Resident Evil series on Netflix

[jvmacross]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, my hopes are not high.

It's on Netflix, so it's not long for this world regardless... but seriously, why Resident Evil?  Zombies have been so overdone for so long that zombies have become synonymous with a lack of imagination both in TV and gaming.  Even Resident Evil has actively tried to distance itself from the zombies.  Even if you're dead set on doing Resident Evil, why continue to beat the Umbrella Corporation's undead horse via remakes and loose adaptations of the plots of 1, 2, and 3 when you could go full camp horror-comedy with an adaptation of 4 or do some actual horror via 7 and 8?

This just looks like we're remaking Afterlife.

[sqidd]

I've read a lot of industry articles on this recently. Netflix isn't going anywhere. They still own the streaming market by a huge margin. They will be re-organizing and tightening belts though. They have a very strange way of operating the business that worked until there was more streaming services (basically throw tons of money at everything). They're going to be doing things differently now.

As far as Resident Evil goes. I don't see how it could be well done. Has it every been well done really?

[tekering]

Adapting video games to live-action is about as successful as adapting anime series to live-action... 😑

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sqidd said:

I've read a lot of industry articles on this recently. Netflix isn't going anywhere.

If this was in response to my remark about it being not long for this world because it's on Netflix... what I was alluding to was Netflix's tendency to aggressively cancel shows that don't meet its viewership targets or that are only starting to see a dropoff in viewership.  Netflix isn't going anywhere, but Netflix is quick to cancel its own shows.

 

2 hours ago, sqidd said:

As far as Resident Evil goes. I don't see how it could be well done. Has it every been well done really?

In the games?  The first three games had some pretty terrible writing because, y'know, CAPCOM.  Resident Evil 4 went ironic retro-camp with it and actually did a pretty good job as a story largely unconnected to the first three.  It reversed course again for the next two games back to playing dreadful writing laser-straight.  Resident Evil 7 pivoted back towards horror and actually did a fairly excellent job of it, which 8 tried to build on but produced incredibly mixed results with some moments of genuine pants-soiling terror and an equal number of cringeworthy accidental comedy moments.  (If I could recommend any one of the games, I'd recommend 7... it's the first one of the lot that can actually be a properly scary horror game.)

The movies... ... ... exist.  That's the nicest thing I can say about them.  A lot of them, especally the first one, manage to be even worse than the games writing-wise.  They're not really Resident Evil movies so much as "based on Resident Evil" in the same way you might say "based on a true story".  Most of them did OK but not great at the box office, IIRC.  The writing wasn't really any better than CAPCOM's, and in a lot of ways was WAY worse because it couldn't settle on what genre it wanted to be and keep oscillating between a straight horror movie, a zombie action movie, a Matrix-esque VFX extravaganza, and a cringe-inducingly bad post-apocalyptic drama.  A big part of the problem was the need to keep Milla Jovovich involved, by turning her character from an action survivor into a bullet time superhuman and then a one-woman clone army, which took it increasingly in the action direction at the expense of everything else.

[sqidd]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 what I was alluding to was Netflix's tendency to aggressively cancel shows that don't meet its viewership targets or that are only starting to see a dropoff in viewership.

Sounds like a smart way to run a business. 

It can get annoying though.

[Big s]

As far as Netflix, they definitely still are the biggest of the streaming services even after the amount of recent cancelled subscriptions. The thing they need are better written shows and some recent films for the price. The films are theatre rejects and the majority of the shows are trash. They still have stranger things and a few other shows that haven’t ended, but even the existing ones like the Witcher kinda feel like they had just had a visit to the vet and are currently wearing the cone of shame. They really need some good quality ideas to justify that price hike. HBO max on the other hand has some really high quality stuff and real movies being added regularly and D + has the geeks and kids covered. Netflix needs some real winners and I don’t have my hopes too high for resident evil, but if everyone says it’s actually good, I’ll check it out

[leibek]

i like the resident evil movies ....................milla was strong and brave .but im not going to watch the resident evil series .. i dont like NETFLIX by the way..

zombies and zombies good movies....................................lol.😎

[sqidd]

9 hours ago, leibek said:

i like the resident evil movies ....................milla was strong and brave .but im not going to watch the resident evil series .. i dont like NETFLIX by the way..

zombies and zombies good movies....................................lol.😎

I'm with you. I never had an issue with the RE movies. Just good stupid fun. Shut you brain off and enjoy. I was entertained.

And yes, as played out as zombies are. I'm still all in!

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, sqidd said:

Sounds like a smart way to run a business. 

It can get annoying though.

That's a big part of why Netflix is currently reorganizing and "tightening belts".  

They've been so trigger-happy about cancelling their original shows the minute they stop drawing large numbers of new subscribers and new viewers that they've killed off a bunch of potentially-promising properties that could've remained profitable for a regular network for several more seasons and lost themselves a lot of money by cancelling those shows before they could fully recoup their initial investment.

Spoiler

Though it involves a partnership with a conventional network, Star Trek: Discovery is a fantastic example of this.  Netflix invested something like $150M in the production of the first season, and when it underperformed in the international markets they had exclusive distribution rights to it in they IMMEDIATELY decided to bail on it and ended up being threatened with a lawsuit for breach of contract from the studio who were upside-down over $250M on development of the series.  Admittedly, looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight we know they were completely right... but at the time, it would've seemed awfully premature.  Especially since Star Trek is a property known to take one to two seasons before a series really hits its stride.

 

Looking at it, I'd have to assume Resident Evil here is intended as a replacement goldfish for the recently concluded AMC series The Walking Dead.  It's questionable judgement, IMO, given Resident Evil's track record and The Walking Dead existing as an exhaustive proof of the hypothesis that postapocalyptic zombie horror is incredibly boring.  My bet is that Resident Evil is another two-season wonder from Netflix's department of "bored now, what else we got?".

[TangledThorns]

Zombies are played out and I can think of many other games that deserve their own series or movies. Oh well.

[sh9000]

 

[Tking22]

Resident Evil isn't really a "zombie" series, there's zombies in it, yes, but it's not like it's Walking Dead or a Romero of the Dead film. Zombies are just another BOW in the RE universe, most games in the series don't even feature them, so I've never considered the Jovovich series a "zombie" series, those are just bad action movies with lots of monsters. I think they switched to a rip-off Las Plagas in the third film, they were zombie-ish but opened their heads up like Las Plagas and Oroboros infected. 

I'm in, because I have Netflix and have played and enjoyed every RE game since the first game in the series, but I'm utterly confused by the timeline and continuity. This isn't a reboot series, apparently this is a sequel to the game universe continuity and timeline, but it's a non-canon sequel. So the games happened in this universe, not the newer crappy Raccoon City movie or the Jovovich movies, but the actual Capcom game timeline, but Wesker died in Resident Evil 5 in a volcano. So Wesker is alive, has children, Raccoon City is being rebuilt, people still trust or now have a renewed trust in Umbrella, and Wesker is black? 

[Big s]

On 6/7/2022 at 10:38 AM, Tking22 said:

Resident Evil isn't really a "zombie" series, there's zombies in it, yes, but it's not like it's Walking Dead or a Romero of the Dead film. Zombies are just another BOW in the RE universe, most games in the series don't even feature them, so I've never considered the Jovovich series a "zombie" series, those are just bad action movies with lots of monsters. I think they switched to a rip-off Las Plagas in the third film, they were zombie-ish but opened their heads up like Las Plagas and Oroboros infected. 

I'm in, because I have Netflix and have played and enjoyed every RE game since the first game in the series, but I'm utterly confused by the timeline and continuity. This isn't a reboot series, apparently this is a sequel to the game universe continuity and timeline, but it's a non-canon sequel. So the games happened in this universe, not the newer crappy Raccoon City movie or the Jovovich movies, but the actual Capcom game timeline, but Wesker died in Resident Evil 5 in a volcano. So Wesker is alive, has children, Raccoon City is being rebuilt, people still trust or now have a renewed trust in Umbrella, and Wesker is black? 

Now I’m lost