Lasers, skinless mutants, and an army of the undead, you say? Hm.. well, what benefits does your company offer?
Resident Evil (The Movie)
I know that many people out there will probably take objection to this opinion, but I love this movie. Undeniably, it has shortcomings all throughout its script, acting, special effects, believability.. well pretty much every where, but I don’t care. Its still damn cool.
*Warning* Spoilers
[CORPORATE INTERESTS]
Now, debatable film quality aside, I want to point out a few topics of interest that arose. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recall that it begins with a bit of narration explaining the Umbrella corporation, its economic interests, and political power. I found this story element interesting because, while I don’t think we’re quite there yet, I believe the idea of an organization of this size and power coming into existence to be a very real possibility.
Already, the world is home to numerous corporate conglomerates with resources easily surpassing those of small countries. Is it hard to imagine that someday one might wield the influence of a world superpower? It isn’t that much of a stretch.
It is certainly easy to recognize that virtually any corporation would be interested in the biological properties of an agent such as the T-Virus. War and Medicine are big business, and both hold the promise of astronomical financial profit. Regardless of the risk, research would undoubtedly be initiated.
On the upside, I think it is reasonably safe to assume that any major organization would go to great lengths to ensure containment and safety, but we all know that nothing is certain. It takes nothing more than a disgruntled employee, a system malfunction, or a brief moment of distraction, and before you know it, you’re at war with an army of the undead.
[ZOMBIE PHYSIOLOGY]
Now, an aspect of the story that I find a little far-fetched is the T-Virus’s ability to rapidly mutate living organisms into super-monsters. I know, I shouldn’t ignore any possibility, but I’m pretty comfortable with my belief that major genetic change takes many generations to evolve and emerge. I am also not certain how the story’s creators are distinguishing between someone succumbing to the T-Virus via zombie bite, and the corporation’s experiments with injecting the virus directly into living tissue. Perhaps it is supposed to be a different strain of the virus, or perhaps different species simply react differently. Regardless, those are dramatically different results.
This brings me to another questions of interest, do we need to fear infected animals? There are a wide range of opinions voiced throughout zombie film and literature, and I find myself standing somewhere in the middle. I believe that there is certainly the potential for a virus of this nature to jump species, but whether it will inherently adapt to every living creature it encounters, I’m not so sure. I have to confess that I am a little skeptical about the prospect of zombie fish (as at least one particular film exhibited), but it seems likely that at least some other species might be susceptible to the virus.
There are a number of other points that could be discussed, but I’d rather just encourage readers to check the film out for themselves. It’s far from perfect, but it’s still fun.
Read other “Resident Evil” posts:
- Free-falling marksmanship? Probably not a zombie apocalypse priority.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Use the force, Milla.
Resident Evil: Extinction
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hmm the zombie fish…..great now jaws has some healthy competition hehehe. that referance isnt from undead is it? as i still have quite a few zombie flicks to see and undead is the only one i have seen with a zombie fish in it. but that is a post for another time i suppose. anyway yea resident evil is a fairly decent film i liked the action and the reaction of the soldiers is believable i mean who wouldnt freak if someone you shot in the chest god knows how many times didnt stay the hell down. although you would think umbrella would properly brief their so called special ops team before sending them into a hellhole such as the hive. i mean in re2 apoc olivera and nicholi had a pretty clear grasp of the situation and always aimed high if you know what i mean. raine was a cool character and the science geek (forgot his name) obviously was not ready to be put into that. but still seriously who wouldnt tell the only people going in to save your sorry asses how to deal with the things down there?
Heh, I’m stoked you caught the Undead reference. I love that movie, just haven’t gotten around to writing a post about it yet
Yeah, the way they let the virus escape from the hive kind of defeated the whole purpose of even having an underground facility like that. I guess it is understandable that they would go back in at some point to investigate, and see what could be salvaged (as opposed to sealing the entrance permanently and destroying/sanitizing the facility with a low-yield nuclear explosion) , but it wasn’t very believable that Umbrella would be so careless about it.
ehh what can i say undead was a diamond in the rough in my opinon and i loved the movie becasue of it and who wouldnt want 3 shotguns mixed together thats a zombie lawnmower right there. one shot 50 million kills hehehe. but as you said a post for another time. the hive was a bad idea to start with. i know for a fact if they are working on a zombie virus in a confined underground facility i will tell them to go to hell and enjoy the view. who in their right mind willingly goes into a place like that? its a disaester waiting to happen and in the movie did. but it proabably didnt help science nerd cut the power to the doors as raine so kindly pointed out to him. now on to a more important concern in my mind ammmo conservation. you would think that a spec ops team wouldnt waste ammo like that. raine and j.d pissed lead. now lets see sepc ops team+ low ammo= chest or headshots. in resident evil it goes like this spec ops team + low ammo = fire in all directions hoping to hit something. something about that eqasion just dont add up.
Undead was definitely a work of art. It really looked like the creators were just having fun making the film, not taking themselves too seriously, and producing some top quality work all the while.
Yeah, the Hive was a death trap for sure, but I think the idea behind it has a fairly logical premise, with regards to containment. Of course containment went right out the window as soon as they cut the power (like you mentioned). You gotta wonder, what the hell was the point of having a high-tech super computer controlled facility if no one could log in remotely and ask it why it killed off all the staff?
Heh, yeah they weren’t the most convincing of special ops team. Real soldiers would have figured out after just a couple of center-of-mass shots that this enemy wasn’t dieing like it should, and moved on to head shots. They should have been able to clear out a room of slow moving zombies without breaking a sweat.