Today at WonderCon 2012, Sony Screen Gems presented footage from their big fall release, Resident Evil: Retribution. Good move on their part as there was a huge burst of crowd support when the panel was announced. The fifth film in the series by director Paul W. S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich features Alice’s return to the fight against the Umbrella Corporation. Also returning are some fan-favorites from Resident Evils past. Anderson and Jovovich were on hand to screen the trailer and an action sequence from the film, which promises to be the biggest yet as Resident Evil goes global. You can get caught up on all of our previous coverage of Resident Evil: Retribution here.
Resident Evil: Retribution, also starring Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, Oded Fehr, Boris Kodjoe, Johann Urb, Kevin Durand and Bingbing Li opens on September 14th. Hit the jump to see our coverage from the event.
I’ll be honest up front, I was a huge fan of the first Resident Evil film but the movie franchise quickly lost favor with me with the atrocious handling of the Nemesis character in the sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. That being said, it’s still impressive what the filmmakers have been able to do with the property, making Jovovich the first female action hero to star in give installments of the same franchise and maintaining (even growing) a huge fan base over the years. But I digress.
Anderson was on hand first to introduce the film and his lovely wife, Jovovich. Per Anderson, Retribution is a direct continuation of Resident Evil: Afterlife, in which an epic battle was promised from aboard the ship, Arcadia. Soon after, the film goes in an unusual and unexpected direction as audiences are taken back in time to see the world before the T-virus outbreak and get to revisit some favorite characters. Anderson also stressed the global scale of the fifth film, as they shot in Tokyo, Moscow, New York, Washington, D.C. and even the Arctic Circle. With that introduction finished, Jovovich took the stage to great enthusiasm from the masses. Soon after she took the stage, the duo debuted an action sequence from the movie as follows.
Without context, the clip played out as a simple demonstration of Alice’s (Jovovich) zombie-killing skills. She was donned from head to toe in tight black leather with an Umbrella Corporation symbol clearly evident. It looked like a training sequence from a Resident Evil videogame, as Alice runs down a brightly lit hallway that is almost completely white, contrasting against her all-black outfit and the colorful attire of a hoard of individually attacking zombies. Armed with a chain whip, a handgun and her kick-ass boots, Alice takes out all comers in a variety of ways in order to highlight her martial arts skills and Anderson’s 3D shooting. The 3D gimmicks are obvious and are to be expected.
After the clip, Anderson and Jovovich led into a panel discussion. Their comments follow below:
As I said above, I’m a huge fan of the games but have more of a luke-warm attraction to the films. However, for fans of the rest of the series, Retribution is a must see.
Follow along with our continuing WonderCon coverage here.
Here’s the official synopsis for Resident Evil: Retribution:
The wildly successful film franchise adaptation that has grossed nearly $700 million worldwide to the popular video game series, “Resident Evil,” returns in its highly anticipated fifth installment, “Re5ident Evil: Retribution” in state-of-the art 3D.
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. The countdown has begun.
The Lockout panel started off with the trailer that was previously released by Open Road and Film District. It doesn’t highlight Snow’s (Pearce) charisma and sarcasm as much as other trailers, which I find to be a strong selling point to the movie. The addition of Besson lends some gravity (pardon the pun) to the project and his influence is readily apparent. The panel also screened five minutes of footage from Lockout which focused on Snow’s entry into the facility, a nice anti-gravity fight between Snow and a random prisoner and his daring rescue of Emilie Warnock (Grace). It also touched on a bit of the madness and personality of the prisoners involved as they force a prison engineer to open a locked door standing between them and the president’s daughter. While Pearce’s wise-cracks were welcome, some of the plotting was simply inane, as in [SPOILER] Emilie’s bodyguard blowing his own brains out to preserve the remaining oxygen in the room or Snow jabbing a “self-directing” needle into Emilie’s eye in order to jump-start her brain functions.
Grace was present for an intimate Q&A after screening the footage. I’ve posted her comments below:
Let’s start off with a walk-through of the trailer for Looper. It opens with a narration by Gordon-Levitt explaining to us what it’s like to live the life of a Looper, assassins hired by the mob to execute criminals sent 30 years in the past. While Gordon-Levitt talks about how rewarding the profession is, the image on the screen shows him standing in the dirt next to a corn field with a white sheet laid out on the ground about twenty feet in front of him. Out of thin air, a man appears on his knees with his hands bound behind his back and a hood drawn over his face. Gordon-Levitt’s character wastes no time in blowing the target away with a modified “Looper gun.” Back at whatever time-jumping station he works out of, Gordon-Levitt drop the gun off in a conveniently labeled bin that reads “Looper Guns Here.”
While the trailer moved too quickly to get a good look at Gordon-Levitt’s make-up, the still images do a fantastic job of letting us see what the Younger Willis will look like. Then, director Rian Johnson and Gordon-Levitt himself took the stage to talk about the film. Their comments follow below:
Gordon-Levitt compared Johnson to a young Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg. Johnson spoke to the influence of a lot of different elements in the film, saying “part of the fun is the way it surprises you.”As Johnson and Gordon-Levitt worked together in Brick, Johnson says he feels like he learned a lot on that film and knew more of what he was doing on Looper. Gordon-Levitt said that he was being humble and that Johnson knew exactly what he was doing on Brick. He compares their working relationship to the early years of high school vs your senior year, where things are similar but you know each other better.Johnson reveals that Looper will deal with all sorts of moral quandaries involved with time travel, especially the basic questions around finding yourself standing across the way from your future self.For fans of Breaking Bad, Johnson will be directing another episode.Gordon-Levitt expressed interest in doing a musical if a good enough project came along.Johnson expressed a desire to be lucky enough to work with Gordon-Levitt for the rest of his career.As a big fan of sci-fi, Gordon-Levitt is most excited for fans to see Looper, even though he has The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, Lincoln and Django Unchained opening this year!Johnson brought in Shane Carruth, the writer/director/star of time-travel flick, Primer, as a consultant on time-traveling.Gordon-Levitt’s make-up was so convincing that his own mother and best friend were freaked out because he acted like himself but appeared completely different.
While we have the entire summer to get through before we can see Looper, which opens September 28th. Luckily for the film, the heavy hitters will have come and gone by then (even Resident Evil: Retribution opens a full two weeks beforehand). With the excellent caliber of filmmakers both in front of and behind the cameras coupled with the always-entertaining mash-up of mob movie and time traveling, Looper is already on my list for most anticipated films of the year.
Let’s start off with the clips as they gave a pretty good indication of the level of action and humor we can except to see in this summer’s Battleship. The first one, surprisingly, highlighted the relationship between the Hopper brothers, Alex (Kitsch) and Stone (Skarsgard). They’re out at a local bar for Alex’s birthday with big brother Stone buying drinks and doling out unwanted life advice. Alex is apparently on hard times and is unemployed, while Stone is in the Navy, following in their late father’s footsteps (which is why Stone feels the need to look out for Alex).
There are some cool highlights to the alien here, which Berg calls “Thug.” They seem to have a Swiss Army knife-like appendage on their suits that can flip and rotate into a variety of tools including guns, knives and a weird scanner-type apparatus (from the footage, it looked like “Thug” was scanning one of the ship’s engines or weapons; it was difficult to tell out of context). More fighting breaks out with the alien clearly winning the upper-hand until…[SPOILER] Alex leads him up onto the deck where Raikes (Rihanna) shoots the thing point blank with a 5-inch deck gun. The build-up to that money-shot was well worth the execution. What was disappointing was Kitsch’s terrible one-liners (he actually said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”)
Originally, Berg wanted to make a movie about the Essex, a whaling ship that sank in 1820 and stranded its crew on an island; the crew resorted to cannibalism to survive. Berg quipped that “cannibalism was not popular with the studio.” (This was the same whaling ship that inspired Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”When asked, “Why Battleship?” Berg was candid with the fact that “it didn’t initially lend itself to the most logical interpretation to film,” but he found inspiration in the fact that once you’ve scored a hit in Battleship, you “try to kill your opponent as brutally as possible.”Berg commented that, although Battleship has an attractive cast, they’re “smart, complicated actors.” He especially raved about Decker and Rihanna.
Skarsgard commented on the physicality required for the action scenes in the film. He told a story about a scene in which Berg wanted to film Skarsgard’s reaction to being hit by an incoming soundwave, which resulted in Skarsgard taking a blast to the face from a 25-foot-long air cannon.Decker also talked about her action scenes saying, “I got to shoot guns. I was a happy camper.” She said that Berg makes everything feel very real, mentioning a time when the director hid in a nearby bush with a machine-gun during a shot in which she stumbles onto a terrifying scene of carnage.The aliens, known as Regents, come from what is known as a Goldilocks planet (neither too hot, nor too cold and having similar conditions to Earth); they were designed by ILM.Berg says that Battleship may not be the biggest movie of the summer, but they have the biggest guns.
After viewing the footage, there looks to be a lot more humor and heart invested in the characters than I would have guessed at first blush. While the setup scene came off a bit goofy, it did round out the characters a bit more. Battleship still looks like, as Berg called it, “a fun, kick-ass, intense, emotional-at-times, summer popcorn madness” movie. With this summer being as over-loaded with action movies as it is, Battleship might end up sinking below the rest.
In an exclusively cut sequence for WonderCon, director Rupert Sanders presented us with a five-minute compilation from Snow White and the Huntsman. It began with a cavalry charge, the daring knights of King Magnus’ (Noah Huntley) forces literally smashing through the Queen’s Shadow Army. Next, we see Snow White (Stewart) making a daring escape from the Queen’s dungeons. It’s out of the frying pan and into the Dark Forest for Snow White, who encounters the evil and nightmarish creatures in the woodland’s depths. Enter The Huntsman, in a familiar scene in which the Queen demands his assistance in returning the fair Snow White.
I’ll admit, I was sold once I saw the footage, but there were more surprises in store as both Theron and Stewart came on stage for a panel discussion with Sanders. I’ve outlined their comments below:
The footage shown at the panel was more than enough to convince me to check this movie out this summer. If you’re a fan of Lord of the Rings, I think you’ll find the aesthetics and the themes to be to your liking. This just so happens to be a tale told with a defiant female protagonist (which I’m sure is a nice change for Stewart) and an equally imposing female villain in Theron’s Queen Ravenna.
The panel kicked off with a very bizarre clip featuring a dessicated (and obviously fake) corpse speaking from a hospital bed. Apparently, this was meant to be a very ill Tim Burton, who was presided over by two attractive nurses and a doctor who preached holistic medicine. After a very strange sequence of events which tried to revive Mr. Burton (and failed), we got on with the show. Author/screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith moderated the panel which included Bekmambetov and Walker. While the previous trailers hadn’t entirely convinced me to see the film, the following action sequence definitely did, but skip the next paragraph if you’d like to avoid spoilers.
Yeah, that definitely made me want to go see this flick, which is promising to be heavy on action and axe-play. Walker looks completely badass when he’s swinging the two-hander around, lopping off undead heads left and right. It makes me want to see a revisionist write-up of American history with this Lincoln in place of the historically accurate one. Although, as the lights come back up and the panel discussion begins, Walker and Grahame-Smith do comment on the surprising accuracy of the film. I’ve outlined their responses below:
Walker commented on the Gothic tone of the film, which was strangely historically accurate (mentioning the unexplained death of Lincoln’s mother), calling it a “period Lincoln movie that just happens to have vampires in it.” In a great quote from Walker regarding playing Lincoln, he called it “badass; it’s an honor as an American. I want to know that my leaders are strong and can make tough decisions…and cut some heads off.”Bekmambetov, Grahame-Smith and Walker all talked about Burton’s support in wanting to take an aggressive, all-out approach on the film. Bekmambetov also said that while they changed some things from the book, the tone of the novel and the structure around Lincoln’s life is still present.Grahame-Smith did extensive research into Lincoln’s life and a lot of his book is in the movie. Some things they added were Adam, the Chief of all Vampires (Sewell); William Johnson (Mackie), who was an actual aide of Lincoln’s who traveled with him to Washington, D.C.; and the kick-ass train sequence mentioned above.On vampire comparisons, Grahame-Smith said the following: “I’m not a Twilight-hater, but I’ll say this…our vampires don’t sparkle.” He also guaranteed that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will be the only movie this summer to feature a president killing vampires.Bekmambetov also joked that it’s important to note they’re releasing this movie on the shortest night of the year. They worked hard to ground the vampires in reality, noting that the vampires could be seen outside since sunscreen was invented in the 19th century.When asked if President Obama would make a good vampire slayer, Grahame-Smith responded coyly that “he’s tall, he’s athletic” and could be okay. Walker had the best answer when asked what Obama’s weapon of choice against vampires would be: “Diplomacy. Maybe email.”
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter looks like an awesome action movie with a Gothic horror slant and a touch of history thrown in. Walker looks absolutely imposing as our 16th president and is entirely believable in the fight sequences. While it’s important not to take this movie too seriously (obviously), it could easily be the biggest surprise of the summer. I’ll say it again: gun-axe.
If you’ve watched the first 12 minutes of Sound of My Voice before, you won’t be surprised to learn that the cult leader, Maggie (Marling) claims to be a visitor from the future. Specifically, she is from the year 2054, denoted by an anchor tattoo with the number 54 that is found on her ankle. In a discussion with the filmmakers, they chose to use the symbol of the anchor to represent time travelers because they use water as a medium, while the number simply marked the year they were from. Before we get into the Q&A with Batmanglij and Marling, cult-members Klaus (Wharton) and Mel (Meyers) came on stage to explain a little bit about their group and invite us like-minded individuals to join them. You can check out their message over at the film’s viral site.
An exclusive WonderCon trailer was then screened, which showed both the back story of the investigative couple, Peter and Lorna, from their planning stages, as well as the escalating tension between the two, catalyzed by the manipulative Maggie. The feeling of dread mounts as Maggie gathers more and more devoted followers, makes plans to move them out of the basement to more of a permanent campsite and starts asking them to do increasingly questionable things. At the risk of ruining any more of the story, I’ll stop there, as I’ve been told that this is definitely a film to see knowing as little as possible going into it.
Following up on the exclusive cut of the trailer, Marling revealed Maggie as “kind, gentle and sympathetic, but also vicious, snake-like and possessing scorpion energy.” Marling herself commented that a friend of hers didn’t realize she possessed such “capacity for cruelty.” When asked about what goes down in the basement, Batmanglij replied, “Shit happens in that basement,” referring to the escalation of menace.
After Lindelof had his own special fan-boy moment in introducing Scott (after sharing a funny story about watching Alien for the first time as a kid), Scott talked for a moment about his return to sci-fi. He said it’s been too long since he’s done a sci-fi project because, frankly, nothing was of interest to him lately. He also mentioned that Prometheus came about as a genesis of a very small idea that hadn’t yet been examined and confirmed that he liked the idea of the film having the “DNA of Alien.” Scott also alluded to the possibility of a sequel or continuation of this film, saying that Prometheus has “enough big, open questions at the end.” After that comment, they debuted the new trailer for the audience. Since you can now simply watch it for yourself, I’ll continue to the panel discussion.
Scott, always the straight man, pointed to two things for Prometheus’ success: the strength of the script and the strength of the ensemble cast. He also mentioned that he prefers working with an ensemble cast as they have better interactions on and off camera which results in better performances.
Since special effects have evolved since Scott’s first Alien movie, he mentioned the fact that the first monster was played by the seven-footer, Bolaji Badejo. While computer effects allow the ability to do more, they’re still more expensive; however, Scott mentioned that the cost benefit to all the effects work is to do more films and that it would be a pleasure to come back to a sci-fi film as soon as possible.