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The upcoming Resident Evil movie from Weapons and Barbarian director Zach Cregger follows the story of an “idiot” in a narrative that the filmmaker says is akin to The Lord of the Rings.
Speaking to Empire, Cregger said Austin Abrams’ character, a medical courier named Bryan, is an “everyman” who gets mixed up in a deadly, horrific adventure.
“The concept here is that we’re following an idiot,” Cregger said. “Not that he’s stupid, but he’s not your typical game character, with no combat skills whatsoever and completely inept at survival. Bryan is very much an everyman who happens to be burdened with this kind of sacred mission that’s going to take him into the heart of everything. It’s kind of like Frodo going into Mordor.”
The entire movie feels like “one gigantic sequence,” Cregger went on to say, adding that things begin to “pop off” five minutes into the movie–and it only ramps up from there.
“It feels like one gigantic sequence,” he says. “Things pop off about five minutes in and it basically stays like that until the end. What I love about the games is that you move from set-piece to set-piece. Every location has a unique challenge. So again, I’m borrowing from the games directly in that rhythm, where you’re just running through a gauntlet.”
The Resident Evil movie does not follow the events of any of the games, or feature its characters, and some have balked at that. But Cregger has said time and again that he’s a huge fan of the games and is aiming to capture the tone of the games while instilling his own vision.
“It’s really a Zach Cregger movie that just happens to be a Resident Evil movie,” he said.
It was reported that Cregger had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with the Resident Evil movie to reinvent the film series. Paul W.S. Anderson directed the six previous major Resident Evil movies that together made more than $1 billion at the box office.
The Resident Evil movie releases on September 18. It’s not the only video game movie still to come this year, as the Street Fighter movie arrives on October 16.
