STACK #206 Dec 2021

CINEMA FEATURE

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FUN FACTS • Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City ’s release coincides with the 25th anniversary of the original Resident Evil video game. • James Wan was set to produce the Resident Evil reboot but left the project in 2018 to work on Mortal Kombat (2021). • Ali Larter played Claire Redfield in Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016). • Hannah John-Kamen stars as Jill Valentine in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City , the character played by Sienna Guillory in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) and Resident Evil: Retribution (2012).

Raccoon City . “I learned practically

everything on this movie. We had an amazing armourer who taught me how to handle all the weapons, which is such an important part of the games and also an important part of her, especially Claire’s iconic shotgun. I wanted to make sure I looked really natural, moving around with it and also so I could just physically hold it for 12 hours a day for three months.” Admittedly, she is not as fearless in real life as her character. “I’m quite a nervous and jumpy

Returning to the origins of the massively popular Resident Evil franchise, filmmaker Johannes Roberts today reintroduces the universe for a whole new generation of fans in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City . Words Gill Pringle EVIL BEGINS

person, so I don’t do well in the cinema with horror movies. I got kicked out of watching The Village because I screamed so loudly and I was removed from the cinema – and it wasn’t even that scary. So I personally wouldn’t do very well in a zombie apocalypse.”

F irst adapted for the screen by writer- director Paul W.S. Anderson in 2002, Resident Evil was a massive box office hit. Starring Milla Jovovich, the film spawned five sequels before the franchise was laid to rest with 2016’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter . While the series featured several characters from the game, the six films were always very loose adaptations. Picking up the reins for a fresh take on the franchise, writer-director Johannes Roberts ( 47 Meters Down ) recalls the landmark Resident Evil video game, declaring, “25 years ago, I walked the dread-filled corridors of the Spencer mansion, then experienced the rain-soaked night surrounding the Raccoon police station.” With his new film, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City , he draws on that early passion. “I come from that generation of the first PlayStation gamers who grew up with the game. I’ve always been a horror freak, so watching other people play it, almost like a movie, was a big part of my student years; the specific sounds the zombies made are indelibly seared onto my soul. “Over the last ten years I’ve become a big gamer, obsessed with Resident Evil. The remake of the second game became a major turning point for me in just how cinematic these games have become.” Understanding that nobody could replace Jovovich’s iconic character of Alice, Constantin Film co-president Robert Kulzer saw a way to reboot the franchise by revisiting the game’s roots.

“The idea was to look at the mythology of the games and go deeper into the events of what happened in them,” he says. “We’d never really done a deep dive into what happened in Raccoon City in 1998, and why the Umbrella Corporation picked it as the place to do these experiments.” All the main characters of the early Resident Evil games would come together at this pivotal moment in Raccoon’s history, as Umbrella plans to level Raccoon City to cover up its sinister deeds. This new spin would rule out the daunting prospect of replacing Jovovich, although the filmmakers wished to repeat magic by introducing a new heroine, casting Kaya Scodelario as the kick-ass protagonist, Claire Redfield. Having played as Teresa in the Maze Runner trilogy, Scodelario had already proven her action chops, and she tells STACK she would never even pretend to emulate Jovovich’s original role. “She’s definitely inspirational, especially when you take into account the amount of times she’s played that character and how she managed to keep physically in shape enough to film those movies – and have a family. “I watched the Resident Evil movies as a teenager,” she continues. “I loved them because they were so of their time with the soundtrack and the colours and the costumes. Everything was very millennium and futuristic and cool.” Despite her action pedigree, she had rarely held a gun before Resident Evil: Welcome to

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City opens in cinemas Dec 9

26 DECEMBER 2021

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