TheResident Evilfranchise has always been a bit of a mess. It’s always been a wild mish-mash of tones, concepts, genres, and storylines that becomes harder to disentangle with each new entry. The film adaptations of the games have been less varied. The animated films stand out by leaning heavily on the virtues of the medium.Resident Evil: Vendettagives fans an experience they can’t get anywhere else.
One of the many sticking pointsbetweenResident Eviltitles is their genre. Every game in the franchise is a mix of horror and action, but some move the slider towards one extreme and away from the other. The films have the same decision to make, but they have discovered that only one side really works.
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What isResident Evil: VendettaAbout?
Released in 2017,Resident Evil: Vendettais the third CG-animatedResident Evilfilm. Early talks from Capcom called it a reboot of the film franchise. The previous films weren’t particularly popular, andVendettadid not break that trend. The film received bad reviews, but each entry made a fair amount of money.Vendettafollows familiar franchise heroes Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield. Kennedy is portrayed by belovedDungeon Master to the starsMatthew Mercer while Redfield was voiced by Kevin Dorman. Both actors had prior experience with their roles, leading to great performances all around. The film takes place between the ill-fated excess ofResident Evil 6and the arguably new beginning ofResident Evil 7.
Vendettabegins with Chris Redfieldtracking a former CIA agent named Glenn Arias. Arias quit the agency and turned to the ever-profitable business of selling bio-organic weapons. The CIA discovered Arias’s actions and ordered his execution. A drone strike aimed at Arias’s wedding kills almost everyone in attendance, but Arias lives. He wages an all-out war on the United States, partnering with the Spanish Illuminados terrorist group. Chris is almost killed in his first tangle with Arias, forcing him to seek a new path. Rebecca Chambers discovers the nature of the new A-Virus and its connection to Las Plagas. Luckily, Chris and Rebecca know one man who has survived Los Illuminados in the past.Leon Kennedy has collapsedinto alcoholism and guilt after the death of his entire squad, so he’s not interested when Chris comes calling. When Rebecca is kidnaped and the world is at stake, Leon agrees to join the quest, and the duo set out to stop Arias’s evil plan.
How DoesRE: VendettaHandle Action Differently?
In the typicalResident Evilgame, action set pieces are temporary tense events that shatter through the tone of the rest of the experience. The first few games are more heavily leaned toward survival horror, so their protagonists are always massively underpowered. If Jill Valentine played likeDante fromDevil May Cry,Resident Evilwould be a lot shorter and less engaging.Resident Evil 4, 5, and6take a more militaristic approach, but the most outlandish physical feats are left to quick-time events. Almost every example of Leon or Chris doing something absurd in aResident Evilgame takes place in a cutscene. Chris punching boulders, Leon backflipping through lasers, and Wesker’s string of teleport-based fighting game combos are all moments with little or no gameplay. That means the moment-to-moment gameplay doesn’t demonstrate the protagonists as superhuman while the cutscenes depict them to be one shieldshort of Captain America. In an animated film likeVendetta, that problem is nonexistent.
InResident Evil: Vendetta, Leon and Chris have distinct fighting styles, tons of visually excellent scenes, and a ton of unique abilities. It can be tough to separate main characters in an action franchise when they don’t have signature weapons or powers, butVendettais a masterclass in the art form. Chris is a proper military hunk, he slings his foes around with incalculable physical strength and wields his assault rifle like a centurion’s spear. Leon, on the other hand, studied at the John Wick school of combat. A single scene in which both men are trapped in a hallway populated by zombies is among the strongest scenes inResident Evil’son-screen history.Vendettahas the aesthetics ofResident Evilwith the action stylings of aproper martial arts movie.
Resident Evil: Vendettahas a straightforward story and a messy script. It suffers a lot of the problems ofotherResident Evilfilms. The scenes that aren’t dominated by combat are utterly dull. It may be best viewed as a “best moments” compilation on YouTube. Despite the myriad of weaknesses throughoutRE: Vendetta, the film understands the appeal of its big dumb action set pieces and knows how to deliver new ones. Video game movies often struggle to remain interesting after the transition out of the interactive medium, butResident Evil: Vendettafound a way to benefit from the change. Maybe the games can find a way to incorporate some ofVendetta’s fun action elements, but sometimes a battle looks better when the audience can just sit back and enjoy it.
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