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In an interview with ComicBook while promoting the new film Psycho Killer (out in theaters today), producer Roy Lee, who is working with Cregger on Resident Evil, shed light on what fans can expect from the new movie. “What Zach wants to do is just have the audience get the experience of what he felt playing the games, because he loves the games, and he says there’s a specific feeling you get when you’re about to enter a certain area, and you have limited resources and you don’t want to enter, but you know you have to,” he said. “He’s like that feeling is what he wants people to have when they see the movie.”
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Could Be One of the Best Video Game Movies
It’s been known for a while that Cregger’s Resident Evil movie is telling its own original story as opposed to adapting one of the games. His goal is to find a way to capture the spirit of the games while taking fans on a new ride, which is likely for the best. Video game adaptations can run into trouble when they try to translate a game’s exact story to a different medium. The narrative can come across as truncated due to run time constraints, and there’s a chance it won’t be nearly as effective because the interactive component has been cut out. One of the reasons why certain video game titles resonate strongly with players is the fact that they feel as if they’re right in the middle of the story, which is something borderline impossible to convey in a movie or show.
The best way to combat that is to get ahead of it by telling a whole new story designed specifically for film. While the Resident Evil franchise features several iconic characters like Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine, the IP is much larger than any one figure. The games have been presented from different perspectives before (Ethan Winters is the playable protagonist of Resident Evil: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village), so it’s not as if the movie is breaking tradition by going away from the familiar faces. There’s an opportunity here to expand the franchise lore and show how the Raccoon City outbreak impacted other people.
