ivy

Star crossed lovers

Now that the trailer for Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil movie was revealed at CinemaCon (and I'm guessing that it will be widely available to the public soon)… let's talk about this movie.

I've seen a lot of very varied reactions to this project from RE fans. Excitement, genuine worry, but also, mostly, absolute and total numbness and/or annoyance. A take that I've seen more than once is "Why the fuck should we care? We already have a plethora of terrible RE movies. This is gonna be no different than the others."

And, I mean… they're not wrong. We have a broadly terrible saga of SIX RE movies by Paul W.S. Anderson (I've only seen the first one, but that was enough), and an attempt to restore the public's faith in RE movies with Johannes Roberts' Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City movie in 2021. That last one, while rife with Easter eggs and the right to boast of the best Chris Redfield casting choice that I've ever seen (I'm not kidding. If there's one salvageable thing in this movie, it's Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield), is still pretty bad. For SOME reason, that movie tried to kill two birds with one stone and mixed the plot lines of both RE1 and RE2 together. Of course, to anyone who's a fan of the games, that choice makes no sense, and the movie just ended up not working out and being a commercial failure.

After a grand total of seven failed attempts to make RE into a movie, a few months ago, the news broke: we're getting an 8th attempt at an RE movie. At this point, everyone's disillusioned and no one actually believes that we can get a good RE movie. Somehow, RE is the hardest story in the world to adapt into a film, when it REALLY isn't.

Things got interesting, however, when it was reported that Zach Cregger was directing it. If you're not familiar with Zach Cregger, he's most known for Barbarian (2022) and, more recently, Weapons (2025). They're both horror movies. Better yet, Amy Madigan, who plays the main antagonist in Weapons, just won the Academy Award and the Actor Award for Best Supporting Actress, and was also nominated for a Golden Globe.

It's no small feat. Horror movies are not very often nominated at the Oscars - and they win even less. In the history of the Oscars, only 6 (!!!) horror movies have been nominated for Best Picture, and only one has won that title (The Silence of the Lambs). If we turn to recent years, the fate of horror movies during award season seems to be improving, but they remain underrepresented. Out of Jordan Peele's horror trilogy (Get Out, Us, and Nope), only one was nominated at the Oscars and won an award for Best Original Screenplay. Despite critical acclaim, neither Hereditary nor Midsommar were nominated at the Oscars (but the Academy had the gall to use Midsommar-inspired costumes for the opening ceremony in 2020). None of Robert Eggers' four horror movies (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman, and Nosferatu) have won anything at the Academy Awards, though The Lighthouse was nominated for Best Cinematography and Nosferatu was (thankfully) nominated a grand total of four times. 

A horror movie winning at the Oscars, even if it's one of its actors and it's not for Best Picture or Best Director, is not negligible. It's a pretty damn great achievement for the genre. I've also seen both of Cregger's movies. They're pretty good. They're not my favourite of the genre, but I had a good time and I found Barbarian genuinely disturbing (I even wonder if Barbarian's The Mother might have inspired The Girl/Marie in Requiem). 

Things got even more interesting when it was revealed that Cregger is a big fan of the franchise and that he's played some or most of the games. The excitement dropped again when it was revealed that the movie, which is scheduled to come out in September, doesn't actually follow the storyline of one of the games and Cregger is doing his own thing set in the RE universe. And now, everyone's crying about Cregger's movie being yet another movie whose biggest link to the franchise is its title.

But if you ask me, this might be the best thing that could have ever happened to the RE cinematic universe.

It seems to me that, this whole time, directors cannot really put their finger on what makes RE great. The franchise just turned 30. There's got to be a distinct reason why people are intrigued by RE, why they keep playing, and why they keep coming back for more. There's probably even multiple reasons, given that this franchise is a sort of shapeshifter that has managed to hold its spot for so long and reinvent itself to remain relevant. There's been too many shifts in directors, dev teams, plots, characters, etc. to argue that only one singular thing makes RE great. Requiem is the very proof of RE's eclectic nature, as a franchise, in an attempt to reconcile both the horror-heavy (RE1, 2, 3 (ish?), 7, 8) and the more action-heavy aspects (RE4, 5, 6 (arguably, but I think everyone would rather bury that game instead and not take it into account) of the franchise. At this point, Resident Evil means different things to different people.

But when you make ONE RE movie, you can't possibly tackle all of the things that solidified the franchise into a monument of horror. You've got to pick a few and stick to those. At the same time, you're bound by budgetary and cinematic constraints. And your film has to be profitable. In hindsight, making an RE film might actually be really fucking hard. Though, to be fair, no one HAS to make an RE movie. But since Hollywood seems hellbent on making one, we might as well get a good one.

If you ask yourself, right now, "What do I like about Resident Evil?", chances are your answer might be different from other fans' on some level. Is it the cast of characters? Is it the main story of Umbrella and the Raccoon City outbreak, arguably the most iconic plot point of the series? Is it the gameplay, in which case you'll never really be satisfied by an RE movie? Is it the corny action sequences? Or is it, perhaps, that feeling of dread before you turn around a corner, knowing that you might not be able to face what's in front of you and get out of here alive? Is it the slight panic in your chest when you open your inventory, only to see that you've only got one or two bullets left, and perhaps a horde of zombies ahead? This specific feeling has been used in RE's marketing before:

Adapting the gameplay into a movie is tough. Filmmaking and video game dev are fundamentally different. I don't even have to explain why. They're two different media: one requires interaction, the other doesn't. You also have more tools to achieve, perhaps, a desired effect in video game dev, depending on coding, whereas a director has to convey that feeling simply through a set sequence of images on a screen. What works in video games is rarely well-translated into a movie.

As much as I love the characters and the story, the games exist for a reason. If I want to delve into Leon's story, I'll play Leon's games. If I want to see more of Claire, I'll play Claire's games. If I want first-person gameplay and Ethan Winters (I don't - but I know that it matters to some, and to them, that's what RE primarily represents), I'll play 7 and 8. I especially never want to see an RE4 adaptation. It wouldn't work out. It wouldn't translate well into a movie. The games exist for a reason, and nowadays, even if you can't play them yourself (you should), you can watch them.

Corny action sequences are fun, but RE goes beyond that. You can do mindless action, and it still won't be RE on its own. 

RE is a blend of all of these things, and more. But what should you do when you have a limited runtime and tools at your disposal? You take the flagships of the franchise, without bastardizing them, and you especially try to recreate its atmosphere. You recreate the reason why players flock to RE in the first place. You try to give them that same experience, without replacing the games and what they do in their own right.

And, so far - notwithstanding the fact that the new RE movie is seemingly doing very well with test audiences - that's what Cregger seems to be going for. All signs are pointing to the very singular feeling of dread and panic when you're overwhelmed by outlandish creatures - that somehow still appeal to your humanity, at first - who could bring about your most painful, agonising death. It's this feeling of anguish, of genuinely doubting whether you should go down that road or that corridor, but having to do it anyway if you ever want to make it out, that stands out the most to me as a first step to making a successful RE movie.

I'm also confident in his choice to cast Austin Abrams. He's genuinely talented, and his role in Weapons is likely foreshadowing what he's going to be able to do with this RE movie.

• Nakanishi says that he feels an incredible sense of relief that people thought the game was good at all (lmao), and he's gobsmacked by RE9 getting the second-highest user score on Metacritic ever.

• Both Nakanishi and Kumazawa attribute the success of the game -- at least partially -- to its multiplatform approach. Nakanishi was apparently skeptical about bringing the game to Switch 2 (he says he was shocked at how well it sold/was received), but Kumazawa specifically pushed for it because he wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted to play the game could play the game.

• RE, as a series, is growing proportionally in the global market -- that is to say, it's not suddenly taking off in one specific country/region. So, even though more copies are being sold, the regional composition of the playerbase in terms of ratios/percentages hasn't really changed much.

• A whopping 90% of RE9 playthroughs are done with people playing in third person for Leon's campaign. Grace's campaign is more evenly split; 60% of playthroughs see Grace in first person, and 40% see her campaign in third person. People in the JP region tend to play in third person at a rate much higher than other parts of the world. PC players in general tend to play in first person at a higher rate than console users.

• Nakanishi says -- and I'm paraphrasing this, ok, just to be clear -- that RE9's story sacrificed plot coherence in favor of emotional impact. He says that many different scenes/plot beats were scrapped and rewritten/rebuilt if the dev team felt that they could come up with a version that hit harder emotionally. Their goal was to constantly subvert player expectations and pull the rug out from under them. He also goes on to say that an entire chapter of RE9 was cut prior to release because he thought it would be too alienating for a new RE player, because it relied too heavily on references to past games.

• Nakanishi says that if he were ever to design a crazy puzzle like The Last Puzzle again, he would craft it in such a way that someone wouldn't be able to just "accidentally" stumble upon the solution (like in the case with the guy who left the game running while he got up to take a shit and, just by chance, happened to allow enough bodies to fall into the processing pool in order to spawn Marie's doll).

• APPARENTLY, if you aim while crouching as Leon, the target reticle closes faster for a more accurate shot/better chance at a critical hit. And if you aim from behind cover (as Leon), it closes even faster than it does while in a crouch. Nakanishi says that there were no combat tips/tutorials put into the game on purpose because he thinks that the user experience is improved by players discovering these mechanics for themselves. (I, personally, disagree, but whatever no one asked me.)

• Nakanishi and Kumazawa say that they do take player feedback into consideration from YouTube and gaming streams, specifically (not social media); they want to hear from people who they can confirm are actually playing the game. Kumazawa makes a cheeky comment about how modern YouTubers/streamers are nicer than posters on 2chan and NeoGAF used to be. (TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: He doesn't name those two message boards specifically, he just vaguely mentions "those" old message boards, with the identities implied for anyone who's old like me and remembers them)

• Nakanishi confirms that the ability of the IV zombie to kill Chunk was placed in the game by the devs intentionally. He also says that, at one point in development, they had it so that the IV zombie could actually one-shot Chunk (but they changed it because too many people on the dev team thought it was cheap).

• Nakanishi's favorite zombie type are the singers. Kumazawa says that he wishes he could've done more with the bulldozer zombie.

• Both Nakanishi and Kumazawa check people's photo mode uploads daily.

• Player response to Grace has been overwhelmingly positive (if you wanted to get super casual with Nakanishi's response, you could, in good faith, localize it as "People fucking love her.") Nakanishi says that he hopes that she becomes a recurring character in the series.

• Nakanishi says: 『バイオハザード レクイエム』では、『バイオハザード6』以前のトーンに回帰しようとする流れの中で、主人公のキャラクター性は深く掘り下げるべきだとチームと話していました。 -- which translates to: "With regards to RE9, as part of a broader shift to return to the tone/feeling of the series prior to RE6, I held discussions with the team wherein we agreed that we ought to dive deeper into the protagonists' characterizations." -- Nakanishi is basically confirming that they made the decision, for RE9, to disregard characterizations/character developments from RE6 -- because the entire series is being developed that way (and seemingly has been for quite some time).

• Nakanishi finally states what the word/title "Requiem" means for Leon. His words in JP are: レオンにとっては置いてきてしまったものを「鎮魂する」という意味を持ちます。 -- which, when localized, comes out to something like: "For Leon, it's about mourning all that he was forced to leave behind (and a future that never came to be)." -- WHICH, I'M SORRY, I HAVE TO DO A LITTLE VICTORY LAP, BECAUSE THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT I FUCKING SAID IN MY FUCKING ANALYSIS ON PATREON

• The story DLC is still in the middle of development, but the mini game that Nakanishi promised us in his DLC announcement is in the final polishing stages. He doesn't go into any detail about what the mini game is, beyond the fact that it allows the player to go nuts with Leon's combat. It sounds like it's less like Mercenaries and closer to Raid Mode -- but it's still not quite that, either. (Bloody Palace-style maybe?) Kumazawa then goes on to confirm that it can only be unlocked after beating the main campaign.

There's also a question about Ada in here and a brief back-and-forth between the interviewer and Nakanishi about Leon's wedding band.

But I'm not going to translate that here.

Tulips (1840/1850) by Leopold von Stoll (1808 – 1889).

Watercolour and tempera on paper.

i don’t tend to be mean on here so i’m sorry in advance if this hurts your feelings but

there’s gotta be something else going on here. this debate cant just be about honest differences in interpretation. it’s not even about opinions, at this point. you guys wouldn’t be pushing these ridiculous interpretations as far as you currently are if there wasn’t something else going on here

and i’m beginning to think that some of you guys are so unhealthily attached to leon that you can’t fathom that the pixel man has an in-game partner. is this the issue? is this why you guys are being delusional about this ring? is this because you can’t marry the pixel man?

it’s a wedding ring. there’s no other reason why an american man born in 1977 would wear a ring on that finger. he’s married. nakanishi confirmed it. the words are clear. there is such a thing as far-fetched interpretations, and if you’re claiming that this ring is anything else, then you’re most likely falling in that category.

it’s not a family ring. it’s not a raccoon city memorial ring. if it were, leon and sherry would wear the same fucking ring on the same fucking finger.

BUT GUESS WHAT

THEY DON’T

because if BOTH OF THEM wore a ring on their respective ring fingers, people would think that they’re fucking married. why? because THATS WHAT A RING ON THE RING FINGER SYMBOLISES LMAO

if it were a raccoon city ring, then they’d both wear it on their pinky!! like sherry does her own ring!!

BUT THEY DON’T

BECAUSE IT’S CLEAR THAT IT’S A WEDDING RING

it shouldn’t be irking you this much to see leon kennedy married to the point where you’re desperately looking for another possible interpretation. he’s not real. he can’t marry you. this would be cute if you lot were 13, but you’re grown adults.