Introducing New Characters
Hitman: Agent 47
Barely eight years since Timothy Olyphant sported the chrome dome as the titular agent, Aleksander Bach’s Hitman: Agent 47 landed in theatres late last month with a new leading man and was, by and large, an underwhelming experience. Despite slick editing and an impressive cast, Bach’s soft reboot failed to elevate itself above its middling predecessor, swapping world-building for glitzy and hollow CG sequences.
Unperturbed by its box office shortcomings, word is that 20th Century Fox is keen on pushing ahead with a sequel, with the biggest clue arriving in the form of the film’s post-credits sting. Such a ploy would see Rupert Friend’s man-made killing machine lock horns with Mark Parchezzi III (aka The Albino), who is a stalwart of IO Interactive’s eponymous video game series.
For a film that largely set itself apart from its source material, Fox looks set to align the sequel closer to the long-running Hitman franchise. Whether those sequel plans pan out, though, is another question entirely.
– Michael Briers
Resident Evil
Admittedly, Paul W. S. Anderson’s video game movie franchise is not exactly high art, but it does continue to hold the world record for ‘Most Successful Movie Series To Be Based On A Video Game’ – so it must be doing something right. In examining all the elements that go into creating a film, it could be argued that the success of this series hinges on the introduction of Alice, played by Milla Jovovich.
This character is an original creation for the films – essentially taking a new figure, and dropping her into the Resident Evil environment that is so familiar to gamers. This narrative choice has been crucial, specifically because of the genre of the piece. If a main obstacle for video game adaptations is the removal of the user experience of being in the game, then Resident Evil goes some way to addressing that, by giving us what is essentially an audience proxy.
Were we playing the game, we’d have the sensation of racing down those corridors ourselves, but since we cannot do that in our cinema seats, Alice does it for us. This is achieved by making her into a character we want to get behind – a single point of focus that takes us into the action, and guides us through the plot, giving rise to an entire franchise.
– Sarah Myles
