Resident Evil Retribution - It is Time to Stop!

At this point, it was more than obvious that Paul W.S. Anderson had no idea what he was doing with this franchise. He handed the project over to others, retconned massive plot points, erased characters with little to no explanation and gave Alice every single superpower under the sun. Whatever the plot ran into, either make Alice more powerful or cause something lucky to happen. Retribution was supposed to take place right after the battle on the ship, but everything that happened on the ship is hereby gone. Yeah, the Redfield siblings are not present anymore, nor is K-Mart. At this point, they are putting whatever they think is clever or conveniant into the plot and rolling with that. 

For some reason, everyone just changes factions and serves the enemy for this one single movie. This is the only movie where Wesker is seemingly on Alice's side and for some reason, the Red Queen is trying to kill her along with the human race. Now, we see the simulations that they alluded to before to see that they're all filled with clones. Yes, we're going back to clones and we're bringing back old characters who died in previous entries. Michelle Rodriguez actually has a starring role, but as two different clones, one of them being evil. 

For one reason or another, Alice is captured in another Umbrella facility, mostly naked blah blah blah. We've seen this so many times, it's not even funny anymore. She runs into Ada Wong, who is actually rather decently portrayed. She's almost kinda like her video game character, so that's something. In fact, we have a lot of characters from the video games in this film. We actually have Leon, and even Barry makes a small appearance. Jill is here, but she's mostly a villain being mind controlled to hunt Alice with a bunch of Umbrella Corp guys. 

Alice has no powers in this movie because Wesker shut them off with a syringe. Half of the things she does in this movie is superhuman, but she's supposed to be a normal human being like she was in the first movie. She does not act like a human being in any conceivable way throughout this entire film. She finds a clone daughter in the simulation. Yes, Alice has a daughter between her clone and a clone of Carlos from the second and third movies. This little girl follows her through half of this movie, but is never seen after the credits roll. Yes, she is yet another deleted character. Pour one out. 

The Red Queen is one of the worst aspects of this entire film, as odd as that sounds. She represents everything wrong with this movie, as compared to the first installment. Like I said in that previous entry, I actually liked it to some degree. The Red Queen's CGI was very dated and looked awful, even for back then, but it looks a ton better than how she turns out here. Here, she just looks more realistic, but also more fake at the same time. The affects are completely changed for this, almost making it seem like it's a different character entirely. That would have made much more sense than trying to tell the audience that this is the same character we met then. Not only does she act differently, but she also changes the meaning of her catchphrase "You're all going to die down here", and effectively killed that catchphrase from this point on. The delivery was off, and brought in at the most awkward times and they treat it like some clever callback, which it isn't. Now, she is out to kill the human race, where she tried to save it in the first movie by cutting off all of the zombies from getting out of the facility. Whoever wrote her part in this movie needs a nice hard demotion and a lesson in writing dialogue.

More nonsensical action sequences and army zombies firing weapons happen while half of the Umbrella Corp characters come to save Alice from the simulation. Again, Wesker is helping her through the facility to escape because he needs her to fight against the Red Queen.... again, for some reason. None of this has any build up, there is no point to this plot and it's all apparently just poising the characters for a double-cross that never comes. It's all just to facilitate a bunch of giant zombies bombarding streets of pointless simulations because Umbrella is bored and can apparently piss billions of dollars a day on seeing what happens when clone civilizations get the T-Virus. Surprise surprise, they all start dying and panicking. 

Most of the characters die, and even if they don't, many of them are never seen again in the final film. Anderson and Jovovich kept hyping all of this up like it comes to some awesome conclusion, but anyone who has been paying attention to this "movie series" can easily see that these were all aimless, mindless action movies that have little to nothing to do with one another. How can there be an awesome conclusion when nothing about them coincides with the other or builds to any sort of endgame? It still baffles me that Anderson had the gall to say "Since the beginning, I knew that the movies would end with the Hive". Paul, no you didn't. You had no clue where this whole thing was going to end, you just kind of thought that going to the main facility from the beginning would be like "poetry because it rhymes". Trying to pass off any of this like it had some sort of plan or story structure is laughable at best, pathetic at worst. The movie has some decent effects and a few cool, effective action sequences. Beyond that, it's mindless gibberish that thinks it's a real story, but it's Virtua Sadness.

Rise of the Triad - Doom DNA Added

 

When Doom was being created, unfortunately, it spelled the end of their peak team dynamic. While John Romero and Carmack were coming up with brand new ideas and killing demons in new and exciting ways, Tom Hall was picking up some pieces of what he wanted to be the next Commander Keen game. The problem was that the rest of the team were a little burnt out on Keen, wanting to move on and explore new depths with the engine they perfected since Wolfenstein 3D's launch. Tom Hall was demanded to resign and he did so with a heavy heart, but he found work at Apogee. 

With a new team and a new goal, they made a game that... defies many counts of gaming logic. They went full force into weird mode with it and somehow Rise of the Triad became a bit of an oddity in the gaming space of the 90's. Believe it or not, I played the shareware version. My brother found the disk at a local software store and the clerk looked the other way because he would get in trouble for giving it to a minor. We were serious gamers and they knew our dad. 

To say we were perplexed is putting it mildly. This game had so many mechanics you would never think would be in a game in the first place. As a child, obviously I had no idea one of the creators of Doom made this. Nor did I have any idea that this was supposed to be Wolfenstein's official sequel. Why they didn't have the rights to do so is confusing, seems how they published the first game. 

The layout was completely different in so many ways. All of the enemies were just guys wearing hats shooting guns, for the most part. You actually platform in this game with trampolines. The weapons range from dual pistols that don't run out of ammo, to a missile launcher that makes fire tunnel through the air in multiple directions. Apparently, this was made due to a mistake that was made in the coding, and they decided to keep it as its own weapon. God bless them for it. 

There's food called priest's porridge and you can shoot a missile near it, heating it up to give you more health. God mode gives you the power to just fire energy from your hand while making weird slow motion deep voice sounds like you're otherworldly. It's just a strange little game with mechanics that you would never think would be in a game. When you shoot enemies, they can hold up their hands and beg for their lives. If you don't kill them, they will go for their gun and try to kill you. There's even men who are lying on the ground, acting dead like you've been through there before. They will wait until you get close and pop up to shoot you. 

This game is challenging for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the idea of complicated platforming in an early FPS shooter. Using the trampolines to go across moving platforms and robot drones flying around your head shooting you, it gets rather stressful. This is abundantly used in ROTT Extreme and is one of the reasons it's so infamous. The levels in either versions of the game are already vast and hard to navigate. 

Okay, so when I say the game isn't like Doom, that's not entirely true. On the surface, it looks like a very different game, but looking close at the wall and floor textures, you'll see some of Doom's influence. Yes, the fact that it's an FPS is inherently Wolfenstein and Doom, but then there are the blood puddles and the red skies in levels. The more you get into it, the more it has a Doom aura while being its own very unique game. The human and robot enemies have more of a realistic quality, but the science fiction theme keeps it grounded in a more fantastic universe. This is especially true when you start in on the magic. 

Yes, magic is in the game. You get a magic wand which you'll need to fight the mages. Yes, there are mages and even a magic user boss battle at the end. This is clearly Tom Hall's influence, among other things. It really just goes to show that Doom could have been plenty entertaining if they followed Hall's design. While his themes didn't click with Doom, they certainly brought about something that still lives to this day. This game gained a cult following, and even spawned some sequels and a remake. This game can get very unforgiving, but it's nothing compared to the Extreme Version. Will I review ROTT Extreme? No, honestly, I think I can beat maybe 5 levels and that's from using level cheats to get through a few very infuriating obstacles. It's a fun experiment but only to dabble with. If you consider yourself hard enough, go forth and get Extreme. Virtua Extreme! 

Mortal Kombat II (2026) - Bloody Victory

 I really wanted to like Mortal Kombat from 2022. The problem was that they took too many liberties and left the meat out of the story. They, instead, replaced it with wheat flakes. In this sequel, they fixed nearly everything! This was what we wanted! A coherent story with Mortal Kombat as a tournament, while giving us a bit of pandering. You can see the care and the fandom in mind as you watch. This movie isn't perfect, but is it the greatest MK film to date? VIRTUA KOMBAT TIME SPOILER WARNING!

This film uses and slightly misuses certain elements from the video games. If you hadn't noticed through the more recent games, there is a lot of coming to and from the land of the dead. If a character is killed, it apparently just takes some Netherrealm magic to bring them back and ready to fight. While they do the right thing and resurrect Kano, they also made it very clear that they are going to use and abuse this in a planned Mortal Kombat 3. Will that happen? Well, that's up to the Elder Gods of the failed box office. 

One of this movie's biggest miscasts is Jade. Do I want a constant reminder of Naughty Dog's biggest oncoming garbage? No, not really. It's not in my nature to like people who flip off the audience they are supposed to be entertaining. Then they went and tipped the entire spectrum up-side-down and cast Karl Urban as Johnny Cage... okay, you know what? We'll call it a draw. The fact that Cage is the main focus of the story is a point in this film's favor. In fact, the fact that they brought back Kano, actor and all, is yet another huge strike in this movie's favor. 

Then there are the massive deaths and loose ends. Jax is back, and he gives the same great performance as last time. Then he gets stabbed by the end of Shaokhan's hammer. Going to be honest, that was not expected and I didn't like it a lot. He and Sonya were great as a duo, and I can only imagine he is one of the ones they'll bring back if they get the chance. A death that was broadcasted like a UHF station very early on was Cole Young. Yeah, no one liked him from the first movie and they gave him a proper sendoff. The fact that Khan drops his tonfa into the acid pit with him was a much welcome added bonus.

Kitana was a definite plus to bring back into the Mortal Kombat lore. They played her story nearly flawlessly, other than her bodyguard. Her journey from a scared little girl to a warrior who is dedicated to avenging her family is actually rather heartfelt. In fact, this movie does the heartfelt seens rather well, especially when Liu Kang and an undead Kung Lao fight and he is forced to kill his former brother. All of these story elements don't get in each other's way because it goes with the flow of the tournament and we see how they serve the overall film. Instead of exposition and endless spoken lore, we leap from the first movie. We've seen these two were the best of friends and we feel their loss as it happens in real time. 

Then there are the comedic elements, which are pulled right off without taking away from the main plot's gravity. There are sweet and sour elements that add to the flavor, especially when we see Johnny Cage's movie from the 80's. Then we see that he fell on hard times since then as he sits at a convention and no one is in line to see him. We don't need someone telling him what happened or grind in our faces that he's washed up. We see it and we see his attitude as it is affected. This is filmmaking 101 and it is so refreshing to see. This is especially true when we see him go out for a drink and is served a shot and a beer by Bartender, Ed Boon. 

The two A and B plots collide in the tournament and the serious mixes with the humor right in front of us. Johnny is a loveable idiot but he's not completely inept. He just needs some time to start taking things seriously. Somehow, they even improved on Raiden's part of the story! He was insufferable in the first film and yet here we are actually seeing how he can help when he puts his mind to it. 

This is probably the first time we have ever seen Baraka as an anti-hero. That is one thing I never expected but it is actually nice to see him in a different, more constructive role. He doesn't play a large role, but it was entertaining and quite memorable because his antics with Johnny Cage are gold! They even made the Tarkatans actual tangible characters. The wonders that this movie pulled off is still too many to count. Characters that normally hinder and distract from the plot are suddenly well implimented element into the film that carries it well on. 

One mysterious element that never really concluded was: What happened to Liu Kang? He got stabbed in a fight with Shaokhan, vowed that he would return, and then disappeared into a puff of vapor. Whether he died is kind of up in the air, but it seemed more like... no, honestly I have no idea. That was a strange element. The violence in the film is kicked up a notch, which echoes what happened with the original games. 

For the first time, we see Noob Saibot in live action where he doesn't really suck. This was actually a very well done sequence when both Kano and Cage work together to get an amulet that holds Raiden's immortality and powers within Shaokhan. This runs parallel with Kitana's final battle against her father's pretender. Her fight with Khan is very well put together, along with a gnarly, in every meaning of the word, ending. 

From beginning to end, we finally get a coherent, perfectly violent Mortal Kombat film. The answer is, yes, this is the greatest Mortal Kombat film. It has all of the fights you could ever want. Scorpion vs Noob Saibot, Raiden vs Shang Tsung, and Shaokhan vs Cole Young as we see him get trampled, along with his plot armor. It's wonderfully gory and fast moving, while also knowing when to take a small breather. The pace is even, if not brisk. With just a few nitpicks, this film brings much more to the table than we've ever had with this franchise. Hopefully, it dodged the box office bullet. Only time will tell. Until then, this film exists in Virtua Legend.

Virtuamehameha #6 - Dragon Ball Super: The No Star Dragon Ball

 Let's get one thing straight off the bat, this is where my journey ended with Dragon Ball as a whole. After starting with Dragon Ball Z on its first run through America back in 92, it has been a very long and arduous journey through years of changed studios, long waits for the series after cancellation, and rises to heights that will never be seen again. Dragon Ball had its hayday all the way through the late 90's to the mid 2000's. It had one of the highest numbers of websites on the internet and has become something of a staple of both Japanese and American culture. There is nary a soul that has not at least heard about this series or at least knows its primary character, Son Goku. 

After the extremely long hiatus after GT ended, Dragon Ball Super was a welcome continuation of the series as if GT did not exist. At first, with the release of Battle of the God's it really seemed like they were off on the right foot. There were some animation glitches, but it was still a charming movie. Then, however, the cracks began to show early, because it turned out that there was an even worse version of this movie, and it was coming out in the actual series. They would do so yet again with the new and "improved" Freeza Saga. 

This series decided it not only needed to borrow nearly everything from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, but it needed to redo or revamp every single one of its previous arcs. The Black Goku Saga was just a "continuation" of the Future Trunks story, which should have ended with Z. If it's not stealing from the previous series, it is doing a tournament. Every single time they come up with new and improved idiotic characters like Hit or Female Broly knockoff. They kept saying that Akira Toriyama, God rest him, signed off on all of these ideas, but the thought of bringing Broly back in any capacity didn't seem like something he'd do. Anytime he was asked anything about Broly, he outright stated that he did not create him, nor owns up to the character in any way. 

The series had gotten to the point where a new form had to be reached in order to defeat the big bad guy and Goku was as strong or as weak as the plot needed him to be. Dragon Ball Super had become all about spectacle with good moments and cool fight scenes. Sometimes, they would show character growth with Vegeta or Goku but it would quickly be washed away with yet another obnoxious new character. Powerlevels and statuses got so abstract and meant nothing, so the powerscale went out the window. Any idea that there could be a number to any of them is now officially absurd. Soon, it all became about how many levels of Super Saiyan could be reached and the idea that it was hard or at all straining to turn your hair bright yellow was laughable. A brand new saiyan character who had barely even begun to fight could just turn Super Saiyan without problems.

Then comes the first female Super Saiyan, which was, again, reached without consequence. This was a very large deal for the community, as the idea of a female SSJ turning up in the series was long awaited. Now that it's come to fruition, it happened... Yeah, it just happened, party popper. Dragon Ball fans' dreams came true over and over again as we saw fanservice come at no cost to the series as a whole. We would get answers and retcons out the wazoo as if it was discounted and sold in bulk. It got to the point where there was almost at least three or four callbacks to the original series per episode. From Captain Ginyu having a brief and meaningless cameo, to Yamcha performing his death pose on a baseball field, this series had no shame.

The worst part about all of it, was the filler episodes. I love Dr. Slump as much as the next guy who knows that it exists, but Arales's return to the series was dipped into one of these. Yes, this may be where she belongs in the series, but the return was as lackluster as the rest of the content that was being put into Dragon Ball Super. There are some good gags here and there, but it's ultimately forgettable. Everything was being done for the purpose of hype and climbing the ladder in power with more and more new forms coming in seemingly every arc. Their hair turned from red to blue with Black Goku going pink, finishing the entire spectrum of Power Ranger colors for all of the memers. 

Harkening back to the filler, it got so bad that there was an entire episode dedicated to King Kai finally asking Goku to wish him back with the Dragon Balls. This is a concept so old, it could drink, but they're just now bringing it up after King Kai has been dead since the Cell Games. The entire episode is Goku having all seven dragon balls and trying to make the wish, but then getting interrupted because other people want things. This was the episode that made me officially stop taking this series seriously. Goku is about to do something selfless and something he probably should have done ages ago, but Master Roshi needs to get off. You know, because he's a dirty old man who likes ladies. Get the joke? Me neither. They brush this off with Bulma calling someone and having everything immediately delivered because money. The episode ends with Goku having taken too long and the dragon disappearing because haha funny. Dragon Ball has never reached this type of low and now it is the bar that keeps lowering. 

It's become trendy to keep latching new continuations onto the series. Even the concept of revamping Gohan back into a fighter or turning Broly into a new anti-hero has become mundane and tapped out. The only good thing to come out of this whole thing is the cool merch and occasional awesome game, but the anime has become another cash-grab that takes the soul from the series. Toriyama-san deserves a lot better. It should have ended like he wanted back in the Cell Saga. The Buu Saga was bad enough and it only spiraled downward. It is a bit of a shame but at least we have the original series and that will not be going away anytime soon.   

Batman Forever - Because Why Not?

So, since we've got the first two movies in the bag, let's keep this rolling into the Schumacher era. Batman Returns turned out to be so dark that the toy deal they had with McDonalds was cancelled and taken out of Happy Meals. Apparently a grim penguin man biting someone's nose into drawing blood and planning to kill children didn't go over well with parents. Tim Burton was immediately off the next movie and the studio decided that Joel Schumacher was a much safer bet. He set out to create a new Batman with the essence of Adam West in mind. Gotham was now colorful, brightly lit and more like a city of neon and jazz. 

Right from the start, we get a bank heist with Tommy Lee Jones acting as Two Face like he's both the Joker and a Dick Tracy villain. The dialogue took a massive hit. The civilians in this movie act so over the top and the action is so sporadically huge. Everything that was subtle and dark in the first movie are now brightly lit and Val Kilmer puts on a much more light-hearted Batman. Given better circumstances, Kilmer could have been a great lead. He even did well as Bruce Wayne. The problem was the script. He has an overly provocative therapist horning after him like she thought she was hired for an adult film and, at the same time, has two variations of the Joker as villains. 

Jim Carrey was a homerun when it came to casting. He took The Riddler to heart and he went big with it. The riddles are still lame, though, and everything doesn't seem to want to make sense throughout the runtime. Half of the stuff that happens, like how he edited a video to make it look like his boss committed suicide, or how there was already a Riddler type character with a game machine and a bobblehead, none of it made any sense. Logic went very much more aligned with the Silver Age of comic books. 

There came another addition to the cast that actually made it to the fourth film, and that is Robin. Chris O'Donnell's induction into the film was a bit sketchy. He was supposed to be Dick Grayson, who was far younger when he became Batman's sidekick. It is understandable that he would want to go after Two Face for killing his family, but the way he just shoved himself into the lore was jarring. Stealing the Batmobile, saving Batman from dying while wearing his acrobat outfit, and then the full suit he was given seemingly out of nowhere, Robin just didn't feel like a natural part of the story for several reasons, and it really doesn't get any better in the next movie.

One great thing that followed the films in all four of them was Pat Hingle and Michael Gogh and they were an anchor when we needed them. Commissioner Gordan and Alfred Pennyworth are two characters that they took by storm and God rest them both. Even when things got nonsensical, these two stayed themselves and rocked their roles like they always did. Beyond these two characters, the movie series is literally unrecognizable from this point on.

How they gave Two Face two of so many things was meant to be comical. It makes no sense for real life, but sure, go ahead and have Drew Barrymore as one of two of his wives and make everything dual colors. The Riddler's lair is not any better as the question marks are everywhere to an impractical degree. The movie is entertaining in its strange decore, and it could have been good as a stand-alone universe movie, but it branded itself as the third entry in a series that it bears no resemblance to. 

When you turn your brain off and activate your Batman fandom, you can enjoy this film as a silly Batman flick. Schumacher took what all of them said to heart and made it as safe and marketable as they possibly could. It worked. The toy sales were through the roof, the ticket sales were nice and plentiful, but the problem was that they changed everything. Parents came with the children they were with and they asked, along with the critics, what happened? This would be a massive precursor for what would come next, though. Schumacher seemingly won this round, but that inevitably led to him getting another film where he was given the keys to the kingdom. He took that control to the next level and I suppose that's the inescapable next review. I would like to escape, though. Robin, get the bat grapple!