Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil' Has Officially Cracked the Code to Making Great Video Game Movies
Overview & Key Takeaways
Zach Cregger pulls of the impossible, but he's not the only one doing it right now
There's a moment near the end of Zach Cregger's Resident Evil when Austin Abrams' bumbling protagonist, Bryan, finally gives up all hope. After arriving at the hospital where scientists are developing a cure for the zombie virus in a top-secret lab, he's stopped in his tracks by… an out-of-order elevator. So Bryan does the only reasonable thing left to do: He gives up, takes off his shirt, sits down on the concrete floor of the hospital's basement-level garage, and cries.
Shirtless and pudgy, Abrams looks particularly pathetic in this moment, which is really saying something, since much of Resident Evil's comedy comes from Bryan's sheer stupidity in the face of various threats and challenges. A few moments later, when the camera pans to an open staircase directly in Bryan's field of vision, it's a reminder of just how dumb this guy really is.
For Cregger, casting Abrams as his lead and encouraging him not to get into shape isn't just a funny gag; it's the entire point of Resident Evil. In an interview with Polygon, the director explained why he chose to make this unskilled medical courier his protagonist rather than write a script focused on Leon Kennedy, the beloved cop-turned-government agent from the video game franchise.
“I'd rather watch a movie starring a schlub who's, like, out of shape and has never fired a gun before,” Cregger said. “I wanna see that guy get chased through this gauntlet.”
The critical and commercial success of Resident Evil proves Cregger had the right idea. The movie has a 95% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 91% from audiences. It also made $60 million at the box office. A sequel seems certain, even if Cregger has made it clear he won't return to the franchise anytime soon. But whatever happens with Resident Evil 2, there's a bigger lesson Hollywood needs to take from the film: Video game adaptations need a dumb guy like Bryan who can act as a stand-in for the audience.
Image: Sony
Image: Sony Pictures
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Image: Sony Pictures
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Image: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures
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Ironically, Resident Evil isn't the only video game adaptation released in September 2026 to use this trick. While Cregger is dominating the box office, Paramount Plus just quietly released a series based on the 1989 arcade game Golden Axe. Like in the original game, the series from Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Joe Chandler focuses on a trio of battle-hardened heroes. However, it also makes the extremely smart decision to throw a dumb guy into the mix.
In this case, that dumb guy is Hampton Squib (Danny Pudi), an inexperienced adventurer who tags along for the ride and seems more interested in making friends than winning battles. While Hampton is initially presented as a "chosen one" hero with untapped potential — kind of like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker — it's soon revealed that he's actually just a useless rich kid with almost no real-world skills.
For Pudi, it's this twist that makes Golden Axe unique.
"In a lot of media, you see this idea of a hero who all of a sudden can do everything and understands the rules of combat," the actor tells Polygon. "Hampton's still figuring it out."
Image: Paramount Plus
Like Bryan in Resident Evil, Hampton is the audience stand-in that the video game doesn't need. Because when you're playing a video game, you want to experience the power fantasy of controlling a grizzled ex-cop shooting zombies or an unstoppable warrior with a broadsword fighting evil warlocks. But when you're watching a movie (especially a comedy), you need a protagonist who's a little more relatable.
This also helps explain why the recent Mortal Kombat movies failed to gain the same positive response. The 2021 film introduced an audience surrogate in the original character Cole Young (Lewis Tan), but Cole actually was the chosen one, which kept audiences from relating to him. The 2026 sequel responded by killing off Cole and replacing him with the somewhat incompetent action star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), which both appeased fans of the games and gave audiences a slightly more relatable hero to root for.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures/Everett Collection
Next up is Street Fighter, and while it's too soon to pass judgment on that movie, the trailers suggest director Kitao Sakurai is leaning into the absurdity of the games, which hopefully means lots of comically dumb heroes. A bit further off, however, another upcoming video game adaptation does give me hope. Noah Hawley's Far Cry series is still a ways away, but the choice to cast Rob Mac (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) as the lead seems like a step in the right direction. Mac has made a career out of playing overconfident, extremely dumb dudes in both Always Sunny and Mythic Quest. If his character in Far Cry is anything like either of those idiots, we could be on the verge of yet another great video game adaptation.
In the meantime, Resident Evil and Golden Axe makes me think that Hollywood may have finally cracked the code for making good video game adaptations. Hopefully, we won't look back at September 2026 as that one rare moment in time before the genre pivoted back to soulless power fantasies about badass cops who never miss a shot.
Resident Evil is in theaters now. Golden Axe is streaming on Paramount Plus.
