In defense of that one scene in the original RE1
The "Chris? Stop it." scene from the original Resident Evil has become pretty infamous but I will always and forever be of the opinion, that pretty much completely changing it in the Remake has taken away a huge portion of Wesker's characterization.
It makes the obsession Wesker has with Chris so much more believable than just "he ruined my plans".
A lot of people portray Wesker simply as a sadistic, megalomanic villain and while these traits are definitely parts of his personality, the severe trauma he had to undergo in his childhood is often neglected or treated on a very surface level. It turns into a "he had a bad childhood", without actually understanding what made the circumstances he grew up in so bad or what the consequences for him were.
What almost always will traumatize us, is the feeling of loosing control and children suffer from this more often than adults, as it is seen as acceptable to take away control and choice from them. This is a hundert times true for the children in Project W. This starts when Albert and the other Wesker children are taken away from their caretakers/parents, continues with years of experimentation and conditioning and does not end with the injection of the virus.
As someone who is a victim of IGM I can attest how traumatising medical abuse/learning that you were medically abused is. The only thing that comes close is the sexual abuse I suffered later in life. Both sexual and medical abuse give you the feeling of not being in control or not being allowed to be in control of your body. Both are heavily traumatizing, because they violate the only body we have. Both also tend to leave marks, a constant reminder of how irreversible that violation is.
So many works of horror use "human experimentation" and "experiments on children" as a trope, but never go beyond "well, their bodies get fucked up". The psychological part is often forgotten, neglected or caricaturized by turning the victims into "crazies" and "freaks".
The reason why it is so terrible especially when kids are involved is in part that it happens so early in their life and that their first memories might be of being abused. This may lead to them believing that being abused is the natural state of things.
Wesker grew up in an environment, that took control from him in any way possible and, since it might have been the only thing he knew at that point, made him feel like this loss of control and the cruelty connected to it would be inescapable, like there is no "good place" out there to escape to. Which was probably by Spencer's design. He hated the way our world is and for the children to build the utopia he imagined, they first needed to perceive the world as it was as an absolute hellscape. And they needed to believe that, should they ever want control over themselves (not even the megalomaniac goal of control over the world), they would have to take control from others with violence or manipulation.
These children were raised to feel like helplessness and being at the mercy of others was something completely natural and that there was no gentle way of gaining control back. If you want to survive, you need to be violent or manipulative. There is no other way in this world. There are no people who mean good. Only the strongest deserve to live, because they struggled the longest and hardest for control. The world is a bad place and it is not only ok to violently reshape it, it is righteous. It gives the same feeling as religious high control groups, which is fitting for someone like Wesker who seeks a science based "godhood".
So, some might say "yeah, but Wesker is shown to be violent and manipulative, why do we need that pathetic scene from the first game?"
Because it is the only one in which we get to see the pain the trauma has left. Everywhere else it is alluded to at best. We see the manipulator and his violence but we never get to see the pain and severe insecurity. In tjis scene, it is out in the open.
Wesker sounds absolutely pathetic. He is insecure. He has lost control. They could have gone a different way to express something very similar; they could have made him sound angry and could have worded it like an angry accusation. A "Chris, how dare you." They could have combined it with aggression, but they didn't.
Wesker isn't angry, he is genuinley upset. And someone who doesn't know Albert's backstory might find it pathetic that Wesker reacts that way just because Chris laughs at him and calls him just that. He already has achieved so much, he is already so powerful, why does he care?
Simply and unprofessionally put, because his trauma is triggered in that scene.
He probably expected Chris to react very differently. With fear or anger. Because these are the emotions the tyrant is supposed to invoke. But Chris laughs. Wesker loses control, again. Over how his biggest creation yet is perceived, over how he himself is seen and over the man he considered inferior to himself. This is the moment that shapes his relationship with Chris; someone he cannot control, a wildcard. Every struggle with Chris from then on becomes a struggle for control. Wesker can not *not* fight him, because Chris has, at this point become the embodiment of his trauma. They are forever connected, because Wesker is forever bound to his trauma.
And with every fight it gets worse, because in every new encounter Wesker has gained new powers, and yet he still can not beat Chris. No matter how powerful, he can't win, yet he desperately wants to, because in the end he is fighting his inner hell.
The scene in Resident Evil 1 is so pivotal because a lot of times we fear the loss of control because we fear dying as a consequence of that loss. And that is exactly what happens to Wesker. He dies. (And then the tyrant stands over him with its fat ass, but that is besides the point).
fig.1
Not only is he confronted with his fear, what is at the core of that fear actually happens. And while Chris doesn't cause his death, he makes him die traumatized and probably scared.
From then on out, we never get to see him scared again. The core of his fear is resolved. He has died already and he sees himself to powerful to die again. So there is no reason to be scared. And yet, he cannot let go of the trauma. He still yearns for absolute control.
Wesker being abused can also be seen in other things. A lot of people joke about his disinterest when Excella gets touchy with him (and I don't want people to feel bad about these jokes! This is my personal interpretation and the way the scene is directed makes it funny). He isn't into it. He doesn't push her away. He is just used to being touched without being asked.
And he calls the virus Ouroboros. A being with no end and even moreso, no beginning. Wesker wants to just exist, he, like a snake its skin (Ouroboros usually being portrayed as snake like, and reflected in the simplified scale pattern of his clothes), wants to shed his trauma. So he can allow himself to just exist, without his traumatizing childhood and without having to fear death.
For his entire life he has been chasing Ouroboros and in the end he looses controlbecause he is confrontes with Chris, and thus his trauma, and dies again.
