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'Welcome to Raccoon City' featurettes set up bloody chess pieces for 'Resident Evil' origin film
"It really does feel like we're making the movie version of the game."
Are you a Resident Evil die-hard or a newcomer to the franchise? Whichever way you answer, Sony is here to help set the stage for its upcoming origin flick, Welcome to Raccoon City, with six bite-sized featurettes (shown below).
The first one — entitled "Origins" — features director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) explaining how the production wanted to be as faithful to the Capcom video games as humanly possible.
"This is where it all started," Roberts says, referring to the shady experiments conducted by the Umbrella Corporation that lead to an outbreak of zombies and monsters. "This is an origin story where we meet all the iconic characters from the games. Every frame has details to the game — from the burger that the trucker's eating to the actual truck design. We built the mansion and the police station to the [specifications] of the game. This is a horror movie created with a love of the game."
The remaining five behind-the-scenes videos are dedicated to establishing the heroes and villains: Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), Chris Redfield (Robbie Ammell), Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper), Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), and Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia).
However, since this is an origin story, these well-known characters won't start out as the people they are in the games. For instance, Hopper says they didn't want Wesker "to be a stereotypical villain, we wanted him to be likable. We're seeing who he really is underneath the sunglasses ... It really does feel like we're making the movie version of the game."
"We watch this character evolve and become the Wesker that we all know from the games," adds Roberts.
Watch all six featurettes below:
"Each of the main characters carries huge importance to the narrative," Roberts explained to IGN in late August. "They are not just cosplay characters who have the exact hair and costume of the characters. I think previously everything had been all about the Alice character — which was never in the games — and the game characters that did appear like Jill, Leon, Claire, and Chris did so as kind of supporting cameos. Jill and Leon in this movie are equal leads along with Claire and Chris and Wesker."
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City arrives on the big screen Wednesday, Nov. 24. We'd recommend enjoying your Thanksgiving meal before seeing the movie, lest the sight of blood and infected mutants puts you off turkey and cranberry sauce for the foreseeable future.
