I’ll tell you where I wasn’t. In the movies. Watching Resident Evil: Extinction.
<Rant Rant Rant> You’d think when you have this much free time, finding time to see a movie would be a cake walk. But nooooooo. Wife playing badminton. Friends out of reach/touch for one reason or another. I know, this shouldn’t have been an issue since it has always been my style (except when Cathy’s around) to see a movie alone, but this usually works only if I’m seeing one of those fairly complex flicks where I need to focus and think. Not in this one. I mean, come on, who’s going to jump off the seat and grab my arm when an icky zombie suddenly leaps into the scene? Mike? That would be kinda weird… </Rant Rant Rant>
Irony: Grizzled video gamers normally AVOID movies based on video games. Why? Because they almost always SUCK. Street Fighter (Jeanne Claude Van Damme), too campy. Mario Brothers (Bob Hoskins), overall unworkable. Tekken the Movie (animated), said to be enjoyable only for Tekken players. Who the hell said that? We almost puked out the whole VCR out the window from the sheer painfulness of the experience of watching that crap.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Huge, at least in theory. Reality bit back viciously, revealing how the movie was crippled beyond imagination, being utterly unable to satisfy both those who know the game (Final Fantasy simply doesn’t work as a 2-hour movie) and those who don’t (left with hardly a thought except a lingering “What the hell just happened?”). Mortal Kombat? Decent, to say the least, a welcome treat for those who suffered waiting along the long and arduous line of mediocre video game-based movies. But they should have quit while they’re ahead. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? Could anything decimate a good start more effectively than this? I think not.
Then here comes RE: Extinction. Third installment of a so far above-passable series (at least compared to The Matrix trilogy). I’ve seen the first two films, and at this point I’m relieved that it didn’t require the RE gaming experience and ShadowLeggy‘s wit to convince me to like them out of pure sentimentalism. The first two Resident Evil movies were good, despite what those ignorant reviewers at Rottentomatoes say. The third one? I don’t know. But what does “grabbing no. 1 spot at the box office on its first week” tend to mean in layman’s term?  For me, well, I lived in the U.S. for six years and in all that time, I haven’t seen a box office hit that isn’t good.
So where was I last Friday?
Never mind that. Suffice it to say that rectification will be made before the week ends. With or without you.
