Okay...I'm going to be honest here...I got into the Resident Evil franchise from the back end forward -- in other words, I loved the notion that Las Vegas was under ruins and riddled with zombies that after I saw the trailers for Resident Evil: Extinction, I knew I wanted to see it. After renting it (from missing it in the theaters) I couldn't help but think that it would have better made a John Carpenter addition to his "Escape" films -- this one being Escape From Vegas with Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken again needing to rescue a president from now bombed out casinos and nightclubs inside the likes of the Bellagio and Caesars Palace...I really did think it was a cool idea.
And so, I purchased Extinction on Blu-ray and continue to watch it constantly -- the scenes of this "convoy" of human survivors battling hordes of undead in front of the Paris Hotel/Casino on the buried Vegas Strip makes for a great hour and a half of mindless entertainment. However, the problem still remains for me after renting the original Resident Evil (on DVD unfortunately; it was an upconverted mess on my Panasonic '10A ) and just the other night, the sequel on Blu-ray, Resident Evil: Apocalypse...and that problem is: What the heck is going on in these video game-based films?
Okay, the original film didn't hold as much promise or interest for me as the third or even this sequel did -- but this second film didn't answer the questions I had about the events surrounding the third film. First of all, who is this "Project Alice"...was she a worker for this Unbrella Corporation and if so, was she the one who tried to sneak secrets about the experiments out to another source, as suggested in the first film? Then what does that have to do with being engineered by the company as a zombie-killing machine? Why are there so many Unbrella Corp. soldiers running around with machine guns? Are they more powerful than our military? How do the end events of this film add up to the third -- that is, at the conclusion of this, "Alice" is snuck out of the Umbrella Medical Facility by the three remaining human survivors to the "T Virus"...two of which reappear in the third film...but if they leave together, then why, in the third film, are they separated once the film picks up in the Nevada desert? There's also another "fight" sequence here, like in all the Resident Evil entries, in which "Alice" must battle a grotesquely disfigured mutated human -- in this particular case, it happens to be her "boyfriend" of the first film whom Umbrella has turned into some monster named "Nemesis"...Umbrella folks make Alice battle Nemesis at the end of this one to see who's stronger, but the whole thing just seems pointless and goes off the rails of what this is supposed to be about: a virus that turns the dead...undead. Look, all I know is that you probably have to be a freak for the video game to get all this...
But let's get to what this disc was REALLY about -- and that is the visual and sounds. Sony/Screen Gems presents Resident Evil: Apocalypse on Blu-ray in a 1080p widescreen transfer at a ratio of 2.40:1. The video quality wasn't up to the same par as the audio here; some scenes look crisp enough but most get a tad bit soft and just don't "look" like high definition; while some reviewers have complained about the noise and grain in dark sequences, I didn't see many distracting examples. The film takes place with very little daylight scenes and so we have to study what this transfer can do with dark challenging sequences -- it, for the most part, pulled it off -- the detail in the wet streets, the flicking of fire...but fleshtones and facial closeups went a bit soft, as I said. Not a reference 1080p transfer here.
No -- the REAL star of the show is the Uncompressed PCM soundtrack on this disc. I mean WOW -- this is the absolute best 5.1 PCM mix I've heard on Blu-ray so far, folks, and I mean it. The audio here is AGGRESSIVE -- be careful not to turn this one up too loud if you live in close proximity to neighbors as I do. The sequence where the group is fighting a duo of "Nemesis things" in a church is simply off the hook -- sounds come at you from every direction, and the channel panning is ridiculous. You are really THERE in that church with them; the sense of presence is staggering. The whole track just sounds open and -- well -- UNCOMPRESSED. This is a good example of what high resolution can do in the audio department. Every break of glass, every effect pan, everything is crystal clear here. I was extremely impressed. If you rent or buy this disc for any reason, forget the mindless plot -- crank up that receiver and listen to the PCM soundtrack!
Sorry I can't comment on the extras; didn't sit down to watch 'em once the film ended.
And so, I purchased Extinction on Blu-ray and continue to watch it constantly -- the scenes of this "convoy" of human survivors battling hordes of undead in front of the Paris Hotel/Casino on the buried Vegas Strip makes for a great hour and a half of mindless entertainment. However, the problem still remains for me after renting the original Resident Evil (on DVD unfortunately; it was an upconverted mess on my Panasonic '10A ) and just the other night, the sequel on Blu-ray, Resident Evil: Apocalypse...and that problem is: What the heck is going on in these video game-based films?
Okay, the original film didn't hold as much promise or interest for me as the third or even this sequel did -- but this second film didn't answer the questions I had about the events surrounding the third film. First of all, who is this "Project Alice"...was she a worker for this Unbrella Corporation and if so, was she the one who tried to sneak secrets about the experiments out to another source, as suggested in the first film? Then what does that have to do with being engineered by the company as a zombie-killing machine? Why are there so many Unbrella Corp. soldiers running around with machine guns? Are they more powerful than our military? How do the end events of this film add up to the third -- that is, at the conclusion of this, "Alice" is snuck out of the Umbrella Medical Facility by the three remaining human survivors to the "T Virus"...two of which reappear in the third film...but if they leave together, then why, in the third film, are they separated once the film picks up in the Nevada desert? There's also another "fight" sequence here, like in all the Resident Evil entries, in which "Alice" must battle a grotesquely disfigured mutated human -- in this particular case, it happens to be her "boyfriend" of the first film whom Umbrella has turned into some monster named "Nemesis"...Umbrella folks make Alice battle Nemesis at the end of this one to see who's stronger, but the whole thing just seems pointless and goes off the rails of what this is supposed to be about: a virus that turns the dead...undead. Look, all I know is that you probably have to be a freak for the video game to get all this...
But let's get to what this disc was REALLY about -- and that is the visual and sounds. Sony/Screen Gems presents Resident Evil: Apocalypse on Blu-ray in a 1080p widescreen transfer at a ratio of 2.40:1. The video quality wasn't up to the same par as the audio here; some scenes look crisp enough but most get a tad bit soft and just don't "look" like high definition; while some reviewers have complained about the noise and grain in dark sequences, I didn't see many distracting examples. The film takes place with very little daylight scenes and so we have to study what this transfer can do with dark challenging sequences -- it, for the most part, pulled it off -- the detail in the wet streets, the flicking of fire...but fleshtones and facial closeups went a bit soft, as I said. Not a reference 1080p transfer here.
No -- the REAL star of the show is the Uncompressed PCM soundtrack on this disc. I mean WOW -- this is the absolute best 5.1 PCM mix I've heard on Blu-ray so far, folks, and I mean it. The audio here is AGGRESSIVE -- be careful not to turn this one up too loud if you live in close proximity to neighbors as I do. The sequence where the group is fighting a duo of "Nemesis things" in a church is simply off the hook -- sounds come at you from every direction, and the channel panning is ridiculous. You are really THERE in that church with them; the sense of presence is staggering. The whole track just sounds open and -- well -- UNCOMPRESSED. This is a good example of what high resolution can do in the audio department. Every break of glass, every effect pan, everything is crystal clear here. I was extremely impressed. If you rent or buy this disc for any reason, forget the mindless plot -- crank up that receiver and listen to the PCM soundtrack!
Sorry I can't comment on the extras; didn't sit down to watch 'em once the film ended.
