that. But I can't look past how they made a character that is a strong, smart, witty, and bad ass person as Leon is, and made him a bumbling idiot. In this movie he can barley handle himself or a gun. He is a rookie in Raccoon City cause he shot his partner in the butt and his daddy, who is some powerful somebody, got him transferred instead of getting fired from the force. 

   They make it seam like he can't handle a gun and needs to be saved all the time. The complete opposite of his character. And it is getting old, this trend of having to make men a weaker character needing to be saved by a woman as how Clair had to keep saving Leon. In the game both Clair and Leon are both strong people who can take care of themselves. We can have both a strong male and female lead characters. One don't have to be better then the other to seem more modern. 

   Also, don't get me started on how they did Albert Wesker. Such a big and important character, and you just throw away all his important back story and make up a new one. 

   Now as I said before about throwing in some nostalgic, there was some good things. Putting in keys shaped like the special keys in the second game. The similarities to the police department. Adding the Raccoon City Orphanage. When they opened a box for a weapon and it was the same as the storage boxes as the game. And of course throwing in the "Jill Sandwich" reference was all great. 

   Even though they do a better job keeping to events from the first two games more then the Resident Evil movies starring Milla Jovovich, they once again stray from the source material two much. Acting was subpar at the most. The little girl they got to play Sherry Birkin had no emotes at all. 

   As a fan of these games I just want to keep the heart of the game's story and characters. As the director or actor in a video game movie I say this, play the games or watch/read up on the source material. Not just to make a good movie, but because us fans of the games deserve it for making it popular enough to make a movie out of it.