A Bulleted List Review of “Welcome to Raccoon City”

• I enjoyed how most of the main and supporting cast were handled: like Claire, Chris, Jill, Wesker, Chief Irons, Lisa Trevor, Richard Aiken, and William Birkin. I thought these characters were likable and enjoyed their story arcs despite some (or many) changes to the games’ lore.

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by Miguel Discart & Kiri Karma is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

• There were many original scenes that I loved. A climactic scene with Wesker, Birkin, and the latter’s family was my absolute favorite. I also like how the movie interpreted the relationships among the S.T.A.R.S. members
• Claire, in particular, was given an excellent original backstory. I like how Claire’s and Chris’ backstories tied into the Raccoon City Orphanage and the lives of other characters, like Lisa Trevor and William Birkin
• Speaking of the Raccoon City Orphanage… I loved that so many locations from the first two games were included in the film. Naturally, we saw the NEST, the Spencer Mansion, and the Raccoon Police Department. Within these locations, we saw other important rooms, including the Spencer Mansion’s piano room and the police department’s S.T.A.R.S. office, parking lot, and jail
• Although I wish the movie had more closely followed its source material, when it did, it usually got things right. For instance, when Chris and Richard encountered their first zombie(s), the action and eerie atmosphere of the Spencer Mansion felt very true to the games
• Even when the movie didn’t follow its source material, it contained tons of Easter eggs!

• I was glad that Ada had at least made a cameo appearance. Still, I strongly disliked that Barry, Carlos, Rebecca, Nemesis, Tyrant, and many other characters and monsters were missing from the plot (especially considering that this universe might have been expanded if box office sales had been better)
• I also didn’t like that the absence of some characters and monsters detracted from the storylines of others. Because Ada, Barry, and Nemesis were mostly or entirely missing (for example), characters like Leon, Jill, Ben Bertolucci, and Brad Vickers were greatly affected. I felt that the movie only sometimes successfully worked around this
• Avan Jogia did well with what he was given, but I thought that Leon’s character was mishandled as overly clumsy and prone to accidents. Furthermore, Annette and Sherry Birkin’s stories were significantly changed, and both their characters were given very little screen time
• Characters like Leon, Ben Bertolucci, and Chief Irons all fell victim to the “too stupid to live” horror trope of making obviously bad decisions (though not all of these characters necessarily died from their decisions). I think the movie itself played too much into this trope, because even intelligent and capable characters seemed to struggle too much with their decisions at times
• The battle in the train car toward the end of the film seemed anticlimactic because it didn’t last long
• I understand that there might have been budget constraints and that these may have been impossible to work around; with this in mind, however, I thought the CGI and SFX make-up looked subpar when compared to other major motion pictures

My last thought is that I can’t help but think that the writers tried to cram the storylines of too many games (or the wrong games) into one movie. By adapting Resident Evil 1 and 2 into a single film, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (which takes place at the same time as Resident Evil 2 in the video games) was completely left out.

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