Well not true, the first 30ish minutes are good stuff. But then you continue on in the movie and it is a lost cause. I mean really, it is bad. And I am trying to look at it from a zombie movie stance, putting my fanboy stance off the side. I went into this movie with low expectations. This is the same thing I did with Transformers. "As long as I am entertained and it is fun, I am good," is what I convinced myself. It work for Transformers but not for this one.

So where do I begin...



Setting up the Movie:



If you are not familiar with the previous two films it goes like this. The Resident Evil series starts off being kind of like another "universe" of the story or if you have to put it in the series, it is a prequel to the first game. It goes through how the outbreak actually happened in the mansion and just sets it all up. I am still not sure why everyone didn't like it. Mr. Jim Sterlmblebee doesn't like how they "kill half the cast with lasers before the first zombie even arrives." It was actually three but I digress. I thought it was pretty decent (besides the whole licker part). It has a secret agent, Alice, who is really trying to shut down Umbrella. She and soliders get stuck in the lab part of the mansion and have to escape before being eaten or being trapped underground. All of the soldiers of course die and her love interest starts to mutate from a scratch he received.




The "franchise" ends the first movie on a cliff hanger with Alice in a Raccoon City (which is apparently not a small town but a large city now) that is in ruins. It picks up in the second one, Apocalypse, with the city being evacuated and zombies everywhere. Honestly the second movie was doing well until they introduced the Nemesis. What was so wrong with him? He was the old love interest and apparently he is a robot now controlled by switches. Another problem is that when he goes to fight (after his rocket launcher and chain/mini/gatling gun is out of ammo) he puts up his dukes like a boxers from the early 1900's. Ummm, in the game you were a super fast killing machine that dove across the screen and had killer tentacles. You were a force to be reckoned with. Now you are a slow moving Toka and Razor with little to no way to actually hit someone. You aren't scary. This one ends with Alice being captured after their helicopter crashed, being tested on, and turned into some sort of machine? Huh? Are we still in the same movie? Don't worry, I will be saying that line a few more times...



Warning the following section may possibly contain SPOILERS, but they will be kept to a minimum! Skip past two the SECOND bolding for the wrap up (not including the following plot one).





Plots(s): This is where the 3rd movie, Extinction, commences. The world ends. The T-Virus apparently can affect wildlife and trees die and the whole world becomes a barren wasteland. (If this is so, wouldn't it infect the water and make drinking water contaminated and then they die from no water? Hole #1?) What is wierd is they say it takes months but later in the movie they reference everything to 5 years. Hmm, which is it? Continuity problem unless I missed something in the begining. Hole #2?

The story follows three groups of people. First we have the underground Umbrella lab working with chemicals, clones (oh c'mon, really?), and the usual. Next we have Alice on a motorcycle driving around. And finally we have the human convoy with Claire Redfield and Carlos Oliveria in control. The latter groups were just trying to survive. Alice driving around and encounters survivors who try to kill her and the convoy just trying to seek shelter and find gas and food. See this is good. Nothing wrong with this. This is how the movie should've started and gone on. But it is from here that it goes down hill. Extinction just doesn't know what it wants to be. At first it seemed like it was trying to copy and paste the plot of Day of the Dead. That would've been fine. But they kept adding to it.

At this point the movie starts to stray off with one scene. They decide to give Alice super powers. While asleep something happens and at first a rock begins to float, then more and her motorcycle. She wakes up and it all comes crashing down. Great, so she can levitates stuff. Is this the same movie? Is this still Resident Evil? Did we slip through a wormhole and plop down into a Star Wars fan movie? Nope, just in a sucky movie. I think it was at this point that I asked if Cowzilla3 wanted to leave. But it was free so we decided to stay.




Next the crow scene comes up. It was pretty stupid when going back to think of it. Running out of a truck and firing blindly into the air at hundreds of crows won't do ANYTHING. A few people die. But it isn't towards the end of the scene that someone gets the bright idea to jump on the flame thrower on the roof of one of the vehicles. Why is there a FLAMETHROWER on the roof? Why didn't they jump up there sooner? No one will ever know...but Carlos goes to save a girl and is about to get blasted by the flames when the first stops in front of them. DUN DUN DUN! Alice has a new power. Yes, Alice was walking by and saw crows overhead so she thought she'd pop in. Magically she makes a force field (Invisible Woman style) around the two about to be roasted, toasted, and burnt to a crisp. Then she makes the flames SHOOT up in the air, covering the sky and killing all the crows.

What.the.monkey.butt...

How did a virus that mutates people, give her special powers? Special powers like these don't belong in a movie like this. A horror (or even a horror/action) movie that is about zombies, and mutated monsters does not have room for these types of powers. It is one thing if there were ANY powers in the first two, but there wasn't You don't start off with a series and then change the type of movie it is later. The first movie had nothing special, Alice was normal. In the second one, she was "tested" or experimented on and just had advanced fighting skills, like a master of the martial arts (still not sure why kung fu is considered a viable means to dispatch zombies). And now she is a super hero/robot? And how can she be a robot without any mechanical parts? Did they remove her eyes and give her new ones? I don't think this is the same movie anymore.

Although my interest in this movie stopped, the movie didn't. But I was curious on how much worse it could get. This seems like a perfect time to bring up Wesker. This was a name drop roll completely. All he did was sit in a chair and talk. The only reason you could tell it was Wesker is cause he kind of had blonde hair and he was the only one in an undergound bunker with sunglasses on. His hair didn't look the same, he barely looked like Wesker. I am sorry but Wesker has always been a thin-faced man, this guy doesn't have it. Not to mention the actor tried so hard to be like a robot, I found his acting to be shameful.

Ah, enough of the Resi-fanboy in me. I decided to try to look at it as a zombie movie...with a lead character with special powers? Gahh, moving on! The convoy needs gas. They sucked all the gas from small town gas stations and the only other place to look is Las Vegas. This place was the main advertising for the movie and they are just now getting to it? That can only mean one thing, big show down right?!

More like big stupidity. They stop at this big crate/dead end in the city. They need to move it to get to the gas, not sure why going around it didn't cross their mind but the end result is that there are zombies in there. Not just any zombies...special zombies from the Umbrella lab. This is where the zombie movie part fails. They mentioned that they have been on the road or at least Carlos has known Alice for FIVE years. Carlos first met Alice in the 2nd movie so it has been five years since then. So if you have been running from zombies for five years, don't you think you would learn that shooting them in the body does NOTHING?



Oh, yeah...slitting their throats or aorta's would do nothing but get you and them bloody. Then why the heck are they doing that? Not only that but when you run out of ammo in your pistol or machine gun, is there a rule that you have to throw it down on the ground? I guess if you have no ammo and expect/want to die then go ahead but I would never throw away a pistol or machine gun in that situation. Sure no ammo but a blunt metal object is much better to whack a zombie with than your hands.

Another thing about this venture to LV is the, as Cowzilla3 put it, "Clown car" crate. This create seriously must have had close to 100 zombies. Back at the lab they only showed like seven tops, but I guess they had reserves. These guys kept on coming. Not to mention that they must have been in a group hug or huddle before they came out to strategize since you could see in a little ways into the crate and you saw nothing. When they finall came out of the crate, it was in WAVES at about five or six at a time. It kind of reminded me of House of the Dead. No no no!

Lastly about this scene...they are going into a big city. They don't go into big cities cause all the possible zombies. Smart. They know they are in a BIG city. So why would the passengers get out of their vehicles and wander around if they were at a dead end? It is like they walked out to die and show some more deaths. Speaking of deaths, you don't really see anyone get BITTEN. A zombie movie that doesn't show any bites, just heads in the way, is just a failure.

So people die, zombies die, people live. Moving on, I will skip towards the end of the movie. The part we have all be waiting for, the Tyrant. He is not genetically created or made into an ultimate weapon. The big guy is more of an accident or side-effect. For ths most part he looks good. But cereal, how hard is it to make a big/semi-big mutated and deformed guy with ONE big arm and claws on it? Huh?! Is it asking too much? AHHH!!!

This fight is not very epic. Punch here, hit here. Boom, crash, pow, ka-blam. Done. I will admit this though...if THIS fight was in Apocalypse and was Alice vs. Nemesis, it might have been cool. It reminded me more of the Nemesis. Tentacles are for the trench coat dude and CLAWS are for the deformed/mutated creature. That is how it is in the game, makes sense. Should've done it.

They don't end the movie. They said this is the last movie. Why didn't they end it? I guess they hope it does REALLY well so they can convince Sony to let them make another. Please, no more! I can't take another. Regardless of it being in Japan and with Wesker, I don't want to see that Wesker or 2038 Alice's running around. That is just STUPID!

stupid.





!!!END of SPOILERISH MATERIAL!!!
Yeah, I revealed a little more than I intended but it must be said. It was so bad and it covered those parts. I did leave out who died though. Your welcome? But were you really going to see this anyways?




Conclusion: This movie feels like Sony or which ever movie company NEEDED to make a third one cause "trilogies are cool" and the "in" thing to do. So they took a decent idea and threw a bunch more JUNK in it, add in a familiar villain unseen before and put it out there to try to reap in money. Thankfully (and saddly?) the movie seemed really quick. It is only 95 minutes but it seemed SUPER quick.

The dialogue was wretched too! Two people on the convoy (which has been around for the better part of 5 years) talk to each other like it is the first time they have ever met. It seemed so out of place. Carlos' dialogue or acting was just not of high quality. Not sure if it was the dialogu or the guy's abilites.

I could just be a harsh critic or showed too much of my Resi fanboy but I tried to remain objective. This "review" is taking me too long to write with all the distractions so it ends here! Let's just hope they don't do a fourth one and include a El Gigante in it. I bet he would be just some fat dude that is 7 feet tall.

The saddest part is that coming home I saw someone from the theater and asked him if he liked it. He said it was good and he liked it. I then proceeded to talk to the guy on the other side of me tell him why it sucked.


My Rating: 3.5 (out of 10) - Not bad if you can forgive continuity problems, stupidness, and if you don't have to pay to see it.