CoCage said:
And how right Mr. Kennedy is. Los illuminados are no longer a factor and have only been mentioned once in RE5. That's it.
And Vendetta.
Honestly, I'd be fine with Los Illuminados coming back. It would actually be less bonkers than the whole Neo-Umbrella stuff.
The monster design, but without the context to most of them, is barely above respect. He sure as hell does not respect Chris, Jill, Leon, Claire, Barry, or Ada (I mostly don't like her so this does not bother me as much). Alice is a bad, overpowered, God Mode Sue in later films and all the characters play second fiddle to the director's fan fic character.
Look, I get that, but it doesn't enter the realm of disrespect for me, least not in the way I'd usually use it in this context. I say this because:
-If the RE films weren't based on a pre-existing IP, Alice overshadowing the other characters would still be a problem. There's nothing wrong with a protagonist being better than those surrounding said protagonist, but as time goes on, Alice ends up making everyone around her redundant.
-I don't think there's a concious effort on Anderson's part to have Alice overshadow the game characters. Like, he wrote every one of the RE films, and taking that as a benchmark of his quality as a writer, I'm left to ask "what quality?" So if an amateur writer has an OC that overshadows the main characters, is that evidence of malice on their part, or simply a reflection of their lack of ability? I mean, I've been writing fanfic since I was 7, and I understand the appeal of OCs, even though I don't use them in the way I originally did.
Like, I get the frustration, but I can't hate Anderson for it too much. In part because of what I've said, in part because he's struck me as being a genuine fan of the games, and in part because I more see the films as being a film series that shares a name with a game series rather than a bona fide adaptation of said game series. I don't have much trouble separating the two.
It's a problem when in Jill's debut film, she barely plays a factor and Nemesis was given an actual backstory as Alice's love interest in the first film. I know it was hinted at in the first film with the "Nemesis Program" line, but I wished they retconned that.
I'd hardly call Matt Alice's love interest. There's nothing to suggest a romantic connection in the films, and IIRC, nothing in the novels either. Only love interest Alice gets is Carlos.
EDIT: I still say George A. Romero's original script was the best option. He was close to the games than Paul WS Anderson wished he could be. Romero's script was literally RE1, except Chris did not work for STARS, is Native American, and he works on a farm. Other than that, it was a straight up adaption of RE1. Romero even had the zombie dogs, the Hunters, and Plant42. The only thing missing were the sharks, but that did not bother me.
I've read the Romero script. To be honest, I doubt it would have succeeded as well - least if we define success as longevity and revenue. It's certainly a more faithful adaptation, certain liberties aside (not just with Chris), but reading it, it felt...off, to me. Kind of like uncanny valley territory where it's close, but not close enough. Also it gave me the sense of it thinking it was deeper than it actually was, such as when Ada gives her moralizing speech. Romero's first RE film might have been less accurate, but to me, it was a tighter work - action-horror that was enjoyable.
I'll be honest, I don't think RE1 lends itself well to adaptation (the same can be said for a lot of games admittedly). It certainly didn't when S.D. Perry novelized it, where the novel drags as soon as it gets to the actual beginning of the game. It's slow-paced, isolated, with the majority of the plot revealed through hand-written notes. Even Romero's adaptation had to cluster the characters together and keep them moving forward.
