Spoilers for Resident Evil follow
If you’ve seen the latest Resident Evil movie, you’ll know that it ends with a lot of blood splattered all over an Umbrella Corporation lab.
As Austin Abrams’ Brian can no longer control the T-Virus coursing through his body, he’s left with no choice but to bring each scientist who stands in his way to a violent end, one by one. The key to making this work, though, is that you can still see the small human part of Brian left that wants to inject himself with the cure he’s spent the whole of the film transporting to this location.
This connection to the syringe is what, in turn, keeps the audience’s connection to Brian, leaving his objective still clear, rather than fully transforming into a mindless killing machine. It may be somewhat surprising to hear, then, that the movie did originally end differently, taking away this key motivation.
Speaking with Collider, director Zach Cregger revealed, “One of the missteps I made early on was not doing that. And so we reorganized the chain of events. Thank God, I shot this as a contingency plan. It was like my plan B.”
This new plan altered how early the cure would be destroyed, stretching out its purpose for an extra few crucial minutes until it falls from the top floor of Racoon City’s tallest building.
“Originally in the script, that scientist pulls the needle out, and as soon as Austin grabs the woman’s face, he drops it, and it shatters,” Cregger explained.
“Then the rest of the movie is just Austin [Brian] killing the scientists, and people were just like, ‘No, like it’s over’, you know,” the Weapons and Barbarian director continued. “But I shot that shot of the scientist putting the needle in his pocket just because I had a feeling. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m going to need that.’
And so then we were able to build a new sequence of the end, and I shot a contingency of him going for the stab in Prague when we were doing our thing, as just like, ‘if I need it, I should just get it’. Thank God because that’s what we ended up using. It keeps the stakes all the way until the end. It’s like, ‘save him, save him’. Whereas before it was just like, ‘kill them all’.
That decision seems to be proving to be the right one, with both critics and audiences alike largely loving Cregger’s interpretation of the Capcom survival horror games. Don’t expect to ever see that original ending or any other version of Resident Evil anytime soon, though, with the director confirming that there’s no ‘Cregger Cut’ incoming.
Resident Evil is a smash hit, having overtaken Sonic the Hedgehog 3 as the highest-rated video game adaptation on Rotten Tomatoes, and defied expectations at the box office with a huge $108 million opening.
For more on the movie, you can check out our review, or read about how it nails being a video game adaptation by being so ridiculous.
