After re-watching all six Resident Evil movies for last month’s Sequel-a-Thon, I realized as
I started writing the reviews that there are so many funny moments in those
movies (a couple maybe intentional, most unintentional) that I couldn’t
possibly do all of those moments justice by just including them in the reviews,
so I neglected to mention many of them in order to cover all of them here, and
count down to the funniest Resident Evil
moment of all. Full spoilers for the movies ahead, and if you haven’t checked
out my reviews, I’ll link them below. Here are the top ten funniest Resident Evil movie moments!
First up is the opening of the last film, which recaps all five movies that came before it. By this point you would think viewers know well enough what happened, but I guess they included one for any potential viewers who missed the last movie or haven’t seen any of them before, and to maintain consistency with the other sequels, all of which have started with recaps. What makes the recap so funny is the way they throw in new information that contradicts previously-established events on top of old information, and the whole recap goes on so long that it becomes comical in that aspect too.
Mike Epps as L.J. is one of the better actors/characters to show up in the series, and unlike many of the other characters in Apocalypse, his role is that of intended comedy relief. At one point he’s driving recklessly down a street in Raccoon City and runs over some zombies, afterwards shouting “GTA Motherf**ker!”—which, in case you don’t understand the acronym, is a reference to another violent video game series, Grand Theft Auto. It’s a pretty funny line, and I wonder if Epps adlibbed it, because that seems more likely than Paul W.S. Anderson writing an actual good piece of dialogue.
I don’t know how this scene ended up being so funny, because it’s clearly meant to be emotionally affecting, but completely misses the mark. Alice stumbles into the clone factory with the deaf daughter of the dead clone from the suburbia simulation. Thousands of Alice clones yet to be activated occupy the room, which really freaks out the kid (understandably so). The problems include: bad CGI for the factory, bad CGI for the duplicated Milla Jovovich’s, the absurdity of the whole concept, and the kid asking this real Alice if the clones are her mom. I mean, take a second look, kid, they obviously are. It could have been and should have been a grave revelation for the child that her mom was just one of many copies, but instead it’s just a bizarre, dumb, and funny moment.
Retribution is arguably the worst sequel, but this moment is easily the funniest unintentionally funny moment from the whole movie. After Alice says she’s going to save her daughter (the one I just mentioned in #8) Luthor West bravely announces “I’m going with you” and it’s clearly intended to be one of those cliché heroic moments for him—then he is immediately shot down with a machine gun by a bad guy! It actually almost feels like intended comedic timing, but I don’t think it was supposed to seem this dimwittedly funny. It makes Luthor look like an even bigger tool than he already appeared to be, and the moment ends up being even dumber when he isn’t killed by the machine gun fire, he somehow survives to the final battle and is dispatched by a precise punch to the heart. He was a terrible character, but this was a laugh-out-loud moment.
Extinction is one of the best of the sequels, and as a result has the fewest funny moments (intentional or otherwise), but there was one that jumped out to me. Every Resident Evil movie has to have a few brutal deaths, and Extinction shows people getting munched on by zombies, pecked to death by zombie crows, and ripped apart by zombie dogs. But, the most brutal death happens to a supporting character, and the culprit is gravity. During an attack a cowboy-looking fellah falls off an electrical tower and lands flat on a metal strut. It’s devastating and ultra-brutal, and the metallic clang as his body hits is so perfect that it becomes funny. This poor random guy who had like three lines before this moment gets killed in a way that’s way more gratuitous than it should have been.
There was never a consistent main villain for the series, but when Paul W.S. Anderson looked back on his previous five movies, I guess he figured Dr. Isaacs (played by Iain Glen) was the best one to bring back for the last movie, and I hate to say it, but he was probably right (of course there weren’t many other options to pick from). It had already been previously established that Umbrella Corp. could clone people pretty easily, so it doesn’t come as that much of a surprise when it’s revealed that there are multiple Dr. Isaacses afoot. But, when it comes down to the final fight and Alice tries to kill the real Dr. Isaacs, he evades death and comes back to stop her once and for all—only to encounter one of his clones, a clone who thought he was the real Isaacs. The clone is enraged, and kills the real Isaacs! It’s completely absurd, but also kind of great that the villain is simultaneously killed by himself and gets to be killed twice in the same movie. The clone is eaten by zombies afterward, which is almost poetic.
Alice’s big entrance in the second movie is about as cheesy as a big entrance can get. After bursting into a church on a motorcycle, she leaps off the seat with a spectacular back flip, but the vehicle keeps driving by itself toward a vicious monster. The monster leaps at the motorcycle, awkwardly embraces it, monster and vehicle fly up into the air, and then Alice shoots at the gas tank and blows it up, killing the monster in the explosion. The cheesiness is emphasized by the bad effects for the monster, the gunshots being in slow motion, and the choppy editing. It’s meant to seem badass, and I guess it does, but it’s also completely ridiculous.
I think this is probably one of the most-agreed-upon funny moments from the original movie. Alice is trying to evade one of the vicious zombie Dobermans, and in dramatic slow-mo, she leaps toward the corner of a room, rebounding off both walls, turning around in mid-air as the Doberman leaps toward her, and then at the moment of impact the frame rate goes back to normal, accentuating the brutal sound effect as her boot collides with the dog’s head and the kick sends it flying back, crashing through a window. I think it’s supposed to be another example of a badass moment for Alice, as well as a shocking display of her strength and skill, but it also seems pretty specifically edited to come off as blatant and brutal. Still, it gets me chuckling every time because it’s just so blatant and violent and absurd. I don’t think it’s supposed to seem as funny as it does.
This is more than just a moment. There are too many moments from the final battle in Afterlife to mention them all, so I’m just counting the whole thing. There’s the villain Wesker with a monster mouth made of bag CGI, then his incredibly stupid speedy moves—seriously, he can move so fast he becomes a blur and Alice can’t even shoot him—but then he stops using his super speed, for some reason, and Alice fights zombie dogs that also have monster mouths, but unlike the cool practical effects applied to real trained Doberman’s in the original, these ones are also made of bad CGI. Then, Alice kills a dog by kicking a broken pane of glass into it, somehow not breaking the glass further, she gets a knife through her arm, she takes it out of her arm and stabs Wesker in the face, and then she shoots him in the head with her shotgun loaded up with coins for ammo. This scene literally broke Mike, Jay, and Rich Evans during RedLetterMedia’s Resident Evil marathon, and once you see it, you’ll understand why.
This is the moment that got me more than any other. I’ll be transparent: Milla Jovovich was my first celebrity crush, and she’s one of the main reasons I followed this dumb series of movies in the first place. I know the movies aren’t good, but she does kick ass, and does so while looking very hot, so that was enough for adolescent me. The series finally came to an end a decade after I first started watching it, and by this time a lot had changed. I had grown into an adult, developed crushes on real people, and Milla had changed, too. She had married writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson and had two kids with him, but was/is still an attractive, kick-ass woman, so it felt weirdly nostalgic seeing her back as Alice one more time.
Until, Old Alice rolled out in her wheelchair.
What the hell? In a twist so stupid and hilarious I never saw it coming, it’s revealed the main Alice has been a clone all this time, and the original Alice, who we have never seen before, is now an old woman. Milla donned some questionable old-age makeup and used a strained elderly voice, and my adolescent memories were suddenly very distant. My friends who knew what Milla meant to me started laughing very hard, as did I, and the mere concept of Old Alice still makes me laugh. It became a meme between my friends and I, and it might not be everyone’s number-one-laugh-out-loud Resident Evil movie moment, but it’s definitely mine.
Reviews:
Resident Evil: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-2002-review.html
Apocalypse: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-apocalypse-2004-review.html
Extinction: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-extinction-2007-review.html
Afterlife: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-afterlife-2010-review.html
Retribution: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-retribution-2012-review.html
The Final Chapter: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2022/10/resident-evil-final-chapter-2016-review.html
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