The Genre of Hidden Gems Pt. 3 The Ultimate Guilty Pleasure

This post and the next one were intended to be written for the last two weeks in March, but I got lazy and never wrote them, so here I am now playing catch up for the past two weeks the next post (which is also the last of my video game movie set) will probably be posted later tonight or tomorrow. Enjoy your double post week.
This week I have the distinct, and boundless, pleasure of discussing one of my absolute favorite movie franchises. The videogame franchise these movies were based on is not one I'm particularly familiar with (primarily because the franchise released primarily on consoles): Resident Evil. So keep in mind my opinions on this film come from someone who has never played a Resident Evil game to completion (I have played a few hours of Resident Evil 4 though). The Resident Evil movie franchise is a beautiful mishmash of all the silly, stupid, over-the-top insanity that makes these sorts of effects driven cinematic drivel fun to watch. The specific parts of this movie franchise's insanity I want to gush about for a while here are: Its downright insane, and inconsistent plot, its stupidly over-capable lead character, and just a little bit about some of the spectacular stunt work.

Starting with the plot of the franchise: the plots for each individual movie are pretty substandard, and pretty dull all things considered. They primarily deal with the lead characters trying to survive, escape, or destroy whatever it is that the Umbrella Corporation (a mega corp that does everything from pharmaceuticals to bio-weapons) is throwing at them this time. The plot of the franchise as a whole, however, is truly greater (or simply beautifully sillier) then the sum of it's parts. It's clear that each movie's plot was developed in a vacuum with little or no consideration for any of the other movies' events. The best example of this strange and silly segmentation is the status of the lead character, Project Alice's, super powers. At the end of the second movie (Apocalypse) it's revealed that due to Alice somehow bonding with the T-Virus (a bio-weapon that reanimates the dead) she gains super powers. These powers include increased healing rate, durability, strength, speed, and of course telepathy AND telekinesis. In the third movie (Extinction) she finds an army of clones of her self which, of course have those same powers. But this was not to last: within the first 10 minutes of the fourth movie (Afterlife) Albert Wesker (the owner of Umbrella Corp.) kills ALL her clones and removes the T-Virus taking away her powers. But in the very next movie (Retribution) she finds another army of clones (though these may not have the super powers), AND Wesker gives her her super powers back so they can team up and fight an evil AI from movie one. If all of that flip flopping and backtracking wasn't enough the apocalyptic status of the earth changes throughout the franchise as well: in Extinction it is shown that the T-Virus (somehow) turned the entire world to desert, but in both Afterlife, and Retribution we see areas of the earth seemingly unaffected (specifically Russia and Alaska). The reason I find these inconsistencies so amusing is because it demonstrates that the writers won't let a pesky thing like continuity ruin their fun. They can say the world is desert for a Mad Max style installment, but still have a super cool huge secret installation hidden under a glacier for their 5th movie. It's all done for the purpose of making a fun stand alone movie that doesn't have to be bogged down by the ideas of its predecessors.

Now to discuss the over capable lead character. I must admit I'm pretty biased when it comes to this topic, because I find the lead actress, Milla Jovovich, very attractive, and, being really honest here, that's probably the largest contributing factor to my enjoyment of the franchise. Anyway moving on: the lead character in the Resident Evil movie franchise is, as mentioned before, Alice. Alice was a security officer for the Umbrella Corporation, but through the events of the first movie we learn she was actually working to take it down from within. After breaking away from Umbrella she dedicates the rest of her life to bringing it down. Also as mentioned before she has superpowers, because her genetic makeup some how works with the T-Virus to make her super strong, fast, and telepathic. As if that didn't make her ridiculously over capable enough she also is the only person in the ENTIRE movie franchise who is actually allowed to do ANYTHING important. For example in Afterlife Clair Redfield is trapped in a prison shower room with a FREAKING AWESOME baddie called the Axeman and...well why don't I just show you:

Now this moment in the movie is one of the very few moments in the entire FRANCHISE where someone who isn't Alice faces off against a monster on their own, and she STILL needs Alice to finish the job for her in the end. This is of course one of MANY moments in the series where Alice steals the show, but I don't have all day to list them. There is of course a reason for Alice being the only effective character in the franchise, and i'll get to that at the end. Suffice to say that a significant portion of the franchise's enjoyment stems from watching Milla Jovovich be awesome for 2 hours at a time.

What I think really separates Resident Evil from a lot of action movies is the stunt work. I think the stunt work in the whole franchise is unappreciated, but Apocalypse is the most unappreciated of all. Because of the difficulty of finding examples on Youtube I compiled a brief montage of 3 of my favorite stunts of the film:

The cool thing about these stunts is that they are REAL those are actually the actors actually jumping out of helicopters, off buildings, and having the reaction time to dive and grab a falling objects. I really think its important for actors to, whenever possible, do their own stunts. It really adds realism to a sequence when you see THE actor or actress actually DOING the things you see on screen (with proper safety precautions of course.

All of the things I have talked about up to this point all lead to one thing about this franchise that makes it the stupid, string of insane action that makes it so endearingly entertaining. The entire franchise is kept going by Paul W.S. Anderson to show off his wife Milla Jovovich. He has written every single one of these movies with the clear focus of showing off Milla; Disregarding everything from plot to good characters to support his wife's character's badassness. this brings me back to my second point: I really don't mind this, because I like seeing Milla Jovovich be awesome for 2 hours. Sure it may be shallow, but I never said that these movies were good, just that I enjoy them, and Milla Jovovich is why.