Six films and more than 1,230 million dollars collected. That is the baggage of the ‘Resident Evil’ saga when it has been headed by Jovovich mile giving life to Alice. However, the film adaptation of the Capcom video games could be very differentsince the actress herself has revealed that Michelle Rodriguez was about to be the great protagonist of the function.
The meeting with Paul WS Anderson that changed everything in ‘Resident Evil’
As you will remember, Jovovich and Rodriguez gave life to the two main characters of the first installment (released in 2002). The truth is that the former had originally been hired to lead the film, but the signing of the latter led director Paul WS Anderson to write a new version of the script to give her more prominence, to the detriment of the actress of Ukrainian origin.
Jovovich milewho had already co-starred in ‘The fifth element’ (‘The Fifth Element’), has explained what happened with ‘Resident Evil’ and how he managed it:
“I almost quit the movie. I was shooting something else and Paul had hired Michelle Rodriguez to play Rain. She came from doing ‘Girlfight’ and there were some rumors about a possible Oscar. It was very fashionable at the time and my popularity was already four years old by then, so Paul rewrote the script for it.
“She basically turned my character into ‘the girl’ and Rain into ‘the guy’. She kept all my big action scenes and became the new Alice, turning my Alice into a sidekick.”
It is not unusual for a film to undergo changes depending on the cast, since it is logical that those responsible want to give more presence to the most popular faces of the cast. Nevertheless, such a drastic change like the one Jovovich comments is still very striking, since here we could well talk about destroying the one who was the main character for it. Like is logic, the actress complained and this is what happened:
“I didn’t get the new draft until I was going to Germany from Canada, where I was working. I ended up reading the script on the plane and by the time we landed in Berlin, I was livid. I went to the hotel and said: ‘We need to have a big talk or I’ll be back on a plane tomorrow morning.’
“Paul came over that afternoon and we literally sat for three hours and we reviewed the script page by page. He would say to me: ‘What do you mean? This hasn’t changed that much.’ And I’d say, ‘Okay, why don’t we start on the first page?’ And he would point at him whenever he felt like my best scenes had been taken away from me. That’s how our relationship began.”
I’m sure Milla Jovovich’s arguments were very solid but, especially after that last sentence, it’s hard not to conclude that the spark of love had something to do with the discussion; And note that they are still together, they married in 2009 and have three children. On the other hand, Michelle Rodriguez would premiere ‘At full throttle’ (‘The Fast and the Furious’, 2001) shortly before the premiere, so his presence ended up giving an added pull to ‘Resident Evil’.
Now it is impossible to forget the idea of what the saga would have been like if led by Rodriguez, which would not be seen again in a ‘Resident Evil’ adventure until the fifth installment of the franchise. For my part, I have always believed that she is a very convincing actress for action movies and that no one has been able to express that conscientiously, but also that Jovovich knew how to be more than up to it.
With that being said, why not bring Rodriguez back into a different character? He is still 44 years old and continues to hit the mark as long as those responsible for him do not want the protagonists to be very young actors. Let’s remember that in 2021 a new film arrived in the form of a reboot, ‘Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’, and the following year a live-action series based on the same saga was released on Netflix (although it was canceled immediately).
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