Paul W.S. Anderson Interview For ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’

Written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, ‘Resident Evil: Retribution,’ the fifth installment in game-to-film franchise stars Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Sienna Guillory, Kevin Durand, Shawn Roberts, Colin Salmon, Johann Urb, Boris Kodjoe and Li Bingbing. The Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of the flesh eating Undead. The human race’s last and only hope, Alice (Milla Jovovich), awakens in the heart of Umbrella’s most clandestine operations facility and unveils more of her mysterious past as she delves further into the complex. Without a safe haven, Alice continues to hunt those responsible for the outbreak; a chase that takes her from Tokyo to New York, Washington, D.C. and Moscow, culminating in a mind-blowing revelation that will force her to rethink everything that she once thought to be true. Aided by newfound allies and familiar friends, Alice must fight to survive long enough to escape a hostile world on the brink of oblivion. ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ opens in 3D, 2D and IMAX 3D on September 14th in the US and September 28th in the UK.

How has it been directing Milla Jovovich as Alice over the years, seeing both the character and Milla develop? And in ‘Resident Evil: Retribution,’ Alice is a lot more “human” in that she’s been stripped of her superpowers?

Paul W.S. Anderson: Yeah. Over the last 10 years, as Alice has developed, we’ve had the opportunity to see her grow as Milla has. Alice was a blank slate in the first film because she had memory loss and knew nothing about herself. She has slowly gathered around her this family made up of other survivors of the apocalypse. This is a big step for her. You see a lot of conflict come out of that because she is a hardened warrior who has sacrificed for the battle she’s chosen to fight. She has given up family, friends and a future. Now, she is a slightly more complex character.

The sort of suburban Alice was great for ‘Resident Evil: Retribution,‘ directing Milla in her scenes where normally she would just crack the neck of the zombies and be totally competent and not be be flustered at all. And with this, to watch her be panicked and scared and act that….at the end of everyday as suburban Alice, Milla would go, “Being scared is hard, because you spend all your time screaming and running away!” It’s much easier being the hero, because you just have to just stand there, look cool and kill things.

‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ takes the franchise in new directions. With this being your third ’Resident Evil’ movie in the directors chair, what is it about this series that keeps you interested?

Paul W.S. Anderson: We start where the last film left off. The end of that film was an epic cliff-hanger and we really wanted to make it pay off at the start of this one, then go somewhere completely different. We have taken a huge conceptual leap with this movie. It’s got global scope and the action is bigger than ever. I love making ‘Resident Evil’ movies, in that they’re everything I loved about movies growing up – sexy girls, big action, cool sets. They’re fun films to watch and fun films to make. We’ve become more adventurous with each movie, but with this one we’ve done something really spectacular.

The army of zombies created when the Umbrella Corporation lost control of the T-virus have become larger and even more dangerous as time has passed….

Paul W.S. Anderson: Yeah. The Undead are constantly mutating. Their evolution is one of the strengths of both the video game and the movie franchise. The Undead from the first movie were slow, shambling zombies. They were horrific, but they have evolved into something even more terrifying. Now there are a lot of different kinds of Undead. The Majini Undead, which were introduced in the last movie, are back. They have huge, tentacular mandibles that come out of their mouths. The Lickers make a return but they’ve evolved, as well. We called them the Uber-Lickers because they’re so big.

The Undead that are infected with the Las Plagas virus maintain motor skills and some degree of intelligence. Some of them can ride motorbikes and shoot machine guns. That gives a whole new level of threat to the Undead and I think that keeps the franchise fresh. Everything is coming to a climax. The days when humanity could just sit behind the walls of a fortress and keep the Undead back with machine-gun fire and superior technology are dwindling. This really is the beginning of the end.

Can you explain a little how the test environments work?

Paul W.S. Anderson: The Umbrella Corporation have test environments, maybe a suburban American neighbourhood, or maybe Time Square, or maybe Moscow, or maybe Tokyo. And they populate these environments with clones who believe they’re in the real world, and the Umbrella Corporation unleash the bio-hazard upon them – whether it’s a creature or a virus. And they study to see what the effects are. Obviously that’s something that’s impossible to do in the real world because it’s completely inhumane and would result in the Umbrella Corporation being closed down, but just using these closes as kind of test-fodder, they do these experiments.

How was it having a number of characters and actors from the previous films back for ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’? People like Michelle Rodriguez….

Paul W.S. Anderson: It’s exciting for us and, we hope, for the fans to have these actors and their characters back. It was a unique opportunity to work with everyone again. It was fun to work old characters back in, I mean, I loved working with Michelle Rodriguez on the first movie. We shot her in the head in the first movie, which kind of precluded her from coming back (laughs), but we always talked about bringing her back but we could never figure out how. Then at the end of the third movie where we introduced the cloning idea, that’s where it really kick-started the idea. Obviously, if you have a franchise that has cloning in it, then there’s the possibility of dead characters coming back.

With Michelle, I’ve never met a woman who feels more at home wearing a pair of combat pants and carrying a heavy machine gun. But when I talked to Michelle about returning for this movie, she said she was really interested in exploring different aspects of herself as a woman in her movie persona. We developed a character for her that is more traditionally feminine. The biggest challenge for her was wearing a pair of high heels. It was fun to see Michelle navigate in stilettos (laughs). She was unsteady on them, which shows a completely fresh side of her.