New Resident Evil: Retribution clip pits Alice against Jill Valentine

Superfluous slow-motion, CGI bullets and wire-assisted acrobatics abound in the latest Resident Evil: Retribution footage.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: The Resident Evil movies are not good movies. They’re shallow, the characters featured in them are one-dimensional, and they aren’t even all that terribly faithful to the Capcom video game series that serves as the film’s source material.

Of course, that’s all speaking objectively. Subjectively the Resident Evil films are a lot like those Peeps-brand marshmallow baby chickens: Yes, they have no redeeming nutritional value to speak of, but when the mood strikes there are few things as decadently satisfying as a vaguely chicken-shaped blob of fluffy sugar. Likewise, though the Resident Evil films offer no real useful commentary on the plight of the modern man, if you catch one on TV late at night and want to see zombies being kicked to pieces by attractive women, then yes, they will serve that niche nicely.

Why did we begin this piece with that clarification? Simple: We’re about to show you some almost brand-new (it has been previously seen at this year’s Comic Con) footage from the upcoming Resident Evil: Retribution and we want to make sure that you all know what you’re getting into by pressing “play.” Effectively, this clip is 2:20 of cliches that the Resident Evil films have already run into the ground (slow-motion, bullet time, anything else it could possibly lift from The Matrix) jam-packed into a single ice ax fight. Again, it’s not objectively good, but it’s certainly attractive eye-candy.

Also, fans of Capcom’s Resident Evil games will delight to see Jill Valentine as the character squaring off against Alice, the Milla Jovovich-portrayed character invented specifically to be the heroine of these films. Actually, not only is it Jill Valentine, but it’s the arguably inferior Resident Evil 5 iteration of the character in which she’s totally nutbar, wears a skintight vinyl catsuit and has some kind of organic ruby embedded into her chest. Please note that this is the same version of the character later seen in the Marvel Vs Capcom 3 games, though since she’s not Mega Man, the Internet probably won’t get too excited about that.

Finally, we have Michelle Rodriguez’s character. Yes, she died in the first Resident Evil movie, but as you can see from this footage, she got better. Though her handy syringe accessory makes an utterly baffling noise when used, we’re happy to see the former corpse benefit from medical science. That whole “eject bullets from your fingertips into the snow at low speed” thing seems like a really effective tactical option.

Did you guys get the sarcasm there? We were laying it on pretty thick, but couldn’t tell if you’d get it or not. In the end, this clip mostly bores us. We’re as up for meaningless, mindless entertainment as the next person, but based on this clip the Resident Evil series is just recycling its ideas ad nauseam until people stop going to theaters to see these things. Hopefully the full movie, which hits theaters on September 14, has a few more novel things to show us.