Okay. Before I start talking about the first trailer for "Resident Evil: Afterlife," which went online on Saturday after debuting at Wondercon, I should clear up something about myself that some people reading this thing possibly might not know...
For better or for worse, I absolutely love the "Resident Evil" movies. Yeah, I know, they aren't exactly deep cinema, but they deliver what they promise: A cool storyline, plenty of action, and lots of scary zombies. They also, with the possible exception of "Extinction," never let themselves get bogged down in boring dialogue, and they have a certain B-movie charm about them. They're all mindless, but they're also quite fun if you can handle the sometimes extreme level of gore.
Most importantly, they feature someone who is, in my opinion, one of the single greatest action heroines of all time: Alice. Yeah, Angelina Jolie can be pretty tough sometimes, but when it comes to ass kicking, no one can quite do it like Milla Jovovich does in this role. She's so good at fighting that she could probably get into a fight with James Bond and not only win, but maybe even kill him. Having said that, Alice is more than just a warrior: She's a sympathetic character who wants to do what she can to help what's left of humanity, and is very easy to root for.
So it might go without saying that "Resident Evil: Afterlife," the fourth movie in the franchise, has become one of my most anticipated movies of 2010. What might come as a bit of a surprise, though, is me feeling slightly letdown after watching the trailer....although the people who made the preview may be responsible for this.
For one thing, rather than tell us anything about the plot, it mainly wants us to know that the movie will be in 3-D. It does this not only by showing a number of shots that are bound to look cool in that format (Alice throws weapons at the camera at one point), but also by informing us that the movie was "filmed with the James Cameron/Vincent Pace Fusion Camera System." For those of us who don't know our "Avatar" trivia, we are then told that this is "the world's most advanced 3-D technology." Okay. So, the movie will be in 3-D. I think we're all going to have that drilled into our heads by the time movie's released.
So...what is there to say about the footage? Much of it is actually pretty awesome, but knowing so little about what we're saying, it's a little hard to know what exactly is going on. We see Alice running around what appears to be the inside of the Umbrella corporation. We see her fighting some sort of monster with an enormous axe (very sweet). We see the villain throwing his glasses at something (why?). And, of course, we so those evil zombie dogs. What would a movie in this series be without them?
We also, unfortunately, see plenty of Claire. Remember how I said that "Extinction" might've been guilty of letting itself get bogged down in boring dialogue and what not? Well, Claire was one of the main reasons for that. This is not to say by any means that I don't enjoy Ali Larter. She's awesome on "Heroes," and she certainly brought eye candy to the guilty pleasure that was "Obsessed." But her acting in "Extinction" was pretty close to snooze-worthy, so the thought of her playing a major role in "Afterlife" makes me more than a little concerned. Give me Jill Valentine over her any day.
Finally, there's the big money shot, which is Alice and Claire falling down an elevator shot in slow motion while firing guns. Falling down in slow motion while firing guns? Wait, that sounds like "The Matrix Reloaded," doesn't it? Guess what? That's exactly what it looks like!
What about that army of Alice clones we were promised at the end of "Extinction"?? Aren't they going to be in the movie at all??
By now, I probably sound like I was dissapointed by the trailer. Maybe I was just a little, but I still liked a lot of what I saw, and am still really stoked about seeing the movie in September. And really, being this excited about a movie that almost certainly won't be screened for critics probably isn't very healthy. ;)
Next, I will attempt the first entry in my "First Viewing" series, when I talk about my thoughts after seeing "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" for the first time on Sunday night.
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