The reason this comes to mind is I was watching the new Resident Evil: Afterlife and I am just so disappointed by it. I loved the games, I have played damn near all them, and they were great. When you play these games you are listening close to the surroundings for a zombie that may be stalking around a corner. Your adrenaline is surging as in an attempt to save the few bullets that you have you try running past zombies in long corridors hoping they don't reach out and grab you. In the newer games, you are fighting overwhelming odds, with limited weapons and everything is moving at you very fast. Your trying to flank them, find cover, get them to bottleneck, and use anything the environment offers to quell the threat. And the whole while you are finding clues and research as to the motivations of the protagonists by going through research notes, and logs. You are discovering new hellish creatures that want to rip you shreds in notes before you face them, building suspense, making you jump at each new sound as you expect to find them around the corner.
The original story follows a team sent to a house in the woods where some disappearance have happened. You get attacked by hellish beasts and barricade yourself inside. The first game centers on the team exploring the house, getting clues as to the research the Umbrella Corporation is doing and finding a secret facility. The second game is quite similar but it is in Raccoon City, that has more or less been destroyed by the undead, while the Corporation is moving in to contain the virus. The third one has the same setting and follows a character from the first game as she tries to get out of the City with a monster chasing her. The fourth game takes you to Eastern Europe to save the president's daughter abducted by corporate hounds and the fifth is set in Africa where a bio agent has been used in a sort of Terrorist effort.
When Capcom made the games, they spent the time to do it right and even remade the games on next gen systems to make them more atmospheric, and visual better. Now the movies decided that with all that hard work from a game maker that they would use an element or two from the games, zombies, a corporation, a licker, and coble together a movie that uses a lot of slow mo in an effort to extend the run time. They ignore all the main characters of the game except by cameo only and invent a new main character (who is played by the director's wife) Alice whom is just kinda there, gets some super powers, then an army of clones and is trying to stick it to Umbrella. In doing that it ignores almost every significant story point from the whole series.
Now see I understand that when you are adapting anything you will have to sacrifice certain things to make the transition between one medium to film. Secondary characters, some character development scenes, maybe smaller arcs, but the issue I have is they are calling these movies Resident Evil, when they don't use the source material for story, for tone, for anything that make the game series a great experience. Sure they toss in a few things that make the series unique, executioner, Nemesis, licker etc.
The polar opposite of this series is a movie called Silent Hill. One of the best movies made from a video game. It's not the greatest movie in the world but it captures the story, the pacing, the creepiness and feel of the game. For that reason it is one of my favorite movies. It hits all the right beats, unlike the RE franchise. Check it out.
At one point I heard talk about them rebooting the Resident Evil franchise. I think this is a great idea, cause if they were to do it again, maybe this time they would actually try to make something that is at least similar to the game in some way more then superficial cameos and monsters. Seriously just try...
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