The upcoming Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City film nearly included a scene involving a boulder that likely would have generated quite a few laughs from fans of the long-running survival horror franchise.
“Robbie has such a great sense of humor, and it was just like, ‘Oh, man. We’ve got to somehow put this in,'” director Johannes Roberts told IGN, referring to actor Robbie Amell, who plays one of the movie’s main protagonists, Chris Redfield. “We never found how to make it work, and all I can hope is that somewhere in this new envisioning of the Resident Evil world that it all leads to this big — our Chapter 10 — whatever it is of Resident Evil, is Robbie punching his way through a boulder. That’s how we end our epic Resident Evil world.”
Boulder punching and Chris Redfield have gone together since 2009’s Resident Evil 5, a game that saw the bioweapon-fighting soldier taking down a zombie conspiracy in Kijuju, a fictional African country. In the game’s final level, Chris is stuck in a volcano fighting his old enemy, Albert Wesker, and needs to make it across a stretch of lava to reach his partner Sheva Alomar. When a giant boulder blocks his way, Chris tries to push it into the lava, and the game prompts the player to mash buttons. The faster players mash, the more Chris will pummel the boulder with his fists — eventually knocking it over.
Chris’ seemingly superhuman strength in the game’s over-the-top finale has become meme fodder over the years, to the point that Resident Evil Village, the most recent entry in the series, referenced it. An older Chris Redfield plays a pivotal role on the sidelines in the game, and when he sets off an explosion within the factory of Karl Heisenberg, a boss with the ability to control metal, Heisenberg screeches: “No, no, my metal army! I’m going to murder that boulder-punching asshole!”
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City serves as a reboot of the live-action film franchise after six entries produced by Paul W.S. Anderson. The movie retells events depicted in the first two Resident Evil games. In those titles, originally released from 1996 to 1998, Chris Redfield was still a young member of Raccoon City’s S.T.A.R.S. special ops team and far from the grizzled veteran who would punch boulders with ease many years later.
Written and directed by Roberts, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is now available in theaters.
Source: IGN
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