Resident Evil at 20: Flawed video game adaptation that spawned an unlikely franchise
Resident Evil (R16, 100mins) Directed by Paul W. S.Anderson **
Big-screen adaptations of video games have had a notoriously chequered history.
From Super Mario Brothers to Street Fighter and Doom, most attempts to recreate the joy of gaming on celluloid have failed miserably.
One of the most hotly anticipated was released 20 years ago this month – a special effects-laden adaptation of one of Capcom's most popular series from the previous decade – Resident Evil.
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Our story is set in 21st-century Racoon City, home to the Umbrella Corporation, an all-powerful multi-national conglomerate which claims that nine out of 10 homes contain their products. Computer technology and healthcare is their forte, although they do dabble in a little military technology, genetic experimentation – oh, and viral weaponry.
When someone tries to steal the potentially lethal T-Virus from a maximum security research lab, things go extremely pear-shaped. The lab's super- computer Red Queen locks all 500 employees in – and it's up to a crack special-operations team to get them out. But, as one character so prophetically says, “it's a whole lot more complex than that”.
Before helming this and eventually becoming a byword for bad Hollywood action movies (thanks to such dreck as Alien Vs Predator and Pompeii), director Paul W. S. Anderson had been credited with making one of the few decent video game adaptations –
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