Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City serves as a reboot for the franchise on the big screen, and it's taking several cues from the classic videogame in order to accomplish that. The film, which arrives in theaters on November 24, follows iconic characters like Chris (Robbie Amell) and Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) as they navigate what remains of Raccoon City in the wake of the Umbrella Corporation's machinations.
Several other legendary characters from the Capcom games make their way to the film too, including STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) member and Umbrella Corporation spy Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper) and RPD (Raccoon Police Department) recruit Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia). Hopper and Jogia spoke to Screen Rant about their respective roles and the honor of creating another piece of such a long-standing puzzle.
Screen Rant: This is the Resident Evil film that I wanted to see. I haven't played the game in years, but seeing you guys in that mansion in some of those scenes, brought me right back to the tone of the game. First of all, can you guys tell me a little bit about your characters?
Tom Hopper: If you played the games, you know that Albert Wesker is the guy in the sunglasses, quite villainesque in his manner. This version of the film, it's very grounded and very three-dimensional. That Wesker from the game, that version of him doesn't exist in this world. We wanted to kind of honor what he is and the problems that he creates from his actions basically.
It really kind of plays into the guilt and the morality and the betrayal, I suppose. The human aspect behind that. That he really is a good friend of all of theirs, but ultimately he's just very selfish, and creates a very selfish act for himself for self-gain. But the human side of this version of Wesker has guilt.
That for me was a much more interesting character. I think villains that carry guilt are always more interesting because it makes them human. It makes them feel that their actions are driven by being the hero of their own story. But ultimately, they're not.
Now Avan, you play Leon who's the rookie to the force, an iconic Resident Evil character. And he is really kind of like the audience's eyes through this world. Can you talk about Leon a little bit?
Avan Jogia: Iconic Resident Evil character, iconic video game character, period. I mean, top five for me, personally. I probably played a couple of hundred hours of Resident Evil 4. I've done a lot of playing Leon before I ever played him in a movie. In that regard, I'm really honored and excited to be able to bring him to life.
He's the rookie. It's his first day on the job. He's having a terrible first day. It was not a great first day, honestly. He's the audience's eyes in. Johannes [Roberts] was really very specific about how he wanted all these characters crafted and what roles and positions they took for the Resident Evil fans, for the story, for the plot, and for the audience that don't really understand what's going on.
He was really thoughtful with how he wanted to have that play out. Even so much as to have a Wesker be a human. He knew that in his Resident Evil, this sort of one-face, one-note villain didn't work. At that point, all the characters throughout the entire piece had to be pulled out and made more sophisticated because it's not a video game.
There are interpersonal relationships, you have to set up stuff, and because you don't get to play as any one of these characters, we have to do the job of making people care about these characters. And part of that is extending the stuff we know about them. So hungover on the first day of the job, having a rough one. And who wants to deal with the zombie apocalypse, when you're a bit hungover? That's not exactly a shout. That's a bad shout.
I think Johannes did an excellent job of capturing the tone of the games. Can you talk to me about what his directing style added to Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City?
Tom Hopper: Well, for a start, he was very, very well versed on the games, right? So he created the world very well. And so our work was kind of done in the sense of trying to create something more, cause it was all there for us.
Then around that, he had to give a beating heart to this world and the characters within it. He was very encouraging of us playing around and trying to make these guys real. Not feeling that we're too rigid to the script and that we have to... within scenes where we're getting to play, we should play and make them as real as possible.
Then it gives [us] more to work with, making these characters really bounce off each other. You know, like a lot of scenes between me and Jill [Hannah John-Kamen] and when we're all in the police office together, all those kinds of scenes. They're all very loose, which was important because it makes it more relatable.
