Thank god, Zach Cregger already gets it about the Resident Evil movie

The director for the upcoming Resident Evil movie, Zach Cregger, has revealed that he doesn’t intend to adapt the games directly. Game adaptations have become the next cultural fracking project by the entertainment industry after comics and the realisation that some of Stephen King’s novels might be too cocainey to adapt.

I think this is good news, to be honest. So far, the best adaptation of a video game to screen has been that Fallout TV show. It immediately got that outside of maybe using settings and certain stories from the games (Season 2 looks to be going this route), it’s ultimately a far more interesting show to watch if it’s something unique to add to the mix.

In the interview, Cregger, who just directed Weapons with Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, said:

“I’m not going to tell Leon’s story, because Leon’s story is told in the games. [Fans] already have that.”

I don’t want to see what Resident Evil has already done

The original Resident Evil movies did this too, opting to pick and choose which characters would make it to the big screen and be quickly overshadowed by Milla Jovovich kicking glass into a zombie dog. They did follow their own plots, and we never saw stuff like Jill and Barry dealing with locked doors or Claire Redfield having to trudge around a police department. That laser scene was cool, though.

Which, in all honesty, we don’t need to directly adapt Resident Evil to the big screen. Any of them. Have you tried following the stories? Could you imagine presenting Resident Evil 5’s boulder punching sequence to a regular, non-video game audience?

While I get that series like The Last of Us “need” to follow the story, like Cregger said, fans already have that. Like with upcoming Marvel movies, I don’t want to see moments pilfered from the comics that I’ve already experienced. Let me see Spider-Man do something vaguely new. Too often, nerds want what they know, and it drives me up the wall.

Someone recently posted online what they’d like to see out of future Superman movies. All they wanted was stuff that’s already been done in the comics.

A similar experience is happening within Battlefield 6 at the moment. Players coming from faster-paced, more “in your face” games are demanding changes that just don’t relate to Battlefield. You already have that style of game, go… play those? Like the wittering of XQC, a streamer with a competitive background. In a clip going around TikTok, he suggests things like adding a battle pass, daily logins, and other stuff that the industry has seemingly polluted the minds of its audience with.

Cregger seems like the man for the job

Why would you want the same stuff repeated in every release, in every medium, ever? This is why stuff feels homogenous until you look outside the box. Cregger’s work on Barbarian has convinced me far and away enough that he’s the right man to bring the spook factor to a new Resident Evil movie.

Resident Evil is a series that can’t help itself by reaching into fan service puddles for each game. Even in the seeming soft-reboot of Resident Evil 7, it still whapped out Chris Redfield to immediately link itself back into the series’ overarching nature.

Adaptations need to stand on their own, or what’s the point? I don’t even need to see a zombie, just scare the hell out of me and say something about a B.O.W or have a horrid, slimy monster at some point, and we’re golden.