E3 Movie News

While E3 is primarily a PC and console video game show, related media do filter in. Most notably, this year previews of the Final Fantasy and Resident Evil movies snuck into E3. During the last hour of each day, the Squaresoft booth screened three limited seating previews of selected scenes from the Final Fantasy movie. The 15 minutes of footage consisted mainly of 4 long, non-sequential scenes spliced together, each likely chosen because of its focus and highlighting of a different aspect of the film. As has been previously reported in other media reviews, the amount of detail in the CG animation is stunning, accounting for even minute wrinkles in clothing and cracks in the ground. Character movements occasionally betray themselves with unnatural, stilted, jerky motion, but at other times are convincingly natural down to even reflexive muscle reactions to shock or action. To a discriminating eye, the animation of mouths in matching the spoken dialogue sometimes appears forced and manipulated, but the dialogue itself comes across naturally, both in diction and expression.

The Capcom booth occasionally, throughout the show, broadcast a short video clip documentary on the making of Resident Evil: Ground Zero. The video clip contained no completed footage from the film, but did provide a look at the sets, costume design and action. Based on the impression given by the documentary footage, the Resident Evil movie will not be so much a suspense horror film as a horror action film in the vein of “Aliens.” The entire look of the production is dominated by metallic gray colors, smoke and exhaust pipes similar to the look of much of the original Alien movie. Contrary to the red dress clad Milla Jovovich in the early promotional photo released for the film, Jovovich’s character in the film appears clad in SWAT team style body armor appropriate for battling an army of the undead. This early look at the film promises an excessive amount of gunplay, explosions, groping zombies and graphic violence.