Resident Evil Damnation: Leon vs Lickers - A Love, Hate Relationship

Waffling Taylors Goes To The Movies

Don’t forget to check out the other episodes in the series. Make sure to click here to see which movies we’ve already covered - we’re sure that you’ll love what you have to say.

The intro for this episode was performed by Morgan Ritson. You may remember him from Ten Minutes of TV Time. As you can hear, he’s a bloody good voice artist and you should reach out to him for your projects

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Players

Squidge

Jay

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Content Warning

As this is an episode about a biopunk action horror movie and the games that it’s based on we’d advise a little caution for this episode. There’s nothing explicitly terrible in this episode, but the subject matter can be pretty rough.

This episode has a few swears in it, but none which should be too offensive.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Squidge started this one off with his, now trademarked, intro:

Squidge:

From active time battling to zombie slaying, waffling Taylors covers video games and beyond.

In this episode Jay and Squidge cover the 2012 CGI movie Resident Evil Damnation. We cover everything from bioweapon on bioweapon action, Chris Redfield from wish.com, to neon plot devices.

So without further ado, sit back, grab some snacks, and get ready for this episode entitled "Resident Evil Damnation: Leon vs Lickers - A Love, Hate Relationship".

Enjoy.

Initial Thoughts

As always, the boys like to lead with their initial thoughts before talking about specific scenes in the movie, and Squidge agreed that this movie (along with the games released at the time) is more of an action affair:

Squidge:

And yeah, it’s more action-based. I’ve noticed that. This one is definitely more action-based

Whereas Jay’s thoughts are more along the lines of how Leon may as well be Samus, starting a brand new Metroid-based adventure:

Jay:

What I noticed when I was watching this was, "wait. Leon’s a special forces agent now. He’s been trained in all sorts of different combat situations. How in the hell can he not fire a gun properly yet?"

…

It doesn’t make sense to me why he doesn’t have his skills at the beginning of the movie; even though he’s been called there specifically.

But Squidge broke in with an explanation of sorts. Although, it does involve a little head canon and some classic British standup:

Squidge:

[Leon] is one of the very few survivors of a medical condition known as "Hand Squeezy Death." So until he warms his hands up, he can’t shoot for $h!t, but the minute his hands are warmed up he is pinpoint accurate.

The Scenes We Want To Highlight

These episodes rarely include a play-by-play of the movie (except for the first few of them), instead both Jay and Squidge wanted to pick out some of their favourite scenes. Since /Squidge went first when they talked about the previous movie in the series, Jay went first this time:

Jay:

So my scene takes part halfway through the movie, roughly

…

Ada and Leon are in the parking garage and I was like ooh nice little Resident Evil 2 thing going on here because obviously that’s where he met Ada in Resident Evil 2. And I love that she says, I think she says it in this scene, "are we ever going to finish when we… started?" Which I was wondering, obviously she’s going for sexual tension, but I was like, "you don’t want to blow up this city as well, Ad! For goodness sake."

…

But the best part for me was the end of the scene, where Leon brings out his gun and points at Ada, and she takes out her grappling hook gun, and it looks like she’s going to point at him. But just points it straight at the, sky fires it without looking, and, like, in my head I was like, "the best way that this could possibly end is if she points the gun up and fires it into the sky, right, and then there’s nothing for like 10 seconds, and then she goes ‘well this is awkward.’ Then the grappling hook falls bonks her on the head, and knocks her out. I think that would have been a way better way to end that scene.

And Squidge’s first scene had quite a similar set up:

Squidge:

My first scene is also in a garage, is also in the car park. But it’s at the beginning of the film. So the scene I want to talk about is the first time you see the lickers, and the possible consequences of the lickers being controlled, because you kind of get the idea.

…

The city is an active war zone. You hear bullets firing and fires and explosions all the time. And [Leon]’s just running through. He’s heavily armed at this point, right? So what they do is, for this scene especially, they utilize the point of view camera awesomely, because it’s not many games you get to see, like, scary as hell lickers but from someone’s point of view and they’re dashing at you other than like Resident Evil [Gun] Survivor. Which is an awesome game, by the way.

So you got the pov camera, he’s in a car park, this this whole part Leon’s there, he’s a secret agent there, he’s not supposed to be there. So you’ve got rebel forces, you’ve got secrecy, you’ve got Leon’s code name being "The Tin Man," he’s more armed to the teeth than he’s ever been, he’s currently smuggling plans for a new weapon—code name Death Star—and we find out the lickers are being controlled somehow.

Jay’s second highlighted scene was towards the end of the movie:

Jay:

I’ve written down in my notes, "did El Presidente" which is what i’ve called her in my notes, "really need to be topless there? Oh I get it, it was so that we can see the skull [tattoos] on her back." I just didn’t see the need for it until we got the wide shot towards the end, and she’s got all those scars down her back.

But then cuts to, like, being outside and there’s multiple Mr. X’s—they’re probably not Mr. X—but there’s multiple of those really tall bio-organic weapons fighting Leon and the bloke that I named "Slavic Chris Redfield" … Seriously, right? Check out the show notes. There will be a picture of him in the show notes. Does he not just look like a slimmed down version of Chris Redfield from Resident Evil: Code Veronica?

Jay:

Wrote down for this scene was, and I have a question for you related to this Squidge, "remember kids: always bring a squadron of lickers to a Mr. X fight." And my and my question is: would being able to bring a squadron of lickers to a Mr. X fight, would that have made the Resident Evil 2 Remake a little bit better?

You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out what Squidge’s thoughts on that question are.

Jay:

But yes, so that happens; they all come rushing in, and I’ve written down as well, "Slavic Chris Redfield and his Magical Licker Squadron to the rescue… sort of. And then, immediately brought down afterwards. Meanwhile Slavic Chris is busy dropping his hip tank," because that’s what happens… Lleon’s cornered, he’s being chased. A whole bunch of the lickers run in and get, basically, eviscerated, ripped to pieces, and then suddenly this tank just, kind of, comes out of nowhere, and just really just properly ups that ante. AAnd I am there for it. It was a whole bunch of fun.

And Squidge’s final scene needed a little set up:

Squidge:

Okay. So leading up to the this scene you’ve got Leon and JD fighting their way out of the tunnels. As we all know, even in, CG films: Leg-Fu for the win.

…

My next scene is where Ada and Madam President sit down and have a bit of a chat. The scene is set up for the audience to know that something’s going to happen. Now the thing is, this is all from Ada’s point of view what I’m going to say next, okay?:

"I know. You know. I know you know. I know you know, but what you don’t know is I know I’d be going to change this scene from Resident Evil to Street Fighter meets Metal Gear Solid with t*t$."

I apologise for the verbiage I used, but yeah, it is Resident Evil meets Street Fighter with Metal Gear Solid with t*t$. That’s what that fight is. You know, that’s the cat fight I alluded to earlier on, and that’s what it is.

Also, this:

How Would We Rate It?

We don’t usually rate games or movies, in fact we have never done that. And this was a conscious decision that we made early in the life of the site.

But we needed to figure out a way to tell you all whether we think you should watch this movie or not. Normally we would rely on three ratings across three categories, which are:

• Love it (best)
• Try it
• Fling it into a tree (worst)

Across these categories:

• As a video game movie
• As a action horror biopunk movie
• As a Resident Evil movie in the Resident Evil canon

Squidge’s Ratings

Jay’s Ratings

External Links of Interest

• Join our Discord server and be part of future episodes
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Resident Evil: Degeneration on IMDB
• Resident Evil Degeneration - Death In The Departure Lounge
• Gamer Thumb TV
  • The Resident Evil Story - Gamer Thumb TV

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

• Intro music is Massive Scratch - Eight Bit/Chiptune
• Spoiler Break music is Spectrum (Subdiffusion Mix) by Foniqz (BandCamp)
• Pallet Cleanser music is Breath Deep Breath Clear (Wu Chi) by Siobhan Dakay
• To Zanarkand (Intro) © Square-Enix & Nobuo Uematsu
• Free Breaking News Intro Video Template (Customizable) - FlexClip
• Film Noir Background Music for Videos - MrSnooze
• What a thrill © Konami
• You know he dead
• Outro Music is Massive Scratch - Eight Bit/Chiptune