Resident Evil director Paul W. S. Anderson says he’s got no time for people who do game adaptations without playing them—’That’s outrageous’
Director Paul W. S. Anderson, who helmed the likes of Mortal Kombat (1995), Resident Evil (2002), and Monster Hunter (2021), has just done a new interview on Chris Plante’s (excellent) podcast Post Games. It’s a lengthy and enjoyable listen, and Anderson speaks at some length about the thought process behind that first Resident Evil movie (which is not only underrated, but kicked off a series of films that have now collectively grossed well over a billion dollars).
One of the interesting aspects of the interview is that Anderson is very clearly a big gamer, something that shines out of the Resident Evil movies in particular, and his love for the source material is obvious. That’s not a given: videogame movies are now big business, partly thanks to Anderson, but for example Jason Momoa adopted the bold marketing strategy of telling everyone he didn’t game and wouldn’t let his kids play Minecraft while promoting The Minecraft Movie.
“I always make sure the production designers I work with play the game or watch playthroughs of the game, so they know what it looks like, and the director of photography knows how the camera moves,” says Anderson. “In a lot of videogames that overhead shot, the top-down look of a room where it’s a grid, is very, very important. Resident Evil—going through doorways, obviously very important. Pushing through a proscenium arch, into a scene…
Anderson is done with the Resident Evil series, but acknowledges that it’s now one of those “forever franchises” that will see new entries for probably as long as we all live. “That’s what I said to everyone when we were working on Alien Versus Predator, all the actors, I said ‘really enjoy this, because you’re going to be a part of this pop culture phenomena forever.’
“Because once you make AVP, and it works, because I was very confident about that movie, they’re going to start making Alien movies again, and they’re going to start making Predator movies again, and they’re going to go on forever. And sure enough, after AVP kicked ass, they kind of rebooted the Predator franchise and the Alien franchise, and they’re still going strong. It’s wonderful to be a part of those big pop culture franchises, but it’s certainly not for me to kind of like lay down the law as to what should and shouldn’t be done.”
Anderson also makes the point that, even though games are now a million times more lavish and beautiful than their 90s counterparts (which is when he started directing videogame adaptations), the audience were “just as invested when it was kind of low res graphics.”
With that said, obviously the fact Resident Evil is now a series with three decades of history does make a difference. “But I think the mechanics for me of adapting a videogame, pretty much, are the principles that I laid down already,” says Anderson.
“Respect for the IP, understanding what an audience gets out of playing the game. For Resident Evil, it was the visceral thrill of shooting things, but also it was scary, and that’s why I had to make a scary movie. You know, I remember playing Resident Evil when the dogs jumped through the window for the first time and the PlayStation controller vibrated. I shot out of my skin.
“It was scary, and I thought ‘I have to make a scary movie because the game is scary’ and that’s one of the things it delivers to the audience, is those scares. That’s why I couldn’t do just a straight adaptation, because it wouldn’t have scared anybody, because they’d have known exactly when the dog was going to jump through the window and they’d be prepared for the scares. I don’t want to rob the audience of that, because that’s part of the experience of playing the game that should be ported into the movie version.”
The full podcast episode has much more about Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, and Paul W.S. Anderson’s thoughts on all sorts of things. It is a great listen.
