Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

Downs...

6. It Awkwardly Combines The First Two Games

Rather than simply adapt the first game to the big screen, writer-director Johannes Roberts made the peculiar decision to make Welcome to Raccoon City a combination of both the first and second games.

The result is a script that basically puts Resident Evil 1 and 2 in a blender but fails to bridge the two narratives in a creative, interesting, or even basically entertaining way.

Sure, the most iconic hallmarks from each game are in here, but constantly cutting between the mansion and RPD scenarios is frustrating and makes it difficult for either plot to gain a real head of steam.

As for the trip to the Spencer mansion, it ends up feeling like a strange afterthought, not showing up until the movie's half-way point.

And this is without even getting into some of the bizarre changes made to the characters - Chris Redfield's (Robbie Amell) revised backstory sees him effectively be adopted as a child by William Birkin (Neal McDonough), and there's a totally pointless romance between Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) and Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper).

While it's fair to assume that Roberts adapted both games in the hope of heightening the movie's commercial prospects - especially with the fairly recent release of the Resident Evil 2 remake - he also bit off way more than he could chew.

This should've been a more modest, focused attempt to finally give the first game a truly faithful adaptation.