A new addition to the Resident Evil saga is scheduled for a September release. Here’s the trailer:

I enjoy a good zombie movie as much as the next four or five people, but something is really starting to bother me. If the Umbrella Corporation’s goal is global dominance, they chose an ungainly way of doing it. Their schemes put the needlessly-complex terror plots of “24” to shame.

They are obviously not motivated by anything as mundane as profit, because nearly all of the human race–perhaps better known as customers–are either dead or bloodthirsty zombies. I am not an economist, but as far as I know dead people and zombies do not spend money on consumer products. Nor do they invest in markets. Nor do they power an economy in a way that would enable financiers to profit.

Umbrella obviously expects to gain from this somehow. Or, the whole movie franchise is just a series of excuses to showcase Milla Jovovich kicking the crap out of monsters in a hottified way. I don’t have a problem with that at all, except that sometimes I wish they would just be honest.

Another example would be Underworld: Evolution, which built on an intriguing premise of an ages-old feud between vampires and “lycans” (werewolves) in Underworld. The sequel was mostly an incoherent gore fest, with Tony Curran‘s vampire leader running around killing everything in sight for no reason, and Kate Beckinsale…

…I’m sorry, what was I saying?