Visiting Alice’s World on the Set of Resident Evil: Retribution

LEON AND ADA

It’s all very dashing of Leon, with his windswept hair and chiseled features.  Romance novel cover art type stuff.  A light from above begins to shine on the two, the wind picking up.

“What is it?” Wong asks, waking up, to which Kennedy answers: “Help.  You’re going to be okay.”  He scoops her into his arms and walks off camera.

The decision to bring these two, including Barry Burton, into the Resident Evil cinematic universe was based on fan demand.  They spoke and Anderson listened, working the popular game characters into the script.  “We really tried to cast actors who brought those characters to life as close to the video game as possible,” Anderson says.  “You have no idea how difficult it is to find someone with Leon Kennedy’s hair.  It is just not the easiest thing in the world.  He has to be manly and has to have those long bangs.  But I’m very happy with the actors that we have.”

Johann Urb as Leon stands well over six feet and cuts an imposing figure.  In Retribution, his character is portrayed as a survivor of the T-virus outbreak that has ravaged the world.  A “partner in crime,” as he says, with Kevin Durand’s Barry.  “It’s basically a best friend type of deal, we’re super close,” Urb says.  “And what a great guy, man.  He’s awesome.  We had so much fun working together.  Also, working with Kevin and Boris together, it’s the firs time I felt like there were actually people towering over me.  I’m the little guy now.  It was great.”

To slip into Leon’s skin, Urb admits to not playing the games.  Instead, he turned to You Tube to see the fan clips that cobbled the best Leon moments.  There, he picked up on character’s mannerisms and reactions.

Urb jokes, “[My Leon] doesn’t have a high-pitched voice.  I feel like he talks how I naturally talk, which is kind of slower.  It matches, so it wasn’t a big, huge thing for me to switch into.”  The actor laments the demise of one action sequence that would have demonstrated Leon’s knife-wielding skills.  “I had a really cool knife fight sequence that was ultimately removed, they had to take it out due to the schedule.  It was bad-ass.  The guy I was fighting was this 300-something-pound zombie, pure muscle.  It was a great fight.  As of right now, I’m not using [the knife].  We’re talking about possibly using it in the end sequence.”

And who can blame him?  Li is an absolute beauty.

The Chinese actress, who previously starred in The Forbidden Kingdom, says she didn’t know the character of Wong all that well.  She was aware of the character’s immense following, however.  One thing she wants to make clear: The hair you’ll see her in isn’t real.

“I’m a big liar,” she laughs.  “Everyone on our crew thought this was my hair.  They didn’t recognize it was a wig – a very expensive wig.  It’s like $7500.  We wanted to make Ada perfect here, so I love it.”  The “red carpet dress,” as Wong calls it, combined with the gun holster, for her, is “cool, sexy and mysterious.”  Except on those days shooting on the streets of Toronto outdoors in 13-degree weather.  “The wind would blow my dress up.  It was so cold!  But to be beautiful I have to feel pain.  I have to accept everything.  I can’t wait to watch the movie, and especially when the movie is released in China.”

CREATURE FX

Describing his role on this Resident Evil film, compared to his previous experience, FX artist Paul Jones says he’s doing a lot “more of the same thing.”  Zombies, zombies and more zombies.

“Someone came to me and was like, ‘You’re do so many less zombies than the last [film].’  No, actually, we’ve done more, except we’re doing them in clumps of 20 at a time instead of [scenes where we need] 127 at a time,” says Jones, whose credits include Resident Evil: Afterlife, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (he designed Nemesis), The Thing and the upcoming Silent Hill: Revelation 3D.

The inspiring aspect of the job this time, however, is the way in which his zombies are portrayed and re-created for big crowd scenes.  “[For] the zombies on motorcycles, the action dictates what they’ll look like because you’ve zombies doing stuff you normally wouldn’t see a zombie do,” he says, referring to the aforementioned Moscow chase sequence.  “I’m not even calling them zombies anymore, I’m calling them ‘infected.’  When you say zombie, you’re talking about someone who has been brought back from the dead.  With these Russian zombies, it’s not the case.  They’ve been infected, so they’ve mutated.  They’ve been affected by the T-virus, it’s the Las Plagas virus, actually, which is why they’re different.  So, again, everything is enhanced with them, we still aesthetically made them look dead.  We’ve actually made a couple of them look really dead.  But they’re actions are almost super-human and their eyes are glowing red as well.”

CG scanning assists Jones and Anderson in portraying hordes of decaying, walking corpses on film.  The process is (relatively) simple: Jones makes an actor up as a zombie.  The CGI team scans the “zombie” in and creates a digital model which they can duplicate and animate.

Jones hope this practical creation will inspire Anderson to want to build another larger monster again, akin to Nemesis or the Axe Man of Afterlife.  That is, if a Resident Evil 6 should come to fruition.

THE FUTURE

How much longer the Resident Evil franchise will continue after Retribution is unknown.  Bolt says he can see a prequel to the first Resident Evil.  “Definitely.  And, possibly, spinning off with another character.”

Anderson is ready, however, with an idea for Resident Evil 6 in mind.  “Unless, of course, no one goes to see [Retribution],” Anderson says.  “Then this film would be the finale, just maybe not a very satisfying one.”


Continue On and Read a Q&A With Star Milla Jovovich!

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