RESIDENT EVIL Director Paul W. S. Anderson Says Not Playing the Game Before Adapting It Is “Outrageous”

Video game adaptations are on a serious roll right now. Between the breakout success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the massive fan response to Fallout and The Last of Us on TV, Hollywood has finally started to crack the code.

But, according to Paul W. S. Anderson, some filmmakers are still skipping a pretty crucial step when bringing games to the screen… actually playing them.

Anderson has been living in the video game movie trenches for decades. He’s directed films based on franchises like Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, and Monster Hunter, so he knows what it’s like to translate interactive chaos into a cinematic experience, even if his films aren’t that great. And apparently, he’s stunned that some directors take on these projects without ever touching a controller.

Speaking on the Post Games podcast, Anderson said: "I think it's important for me to be a fan. You know, it always shocks me when directors give interviews and they're doing a video game movie and go, 'well, I never played the game.'

“Like, that's outrageous! You know, would you adapt War and Peace and say, 'you know, I never read the book: I've got the script, it's fine, I shot that, the book I'm not interested in.'"

He’s got a point. You wouldn’t adapt a novel without reading it, so why treat a game any differently?

For Anderson, it’s not just about knowing the plot. It’s about respecting the people who’ve poured hours into these worlds.

As he explained, he feels "like it's doing a disservice to the people who love the game and have invested many hours and days and months of their time into this world for you to ignore it."

What really matters to him is capturing what he calls the “aesthetic” and the overall feel of the experience.

He doesn’t just expect that commitment from himself. He makes it a rule on set. "I always make sure the production designers I work with play the game or watch playthroughs of the game, so they know what it looks like, and the director of photography knows how the camera moves," Anderson explained.

He added, "All of those things are present in my movies because they're present in the games that I've adapted. I make sure the entire crew are immersed with all of that as well, so if you're a fan of the game you really feel like the DNA of the game is built into the film you're watching. I think that buys you a lot of goodwill."

That idea of embedding the “DNA” of the game into the movie is interesting, especially when you look at the mixed reactions to the Resident Evil franchise over the years.

I’ve always thought Anderson’s 1995 Mortal Kombat nailed the arcade-style energy and camp of the source material. The Resident Evil movies, on the other hand, have sparked plenty of debate. They’re fun in a big, chaotic way, but they are very different from the game franchise. The films are their own thing.

Still, Anderson insists his guiding principles are simple… respect the IP and understand why people love playing it in the first place.

He pointed to one of the most iconic moments from the original Resident Evil game as a key inspiration. You know the one. The hallway. The window. The dogs.

"It was scary," Anderson recalled, "and I thought 'I have to make a scary movie because the game is scary' and that's one of the things it delivers to the audience, is those scares.

“That's why I couldn't do just a straight adaptation, because it wouldn't have scared anybody, because they'd have known exactly when the dog was going to jump through the window and they'd be prepared for the scares.

“I don't want to rob the audience of that, because that's part of the experience of playing the game that should be ported into the movie version."

That’s an interesting take. His argument is that copying the game beat for beat would actually hurt the experience because fans would see every scare coming. So instead, he tries to recreate the feeling rather than the exact sequence of events.

You could argue that you don’t need to play Resident Evil to know it should be scary, but at least Anderson is thinking about what players felt when they first experienced those moments.

Whether you love or hate Anderson’s films, you can’t say he doesn’t take the responsibility seriously.