Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, let's analyze the plot and its connections in detail

Resident Evil

There has always been a bit of confusion about what Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness would have been since its announcement: first a TV series, then a movie, then again a TV series, not maybe a movie. It turns out in the end that it is a film divided into four parts of twenty-five minutes each, a rather bizarre choice, but understandable if you want a more in-pill experience. It is true that the wording "Season One" places it more in the perspective of a television series but, for the way it is presented, it is a strange hybrid; choosing an approach more similar to Fear Street (three parts, one a week, each consisting of an entire film) might have been preferable, but discussing this leaves some time for it.

Much better to concentrate on the film itself, on the making, on how it fits within the extended canonical timeline of the saga and especially if it was necessary to produce it. This last observation may seem like a criticism, and in part it is, but it mainly concerns the way it was written, not the idea itself of continuing the series of films in computer graphics: in fact we are not very convinced of the result, net of intriguing parts that shed light on aspects that have remained in the shadows.

Let's find out how Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness relates to the rest of the series, if there are inconsistencies and how it maintains the characterization of the various characters. We warn you that inevitably we will have to do a lot of spoilers.

The war has changed

Let's steal this quote from good old Solid Snake to introduce the storyline of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. The war, from the Raccoon City incident and in particular from the tragedy of 11 September, has taken a different form even if it starts from our own historical bases: the so-called War on Terror is a campaign launched by the US government following the attack on Twin Towers, initially focused on organizations linked to al-Qaeda and then transformed, with the growth of the sale of BOW on the black market, in a completely different conflict, fiercer and on a much larger scale. The dynamics have changed but we are always talking about war.

The facts of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness originate in the year 2000, with the civil war of Penamstan, and then move forward six years. The film, in its four parts, bounces between the two timelines to put together an easy-to-predict puzzle: at the beginning, the Mad Dogs team is seen disobeying orders and rescuing an allied unit, managing to rescue a wounded but remaining involved in an explosion.

From here we move on to 2006, where we are introduced to three new characters: Jason, Patrick and Shen May, agents chosen together with Leon Kennedy to deal with a hacker attack on the servers of the Pentagon. What appears to be a seemingly simple mission turns into a night of survival, as a virus has been introduced into the White House infecting some of the staff and endangering the life of President Graham (Ashley's father).

Once the area is secured, the next morning Leon is intercepted by Claire - who, we recall, works for TerraSave and is taking care of the refugees of Penamstan - who gives him a drawing made by a little boy who survived the horrors of the civil war. The scene portrays what to all intents and purposes looks like an epidemic not too different from Raccoon City. From here, the two will take different paths to investigate related facts.

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, Leon observes the drawing delivered by Claire Over the course of the four episodes it turns out that the whole situation , starting with the horrors of Penamstan in 2000, they were orchestrated by then Colonel Wilson (later Secretary of Defense) who used the civil war and the small state itself as a test bed for biological weapons, infecting select soldiers sent on a mission. The same ones that the Mad Dogs help, finding themselves attacked and infected: to survive, they need a special inhibitor created by Wilson, in collaboration with a mysterious pharmaceutical company. This binds the whole unit to him and to his will, forcing the soldiers to carry out their orders to receive the doses that allow them to continue living as human beings.

During the six years that separate those tragic facts from the present, the whole team except Jason commits suicide, unable to bear the weight of such an existence. He does not give up and, allying with Shen May, prepares an action plan to expose Wilson and the general role of the United States in the B.O.W. Shen May is involved as the sister of the only man saved by the Mad Dogs, a soldier chosen precisely to carry out the mission linked to biological weapons and therefore infected: before (not) dying, he gave his doses of inhibitor to his rescuers, creating a sort of "debt of honor" with Jason bringing his body back and decides to operate in secret to uncover a devastating Pandora's box.

Wilson's idea is to blame the China of attacks and sabotage that are the work of him and the Mad Dogs, pushing for Graham to sign a peace treaty with Penamstan so as to place the American army in place to put pressure on the Chinese government. The submarine that should take Leon, Jason and Shen May to China to investigate the veracity of Wilson's claims is infected and destroyed, a situation that prompts Leon to doubt his two companions: faced with a part of the situation, namely the desire to revenge of Jason, refuses to ally and kills him, then throwing himself in pursuit of Shen May. We focus on this scene in particular, the first to have made us turn up our noses: even knowing that the character of Leon was slowly "corrupted" by the American government, leading him to put the security of the nation in front of everything or in any case to act on behalf by keeping vital information hidden, we found the exchange with Jason too hasty and out of context.

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, Shen May We felt like we were reliving the scene from Resident Evil Village where Ethan refuses to ally with Heisenberg despite having a common goal: the same typically American temperament shines through, classic of the first shot and then I ask who he is. Although it is very well perceived that Jason is animated by a strong sense of revenge and is on the verge of madness, therefore that the concept of justice is not within his strings, Leon immediately starts in fourth by talking about court martial and basically wanting it. arrest for the crimes committed - the attack on the submarine and the killing of the entire crew are basically his doing.

Here, from a character who with closed eyes trusted Ada Wong twice, in both cases being helped, but also screwed without too many problems, the fact of not even wanting to investigate the matter, even when Jason tells him clearly about Wilson's involvement, he didn't agree with his characterization. Too hasty as a scene and overall poorly managed. Especially because, as we see, shortly after he reaches Shen May and chooses to trust; certainly, her ideals are more noble but the crimes she is guilty of are almost identical, so the two weights and two measures makes itself felt too much in the space of two or three scenes.

Returning to the development of events, Leon chases Shen May to a mansion outside Shanghai, where he is told the whole truth: Wilson, his ties to a pharmaceutical company for the development of biological weapons, the Mad Dogs, his brother and so on. Clearly, after what happened to Penamstan, Wilson had ordered the destruction of the place to wipe out any evidence but the fact that Jason handed Jun See's body (his brother) to his family allowed the extraction of a chip containing all the data. needed to expose Wilson. During this scene we are confronted with the corruption that Jun See has suffered in six years of undead and we were surprised to see slight signs of crystallization: the same, for good or bad, that characterized all the creatures of Resident Evil Village.

This detail made us think that the company involved at the time was The Connections, to which if you remember well Mother Miranda gave samples of mycorrhiza and the embryo of Eve so that they could carry out research in an attempt to return them the lost daughter. The mycete elaborated by them had no crystallization effect, as demonstrated by the facts of Resident Evil VII, however we cannot exclude that the fabrics offered by Mother Miranda may have had other uses.

On the other hand, the project that led to the creation of Eveline materialized many years later. Furthermore, the use of infected soldiers inevitably brings us back to the Village finale and to the body of the BSAA soldier recovered from Chris Redfield's unit: although it was not yet founded in 2000, it is clear that the search for perfect soldiers to field already happened and has always been carried out in great secrecy even with the establishment of the BSAA.

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, Leon confronts Jason After a sudden attack destroys the entire mansion and everyone inside it. Except for Leon and Shen May, the two head to Wilson's secret laboratory as President Graham, having succumbed to pressure from the Secretary of Defense, prepares to sign the peace treaty with Penamstan. Here they will confront Jason, obviously revived not really being able to die, who lets himself be corrupted by the infection, infects Wilson in turn and then does everything to come out with the intent to show himself to the world and expose the atrocities in a definitive way. of the United States.

Shen Mey tries to make him think, relying on the human side of her, but Jason kills her without particular hesitation. With the help of Claire (whose role in the whole story we will illustrate shortly), Leon manages to get the better of him. Again, we take a break to criticize yet another botched scene from the film: in an attempt to stop him, Leon is taken by Jason and nearly killed.

We stress this almost not because some outside intervention prevents him from doing so, as it would have been logical to expect, but because it is Jason himself who lets Leon go, thus giving him the perfect opportunity to get rid of him. An absolutely meaningless choice if we consider that a few minutes earlier he killed Shen May, his partner in the insane plan to expose the United States and the only one to have tried to stop him in a peaceful way. Leon, who not only "killed" him the first time but shoots him and even takes his arm off, is spared for ... we don't know exactly why.

With Jason's death, and the timely tip that prevents President Graham from signing the deal, the film comes to its conclusion. Leon and Claire reunite for a final exchange, in which he chooses not to give her the information contained on the chip and keep it to himself, in order to put an end to the matter in his own way. Although disappointed, she accepts his choice and walks away, not before having thrown him a second time the jab on the clothes that do not suit him - a joke that under a superficial reading hides a criticism of the fact that life as a government agent has changed Leon, making him another person.

In one last scene Wilson, who somehow survived the disaster in the laboratory, injects himself with the inhibitor he now needs after receiving it from an unknown man: on the serum case he heads, looks, logo of a certain Tricell.

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, Claire investigates the facts of Penamstan This detail took us by surprise, as it partly overturns our belief that the company involved in Penamstan was The Connections, and obviously opens up interesting scenarios about the future of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. In reality, we are still convinced that both companies have played their part, because after the events in Raccoon City, Tricell was cornered and tried to rebuild its image by giving documents of its own free will to Umbrella's detriment: in such a hot period for the company, we find its direct involvement in the Penamstan events difficult.

The Connections instead, which has always remained in the shadows, would make more sense. The presence of Tricell in 2006, on the other hand, is more logical, not only because Wesker had already been collaborating with it for three years, but precisely because for some time he had his hands in the dough almost everywhere - we remember the T-Abyss and being one of the largest founders of the BSAA. We are curious to see how things will evolve from this point.

What about Claire? We promised to talk about it and we are sorry to say that his presence, throughout the film, is not only relegated to a few scenes but completely irrelevant: although his investigation is parallel to that of Leon, the necessary information is still told to us by Jason and Shen May. Her contribution to the events is nil and, indeed, she seems rather a deus ex machina to push Wilson to the underground laboratories, creating the pretext for him to be infected. Her screentime is clearly unbalanced compared to Leon, once again in the spotlight, and what a little while ago is either useless or once again out of her character.

After having in fact discovered Wilson's involvement in the events - something that the viewer already knew by then - he does the only thing that the survival manual against conspiracies does not recommend: go to the person concerned and tell him that he has a evidence against him. What could possibly go wrong? In fact, she is kidnapped and taken to the underground laboratory, where Wilson tries to bribe her and then moves on to threats, before Jason intervenes, the film shifts the focus on the facts that we have already told you. Summing up, Claire is a character who deserved more, left as a useless supporting actor and who has not even been done much justice, if we think that having survived first in Raccoon City, then in Rockfort Island and finally, only the year earlier, at the Havardville airport epidemic, some conservation instinct should have developed it. Clearly the choice to introduce it was because the Leon / Claire couple works, in terms of image, but in fact its absence would not have shifted the balance of the film at all.



Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, Leon and Shen May in the underground labs

Overall, this first season of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. He finds us in front of a four-part film that lets itself be watched and runs off well, we have to admit it, but the script can barely stand up: there are illogical scenes at the bottom, characters like Leon and Claire that border on their characterization and others, like Shen May and Jason, who had great potential and could be deepened a little.

The whole staging is hasty, devoid of bite even in the action parts (you just save the night in the White House) and absolutely lacking in tension. The plot is predictable from the beginning, if not in detail at least in broad terms, and although some details have aroused our interest, as well as there are very well-chosen exchanges, they are not enough to get the series off the ground properly. Also thanks to a computer graphics that falls on many occasions, falling well below the level of the previous Resident Evil: Vendetta. Outside of Leon, Claire and Jason, everything else, and in particular both some scenarios and side characters like the Penamstan rebels, has a mediocre aesthetic.

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