Resident Evil: Apocalypse

[Andrew]

I finally watched "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" tonight from start to finish.  Much like "Doom" surprised me, this one was not anywhere near as bad as I had been told.  Several scenes that covered the losing battles fought by the police, S.T.A.R.S., and Umbrella security forces against the undead were much better than I expected.  And, thank you, the poorly prepared reporter woman got et after all.

On the bad, I could have done without Milla's impersonation of Meatloaf on the motorcycle as she fought the lickers in the church.  The whole Nemesis plot was also botched.  I can see them wanting to test him, including against the S.T.A.R.S. members, but to pit him against Alice with all that heavy weaponry was a serious mismatch.  They tried to even that out in the end by having the two of them fight without weapons.  Unfortunately, the fight was also a letdown.

Oh, and how many collapsible batons are able to withstand the impact of a hunk of steel swung by a huge freaking mutant?

I liked the dogs.  I also liked it that people were constantly getting killed off and the party whittled down as the movie progressed.  Alice's matter-of-fact assessment of Valentine's injured partner was another good point.

For the longest time, I thought that Alice found and used a samurai sword at some point during this movie (misfiring brain cells, I know it).  In the case of a true superhuman, who is able to kill multiple "normal" people, I think a sword or knife would be very useful.  It would have to be something out of a martial arts flick, nearly unbreakable and amazingly sharp, but think of the possibilities.  Alice could have cut apart that entire graveyard of zombies if she had McCloud's sword from "Highlander."

There are at least two earlier threads about this movie:

http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,69315.0.html

http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,72758.0.html

[Torgo]

I thought that Apocalypse was an improvement on the first Resident Evil film, but considering that I thought that the 1st film was  a cinematic abomination of the lowest order, that's not really saying much.

The only thing that kept my eyes to the screen was Milla. 

[BeyondTheGrave]

I saw this in the theater when it came out. Looking back it was better than the first.

I too didn't think it was all that bad. Plus is had Jill from the video games who I'm a big fan of.

[Ometiklan]

Ahh Yes Jill.....  WOWZERS!

Sienna Guillory



Not A Bad Movie Either!

[Scott]

Both the 1st and 2nd were good in my opinion. With the sequel being the better of the two. I was also surprised that they were good because I thought it would be some video game movie, but I'm glad I was wrong. Enjoyed both of them.

[Shadow]

I saw the first in the theater and enjoyed it. The second one I have seen only once, but I recall not liking it as much as the first. I think a second viewing may be in order.

[Jack]

I really liked the first one, thought it was very cool and stylish.  Didn't care for the second one nearly as much, it was was too over-the-top and childish. 

[Masked_Maverick]

I kind of liked it. Mindless fun and Milla is Hoooot.

[WingedSerpent]

For the longest time, I thought that Alice found and used a samurai sword at some point during this movie (misfiring brain cells, I know it).  In the case of a true superhuman, who is able to kill multiple "normal" people, I think a sword or knife would be very useful.  It would have to be something out of a martial arts flick, nearly unbreakable and amazingly sharp, but think of the possibilities.  Alice could have cut apart that entire graveyard of zombies if she had McCloud's sword from "Highlander."

That's "Ultrviolet" the movie

I agrre with most of what was said.  Up until the last 20 minutes or so when they had Alice fight Nemesis-beforwe that the movie was pretty good. The one thing I would like was more creatures from the game.  I would have enjoyed seeing the Hunters,or the giant alligtor

[Wicked Nick]

I thought the first one terriable.Just a bunch a zombies crammed into hallways going "ARRRRRR" and only one Licker. So I have avoided watching the second, one to me it looked just as bad. What would have made these movies good is instead of making them all slick and stylish they should have been grity and brutal like Land of the dead or the Dawn of the dead remake.

[Famous Mortimer]

It’s terrible, and not really a patch on the first film. Spoilers be ahead, so if you’ve not seen the film turn away now.

Nemesis attacking the STARS guys early on. If you’ve got a rocket launcher, and can only hit one group, do you go for:
a.   the group of 12 heavily armed people, all stood together
or
b.   the one guy with a rifle sat on the roof?
If your answer is A, then you’re smarter than a computer-controlled super-monster.

Also, Milla could not only drive a bike through the quite-high-up window of a church, she also knew exactly where to land it so it wouldn’t just obliterate both her and several rows of church pews. And I know my next point was kinda covered in the IMDB trivia for this (it was apparently a heatwave) but the fact Officer Valentine was dressed in barely any clothes and everyone else was fully covered up lent it a needlessly exploitative air- like anyone’s going to watch a Resident Evil film to see a woman in a tank top and shorts?

I thought it moved along at a fair old pace, and was fun, but it was so stupid and insulted the intelligence so often that it ended up being a very stupid film. The nuclear bomb thing, for example: I don’t know much about the subject, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the sort of radiation given off by a power plant is way different to the sort given off by an atomic bomb, and that the survivors would have mentioned the bomb flying overhead. Stuff like that.

Mocking this film is like shooting fish in a barrel. Milla Jovovich was the best thing about it by miles, but even she wasn’t close to being enough to save it.

[Jack]

That whole motorcycle thing seemed like it belonged in one of those slapstick Jackie Chan films or something - it's over-the-top stunts completely destroyed the suspension of disbelief necessary for a film that's supposed to be dead serious like Resident Evil.  Then there was that ridiculous fight between Milla and that bulletproof monster, edited like an MTV video so you couldn't tell what was going on, and the whole rescue at the end was a complete laugh as well.  To me, Anderson is a good director when it comes to visual style and tight editing, that sort of thing, but whenever he writes something it's silly, comic book material with dull dialogue and action sequences that are way too over the top to be taken seriously, yet it's obviously supposed to be taken seriously.  It just doesn't work for me.

[Kooshmeister]

Sorry but this film is just awful, in my opinion. The first one is much better, but not by much. My main problem is the editing, with lots of brief scenes and quick cuts, like an MTV music video. Obviously this film was made by and for people with very short attention spans.

The second problem is too many characters to keep track of. The movie should've just followed Alice and Jill's party and the Umbrella people. Everyone else only bogs the story down.

The third problem is that despite the fact lots of people get killed, it never seems like any of the characters are ever actually in danger. The zombies and other monsters come and go with little rhyme or reason (the best example being the zombie children that kill Terri), and the main party of characters, apart from the church/graveyard and Nemesis, never seems to be in any real danger; they just kind of mosey along without a care in the world.

It's also painfully easy to pick out who is gonna die. Carlos' pals Yuri and Nicholai? Dead meat. Jill's partner Peyton? Dead meat. (although to be fair, considering he gets bitten literally within moments of being introduced, it's not like the script tries to pretend he won't get killed). Captain Henderson and all the S.T.A.R.S. members who didn't listen to Jill? They might as well have targets on their chests. The only surprise death at all was Terri, but I was glad she died because she was annoying as hell with her stupid little video camera and going on and on about getting an Emmy.

Another big beef I had was how omnipotent the Umbrella Corporation has been made. I'm sorry, but they're a pharmaceutical company as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and therefore would not be allowed to barricade the city like that or launch the nuke to destroy the city. The U.S. Army or the CDC ought to do that, like they did in the games, wherein Umbrella was powerful and influential, but not enough to brazenly deploy their relatively small security force, or to launch a nuclear weapon (in the games, the Army launched the weapon, after it became obvious it was impossible to contain the monsters and infection).

I know that arguments about what's different in the movie(s) vs. the games is pretty childish, and normally I don't resort to it. But I will if the changes the movie makes are as idiotic and detrimental as the ones Paul W.S. Anderson and his people have made for the Resident Evil films. As adaptations of the games, the movies are pathetic. As horror movies they're woefully ineffective, as action films they're ridiculous and silly, and as sci-fi... well, you get the idea. They're just really lousy through and through.

These are just my own, personal opinions, though.

[DistantJ]

I like this film quite a lot. My only irks are the Nemesis creature (I dunno why, but that thing just irritates me) and the fact that every zombie shot seems to be given some kind of insane blur treatment to the point where all the zombie makeup effects are barely visible. I think it would have felt a lot more like a zombie film if the zombie shots were in focus and not shaky like that.

Otherwise I really like this one. Some of the OTT action sequences are just gold, particularly the one lifted straight out of the Dreamcast game. Like with Matrix Reloaded, though, this one seems to mostly serve as an action packed bridge between the first movie and the new one.