Resident Evil: Extinction

Even though it's the most recent of the 'Resident Evil' trilogy, 'Extinction' falls in the middle of the pack for picture quality. Like the movie itself, the 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer is better than the second film, but not as good as the first. Presented in its theatrical 2.40:1 aspect ratio, the movie's photography has a deliberately bleached appearance with pumped-up contrasts meant to evoke the harsh desert climate. It's a very flat image, without much sense of depth. Colors are also muted by design. I have no problem with the stylistic intent, but the picture is a bit soft and has only fair detail, better in close-ups than medium or long shots. This extends even to the clips reused from the first 'Resident Evil', which look much softer here than they do in that movie's own Blu-ray transfer.

(I also want to note that the 'Resident Evil' clips have been modified from their original 1.85:1 ratio to match this film's 2.40:1, which results in a famous glimpse of Milla's nudity being cropped out of the frame. The bastards!)

Dark scenes are sometimes grainy, but feel appropriately so. The digital compression quality is fine, with no major issues, though there's a small amount of edginess to some of the higher contrast desert scenes. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the picture is that, in many of her close-ups, Milla's face has been digitally airbrushed, similar to what was done to her in 'UltraViolet'. It makes the actress look waxy and inhuman. Perhaps that was the intention, but it's very distracting to look at, and leaves the shots in question severely lacking in detail.

All of the bonus features from the DVD edition have carried over to the Blu-ray. Sadly, this is by far the thinnest package of the three 'Resident Evil' movies.

• Audio Commentary – Director Russell Mulcahy is joined by writer/producer Paul Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt. Unlike the first two movies, Milla is nowhere to be found this time out, and that's probably a blessing considering how lousy she is at the commentary format. The track is mildly interesting, with Anderson and Bolt doing most of the talking. Anderson continually refers to the movies as a "trilogy," despite the obviously open-ended finale. When he does pipe up, Mulcahy describes Jovovich as "a thinking actress," which tells you a lot about his filmmaking and why most of his movies turn out the way they do.
• Beyond Raccoon City: Unearthing Resident Evil Extinction (HD, 31 min.) – This pretty good making-of featurette was produced by Automat Pictures and covers the major bases of how the movie was put together. Topics include pre-production, the attempt to be different than other recent zombie pictures, the 'Mad Max' influence, hiring Mulcahy, shooting in the desert environment, production design, and the zombie makeup.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 9 min.) – 11 short scenes of little consequence didn't make the final cut. Ali Larter is featured in three of them, and somehow I doubt that's a coincidence. The most interesting bit involves the villains trying to capture a zombie for their experiments.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration Trailer (HD, 1 min.) – This teaser trailer for the upcoming CG animated feature looks an awfully lot like an assemblage of cut-scenes from the various video games. To be clear, 'Degeneration' is a stand-alone work based on the game series, and is not a direct sequel to the live action movies.

HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There?

Like both of the other 'Resident Evil' Blu-rays, 'Extinction' offers the option of watching each featurette individually, or using Blu-Wizard interactive controls.

• Blu-Wizard – Rather than watch each featurette one at a time, Blu-Wizard allows you to select a series (or all) of them from a checklist to watch in uninterrupted sequence. You can also choose to view them during the movie playback. However, this is not a picture-in-picture function. The movie will pause and then branch out to each video segment, pieces of which have sometimes been broken out from their original featurettes to place them in relevant context. Had this been picture-in-picture, it might work a lot better. It's frankly easier to just watch the featurettes on their own, in which case the playlist function is useful.

'Resident Evil: Extinction' is also one of the first Profile 1.1-enabled Blu-ray titles, and includes a new interactive feature that can only be viewed on Profile 1.1-compliant Blu-ray players (such as the Playstation 3 or the Panasonic DMP-BD30). Players without this function can access all of the traditional supplements and the Blu-Wizard feature described above, but not the following:

• Under the Umbrella: Picture-in-Picture – Working similar to the "In-Movie Experience" feature on selected Warner Bros. HD DVD titles (and presumably soon Blu-ray as well), Under the Umbrella provides a running stream of picture-in-picture video footage viewable during the movie playback. Included are interviews, storyboards, and behind-the-scenes material. A small bit of it is taken from the separate featurettes, but much of it is new and only viewable here. A lot of it involves Milla blathering on about random nonsense. I have no doubt that Profile 1.1 features will improve with time, but at least in this early example, the feature is pretty rudimentary, feeling a lot like the very earliest of Warner's IME tracks, before they refined the process. The PiP windows (popping up in various corners of the screen) are extremely small. They run fairly regularly, but have a number of long gaps. Irritatingly, the volume for these audio clips is set much lower than the movie soundtrack, which will blare deafeningly between segments. The PiP can be run simultaneously with the audio commentary, and I recommend this approach since both play back at similar volume levels, though obviously the commentary will drop out when the PiP windows appear. All in all, I didn't find any of the content in Under the Umbrella particularly interesting. I expect that as disc authors get the hang of it, they'll eventually do a better job.

Some trailers for other Sony titles are also available, the most relevant being the first two 'Resident Evil' pictures (there's no trailer for 'Extinction'). There's also an ad for the 'Resident Evil 5' video game.