Topic: Having compared the movies to the games...

[Lumi Kløvstad]

I can honestly say I enjoy the Resident Evil films more than the games.

The reason is tone.

The games are overly serious, and while it worked for a while, eventually, you effectively serious yourself out of steam. The games also have a very inconsistent sense of identity-- this one is horror, this one's a shooter, etc.
 
The movies are just halfway serious, often going hilariously over the top in a very Sharknadopus vs CyberConda sort of way.  They can't get lost in their own plot because they just barely had one to begin with. They are completely troperiffic, and always know what they want to be: a simple fun summer flick that doesn't make you think too hard.
Oh, and Milla Jovovich.

Purists may hate them, but I bloody love these movies.
I also love Sharknado, and there IS a connection there.

[piscesdreams]

The first 3 movies are decent and I enjoy them. After that the Alice story arc just got way too ridiculous for me. Plus I always feel like Milla Jovovich is trying too hard to be a badass and it comes off as awkward. And I get tired of directors with wives in their movies. I'm not knocking your opinion, as I can totally understand your point. Fwiw, Apocalypse and Extinction were actually pretty badass movies. I really dig the vibe in Extinction especially.

I must be on my man period, I don't know how I feel! Chocolate!!!

[Claimh Solais]

I thought the first two movies were good. The first one was actually a good film on its own, let alone video game movie. Aside from a few of the plot choices in Apocalypse, I liked that one, too. But after that, I thought that all of them got worse and worse. During Extinction, I stopped caring that they had Resident Evil in the title since I knew that it was pretty much just using that title to sell now.

But holy crap, Afterlife and Retribution weren't just bad video game movies or bad Resident Evil movies, they were bad movies overall. Retribution was the most painful movie I've ever watched, and it makes me a little annoyed to hear that Anderson is making another one.

Granted, though, if someone likes the movies, it's the same with all other movies I don't like. More power to you, to each their own. I didn't like them, but that doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't.

Now for anyone who cares, I'll explain why I don't like them, so I don't seem like a guy who's saying he doesn't like them just to jump on the bandwagon.

(click to show/hide)

The movies portray the characters from the video games completely differently, to the point where some of them are just that character in name only. Carlos resembles RE3's Carlos in no way, but his last name is spelled differently ("Olivera" instead of "Oliveira") so I'm just using that as an excuse to say he's a completely different character. But Nicholai was a good guy who sacrificed himself to save Jill, which is the complete opposite of his character in the games. Chris resembles the original Chris in no way shape or form, but at least he was cool in the movie.

Then there's how the video game characters are treated in the later films. At this point, they're not even trying to make anything fit in the world anymore. Barry in the fourth film is wearing his RE1 outfit, which looks completely out of place in the world that they set up. It's bright and colorful and just looks plain dumb in live-action. Wesker is needlessly over-the-top and won't stay dead no matter what, though I do give Shawn Roberts props for doing live-action Wesker better than anyone I've ever seen do it. Ada's outfit in Retribution is straight out of RE4, and it's just as impractical here. Not to mention Sally Cahill's voice on top of Li Bingbing's face just seemed wrong on so many levels, since it literally did not sound like it was coming from her mouth.

At least they handled Jill well. And Leon (mostly), too. They nailed Jill in Apocalypse, but then they went and screwed her up in the later films when they tried too hard to make her evil. Leon was probably one of the better characters of the later films, aside from his forced attraction to Ada at the end of the fifth film.

On the flip-side, the movie series' original characters are really good, and fit in perfectly. I may not like Alice in the later films, but she was actually a worthwhile protagonist in the first three movies. But then with the fourth she was just kinda one-dimensional. Luther and CJ, in particular, are two characters I really liked, and the whole story between Spence and Alice in the first movie was actually quite intriguing. Spence in particular was actually a really cool villain(?).

Two other characters from the first film I liked are Rain and Kaplan. The former in particular was really cool, though I think them bringing her back in the last film was kinda stupid.

Like I said previously, the story and mystery between Alice and Spence in the first movie was actually cool. The writing in that movie was well-done, and I legitimately enjoyed the film. The second movie, while not as well written, was still a pretty enjoyable film, aside from me not liking the final fight between Alice and Nemesis. The third movie is where the story started becoming bleh, but I outright hated the writing in the fourth and fifth.

So yeah. I'm not a big fan of the movies, and overall, I don't really like the series. But there were some good things that they did and I do give them credit for that.