Although
I vaguely remember watching the first Resident Evil movie, I was more than
happy to skip the sequel, Apocalypse. Apparently, Milla Jovovich’s Alice
character had evolved into an outright superhero with no regard for the laws of
physics, and that’s where I checked out. Who wants to see zombies get mopped up
by someone that powerful? Booooooring. But this franchise is making Sony/Screen
Gems money, and so it continues its Diddy-esque march (“I thought I told you
that we won’t stop….I thought I told that we won’t stop….uh uh uh uh”) toward
theaters with a brand new installment, Extinction, and now, a new full-size
trailer.
Interestingly
enough, it seems that I missed nothing by skipping the previous installment as
a lot of this looks like alternate takes from the original. They even copy the “Milla
runs up a wall away from demon dogs” bit. There’s some loose storyline about a
group of scientists walled up in a desert compound creating clones of her in
hopes of fighting off the zombiedom. And while that’s going on, a motley crew
of C-listers (Mike Epps, Oded Fehr, Ashanti, Ali Larter) join up with Milla to
fire and wire-fu their way through the hordes. About the only thing even remotely close
to progress or innovation here is the fact that the scavenger birds of the
desert have been feeding on the zombies and are now aerial plague carriers
themselves, which I think is an interesting wrinkle. But too much of this looks like Land of the Dead with a
fight choreographer.
Still, I
know the franchise has its fans, and I can’t completely write this off simply
because it’s directed by one Russell “Yes, I take credit for Highlander
2” Mulcahy. To get a look at the Quicktime goods for yourself, just click here. Resident Evil: Extinction
hits theaters September 21.