Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City promises to feature plenty of gory action, with the trailer including several monsters from the popular video game series. Fans of the franchise will be able to see the imaginative monster and boss designs from the series brought to life in live-action. The monsters are part of how Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City hopes to create a movie that's more faithful to the lore of the gaming franchise than past Resident Evil movies.
The Resident Evil series of games date back to 1996, when the first installment, developed by Shinji Mikami, was released by Capcom for the PlayStation One. The game's story saw special forces agents Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield investigating a mansion filled with horrific creatures that hides a deadly secret. The Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City trailer hints at many of these familiar revelations. Decades ago, the game helped to pioneer the survival horror genre, where players must carefully conserve resources like bullets and healing herbs to survive, while combatting horrifying creatures. The Resident Evil series, in particular, also became popular for its campy tone and complex mythology. The first game has since spawned several direct sequels and over a dozen spinoffs, including the well-regarded Resident Evil: Village, the eighth installment within the main canon of RE sequels.
Resident Evil first came to the big screen in 2002, with Paul W. S. Anderson as writer and director. The movie was successful enough to spawn five sequels, becoming the largest-grossing franchise based off a video game. However, Anderson's movies received poor critical response and diverged greatly from the game, featuring a new protagonist named Alice played by Milla Jovovitch.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City adapts the first two games, essentially aiming to be a more direct and faithful adaptation of the games than Anderson's previous movie titles. The trailer features familiar game characters like Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, as well as iconic locations like the mansion from the original Resident Evil and the police station from Resident Evil 2. The monsters will be a key part of capturing the game series' unique approach to horror, and the trailer reveals a number of creatures which will be in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, such as:
Zombies
Zombies are one of the most common enemies in the Resident Evil games. In the franchise's universe, they are humans who have been infected with the T-Virus created by the sinister Umbrella Corporation. As in other zombie stories like The Walking Dead, zombies can spread their infection through bites and scratches. Resident Evil's zombies are slow-moving, though they also frustratingly absorb a lot of ammunition before going down.
The Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City trailer features a number of different zombies. It would appear that, as in Resident Evil 2, a T-Virus outbreak is taking over Raccoon City. The zombies' appearance is faithful to the Resident Evil games, with pale skin, protruding veins, and an insatiable appetite.
Zombie Dogs
The T-Virus doesn't just infect humans: the Resident Evil games are also full of zombified and mutated versions of different animals. One of the series' most iconic enemies are the zombie dogs. Because of their small size and fast speed relative to human zombies, the dogs have ended many Resident Evil players in the early sections of the games.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City's zombie dogs look like they will faithfully adapt this element of the game. The dogs appear multiple times in the Resident Evil reboot movie's trailer, with a bloody and distorted appearance. While it seems unlikely the movie heroes will struggle as much with the dogs as a video game player might, the hounds are a crucial part to the atmosphere of the Resident Evil games.
Lickers
One of the more disturbing creatures featured in the 2021 Resident Evil trailer is the licker, a virtually skinless mutant whose brains and musculature are exposed to air. Lickers are T-Virus-infected zombies who experienced a secondary mutation, gaining sharp teeth and a lengthy tongue, as well as a monstrous appetite. Their main weakness is a debilitating vulnerability to sound.
The licker appears only briefly in the Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City trailer, but it does help to place the Resident Evil reboot movie's timeline in relation to the games. In the games, the licker monster first appears in Resident Evil 2 which takes place in 1998, the time period of the movie as well. The glimpse of the monster in the Welcome to Raccoon City trailer suggests that the horrific creature will be recreated more-or-less faithfully in the 2021 Resident Evil movie -- perhaps even with a similar "hanging from the ceiling" introduction as that of the video game's ceremoniously introduced monster.
Tyrant
The Resident Evil video games have become known for their elaborate and difficult boss fights, where heroes must square off against giant monsters who prove to be very hard to kill. One of these intimidating creatures is the tyrant. Like zombies, tyrants are humans injected by the T-Virus, but they are specially conditioned by the Umbrella Corporation to be a more intelligent and adaptable bioweapon. The tyrant is the final monster that the player must confront in the original Resident Evil game, and has reappeared over the course of the franchise.
Along with human villains like Lisa Trevor, the tyrant will make an appearance in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, being briefly visible in the trailer. Some have speculated that the giant tyrant could be a mutated form of William Birkin, a scientist working for Umbrella who is also seen as a zombie in the Resident Evil reboot trailer. The monster could be a key part of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City's climax.
Other Possible Monsters
In addition to the monsters featured in the trailer, the Resident Evil franchise offers plenty of disturbing creatures that could appear in the 2021 movie. Other possibilities include the mutated Crimson Head zombies, other zombified animals such as crows and giant insects, and bio-engineered mutant sharks called Neptunes. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City seems interested in launching a new series of films that would more directly tackle the lore of the Resident Evil games than previous films, already hinting at villains for a Resident Evil reboot sequel. The ability to translate the disturbing monsters of the video game to the big screen will help to determine whether Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City can win over franchise fans.
