Biohazard: Degeneration

"A perfectly realistic story on bio-terrorism."

Biohazard: Degeneration (aka Resident Evil: Degeneration) is the first full length CG animated film fully based upon the Resident Evil game series. Starring the hero (Leon S. Kennedy) and heroine (Claire Redfield) of Resident Evil 2 (for Play Station), Degeneration is a film much anticipated by fans. Please note that the live movie trilogy is unrelated to the games beside the borrowed character names and the fate of Raccoon City.

Story:
There are quite a bit of background story to understand if one wish to fully understand the movie. Taking place seven years after the events in Resident Evil 2 (one year ... after the event in Resident Evil 4), the demands to reveal the truth of what happened at Raccoon City continues to heat up and an extremist ended up threatening to release the T-Virus to all major cities around the globe, turning all population into zombies.

A few years after Resident Evil 2, the company responsible for the outbreak in Raccoon City (Umbrella Cooperation) was in complete ruin after their stock prices plummeted and legal proceedings against them. After the downfall of the Umbrella Cooperation, many ambitious businesses try to take over the leftover viruses invented by the company which lead to many political and social unrest. The story in this movie will be focusing on one of these companies that took over what's left of Umbrella Cooperation.

Animation:
As stated earlier, the film is fully animated in CG thus fans can expect the familiar faces to remain the same as in the games (though I find Leon's face slightly different than in Resident Evil 4).

In terms of animation quality, it is without a doubt better than the cut scenes from Resident Evil 4. But there are still much room for improvement. Take this, this, or even this for comparison, there are simply much better CG films out there. Resident Evil: Degeneration simply can't beat this level of CG.

*note* In case people are wondering, the images above are from Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO 2: Gravity of the Battlefront.

Sound:
While the ED song is nothing out of the ordinary, the sound effects in the movie is very worth mentioning. The gun fires, explosions, even the water rushing sounds are very realistic. In terms of the character voice acting, it should not be a surprise that the main voices are the same as the games (ie. Leon is voiced by Paul Mercier, who is the VA in Resident Evil 4). There is a Japanese dub version as well for those who enjoy Japanese voicing over anything else (but I have yet to see that version, so I'll not comment on it for now).

Character:
In addition to the return of Leon and Claire, we also see other familiar faces from the games (not going to spoil it for you, go watch it yourself). But perhaps what was most disappointing was that Ada Wong (Leon's "partner" in both Resident Evil 2 and 4) did not show up to aid him. Other than that, everything else is pretty average with a decent among of character development and backgrounds for the main movie characters.

Final Thoughts:
As a Resident Evil fan since its debut in the mid 90s in Japan, I had very high expectations for this game. In some sense, it gave me most of what I wanted to see. Although there's just so much more room for improvement ranging from the graphics to character to story plot.

Lastly, I would like to say after what Leon had been through in Resident Evil 4, the event in this movie should be child's play for me (at least there's no chainsaw or nasty parasites this time :P)

=-= Biohazard : Degeneration =-=

Story : 2/10
Dude...this movie was the most cliche thing I have ever seen in my entire nearly-sixteen-years-long life.
When I heard that a full Resident Evil movie was to come out a few months ago, I was kinda hyped. But, after watching this...thing... I have to say that I am mega-disappointed.
The story started rather nice, but after about half an hour it got very very lame. Lots of uber-predictable and silly scenes like, for instance the water-kissing scene or the matrix bullet-time.Not to mention how ... the picture with Angela's family popped up 2 times in the perfect place, right on time to trigger a lame dramatic bulls**t scene.
Everything just sucked. If you don't believe me, just watch the movie. You'll understand.
I mean, I'd rather watch a bad Lorenzo Lamas action movie.

Art : 9/10
If it weren't for the nearly-flawless art, this movie would have been a perfect failure. The CG-style was awesome, and was, in my opinion the only good thing about this movie. Because of the art, I won't consider that I lost an hour and a half of my life. If only every part of this movie were as good as the art...

Sound : 3/10
Besides Leon's superficial and "bad-a**" voice acting , which failed miserably, I really liked the ending song. It was great... NOT !
I mean, come on. Something like Papa Roach or Mudvayne would have fitted a lot better with the ending. Not that pop-rock-like song.
Also, what was with the super-modern cellphones that had some old brick-like phone monophonic ringtone? And how come at the end, everyone had their clothes and hairstyles absolutely identical ? Like, what the f**k? Didn't they shoot, tumble, swim and jump throughout the whole damn movie??

Character : 4/10
What happened to the cool Resident Evil 4 Leon? What's with this Arnold Schwarzenegger-like guy? The only thing that was similar to the movie Leon and the RE4 one, was his leather jacket and the hairstyle.
At least Claire was okay (besides being slightly retarded).

Enjoyment : 3/10
All I have to say for this part is that, after the first 45 minutes, I was eager to finish it faster. And that can't be a good thing when watching a movie. If it wasn't Resident Evil I wouldn't have watched it all the way.

Overall : 4/10
Overall, this movie blew. If you're not a hardcore die-hard Resident Evil fan, don't watch it. There are lots of other horror movies that you'd be better off watching; like for example :

Dark Water, Shutter, Saw and even the Silent Hill movie, which was pretty bad.
Or better yet, go watch all three Resident Evil movies, because they can't even be compared to this piece o' trash.

I'm a huge Resident Evil fan, and I've been waiting for Capcom to jump into the film business for a long time. That said, this movie really feels more like a long trailer for the upcoming RE:5 than an actual movie. The story's basically the same thing as most of the games: two characters, Leon and Claire, are propelled through a series of action packed gunfights with zombies and all sorts of twisted T and G virus mutants. While some of the earlier fight scenes are nice, the latter half of the movie has a dreadful amount of drama in it. I ... watched the dub, which was just horrid. Besides the fact that the lip synching was really off, which I kind of expect when it comes to CGI anime, the faces weren't able to hold a wide range of features, and that makes all the characters look like dolls when they're trying to convey emotions.

The art itself was decent. It's certainly no more advanced than Square Enix's previous Final Fantasy movies. Degeneration actually looks a lot more like a really nice X-box 360 ingame cutscene to be honest. Lets face it: these graphics are really only a little bit better than the game will look. The graphics on this movie are pretty sorry for a movie coming out recently. Some of the characters have rather jerky animations, too, and it gets really noticeable when you see the crowds. Some things look really fantastic in this, though: billowing fire and explosions in particular.

The sound was decent, I have no real complaints. It didn't wow me or anything, but it got the job done. Some of the instrumental music was decent, but the guitar riffs in some of the later parts of the movie weren't really necessary.

Character is where it gets interesting, sort of. If you're already a RE fan, there's a few nods to the players out there. Once again, Claire gets stuck with the kid, while Leon's off attempting to seduce the lady-cop, Angela. Leon's aide Hunnigan has a cameo, but the real lady every fan would want to see never makes an appearance. I don't know why Capcom chose to keep Claire from really getting into the action like Leon (she goes through almost half of the movie without a weapon), but I thought it was a really poor decision.

I had fun with this, but I'd imagine that if I weren't already a fan of both horror movies (not that this was all too gory) and Resident Evil, I wouldn't have cared for it as much. Still, its not too bad, and its a good way to get friends to watch anime (possibly).