Trivia / Resident Evil (2002)

• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Milla Jovovich became a massive fan of the games through her younger brother Marco, whom she used to play them with, and joined the film for how cool it would be to be in Resident Evil.
  • Michelle Rodriguez told her agent to let her know the second a Resident Evil movie was greenlit, because she would accept any role available in order to be in it. Sure enough, she ended up cast as Rain.
• California Doubling: The film, set in an indeterminate part of the Midwest, was shot in Germany.
• Creator Cameo: Of a sort. The door code Kaplan struggles to remember as they're fighting off the initial zombie attack - 04031965 - is writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson's birthday.
• Descended Creator: They were short on extras to play zombies, so several Capcom executives agreed to appear as such. As did the producers.
• Distanced from Current Events: The first film would have the subtitle Ground Zero, but that was left out after 9/11 happened.
• Doing It for the Art: Paul W.S. Anderson wrote the script for the film specifically because he wanted to ensure that Resident Evil got a decent cinematic adaptation, and the next films are loaded with winking little references to the games.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Paul W.S. Anderson's script began as a standalone film (though it was heavily inspired by the games), before getting integrated into what became the adaptation.
• DVD Commentary: On the Deluxe Edition, Paul W.S. Anderson, Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez crack jokes and argue about meaningless crap.
  Anderson: And in this scene we...
  Jovovich: Who cares about that, you can see my boobs! Look!
• Dyeing for Your Art: The actress who plays the scientist that revives underwater in the first film, Anna Bolt, learned how to scuba dive for her One-Scene Wonder role. Likewise all the actors playing commandos, as well as Jovovich and Eric Mabius, had to undergo a week's training with a Navy SEAL.
• Fake American:
  • Milla Jovovich as Alice is a borderline example. She's Ukranian by birth but has been in America since she was a child and thus doesn't have to fake an accent.
  • Colin Salmon, James Purefoy, Jason Isaacs, and Liz May Brice are all British. The Umbrella employees are played by a mixture of British and Irish actors.
  • Lisa is played by German actress Heike Makatsch.
• Fake Nationality: JD's last name is Salinas, suggesting he's Hispanic. His actor Pasquale Aleardi is Swiss-born, of Greek and Italian descent.
• Follow the Leader: The success of this led to other video game films like Doom, Max Payne and Silent Hill being greenlit.
• Looping Lines: Milla Jovovich ended up redoing all her dialogue with ADR, as she was dissatisfied with her performance. In the ADR, she gave Alice a lower speaking register than before.
• Method Acting: Milla Jovovich trained for three months to be able to do the stunt where Alice runs up the wall and kicks the dog in the head.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The dogs kept licking the make-up and blood effects off themselves.
• No Stunt Double: Milla Jovovich did all her stunts herself, except for when Alice's pipe jump in the sewer scene (her agent was afraid she'd be strangled by the hanging wires).
• Real-Life Relative: Producer James Bolt's sister and girlfriend appear as zombies.
• Romance on the Set: Anderson and Jovovich met while working on the movie; currently, they're married.
• Throw It In!: The movie was not supposed to have the little nudity it did, according to the DVD commentary. Apparently, Milla Jovovich had a Wardrobe Malfunction twice in the same movie and it was left in.
• Wag the Director: Paul W.S. Anderson had initially conceived the character of Alice as a full-on Damsel in Distress, with Rain being the only Action Girl in the film. When Milla Jovovich found about it, she went to Anderson and convinced him to change the character to a more action-oriented one.
• What Could Have Been:
  • George A. Romero wrote a screenplay for and was to direct the first film. It was thrown out entirely when he was kicked off the project, as Capcom thought that, while Romero's script was close, it wasn't a full adaptation of the game, and they believed fans would complain about the changes while newcomers would dislike the premise too. Confusion sets in when they approved Anderson's script even though it's a much, much farther cry from Resident Evil (in as few words as possible, Romero's script was a rough adaptation of the first game and included all of the main characters, while Anderson's was a completely original story that featured all new characters, and whose only connection to the games was Umbrella, the T-Virus and zombies). Word of God is that Capcom didn't want a direct adaptation, out of fear that fans would stop playing the games in favor of watching the movies. Romero's script was also partly rejected because it would likely get an NC-17 rating.
  • David Boreanaz was approached to play Matt but he turned it down due to Angel commitments. For a while, he was in talks to star in a smaller role, but ultimately nothing happened.
  • Hilariously given the above, Sarah Michelle Gellar was Anderson's first choice to play Alice. She was initially interested, but balked at the nude scenes and turned it down.
  • Gwyneth Paltrow was also considered for Alice.
  • Back when Jill Valentine was part of the film, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kirsten Dunst, and Natasha Henstridge were all considered for the role. She was ultimately written out and made her film debut in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, played by Sienna Guillory.
  • The White Queen from Resident Evil: Extinction would originally have appeared in this film (one of the older scripts for the Alice version, not the Jill and Chris one). She would be the A.I. monitoring the Hive from Umbrella Headquarters, and jam the Red Queen's systems after the incident — explaining why the soldiers were able to enter the Hive so easily.
  • At one point Rain was going to die relatively early in the film — at the end of the failed escape from the Dining Hall. Apparently due to complaints from Milla Jovovich, this death was given to JD instead, who originally shared Rain's fate in the final film.
  • The final battle was originally taking place on a moving elevator platform instead of a moving train. In addition, Kaplan, who was originally named Isiab Tagawa Mercurio and had a nickname of "Twelve", was going to survive the encounter with the Licker, only to turn into a zombie and attack the medics just after fleeing the Hive with Alice and Matt.
  • An ending that nearly got filmed had Alice and Matt being captured by Umbrella, but then being freed by the White Queen as the T-virus spreads throughout the world. They would be seen driving together through a deserted road and approaching the overrun New York, with the implication that they'd become lovers.
  • Another drafted ending still had Matt become a monster (but not Nemesis) and in the hospital room with Alice when she wakes up. The credits would roll there, leaving it ambiguous as to whether she got away. Another version of this ending had Matt with just memory loss but still helping Alice escape.

---