Zach Cregger Was “Frustrated” by the ‘Resident Evil’ Conversation… and He Has a Point
By Dread Central
4 min readZach Cregger says he was frustrated that so much of the conversation around his Resident Evil movie had nothing to […]
Zach Cregger says he was frustrated that so much of the conversation around his Resident Evil movie had nothing to […]
That movie was much more faithful to the source material. It used the familiar characters and locations. And people still weren’t happy.
So for hardcore Resident Evil fans to keep screaming about wanting a very specific kind of Resident Evil feels a little hypocritical to me, not to mention ridiculous. It takes away from the fact that Cregger is also a fan and has his own perspective on what he wanted to see.
That’s one of the things I don’t like about modern criticism. When you review a movie, you should be reviewing it for what it is, not what you wish it was. Pointing out problems is one thing. But when you haven’t even seen the movie yet, and you’re criticizing it because it’s not what you wanted it to be, that’s a problem with modern criticism, and especially modern fandom.
Having the entire conversation pulled away from the movie and turned into a discussion about what everybody wanted instead has to be frustrating.
Of course, we’ve been dealing with this forever. Comics Buyer’s Guide published anti-Keaton letters and fan-organized campaigns against Michael Keaton’s Batman casting, as documented in a 1988 report.
People were pissed off before they had seen him play Batman. This isn’t new, even if experiencing that kind of pressure is new to some filmmakers.
And that pressure can get ugly. Christopher Landon left Scream VII after being attached to direct it, later telling Vanity Fair that the abuse following Melissa Barrera’s firing helped drive him away. He said he had no involvement in firing her, yet received threats against himself and his family.
There’s a lot of pressure from fan bases. Their voices absolutely deserve to be heard, and sometimes they’re right.
Look at Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic looked like fucking shit until people complained and the filmmakers fixed the design. Now it’s a huge franchise for Paramount, with the first three movies passing $1 billion worldwide.
They were right.
Resident Evil? I think they were wrong.
Cregger is a fan of the franchise. This is what he wanted to see as a fan, and that’s what we got. It’s also a huge fucking success, with roughly $400 million worldwide.
And it’s a good movie, too. Our own Matt Konopka called it “the most accurate depiction of the survival horror gameplay experience we’ve ever seen” in his review.
So now what do you say? You’re still angry that he made his version of Resident Evil?
The movie’s a monster success. If you were insisting this approach couldn’t work before you even saw it, you were wrong.
