Paul W. S. Anderson is a busy man just now, but standing back more in the shadows and working on one type of genre, the videogame. He’s been at this for sometime, but in Now Playing Magazine he says:
“Well, that’s a game [Driver] that I optioned with the idea that I may direct, and that’s still something I’m keeping an option open to direct.” he says. “We don’t have a screenplay I feel happy with yet. We’re still kind of in the development phase of that. [And] at the moment I’m producing a movie for John Fawcett, who made Ginger Snaps, called The Dark. And next year I’m producing a movie for Corey Yuen which is an adaptation of DOA, the Xbox title. So [producing] is something that I’m doing increasingly when I’m excited about the filmmakers that we’re working with.”
So not only is he working on Driver and Resident Evil: Afterlife, although Anderson says:
It’s still just a concept at the moment…The second movie did better business than the first movie did, so obviously there’s talk of doing a third film. When I made the first movie, I always wanted to see it as a trilogy. I always had a vision for a trilogy of films…but we’re still kind of in negotiations. But there’s definitely a will to make the movie, that’s for sure.
…but he’s also working on Dead or Alive and The Dark. All videogames for various games machines.
Resident Evil is pretty much a game like the rest of the series, whereas Driver is much more modern and open game although a poor relation to the incredible Grand Theft Auto series (from III onwards). Dead or Alive will see him return to the world of super beings fighting against each other, much like Mortal Kombat did, and The Dark is a brooding and scare filled adventure game.
I do hope some of these turn out well, Driver and The Dark have good potential on paper, and let’s hope Sean Bean doesn’t suffer another career setback from starring in the latter.
I agree all the Resident Evil movies thsu far have all been crap. My main concern unlike Max here, is not the numerous plot holes but the complete butchering of the Resident Evil concept and the glorification of Alice character.
Anyways before I begin picking the movie apart I’ll adress a few things Max wrote.
Max Wrote:
1. How does wheelchair (Dr. Ashford) turn into a zombie, when he only gets shot in the head. We don’t see him get bitten.
Not so. Remember that Ashford had injected himself and his daughter with the virus for years. The virus contained in their bodies were controlled by the medicine that took daily/weekly.
So when Ashford died the virus already in his body probably became active.
This is an explanation for it, unfortunatelly I doubt mister Anderson whose writing skill rivals that of a monkey, even considered thsi when he had Ashford turn living dead.
Max Wrote:
2. After the footage is discredited as authentic and they are plastered all over the news, how does the Umbrella Corporation fail to notice the abduction of Alice at the end of the movie?
Ah, but William Birkin – or whoever that scientist with the glasses was supposed to be – he seemed to have foreseen all this and he wanted Alice to escape so that he could test if she could carry out orders and kill. The people that had survived Raccoon city were perfect test subjects.
Yet again, I agree with you that this is a terrible plotdevice.
Max Wrote:
3. How do the corpses in the graves at the back of the church become infected?
In the game “Resident Evil – Code Veronica.” and in the game “Resident Evil – Nemesis/Last Escape” Corpses of people long dead actually did come alive and start crawling out of their graves. As it appears the virus must be able to contaminate living and dead cells at the nucleus. How else did the virus start contaminating people at the mansion? It spreads through the air and any other way it can. So the T-virus had probably contaminated the very soil and dead cells with it. Andersson stole the graveyard scene among others directly from the games in an atempt to make fans smile – unfortunatelly he never seemed to bother understanding the concept of those scenes.
Max Wrote:
4. Why did nobody attempt to shoot Nemesis in the head (especially the sniper on the roof)?
They probably did. In the game Nemesis can’t be killed by being shot in the head since it’s brain isn’t located in the head – yet would would this be true about Andersson’s Nemesis?
Max Wrote:
5. WHAT MUPPET DECIDED TO MAKE NEMESIS WEAR A LEATHER DRESS??????????????
That’s not a dress… it’s a long coat. The coat Nemesis wears in the game appears to have been inspired by the atire that “Pinhead” from the Hellraizer movies wears…
Max Wrote:
8. WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD’S ARSE WAS THE POINT OF HAVING ALICE RUN DOWN THE SIDE OF THAT BUILDING IN THAT CHEESEY SCENE?
Andersson just has a thing for Milla…
Max Wrote:
10. How can Nemesis be so agile when he’s a bulky piece of rotting flesh?
Nemesis unlike Zombies never were a pile of rotting flesh. Nemesis is a modern Frankenstein’s monster. The special virus that was contained within Nemesis body in the game, ran through it’s nueral centers and nerves. All teh tentacles you see Nemesis sprout later on in the game is actually a part of what it really is. The ‘body’ you see it wearing is actually nothing more than a big armour which the Nemesis lives in. This is what the the game Nemesis was – the Nemesis in the movie however seems to be nothing more than a mutation of the Lickers we saw in the first movie. As explained there the cells of that body never really died. So no, Nemesis has never been a rotting corpse.
Max Wrote:
11. Why do Alice and Nemesis jump over fences without breaking a sweat, it looks really cheesey!!!
Nemesis did it because he is a badass monster and it was easier to have him do this than let him breake down the fence which would have been much more realistic.
Alice on the other hand has been made out to be this superbeing. … It would have been better if the character Alice had just died in the first movie ….
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Ah there, now that I have replied to the previous comment I’ll start commenting the movie itself.
I never did have particularly high expectations for the Resident Evil movie when I first saw that it was Andersson that had directed it. After all this is the guy that couldn’t even make a good martial arts movie… I mean common! Anyone can make a good beat em up movie! It takes no skill on the directors part!
But he did screw up the Mortal Kombat movies and yes, his take on Resident Evil was even worse.
I read the Script made by Romero, and although he had some strange ideas he wanted to include in it atleast he understood what Resident Evil was all about!
Resident Evil is a horror game!
Yes, it might not be very scary but the intent is there! It is – a survival horror!
The first movie had nothing of this so my expectations for the second one was actually less than zilch.
Ah, but Andersson has perfected dissapointing his viewers to a an art!
The movie – I kid you not – actually started out as more than decent! The zombies in it looked more the way zombies should, and even the actors had that charming B-movie factor that they should have in zombie movies. We were shown Umbrella at its finest and how evil they really are. We saw people get hunted down and eaten by living dead, yes and we even saw Jill Valentine!
Playing a character from a videogame and acuratelly portraying them is no easy task but Sienna Guillory did! She did … in the beginning of the movie.
Then they introduced Alice again and any credability the movie had gained was shot to hell.
Resident Evil was never about superheroes, it was about ‘normal’ people surviving against impossible odds! The intent with Resident Evil was to emulate a horror movie and scare the player! But whereas the game had to cut corners to do this the movie cut corners to avoid this!
Like I stated earlier; the character Alice should have died and stayed dead!
Nobody cares about Alice. Not the die-hard Resident Evil fans and certainly not the movie critics! The only people that could enjoy her on screen are those that are hoping they will see her naked again, something the actor Milla seem to have no problem with.
Sure Milla is beautiful and yes seeing her naked is nice… but she can’t act, and she isn’t believable as anything else but a supermodell.
Having Alice become a superhuman that saves the day was the worst decision Andersson could have made – and he made it.
When she first appeared blowing up that motorcycle I was disgusted. When she jumped the fence in one leap like a frog I was horrified, and in the end when she fought Nemesis I cried.
And then after she had finally met her maker Andersson brought her back to life!
If Andersson has such a thing for her he should have made a pornomovie or something staring her, this at least wouldn’t have hidden his true intentions!
Resident Evil 2 was not a movie about Resident Evil, it was a movie about Milla Jovovich.
What was up with that fight in the end anyways? Sure Alice might have been superhuman and all that but not more so than Wesker appearantly was in Code Veronica.
Nemesis would have had Alice for lunch if Andersson had stayed true to the Resident Evil story. Hell even the whimpy Nemesis in the movie should have been able to beat her easilly. She was fast and strong … but that was all! Nemesis had combat techniques programed into his brain! He was stronger than her! He was faster… and still she beat him! And how did she beat him? She had him get speared on a protruding pipe! Come on!
A little thing like that would have been shrugged off!
No this movie sucked and what frightens me is that Andersson is going to do another just like it. From what I’ve seen Alice is probably going to be evil, then just like in Terminator 2 she will destroy Umbrella and sacrifice herself in some cliche scene that Andersson believes people will care about because Andersson loves Milla and then obviously so does everyone else!
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And now I get informed he is the one they have hired to direct Dead or Alive?
What the hell!
What were they thinking? Haven’t any of them ever seen his horrible Mortal Kombat movies?
From what we have seen thus far – this is what we probably are to expect from the movie:
Badly written scenes that really has nothing to do with the game, save the names of the characters and some key elements such as the Doa tournament and the name of the company Doatec.
People that don’t resemble the characters at all will play them.
One of the blond-non asian females will have the lead. (probably Bass daughter or something)
Milla Jovovich or some other woman Andersson finds sexy will star in the movie… and yes … non of them will be anywhere near being a teenager like most of the Doa girls are, but Andersson will say they are and we will all cry because we are asking ourselves who the hell he is trying to kid.
And that’s about it.
In conclusion; don’t hire Andersson, fire Andersson!
Having watched Resident Evil second failed attempt at a movie, I have now lost faith in the film industry. I could have happily enjoyed the movie at face value, had it not been for the numerous mistakes and pot-holes along the way.
Some of the questions I have are….
1. How does wheelchair (Dr. Ashford) turn into a zombie, when he only gets shot in the head. We don’t see him get bitten.
2. After the footage is discredited as authentic and they are plastered all over the news, how does the Umbrella Corporation fail to notice the abduction of Alice at the end of the movie?
3. How do the corpses in the graves at the back of the church become infected?
4. Why did nobody attempt to shoot Nemesis in the head (especially the sniper on the roof)?
5. WHAT MUPPET DECIDED TO MAKE NEMESIS WEAR A LEATHER DRESS??????????????
6. What is it with all of these protege evil scientists in the movies? As one dies, another emerges!
7. Towards the end when Nemesis is killed by a helicopter, the shrapnel that hits Alice in the face leaves an injury on the wrong side!
8. WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD’S ARSE WAS THE POINT OF HAVING ALICE RUN DOWN THE SIDE OF THAT BUILDING IN THAT CHEESEY SCENE?
9. How do you expect audiences to believe that the gas explosion was plausable, it would have taken a lot more gas to create an explosion that big. Plus, who can flick a cigarette that far???
10. How can Nemesis be so agile when he’s a bulky piece of rotting flesh?
11. Why do Alice and Nemesis jump over fences without breaking a sweat, it looks really cheesey!!!
PS – LOVED EVENT HORIZON!!!
Paul Anderson should be greatly ashamed of himself, he should stop now and spare us the suffering of another one of his travesties.