Review #132: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #18- Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

I've said the last couple days that I don't want to keep complaining about how these aren't accurate to the games (or something like that), but watching this one I had a revelation that I think will help explain why I've done that so much.

Imagine if another popular IP- let's say Harry Potter- got its first movie adaptation, and it was popular enough to warrant numerous sequels. You go to watch them one day, after having been a fan of the books, but when you do, you realize some very odd things:

First, Harry Potter isn't even the main character. Instead, the series is about this other character, wholly made-up for the movie. This character is shown to be the best wizard in all the Wizarding World, and everybody knows it. The entire story is about how this new character is the key to everything.

Second, the first couple movies take place at Hogwarts- for the most part, although it doesn't really resemble the Hogwarts from the books, but it's a magic school at least. But then, the rest of the movies take place at concerts, at the mall, you know- stuff none of the books delved into (and once again, all following this new character).

Third, all of the other characters are there, of course! Er, sort of. Harry does show up... in like the third book, for just a little while. Ron and Hermione do too, but the new protagonist notably doesn't meet them at Hogwarts, they meet at the store. Or something. The characters don't even really resemble their book counterparts, at all- but one of them has red hair, so that must be Ron (except whoops, when he shows up in movie #5 he's got black hair, you didn't recognize him but he was in the credits), Harry does have a lightning bolt scar (but he isn't a wizard for some reason, he's like a vampire or something?), and Hermione has a sidekick that is some new character that wasn't in the books. And they all play in a band apparently.

Fourth, there's passing mentions of stuff from the books (Dumbledore, Potions Class, the Triwizard Tournament) but they like... don't make ANY sense given the context. Maybe you hear Harry say something like "That Dementor has a Time Turner!" (and it's the first time anyone has mentioned Time Turners) but for the most part, the entire story is its own thing, and it all revolves around that new protagonist.

....It would be pretty freaking weird, right? Because that's what this is. That's right- the Resident Evil movie series is, basically, My Immortal, in movie form. It's bad fanfic that ignores the entire source material except to bring in characters out-of-context just for a little bit of recognition, and it all revolves around this author-insert character who wears tight leather and has superpowers (explicit and implicit).

I just have to ask, who is this series for? If it's for an average moviegoer, with no knowledge of the games, then surely that moviegoer is going to have no idea who any of these characters are or why they're given prominence, because I guarantee you someone in the board room said "We don't need to waste time explaining who Leon Kennedy is, fans of the games will know who he is." But then, anyone who played the game is going to be just as lost as those who haven't, because how did Leon get here? He certainly didn't have the experience of escaping the city in Resident Evil 2, he certainly didn't get hired to rescue the president's daughter in Resident Evil 4, and considering how Raccoon City got nuked in RE:Apocalypse, I don't know how he knows Barry or Jill or any of the other S.T.A.R.S. members (an organization which, to date, has never been explained in the entire movie series so far). To go with my earlier analogy, imagine if the Harry Potter movie continuity has completely omitted Voldemort from the story- there was no Wizarding War, no Tom Riddle, no Death Eaters- yet one of the later movies still has Harry out hunting for Horcruxes (and the movie never bothered to say what Horcruxes were, there was just one passing mention of looking for them). IT WOULD BE PRETTY WEIRD, RIGHT?

That's where I'm coming from with these reviews. It is so confusing as someone who has played the games, yet I see nothing that this series has to offer to someone who HASN'T played the games, because the filmmakers neglected to explain LITERALLY ANYTHING, most likely because it was assumed viewers would have played the games. This series is BONKERS no matter how you look at it.

Whew. Sorry, that was a lot but let me take a minute and actually talk about this movie a bit. I totally called how (similar to the cliffhanger from RE:Extinction) the big epic battle was going to amount to nothing- it was over and done in the first five minutes of the movie, and that's including being shown the battle TWICE, and a lengthy recap of the story so far. (The story so far actually got more screen time than the battle did!) So much for a cool cliffhanger. And because of what I've been conditioned to think, I can only assume the next movie is going to do the same thing, AGAIN!

So much of this movie revolves around Alice trying to save... Becky? The "deaf" girl (I say "deaf" because, aside from signing when she speaks sometimes, this girl does almost nothing to portray her character as deaf- apparently the actress IS hearing-impaired, but the script was clearly not adjusted to include it). For the first portion of the movie I assumed she was a dream, or figment of Alice's imagination, and then I assumed she was a hologram. It ultimately turns out she's a clone (?), and I just have to say, it REALLY hamstrings the tension of your movie when the stakes character is pretty quickly established to not be real. And on that topic, it's pretty silly to believe that Umbrella was able to create city-block-sized, perfectly-accurate hard-light holograms in the distant futuristic era of 2002. The entire middle of this movie was a huge mess because I couldn't tell what was real, what I COULD tell wasn't believable, and to keep with my constant refrains with this series, I. Did. Not. Care. About. Anyone. Seriously, I felt so much more joy seeing the characters from the first movie show up for a couple minutes, than I did seeing Leon, Barry, and Ada for the entire movie. That's how little I cared about the portrayal of these franchise-favorite characters. Tell me how they got to this point in the story and I might care! Don't, and I won't!

Again, this movie had some cool parts (gimme a movie where people have to journey through multiple holodecks to reach an exit, I'll watch it any day of the week) but was just a soggy confused mess.

Overall Rating: 4/10 Zombies Beneath the Ice

Tip To Any Supervillains Out There: If you're going to mind control somebody, and send that somebody to fight in hand-to-hand combat with a group of fierce warriors, maybe don't make the mind-control device a big obvious bauble that can easily be snatched away? This is Supervillain 101 stuff, people.