Paul W. S. Anderson
162 connections found
Filmography
Event Horizon 1997 
Pompeii 2014 
Soldier 1998 
Resident Evil 2002 
The Three Musketeers 2011 
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter 2016 
Mortal Kombat 1995 
Death Race 2008 
Resident Evil: Retribution 2012 
Monster Hunter 2020 
AVP: Alien vs. Predator 2004 
Shopping 1994 
Resident Evil: Afterlife 2010 
In the Lost Lands 2025 View:
Connections, in both directions
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
Directed by Julius Onah
influenced by Event Horizon (1997)
Themes Plot
A hodgepodge of everything from Alien to Event Horizon to an episode of “Fringe” to Back to the Future to an H.P. Lovecraft story to the classic 1983 television movie The Day After, to call this effort a mess would be massively understating things.
After the accident, we suddenly shift into a sci-fi horror vibe, as if the ship has crossed over into the hellish dimension from Event Horizon.
Essentially: Blame science, and take a page or three from the scripts for Alien, Event Horizon and Pacific Rim.
This entry lacks the freshness of both, though, and instead regurgitates a sloppy stew inspired by the likes of Event Horizon , Life , and Interstellar .
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
There is one brief section of the movie that doesn’t go along these lines and elects to go crazy instead—it starts off with O’Dowd’s character inexplicably losing his arm while trying to repair a wall and grows progressively battier—and it is the best portion of the movie because it is the one part where it seems to be doing its own thing instead of simply cribbing from films ranging from “Supernova” and “Event Horizon” to practically the entire “Alien” saga.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Directed by Simon McQuoid
influenced by Mortal Kombat (1995), Resident Evil (2002), Event Horizon (1997)
Plot
The 1992 Midway Games property, which originally was designed as a fighting game modeled after Jean-Claude Van Damme (hence the posturing of the Johnny Cage character), and originally adapted for the screen in 1995 by Paul W.S. Anderson (who would move on to the much more prolific Resident Evil franchise), and then immediately laid to rest after the considerable failure of its 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat 2: Annihilation (helmed by the first film’s DP, John R. Leonetti).
The cheesy “Mortal Kombat” (1995), from the future “Resident Evil” director Paul W.S. Anderson, proved as much, and now there is “Mortal Kombat” (2021), directed by Simon McQuoid, a snazzier, marginally more coherent movie that features a less catchy version of the techno theme song.
Sure, there’s a certain campy pleasure to watching Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue leading battle in Street Fighter ; the Resident Evil films (especially the first) have their gory charm; and, whitewashing casting controversy aside, the sight of Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia is enough of an aesthetic appeal to forgive that film of its sins…but for every one of those, there’s a Double Dragon or a Super Mario Bros. to constantly remind you that the transferred medium is a tough ask.
A few differences in dramatis personae aside, the bare-bones mythology is more or less identical to that of the 1995 film “Mortal Kombat,” a campy hoot best remembered as a calling card for the director Paul W.S. Anderson (who would move on to a more sustained game-adaptation franchise with the “Resident Evil” series).
Directed by Paul WS Anderson ( Event Horizon , Resident Evil ), the effort was a slick but vapid affair that featured none of the iconic battle-splatter the game was renowned for.
Anderson may have later earned infamy for his dubious adaptations of the Resident Evil games, but this remains one of the more faithful video game movies of its era, in a time where Hollywood generally wasn’t interested in attempting to translate the experience of gameplay to the big screen in any tangible way.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George A. Romero
influenced Resident Evil (2002)
Plot Characters Themes Visuals
Sure, it is derivative of many other flicks from the obvious "Night of the Living Dead" and "Aliens" to things more obscure, like "Ghosts of Mars" and Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians," but, even so, this modern horror/monster movie stands on its own as a sci-fi actioner.
Alice, Rain and their team spend the whole movie rushing about the Hive, fending off those "Night of the Living Dead" ghoulies (who have the power to infect the living by inflicting the merest scratch) and a pathetic handful of other beasties (namely, the aforementioned Dobermans and an Alien-like slime thingy).
First and foremost, however, "Resident Evil" is a genre film, the cinematic child of James Cameron's "Aliens" and George Romero's horror classic "Night of the Living Dead."
Enthusiastic and jubilant joystick jousters will probably get a rise out of star Milla Jovovich as the expressionless butt-kicking babe in a vehicle that's a weak-kneed cross between "Alien" and "Night of the Living Dead".
"Resident Evil" is basically "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Aliens," with the storyline of the former and the visual sense (and much of the dialogue) of the latter.
Its chief instrument of horror is a mob of flesh-eating zombies lifted part, parcel and gaping head wounds from Night of the Living Dead.
…the action beats of a typical Resident Evil video game…
…the type of zombies you’d find in a horror video game like Resident Evil…
There are shootouts and fight scenes, sometimes feeling like a Resident Evil movie.
I can totally see it being a level in a RESIDENT EVIL video game.
From here, the movie largely plays out like a video game adaptation, drawing especially from Resident Evil (the games, not the PWSA movies, to be very clear), with big guns, varying creatively designed big and little bads, and some not-so-smoothly integrated exposition drops.
The Gorge melds T.S. Elliott and the Ramones with sci-fi action-horror reminiscent of Resident Evil, Doom, and The Last of Us, all with a dash of romance thrown in for good over-the-top measure.
Produced in 1975 at a time when the rising levels of violence in professional sports inspired both public outcries and a solemn, big-budget epic of speculative science-fiction based on that concept in Norman Jewison’s “Rollerball,” Paul Bartel’s “Death Race 2000” was a low-budget extravaganza from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures that combined bloody action and jet-black comedy to tell the story of a futuristic government-sanctioned cross-country auto race in which there were no rules, the contestants were free to knock out their competition by any means necessary and bonus points were scored for every pedestrian that they struck and killed along the way.
Death Race has more in common with homage-movies like Doomsday, the Rollerball remake, and Escape From L.A. than it does Mad Max, 1975's Rollerball, or Escape From New York.
Carradine, as fans of the original Death Race 2000 (produced by Roger Corman and directed by Paul Bartel in 1975) already know, played the masked driver Frankenstein, a racer in a two-lane-blacktop version of the equally nihilistic Rollerball (which came out the same year).
Resident Evil (2026)
Directed by Zach Cregger
influenced by Resident Evil (2002), Mortal Kombat (1995)
Themes Plot
The live-action Resident Evil movies are widely considered bad adaptations of the game, prioritising generic action spectacle and doing away with the nerve-shredding survival-horror atmosphere of the video games.
With a clear appreciation for odds stacked against the protagonist and all manner of freaky foes to stand against them, Cregger ably adapts the spirit, if not the letter, of the Resident Evil games into a jet-fueled horror experience…
Gamers of Resident Evil have been like redheaded stepchildren when it comes to adaptations on the big screen. 99% of the time, when Hollywood comes calling, they want to make a movie that resembles the game, for obvious reasons. But nah, that wasn’t the case for Capcom’s iconic horror, which got a franchise that only resembled it on a surface level, and less so as time went on.
Regardless of whether you’ve seen them all, most people are at least familiar with the six live-action Resident Evil features from creator Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich which ran from 2002 to 2017.
Admittedly, the competition is nothing close to formidable: Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog, Minecraft, Super Mario Bros., Uncharted, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, the previous six Resident Evil movies.
As the eighth installment in the Resident Evil film franchise and the second attempt at a reboot following producer Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2002-2017 series and Johannes Roberts’ 2021 reboot…
Underwater (2020)
Directed by William Eubank
influenced by Event Horizon (1997), Resident Evil (2002)
Visuals Plot
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
As you’ve probably guessed, “Underwater” is something of an assemblage of spare parts: “Alien” most obviously, though you’ll also hear echoes of “Event Horizon” and your choice of titles from the 1989 undersea horror derby (“Deep Star Six,” “Leviathan,” “Lords of the Deep,” etc.)
Thrills abound as a one-in-a-million plan of survival gets underway, borrowing from other undersea adventures like “The Abyss,” “Black Sea,” and “Sanctum,” all while the mystery of a final transmission from the drilling team poses concerns of a supernatural kind (not unlike “Event Horizon”).
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
This is a feature designed around its thrilling monster attack sequences, running the gamut from Alien and Pitch Black inspired cave scenes to bright sunny sand monsters in the vein of Tremors .
Beyond some spider/scorpion creatures who seem modeled after those in Pitch Black (2000), there are only two, and they take an enormous amount of effort to bypass (not to mention, they look like any number of such approximations from contemporary Hollywood films, from Pacific Rim to Jurassic Park to the new Godzilla titles).
After battling this beast, they take refuge in a cave structure and are then set upon by a new assortment of creatures that look like the monsters from “Starship Troopers,” reproduce like the monsters from “Alien” and fear the sunlight like the monsters in “Pitch Black.”
They run toward the rocks, where some giant bug creatures attack (these look and act like the monsters in the vintage Vin Diesel movie “Pitch Black”).
If the writer, Philip Eisner, drew inspiration for his screenplay from any single picture, it would easily be Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris.”
The obvious inspiration for "Event Horizon'' is a much better film, Andrei Tarkovsky's " Solaris " (1972), where a space station orbits a vast planet.
The basic concept has been done before in Forbidden Planet and more recently Event Horizon would steal some elements from it.
It's more variation-on-a-theme (by way of "The Running Man") than remake of producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's campy 1975 drive-in classic, "Death Race 2000."
Yet it's not like Anderson didn't start with a reasonably sturdy foundation: The original film, 1975's Death Race 2000, is trashy fun, a campy Roger Corman satire with David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone as rival drivers in a nationally broadcast sport where the purpose (along with taking out fellow speed racers) is to run over as many people as possible.
Produced in 1975 at a time when the rising levels of violence in professional sports inspired both public outcries and a solemn, big-budget epic of speculative science-fiction based on that concept in Norman Jewison’s “Rollerball,” Paul Bartel’s “Death Race 2000” was a low-budget extravaganza from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures that combined bloody action and jet-black comedy to tell the story of a futuristic government-sanctioned cross-country auto race in which there were no rules, the contestants were free to knock out their competition by any means necessary and bonus points were scored for every pedestrian that they struck and killed along the way.
Based loosely on Roger Corman’s biting Death Race 2000 (1975), the movie pits a disgraced, rough-trade racing driver, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham), against amoral prison boss Hennessey (a silky Joan Allen), who has invented the ultimate pay-per-view thrill: snuff TV.
The film "re-envisions" the Roger Corman-produced, 1975 cult film (which was titled "Death Race 2000") and stars Jason Statham.
Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil is a louder, lazier, wholly jump-scare dependant rip-off of James Cameron's Aliens .
First and foremost, however, "Resident Evil" is a genre film, the cinematic child of James Cameron's "Aliens" and George Romero's horror classic "Night of the Living Dead."
Sure, it is derivative of many other flicks from the obvious "Night of the Living Dead" and "Aliens" to things more obscure, like "Ghosts of Mars" and Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians," but, even so, this modern horror/monster movie stands on its own as a sci-fi actioner.
"Resident Evil" is basically "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Aliens," with the storyline of the former and the visual sense (and much of the dialogue) of the latter.
Worse, director Paul W.S. Anderson isn't immune to pilfering concepts or shots from Aliens, Forbidden Planet, George A. Romero's Living Dead epics, The Relic and even his own Event Horizon while screen-adapting a video game franchise.
It's more variation-on-a-theme (by way of "The Running Man") than remake of producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's campy 1975 drive-in classic, "Death Race 2000."
It's not a unique idea, having provided the backstory for more than one action movie (the most famous of which may be Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Running Man).
The year is 2012 and, in a mish-mashing of Rollerball and The Running Man, TV audiences crave death and destruction to keep them happy in a world in which - and how ominous is this? - the financial system has collapsed.
Skip it: Not only does "Death Race" recycle much of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Running Man" and 2007's horrible Steve Austin vehicle "The Condemned," but it doesn't even offer a character who thinks killing cops or broadcasting violence online is wrong.
As reconceived by writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson—the architect of such thematically vapid exercises in stylistic excess as Alien vs. Predator, Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat, Soldier and Resident Evil—Death Race now actually more closely resembles a cross between The Running Man and The Road Warrior, though even those comparisons offer it far too much flattery.
"Death Race" is a loose reimagining of 1975's "Death Race 2000," but it is just as derivative of any number of films, from 1987's "The Running Man" to 2007's " The Condemned ."
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Directed by Johannes Roberts
influenced by Resident Evil (2002)
Plot Themes
With the era of Paul W.S. Anderson’s battle-heavy Resident Evil movies now passed, the job of exploiting Capcom’s much-loved game series falls to 47 Metres Down ’s Johannes Roberts, who lays claim to being a huge fan of the original two games (his film draws a lot of inspiration from the 2019 Resident Evil 2 reboot).
Gamers will quickly recognize that Roberts’ dual-track narrative is a combination of “Resident Evil” (Chris’ mission) and “Resident Evil 2” (Claire’s thread).
As overseer of the previous cycle of Resident Evil films, Paul W.S. Anderson nudged the material towards action-fantasy, the better to showcase the gifts of his muse Milla Jovovich.
Roberts now takes over the reins of the Resident Evil series from Paul W.S. Anderson with the prequel Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City .
Eschewing the action-heavy aesthetics of the successful six-film series — beginning with 2002’s Resident Evil and culminating with 2016’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter , all starring Milla Jovovich as kick-butt heroine Alice tasked with saving the world from the zombie apocalypse — Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City attempts to take the property back to its horror video-game roots.
(In fairness, some were heard to condemn the film on the grounds that it 'rips off' Event Horizon and Sphere, even though Lem's book predates both of those pictures by several years.)
Purportedly the Russian answer to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," the film was pretentious and dreadfully slow but nevertheless intriguing and went on to inspire the likes of the similarly themed "Event Horizon."
Sci-fi followers will quickly recognize the plot, taken from Stanislaw Lem's novel, since it's been unofficially borrowed for many other films (most notably the 1997 thriller "Event Horizon," which gave it a gruesome twist) and TV shows.
While several of the plot conceits have been seen over the years ("Event Horizon" being a prime example), Soderbergh makes them seem fresh and intriguing by focusing on the character relationships rather than the special effects.
Alien (1979)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced Resident Evil (2002), Event Horizon (1997)
Themes Plot Visuals
We’re not talking Alien territory here, nothing that tangible, but the residue of some otherworldly hell that has infested the hulk of the ship and imbued it was a hideous life of its own.
15, 1997) -- In the early going, Event Horizon looks like it might be among the best of the several sci-fi/horror films to follow in the ever-widening wake of Alien.
"Event Horizon" is little more than a cross between "Alien" (everything jumps out at you except the cat) and "Hellraiser" (although it owes something to "Stargate" and a dozen other sci-fi and horror flicks).
But in "Event Horizon," a pathetic, gratuitous gorefest posturing itself as the heir to the "Alien" sci-fi/horror throne, this line belongs to a Sam Neill, a perfectly good actor who gets steady work.
I haven't seen atmospheric buildup of tension this good since Alien and, well..., The Shining, both of which were released nearly twenty years ago.
Anyway, after the rescue team's initial exploration, we get an endless amount of "Alien" type creeping around in the labyrinthine spaceship, with folks dying in various gruesome ways.
In an opening reminiscent of Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar in its focus on the intricacies of skilled manual labor, Ames emerges from a dying steel plant on its last day of operation to a minimal pay packet.
Pandorum (2009)
Directed by Christian Alvart
influenced by Event Horizon (1997), Resident Evil (2002)
Plot Themes
Imagine, if you will, taking the basics of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and 28 Days Later ... (2003), tossing in the aesthetic of a Resident Evil picture, adding a little Event Horizon (1997), sprinkling a thin dusting of A.I. (2001) over it all, inserting a laugh-out-loud, transparent plot twist, and then shooting the whole thing in a murky imitation of Ridley Scott’s Alien.
Directed by Christian Alvart (“Antibodies”), “Pandorum” is more easily described as a riff on the 1997 chiller, “Event Horizon.”
One of them involving Payton and Gallo feels old-hat, not far off from producer Paul W.S. Anderson's own 1997 space-set horror pic "Event Horizon," but the film's last handful of minutes are superb, even wondrous, in their game-changing ways and ultimate wrap-up.
Pandorum Evokes Event Horizon, Alien Throughout Its Story If Pandorum sounds a lot like Event Horizon (despite few storyline similarities), that’s because it’s produced by Paul W.S. Anderson, director of that film and Resident Evil.
Set entirely aboard an interstellar spaceship and containing speeches about man giving in to his evil side, Pandorum brings to mind Event Horizon.
Yet the story’s bibilical allusions, as well as its interest in issues of morality and madness (à la producer Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon) via the hypersleep-fostered insanity known as Pandorum, are too facile to prop up a lack of second-half scares, with the material devolving into outright ludicrousness when a screeching warrior creature throws the weaponless agriculturalist a spear for their showdown in an act of interspecies sportsmanship.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
influenced Monster Hunter (2020)
Themes Visuals Plot
In some ways this film, and its relentless obsession with action sequences involving these unfriendly beasts in different iterations, reminded me most of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, which came from a more prestigious label at Sony rather than from the studio’s discount B-movie brand at Screen Gems which is releasing Monster Hunter.
After battling this beast, they take refuge in a cave structure and are then set upon by a new assortment of creatures that look like the monsters from “Starship Troopers,” reproduce like the monsters from “Alien” and fear the sunlight like the monsters in “Pitch Black.”
Some resemble dragons or dinosaurs, others look like they might be related to creatures from other movies: the giant bugs from Starship Troopers , or the sandworms from Tremors or Dune .
During all of that, Anderson unabashedly cribs from "Starship Troopers," "Alien/Aliens," "Tremors" and more in a sort of guilty pleasure way.
The kinds of monsters you want from a movie called "Monster Hunter," creatures that look like they've been born out of some unholy amalgam of "Starship Troopers," "Tremors" and "Eight Legged Freaks."
Aside from the “Starship Troopers”-like Nerscylla, the Black Diablos is all we get until deep into the second act, as the entire first hour of “Monster Hunter” is entirely, inexplicably devoted to the tentative alliance that forms between Artemis and the titular Monster Hunter (Jaa) who rescues her amidst the sand.
Amongst all the chatter that the zombie concept is played out, consider that the closest these horror staples have come to a blockbuster depiction is the Resident Evil series – something that leaves ample scope for improvement.
Yes, we've seen this sort of material before (even the fast-moving zombie angle isn't fresh anymore, although seeing them pile up like raving mad army ants to scale a wall into Jerusalem was a first for me), and the finale clearly borrows its "look out for the zombies in the lab" aspect from the "Resident Evil" flicks.
The film, co-written by Damon Lindelof (“Prometheus”), Matthew Michael Carnahan (“State of Play”), Drew Goddard (“The Cabin in the Woods”) and J. Michael Straczynski (“Thor”), will feel familiar to fans of the “Resident Evil” series and Danny Boyle’s far superior “28 Days Later” (2002).
A flexible metaphor for all manner of social, cultural and political maladies, the zombie genre has, over the decades, been employed as an analogue for everything from the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1932’s Bela Lugosi starrer “White Zombie”) to the upheaval of the Vietnam/civil rights era (“Night of the Living Dead”) and the bio-panics of the late 20th century (“28 Days Later,” “Resident Evil”).
Did Lane quit, or did he get fired because of that douchey haircut?), I'd be veeery interested to see the original ending that was so unsatisfying it prompted Paramount to switch gears from "balls-out action flick" to "shelved sequence from the first Resident Evil movie."
Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)
Directed by Aleksander Bach
influenced by Resident Evil (2002), Mortal Kombat (1995)
Plot Visuals Themes
Le Clerq is intent on creating an army of super-killers because, well, he’s a bad guy, and that’s what bad guys do—just as Hitman: Agent 47, which also comes around to mimicking the Resident Evil franchise, clumsily apes from better movies because it’s a lousy one, and that’s what lousy ones do.
One strobe-lit massacre looks a joyless imitation of John Wick ; other moments briefly recall the Resident Evil series and The Wolverine .
If The Bourne Identity and Resident Evil hooked up back in 2002, this is the baby that one of them would bring to the doorstep of the other, begging them to take it.
Say what you will about the overall quality of the “ Resident Evil ” films, but they at least had personality now and then, which is what every frame of this film is lacking.
Fingers are firmly crossed for Duncan Jones’s forthcoming Warcraft , but in the meantime this big-screen reboot of the Hitman series merely reminds us that in this genre Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill remain unremarkable high-water marks.