The panel for Resident Evil: Afterlife was held at Comic-Con 2010 this past weekend. This is a movie with an uphill battle in front of it due to the fact that quality has seemed to go down with each new movie released since the first, and that it’s a movie that fully embraces the hostile 3D takeover currently going on.

The panel opens with the introductions of director Paul W.S. Anderson and stars Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, and Wentworth Miller. They kick things off by premiering the exclusive look at the recently released first trailer in its 3D form. If you’ve not seen the regular 2D trailer, you can check it out below to see what was shown.

The first topic discussed is of course 3D, and Anderson goes into how he’s always liked 3D and always thought it was a great idea. But it wasn’t until James Cameron came around with Avatar that the director knew it was something really special, and that he not only needed his new movie in 3D, but he had to use the same cameras that Cameron used. He thinks eventually 3D will be the benchmark in filmmaking and he plans on making all of his movies using it from here on out.

Anderson talks about why this franchise — as one based on a video game series — has been so popular where others have failed. He thinks it’s because there’s so much passion that goes into them and that fans can see this passion.

Some 3D footage from the movie is shown next. The scene features Alice and Claire battling a character from Resident Evil 5 known as The Executioner. You can read our own Dave3’s full description and feelings on the footage below!

The group then fields a bunch of audience questions. One story comes up about a scene which features Alice in an airplane graveyard. Apparently at some point she had to fire her gun and accidentally shot one of the $100,000 cameras they were using. I may have missed something here, but not quite sure why they were using live rounds? Interesting decisions there.

Some details revealed about the new movie over the course of the Q&A. The flick will be based largely on the Resident Evil 5 game, which you may have figured out judging by the use of The Executioner, and there will be an army of Alices unleashed.

Popular game character Leon will not be used, sadly, but Anderson says it is a character they would have to seriously consider using in the future. As for whether there will in fact be more movies, he says they like to take them one at a time, but are always open to new ones so long as they’re successful.

Again, you can read the footage description right here, and the basic 2D version of the trailer they showed is also embedded below along with some pictures from the panel!

Footage Description

A group of people are in a huge white-tiled bath house/shower room. Both the lead girls Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Claire (Ali Larter) and a few men are standing over some type of drainage tunnel/shaft that leads out of where they are on a downward sloping angle. One person gets into the tunnel and starts to slide/climb down [maybe Wentworth Miller’s character). The Asian guy in the group is all whimpering about how he can’t do it and protests like a little whiny bitch for a few seconds. With the camera still on him whimpering we quickly see him get sliced in half (kind of diagonally) via (what we learn is) a huge axe/hammer weapon wielded by the “Executioner,” a huge grotesquely hooded monstrosity who swings this massive axe thing around like it’s a toy.

Alice makes to attack the Executioner but is quickly bashed hard by the hammer portion of the weapon and flies off to the side of the bath house and slams against the wall, knocked out cold, her hand gun flying off to land in an inconvenient spot. Claire jumps in to fight the Executioner. The fight mainly consists of her ducking from the massive swings of the weapon as they systematically destroy six (or so) pillars/pipes that are laid out in rows of three on either side, each busted pipe now spewing water vertically creating pillars of contained rain as they travel towards the front of this bath house, where light is shining in through a big window against the front wall. You get the impression that this bathroom is on the top of some isolated mountain of hopelessness. Claire dips and slides a lot. We get one seemingly cool silhouetted shot as she does a back flip off a wall and lands in a spread-eagle cat pose on the floor [this was really bad looking and kind of ridiculously staged as well, it really took me out of the moment, but you know, there has to be a “pose”. Claire spots the gun, makes for it, and has at the Executioner with whatever bullets are left in the gun. This takes him down. Naturally it’s a “Jason” moment. After a moment the monster starts to get back up again. Enter Alice again, back from her siesta. The monster grabs his big-ass axe/hammer and makes a Hail Mary toss at both Alice and Claire with it. Very much like that axe scene in Last Action Hero, they both huddle together and vault away as it circles just above their heads and passed them. Then as the ‘Phew’ moment ends Alice pulls out a shotgun of some sort and proceeds to blow the head of the Executioner apart.

Let it be said that I was excited to see this movie because I love Resident Evil and Milla Jo. But I was far less excited to see this movie AFTER this footage. The proportions between the giant Executioner and the must smaller Claire looked horrible, as if Claire was running passed a video screen with the Executioner on it. I hope it was just temp stuff and they continue to work on re-cutting it, redoing the 3D, and everything else ’cause it kinda was assface bad.

Panel Photos

Trailer

Footage description and photos by Dave3.