{"id":426397,"date":"2026-05-05T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/426397\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:57:10","slug":"resident-evil-loremaster-calls-for-calm-after-movie-trailer-sparks-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/426397\/","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil Loremaster Calls for Calm After Movie Trailer Sparks Complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

After last week’s Resident Evil movie trailer sparked complaints that it didn’t look enough like Resident Evil<\/a>, the series’ unofficial loremaster has said that fans should just accept the film for what it is \u2014 and enjoy the ride.<\/p>\n

The internet’s reaction to Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie<\/a> trailer was decidedly mixed, with many suggesting the film looked like a generic horror movie, rather than a specific Resident Evil adaptation. “This looks more like a 28 Days Later spinoff than anything Resident Evil,” one fan claimed.<\/p>\n

While the trailer did include one hard-to-spot Resident Evil Easter egg<\/a>, its focus on an original character and a creepy-looking new enemy left many fans cold \u2014 even if Cregger had spoken previously about wanting to create his own take on the franchise<\/a>, with a deliberate focus on a new character so as to not simply retell a story fans were already familiar with<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Now, Resident Evil loremaster TheBatman \u2014 who IGN has featured previously for his exhaustive chronicling of the franchise’s story<\/a> \u2014 has called for calm, and pointed out that the movie appears to be no less canon than any of the other Resident Evil film adaptations over the years, such as the long-running Milla Jovovich series, or the more recent Welcome to Raccoon City reboot.<\/p>\n

“To be fair to Zach Cregger, he admitted early on that his movie would not abide to the strict storyline or canon to the games and the trailer certainly reinforces that,” TheBatman told IGN. “It is evident his focus is on recreating the feeling of being in a Resident Evil game or playing one for the first time rather than adapting any storyline. So, like the Paul Anderson films prior and the Netflix series, I think this is going to be a largely unrelated to any of the games.”<\/p>\n

Resident Evil Movie Trailer Slideshow\"\"<\/p>\n

Cregger himself has placed the movie as taking place simultaneous to the zombie outbreak in Raccoon City seen in Resident Evil 2 (canonically, September 1998), but many fans have pointed to the trailer’s reveal of a snowy Raccoon City and said the setting doesn’t match. Others have pointed to the use of a smartphone in the trailer as a signal the film is set in the present day, rather than 20 years ago, as further evidence that Cregger’s version may be set during the same events of Resident Evil 2, but clearly in a different branch of the Resident Evil multiverse.<\/p>\n

“[Cregger] is speaking hypothetically here,” TheBatman continues, “as [main character] Brian’s use of a torch on his smartphone tells us this clearly isn’t 1998. And given Umbrella were collapsed and gone by 2004 in the games but are still around in the present day in this movie, I would urge people not to get riled up about ‘canon’ and just enjoy the ride.”<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that Resident Evil fans won’t be rewarded by watching the movie. As well as the trailer’s inclusion of a green herb, TheBatman has been able to identify another Easter egg that many missed: the answering machine bleep in the trailer is “lifted straight from the original PS1 RE2 and RE3.”<\/p>\n

As for the trailer’s grotesque multi-limbed creature, TheBatman suggests this could have been inspired by the Nyx from Outbreak: File 2, which is a creature that absorbs corpses. “One of its arms is a twisted amalgam of human limbs so I’ll be very impressed if this was the inspiration behind it,” he noted. <\/p>\n

“This is an original horror film painted in a Resident Evil skin,” TheBatman concluded. “But Barbarian and Weapons were both impressive so I’m excited to see what Cregger comes up with.”<\/p>\n

IGN recently travelled to the set of the Resident Evil movie<\/a> and spoke with Cregger to discover the kinds of Easter eggs fans can expect \u2014 such as recognisable weapons, locations, and green herbs (none of which were in the trailer). Still, Cregger seems to understand the need to please fans with the film, and noted that he expects lore nerds will likely “crucify” him if his reboot deviates from franchise lore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Co-written by Cregger and Shay Hatten, Resident Evil stars Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, and Kali Reis. The movie is set to launch in theaters on September 18.<\/p>\n

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After last week’s Resident Evil movie trailer sparked complaints that it didn’t look enough like Resident Evil, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-426397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}