A New Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City Featurette Introduces Robbie Amell's Chris Redfield
It has been a big year for the "Resident Evil" franchise. The latest video game installment, "Resident Evil: Village," arrived in May to mostly positive reviews (via Metacritic) while setting gamers' hearts ablaze with its Amazonian-sized antagonist, Lady Dimitrescu. Then, in July, Netflix debuted the four-episode anime series "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness." In the wake of these two big releases, it's easy to forget the film component of the "Resident Evil" franchise has been left idling, with the most recent installment, "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter," hitting theaters in 2016 (via IMDb). However, that is about to change, as a new film is set to emerge and give audiences the kind of franchise refresh they want.
The upcoming live-action film "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" is set to revamp and reboot the franchise. The first official trailer teases a movie that looks to provide an experience more akin to the original Capcom games than the previous films starring Milla Jovovich. Most recently, fans have gotten another good look at "Welcome to Raccoon City" through the character vignettes released by Sony Pictures. One particular featurette focuses on Robbie Amell's character, Chris Redfield, and gives a window into Sony's process of adapting the game's world and story for this next feature.
Robbie Amell's Chris Redfield will be just like he was in the games
This week, Sony Pictures Entertainment released a new featurette for "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" on YouTube. The brief video weaves together footage of Chris Redfield, played by Robbie Amell, and interviews with both the actor and the movie's director, Johannes Roberts. For starters, it looks like the studio did a decent job casting Amell as Chris Redfield, at least from an aesthetic point of view. The actor looks remarkably similar to the in-game versions of Chris that we have seen over the past 25 years. Roberts describes Chris' personality in the featurette, noting, "[He] is a small-town hero, and now he's part of the Raccoon City police force," and continues later in the video, "Chris has to become more than the small-town hero. He has to become this action hero."
It's unknown if Chris retains his military background from the games. However, everything following his entry into the R.P.D. remains fairly faithful. He also describes "Welcome to Raccoon City" as "very much an adaptation of the games" and goes on to say, "It's like I'm living in a video game, and it's really, really exciting."
In the movie, Chris and his sister, Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario), are part of a special unit sent into the titular Raccoon City to understand the T-virus outbreak and the Umbrella Corporation's insidious experiments on residents of the town. Furthermore, the various creatures that emerge from the outbreak remain faithful in both appearance and behavior to the original games; the undead of "Resident Evil" appears as pallid and shambling as ever.
We'll see more from Chris, Claire, and these zombies when "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" is released on November 24.