Resident Evil 3KISSMATE: Hello, my dear followers! Today is the third movie of the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) dir. by Russel Malcuhy. So far each movie has had a different director. It showed last movie. Let's see if it's better here!
We see Alice waking up in the shower again, per first movie. Like, shot for shot, scene for scene. Did we put in the first movie by accident? No, because none of the Hive deaths were shown... She opens a door and now is in the Queen Laser Chamber! The lasers attack, but she escapes through the vents. Now she's in the empty hospital. She runs through the hallway pushing a gurney (to break the glass?) when a trap guillotine falls and breaks the bed!
Is Alice in a personal obstacle course from Hell? Oh shit, she stepped on a switch and a spread gun fired into her, killing her slowly. Scientists come in and takes samples before disposing of her. What, was that a flashback? Are they making clones? An elevator hidden by a shack reveals the scientists dump Alice's body into a mass grave of other Alices. All I can think is "Where are they buying those dresses and black boots? Is it cheap? Being an apocalypse, you'd think those materials would be too costly."
See, you keep the dead bodies of your experiments around, you just attract pests to eat them up! You want hoards of the undead surrounding your secret base? This is how you get hoards of the undead surrounding your secret base! Now it's not so secret!
Alice tells us that the T-Virus wiped out human life in a month. But it doesn't just affect humans. "Lakes and rivers dried up, forests became deserts, and whole continents were reduced to nothing more than barren wastelands." So the virus sped up global warming. Real Alice wanders into a trap set up by wasteland hillbillies. They aren't the fun Borderlands kind. Instead they're more the Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind.
[TW: Rape] Fun fact, the guy trying to rape Alice plays Jason Stackhouse in True Blood! And I can't separate the two. It's so weird to see him force himself on someone. Me and Husband are both "JASON WOULD NEVER". Alice kills one of them. This freaks them out so bad that they throw her to the zombie dogs. Literally.
Suddenly I'm getting RE7 flashbacks. Don't know why. I blame the cannibalistic hillbillies. Alice unleashes the hounds back on the hillbillies and takes back off. Again, the action could be way better as the camera is just too close. This is going to be a reoccurring problem through all the movies, isn't it? We see buses and semis drive through the desert being driven by Olivera and CLAIRE! Oh Claire, may they NOT do you wrong!
We get a look at Umbrella, again in an underground bunker, and we see Wesker. Or a really bad-looking imitation of him. Oh boy. That could be improved on. For starters, more blond hair helmet. At least he's got the sunglasses-even-when-dark look going on. They talk about trying to reverse the effects of the virus in hopes of domesticating the zoms. It's that or have dead flesh monsters roam for decades. It's hard to listen because Wesker is the most dominant man in the room. Stares ahead, hands crossed on the desk, sunglasses hiding his eyes. I don't know if he's going to pull out a shotgun to end the meeting or order everyone quiet so he can hear his podcast.
Holy shit, ok, he may not LOOK exactly like Wesker, but he feels like Wesker. He moves like Wesker. He talks like I expect Wesker to talk. Maybe not perfectly, since it's been a while since I played the games, but they tried! Oh good, capitalism is figuring out how to make zombies a free labor source. That was inevitable. And all it takes is killing a woman and torturing her over and over again until results finally pan out. Umbrella is such a capitalist douche.
Alice goes into a gas station, now deserted and nearly empty. She finds a journal left behind that speaks of an isolated area. I thought she wanted to kill all the zoms, though. Then again, all I know about her wants is she wants to survive. Claire's group comes across a hotel. There, LJ gets bitten, but he tells no one. That seems a bit OOC for him. Also, if this is a convoy that relies on being close to one another for long periods of time, you'd think there'd be a strict rule on that.
In Umbrella, we see the domestication experiment isn't going great. The Doctor, after seeing someone beg for their life, just politely fixes his tie and walks away like he's thinking more about how to report this to the council than the blood he has on his hands.
Claire's convoy is getting their night watch set up, and Alice is reading how Alaska is supposedly free of undead. Alice also breaks her motorcycle with her mind while sleeping. She's psychic? I knew she hurt that camera guy last film, but... the fuck? The Doctor Isaacs hears from the new Red Queen about a psychic outside. It's a different actress than before. Also, we don't get to see the girl we saved last film. What's up with that? She demand more pay?
Claire's group wakes up to see infected crows surrounding them. They lose two vehicles and some nice people I liked. I'm just surprised LJ, knowing he's infected, didn't try to sacrifice himself for his girlfriend. Alice appears to give Olivera some flashbacks. She fills the sky with fire with her mind, then passes out. This feels a bit much. At this point, she could push over skyscrapers and kick lightning out of the sky and I'd be like "k, what's next?".
Isaacs gets another clone killed, but at least he knows where Real Alice might be. Also, he's stepping over his limits and not telling Wesker everything. That's going to get him killed, or worse FIRED. Real Alice wakes in the convoy and meets a girl who feels VERY trans. She doesn't like her old name, and everyone she knew is dead. They found her in a K-Mart, so she calls herself K-Mart. She even made a friendship bracelet for Alice.
Alice says she left after last film because Umbrella was tracking her. She's afraid that they'll hurt those around her. Problem is, she's right. Isaacs found her on the satellite imaging. "Welcome home," he says. I think he's talking about his promotion, not her. Isaacs tries to convince Wesker to get her back, but Wesker wants to wait. Why, I'm not sure, but I guess he's thinking about resources and men getting lost trying to get her back when he knows they can't.
Claire's convoy heads to Alaska, even if it's just to give them hope. Problem is, they need a big pay-out in order to even start. Big cities mean big hoards, but it also means huge supply area. So, to strike it rich, they head to Vegas. Isaacs, on the other hand, makes an illegal voice profile based off Wesker to get men and supplies. Even though Wesker just told him no. But, if it gets him Alice, then he gets his results. And who can argue with results, right? This plan is so fucking ludicrous.
The convoy makes it to Vegas and sees how empty it looks. "Birds must have gone block by block. Picked it clean." Meanwhile, LJ isn't looking so good and still telling no one. This feels wrong. Isaacs dropped a storage unit full of zombies in the convoy's way, so now they have to fight through it! It makes for a GREAT action scene! There's kicking and shooting and scrambling for guns when on the ground. It reminds me of the first movie!
Isaacs has a magic button to put Alice in a stunned state. Fortunately, Alice isn't one to go down easily. As her friends fight for their life, so she fights the conditioning. She wins by frying the satellite in space. Some convoy members die. LJ bites Olivera before dying himself. That feels very... bad. Alice goes to Umbrella's little camp site and shoots it up, ruining Isaac's plan. After they fly off in a chopper, Alice gets an idea to steal that to go to Alaska.
For now, Isaacs is allowed to fly off "home". He's been placed in "house arrest" while pumping himself full of the Cure. Turns out the supped-up zoms he made are super infected too. He may end up being one. Here, we have to take a break, as groceries don't buy themselves. We'll be back after a while! Back! Isaacs was on house arrest and looking sick. Someone shoots him (the Umbrella version of firing an employee), but Isaacs gets right back up and does some very tentacly things to their new corpses. (Insert hentai jokes here.)
We see Alice and Convoy scoping out the "secret" Umbrella base surrounded by zoms. They're hoping the antivirus will save Olivera, but it looks like he's going to sacrifice himself for the others. He did get bit after all. [TW: Self Harm] Olivera drives into the heart of the hoard and takes one last smoke before going up in smoke himself. He takes out a bunch of the hoard, though. It's enough for Alice to barge in with the convoy and drive them close to the chopper. Alice gives K-Mart the journal to Alaska while she heads into the base. The convoy seems safe. They leave the movie. Maybe the less we see of them, the happier the ending we can imagine for them.
Oh shit, Alice found the clone pit and she is not ok. She doesn't have time to emote, so it's going to end up being rage later. She barges into the shack and... calls the elevator somehow? Literally never shows us. But, she's down there, so movie continues! The base looks empty in the "zombies got us" way. Wow, that's a lot of bloody handprints. I'm imagining Isaacs going around making them. "Yes, this will make a GRAND entrance when Alice finds me! She'll be so scared! I can't wait to see her face! *evil laugh*!"
The new Red Queen (White Queen) tells her what's going on with Isaacs and how Alice is the only cure for the world. The only thing stopping them is Isaacs himself. So Alice goes in, expecting a fight for the world! After passing some of Isaacs' art pieces, Alice sees a clone of herself in suspended animation. After Isaacs attacks, the clone is released and in shock. Alice covers her like she's dead though. So is she dead, or....? Alice follows the blood trail to the beginning of the Clone Killer Course. Clone Alice helps in the fight though! She turned on the laser grid to kill him, but spare Real Alice! Yay for girls working together! I think? It was a short fight, either way.
In Japan, we see Wesker and his council talking about continuing productions. Alice crashes the party, telling them to fuck off. We then see a possible ARMY of Alice Clones about to awake! The End! This movie is much better than the second one! It has long sweeping shots, breathing room for the story, and better action scenes. Granted this movie isn't perfect, and still inferior to the first, but still has merits! 5/10, worthy of the popcorn popped for it.
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ANA: We're starting tonight's Resident Evil movie early because of Reasons! Kissmate always does clever things like look up the director and I didn't even realize each movie had a different director, so that's fun information for me.
Ah! I forgot that we start out with the "is it a dream / is it a memory / oh, it's a cloning experiment!" opening in Extinction. It's so wildly surreal because, I mean, HALLWAY GUILLOTINE. And blood-memories. Kissmate observes "that's a lot of red dresses and black boots they have to buy" for the clone graveyard and I crack up and start losing my shit because he's NOT WRONG but I don't think I ever considered that.
The aesthetic in this movie is so good. The deserty wasteland in which the T virus has killed everything (including the animals) and fucked up the world ecology is just *chef's kiss* very Zombies vs. Mad Max. Alice's bike and duster jacket and, like, everything else is such a good choice, too. I don't like her hair, though. Then again, she's presumably been cutting it herself so maybe that was the point.
Kissmate has been wondering why I keep saying RESIDENT EVIL has all the desert cannibal biker gangs that AFTERLAND lacks, which is one reason why we started early today.
Me: "See? Cannibal biker gang!"
Kissmate: "You did promise, yes."
[TW: Rape Threat] I do love that Alice does not get raped after the initial threat; they're so freaked out by her kicking her attacker to death that they just throw her into the dog pit without further dithering.
Alice's murder thighs are a thing of beauty and we should all be honored to die in that way when our time comes. (Kidding!) (But oh my god, her thiiiiighs.) Ah, and then the Biblical proverb comes to fruition: he who lives by the murder-zombie dog, will die by the murder-zombie-dog. I think that's very true and meaningful, even today in these modern times.
Props to Umbrella Corp. for building a zillion underground bases all over the world. They're like WE DO ONE THING WELL, and it's not a sensible thing but they're gonna do it regardless. I do like that Isaacs is trying to train the zombies to be a "docile workforce" because it's one of those things that's both sensible and 100% something I would expect an evil corporation to do. It reflects how they previously viewed their human workforce, really.
Kissmate has so many questions about why the T virus has fucked up the ecology and I'm just like *waves hands* aesthetic? The forests being gone is probably a function of the animals all getting the virus and not spreading seeds with their shit anymore. The water all drying up.... Man, I have no idea. Did anyone ever sit down and science out where the water went? Underground reservoirs? New polar ice caps to replace the old ones?
I hate that LJ gets bit. I hate that he doesn't tell the others. He would TELL THEM. I think they're trying to make it so that he doesn't want to bum them out and stamp all over their dwindling hope, but he would tell CLAIRE at least and I hate it. The Alice dream sequence where she blows up her own bike by accident is just such a mood, lolsob. Whomst among us hasn't had those days?
I love K-Mart's character so much. She's so trans-coded to me and I just. She never liked her old name and the apocalypse seemed like time for a change. *heart explodes* We are now having a spirited discussion over whether Apocalypse or Extinction is better. The words "but the blue tube top!" have been uttered with increasing and repeated urgency.
God, the scene in which we lose Olivera is just so emotional. I loved him. We all loved him. He deserved so much better. Therein follows a lively discussion about how Alice got the elevator to work for her. She *was* head of security and Umbrella is probably very lax about changing their codes. Nothing ELSE they make is secure!
I love the Red Queen and White Queen so much. I love that they (presumably) only exist because they were originally trying to do an Alice in Wonderland theme that they abandoned early on in the first movie. I love how Isaacs continues the final movie boss battle that we saw in Apocalypse with Nemesis, and arguably with the first movie and the licker on the train. THE ALICE ARMY!
Oh my god, I completely forgot they set the credits to WHITE RABBIT. Nice callback to the Alice in Wonderland thing, well played, otherwise incomprehensible to people who don't know that little piece of trivia.
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