(Photo Credit: Sony Pictures)
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie reviews have begun pouring in, and are praising the latest movie to adapt Capcom’s iconic video game franchise.
The movie features Euphoria star Austin Abrams as a courier who winds up stranded in a town where he must fight for his survival. Alongside Abrams, the movie will also star Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Johnno Wilson in the film. The new Resident Evil movie is directed by Cregger, who co-wrote the screenplay with Army of the Dead and John Wick: Chapter 4 scribe Shay Hatten.
“In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos,” reads the official synopsis.
Amidst the stellar reviews the movie is getting, it’s a good sign which shows even though fans might think they know best, they don’t always.
Resident Evil doesn’t need to be a straight-up adaptation to be successful
One of the main criticisms against Resident Evil by fans online is that, despite the movie having the game’s name and setting, it seems to be its own standalone concept of the game. Cregger has said that the game is meant to take place within the timeline of Resident Evil 2, but sort of exist in its own world, as the movie features a snowy environment that Resident Evil 2 did not.
Fans of the movie have used this, as well as the fact that Cregger’s Resident Evil won’t feature any of the characters from the games, to say the movie is simply cashing in on the name of Resident Evil, and will be bad. I hate to break it to those people, but a movie doesn’t need to do a 1:1 adaptation of a game for it to be good. For those who might know, Cregger is a self-professed major fan of the Resident Evil series.
Not only has he talked openly in the past about putting upwards of thousands of hours into the series, but has played them on streams from time to time. The director has also talked in-depth about his love of the series, and the elements he put into the movie that express that love, like many of RE’s staples that include stuff like inventory management, level exploration, and more.
On top of that, and perhaps most importantly, the world of Resident Evil is a constantly changing one. The tone of the first three games don’t match that of Resident Evil 4 at all, and Resident Evil 5 and 6 don’t match any of the previous 4. Prior to the latest entry, Resident Evil: Requiem, Resident Evil 7 and Village didn’t even feature a playable character that we had met before.
While it’s normal for fans to want movies to be a certain way, it’s clear by the reviews that Cregger made the right choices. Adapting a game in its entirety is not only hard, but often fails due to the instant comparison it draws. Instead, Cregger seems to have adapted the game’s in a way that still make sense, to deliver an incredible original story all on its own.
