On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 37/48 |
Kim Hollis |
Not as bad as I was fearing. Lowered expectations help. |
| 56/94 |
Shane Jenkins |
Third verse same as the first |
| 109/214 |
Max Braden |
It's no Road Warrior, but it's decent. |
The Raccoon City tragedy is the stuff of myth and legend by now. Due to the machinations of the Umbrella Corporation, the T-Virus was accidentally unleashed upon employees working in their underground laboratory, The Hive. Automatic lockdown sequences were implemented, but the designers of such safeguards could have never anticipated the type of disaster that would be faced here. The dead were re-animated, and they hungered for the flesh of the living. And some of them escaped The Hive, infecting the innocent residents of the local town. Raccoon City had morphed into Zombie Town.
A woman named Alice woke up in the middle of such surroundings. An amnesiac, she retraced the steps that led her to her current locale. What she came to realize was that she was partially responsible for the outbreak. Even worse, Alice was also made aware of the fact that she had been genetically altered. Umbrella Corporation had given her unique, super-human talents and she used them to lead a small group of people to escape The Hive. Before she could get away, however, she was tracked down by Umbrella scientists who sedated her. The next time she awoke, Alice was virtually naked and tied to a series of intravenous tubes, probes that were being used to determine the strength of her new abilities.
Those test results would never be reported. Some mysterious event occurred that caused all of the people at the new facility to die. Alice put on some trendy clothes and headed out into the unknown. Once there, she discovered that the zombie outbreak was more widespread than she could have ever imagined. While seeking answers for the developing mysteries, Alice encountered another group of would-be survivors, including the heroic S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine, as well as an Umbrella soldier named Carlos Oliveira, a cab driver named TJ, and a little girl named Angela. It turns out that Angela’s father is a key player in the unfolding events. Her father, a medical researcher, invented a procedure that could re-animate dead cells. Yes, Angela’s father accidentally invented the T-Virus.
When we last saw Alice, she had escaped the Umbrella Corporation’s forced amnesia for the third time. She ominously told a doctor, “My name is Alice…and I remember everything.” She then proceeded to wipe out the medical installation’s security team in short order. Most terrifyingly, she took out one guy monitoring the security cameras by willing him to bleed from the nose and ears. Alice’s powers had evolved into something more dangerous than ever before, and her friends Jill, TJ and Carlos showed up to prevent her from being wreaking further havoc.
This is where the third film in the Resident Evil franchise begins. The storyline takes place a few years down the road. Alice believes herself to be too much of a threat to her friends, so she has isolated herself from others. Meanwhile, TJ and Carlos are driving a heavily fortified bus - not unlike the one in the Dawn of the Dead re-make - through the Nevada desert as they try to remain two of the lucky few people who have lived through the T-Virus outbreak. Along the way, they pick up a trio of new survivors including Claire Redfield, a character quite familiar to people who have played the videogames. While Alice’s events will be a new series of events in the Resident Evil franchise, the Nevada storyline will include plot developments from Resident Evil: Code Veronica, one of the two games where Claire Redfield was the main character.
The first two Resident Evil movies have earned $231.3 million in worldwide receipts. They have filled a nice niche in the second tier action movie genre, bringing in a consistent amount of money each time while also performing well on the home video market. Resident Evil: Extinction is expected to be a similar success story for Sony’s Screen Gems arm. (David Mumpower/BOP)
|
|
|
|
