4) Alice – Resident Evil
This Alice fell down a very peculiar and very violent rabbit hole. In this Wonderland, the Red Queen is a computer program made to look like a little girl, and the endless army of playing card soldiers is a mass of undead creatures created by an evil corporation. As a worker drone in that corporation, Alice was a perfectly expendable cog in the machine, but through the infection of Umbrella headquarters, the quarantine of Raccoon City, the end of the world, and everything that comes afterward, Alice has proved herself a survivor, and perhaps the only hope for saving mankind from itself and a zombie-filled future.
Alice’s journey has certainly been multifaceted in a number of different ways. In the first Resident Evil, she has to overcome amnesia as she’s trapped in the Umbrella complex with a group of strangers, and although she’s not sure who she can trust, her muscle memory is thankfully intact. Once captured by Umbrella, she becomes a test subject for the T-virus, but rather than becoming another kind of monster, she’s able to use the virus to develop super-powers, which she then uses to fight Umbrella and attempt to save the surviving remnants of humanity. When she becomes too powerful, Umbrella agent Wesker takes away those abilities, but still, Alice can’t be stopped so long as she has her fight, a gun, and the wits in her head.
All that considered, it’s no wonder that Umbrella not only has an interest in keeping Alice alive, or even just alive enough to be studied more thoroughly, but at the end of the last movie, Retribution, Alice is once again infected with the T-virus and told that she is the key to saving the world (or what’s left of it). Considering everything she’s done and survived so far, it’s impossible to tell what Alice might now be capable of, but what’s clear is that no matter the challenge, no matter how dire the odds, and no matter how many monsters, creatures and madmen stand her way, you’d be foolish not to bet on Alice to come out on top.
– Adam Donaldson