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Resident Evil: Apocalypse: An Explosion of Horror is an article written by Nathan Tyler for issue #236 of Fangoria.
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It's 2 a.m. on the rooftop of Toronto's City Hall, located in the heart of spacious Nathan Philips Square, in front of a glass-and-mortar building complex constructed especially for the filming of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the $50 million follow-up to 2002's genre hit Resident Evil. Eleven cameras situated in all corners of the area roll simultaneously as three black helicopters hover mere feet above the asphalt, zooming over and around the location-and Fango's head. The sheer loudness of the mammoth choppers is peppered with near-deafening fire from guns that look like cannons. The feeling is, in a word, scary-the bullets may be blanks, but the danger on the set seems real.
And that ain't nothing. A little under an hour later, selected members of the cast and crew huddle together in a small room hidden deep inside the faux building complex, where video monitors are set up-the space is, to quote the unit publicist, "the safest place on the set." At the count of 10, the entire fronting of the building explodes as actress Milla Jovovich sprints through its columns, glass and rock and flames soaring all around her in its wake. Afterward, when the debris clears, the set looks...well, like a bomb hit it. It's a rare treat for a Fango reporter-while stabbings, spurting arteries and flesheating beasts are normally the order of the night, some times there's nothing quite as frightening as a good ol' explosion.
"There are so many stunts on this movie that all of the big sequences have their inherent dangers," says stunt coordinator Steve Lucescu, whose résumé includes Gothika, Jason X and Darkman 2. For the building sequence, Lucescu had rigged over 500 individual explosive hits to detonate at once, two for each pane of glass, all around Jovovich-whom he trained to perform her own stunts and fight sequences for three months before production began.
"Everything we've done has been a close call, because we planned it to be-if it wasn't close, it would be pretty boring," Lucescu says. "But has it crossed the line of being unsafe? No. [Milla has] gotten some bumps and bruises, and cuts and stuff like that, but as far as any major disaster, no. Otherwise, I don't think we'd still be here tonight."
Based on the popular video game Resident Evil: Nemesis (the film's title was changed due to the release of Star Trek: Nemesis), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (opening September 10 from Screen Gems) picks up right where the original movie left off, with Alice (Jovovich) having escaped the Hive and entered the ravaged, treacherous Raccoon City. While in the Hive, Alice had been subjected to bio-genetic experimentation by the diabolical Umbrella Corporation and has now become genetically altered, with superhuman strength, senses and dexterity. She is joined by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a recently demoted member of Umbrella's elite Special Tactics and Rescue Services (S.T.A.R.S.), Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), Carlos Oliveira (Oded Fehr), L.J. (Mike Epps) and Nicholai (Zack Ward), and they all must escape what is rapidly becoming a city of the dead. To reach that goal, the group must battle their way through the relentless onslaught of ravenous ghouls, as well as Umbrella's bio-engineered weapons-the most lethal of which is the colossal, heavily armed assassin called the Nemesis.
"The second one, for me, is much more fun than the first," says executive producer Robert Kulzer, head of production at the German-based Constantin Film and executive producer of the original Evil as well as Wrong Turn. "We wanted to give the movie a slightly different tone. When I see the first one now ,it's very much about the terror of the claustrophobia and the music blaring and the sound effects really loud-it's more of an adrenaline rush-type movie. So for the second one, we thought we should try to have a little bit more fun.
"There are still going to hopefully be great horror elements and shocks, but there will also be more of an element of entertainment," he adds. "I wouldn't want to compare it to Freddy vs. Jason, but it's practically over the top. So where the first one was almost heart-wrenching and disturbing, the second one allows the audience to really cheer when somebody dies, when somebody gets it."
To accomplish this, Kulzer and his team hired first-time director Alexander Witt in place of Resident Evil's Paul W.S. Anderson, who scripted Apocalypse and was occupied with helming Alien vs. Predator. Not at all a novice, the Chilean-born Witt has worked as a 2nd-unit director and cinematographer on films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Daredevil, xXx, Hannibal and Black Hawk Down.
"In retrospect, he was the perfect choice," says Kulzer. "The script, compared to the first one, has a lot more action. Again, there are the horror beats and real gore, but there's also a lot of spectacular action. It's much, much bigger than the first movie. Looking at the guys who do this sort of studio-type action, there's just a handful of people who probably wouldn't want to be the director of Resident Evil 2. And then you start talking to the filmmakers, and they say the guy to go is Alexander Witt."
The director, taking a breather between shots, admits that while the emphasis on Apocalypse leans a little more toward action than scares, the film will have enough horror to tide Fango readers over. While he's not an aficionado of the genre in particular, Witt reveals, "You know, I used to be when I was a kid. And that's why I kind of liked getting back into that. I did get to a lot of horror movies back then, and then probably didn't go over the last 20 years. I mean, I've seen some of them-like the Freddy movies-but for two decades I really didn't do much about that. I liked them, and if I direct another one, I probably would do a better job of making people jump and all that.
"It's kind of 50-50," he says of the film's tone. "There's blood and such, but I don't think it's violent in the sense that people are cutting each other's heads off. There are more violent movies than this. It's really more suspense and action, apart from people dying and being blown up by machine guns. But it's not gruesome-it's not people stabbing and cutting each other's throats and blood flying around. I know that Paul wanted to make it distinct, and this film is totally different from the first one, because that film happens in the lab and now we're outside in the city. But we've tried to have both [horror and action] in a balance, and it has worked out pretty well. We still have the undead people and the dogs [makeup FX created by Caligari Studios]. A lot of people liked those elements in the first movie, so we put them into a couple of scenes. And then we have the Nemesis, the monster from the game."
The Nemesis, a goliath that was once the human protagonist Matt (played by Eric Mabius) in Resident Evil but has been genetically transformed into a murderous beast by the Umbrella Corporation, was designed by Paul Jones, one of Canada's leading special makeup FX artists. The British-born Jones, who has worked on films such as Ginger Snaps, Wrong Turn, Bride of Chucky and the upcoming Assault on Precinct 13 remake and Head Games, sees bringing the Nemesis to life as a once-in-a-lifetime gig.
"When I received the script, it was full of effects," says the amiable Jones, surrounded by foam latex appliances smeared with pro blood in his team's trailer. "[The producers] asked, 'Can you do the whole movie?' and I said, 'Nope, I just want to do the Nemesis.' And they went, 'Really?' and I said, 'Yeah-he's the Darth Vader character of the movie, he's the main bad guy, he's going to steal the show.' So they gave me an actor [Matt Taylor] who could physically play the role. We did a life cast and designed him based on the game. My job was to make him real, to essentially give him a three-dimensional form.
"Everybody will recognize the character-we couldn't change the look at all," Jones continues. "We had to basically stick to the design, but give him a unique movie persona. So there are many elements that are instantly recognizable and a few little Paul Jones-isms I threw in there just for my own artistic [tastes]. He has a scar going through one eye, which is a little twinge he didn't have before, and he has a different skin texture. Essentially, with the leather part of the costume, we just went verbatim right from the game. There were a few ideas tossed around at the beginning about making his costume out of red leather or having more skin exposed, but we just said, 'No, that's not the Nemesis-the fans need to be able to recognize this guy.'
"This is, to steal a line from [FX artist] Chris Halls, the best job I've ever had," beams Jones with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store. "For me, a job isn't defined by its budget-it's defined by the amount of input and artistic freedom I'm given. Out of every job I've ever done-and this goes for Hellraiser II, Nightbreed, Hardware-this is without a doubt the best experience, in the sense that they gave me a design which they wanted to kind of start my juices flowing, rather than saying, 'We want this.' I knew what the Nemesis looked like-so does everybody else. But I had to build this guy and make him work.
"After my first pass at the sculpture, they said, 'Hmm, make his teeth a bit more pointy. Otherwise, that's spot-on.' That was our first shot, which is unheard of! Usually you go through give, 10, 15 different passes to get the look, but I just hit the mark, exactly what they wanted right off the bat. They were delighted, and in fact, the second week of prep out of 10 weeks, [producer] Jeremy Bolt came in ad said, 'Yeah!' and was gritting his teeth like, 'This guy's gonna kick ass!' And that was just the sculpt form. So it was wonderful having that enthusiasm to work with, and bringing my own kind of boyish charm to the table. Because I'm still a big kid; for me to be able to design a movie icon... I believe he's gonna be one; he's gonna be up there with Freddy and Jason in a couple of years."
Similarly, to look at actress Guillory outfitted for her role is like gazing a mirror image of Jill Valentine from the video game-the resemblance is truly uncanny. "It's kind of spooky," laughs the gorgeous Australian actress, previously seen in The Time Machine and as TV's Helen of Troy. "I'd been looking on the Internet before going out for this and trying to find pictures of her for the screen test, so that I could pack a few garments or whatever would help. Then I got the part and they're like, 'Oh, here's her boob tube and her miniskirt,' and I thought, 'OK! I wish I'd been to the gym more often.' They showed me a printout from the cheats book of Jill, and it was weird. I said, 'But I look like that... that's actually very similar to how I look.' I mean, when I've got no makeup on and just mascara and without the big, foxy eyes and stuff, it's just scarily alike.
"In the game, she's the one who basically wins-she's the one who kicks ass," says Guillory of Jill. "If you want to play Resident Evil and win, you play Jill Valentine, 'cause she's hardcore. She's a little world-weary-she's had a gun held to her heard so many times that she really doesn't give a damn anymore. She dresses how she wants; she says what she likes. It's shoot first, ask questions later-that knowledge that she's the top of her field and if she messes up, no one's going to be there to catch her. She's nails. The thing I really enjoy about playing someone that is hard is that she's also incredibly feminine. She's got this 'Come get me' little outfit on. Because she can. And every time you go out for a part or you read a script and it's got this kind of hard woman, she's dressed like that and she's manly and has these masculine qualities. And Jill's really girly. Because, you know, she could walk around in stilettos and a miniskirt and a little tank top and no one will mess with her, 'cause she can break people's necks with her bare hands. She's cool, she's really good fun. She's foxy."
The star of the show, of course, is Jovovich, the original film's ass-kicking heroine. An international fashion-magazine cover girl since her early teens, in person the stunning Jovovich is miles apart from what one would expect based on her public image-she is completely down to Earth and sharp as a tack. Fango catches up with the actress in her personal trailer, where she relaxes following her aforementioned running-and-dodging sequence and contemplates the evolution of Alice.
"It's such a dream for an actor to play a part two times, because there's going to be freshness there just based on the fact that you know this person so well, and you're going for things that you would never have thought to go for in the first film because you were nervous or doing whatever you were doing at the time," notes Jovovich. "But since I already did that movie, I can take the time to do something else now and think about other facets of her personality. She is changing, she is evolving, so there's more freshness because I'm more comfortable. And the moment you're comfortable in a scene is when beautiful things happen.
"One of the most significant changes that Alice is going through," Jovovich continues, "is that she's been infected with the T-virus now, and so she's first-hand experiencing what it is to have the disease and be living with it. That's really interesting, because I feel like she's a strange type of hero, you know? She's a hero who is living with the sickness and having to del with not really knowing what her body is doing, what it's going to react to or not react, and her emotions are going through so many changes. That's such an important point-that she is dealing with this sickness. Because I've had good friends of mine coping with HIV. I love the fact that, in a certain way, there's going to be a hero out there for everybody in the world who has to face this day in, day out."
Another key aspect of the film, and one that Jovovich says drew her back for the sequel, is that there is more to the movie than there appears to be-while it is action-based, it also deals with deeper issues. "One thing I know for sure is that people aren't interested in just going to see shoot-'em-up films," she says. "So that's why I feel like our movie is going to have a lot of amazing action, but the core story, about Umbrella and what they stand for, the experiments they're going-what they did to me, what I'm going through and what I'm going to become-goes straight into like a holographic universe. I'm really excited about the main points of who Alice is becoming and things that only physicists are talking or something about. [Actor] Thomas [Kretschmann] has this speech at the end where he's telling her what they did to her and that she's like this engineered weapon, which is, in a sense, the next step in human evolution.
"So in effect, if you look at the holographic theory, they talk about the fact that all energy is not equal, right?" she continues. "You could get something from nothing in a holographic universe. So we're taking that philosophy and toward the end of the movie, Alice is in this big laboratory and picking up on the data and talking about what's going on. It's really cool! They have all these factoids that we researched from all these books. I'm really into science-I love physics, it's something I'm very interested in. We've been doing a lot of research and backing things up because it's so fun and it's so science fiction at the same time. I mean, you read Dune and you think, 'Wow, this guy knew what he was talking about. This could be real.' This is the future of mankind."
"We also totally picked up on the idea of, in this world of Microsofts and the CIAs, there's all the stuff going on behind the curtains that you have ideas about but nobody ever really talks about," adds Kulzer of the film's deeper matters, grinning. "We we wanted to tap into this and use the ever-increasing power of the Umbrella Corporation to have fun with it. In most situations, you don't know who is really in charge-is it the police or the Umbrella soldiers or the guys who are watching whatever is playing on the security monitors that are everywhere? You get a sort of paranoid worldview, and the second movie is much more about that unease. Because you will probably realize at one point that our lives are very, very similar already to the world of Resident Evil. We could be that close to having a SARS outbreak or an Ebola outbreak or something like that, and that's what makes it kind of creepy. Especially when you go to Toronto to shoot a movie about a deadly virus!"
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