Anderson Promises Impressive Dogs in ‘Resident Evil 4′
by Ben Bussey
“It’ll still be Resident Evil. It’ll have all the really cool Resident Evil things in it, the characters from the game, the dogs that you’ve seen, but the dogs on a new level. These dogs are a massive improvement on the dogs before.” So says Paul W S Anderson regarding the upcoming Resident Evil: Afterlife. Hmm, you’d almost think I selected that quote to make him look silly…
I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’m no big fan of Anderson. It’s not that he’s the most completely inept director around; honestly, I think he has some skills visually. It’s more that he has a knack for getting at the helm of movies that have the potential to be truly great, and turns out results that are middle of the road at best. Event Horizon was pretty decent, and Alien Vs Predator wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but other than that… Death Race? Fucking Soldier?! Subsequently it’s bewildering that Resident Evil has wound up having such legs as a franchise. Yes, Milla Jovovich in a little dress with a big gun is an attractive proposition, but the charms of the original don’t stretch much beyond that. About the best you can say for Anderson is at least he wasn’t directly responsible for the mind-bogglingly awful second installment Resident Evil: Apocalypse, though to be fair the third installment Extinction wasn’t all that bad.
So now the big PWSA is back in the chair for part 4, and he promises “a conceptual jump like Terminator did to T2.” (I can only assume he’s aware that T2 came after Terminator.) Beyond that he enthuses at length about shooting in 3-D, which to give him his due he does seem to have done his homework on. But this is the thing about Anderson: he always comes off in interviews like a nice guy. There’s never any of that standoffish egomania that radiates from the likes of Michael Bay or Uwe Boll. Anderson has always struck me as genuine in his enthusiasm, and for some time I’ve quietly clung to the hope that such enthusiasm might one day metamorphose into actual talent… but I’m not holding my breath. I think it’s fair to assume that Resident Evil: Afterlife will just be more of the same. But in 3-D. And with more impressive dogs.
Full Story at Shock Till You Drop.
