Return to the start
> Director Paul W.S. Anderson talks about the final instalment of the most successful video game-inspired film franchise ever
ZOMBIE action film Resident Evil: The Final Chapter picks up immediately after the events in Resident Evil: Retribution.
Alice (Milla Jovovich) is the only survivor of what was meant to be humanity’s final stand against the undead.
Now, she must return to where the nightmare began – The Hive in Raccoon City – where the Umbrella Corporation is gathering its forces for a final strike.
Paul W.S. Anderson – the writer of all six Resident Evil movies and director of four of them, beginning with the first one Resident Evil in 2002 and now the final one, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter – talks about the movie franchise in this question-andanswer transcript provided by Sony Pictures Releasing Malaysia.
What story are you telling in
“It’s a return to the start of the franchise and to Raccoon City and the Hive. Alice goes back to where it all kicked off to finish what she started, and put right the things she left undone in the first movie.”
What do you believe will make
appealing to the millions of fans you have all over the world? “I believe this last chapter is really going to dig into the mythology of the franchise and bring something new out too.
“So I think that the fans of these movies are going to get a lot out of it, and so will the gamers.”
Why will the gamers especially enjoy “Because we worked a lot to put many details from the game into the movie. Ed Thomas, our production designer, has been all over that.
“And you can see it, for instance, in the weapon that Milla is carrying, that is known as the Hydra: a triple-barrel sawed-off shotgun that is a big feature in one of the games.
“And the same can be said about some of the storylines and sets we have too.”
The truth is that no other franchise has managed to adapt a game to the big screen with the amount of success of “I think adapting games into movies is not easy and generally underrated.
“And I believe that studios look at video games and think: ‘Well, this is easy. It looks like a movie, so how difficult can it be to turn it into a film?’
“And the answer is that it is quite difficult, which is why in the end, there are so many failed adaptations.”
Aside from the game, what were your film influences? “Well, it was partly the Romero movies that the video games were based on.
“The second Resident Evil is heavily influenced by John Carpenter, and you can see a lot of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog in it too. Those were great movies and big inspirations.
“You can also see elements of The Road Warrior in the franchise, or classic postapocalyptic films like Escape from New York.
“This movie also has influences as diverse as Michael Mann’s The Keep in terms of the look of the locations.
“It’s been a fun thing to do a franchise over such a long period of time because there’s not one influence but rather a whole range of them.”
And after all these years, are you ready to say goodbye to
“Absolutely not! I’m dreading the day when we finish shooting and it’s all done and I have to go out to promote the movie.
“It’s been a huge part of my life, and I’ve really enjoyed it. So I want it to end on a high, but at the same time, I don’t want it to end.”
That means that this will also be the last time Milla plays Alice. “It’s been interesting making these last three movies, because they’ve essentially had the same crew, and everyone has commented how much Milla has grown in strength.
“At the start, she was this supermodel pretending to be a badass, and now she really is a badass!
“In some of the earlier movies, she would ask me about line readings, and I would answer: ‘You have to channel Clint Eastwood’, and we’d watch Clint Eastwood movies, or, ‘You have to channel Steve McQueen’, and we’d watch McQueen movies.
“But now she doesn’t do that any more. I feel like she’s found a truly original, badass voice that is her own.”
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter