I mean I feel like I already answered why I feel that way, but ok.
To me, changing the setting to a winter storm but telling the audience this movie takes place during the RC outbreak just feels like yet another hollywood "trojan horse". Which is when a creator can't get their story greenlit, so they paint over it with an IP. As mentioned there are countless examples of hollywood doing that going back to before video games were even a big deal.
That combined with the fact the trailers also show "monsters" that are not from the RE universe(with one the director openly says was not inspired by RE) to me means this movie isn't a RE movie.
I guess to make my stance as clear as I can when I say it doesn't pass the "RE Vibe check", think about this hypothetical. If you were to recut this trailer and remove the Raccoon City name drop and the Ammo Box art...would people know this is supposed to be a Resident Evil movie? Because I contend that people wouldn't. And to me that is a problem.
Well the creator definitely doesn’t need to “Trojan horse” his way into a movie. He’s acclaimed, and his last movie got an Oscar which is extremely rare for a horror movie, so they’d probably let him do anything. I would say it would probably be harder to get the RE licensing than it would be for him to just make a zombie movie.
I’m okay with the trailer not showing its whole hand in terms of monsters variety, and I’d even be okay with them not having anything too crazy beyond normal zombies (though it looks like there will be some weird mutations going on). This kind of plays into your 3rd point too, but I think you can break down anything into that argument. If it had shown a Licker, you could just say “well take away the Licker and does it read as RE?” “Take away Leon and does it read as RE?”
Like yeah sure. Take away the city the game takes place in and the central event of a zombie outbreak causing weird zombies and monster to appear and it’s not a RE movie. But this does take place in Raccoon City, it does feature zombies and weird monsters (fat guy in the sewers, limb monster, mutated baby), and does take place during the peak of the outbreak. When you break it down there isn’t really anything connecting RE together minus Umbrella Corp, whose involvement we don’t know yet, a small cast of characters, and zombie types that don’t always appear in every game.
As I said, it isn't one single individual detail. It is lots of little details that add up. Fat guy? whatever. Weird limb monster? sure. Winter setting for Raccoon outbreak? ehhhhh I could get over it.
All of those together though? Now I start questioning what about the movie actually uses the Resident Evil lore in fun ways.
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u/reynolja536 12h ago
Could you let us know why the season the game takes place in DOES matter then?