{"id":3551,"date":"2007-12-25T16:49:50","date_gmt":"2007-12-25T21:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2007-12-25T16:49:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-25T21:49:50","slug":"resident-evil-extinction-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/25\/resident-evil-extinction-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019ve come to grips with the fact that we may never be able to have an almost accurate and horrifying zombie film stemming from \u201cResident Evil,\u201d but perhaps someday someone will reboot the franchise and actually create some great zombie flicks. In case you didn\u2019t know it, \u201cExtinction\u201d recaps the entire three films, including the story of Umbrella ad nauseum, and yes, there\u2019s nothing like a warmed over sense of tension and suspense. From the first five minutes, it\u2019s pretty obvious this has no idea what it wants to be, but truly, it\u2019s just another episode in an ongoing franchise, regardless of the pretense it sets up that it\u2019s the final film in the series. It\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtinction\u201d takes off from the horrible \u201cApocalypse\u201d and the mediocre first film developing itself in the vein of \u201cMad Max\u201d meets \u201cHouse of the Dead.\u201d And that\u2019s not a good combination by any means. \u201cExtinction\u201d is barely a horror film, at all. It\u2019s another cheesy take off of Ripley from \u201cAliens\u201d with Jovovich filling in for Weaver as the uber-heroine in a world that looks like \u201cDay of the Dead\u201d lite. \u201cExtinction\u201d doesn\u2019t stop borrowing from better movies, oh no. Why stop where Paul WS Anderson started? Yes, there\u2019s even a Sarlacc Pit scene with Alice being dropped into a pit by a bunch of goons who watch her fight zombie dogs for their amusement. Most offensive is that the writers are purporting to subconsciously suggest this is their \u201cReturn of the Jedi\u201d of the trilogy. Don\u2019t get ahead of yourselves.<\/p>\n

This is not even \u201cThe Phantom Menace.\u201d But of course the Umbrella corporation hopes to find a way to domesticate the zombies (Day of the Dead) even drawing many conclusions about the walking dead that many fans have known for decades since Romero laid down the groundwork, and in spite of the apocalyptic setting, we\u2019re still able to view a meeting of the Umbrella council in suits, well made up attire, and shaded offices, to boot. Which also goes to say that they also resemble eighties pop stars, always wearing shades in the darkness of the offices for no apparent reason. Mulcahey\u2019s installment has a lot of things going for it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s visually appealing, has some great ideas, and broadly touches on some potentially interesting characters, but it just cashes all of it in in exchange for more fluff and mediocre horror mayhem. In its essence it\u2019s really nothing but an action adventure with some zombies thrown in to please the fan base, and \u201cExtinction\u201d tries vainly to pretend otherwise. But when we\u2019re exposed to nothing but terrible shorthand dialogue, awful performances (I\u2019m looking at you Ali Larter), and ideas that are approached and suddenly forgotten, you never get the sense that you\u2019re watching a horror movie at all, let alone a \u201cResident Evil\u201d movie. Characters are killed off, sub-plots are shortly developed and then suddenly extinguished, and every scene feels like a pastiche of concepts and nothing more.<\/p>\n

Milla Jovovich is the exact same person we saw in \u201cUltraviolet\u201d and \u201cFifth Dimension,\u201d a mumbling, brooding, and smooth warrior who has a vendetta and will not stop, all the while the writers add abilities to her whenever it\u2019s convenient making her a walking dues ex machina. First she\u2019s Ripley, then she\u2019s Sheena, then she\u2019s Jean Grey, and then The Terminator. She can jump high ledges, flip, spin, knows how to handle every weapon she gets a hold of, and also can operate machinery she has no prior knowledge of all the while failing to answer one question I\u2019ve been wondering. Is she just a clone of a clone of a clone of a clone, or a clone of an actual woman?<\/p>\n

If so what happened to her? It\u2019s all really just one big drab affair that I was able to endure, but would never watch again. Try as they might to deny it, \u201cExtinction\u201d is just another installment or episode, if you will, in a franchise that really was meant for better things. Uber-Ripley has a trillion powers, Jovovich treads over the same material, Ali Larter abuses with her horrible performance, the horror genre is further pushed away from the franchise, and though the visuals rock, the third film is basically a warmed over \u201cMad Max\u201d clone that rips from as many movies as possible, and fails to even do that right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve come to grips with the fact that we may never be able to have an almost accurate and horrifying zombie film stemming from \u201cResident Evil,\u201d but perhaps someday someone will reboot the franchise and actually create some great zombie flicks. In case you didn\u2019t know it, \u201cExtinction\u201d recaps the entire three films, including the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,71,104,813,906,922,1087,1219,1221],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-apocalypse","tag-r","tag-science-fiction","tag-sequel","tag-thriller","tag-zombie-apocalypse","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}