Criticism | ‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ is a faithful adaptation of the game, but it is empty and shallow …

Adaptations of games for the big screen are extremely complicated, and hardly appealing to the public. However, the ‘Resident Evil’ franchise can be considered the most successful in cinema. Director and producer Paul WS Anderson, who “specializes” in adapting games for theaters in films such as “Mortal Kombat” (1995) and “Monster Hunter” (2020), made in 2002 the first adaptation of the movie. franchise with ‘Resident Evil: The Guest Maldito’, which cost little by blockbuster standards and produced a six-movie franchise that grossed $ 1.24 billion at the global box office.

The movies won over a large chunk of the audience with plenty of cutting edge action and special effects, but they displeased most players for bringing in the protagonist Alice – played by the wonderful Milla Jovovich – a character who didn’t has never appeared in games. . Despite the success of the franchise, many fans of the games have turned their nose to the director by taking creative liberties and delivering stories different from the source material, adapting them to the movies.

Just five years after “Resident Evil 6: The Final Chapter” (2016), Sony did the same as with the “Spider-Man” franchise and developed a reboot with a new team and a new cast, faithfully adapting the first two games and put them together in one movie.

The result is bittersweet. Those who enjoy the games will likely revel in the nostalgia and references, as the film recreates several iconic frame-by-frame moments, but precisely fails to create an interesting, in-depth story and characters to justify another film in the franchise.

The feeling is that we are watching a friend play “Resident Evil” on Playstation 2 while we wait our turn. But why on Playstation 2? Why the graphics and special effects are so poorly developed they seem like they came off the platform in the ’90s, see the clearly created Doberman scene in an infographic so poorly done, you wonder if it wasn’t. This is only a reference to the original game, or if they are, they really didn’t mind spending the money on decent special effects.

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‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’ traces back to the franchise’s origins by showing Claire Redfield returning to Raccoon City in 1998 after spending a traumatic childhood in an orphanage for the burgeoning pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, where children were used as guinea pigs. illegal experiments. Years later, Raccoon City is now a dying town out of nowhere. The corporate exodus has turned the city into a desert, with a great evil brew hidden beneath the surface. When this evil breaks loose, a group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella as they seek to live one more night.

All of the great characters in the game are here in extremely similar versions to the originals, with the exception of looks by Leon S. Kennedy (Avan Jogia) and Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen). However, the goofy script doesn’t give any of the characters time to shine onscreen, nor does it take the time to develop any of them.

The only ones that gain prominence are Kaya Scodelario (Claire) and Robbie Amell (Chris), but their relationship is explored quickly and superficially in favor of a shift to action and horror scenes.

In my opinion, to restart a franchise you have to create something better than the original. And that is not what is happening here. While the debut film starring Milla Jovovich is more action-packed than horror-driven, it was a visibly neat and directed production, while this new film feels like a ’90s TV movie.

The action scenes are few and the horror scenes are not scary, always with dark photography and confusing surroundings. Director Johannes Roberts (“Deep Fear”) even manages to deliver some interesting scenes, filled with popular songs from the late 90s, but even good acting does not save “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” from ‘be an average film, with an uninspired screenplay and poorly written dialogue. It wasn’t this time.

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