‘GROUND ZERO’
Japanese developer Capcom’s blood-spattered Resident Evil had grown into a global phenomenon, however, and Anderson felt it could buck the trend.
The 52- year- old British writer- director cut himself off from the world to immerse himself in the game, emerging bleary- eyed two weeks later with an idea for a movie.
“I felt it was way ahead of the curve. It was talking about things that people weren’t paying any attention to, this idea of corporate malfeasance and the fact that your government probably wasn’t looking after your best interests,” he said.
The movie, based loosely on the first two video games follows a special ops unit as it fights a powerful, out-of-control supercomputer and hundreds of scientists who have mutated into flesh-eating creatures after a laboratory accident.
Anderson shot almost the entire movie in Berlin but was mid-air on the way to filming the final scene in Canada on Sept. 11, 2001 when two planes slammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
“When I first came to Hollywood to make Mortal Kombat back in the day, there was this rule that female-led action movies don’t work and American studios didn’t want to make them,” Anderson said.
Despite its brave casting, critics were not kind to the series — Time Out’s review of Resident Evil as a “derivative, tedious mess” wasn’t an outlier — but the first movie in particular has since grown a passionate fanbase and more generous reviews.
“There are so many movies that receive critical pannings and then become classics. It’s really nice to be in that bunch, to be honest,” said Jeremy Bolt, the producer for most of Anderson’s movies, including all six Resident Evil films.
The home entertainment release was marked Tuesday with a special screening in Hollywood of the original Resident Evil, arranged by superfan Kory Davis, who is better known as film fan and Twitter personality @ moviedude18.
“The games were really good at first and then they kind of lost their way but I feel like the movies stayed consistent,” he said.
Next up for Anderson is Monster Hunter, another Capcom video game adaptation which is actually outselling Resident Evil.
“I’m staying in my wheelhouse, not making any romantic comedies in a hurry,” he joked. —