Stoopid, yes, but tough as nails

I've never played the Resident Evil video games (I outgrew video games before the '80s were over), so I judge the movies only as action/adventure films.

I also don't know if what happens in the time jump between the second and third films is covered by any of the game series. But it's weird as an interested viewer and, I suppose, fan of the first two, to have the resolution of the cliffhanger ending of the second blow past you.

It may not have been the most creative of setups--omigod, what have they done to poor Alice?--but it deserved more payoff than a couple lines of dialogue.

Still...after three movies (and the budget seems to have gone down with each)--I sorta can't believe I'm saying this--I was surprisingly impressed with Resident Evil: Extinction. I'm actually looking forward to the fourth, if there is one.

To me, this series is part of a genre that I call "stoopid." Not stupid, "stoopid." It's a fine line. Die Hard 2 is "stoopid." Hard to Kill with Steven Seagal is stupid (don't get me started). The Warriors is ...no, actually The Warriors is better than stoopid. But you get the idea.

A "stoopid" movie isn't going to make you think too hard (if at all), but it isn't going to rub your face in how idiotic it is, and it's going to give you, as they say, "bang for your buck."

A stupid movie just wants to shit in your mouth and tell you it's ice cream.

The RE franchise reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean in a way, and not just because I liked the third one best. In fact in some ways I like the RE series better than Pirates because it has fewer pretensions of "weight." The Pirates movies are awfully heavy for films based on a theme park ride.

But what the series most have in common is that they both center on model-pretty stars: Milla Jovovich and Johnny Depp, respectively, and both depend on those stars to save the films from being utterly average.

I'm aware many--perhaps most--would feel the RE series hasn't escaped that fate. And I'd question my judgment on this--like, maybe the antidepressants have fucked with my critical faculties? But until I start taking MST3K'd movies like Manos seriously, I think I'm safe.

You might also suggest that I'd watch Milla Jovovich doing just about anything. Yes, a lot of it's about Milla for me--She may be higher than Towlie when she chooses most of her film projects, but the camera loves her.

Still, it takes more than just having such a beautiful girl playing a powerfully tough chick to make a film a pleasure for me. You ever see Ultraviolet?

Or in this movie, Ali Larter just can't compete, despite being a lovely woman in her own right.




She's basically a faded copy of Linda Hamilton in T2 here.

See?

To win my affection, it probably also doesn't hurt that the director was Russell Mulcahy, he of the Buggles, Duran Duran, Elton John and Ultravox videos.

But I think this is actually the first big-screen film of his I ever saw (and I didn't even see it on a big screen). No, not even Highlander. As the '80s videomeisters turned directors go, Julien Temple has a higher place on my honor roll.

So, if it isn't me being drugged, and it isn't the fact that I get off on Jovovich (well...it isn't just that), and it isn't the director, what do I like about these films?

Good god, could it be the story and the characters, specifically Alice? Why yes, yes I think it is. I just know that if I ever do become famous in my own right somebody is going to dig up this post to discredit me.


So I might as well run at the wall headfirst and say without apology that there is a loosely pro-feminist vibe to the whole series (the image above is from the first sequel) as I see it.

It is, literally, about a woman who has control of her body forcibly taken away from her by men who are always pawing at her. Men who claim to be fighting for the future of life but have no problem dealing out death, and who control, seemingly, everything.

The whole series starts with the woman saying "no," to those men, and meaning it. In the end her mind is too strong for them; she reclaims her control.


Then she gets angry.


She helps other women leaders and workers to escape, then with her "sisters" (if you see the movie, you'll understand the quote marks) decides to take the fight to the men.


One man stands above her and roars "I am the future!"

And she replies: "No. You're just another asshole."

Now, I'm not kidding myself that this series will be/should be viewed in Women's Studies classes or anything, though stranger things have happened. Heck, for all I know, maybe they already are.

It does have a saving grace that some other "feminism championing" shows do not, however.

You probably don't need me to tell you what I'm thinking of...but it's a show Ashanti also guest-starred in, come to think of it.

That saving grace is, there's no big, strapping man riding in to save a "woman in peril," who is allowed to be tough--but not too tough. Alice is tough as nails.


She’s also not without heart, but the filmmakers don't seem to have felt they needed to weaken her to show it.