Retaliation... Extinction... Unleashed.... We've all heard these corny and horribly clichéd subtitles tagged onto the end of movies before, haven't we? Filmmakers looking to showcase their clear lack of creativity opt for words like 'revenge', 'revelation', and 'resurrection' (words ending in '-tion' seem to be rather popular in this department) to inject a little spice. Tactless action films or lame comedies trying to add some flavour to proceedings by adding a subtitle that usually means nothing at all (puns are popular). Most subtitle usages are factored in to make up for something that isn't there, of course: they're just supposed to fill a gap. Here, I'd like to present to you my picks for 10 incredibly arbitrary film subtitles that could have been swapped out for another word entirely without losing much of the intended impact (or just lost entirely). The movies themselves can be good or bad, but when it comes to the subtitle, I can't quite help but feel they were slapped on without much thought...
10. Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife & Retribution
This zombie-massacring film series might be one of the worst offenders of looking up 'destruction' and 'anger' in the thesaurus and attaching the first meaningless word to a title - so let's kick this list off with Resident Evil. Usually, you can expect a subtitle to help define one film from another in an anthology by giving hints to its plot. That is the purpose that a subtitle serves. But when you realize that all the film titles for Resident Evil seem like they just came from a melting pot labeled 'superficial,' they all seem to blend into one. 'Apocalypse' might have some weight as a subtitle. I mean, that did happen to the world, didn't it? Nope. No. That was actually the third movie when the zombie outbreak became worldwide. Well, maybe 'Extinction' makes sense? That means the same thing, though. Maybe it defines the extinction of humans (if you use the word in a broad form), but given that the humans are still around for another two movies, it does not seem to be useful either. The usage of the title 'Afterlife' was simply to make it sound cool and is maybe the worst offender here. And the use of 'Retribution' was more or less added nothing. Resident Evil is a series where it's hard to blame the filmmakers for arbitrary subtitles - why should they care? They are looking for the most masculine, adrenaline-filled word choices known to humanity, as to lay it all out on the table. Still, it doesn't make it any less shallow and cheesy.