Resident Evil: Retribution

This review contains some spoilers for Resident Evil: Retribution.

What I am about to say will make it seem like I am tearing Resident Evil: Retribution apart. So before I start, I would like to make it clear that this is not the most awful movie ever made. (House of the Dead still has that "honor.")

Retribution started off really well. It appears as if Alice wakes up in a world devoid of zombies. She is married to Carlos, has a daughter. It's. All. Very. Normal. And you know what that means. This is not what it seems. These people are not really Alice or Carlos. They are more clones being tested by Umbrella and things are about to get very bad for them.

Umbrella has simulation rooms set up all over their headquarters, designed to look like New York, Tokyo, Moscow and Raccoon City, featuring many different enemies. The entire movie focuses on Alice (the real one) attempting to escape with the help of Ada Wong and, of all people, Albert Wesker. Wesker tells Alice that the Red Queen is on a mission to destroy humanity and he is basically her only hope of making it out alive. Where do I even start...

AI is scary. I am sure we have all seen enough movies and played enough video games to know that you can never really trust it. Even so, I cannot understand why the Red Queen's goal now is to kill everyone on the planet when her initial goal in the first film was to prevent the spread of infection. How does she even exist when her circuits were fried? I suppose there could be another Red Queen, but giving her the same name is misleading and they probably should have considered this while making the movie.

As for Wesker, he does not suffer from Nemesis syndrome, as other people have claimed he does. While it is true that he does appear to help Alice escape from Umbrella HQ, his reasons are purely selfish. I do not believe his game counterpart would ever have enlisted help from any of his enemies, regardless of how desperately he needed it, but I think we all realize by now that when it comes to these movies, all bets are off.

Someone on IMDB called Retribution "Resident Evil All Stars." That is accurate. And not in a good way.

Ada, Leon and Barry were all unnecessary to the plot. If they had been cut out, it would have been the same film, just with less characters running around for no real reason. I am a fan of the games first, but these characters served almost no purpose in the movie. They are fan service. I would rather see them excluded than wasted. I think the inclusion of Barry was the worst, since he has no ties to Leon in any of the games (unless you really want to include Gaiden) and that is who he is working with.

Chris and Claire are nowhere to be found this time around, which is a good thing because Jill, Leon, Barry and Ada were poorly written (or barely even utilized at all). At least they escaped this film.

 I do not mind a unique take on the series involving new characters, but when you bring in established characters and make them barely recognizable, it is a problem. There is no point to it.

Many enemies are included in Resident Evil: Retribution, most of which we have seen in the previous films. There are incredibly fast zombies in the Raccoon City simulation, but after that, they disappear in favor of the Plagas (who do not translate well to film, they look ridiculous). If you have played Resident Evil 5, you already know that Plagas are smarter than zombies. They drive cars, ride motorcycles and they will shoot you with whatever they can get their hands on, whether it is an SMG or an RPG. Also included from RE5 is the Executioner (who I mistakenly thought was the Bogeyman from Silent Hill Downpour, I forgot what I was watching for a moment) and the Chainsaw Ganado from RE4/RE5. The "big bad" is a giant super-licker, bigger than any enemy I remember seeing in the films before. And of course, there are also the clones of Carlos, One and Rain, led by a mind-controlled Jill Valentine.

There are a lot of references to the games that could leave people lost if they have never played them (where did the new enemies come from?) and a lot of additions from the games that will leave people who HAVE played them wondering why they bothered to include them. Everything happens too fast, the movie feels rushed and it suffers because of it.

Look at where the first film started and where we are now. The plot is so convoluted I do not even know what is going on anymore. The first movie had its flaws, but I genuinely enjoyed it. Now I feel like things are being made up as they go along just for the sake of dragging out the series and making more money. It could have been planned better.

Overall, Retribution was entertaining enough. I was not bored watching it. Maybe I am used to how bad the movies are, maybe my  expectations are lower. Maybe I am just beyond caring at this point. It was not the worst movie I have seen in this series, but it is still far from good.