Resident Evil: Netflix’s eight-part adaptation’s very different from the movies – Stuff

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This franchise has been living among us for a quarter of a century now.

From its origins as a cult-smash video game in 1996 still regarded as one of the best and most influential games ever made the Resident Evil universe now embraces seven live-action films and countless other spin-offs and products.

Resident Evil was largely responsible for reintroducing zombies to popular culture and proving that ideas such as 28 Days Later (2002) would find an audience.

And now, the series has made it to television, via an eight-part adaptation that appears to get many things right, even while it is disappointing and disenfranchising a lot of the game and film series fans.

Resident Evil revisits the origin story of the games, but also changes pretty much everything around. Our main characters here are two young women played by Ella Balinska and Adeline Rudolph, as the daughters of Albert Wesker (The Wires Lance Reddick). Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong play the sisters as teenagers, in flashbacks set in 2022 the year that the world first went all to hell.

Critics of the show point to the lack of action and how different the storylines are from anything that the feature films have explored. While fans will say the writing is exploring plot points that are in the game play and that the focus on character and storytelling rather than action and bloodshed makes for a compelling, engaging show that achieves far more than the films ever attempted. I think both sides have a point.

Me? I kind of like it, although I was never a huge fan of the films or the games, so I don't have any real investment here.

NETFLIX

Resident Evil is now available to stream on Netflix.

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NETFLIX

D.B. Cooper: Where Are You? is now available to stream on Netflix.

The D.B. or Dan Cooper case is the Big Foot of unsolved recent crimes.

All that is known for sure is that in November, 1971, a man bought a ticket for a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. A few minutes into the flight, he handed an attendant a note, demanding $200,000 and four parachutes be brought on board when the plane landed and claiming that he had a bomb in his luggage.

The money and parachutes were delivered, the plane took off and a short while later the rear stairs were lowered. Dan Cooper whoever he was, had parachuted into the night, thousands of feet above forests and lakes, on a freezing cold and stormy night.

In the 50 years since, there have been dozens of books, movies, theories and documentaries about the D.B. Cooper case. He has featured in Loki and 30 Rock and the film Without A Paddle aka "that time Burt Reynolds came to Lower Hutt".

The documentary series D.B. Cooper: Where Are You? takes a near-exhaustive look at the case, profiles several of the main suspects and visits the various players who still investigate the case today. Although who Cooper was will probably never be conclusively proven, the name is still a drawcard and, like Jack The Ripper, can still get a book or a film deal off the ground, if you have a compelling story to tell.

D.B. Cooper: Where Are You? has interesting things to say about popular culture, internet-based society and the entertainment industry. The mystery of Cooper will endure, as long as there is money to be made from it. And, since his crime was essentially victimless, I guess that's fine.

NETFLIX

How to Change Your Mind is now available to stream on Netflix.

Years ago, I heard author Michael Pollan on a podcast, talking about his research and his rediscovery of earlier research, into the potential therapeutic and beneficial effects of LSD. The series How to Change Your Mind is based on Pollan's book of the same name.

This is a fascinating, serious and determinedly non-sensational look at how four popular party drugs LSD, MDMA, mescaline and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) all have therapeutic uses, that often pre-date their counter-culture and recreational use.

The first episode, on LSD, opens up the history of the drug pre-1965, when it was being widely researched for its potential in psychiatry and counselling. But, with LSD let out into society in the 1960s and being seized on as a symbol of rebellion by the hippies and the anti-war movement, LSD became the subject of a hysterical conservative backlash that led to LSD being demonised for decades.

In fact, it is a potentially incredibly useful tool. And, in the right environment, with people who understand what they are doing, one of the most benign and enjoyable of all the recreational drugs.

How to Change Your Mind is a well-made show with some real things to say. Very recommended.

ROADSHOW FILMS

Tenet is now available to stream on Netflix.

And lastly, Christopher Nolan's long-delayed sci-fi actioner has made it to Netflix.

Tenet was the first trip back to the big screen for many of us, in August 2020 and I was underwhelmed at the time. Tenet is an undeniably spectacular film and an astonishingly ambitious one too. But it is also a film so in love with its own cleverness and paradoxes, that it misses the essential emotional resonance that every film needs, to engage an audience at any sort of level that really means anything.

John David Washington (son of Denzel) is fine as a secret agent-type looking into the affairs of a brutal Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) and Robert Pattinson is even better as his shadowy counterpart who may just have the answers. But the promising James-Bond-but-by-Nolan build up comes badly unstuck trying to explain who the villains are and what they are up to.

The idea SPOILER of reversing the flow of time through objects, so that they may be sent from the future to attack us is hard to film convincingly and even harder to make into an entertaining movie.

Tenet spends so much time trying to prove how clever it is, that by the time the big set-pieces arrive, you'll have forgotten why you are supposed to care.

Tenet is a massively conceived and structured film, but it lacks a heart.

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Resident Evil: Netflix's eight-part adaptation's very different from the movies - Stuff