Resident Evil: Degeneration

Playing through Resident Evil 5 last week reminded me of the fully CG movie I saw Capcom touting at TGS last year. I knew it would probably be terrible, but I’m kind of a whore for anything 3D animation. I can’t wait for the new high definition Advent Children Complete coming out soon if that’s any indication, another movie that arguably sucked. I like quality 3D films too though, WALL-E was one of my favorite movies of last year, don’t judge me!

Anyway, back to Resident Evil. Does anyone have any idea what is going on in this series? There are at least six games in the story that are considered canon, maybe more, but as far as I can tell none of it makes continuous sense. RE4 attempted to be a self-contained story and it benefitted from it. It was also overly simplistic, president’s daughter went missing in Spain, in comes Leon, he discovers and thwarts zombie cult guys, saves the girl and gets out. That was fine though, it worked. Even 4 got confusing when they brought in old characters like Ada Wong for no reason. Then RE5 used the same storyline in Africa and showed that some new company TriCell has been responsible. Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t played that many of the older RE’s, but when did TriCell replace Umbrella? None of this seems to follow any sort of coherent storyline. It’s not surprising that they are talking about completely rebooting the series with RE6. Maybe that’ll give them a fresh start that they won’t screw up. I’m skeptical though.

I guess the movie, Resident Evil: Degeneration, is supposed to connect the stories between RE4 and RE5. I never would have guessed that without skimming the Wikipedia article about the movie after I watched it. My neighbor, who has played through every RE excluding the Chronicle ones on the Wii, seemed to think it took place between 1 and 2. Something must have gotten lost in translation or Capcom clearly needs a few lessons in storytelling. Maybe they shouldn’t have closed down Clover. Their plots no matter how obtuse always made sense.

I could probably sum up what happened in Degeneration, it is at least coherent enough for that, but an underlying “why?” never seems to be explained. A zombie outbreak at an airport starts the story off, but what causes it is not particularly well explained. There are people wearing zombie masks protesting something Raccoon City related, but then an actual zombie shows up seemingly out of nowhere. This starts a series of events ending with some random cops’ brother turning into a hideous monster in a huge pharmaceutical research building and squaring off against her, Leon S. Kennedy and some marines. Well known RE character Claire Redfield also plays a prominent role doing something or other. The building then goes into the most convoluted self destruct sequence known to man. The movie ends with the dramatic realization of something. I have know idea what, but the ominous music they played as they revealed TriCell bought out the pharmaceutical company WilPharm was obviously intended to invoke an, “Ah Hah” and an accusatory finger point. I had never heard of WilPharm until this movie and had never heard of TriCell until RE5, but apparently they are related now and I’m supposed to be shocked. Maybe even appalled.

That was a gross oversimplification of the plot with several key points left off, but you are probably better off reading it that way. If not, here you go.

At least it had the CG going for it. Every now and then I’d get a bad dose of uncanny valley, but for the most part I never got the lifeless zombie vibe from any of the people. The zombies on the other hand came off quite successfully as zombies. I couldn’t help but giggle as several of them would attempt to stumble through a small gap only to fall all over each other. Still though, the visuals weren’t good enough to warrant a watching just to see them. Something Advent Children is still capable of getting me to do.

On the rare chance you were planning on seeing this movie, but didn’t watch it back when it was released, I wouldn’t bother. It has a few cool looking moments, but is definitely nowhere near good enough to devote a hundred minutes to. You could be playing a video game!