バイオハザード ダムネーション / Biohazard: Damnation / Resident Evil: Damnation

Not much need to write a whole lot about Damnation, Capcom and Sony Pictures’ second computer-generated animation in the Resident Evil franchise. I’ll say this: it was more fun than Degeneration. At least it was full of action and didn’t drag on, which despite not having a bad script that film did. It was thin on plot and high on rocket launchers making tyrants explode, and already puts it above Degeneration in terms of action, but it had a terrible script and very unlikeable characters, so it ended up pretty dreadful and too often unintentionally hilarious.

Leon – here horrible characterized as a highly irritating wise-cracker who fits in quips before taking action – is dropped into Russia to investigate biological weapons. He finds them, of course, and some Russian mercenaries (or similar) who he befriends. Meanwhile, Ada Wong is doing her usual infiltration business to find out who sanctioned getting in dangerous viruses. Most of the film is just Leon and co fighting their way from one place to another.

It still looks clunky. Despite some beautiful renderings of a church – internal and external – and clear effort put into making it look good, it moves in an awkward motion-captured way, the lip-synch is all still iffy and the zombies look more comical than anything else. Only the tyrants look good, huge and lumbering – though the lickers aren’t bad.

Ultimately, the film is basically a tie-in to Resident Evil 6, and if you’re not interested in that – as I’m not – then it’s unlikely to have much for you. 

鉄拳 ブラッド・ベンジェンス / Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Another dated-looking CGI video game tie-in from Digital Frontier (who also made the similarly-flawed Resident Evil: Degeneration), 2011’s Tekken: Blood Vengeance is likely to disappoint fans of the game and bore the uninitiated. It has its moments, mostly when it comes to impressive action sequences, but as a film it’s severely lacking.

The film opens with that welcome staple of Tekken media – Anna Williams trying to kill her sister Nina and getting thwarted. Afterwards, each is revealed to be working for one of the Mishima line: Anna for Kazuya and Nina for his bastard son Kazama Jin. Each is investigating the mysterious teenager Kamiya Shin, who apparently possesses mysterious powers, and each hires a student to gain intel on him: Kazuya, through Anna, recruits a sassy but identifiable Ling Xiaoyu, who comes complete with her panda, while Jin opts for Alisa Bosconovich, the quirky, perky robot girl chiefly remembered for showing up in Tekken 6 and presenting people with her detachable, explosive head. They clash but then become fast friends, especially when Anna calls Ling a failure and tries to kill her. They hide with their teacher Lee, whose character is consistent with his recent characterisation as almost nothing to do with his foster family and a total – but pretty hilarious – dickhead. Continuing to tail Shin, they find that he is very possibly immortal, and find him captive in Kyoto Castle. Big Bad Heihachi reveals himself, but it’s okay, Shin apparently has a plan. His plan is to punch Heihachi and lose his immortality in the process. Heihachi barely even flinches, so that’s the end of Shin – but as it turns out, Kazuya and Jin have followed their young charges and a huge three-way battle between the three generations of main characters begins, pretty much with a starting point of them all saying the plot up to this point was totally meaningless. The fight gets increasingly absurd until it involves flying devil monsters attacking huge demons made of tree-men, and ultimately the viewer must decide whether to just enjoy the brainless awesomeness of it or to be disgusted by how totally unnecessary the hour’s build up was when the pay-off is a fight between characters who have barely even featured up to that point.

The characters mentioned there are pretty much all that make it into the film – plus Ganryu randomly cameoing as Ling’s principal, Lei turning up as a face on a text message and the wood spirits being Mokujin. No Paul, no Law, no Julia, Christie, Yoshimitsu, Jack, King, Leon…basically, a game with an incredibly rich cast led to a film with a tiny and oddly-chosen one. Xiaoyu is popular and cute, no doubt, but she’s supposed to be ditzy and wild. Her original story was a quest to get a theme park built, after all! And Alisa…well, she’s funny and has a distinctive design, but the attempts to make her genki and loveable just make it look like she’s a horrible actress. She’s animated, and she comes off as a much worse actress than any others in the film. And ultimately, scenes of her bonding with Ling seem daft when the only point is to try and make a tear-jerker out of her using attacks from a cartoon at the end – only for enormous devil lasers to make it all meaningless.

Though the US dub was the first one to be released (the two made in tandem), I urge any viewers to watch the Japanese version: not only is the acting much better in Japanese (though Alisa is annoying in both), but the lip movements are synched to the Japanese, and it makes a big difference.

Ultimately, this seems like a wasted opportunity. Even if only for moments, like in the Street Fighter II anime, I wanted to see more of the wider cast. A sequel is heavily hinted at, and will perhaps be better, but I wanted much more here.

バイオハザード：ディジェネレーション/ Biohazard: Degeneration / Resident Evil: Degeneration

Resident Evil doesn’t exactly have a reputation for great big-screen adaptations. The live-action versions were blockbusters of a kind, but few people I’ve spoken to have ever said they thought they were any good – a consensus reflected by critics’ reviews. On the other hand, people have said good things about this CG animation from Japan.

I’m, I suppose, a lapsed fan of Resident Evil games. I got the first one for the Playstation, and even got the US version from an import store because the UK one was censored. I played it until I’d seen every nook and cranny, and then did almost the same for the second game, though the difficulty towards the end annoyed me. But since then I’ve not really had much interest in the series, nor more than a passing awareness of events.

But that’s about all that anyone needs to understand Degeneration, which unlike the live-action films is a continuation of the games. Claire Redfield just happens to be in a particular airport where there is a new T-virus outbreak, and finds herself with two important people to protect – a sweet little girl she had been meeting and a pompous senator. A special agent is dispatched to rescue them – the perfectly-coiffured and laconic Leon Kennedy. They escape, but not before uncovering a conspiracy within a pharmaceutical company, where the deadly viruses of the games may well be kept.

The film’s visuals are disappointing. This film came out in 2008, and I expected the CG to be of the standard of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at least. But it looked like the old PS1 intro to the second game. The animation was clunky and the models looked plasticky. The lip-synch was no good at all: it was so bad in English that I got hold of the Japanese version, only to find that even worse! In addition, there really is no point to this film being animated: a lot of work went in to something unnecessary, for other than one sweeping shot of the interior of the building and I suppose how well certain big boss monsters fit into the overall look of the piece, there was nothing that could not have been achieved by live-action filming, which would have looked far better anyway.

The film is, I think, a statement: this is the kind of script that the live-action films should have had, rather than the made-up nonsense we got. That’s both valid and quite true, but unfortunately isn’t enough to make a good film.