This page is for Paul W.S. Anderson film series. For the Resident Evil games, see here.
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First film
Resident Evil (2002)
- Umbrella Corporation has built an undeground facility meant to produce and test biological weapons, the Hive.
You'd Expect: The Hive to have isolated air circulation systems, preferably a separate, closed one for each department. This should be a basic measure given that at least one of the bioweapons being produced there is air-based.
Instead: There's a single, unified air ventilation for all the facility, which causes the T-Virus to spread quickly out of the laboratories when released by Spence and kill and/or mutate everybody.
You'd Also Expect: The Hive to be located as far away as possible from dense population centers to minimize the danger of any possible security breach.
Instead: It is somehow located directly under a populous city, Raccoon City. As if the logistics of this weren't convoluted enough, it also forces Umbrella to hide its entries under suburban mansions and keep the facility secret, as no sane citizen or politician would want to live with a potential and very literal hell directly under their feet.
The Result: As seen in Apocalypse, when a strain of T-Virus breaks free, it turns Raccoon City into something more akin to Zombie City, and soon causes a global pandemic despite Umbrella's allegedly best efforts to contain it. - The reason T-Virus starts spreading across the Hive in the first place is because Spence throws the ampule containing the virus at the floor and shatters before leaving.
You'd Expect: That the vial would be made of extremely tough material in case it falls down or is at any other risk to break.
Instead: Spence is able to break it with minimal effort, as if it was made of cheap glass. - The Red Queen is now in charge of a Hive filled with T-zombies and a desperate team of survivors, among which there is the thief that caused all the crisis by releasing the virus.
You'd Expect: The Red Queen to immediately explain to the team exactly why she took the steps she did and why they must not cut power (remember the zombie in the flooded area - she could certainly direct them to it to prove what she's saying), and holding attacking them as a reserve move. She could also point the team to the nearby, ready-to-use anti-virus in case they need them to stop the infection.
Or Better Yet: Just send a warning herself to the entire corporation to not return to the Hive and say why it's a terrible idea.
Instead: Not only does she say nothing to the rest of the corporation at large, but she attacks the team set to rescue the survivors upon first contact, making later attempts to talk to them useless because they will no longer trust her.note
Result: After the first assault team dies, Umbrella, who had not been warned about the situation, decides to investigate the Hive anyway, allowing the virus to escape and rampage through the entire planet.
Apocalypse
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
- By this point, the Hive is legitimately Sealed Evil in a Can:
You'd Expect: Since Umbrella came in wearing hazmat suits, it's safe bet they know what happened in the Hive and why opening it is a bad idea. As such, they would either interrogate Alice to learn what kind of threat is inside or leave the Hive as it is.
Instead: They reopen the Hive anyway, probably still assuming the Red Queen is the true threat.
You'd Expect: They know what biological horrors may be down there and come in with a veritable army, heavy weapons and equipments, and anything else that could have a reasonable chance to actually clean up the place.
Instead: They sent in less than 10 people with only small arms and judging by their attitude, not expecting any kind of significant threat (e.g. with even less preparation than the previous strike team). As a result, they are swarmed and killed right after opening the front gate, leaving it open for the infection to spread in the process. - Realizing the infection is practically impossible to control, Umbrella initiates an evacuation.
You'd Expect: Umbrella to realize sooner that they will have to cover up the entire incident, and therefore extract only her staff and their families, the only people necessary to the corporation and the least likely to rat out on it. Then nuke the city and claim a nuclear meltdown before any word about zombies can get out.
Instead: For some reason, in a somewhat opposite move as of what happened in the original games, they do attempt some damage control... by periodically letting out large masses of people through their gated walls before putting the city on lockdown and nuking it up abruptly. Rarely, if ever, do they check up any possible sign of infection among the fleeing citizens. Aside from increasing exponentially the risks of keeping spreading the T-Virus, which would render all their measures useless, this has the effect of leaving tons of witnesses unrelated to Umbrella who will testify about a zombie apocalypse, making the corporation's attempts to cover it up next to impossible.
Result: While Umbrella does initially get away with the Raccoon City incident, the T-virus escapes again, spreads worldwide and causes a global Zombie Apocalypse that turns most of the planet into a Death World. note - While evacuating Raccoon City, Umbrella loses contact with a VIP in a car crash, namely the daughter of Dr. Charles Ashford, creator of the T-Virus. The accident happens in broad daylight and in midst of an urban road.
You'd Expect: Umbrella to immediately realize one of their urban extraction teams is not answering to the radio and send another team to find out what happened. If Angie is not among the wreckage, all they have to do is checking up the cameras all over the city which Umbrella seems perfectly capable to use.
Instead: That absolutely nobody in the unevacuated city seemed to notice the accident for an entire day is already weird, but that Umbrella didn't either is downright fathomless. Nightfall comes with Angie having received absolutely no attention by Umbrella, and at the end it is up to her own father to check up the surveillance system to discover the accident.
You'd Also Expect: Angie to immediately seek help once waking up from the crash. The latter took place right during school hours and there should be no reason why she cannot knock any nearby door and ask to use the telephone to call her father, her guardian, the police or any other adult in charge. Even if she believed herself to be Too Smart for Strangers, returning immediately to the school and tell what happened might be a start - it shouldn't be too faraway from her position, given that the crash happened mere minutes after being extracted.
Instead: What she did for all the day remains unknown, but it was apparenly nothing of this, and she is found at night in a school overrun by all kinds of zombies. The implication is that she was there for a long time, as she witnessed the zombie outbreak and managed to hide from it, yet it apparently never occurred to her to use the building's presumably working phones since her very arrival. She doesn't even look particularly shell-shocked or traumatized to explain this.
In fact: In DeCandido's novelisation, she does go to school and try to warn others, but she fails to use the phone and ends up dooming everyone inside when a zombie follows her and starts infecting others. - Umbrella wants to use Project Alice to perform a bioweapon testing. She is kept in a coma in a hospital's chamber and gets automatically awakened by its systems.
You'd Expect: If their intention was to set her free around the city, at least open the chamber door too so she can actually go anywhere. (And if they intended to send a team to her, not to wake her up until their arrival, given how dangerous and hard to control she is.)
Instead: They wake her up, but don't open the chamber door. Fortunately, being a trained security operative, she manages to crack the door open; had she failed to do so, the experiment would have been certainly short. - The S.T.A.R.S. sniper is sitting on the roof of a sporting goods store, picking off zombies, with headshots, at his leisure. He's even good enough to pop the head of one sneaking up on L.J. Then, Nemesis shows up.
You'd Expect: That, as an experienced, competent sniper who seems to have realized that the monsters wandering around the city only die with headshots, he'd put one of those high caliber bullets through the Nemesis' skull. Targeting his head should be even more intuitive given that Nemesis is a giant of a zombie who also wears a visibly thick-looking body coat, while his head is clear and unprotected.
Instead: He shoots him dead center in the chest, and is shocked that he doesn't go down, when that would not have put down a regular zombie. So he shoots him again in the same exact spot. Nemesis blows him up before the sniper can get a third shot off.
You'd Then Expect: That the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. officers would take clue and try to shoot him in the head or at least disperse in positions they would be hard to pick off.
Instead: They also fire dozens of bullets at his torso, not even aiming for the head, and as such Nemesis proceeds to slaughter all of them with his minigun, only sparing L.J. because he is a civilian posing little to no danger. - Jill, L.J. and Terri all get to the school to find Angela.
You'd Expect: That Jill would warn them to not split up, for security reasons that should be obvious by this point.
Instead: She tells them to split up. Which leads to... - Terri has no experience using firearms and is quite flaky about Jill's suggestion that they all split up on their own, so L.J. offers to take her with him.
You'd Expect: That Jill, being a cop, would understand, allow L.J. and Terri to go search together (or even take L.J.'s place as her partner), as Terri has no experience with guns, and therefore is probably more vulnerable on her own.
Instead: Jill completely ignores L.J.'s suggestion to take Terri with him to be safer (probably due to mistaking him for a pervert), hands off a gun to Terri with a half-assed explaination of "shoot them in the head" and sends her on her way on her own, Terri is promptly gruesomely torn apart by a horde of zombie children not five minutes later. And had Carlos not saved him, L.J. would be killed off as well. - Jill finds Angie hiding in the school.
You'd Expect: Jill to immediately ask her about the zombies and dangers lurking in the school, which Angie probably knows well by having been hiding there the entire day, in order to know what to avoid in their way out. Alternatively, Angie herself to warn Jill, especially about the zombie dogs in the next room.
Instead: Not a single word is crossed about it until they are in front of the doggies. Nicholai ends up paying the price because he and Carlos had not been informed of their presence either. - Alice, Jill, Carlos and the rest has planned to sneak on an Umbrella helicopter to leave the city for good. On their way to it, they knock out some Umbrella soldiers via flashy hand-to-hand.
You'd Expect: Them to collect the firearms of the mooks, which most of the party is trained to use. Then, as they don't even known whether the chopper is manned or there are more guards around, they should approach it cautiously and check up there's no Umbrella trap lying around.
Instead: They forget about the weapons and rush to the helicopter without any care. It turns out the chopper was a trap, which gets them held in gunpoint by Caine and company. As a result, Dr. Ashford is executed in a completely pointless death, and a series of events ends up with Nemesis/Matt killed too. - Timothy Caine is thrown out of the helicopter right in front of a swarm of zombies. Albeit crippled, he still has his pistol, and it's loaded.
You'd Expect: That Caine would understand he has no way out and shoot himself to avoid suffering a gruesome fate.
Instead: He desperately fires at them, as if there is any way for him to kill them all with a single pistol magazine, not to mention the nuke coming during the dawn. By the time he does attempt to end his own life, he discovers that his gun has run out of ammo. He promptly gets torn to pieces by a zombie mob, with zombified Dr. Ashford taking the first bite.
Extinction
Resident Evil: Extinction
- In the opening of DeCandido's novelization, the Raccoon City evacuation procedure has to be cut short once zombies show up.
You'd Expect: That Umbrella would make sure to scan everyone from their own staff outside the quarantine zone. After all, better safe than sorry.
Instead: In a gross violation of safety measures, they never do a double check-up on anyone once they pull out from the infested city. As such, when one scientist turns up infected and transforms, he is quarantined too late, manages to cause a breach anyway with fellow zombies, and soon the entire world becomes ransacked by the resulting pandemic. - During the motel raid L.J is attacked and bitten by a zombie before Carlos barges in and blasts said zombie away. L.J. then assures Carlos that he is alright.
You'd Expect: That Carlos would not believe L.J and check him for bites. Since the zombie bit him in the torso, the bite would not be very hard to spot.
Instead: Carlos believes L.J's words and leads him back to Claire's convoy. Other survivors are none the wiser and fail to spot the bite as well, including the nurse, who is L.J's love interest. In the novelization, L.J. receives the bite on the arm instead, which is easier to conceal, but it does not excuse others for failing to check the spot regardless.
Result: L.J. gets worse and worse for several days until he turns right in the middle of the Las Vegas battle, putting K-Mart's life in danger because no one was keeping an eye on him.
Even worse: Such lack of attention and caution bites Carlos himself (literally) when he gets infected by his former partner. As a result, he has to sacrifice himself in order to provide an escape route for the last survivors of his group. - Dr. Isaacs wants Project Alice's living DNA to use it on his experiments, and as soon as he gets a notification about her wandering outside the facility, he gets an idea to capture her. He tells about this to his supervisors, who tell him to wait until they confirm it is in fact Alice.
You'd Expect: The reason why he doesn't have already her DNA if he can produce clones of her is never given, but he at least should have Alice captured in ways that don't kill her by T-creatures (as it would infect her DNA, rendering it explicitly unusable) or leave her even less accessible (as Umbrella's resources are clearly dwindling by this point, not counting his own spectacular waste of them, and a search and rescue operation of her body would be difficult). Contacting Alice and tempting her with the possibility of using her DNA for a cure for the T-Virus might be a promising possibility. Granted, Alice would most likely not trust him after being mind-controlled periodically by Umbrella and many other things the corporation had done to her (even moreso in the novelization), but it would still be worth a try.
You'd Also Expect: That Isaacs would exercise patience and wait for his board's full approval. He already got on tense terms with the other top Umbrella executives, and he should also know how much could he risk losing by rushing things.
Instead: As his idea of a trap to capture Alice, Isaacs not only takes haste means, but also unloads a Clown Car of enhanced zombies on Alice's survivor group as a distraction, then tries to take her under control and abduct her through a vantage point on a rooftop. The plan is a complete failure, with Isaacs himself getting infected, but even although it had been successful, Alice could have been overrun by the zombies and infected in her mind-controlled state, thus destroying all the move's purpose. Not only that, but it also ruins Umbrella's trust in him and leads to his termination. Oh, and speaking of... - Umbrella executive Alex Slater is understandably sick and tired of Dr. Isaacs' shenanigans, especially after the desert fiasco. After learning Isaacs is visibly infected and is wasting vials of antidote, Slater executes him with his sidearm.
You'd Expect: Slater to remember that Isaacs was mutating and that a couple gunshots (which didn't even go for the head) might not be enough to put him down. After all, the most intuitive thought would have been that he was turning at least into a Licker, and Lickers definitely need much more than two bullets to die. Therefore, Slater should keep putting bullets on Isaacs' head, order the guards to fire at him with their own guns, and then run from the chamber just in case, not forgetting to seal it. Not that it would've helped much considering Isaacs mutates into a Tyrant shortly thereafter, but it would be the most sensible thing to do.
Instead: Slater turns his back on the supposed corpse and starts gloating about his position. Only upon the guards' late warning, he turns back to Isaacs to find him turned into a monstrous mutant, who promptly kills him and starts a rampage in the facility.
Afterlife
Resident Evil: Afterlife
- Alice and her clone army are now determined to take on Umbrella and get revenge on its chairman, Albert Wesker, who is hiding in the corporation's base in Tokyo.
You'd Expect: Having an army of telekinetic, superhuman, psychically-linked clones, and being herself a trained security operative who should have a grasp of military tactics, Alice to prepare an efficient, intelligent plan to assault the base.
Instead: She somehow decides the best plan to take the Umbrella base in Tokyo is a wild open assault, without any discernible strategy aside from "breaking in and shooting all enemy on sight", and not using their psychic powers except in very punctual moments. The first of her clones dies in a particularly useless solo entry.
You'd Also Expect: Having deduced Wesker's plan to escape in a VTOL, Alice to disable or otherwise sabotage his VTOL before he comes and wait for her clones to catch up and surround Wesker. If not, at least try to shoot Wesker down right at his arrival to the VTOL and impede him to remotely self-destroying the base, which would be easy to expect given than nuking things up when they get complicated is typical of Umbrella.
Instead: Alice waits until he has taken off and blown up all the base, which kills pointlessly all of her clonic sisters. She does wise up and plant a bomb on the VTOL during the battle on Arcadia.
You'd Then Expect: That Alice would blow Wesker's brains out right there and then, putting an end to him once and for all. Not that it would have worked in the first place, but at least that would put Wesker out of commission for some time.
Instead: She holds him dramatically at gunpoint for a pretentious Bond One-Liner, allowing Wesker to reveal his own T-virus enhancement and turn the tables on her. Alice gets injected with a de-powering serum and ends up trapped in a plane with a guy just as superhuman as she was until that moment, and even after improbably escaping, she is now alone and unsupported again in a post-apocalyptic world roamed by mutant creatures. - Speaking of Wesker, he is now in a plane with Alice, staging his own Bond One-Liner.
You'd Expect: Him to a) plug Alice right there and then and b) remember to put the VTOL in auto-pilot. He might be basically indestructible to any crash, but there's no reason to sacrifice the plane and end up lost in the post-apocalyptic world.
Instead: He forgets, causing the plane to crash. Alice somehow survives and escapes again from Umbrella's clutches. Wesker is not so lucky and gets killed during the collision. And while T-virus does bring him back to life, it gives him a side effect of mutations that could only be controlled by cannibalism. - For the next sixth months, Wesker needs to eat human flesh to keep stable his T-Virus mutation, and comes to believe that eating Alice's flesh will give him control of the virus. He finds out, through the satelite tracking system and a mole in a prison building inhabited by survivors, that she has arrived there.
You'd Expect: Wesker to go himself to the prison, kill all the other survivors with his superhuman abilities and devour Alice now that she is powerless.
Instead: He stays full Orcus on His Throne at the Arcadia, and the best plan he comes up with to bring her to him is sending an army of Majini and Executioners to the prison. Which again, in the improbable case they managed to overpower Alice, would either kill or infect her, making a nightmare for Wesker to recover her now wandering body if the T-Virus infection had not rendered it inedible for him. In case they could not, Alice might have perfectly chosen not to aboard the Arcadia, or end up unable to do so for any other reason. - After the attack, Alice decides to aboard the ship.
You'd Expect: Wesker to unleash a horde of mind-controlled people to hold her down, or pull out a taser, or do something to incapacitate her while he has the element of surprise.
Instead: He has a single, civilian mook train a gun on her, explains his plan like a good Bond villain, and expects to succeed by beating her in hand-to-hand combat (which he has a good chance of doing, frankly speaking, but is still a convoluted, dangerous course of action he has no reason to follow). As a result, he fails. - After easily beating Chris and Claire and putting them in pods, Wesker then goes to cannibalize Alice.
You'd Expect: Wesker to use his superhuman speed and reflexes to dodge any attacks from Alice and quickly subdue her.
Instead: He just stands there and lets Alice stab and shoot him. Wesker does get better (of course), but he missed a golden opportunity of devouring his foe right there and then.
Retribution
Resident Evil: Retribution
- In the film's background, Umbrella develops revolutionary clonation methods and implanted memory technology.
You'd Expect: The corporation to advertise and commercialize the fuck out of them, given that any possible application of those technological wonders, legal or not, would generate infinitely more benefits to humanity as a species than any biological weapon program and would probably have the CEO and board of directors practically swimming in money while everyone else is swimming in the absolutely unlimited possibilities of their tech.
Instead: They invest those in creating whimsically realistic test scenarios for a prosaic zombie virus that could not possibly be anywhere as economically promising as them.
Even Worse: As explained by Ada, Umbrella actually showed the clone simulations to several governments in order to try to sell them the T-Virus, yet none of them was interested on buying it - and none of them noticed the possibilities of trying to buy the clone/memory technology instead, either. - For some reason, the Red Queen is still alive and is now evil, and it manages to capture Alice during the battle at the Arcadia.
You'd Expect: The Queen to extract her DNA for any further experiments and have her killed. The only people who had beefs with Alice were Dr. Isaacs, who is seemingly dead, and Wesker, who has betrayed Umbrella.note
Instead: The Red Queen keeps Alice alive, contained in an expensive and useful cloning facility instead of a safer, cheaper place. She then proceeds to interrogate Alice about her reasons to betray Umbrella, which should be perfectly known by this point (especially by the Red Queen of all people, who was present in the events of the first film) and have no importance anymore (if anything because Umbrella Corporation is now the most powerful organization in the planet and has no rivals left). - Wesker, now humanity's Big Good after having left Umbrella, learns about Alice being imprisoned in Umbrella Prime and plans to rescue her.
You'd Expect: Wesker to go himself to Umbrella Prime. With his superhuman abilities, he has absolutely nothing to fear from the Red Queen and her security measures. Even better, in this film he seems to have gotten over his need to eat human flesh.note
Instead: He sends a small rescue team formed by regular humans that barely have any chance of surviving down there. As a result, most of them are killed and Alice almost dies in Umbrella Prime. - While battling through the facility, Alice and Ada find Becky, the young daughter of one of the former’s clones. The kid mistakes Alice for her mom and clamps to her.
You'd Expect: Alice, being already very familiar with cloning and having even sacrificed her own clones in Tokyo, to ignore Becky as just part of the simulations created by Umbrella. They are already under difficult odds to make it out alive, and carrying a child with them will only complicate everything. Moreover, she has no reason to save that specific child – all the clones in Umbrella Prime are going to die, among them many other Beckies, and it's not like Alice is trying to do something about it. Therefore, although it admittedly requires some cold blood, Alice should tell Becky to return to the closet and keep waiting, and then continue her own travel to the surface with Ada.
Instead: Alice suddenly grows a weirdly ambivalent and borderline hypocritical view about clones (leaving thousands of anonymous clones to die is good, yet leaving a specific one to die is bad) and takes Becky along, which almost derails their escape and survival.
Even Worse: Becky becomes missing in action in the next film, yet Alice doesn't even bat an eye about it. In hindsight, she could have perfectly spared Ada and herself an extra load in Umbrella Prime if it was just whim of the moment for her.
The Final Chapter
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
- In the film's backstory, Alexander Isaacs has Wesker kill Dr. James Marcus in order to take over Umbrella.
You'd Expect: Them to kill Alicia Marcus as well. The two would gain absolutely nothing by leaving her alive. Yes, it would be sad to see the Death of a Child, but it's painfully obvious to any fan of the franchise that Wesker and Isaacs are beings of pure malice who would very likely have no qualms murdering a child.
Instead: Wesker does nothing while Isaacs not only lets her live, but actually adopts her, takes her under his wing and allows her to gain her own share of influence in Umbrella (instead of, you know, Wesker), apparently expecting a child who had witnessed her father's murder (and was old enough to understand its implications) would turn some day into a loyal employee. As a result, she eventually finds the chance to kill both Isaacs and Wesker. - Before the events of the film and Retribution, Wesker begins the mission to eliminate all the remaining enemies of Umbrella Corporation.
You'd Expect: Wesker to kill Alice, who was captured by Umbrella during the battle in the Arcadia, and then hunt down the rest of the resistance against Umbrella with the help of his mighty powers and troops. Alternatively, to kill her and ignore the rest; humanity is about to fall anyways, as the resistance is pretty much powerless against Umbrella while the U.S. government is on the verge of being crushed by the Death World created by the T-Virus.
Instead: He executes a monumental and vaguely absurd ruse which sees him imprison Alice in Umbrella Prime, gathering an anti-Umbrella team in the White House, sending them to recover Alice and destroy Prime in the process, and then unloading T-creatures on the White House until everybody except him is dead (even although he could have done it himself in a much more efficient way). For some reason, this also includes Ada Wong, who was never implied to be anything but loyal to Wesker. The result is that Wesker has wasted tons of team and resources, destroyed valuable facilities and betrayed and/or killed a whole lot of useful people for nothing.
Even Worse: And still, he fails to ensure that Alice, who is effectively Umbrella's most dangerous and determined enemy, has died in the battle. The novelization shows the entire battle and has him acquiring full Bond Villain Stupidity, as he merely leaves the heroes to die to a defective mutant monster, despite he could have butchered all of them and the depowered Alice one for one. - The Umbrella guards have planted road ambushes. It's a weird move, given that they live in a world where only 4,500 humans are left, but also weirdly fruitful, given that Alice of all people conveniently falls into one.
You'd Expect: The guards to just shoot her with their guns, capitalizing on the fact she is hanging off a rope and without weapons.
Instead: They prefer to use her as a piñata for awhile, hitting her with their rifles' butts. Thanks to this, she finds the opportunity to fight them off and escape, only getting knocked out when she tries to hijack an Umbrella motorcycle. - Isaacs' clone manages to capture Alice after the aforementioned ambush and has her at his mercy en route to Raccoon City. After interrogating her for nonexistent information, he decides to get rid of her.
You'd Expect: That he would immediately kill her right there and eliminate the major threat once and for all.
Instead: He comes up with an overly convoluted and sadistic scheme, which involves chaining Alice to an Umbrella tank and making her constantly run to avoid being devoured by a huge horde of zombies. Predictably, she turns the tables on them and escapes on a motorbike, arriving at the city hours before the clone of Isaacs does. - Claire and the resistance intend to infiltrate the Hive and acquire the antidote, as they are engaged in a very literal countdown for humanity's future. However, Umbrella sends a hefty army against the skyscraper where they have their headquarters.
You'd Expect: Them to get down immediately to the Hive, where they could also take cover, impede the army from using its numeric advantage, and maybe even be safe until they find the antidote - which again, they are in a countdown for.
Instead: They delay their plan in order to pointlessly fight the Umbrella contingent in the building, losing a lot of time virtually for nothing and risking themselves to be killed, all without a clear reason - rather, with a clear reason against it, it being the darn countdown for humanity's future. - It turns out Wesker had a mole in the resistance, thus he always knew they were lurking in the ruined city.
You'd Expect: Wesker to take measures against the group at the first moment he found about their presence. He doesn't even need to command any troops; all he has to do is walk into their base and kill them with his (guess what) superhuman abilities.
Instead: The history repeated itself. Having learned absolutely nothing from the Arcadia fiasco, he preferred to let them live peacefully directly on top of the Hive, only sending someone after them when Alice appeared to join forces with them. The result is fatal, as Alice uses their help to infiltrate the Hive and push the events that end up destroying both Wesker and Umbrella. - In the flashback, Alexander Isaacs reveals his intentions to cleanse the world and reshape it in the Umbrella's image. He tells the meeting board that he wants the Earth resources to remain intact so the world rebuilding would be easier.
You'd Expect: Him to come up with a way that would wipe out most of the human race without destroying much of the world itself, like a sterility plague or even a synthetical virus.
Instead: He decides that a zombie virus that is capable of bringing a global drought is the best way of wiping out humans. As Extinction and it's sequels show us, the world has been reduced to a barren wasteland with the biosphere irrevocably destroyed. It's outright ridiculous that even the corporation itself hasn't realized that they went too far with their plans. - When Alice and Doc's crew are infiltrating the Hive, Wesker is watching them, fully knowing that the traitor is among them.
You'd Expect: For him be careful while attacking them with traps so his informant would have the chance to make it inside unexposed.
Instead: He decides to go all out on them, sending zombie dogs first, then using a huge fan to try and suck them in and then dump in many parts of the Hive with more dangers lurking within. While this does kill most of the team, the risk to accidentally kill the mole was still high.
Even Worse: This is actually what eventually gets said mole exposed as Alice figures out that whoever made it this far with the group is an Umbrella spy. - Alexander Isaacs anticipates Alice's arrival and, just as she arrives, bluffs her into putting her gun down. Claire can't help her since Wesker manages to get a drop on her.
You'd Expect: That he and Wesker would just kill Alice and Claire on the spot. Granted, Doc's weapon is out of ammunition because Alice deduced he was the traitor, but neither of the bad guys ever knows about this.
Instead: For no reason other than to tell Alice about her true past (and to also be a dick), he has Alicia awakened from cryogenic slumber too and then gloats about killing Alice and demoting Alicia once the Umbrella executives are awakened. Because Alicia still shares 50% of the company, she has the Red Queen incapaciate Wesker and gives Alice the reassuring speech, turning the tables on Isaacs. - After Alicia Marcus fires Wesker, he gets crushed by a door. At the same time Doc, who was figured out to be the traitor, is out of ammo. Isaacs finds himself alone against all of them.
You'd Expect: That he would immediately slaughter them, using his abilities. While it's true that Alice is a tough foe, he can still opt going for other humans like Claire or Alicia, who is bound to a wheelchair.
You'd Also Expect: That since he still outranks everyone at the Umbrella ranks, he would hire Wesker back and coerce Red Queen to release him and give him time to recover.
Instead: He thinks of neither and runs away, leaving Wesker and Doc to their fates and giving the heroes time to plant the bombs, bringing down Umbrella for good. - The insane, religious clone of Isaacs finds the original outside the Hive. Alexander Isaacs tells him he's just a clone, and the latter is mystified by the situation.
You'd Expect: Alexander to kill the clone with his cyborg abilities. The clone is armed and clearly disturbed, and might perfectly opt to attack him. Alternatively, Alexander would try and convince his clone that Alice is a greater enemy right now, thus offering him to team up against her. And once Alice is dead, he could easily dispose of his clone next.
Instead: Isaacs only laughs in the clone's face and decides he doesn't deserve any more attention, even turning his back to him. As a result, the crazy clone easily stabs him to death, convinced he's a demon.
Even Worse: Isaacs is supposed to have Super-Senses and Super-Speed, which should have explicitly enabled him to see it coming and dodge it, but he apparently didn't feel like using them. The result? The mighty Alexander Isaacs is eliminated by his own, pathetic non-enhanced doppelgänger.
Worse Still: After the Isaacs' clone kills the original, he gloats Alice that he is the true Isaacs rather than taking advantage to kill her for all the troubles she's caused him through the film. Then he gets torn apart by zombies for his troubles, because he wasn't paying attention to other enemies either. Maybe this is a genetic trait within the Isaacs lineage. - Alice finds thousands of members of Umbrella members in cryostasis.
You'd Expect: Sure, many of them are probably douchebags, but they are still thousands of living, healthy people in a world where humanity is almost extinct. It would be useful to leave them alive to help rebuild the world and the human race when the right moment comes, as well as avoiding the inevitable genetic bottleneck that will come. Moreover, there are entire families frozen in those tanks, and those might perfectly not be responsible for the others' actions.
Instead: Alice kills them all, making it even harder, if not near impossible, for the remaining humans to rebuild the world.
