George Romero’s Resident Evil: Better Than All the Crap We Got

George Romero’s Resident Evil: It Had Flaws, But At Least It Respected the Game

Why is it that The Last of Us can get a faithful, emotional, critically acclaimed TV adaptation, while Resident Evil fans are stuck with garbage movies that only use the title and throw the rest in the trash? Comic book fans are getting more source-accurate films than ever. Video game adaptations are finally leveling up. But for Resident Evil? We’re still watching Hollywood spit in our face.There was one moment of hope. Back in the ’90s, horror legend George Romero wrote a script for a Resident Evil movie based on the first game. Capcom rejected it.

Since then, it’s been a never-ending circus of embarrassments, reboots, and fake adaptations that somehow always miss the point. Let’s walk through the wreckage, and remind ourselves that even though Romero’s version wasn’t perfect, it still deserved to exist more than anything we actually got.

Paul W.S. Anderson: Resident Evil’s First Betrayal

Instead of Romero’s version, we got Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil movies, six of them. He threw out the entire game storyline and replaced it with a brand-new character: Alice. A generic, overpowered, movie-exclusive Mary Sue played by his wife, Milla Jovovich.

The original game icons, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, and Ada Wong, got reduced to background extras, cannon fodder, or last-minute cameos. Alice stole the spotlight, the action turned cartoonish, and by the end of it, the only horror left was the writing.

Welcome to Raccoon City: Three Games, One Bad Movie

Years later, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City promised a faithful reboot. Instead, it tried to merge Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 into one film, because who needs pacing or structure, right?

Leon was written as a joke. Jill was race-swapped and rewritten without explanation. Wesker had all the menace of a guy who bags your groceries. Only Claire and Chris felt somewhat accurate.

The whole thing played like a speedrun written by someone who barely skimmed the wiki. It tried to fix what Anderson broke, but just made a new kind of mess.

Netflix’s Resident Evil: The Vegan Apocalypse Nobody Asked For

Then came the absolute peak of Resident Evil failure: the Netflix series.

This trainwreck gave us a reimagined Albert Wesker, now a kind-hearted, race-swapped suburban dad raising two teenage vegan daughters. These daughters accidentally cause a zombie apocalypse because they wanted to stop animal testing. On rabbits. No Umbrella Corp conspiracy, no bio-weapon warfare, just rabbit rights activism gone wrong.

As if that wasn’t enough, the main character, Jade, casually says she enjoys Zootopia porn. Yes. That was an actual line of dialogue. Go ahead. Google it.

But here’s the good news: Netflix canceled the show after one season. Finally, someone at Netflix realized that Resident Evil fans weren’t going to sit quietly and pretend this was okay. We’re still celebrating.

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil: It’s Just the Logo Again

And now, Barbarian director Zach Cregger is confirmed to direct the next Resident Evil movie. At first, fans had hope. He’s a horror guy, after all.

But nope.

This new movie will feature an entirely original cast. No Jill. No Chris. No Leon. No Ada. No Raccoon City. It’s Resident Evil by title only, again. Just another false adaptation where the studio slaps the name on a script that has nothing to do with the games.

We’ve seen this before. We know how it ends.

George Romero’s Resident Evil: Annoying Changes, But Actual Effort

Now let’s go back to George Romero’s Resident Evil. Was it perfect? No. Romero made some strange changes: Chris Redfield was written as a civilian farmer, not a STARS member. Jill Valentine was still with STARS, but now she was also Chris’s girlfriend. That part annoyed a lot of fans, especially since Chris and Jill are strictly platonic in the games.

But you know what? At least Romero used the real characters. At least he set it in the Spencer Mansion. At least there were zombies, horror, tension, and a story that resembled the actual game. Unlike Anderson’s fanfic, Welcome to Raccoon City’s Wikipedia mash-up, and Netflix’s Zootopia-obsessed apocalypse, Romero’s script had some soul.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a real attempt.

Watch the Resident Evil Movie That Was Too Good for Capcom

The YouTube channel Residence of Evil– creators of the canon-accurate fan film The Keeper’s Diary– made an incredible documentary about George Romero’s Resident Evil. It dives into the script, explains the changes, and reveals why Capcom rejected it.

If you’re a Resident Evil fan who’s sick of fake adaptations, this documentary is essential viewing. It shows the movie we almost had, and reminds us how many chances Hollywood has blown since.