Resident Evil (2002) - Corporations are the real monsters | Zombie Book Club Ep 119 - Zombie Book Club

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_05 (00:19):
Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club
where the book is underground,and in a strange twist of fate,
AI is protecting it from theprying eyes of humans.
I'm Dan, and when I'm not deepunderground, I'm writing a book
about a zombie apocalypse wheremega corporations, tech
billionaires, and politicianstake full advantage of the
crisis to seize control andrewrite the rules to give
themselves absolute power.

(00:41):
Sounds a lot like the moviewe're talking about today.

SPEAKER_02 (00:44):
Yeah, I'm glad that these things only happen in
fiction.
Only.
And I'm Leah.
Dan, I need you to close youreyes.
Okay, I'm close my eyes.
And if you're listening to thisand not driving or um grading
something unsafe, I'm operatingequipment.
Oh no! Close your eyes.
Okay.
Your eyes are closed?
Yeah.
Okay.
Imagine a body that cannot die,has no pulse, and no conscience,

(01:08):
yet it's granted the full rightsof a human being.
What is it?
Donald Trump.
Also true.
I've seen a lot of people say,is that at this point I'm
convinced the president is AI.
Maybe he knows.
Yeah.
But no.
It's a corporation, legally aperson, biologically undead.

SPEAKER_05 (01:28):
Just like Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32):
It doesn't age.
Oh.
It outlives its makers.
It consumes without remorse.

Uh the question is (01:38):
if a corporation is a zombie, what
does justice look like?
And how the fuck do we shootthem in the head so they're
dead?
Oh, yeah.
Where is the head?
You know, um, Luigi Mangioni hadsome ideas about that.
Yeah, but it But that was justone head.

SPEAKER_05 (01:54):
That corporation, yeah.
The corporation continues.
The man died, the corporationcontinued.
The shareholders demanded thatmoney still be made.
Yeah, you know what?
This is like that um that sewerzombie in the first season of
Dead City, where it had likefour or five different heads.

SPEAKER_00 (02:11):
Yes.

SPEAKER_05 (02:12):
You know, um, not sure how exactly that worked,
um, but you had to kill all theheads.
So I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 (02:20):
I don't know.
I don't know either.
And um I've been studying thisquestion since 2007, and I still
have no good answers.
So I don't know what the head ofthe corporation is.

SPEAKER_05 (02:33):
Yeah.
Well, you know what, I thinkcorporations do have one
weakness.
What's that?
Money.

SPEAKER_02 (02:38):
Well, yes, we can starve.

SPEAKER_05 (02:42):
And then it goes away.

SPEAKER_02 (02:43):
Yeah, we have to create our own communities and
systems so that we don't needthe corporations so much
anymore.
Yeah.
Uh today we're talking aboutResident Evil.
In case it wasn't obvious.
The movie, the first movie, notthe game.
Yeah.
I learned recently that one ofmy nieces really loves Resident
Evil, the game.
Yeah.
That was very exciting.

SPEAKER_05 (03:02):
There's there's a lot of there's a lot of games,
and um, I'm partial to the firstthree.
So you've played it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I grew up, I grew up with uhResident Evil.
It was like the only zombie gamefor a long time.
Except for Zombies Ate MyNeighbors.
That was on Sega Genesis.
And actually it was a kind of agood zombie game.

(03:23):
Um Leah, we release episodesevery Sunday.
So Subatomic?
I just at this point I'm justlooking up words that start with
sub.

SPEAKER_02 (03:32):
I'm surprised that we hadn't come to that one yet.
We should have used it forFallout.
Maybe when Fallout 2 is out, wecan do it again.
We're gonna reuse it.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (03:40):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (03:41):
Uh well, the cool thing today is that we're
talking about a movie that I'venever seen before until now.
Yeah, this is your first time.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (03:49):
And uh I haven't seen it since like the 2000s.

SPEAKER_02 (03:52):
Yeah, and I I actually we have a little
Facebook group now.
Um, and whenever there's a newperson who's joined once a week,
I do a little post.
It's automated.
And it asks, it welcomes the newFacebook group members uh and
asks what their favorite zombiemovie or book is.
And a number of people have saidtheir favorite movie is Resident

(04:14):
Evil.
Alice B.
Sullivan said it was ResidentEvil.
Um Dee Lee says Resident Evil.
I feel like somewhere BrandonStaraki also said Resident Evil.
Shoot me if I'm wrong, Brandon,or don't actually.
Please don't.
We're still waiting on yourmustache.
Just saying.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (04:33):
Brandon has yet to deliver the mustache.

SPEAKER_02 (04:35):
Yeah, from losing Summerween slam down.

SPEAKER_05 (04:38):
He claims that a family member stole said
mustache.

SPEAKER_02 (04:42):
Um well, that's what we've heard through a friend of
a friend of a friend.
I am waiting for Brandon'sresponse.

SPEAKER_05 (04:47):
Okay, we have to confirm.

SPEAKER_02 (04:48):
Our super villain Brandon.
Yeah.
Uh, but before we get intoResident Evil, we have a couple
of things like some quick lifeupdates.
Oh.
And a very belated elevatorpitch that I have literally been
trying to share with you all forlike two months, but it never
seems like the right time.
And today is the time.
I feel like actually today isperfect.

(05:09):
Yeah.
From what I know.
Yeah.
Um, so life updates, Leah.
Yeah.
What have you been up to sincewe recorded uh last week?

SPEAKER_05 (05:19):
Um, took a few days off, then went back to work.
Uh Wednesday, I was capable ofwriting, so I did.
I wrote a little bit today aswell, right before we recorded
this episode.
Um, it's not great, but you knowwhat?
It moves me along.
I feel like I've been writingthis book for 50 years.
Um, and I also feel like I'mstill at the beginning of this

(05:41):
book.
It's not that I'm writing slow,it's just that it's a process,
you know.

SPEAKER_02 (05:47):
I can't even imagine this process.
Making art like visual art feelsso much simpler than when I
listen to writers talk aboutwriting.
You all fascinate and terrifyme.

SPEAKER_05 (05:57):
Yeah, it feels like a mental illness.
Yeah.
Um, and maybe it is.

SPEAKER_02 (06:02):
Not to not to uh make light of mental illness.
I I have many.
I mean, we both do.
Uh why did we take off time,just in case folks missed the
last episode?

SPEAKER_05 (06:12):
Yeah, if you missed the last episode, which I
totally understand, what hadnothing to do with zombies,
except for one very distant callback to zombies right at the
end.
Uh which I don't even know whatwas.
Um, our little buddy Nero, ourour pupper doo, our doggo uh
passed away last weekend.
Uh right when we were supposedto record an episode and edit an

(06:32):
episode and get ready for ZombieWeen that was supposed to come
out this week.
Um but uh alas, those thingscould not happen.
So we had to push a lot ofthings back, had to make room
and space, we had to take somedays off of work um and just be
there with our feelings aboutour little puppy dog.

SPEAKER_02 (06:53):
And Snuggle Ziggy, who is still here with us and is
playing his very important roleof podcast sidekick.
Also, I'd like to remind folksthat last year he was voted
America's next top zombie.
Oh for my cartoon of him as azombie.

SPEAKER_05 (07:08):
Oh, right, yes.
I'm like, uh we're zombifyingZiggy.

SPEAKER_02 (07:11):
Yeah, I need to get on some making some new zombies
to have, and this year isAmerica's next top zombie.
Or we should just give it toNero.
Yeah.
Because he's he's dead now.

SPEAKER_05 (07:20):
So kind of in memoriam.
Oh it's like when they finallygive somebody the Academy
Awards.

SPEAKER_02 (07:26):
Oh my god, it's his lifetime achievement award.
Uh, you know what?
I think that's what we're doing.
Uh and if you're wondering whatthe heck is zombie ween, Dan
just referenced, it's an annualgame show that we do.
It's very funny.
It features zombie authors andcreators competing for a meat
crown that uh yours truly Leah,bleep last name person, makes.

(07:50):
Um, uh other just brief thankyou.
I want to say a lot of folksreached out and shared their
condolences, talked about theirown animals that they've loved
and lost, sent us cookies andflowers.
And I just want to say thankyou.
Thank you so much for seeing usand for caring.
It means a lot.
Um I miss having the podcast bethis thing that I do that's fun

(08:11):
and not uh I feel like I've beena little bit off my game because
I'm also still unemployed.
I'm almost officially two monthsinto unemployment.
No job.
So you should go check out myEtsy page.
Uh I am officially launching itthe day that this website comes
out.
There's a few things on there.
If you're you like cute art, uhcome check out my stuff.

(08:34):
I make cute little mushroomincense holders, little trinket
boxes, I do custom portraits ofpets.
I used to do custom portraits ofchildren on the beach.
You'd have to pay me a lot forone of those.
I don't want to ever do oneagain.
That was a whole trend, a microtrend that happened to me many
years ago as an artist.
And um, I don't want to paintkids in bathing suits anymore.

(08:54):
It gets weird.

SPEAKER_05 (08:56):
Yeah, I understand that.

SPEAKER_02 (08:57):
Yeah, yeah.
But if you want a portrait ofyour pet or a little clay
ornament of your pet, I'm yourperson.
Go check out my Etsy page.

SPEAKER_05 (09:04):
Yeah, pets never get weird.

SPEAKER_02 (09:06):
No.

SPEAKER_05 (09:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (09:07):
And it's really fun to create, recreate them, and
honor them in that way.
So yeah, that's uh a way you cansupport us.
And also, I think we are overduefor a shout-out for some people
who supported the GoFundMe.
As of this recording, we'veraised over a thousand dollars.
Thank you.
Wow.
That brings us incredibly closeto our six-month goal, survival

(09:28):
goal.
Um, so that gives us about fourmonths, a little less than four
months, maybe like five,actually, almost exactly five
months uh of podcast runway, twoof which we've eaten by me being
unemployed, but still reallyappreciate that.
And there's been a number offolks who have recently donated
uh that I don't think we gaveshout-outs to.

(09:48):
So I'd just like to say somethank yous to them.
Uh Nina Caillou, thank you.
Thank you so much.
You've been a zombesti since thebeginning.
Rebecca Deshaun, my friend, mybeloved from Atlanta.
I miss you.
Thank you for your generosity.
Covey Chintam, uh, formercoworker, thank you.
Also, um, very cool human being,and a fellow zombie apocalypse

(10:14):
survivor community kind of type.
Uh Naila, thank you again foryour support.
An anonymous person, thank you,anonymous.
Another anonymous person.
Whoa, anonymous is donating?
Yeah.
Um you know what?
That'd make me feel really goodif they were.
Let's just say they are becausethey're anonymous.
There's two anonymous people.

(10:34):
Kate, my childhood best friend,um, who I don't think has ever
listened to this podcast.
Thank you so much for yourmoney.
Uh, Reanimated Podcast, a fellowundead podcast.
I've listened to a few of theirepisodes recently.
They're really cool.
Oh, good.
They're also a co-host duo, andI think we should have them on
the show sometime.

SPEAKER_03 (10:54):
You gotta check that out.

SPEAKER_02 (10:55):
Yeah, uh, you know what it's like to run a podcast.
So thank you so much.
Corey McClinton, thank you.
And I thank everybody else wethanked on the last episode.
So what I would say is we're notactively promoting this right
now.
Um, but if we are in a positionwhere we need to in the future,
we will.
I also am thinking of some waysto offer additional value and
have a pay what you can sort ofopportunity on Patreon.

(11:17):
But we're still cooking that upfor 2026.
There's no solid plans yet, butjust a heads up.

SPEAKER_05 (11:22):
Actually, I have have some ideas that I was gonna
tell you about um about thingslike Patreon and stuff, because
I've been I've been exploringSubstack.
I'd be interested to know ifanybody listening knows what
Substack is.

SPEAKER_02 (11:34):
I'm sure many people know what it is.
Sylvester Barzi has a greatSubstack.

SPEAKER_05 (11:38):
Yeah.
Um I I really like Substack, butI haven't really fully launched
on it yet.
You know, like I'm still tryingto kind of like finding my place
in Substack.
But I did create a Zombie BookClub podcast uh Substack.
I just haven't posted anythingyet.

SPEAKER_02 (11:53):
Yeah, it's like it's hard.
You know, there's like a millionplaces we could be.
That's what I get confusedabout.
Um, but for now, you should jointhe Zombie Book Club Podcast
Zombesties public Facebookgroup.
Yeah, come hang out with usthere.
Tell me what your favorite movieis and let me know if it's
Resident Evil.
If you're on if you're aFacebook person, you know what?
Maybe you're an Instagramperson.

SPEAKER_05 (12:11):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (12:12):
I think it's time, well overdue, for us to share an
author elevator pitch from ourfriend Zelinda Morrison.
Yeah, you don't want to push itoff until next week?
No.
Because next week is Zombie WienGame Show 2025.
Also, Zelinda had a uh a freedeal for Kindle.
So I actually just got theirbook on my Kindle and um have

(12:34):
not started because dog died.
Financial employment crisis.
I haven't been doing a lot ofreading yet lately, other than
job descriptions.
One of them was actually veryzombie-esque.
It said that uh they werelooking for somebody who could
show their teeth.
Quote unquote.
Direct quote from a jobdescription.
Literally or I don't knowbecause I'm not the person who

(12:57):
wrote it, but I instantly said,this is a sociopath.
Who would put that in a jobdescription?
Comfortable showing your it'snot comfortably showing your
teeth in disagreements.

SPEAKER_05 (13:08):
Oh.

SPEAKER_02 (13:08):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (13:09):
Yeah.
I mean that that sounds likethey're looking for a very
specific kind of person.

SPEAKER_02 (13:14):
Yeah, so I applied.

SPEAKER_05 (13:17):
No, I didn't get a call back.
Um, let's let's hear this groanfrom Zelinda Morrison.
All right, you ready?
I'm ready.

SPEAKER_00 (13:24):
Hi, this is Zelinda Morrison introducing Harsh
Light, my zombie novella.
It explores what would happen ifsleep were a privilege.
What if you had to earn pointsto sleep?
What if you had to rack upmerits at work to be allowed to
sleep at night?
And if you didn't, you'd beawake for days.

(13:44):
And what happens when nobody onthe planet sleeps and
infrastructures collapse?
You can get this on Amazon, andum, if you have Kindle
Unlimited, you can read itwithout having to spend money
other than the monthlysubscription.
Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 (13:59):
Wow.
I uh A, that sounds like ahorrifying world to live in, and
B, I kind of feel like that'salready the world I live in.

SPEAKER_02 (14:09):
Yeah, because you don't have time to sleep.
Yeah, like you get to sleep whenyou're off for the season.

SPEAKER_05 (14:14):
Yeah, I I sometimes, you know, usually, usually I'm
done by 12 hours in a day.
Sometimes it's 14, sometimesit's longer than that.
But I I feel like I come home,I've got about an hour to shovel
food into my mouth and be ahuman.
And then immediately, like, I'mlike, if I want to get six hours
of sleep, I better go to bedright now.

SPEAKER_02 (14:36):
And sometimes we revenge bedtime and you get four
hours of sleep.

SPEAKER_05 (14:39):
Yeah.
Some sometimes we're watching adumb Netflix show that we get
hooked on and we're like, well,let's just do one more episode.
Shout out Sneaky Pete.
Sneaky Pete's all right.
It's all right.
It's all right, it's not it'snot like groundbreaking.
No, but you know what?

SPEAKER_02 (14:54):
If if you're like if you're mourning, if you're
mourning the loss of your dogand you need to dissociate and
not think very hard and bemildly entertained, yeah.
Sneaky Pete's your guy.

SPEAKER_05 (15:04):
Sneaky Pete.
Um yeah, that's uh that soundshorrifying.
Um, because I I could absolutelysee a world where you have to
earn your right to sleep ifcapitalism continues down the
path that we're going.
Like, you know, that they theyalready want to do away with
like retirement age, um, youknow, like workers' rights.

(15:26):
They just they they just wantyou to work the whole time.
I don't know when they we'resupposed to spend our money on
the products that they'remaking, um, but we're just
supposed to keep making theproducts.

SPEAKER_02 (15:35):
Well, the working all the time makes us buy the
products because we have notime.
So like convenience items,skyrocketing.
Like, why is everything likedisposable?
This disposable, that one meal,put it in the oven or the
microwave.
It's because they we don't havetime.
But I don't I don't want to seethis world, Zelinda, except in
fictional form, because if Idon't get nine hours of sleep,

(15:56):
I'm I'm an angry zombie.

SPEAKER_05 (15:59):
Yeah, I need to get five.
Five is five is my minimum.

SPEAKER_02 (16:02):
I cannot function on five.
That is way too little.
Seven is fine.
Uh, as Zelinda said, you cancheck them out on Amazon, on
Kindle Unlimited.
They also have a Reddit uhthread that I'm gonna put, or
Dan, I should say, I'm I'm Dan'sgoing to put it in the show
notes for you.

SPEAKER_05 (16:17):
I'm gonna put it in there.

SPEAKER_02 (16:18):
And their handle on Instagram is Zelinda Morrison.
Uh Z, look at me slacking likean American.
Zed.
Z-E-L-I-N-D-A.
Morrison.
Just like it sounds, it'll alsobe in the show notes.
So thank you so much for uhsubmitting that for us.
I know there's a whole series uhthat I am looking forward to
digging into.

SPEAKER_05 (16:38):
Yeah, it's it's it sounds fascinating and horrible
horrible.

SPEAKER_02 (16:42):
It also is perfect for this episode because we are
talking about corporations inthe apocalypse in this episode.

SPEAKER_05 (16:47):
We are.
I forgot what we were talkingabout.

SPEAKER_02 (16:52):
Uh one last thing.
We're going to reveal the 2025Zombie Wien game show theme and
lineup at the end of thisepisode.
So if you have been waiting withburning venereal disease
anticipation, um is venerealdisease a slur now?
I don't think so.
Now I'm worried.

(17:12):
Venereal disease.
STI disease.
Yeah, a sexually transmittedinfection.
That is the better term.
What were we talking about?
I don't know.
Um, I have no idea why I broughtthat up.
This is what grief sounds like.

SPEAKER_05 (17:29):
Something about burning.

SPEAKER_02 (17:30):
Yeah.
If you have a burning itchingneed to know who the uh
contestants are for Zombie Wiiand Game Show 2025, we will
announce that at the end of thisepisode.
Yeah.
Let's get into Residential Evil.

SPEAKER_05 (17:42):
Residential evil.

SPEAKER_02 (17:44):
The movie.
You know, you know, residentialevil.
I've been calling it that allweek, and Dan has been laughing
at me, and I honestly didn'trealize I was saying it wrong.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (17:53):
So Resident Evil, it's a movie, it's a game, uh,
it's a movie game, and uh cameout in 2002.
I remember seeing it in themovie theater.
Wow.
When I was in training in thearmy.
Um, and it blew my mind then.
And you know, this uh this camebefore uh 28 weeks later, it

(18:16):
came before the reboot of umDawn of the Dead, like it came
before Shawn of the Dead.
This is kind of like areawakening of the zombie genre
because I feel like for a verylong time there wasn't a single
decent zombie movie untilResident Evil.
Wow.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong.

(18:37):
I was still in high school in2002.
Wow.
Yeah, I was I was almostfinished with my first year of
training.

SPEAKER_02 (18:45):
I know you cradle robbed me.
We met in 2002.
Wait, no, that's not true.

SPEAKER_05 (18:49):
No, we did.

SPEAKER_02 (18:50):
We did, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (18:51):
It was the end of 2002.

SPEAKER_02 (18:52):
I feel like I've got to do math in my head to make
sure that's true.
I bel I think you're right.

SPEAKER_05 (18:57):
Yeah, yeah.
I I remember everything based onwhat I was doing, and I knew
that I was uh actually that wasafter training.
So I I just um got to my firstduty assignment, um, and I was
sent back out to do moretraining, because that's how it
works in the army.
Train, train, train, and thenone day you get to use it.

(19:20):
Um what were we talking about?
Resident Evil.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (19:25):
So tell us about it, Dan.
Let's do a quick summary andsome key characters, and then
we'll get into what we thoughtabout this movie.

SPEAKER_05 (19:30):
Yeah, so our characters, we got Alice, who's
the main character, played byMila Jovovich.
Um, we got Spence Parks, who'suh Alice's supposed husband.
Um, we got Rey in Ocampo by uhplayed by Michelle Rodriguez.
Uh this is like right after shewas in The Fast and the Furious.

(19:51):
The first Fast and the Furious.
Uh the second one hadn't evencome out yet.

SPEAKER_02 (19:55):
I actually learned uh in preparing for this episode
that Michelle Rodriguez said toher agent that if they ever made
a Resident Evil movie, shewanted to be in it because she
loved the game.

SPEAKER_05 (20:04):
Yeah.
Uh we got Matt Addison, who's anenvironmental activist.
What?
This can't be right.
Yeah, I don't think Matt I thinkthis is uh this is incorrect.
Um ah man, I don't know.
I gotta go back to the movie.
Was Matt Addison anenvironmental activist?
I didn't notice that vibe.
It might have been in the game.
Sometimes, like when we pull upuh facts about things, if

(20:26):
there's a game and a movie andif they differ too much, we
might get the wrong thing.
Uh at the very beginning, Mattintroduces himself as a cop, um,
but he might have been lyingabout that.
I don't know.
I think he was lying.
I know he was there to try tofind his sister who was working
in uh the place.
The hive.
We'll talk about the hive later.
Uh Chad experts, you shouldlisten to us talk about this

(20:49):
movie.
Uh Chad Kaplan, the team'scomputer expert.
Um, and then we've got JDSalinas, uh, who's uh somebody
you added to the list with nocontext.
No, JD Salinas is a part of theteam.
You had somebody else's namethere before, but that was from
the video game.
Uh we can't forget the RedQueen.
The Red Queen.
Uh I kind of I probably wouldhave left it out because I'm

(21:11):
like, that's an AI.
We don't we don't give credit toAI.
If corporations are people, thenthe Red Queen is a character in
this.
Yeah, so uh the Red Queen is thehive's the Hive, it's an
underground bunker, we shouldsay that.
Um the Hive's AI defense system.
So like she has like a hologramgoing on, lots of lasers, and

(21:35):
she's an absolute psychopath.
Modeled after uh one of thecorporation people's executives'
uh children.
Yeah, the designer's kid.
Um, so the movie takes place, itstarts off uh in the mansion.
The mansion's actually where thefirst game takes place.
Like the hive was actually justkind of like a creation for the

(21:55):
movie, as far as I'm concerned.
Unless, I mean, I didn't reallyfinish the first Resident Evil
game, but I'm pretty sure it alltakes place in the mansion.
Um but yeah, so the mansion islike the top of the hive, and
both Alice and Spence are kindof like guardians of that door.
Like they're highly trainedpeople who are supposed to just

(22:17):
keep people out of the hive.
And what is the hive?
The hive is this undergroundresearch facility that's uh like
2,000 feet under the city, theraccoon city.

SPEAKER_02 (22:29):
It's a city full of raccoons in the near future, uh
wherever then whatever the nearfuture is when you're watching
it, basically.

SPEAKER_05 (22:35):
Yeah, it might be, um but also it might just be
that the corporation just haslike lots of really good
technology.
Like it's it's a high-techcompany, the umbrella
corporation.
They've got their fingers inlike uh uh pharmaceutical stuff,
um, technology, biologicalweapons, yeah.

(22:55):
And unbeknownst to most ofsociety, they have the most of
their money is made throughgovernment contracts making
bioweapons and genetic uhexperimentation and therapies
and uh other interesting things.
Um so fun.
Uh the Umbrella Corporation, uhgood thing we don't have
anything like that.

(23:16):
Not at all.
You know, corporations that havea friendly face on the outside,
and they're like, we're makingyour life livable, and make and
we make your hamburgers and yourmedicine.
And then on the other side,they're like, also the bombs to
kill you with.

SPEAKER_02 (23:29):
I really love the name Umbrella Corporation.
Like it could not be more on thenose.
And I forget what the exactstatus is, but I think it was
like nine out of ten things youbuy in this universe from
Umbrella Corporation.
Amazon, Walmart.

SPEAKER_05 (23:43):
Um feels like so many mega corporations at this
point.

SPEAKER_02 (23:46):
Yes.
Uh, if you look at, I think weonly have like three or four
actual grocery chains left inthe United States, despite all
their names.
Uh, most of the brands we lookat are actually all from the
same companies.
Yeah.
Uh the umbrella corporation is areal concept, a real or a real
thing in real life.
A real thing in real life.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (24:03):
And like all of your streaming services, like a lot
of them are just owned by thesame umbrella corporation.

SPEAKER_03 (24:10):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (24:11):
Uh which you would think like if if Paramount and
HBO Plus and Disney are all thesame thing, couldn't we just
subscribe to one thing?
No, they want more money.
They don't want$20, they want$60.

SPEAKER_02 (24:23):
They want you to think there's differences, just
like the no name brand stuff ismade up in the same place as the
fancy name brand stuff.
Uh, but basically a virus leaks,one of their biological weapons
leaks and kills everybody insideof the hive.

SPEAKER_05 (24:36):
Yeah.
Or does it so it infectseverybody, but I think I think
the Red Queen kills everybody inthe She definitely kills
everybody in the elevators.

SPEAKER_02 (24:44):
That's right, because the Red Queen has the
directive that if something likethis were to happen, you just
kill everyone so that you don'thave the outbreak spread to the
outer world.
Uh so basically we enter the themovie when Alice is waking up in
the mansion, uh, in a shower,naked, of course.
Very important detail, uh, withamnesia.

(25:04):
She doesn't know who she is orwhere she is.

SPEAKER_05 (25:06):
You know, the amnesia thing is something
that's that's used quite a bit.
Like 28 Days Later used it, TheWalking Dead used it a little
bit to some extent.
Like, ah, where am I?
How did all this happen?
Um, and I think it's actuallylike really interesting in this
context because like since themovie's based on a video game,
like you, as the player of thevideo game would kind of come

(25:29):
into something with no previousknowledge of anything.
So Alice being like a blankslate, that's you playing the
role of Alice.
You're you're hopping in andyou're like, I don't know
anything, and neither doesAlice.
And she's got to figure thingsout and let us know when she
figures it out.
But all of a sudden, there arethese umbrella commandos leaping
into the mansion.

(25:49):
You think they just come inthrough the front door, but they
just bash in through the throughthe through the glass.
Um, yeah, we don't really knowwhy.
They just do it.

SPEAKER_02 (25:57):
It's uh it looks cool, and they just tell her,
like, oh yeah, you don't knowwho you are because you were you
got sprayed in the face ofsomething that makes you forget
who you are.

SPEAKER_05 (26:04):
Yeah, you had you had forget forgetful gas.

SPEAKER_02 (26:07):
Yeah, and also you're also an umbrella
operative, and you're gonna gounderground to the hive with us
to investigate what's going on.
And Alice goes, Okay.

SPEAKER_05 (26:14):
Yeah, and then we also meet the guy that's like
that's there for some reason,and he's like, uh, I'm a I'm a
police officer, and they'relike, whatever, buddy, we're
gonna handcuff you, and you'realso coming into the hive.

SPEAKER_02 (26:25):
That was maybe a bit of uh don't look too closely at
the plot, the starting plot, orwhy it is that these people seem
to care so much about eachother, even though uh it feels
like they don't know who eachother are half the time.
Um so they go underground, yeah.
Into the hive.

SPEAKER_05 (26:41):
Into the into the hive.
Um in the hive, you know, theyhave to take a train into the
hive.
Important to know because theyhave to take a train back out.
Um, but they take a train, theygo into the hive, and they find
it like empty, and they're like,Well, that's weird.
And then they start findingcorpses, they find the the labs
have been flooded.
Oh, that was that was a crazypart of the intro sequence when

(27:02):
uh the Red Queen was killingeverybody.
Like most people, she killedwith gas or she dropped them
down an elevator shaft, but theuh the laboratories, um, all of
a sudden their fireextinguishers just started
spraying.
So, like their airtight room isjust filling up with water.

(27:22):
Drowning doesn't sound like agreat way to go.
I'm not a fan.
No, no, no, thanks.

SPEAKER_02 (27:28):
Um, yeah, and they discover zombies.

SPEAKER_05 (27:31):
Yeah, I don't think they call them zombies though.
No, they can't, it's against therules.
Um, you know, you gotta theythey gotta be naturally confused
about the zombies.
So they're like, like, hey,what's this lady doing?
She looks all messed up, andthen uh she attacks them, like
bites Michelle Rodriguez in thehand, and then they push her

(27:51):
away, and they're like, What?
She's crazy, and then they shoother five times, and then she
lays, she goes down on theground, and uh then they're
like, Where'd she go?
I don't know where she went.
Zombies usually go in a straightline, but this one got tricky
and decided to go hide somewherefor a while.
I'm so glad you remember things.

SPEAKER_03 (28:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (28:09):
Until it was convenient for her to come back
out, and they're like, She'ssupposed to be dead, and then
they shoot her 75 more times,and uh, and she's and she's
still like, ah, hey guys, I'm azombie.

SPEAKER_02 (28:20):
Yeah, so does that sum up the do you like my
rendition of this movie?
So far, I think you gotta talkabout the mutant creatures that
are also zombie-esque, butthey're like they've been
mutated.

SPEAKER_05 (28:31):
So let's talk about the zombie types because we got
Resident Evil is as as afranchise is has has always had
crazy zombies in them.
You got your standardrun-of-the-mill George Romero
zombies.

SPEAKER_02 (28:46):
You say standard, but having like watched a lot of
George Romero films and thenbeen mostly immersed in zombie
world from like 2010 onward, Iwas like, oh, these like look
and move like George Romero.
Like the makeup was very GeorgeRomero.
It was distinct for me.

SPEAKER_05 (29:00):
Yeah.
So again, this is like this isbefore 28 days later.
So there hasn't been a moviewith fast zombies in it.
I mean, again, correct me if I'mwrong.
I don't think I am though.
Um, the idea of a fast movingzombie isn't even in the
cultural zeitgeist.
So the only really good zombiemovies have been George Romero

(29:21):
movies, and they kind of set thethe standard for what a zombie
is.
So zombie movies all all theyall moved like Romero zombies.
Um so I I thought the zombieswere really great, and one thing
that I really loved was how howscary they actually made these

(29:41):
slow moving zombies.
Like they actually they actuallyuh gave it some tension.
Um so I think they did a reallygood job with it.
Uh we also have zombie dogs.
How did you feel when you sawthe zombie dogs?

SPEAKER_02 (29:55):
I was pissed because before they were zombie dogs, we
saw them as Dogs.
Yeah.
And they were in these reallyshitty cages with like they
didn't even have a bed.
They were just like in littlecubicles.
They were all Dobermans for somereason.
It was clear they were beingexperimented on, which um I
don't think it'll shock anyonethat I'm I'm not pro-animal

(30:16):
experimentation.
I think they're not consenting.

SPEAKER_03 (30:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (30:19):
Um, and they do some horrible things to them.
Check out the Beagle FreedomProject if you're interested in
learning more about actual doganimal experimentation.
They do some fucked up things tobeagles.
There's a whole organizationthat basically just tries to
convince andor take slash rescuebeagles who have been uh in
experimental labs and then givethem new homes and like they've

(30:40):
never touched grass, they don'ttrust human beings at all.
It is fucked.
So my immediate reaction waslike, that's awful.
So when they became zombies andlike broke out of their cages, I
was like, good, good for you,zombie dogs.
The zombie dogs are rising up.
Yeah, I was okay with that.

SPEAKER_05 (30:56):
Yeah.
Um, I think they're allDobermans because that's what
they were in the game.
Oh, okay.
And because this is like a gamefrom 1998, you've got one model
of dog.
That's that's all the all youhave all you have memory for is
one kind of dog.
Um, but yeah, they're all theirskins peeled off because they
had to they had to crawl througha wire cage, they had to chew

(31:19):
their way out of their theirtheir cages.
Um, and it's upsetting.
They're not slow though, they'reactually really fast.
They are dog fast, they are dogfast.
Um, and there's a third type ofzombie in this movie, and one
that Leah did not see coming.
Uh, I knew it was coming becauseI played the games.

(31:40):
It's the liquor.
Did you know it was called aliquor?
I did not.
Yeah.
Why?
Because that freaky tongue.
Tongues! And their tongues canshoot out and whip your ankles
and drag you into their mouth.

SPEAKER_02 (31:53):
Well, what was interesting about them was like
we knew there were these thingscalled they were not called,
they we knew there were thesecage things, and you kind of see
them at first.
But like, what was the umbrellacorporation doing making these
things?
Yeah, are they supposed to beweapons?
Probably.
Oh god, are they like mutateddogs with really long tongues?

SPEAKER_05 (32:09):
They could be.
I don't have the answers tothat.
Um, but my belief with the dogsis that um if they were making
biological weapons, um, theywould want something that you
could train, but you could alsogive them some really heightened
abilities.
And maybe that's what they wereusing the T virus for, is like
we can enhance their abilities.

(32:30):
Maybe they were making liquors.
I mean, they run around on allfours, so they could have been
dogs, I guess.
Um, they're doing all kinds oflike genetic research down
there, so but if you're tryingto sell something to the
military, the military is like,well, we need canine units, and
they're like, Well, what aboutsuper canines?
Those things are fucking scary.
You know, everybody else willthink they're normal, but these
dogs run like 97 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_02 (32:50):
I really enjoyed the shot of them uh cutting the
tongue off, cutting the tongueto like help save somebody.

SPEAKER_05 (32:56):
Uh yeah, from the liquor.

SPEAKER_02 (32:57):
Yeah.
And in general, I know we're notthe parts where like things we
love, but I loved watching amovie that like all the scary
stuff was cutaways, which isperfect for me because I can't I
look away for all the scarystuff.
And if there's any like bodyhorror stuff, I'm looking away.
I don't like to see it.
I just asked Dan to tell me whenit's done.

(33:18):
So I was appreciative that likemost of the time we didn't even
see the thing that washappening, we just had it
implied through a series ofcuts.

SPEAKER_03 (33:24):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (33:24):
Um a fourth type of zombie was mentioned in the
movie.
Um, and I don't think you caughtit because you haven't played
the games, but when I first sawthis movie and they were carding
off one of the characters, andthey're like, put him in the
nemesis project.
I'm like, oh shit, is the nextmovie gonna have nemesis in it?
I'm down to watch it.

(33:45):
I'm here for the whole seriesnow.
So they mentioned Nemesis at thevery end, but we didn't we
didn't see Nemesis.
Um, and uh that's all I'm gonnasay about that.

SPEAKER_02 (33:55):
I you know, I will say it's it's people's favorite
movie for a reason.
I thought it was pretty qualityfor 2002.

SPEAKER_05 (34:01):
You know, I I've avoided re-watching it for a
very long time because I don'tknow, like I I I liked other
zombie movies and like ResidentEvil kind of takes this more
sci-fi approach to the zombieapocalypse and uh and sometimes
has some some cheesy elements.
Um so I kind of just willinglyforgot about the Resident Evil

(34:25):
franchise.
I watched three of the moviesand I was like, yeah, I can stop
there.
But when we re-watched it, Iactually did enjoy it.
And I was like, you know what,this actually is a pretty good
movie.

SPEAKER_02 (34:37):
I don't think I ever watched it, but I did have a
memory of a naked lady, which itwhich stands.
There is uh she's naked a lot,or implying nakedness, yeah.
Um, but I really don't rememberwatching it from back then.
However, this is me.
It's possible I did.
That is more than 20 years agonow that it came out.
Uh, should we get into theexistential questions that this

(35:00):
movie brings up?

SPEAKER_05 (35:01):
Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 (35:02):
Okay.
The first one that I waswondering as I was watching it
is okay, a virus has beenreleased.
It turns people into zombies andanimals, apparently, too.
All living mammals, at least weknow, are gonna be zombies.
It's bad, could kill theuniverse.
So the Red Queen, the AI whocontrols the hive, says, I'm

(35:23):
gonna just kill everybody tomake sure this doesn't get out.
And all of these folks are beingsent back in as the operatives
by the umbrella corporationbecause they want to know what
happened.
My instinct was like, is this sobad?
Does that sound terrible of me?
I was like, is it is it theright thing to just go ahead and
kill everyone and contain thisthing that otherwise is going to
destroy the rest of the world?

(35:45):
Yeah.
Or was that amoral?

SPEAKER_05 (35:47):
Uh questionable, right?
Yeah.
Um, I feel like, you know, thethe beginning sequences where
the Red Queen was killingeveryone, some of it was pretty
brutal, like dropping people inan elevator shaft.
We had this one person who um inon IMDB is only known as Miss
Black.
And she was in one of theelevators, and there's this

(36:08):
whole scene where she's liketrying to crawl out through the
elevator door.
She can only get her head out.
Oh, and the elevator and likesuddenly the the brakes on the
elevator drop, and uh, and andthe elevator falls just enough
so that she's like face to facewith the ground.
And Red, like, ah, oh, say savedher at the last second.

(36:28):
The take that, whoever's doingthis.
Red Queen.
You know, you're not gonna getthis person who we assume at
this point is the main characterof the story because she's
gotten the most lines, and thenuh and then the Red Queen's
like, No, no, no, I'm gonna goup, and then raises the elevator
up and then decapitates her.
And so doing it in the downdirection, did it going up.

(36:50):
Did they show her beingdecapitated, or did I look away?
I don't know.
It might have been a cutaway.
You were looking away becauseyou're like, tell me when it's
done.

SPEAKER_02 (36:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (36:58):
As soon as she put her head through that hole,
you're like, I'm not watching.

SPEAKER_02 (37:02):
Limb, any kind of like limb removal of some kind
is definitely triggering for me.
I don't want to see it.
It's upsetting.
Yeah.
Um, well, I think that from thepoint of view of the corporation
and the way that she'sprogrammed, she made the right
choice.
But then I asked the question,like, is there could there have
been other alternatives to thejust killing everybody?

SPEAKER_05 (37:23):
I mean, they already had a cure for the T virus.
So yes.
In the very same lab that theyreleased the T virus, there was
a cure.
This AI is not very smart then.
Yeah, I think the AI is justlike, look, I'm working with
what I got.
They tell me, they tell me thatthis is a big threat, I'm gonna

(37:44):
act on it.
Um and then like I guess theycould have just done a shutdown
procedure and just been like,look, everybody's getting
vaccinated.
But I guess in the context ofhow it was released, which was
when somebody went in, anunknown person that we find out
at the end of the movie, um,they were stealing the virus and
they intentionally threw a vialuh to disperse it and infect

(38:08):
everybody.
Um and I guess in that context,if you have a willingly
malicious person inside thefacility who wants to get out
with it, then I guess your onlyoption is to kill everybody.
Because like a lockdown mightnot work because they're gonna
get out.
Like if it's a if it's somebodythat isn't supposed to be there

(38:30):
and wants to leave, like theycould hide, they could get out,
and that's a big risk.

SPEAKER_02 (38:36):
That's true.
I I you know, I think there's atemptation to say, well, they
all knew what they were in for,right?
Like they were working in thistop secret facility doing fucked
up shit to animals, uh, creatingbiological weapons.
And I it felt like everybody inthat movie was sort of a pawn
for this corporation, and theRed Queen was sort of the
metaphor of of the folks whocontrol the corporation and

(38:58):
their interest.
She was the queen.
Yeah, but we don't actually seethe people who really are making
these decisions or what howthey're benefiting.
Obviously, they're gettingwealthier, because why else
would they do this?
Yeah, they're getting one moreyacht for their collection.

SPEAKER_05 (39:11):
Yeah, and then in this hive, obviously it's a
loss.
You know, a lot of uh laborloss, research loss, product
loss.
You've got the infrastructureloss of the hive, but they
probably have insurance on allthat.
So they probably came out aheadof it.

SPEAKER_02 (39:29):
That's horrifying.
Yeah, but uh corporations arehorrifying, which is why I
wanted to make the main part ofthis conversation a comparison
of Resident Evil with the 2003documentary, which came out one
year after this, uh, Canadiandocumentary, Go Canada, uh
called The Corporation, thePathological Pursuit of Profit
and Power, because it is, Ithink, almost verbatim the same

(39:52):
critique that the umbrellacorporation is making, but in a
documentary style versus a film.

SPEAKER_05 (39:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:58):
What kind of zombies does it have?
Um, none.
Basically, it's a deep dive intowhat a corporation is.
It asks the question ifcorporations are legally people,
which they are, what kind ofpeople are they?
Like if McDonald's, if Amazon,if Walmart, if Monsanto, uh, if

(40:19):
Pfizer, if they were a person,what kind of person would they
be if they really are people?
And this documentary argues thatthey're a psychopath, that the
corporations pass all of thediagnostic checks for being a
psychopath.
Uh, and so this documentarybasically very methodically goes
uh diagnostic criteria bydiagnostic criteria to show that

(40:42):
corporations are indeedpsychopaths because their entire
purpose for existing is to makepeople richer.
That is their bottom line,literally.
And everything is in service ofthat.
Uh so basically, do you know howcorporations became people?

SPEAKER_05 (40:56):
I mean, it's in the notes that I'm looking at right
now, but why don't you tell me?

SPEAKER_02 (41:02):
Uh, in a nutshell, after the 14th Amendment was
passed in 1868, corporationsbegan to claim the same legal
protections as people.
So here's a quote from historianEbon Mowglin.
Uh, from the moment the 14thAmendment passed in 1868,
lawyers for corporations,particularly railroad companies,
wanted to use the 14th Amendmentguarantee of equal protection to

(41:22):
make sure that the states didn'tunequally treat corporations.
So legally, corporations becametreated as people united in one
body for a purpose.
So even though there's lots ofpeople who work at corporations,
they can't be held liable.
So even though Luigi Mangioniallegedly killed uh Brian
Thompson.
Brian Thompson, the CEO ofUnited Healthcare.

(41:43):
Right, uh, he could never belegally held responsible for the
choices that he was he was apart of making in terms of
denying people coverage.
Um, the corporation couldtechnically be held liable.
Yeah.
But weren't.
No.
And also corporation can justlike in fact, like corporations
have in their budgets lawsuits.

(42:03):
Like that they just expect thatwill happen because they know
they're gonna have to pay forthose things.
In fact, the budget is the same.

SPEAKER_05 (42:09):
Yeah, the cost of doing business sometimes is how
much is how much money will welose doing things the right way
versus how much is a lawsuitgonna cost?

SPEAKER_02 (42:18):
So everybody working in a corporation, their bottom
line job is to make thecorporation more money, and none
of them are responsible for thethings that they do as long as
it's within the, you know, theycould be uh sued or go to jail
for doing something like fraudas an individual, but what the
the corporation itself decidesto do, like we're gonna dump

(42:39):
toxic waste in this river andnot tell anybody about it.
Um, we're gonna start makingthis data center work by putting
gas turbines in and just bypassall of the regulations.
They can do that, and nobodyinside of the corporation can be
held responsible.
So a corporation is a personwith immense power, no
conscience, no biologicalcapacity for empathy, and

(43:00):
they're just there to make moremoney for their shareholders.
So I wanted to go throughbasically how the umbrella
corporation is a psychopath.
All right.
You ready?
Yeah, I'm ready.
So in the corporation, they usethe DSM 4 criterion to apply to
real-world companies andResident Evil, uh, and in
Resident Evil's UmbrellaCorporation, it scores a perfect

(43:21):
six for six of the criteria.
So the first criteria to be apsychopath is callous disregard
for the safety of others.
Do you think the umbrellacorporation has regard for the
safety of others?
Um, it doesn't seem like it.
Yeah.
They built a secret lab under apopulated city.
They experimented withbioweapons intended to harm

(43:43):
people, they didn't give a shitabout the people working in the
facility, and they have notrouble killing everybody when
it leaks.

SPEAKER_05 (43:51):
Yeah.
It was the cheapest way for themto deal with their problems, so
that's how they did it.

SPEAKER_02 (43:55):
Yeah.
And if you think like, well, whywould they do that?
Were they doing it to savehumankind, or were they doing it
to save their own ass and keepmaking money?

SPEAKER_05 (44:01):
I mean, if it's the corporation making the decision,
it was to save their own ass.
Yeah.
And make more money.
Because they because thecorporation doesn't give a shit
about humanity.

SPEAKER_02 (44:13):
No.
Everybody in that movie is apawn of the umbrella corporation
and entirely dependent on it fortheir survival.
The second criteria isdeceitfulness.
Is the umbrella corporation anhonest fellow?
Is Mr.
Umbrella a a nice honest guywith transparency and integrity?
Mr.
James Umbrella.

SPEAKER_05 (44:33):
Um, I'm imagining this guy with a monocle and a
top hat, and he's just like, Areyou uh questioning my integrity?
Well, obviously he's holding anumbrella, Dan.
He's got a red and white one.
And he's like, I don't even havean umbrella.
What umbrella?

SPEAKER_02 (44:51):
What monocle?
What top hat?
I'm just a harmlesspharmaceutical company.
I'm here to help you survive.
I'm not even real.

SPEAKER_05 (45:01):
Um, yeah, it doesn't seem like they are um
trustworthy.
I mean, if I mean if they'rebuilding secret underground
research facilities, then that'sthat's not exactly above board
behavior.
No.

SPEAKER_02 (45:16):
No, and they willingly uh spray gas into
their employees' faces so theyhave amnesia.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (45:24):
Um, so I'm gonna go with uh yes on deceitfulness.
So two for six.
I think we'll probably see moreexamples of these things in
later movies.
Um, but from what we've got towork with.

SPEAKER_02 (45:36):
Do you think Mr.
Umbrella has an interest inmaintaining lasting
relationships?
I guess it depends on with who.
Because psychopaths don't.
Psychopaths have a specificinability to maintain lasting
relationships.

SPEAKER_05 (45:48):
Uh sounds like somebody I know.
Um I think yeah, I mean lastingrelationships, I think, is the
the operative word.
I think psychopaths make manyrelationships throughout their
lives.
I think the umbrella corporationmakes a lot of uh relationships
with those that they uh canbenefit from, um, and probably

(46:10):
is how they got to the top.
Um, but lasting, I I I doubt it.
I feel like all thoserelationships they made, whether
it was with politicians or umother corporations or other
important voices in the world,uh got gobbled up by the
umbrella corporation.

SPEAKER_02 (46:27):
Let's think of the term human resource.
That's fucking creepy.
Okay.
People are a resource.
Yeah, it puts us on the same umplaying field as inventory.
Yeah, coal, paper, the laptop.
Yeah you're a cost on aspreadsheet.
I know that very well.
Somebody was just laid off.
Uh, but essentially, yeah, itsaw folks as dispensable as long

(46:49):
as they weren't making them moremoney.
So absolutely passes theinability to maintain lasting
relationships check.
Failure to feel guilt orremorse.
I think this is really umembodied in the Red Queen.
Yeah.
The Red Queen is not feeling anyremorse for brutally murdering
murdering people.
You know, I think she could haveeven done it.

(47:10):
It's a laboratory.
You're telling me they didn'thave any kind of sleeping gas.
They couldn't just like releasesome carbon monoxide and let
people have a nice nap.

SPEAKER_05 (47:17):
She killed most people with halon gas, uh, which
is a fire suppressant.
Um, but then other people shedrowned or drop down an
elevator.
Yeah.
Unnecessary.
Uh, and then the dogs were justleft in their cages.

SPEAKER_02 (47:31):
Yeah.
And then the actual people whoare like, hey, what the fuck
happened in the hive?
were like, let's send somepeople down there.
Everybody's dead and nothing'sworking, so let's send more
people down there.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (47:42):
I think I think the the human side of the
corporation was like, we need toknow how much of our assets are
lost.
They were basically justinsurance adjusters, these these
sources.
How many of those resources ofhumans?
Yeah.
We need well, they they neededthe to go down there and turn
off the red queen.
That was the mission that theywere following.
Um, because they could theywouldn't be able to uh recover

(48:06):
their assets if the red queenwas out there lasering everybody
into cubes.
Which uh, to be fair, when theywent out on that mission, they
should have told them that therewas a laser field that'll cut
you into cubes.

SPEAKER_02 (48:20):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, why did they just cut offparts of their body and not just
start with the cube laser?
Because the queen wanted to havefun.
She wanted to show off.

SPEAKER_05 (48:29):
Maybe it costs costs money per laser.

SPEAKER_02 (48:32):
I think uh that already, you know, callous
disregard for the safety ofothers, deceitfulness, inability
to maintain lastingrelationships, failure to feel
guilt or remorse, being like,you know what's gonna be fun,
guys?

SPEAKER_05 (48:41):
I've just been using one laser this whole time.

SPEAKER_02 (48:43):
Let's cube some people, size them up.

SPEAKER_05 (48:45):
Yeah.
This guy wants to do acrobaticsand hang from the ceiling.
Check this shit out.

SPEAKER_02 (48:51):
Criteria number five
safety and laws.
Yeah.
I mean, do we need to say more?
Completely unrelated, yeah,unregulated human animal
testing.
Yeah.
Uh laser grid.
Yeah, that's not that's they putthat in there.
Yeah, which is also a wildchoice.
Licker mutant creatures.
Yeah, they're like, let's makethese.

(49:12):
And you know, maybe thoselickers are sent.
I mean, that uh they aresentient.
Maybe they're not the bad atthey're just misunderstood.

SPEAKER_05 (49:18):
Yeah, they have brains.
You can see them right on theoutside of their head.

SPEAKER_02 (49:21):
It's true.

SPEAKER_05 (49:21):
Yeah, big brains.

SPEAKER_02 (49:22):
They didn't choose to exist, they're just pissed,
they've been in cages this wholetime.
Yeah, they just want to climbthe walls and lick people.
The lickers are the real victimshere.
They really are.
They didn't ask for anything.
And the dogs, and the people.
All of them are really.
Uh, except for the people thatare up above in Raccoon City
making these decisions becausethey don't want to upset their
shareholders and they want tomake sure they get a really good
bonus this year.

(49:43):
I doubt any of them live inRaccoon City.
Good point.

SPEAKER_05 (49:47):
Or actually, no, I take that back.
I know one does.

SPEAKER_02 (49:49):
Last criteria incapacity for empathy.

SPEAKER_05 (49:53):
Yeah.
Need we say more.
You know, using the Red Queen asan embodiment of the Umbrella
Corporation is kind of perfectbecause she's an AI and she
doesn't have capacity for any ofthese things.
Um, it gives it gives what is aheartless, soulless corporation
that's considered a person, uh apersonality.

SPEAKER_02 (50:15):
And a very innocent face.
Like choosing a child with acute little voice is very much
like the marketing we get fromcorporations.

SPEAKER_05 (50:24):
Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 (50:25):
We're friendly.
Like how many she's the Afflakduck.
The what?

SPEAKER_05 (50:29):
The Afflak duck.
What's that?
That's an insurance company,Afflak?
Oh, I don't know this.
And there's this little duck,and it's the the voice of um ah
fuck, I can't remember his name.
Uh Gilbert Gottfried.
And the duck just says Aflack.
Okay, that's cute.
See how they get you?
Yeah, and that's a that's asoulless corporation.
That's an insurance corporationwho when you when you've been

(50:53):
paying for your insurance fordecades, and finally you're
like, I need to call myinsurance company because
something horrible happened inmy life, they're like, sorry,
this is a pre-existing conditionof being in a car accident.

SPEAKER_02 (51:07):
Yeah.
Like the Geico lizard.

SPEAKER_05 (51:09):
Yeah.
The Geico Lizard, yeah, he's afriendly lizard with a New
Zealand accent.

SPEAKER_02 (51:15):
Yeah, McDonald's all Ronald McDonald and all of his
friends.

SPEAKER_03 (51:18):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (51:19):
They humanize themselves in nice ways.
All of the uh food corporationsthat put really happy farm
images on food that you knowthose animals were not okay.
Yeah, really happy.
Had a great life in those uh,what are they called?
Not meat lots.

(51:40):
Um uh feed feedlots.

SPEAKER_05 (51:44):
Feed lots, yeah.
Yeah.
I they should they should theyshould have like a carton for
milk that shows like a reallycool cow with sunglasses holding
on it to its udders and justbeing like, suck on my teets.

SPEAKER_02 (52:00):
I think I just really love uh that that's what
makes me like this movie is thecorporate part of it.
And I also love that it itdoesn't really get into like why
they're doing this, it's sort ofimplied.
We all know that it's becausesomebody's making money
somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 (52:16):
Money.

SPEAKER_02 (52:16):
But just to like bring this to a very honestly,
like relatively benign real lifeexample.
A friend of mine works for acorporation and she explained to
me that there's things calledgrowth companies.
And I did not know that this wasa thing.
But basically, if you're agrowth company, which is most
corporations, tradedcorporations, you have to always
be growing.
You can't be satisfied.

(52:37):
If you're if your profit thisyear was um a hundred million
dollars, it better be 150 nextyear.
Otherwise, yeah, there will belayoffs.
She was literally told verbatim,if we do not make more money
this year, we will have layoffs.

SPEAKER_05 (52:53):
It's it's so crazy because you think you think that
it'd be good enough just to makeprofit.

SPEAKER_02 (52:59):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (52:59):
But you have to make more profit because of the
shareholders.
Yeah.
The company, the company canmake a profit, and that sounds
like a good thing.
But if the shareholders don'tsee their number turn green
instead of red, then they'relike, I've lost money because
you haven't profited enough.

SPEAKER_02 (53:19):
Here's where it's extra sick, though.
Who are the shareholders?
Where does my 401k come from?
Uh I'm a shareholder.
If you have any kind of stock atall, if you have a 401k, you're
a shareholder.
And my 401k 100% is money thatI've put in with this idea that
I'm gonna get something back.
And every time that money goesup, it's because some growth

(53:42):
company is growing.
Obviously, I'm a fucking minionin this deal.
I'm not the people who aremaking a ton of money on it.
But we have all been sort ofushered into the system where
we're complicit.

SPEAKER_05 (53:54):
Yeah.
You know, it's we we used to beoffered pensions.

SPEAKER_02 (53:58):
Yep.

SPEAKER_05 (53:59):
Um, and now we are offered a gamble.

SPEAKER_02 (54:03):
Yeah.
This year I'm really glad I madethe choice.
We talked a lot about it.
I've been talking about it foryears.
Like, do we keep paying into the401k?
Ethically, it's questionablebecause uh when you get your
401k from a company, you don'thave a lot of control over like
what's it being invested into.

SPEAKER_03 (54:17):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (54:18):
Um, so there was that.
But then there's also the like,I don't know if this might shock
you, listeners of the podcast,but I'm not sure money's gonna
mean very much one day.
And I'm not sure that the rateof growth I'm seeing on my 401k
is going to equal me being ableto survive when we're old.

SPEAKER_05 (54:31):
Yeah.
Yeah, we should just um investin bullets.

SPEAKER_02 (54:34):
We should invest in each other.

SPEAKER_05 (54:36):
That way when we retire, we can we have lots of
bullets.

SPEAKER_02 (54:40):
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, we're allshareholders.
And also in the same way thatlike we're eating ourselves,
nine out of ten products in thisworld, the Resident Evil, are
made by the Umbrella Corporationand we're all consuming it.
It's these corporations arefucking masters at making us be
snakes eating our own tail.

SPEAKER_03 (54:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (54:59):
Very difficult to create a new system or a new
cycle that gets us out of thissituation.
Hence, how the fuck do we shootcorporations in the head?
With a lot of bullets.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (55:10):
They all have to be very well timed, though.

SPEAKER_02 (55:15):
So I I think I just want to end this part before we
get into a little bit of alighter fare.
What we loved and what we didn'toverall is just that the
umbrella corporation is not afictional villain.
It's a very clear critique ofcorporations and that
corporations are psychopaths.
And if you want to see real lifeexamples, uh, you can watch the
corporation for free on YouTube.
It is uh probably one of thethings that radicalized me, to

(55:37):
be frank.
I remember watching it for thefirst time in university and
being like, holy fucking shit.

SPEAKER_05 (55:41):
So Yeah, what a horrifying world we live in.

SPEAKER_02 (55:44):
Yeah.
It's run literally bypsychopaths because corporations
are people and they'repsychopaths.

SPEAKER_05 (55:51):
Yeah, I was I was thinking this week um about how
like you are forced to be amember of society.
Like society as a whole is afine idea to have uh other
individuals that you can lean onand other systems that help take
care of certain things so thatyou're not lone wolfing it

(56:13):
because that is uh is animpossibility.
You mean community?
Yeah, uh, which is what societypromises.
Um but the one that we have,it's like e even if you didn't
want what we have, like you'relike, I don't want to pay into
the 401k, I don't want to buy acar, I don't want to work every

(56:33):
minute of my life to pay for ahouse, can I just leave?
And society's like, no.
For a price.
This exists everywhere.
There's nowhere you can go thatthis doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 (56:49):
Not to get really geeky, but that's actually what
my master's or no, it wasn't mymaster's thesis.
That was about the globalizationof the food economy.
Um, but my undergrad researchpaper was on um how indigenous,
some indigenous cultures arestill able to weave in and out
of empire, like they participatein it, but they have more
pockets of autonomy.

(57:09):
Of course, corporations have avested interest in removing
those pockets of autonomy asquickly as possible, hence the
destruction of the fuckingAmazon and and making everything
private property so that placesthat have been traditional
territories of indigenous peoplefor millennia are suddenly
private and they're not allowedto go onto anymore.

SPEAKER_05 (57:27):
Yeah.
You know, right now, um uhfederal land is being auctioned
off to corporations so that theycan do what they want with it
instead of us uh going out andenjoying the untouched spoils of
majesty.
Um they they wanna they wannaput something there.

(57:48):
You know, they're like, look atall this wasted space with
mountains and trees and streams.
We should put an Amazon facilityhere.

SPEAKER_02 (57:55):
Yeah, something's really broken.
We should mine all of this forcobalt.
Well, cobalt's more and placeslike the Congo that are out of
sight, out of mine for us, andwe all benefit.
Again, like this system has madeus all complicit.
None of us here uh exist withoutblood on our hands, but I think
that's why systems change is soimportant and why I think the

(58:17):
real revolution is mutual aidand figuring out how to take
care of each other outside ofthese systems.
Like, for example, we know thatum starting in November, snap
benefits for American citizens.
If you're not from America andyou don't know what that is,
it's I don't even know what itstands for, but basically it's a
food assistance program and it'soften called food stamps.
Because of the governmentshutdown, uh, they which is not

(58:39):
a precedented thing ingovernment shutdowns, they are
going to stop providing folkswho have been relying on food
stamps to fucking feedthemselves and their children.
Um, and the only solution tothat is for us to feed each
other.
And I was thinking about thislike we've got um literal
buckets of rice and beans overthere, and I think we should
take some of them and take themto the food bank because we
don't need them right now.

(59:00):
And our society and our culturetells us to hoard, hoard, hoard,
hoard, hoard because one dayit'll be us.
And like I'm currentlyunemployed and I'm scared.
But I think that if we want tobelieve in community and
reciprocity, if we have a littlebit, we got to share a little
bit.
Um, again, I will reference backto the Black Panthers.
They had free breakfast programsfor children, they were

(59:21):
providing free medical care foreach other.
Um, the only way out of this isto start to create our own
systems, and they're not goingto be perfect, but they're at
least human and not run bygovernments that are really
plutocracies that are owned bycorporations.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (59:38):
Yeah.
I mean, that's that's that'sjust it's how that's how it is.

SPEAKER_02 (59:42):
Yeah.
But you know what?
The beauty of talking about thisstuff in the context of a zombie
movie is we can just zoom rightout of that housecape and talk
about the fun parts of thismovie.
Other than I think the critiqueof corporations was pretty
great.
But what else did we love?

SPEAKER_05 (59:56):
You know, I thought I thought the critique was
really great.
Um and And you know, the erathat this movie was made, uh,
the expectations of it beinglike an action horror movie,
like you don't expect it to havea big message.
Um, but Resident Evil has alwayshad that message.
That is the purpose of theseries is hey, look how shitty

(01:00:18):
this is.
Um in fact, I think like the thelast Resident Evil I remember uh
watching somebody play was likethe one that came out in 2010.
I think it was Resident Evil 5.
And that one takes place in Iwant to say South Africa or
somewhere in Africa.
And it's all it it starts offjust showing like the

(01:00:39):
exploitation of African peopleand like what what they have to
live in, and then then they allturn into zombies.
What part of Africa?

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:47):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 (01:00:47):
I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:48):
Do they just like have this whole like Africa's a
country, not a continent?

SPEAKER_05 (01:00:52):
No, I think they say where it is.
Uh but it's it's literally been15 years since I saw I was
watching over the shoulder ofsomebody play it in a basement.
So I didn't I didn't gather awhole lot at the time, but
thinking back, I'm like, yeah,this is absolutely a critique of
like um how how that the thewhole continent is just

(01:01:14):
exploited for its resources andthey don't give a shit about the
people there, so yeah, why notinfect them with a zombie virus?

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:22):
Oh god, do I ever want to get into HIV AIDS right
now?
But I'm not going to.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:26):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:26):
I'll just say there's a parallel between what
you're saying.
I'm gonna sound like conspiracytheorists.
I don't think that HIV is notreal, is that what I'm saying?
I do think it's convenient as away to oppress people who are
already oppressed.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:37):
Do you know who uh invented the idea of the
conspiracy theorist?
Who?
The CIA.
Hilarious.
The CIA, um before before therewere conspiracy theorists,
conspiracy theorists were peoplewho were doing research to find
all of these areas where it'slike, why is this happening?

(01:01:57):
What are these people up to?
Why isn't the government tellingus anything and demanding
oversight and demandingtransparency?
So the CIA started creating theconspiracy theorist archetype.
And they would highlight certaincrazies, nut jobs who are like,
I was abducted by aliens, andthey put they put a whole bunch

(01:02:20):
of stuff in my butt.
QAnon told me this.
And that would be right on thefront page of the tabloids
because that's what this the CIAwants you to think about a
conspiracy theorist.
Wow.
But a conspiracy theorist issomebody who has a theory about
a conspiracy.
They don't even want you toassociate conspiracy with what
it actually means, which is thatthere is a conspiring within an

(01:02:44):
organization that's supposed tobe doing something different.
There's something happeningwithin this organization that is
being kept secret and it iswrong.
So when you're when you aretheorizing about a conspiracy,
it's not that you're you youthink that there's little green
men in your bathroom.
It's that you're like, why isthe CIA experimenting with LSD

(01:03:08):
and uh and giving uh elephantsat the zoo a large enough dose
of uh LSD to kill it?
What?
I did not know they did this.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:20):
Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:03:20):
Uh um MK Ultra.
It was fucking crazy what theydid with MK MK Ultra.
They're doing science, but thepeople doing science were CIA
agents and not scientists.
So they're just like, what wouldhappen if I just filled up a
crank dart with LSD and see andand shoot an elephant at the
zoo?

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:39):
I mean, frankly, scientists were doing some
pretty suspect shit.
That's why we have humansubjects research protocols.
But I that's I feel like we thisis this is turning into a
tangent.
A good one, though.

SPEAKER_05 (01:03:49):
There was this whole um uh part of uh MK Ultra where
they were experimenting onprisoners with LSD.
There's a little offshoot ofthis conversation.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:58):
This is again why we have human subjects research
protocols because prisoners areconsidered a specially uh
vulnerable population.

SPEAKER_05 (01:04:03):
So they were volunteers.
They're the CIA came to theprison, they're like, Do you
want to volunteer for a thing?
They didn't tell them what itwas.
It was like, it's it's anexperimental thing, we're gonna
do some science, and it'll giveyou some time off of your
sentence.
I feel required to say thiswould not happen in 2025.
Well, we'll see.
So they're they're like, Yeah, Iwant to get out of prison early.

(01:04:24):
Um, and all I have to do is someof your science experiments?
Sure.
So for a year, they gaveprisoners large doses of LSD
every single day to documenttheir their um experiences to
see if like maybe it wouldtransform them and make them
into more compassionate people.
But really, they wanted to seeif they can control people's

(01:04:46):
minds with LSD.
Um and they uh made them journalabout it every single day, and
like these journals are crazy.
They're like they're like, Ithink every single one of them
is like, I think I'm losing mymind.
I don't want to do thisexperiment anymore, but they
have to because they signed upfor it, so they keep on giving
them LSD every single day.
One of those people was a personnamed Whitey Bulger.

(01:05:09):
And Whitey Bulger was a mafiosoin Boston and also a notorious
killer.
And when they let him out,because that was the agreement,
they're like, you can go now.
He went on to murder so manypeople.
Oh my god.
And he was uh a famed serialkiller.
LSD forcing him to take LSDevery single day for an

(01:05:32):
experiment did not make him abetter person.

SPEAKER_02 (01:05:35):
I have no I am blown away.
Mostly that these things live inyour head.
It's great living with somebodylike Dan because you never know
what like detailed facts areabout to be shared.

SPEAKER_05 (01:05:47):
So a conspiracy theory would be I think that
there's thing this thing calledMKUltra, and the CIA is trying
to create a mind control drug.
And they're like, you're crazy,just like that guy who thinks
that there's green aliens thatlive inside of his butt on the
tabloids.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:02):
It's so hard in this day and age, though, because
misinformation is is so rampant,it's really hard to know what to
trust.

SPEAKER_05 (01:06:08):
Yeah.
That's why I think really goodkind of works in their favor,
doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:12):
It does, but really good journalism um and research,
evidence-based research is likethe only way to go.
But though that takes years todo.
The corporation's a greatexample of that.
I think it's it's not aconspiracy theory in the sense
of it's not a maybe that's thekey here is the term theory.
Um, what we're describing islike factual evidence in
documented that Dan hassomething in his eye.

(01:06:34):
You okay?
Yeah.
Is that a conspiracy?
Did somebody put something inyour eyes and screw?

SPEAKER_05 (01:06:37):
There's aliens in my eyes.
So um How do we talk aboutResident Evil now?
If it is a theory, that wouldmean the meaning of theory is is
uh is that there is evidence toback it up.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:51):
Well, uh the scientific meaning of theory is
that all evidence points to thisone answer and nothing refutes
it yet.
But I don't think that's whatpeople are saying when they say
conspiracy theory.

SPEAKER_05 (01:07:01):
Yeah, because the the CIA um gave a context to
that word.

SPEAKER_02 (01:07:06):
I hear that.
And I I guess what I'm trying todifferentiate is like while they
have done a really good job ofmaking uh people just look at
each other and be like, well,you're a whack job because you
believe these things, thedifference is whether or not
there is a solid evidence basebehind it or not.
That's like there are realconspiracies.
There are people conspiring todo fucked up things, and it's
not always aliens.
But we have to be able todifferentiate between a

(01:07:27):
conspiracy theory in the waythat the CIA has branded it
versus um factual evidence thatlike things like corporations
are psychopathic and not in ourbest interest.
Or I wish I could remember thename of the book right now, but
I think you read it.
It's um basically documents theway that the US government has
assassinated people all over theworld to basically keep
capitalism on top.

(01:07:48):
That's the short story, and makesure people kept making money,
hence plutocracy that ourgovernment is basically serves
corporations and rich people.
Um, there is tons of evidencebehind why it is that continents
like Africa overall areexploited and oppressed and
continue to be, because it's nothidden behind closed doors.

(01:08:09):
It's an international law, likethe International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank.
Those are things that are, yes,people in a room made those
decisions, but they're verythey're not like some people in
a room who have some lines anddots on some pieces of paper.
There's this is like factualstuff.
Am I making sense?
I'm trying to differentiatebetween the two things because I

(01:08:29):
think otherwise we're gonna spinout.
Do we want to finish talkingabout Resident Evil?
Yeah, let's talk about what weloved.
All right, the zombies wereactually scary.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:08:37):
I enjoyed them.
Yeah, I I think I think they uhthey followed the the Romero
zombie um archetype and theyeffectively showed scary
zombies.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:50):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:08:51):
Um there were even some like really good-sized
hordes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:54):
It made me really appreciate a good 2002 action
flick slash horror.
I think there's more action thanhorror, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_05 (01:09:02):
There was some horror elements.
Like it felt very like, youknow, a lot of like early 2000s
horror movies like The GhostShip.
I don't think I've seen that.
Um or uh I don't know, like awhole bunch of movies around
that era where they're like, wecan use CG to make ghosts.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:18):
I thought the practical effects in this movie
were good and it stood the testof time.
And I frankly, like I saidearlier, appreciated the
cutaways.
I don't need to see somebody'sbody get mutilated.
Thank you.
You can just imply it, andthat's disturbing enough.

SPEAKER_05 (01:09:31):
Yeah.
They were probably trying to geta PG 13 rating.
I don't know what this is rated,but uh let's let's look it up.
Given that it's based on a uhvideo game franchise, they're
like lots of kids are gonna wantto watch this, so we gotta keep
it PG.
It's a solid R.
Oh, okay.
Well, never mind then.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:46):
The video games are rated M for mature.
Yeah.
Um anything else that you reallyloved?
I thought the acting was okay.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:53):
Yeah, that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:54):
Uh and the story stands the test of time.
It's not one of those exampleswhere I'm like, I wouldn't watch
this again.
I think I would watch it againwhen I was in the mood for
something that I didn't have tothink too hard about.

SPEAKER_05 (01:10:04):
Yeah.
So the thing that I reallyliked, and it's probably what I
noticed this time watching itand didn't notice it when I
first watched it, like 20 yearsago, um, is that the movie
really felt like the game.
So, like, the game, uh, likeevery room has like some kind of
visual puzzle.
Like, you know, how how do I getout of this room?

(01:10:24):
I gotta move a statue out of theway.
Um, I've got to go investigatethis little broom closet to see
if there's a key inside of it.
Um, oh no, there's a zombieinside, and it just lunged at
me.
So I kind of had a lot of uh alot of moments like that where
like tonally and visually andwith the sound design, it's like

(01:10:46):
I feel like this is the game.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:48):
Yeah, I can't pick up on those things because I
don't play video games, but Iwill say that I've heard two
different reactions to thismovie, which is like obviously a
bunch of people who loved itenough to tell me it was their
favorite movie ever.
Um, but there are folks who werelike, I played the video game
and I love this because theytook the concept but not the
storyline.
They made a new one.
Yeah.
And then I recently read anarticle that was like, they
fucking butchered my favoritegame.

(01:11:08):
I hate you forever.
So, like all art, it'ssubjective.

SPEAKER_05 (01:11:12):
Well, I appreciate that they made their their own
storyline with it because uhexactly that.
Like, I don't feel like theybutchered the the franchise
because they didn't follow it.
Um, they made their own thing,starting from you know, maybe
not the first scene because westart off in the mansion, but
like right after that we go downinto the hive and it's like, oh,

(01:11:33):
this isn't in the video games.
Like, we're we're going adifferent path.
This is a different story thatjust you know uses the
characters and uh and theatmosphere and world of Resident
Evil.

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:47):
Let's get into what we didn't like.
There's a few.
Yeah, I think we disagree onthis one.
I will say outright, I did notlove the Quippy one-liners.
I felt that um most of thecharacters had one dimension at
best.
Yeah, and the Quippy One-linersfrom Michelle Rodriguez's
character, Reino Campo, werelike notably bad.

SPEAKER_05 (01:12:07):
Yeah, cheesy.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:08):
So cheesy.

SPEAKER_05 (01:12:09):
No, I agree.
I okay.
I'm I'm not on the side ofloving one-liners.
In fact, I had to go down arabbit hole and like learn about
this because I'm like, I feellike there was a point where
this type of writing kind ofstopped.
So what I found out was that uhthe Quippy one-liner was used
between the 70s to themid-2000s.

(01:12:32):
And that's because at that timeall we had like like media was
mostly movies.
Like there weren't a whole lotof highly produced TV shows.
If you wanted to be entertainedwith a story, you went to the
movies, and usually you know,they got you for 90 minutes.
It's not part of a bigfranchise, we're not talking
about sequels, it's one time.

(01:12:54):
Um, and they have very limitedamounts of time to reflect who
these characters are.
So what these one-liners werewas a shorthand to remind you of
somebody's personality quirks.
So, like with MichelleRodriguez, they want you to know
that she's the tough girl, butshe's also like the tough girl

(01:13:17):
who can hang with the fellas.
Like she's going out to the barwith her squad after they deal
with this hive situation.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:26):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:27):
And she's gonna let you know that by like after
she's been bitten several times,she's gonna be like, after we
get out of here, I'm gonna getlaid.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:35):
You know the one that like really killed me
because it felt likeinappropriate, but it was with
zombies, but she was likesqueezing, they were up above
the zombies.
I don't remember how they wereup there, but they were above
the zombies, and she hurt shewas bleeding her hands, and she
just was like squeezing theblood out of her hands when the
zombies were eating it as it wasdripping on them.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:52):
Like, yeah, you like the taste of that?
You like that?
Yeah, you like that.
I was like, this is fucking socr.
I don't like that.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:59):
Yeah, they're they're telling you that she's
like she's she's uh she'staunting them.
She's like, that's herpersonality.
She's like not necessarilyscared, she's not afraid of
death, and she's kind of pissedoff that she's going to die.
So she's like taunting them andtrying to, I don't know.
I don't know where I was goingto.

SPEAKER_02 (01:14:17):
I appreciate you for making it, trying to make it
interesting, but I just foundthem like really they took me
out of the movie.
Again, probably 2002 Leah wouldhave liked it because it was a
different era in movies, andfrankly, my tastes were not as
uh defined as they are now.
I think my standards wereprobably lower because I think
everybody's standards were lowerin 2002.

SPEAKER_05 (01:14:36):
I want to be clear, I don't like one-liners.
So one-liners were also amarketing strategy for action
movies.
They needed something that wasquotable.
I'll be back.
Exactly.
And like Arnold Schwarzeneggerbased his whole career on Quippy
One-Liners.
I you you most of his movies,you couldn't name the characters

(01:14:56):
who were in the movies.
Like, who did he play?
I don't know.
Arnold fucking fuckingSchwarzenegger as a robot.
Yeah, you know.
Arnold Schwenzer in uhkindergarten cop, one of my
favorites.
He's like, it's not a tumor.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:08):
You know, it's true.
And then like Americans,especially, I feel like love to
quote things.
So the Quippy one-liner does umsupport that cultural habit.
Uh yeah, I think I'm glad theywere both in agreement.
Other things I didn't like.
There's definitely some racist,sexist, colonial, ableist
misogyny of the living dead inthis film.
Yeah.
Um not as much as I thoughtthere would be.

(01:15:29):
No, it was only marginallysexist.
Yeah.
You know?
It's like could be worse.

SPEAKER_05 (01:15:34):
I was kind of relieved.
Because like I I I knew whatwould be an issue, which is like
main character has to be in askimpy dress.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:42):
Yeah.
Nipples poking out.
Nipples poking out.

SPEAKER_05 (01:15:45):
Which honestly shouldn't be sexualized, but
she's gonna be doing spin kickswhere you're like, it's it's
that that dress could be goinganywhere.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:53):
Yeah.
Her the dress making no sense.
Um constantly, you know, naked,and the possible the possibility
that the very strange hospitalgown we find her in at the end
is going to like slip, or thetowel that she finds is gonna
slip, uh, or that they're gonnajust give us a little peek of
something more.
So whatever.

(01:16:14):
It's 2002.
I'm unfortunately not surprisedthey needed to have that,
especially for like an actionhorror flick.
You know, you gotta feed themale gaze.
Yeah.
But it would, it could have beenworse, and has definitely been
worse in other things we'vewatched.
Um, so I guess that's wherewe're ranking it.
I would put it on the it couldbe worse scale of sexism.

SPEAKER_05 (01:16:34):
The last big thing that um Mila Jovovich was in
before Resident Evil.
I mean, I don't know what otherthings she was in between then.
It was like a five-year gap, butshe was in uh the fifth element,
and that also had those momentswhere it's like she's wearing
basically an ace bandage around.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:50):
Oh my god, I didn't realize that was the same
person.
Yes.
Same person.
Yeah.
Um, which, you know, MichelleRodriguez characters was a nice
counterpoint being like to thetough girl.
But it was like, okay, you getto be two things if you're a
woman in this movie, tough girl,or I mean, you can't say that
Alice uh Mila Jovovich, I can'tsay her name, uh, wasn't also a

(01:17:13):
tough girl.

SPEAKER_05 (01:17:14):
Yeah.
And that's what I appreciatedabout the movie, which like it
it was very much not done untillike the late 90s to early
2000s, where you had the toughgirl archetype where it's like
she's she's the action starhere.
Everybody else, they look coolwith their with their guns and
they do a lot of stuff, butAlice, she'll run up a wall and

(01:17:37):
spin around and kick a dog inthe face.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:40):
Yeah.
Uh, there was some racialdiversity, but not a lot.
Main characters were white.
Um, I was just reading about it,and there were some people that
were upset that from the videogame to movies in the future and
Netflix that they actuallychanged the race from being
primarily white people to racialdiversity.
Sorry about it, y'all.
I think people need and deserveto see themselves in movies.
Uh, there's no reason to keep itall white.

(01:18:01):
But again, was it like the worstoffender?
No.
I it wasn't the kind of moviethat I had to turn off because
it was it was offensive.
And Dan, you know I have a athreshold around these things
where I'm like, I just can'twatch this, it's gonna piss me
off too much.
So it it passed my I'm willingto like deal with some of the
problems of this film test.

(01:18:23):
Attention span, I think I paidattention most of the time.
Yeah, which was impressivebecause I was in the midst of
grieving.

SPEAKER_05 (01:18:29):
So yeah, there was only a couple times where um I
had to like nudge you becauselike things were happening and
you were looking at your phone.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:37):
I was looking at pictures of Nero.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:18:40):
Uh he was so cute.
But there was only a coupletimes like that.
And for the most part, I like Iremember a few times like we had
to take a break in the middle,and you're just like, I am I
like this movie.
Yeah, I was surprised.
Pleasantly surprised.
So was I.
That's good.
Yeah.
Even though I'd seen this moviebefore, I'm like, okay, it's a
little bit better than Iremember.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:59):
Yeah, like World War Z still has is like objectively
a great zombie movie, but ispretty problematic and
annoyingly so for me, like morethan Resident Evil.
Yeah.
In terms of the tropes around,like, man, save world.
Women have zero dimensions, letalone one.
Uh, are there any survival tipsyou think we could glean from
this film?

(01:19:20):
Bring more ammo.

SPEAKER_05 (01:19:23):
Um they they took a long time to catch on to the
whole headshot thing.
Uh I I think a lot, like all oftheir main weapon ammunition was
wasted on the first horde wherethey were just kind of like
trying to blow them to pieces.
Um, and if they'd realized, hey,they're not going down like we

(01:19:43):
expect them to, let's shoot themin the head and see what
happens.
Um, that could have saved someammo and maybe they would have
made it out of there, okay.
But at the same time, um I thinkthat like one of the tropes of
the zombie apocalypse is likethe first the first four shots
go to the chest, and then you'relike, then the characters the uh
makes the realization, oh, Ihave to shoot them in the head,

(01:20:05):
and that's all done in likealmost one scene.
And in this one, it took a fewscenes for them to be like, oh,
right, the brain.
These are zombies.
I've never heard of zombiesbefore because in my universe,
zombie movies don't exist.
I mean, I kind of appreciatedthat.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:20):
Uh the survival tip that I gleaned from this movie,
actually, there's two.
One, let's practice radicaltransparency.
What if what if like you justcouldn't have secrets like that?
What if corporations could notlegally do this?
Uh, they had to disclose things.
Uh I oh oh also, what if we uhwithdrew their person status and

(01:20:40):
individuals became culpableagain for choices?

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:44):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:44):
Uh that would be a great survival tip.
And my last survival tip fromResident Evil is seize the means
of production.

SPEAKER_05 (01:20:50):
Uh what what uh what production would we seize?

SPEAKER_02 (01:20:54):
Well, in this case, it's too late to seize the hive.
It's it's been uh I think thehive got seized.
Yeah.
And that's why everyone's deadinside.
But I think in I would say morebroadly, like, what what ways
can we take back control of howwe take care of ourselves and
each other away fromcorporations?
Every single small choice youmake uh is something.

(01:21:16):
Uh this is not going to be abattle we we win overnight.

SPEAKER_05 (01:21:20):
You know, there was a little B plot that I always
forget about, um, which is thatlike when Alice starts to
remember things, she realizesthat she was making this back
alley deal with this woman whoworked inside the hive.
And the whole idea was that shewanted to get the virus out so
that she could expose theumbrella corporation for what
they're doing in the hive.

(01:21:40):
And then um her fake husbandoverhears them um because he's
spying on them, and is like,well, I'm gonna take it up a
notch and I'm going to uh infecteverybody in the hive, steal the
virus, and then sell it on theblack market so we can make lots
of money.
Um and Alice had the intentionof bringing down the corporation

(01:22:04):
with the truth.
So like there is that thread ofum trying to use uh trying to
use transparency as a weapon andtherefore seize the means of
production that way.
And they seize the means ofproduction, but they did it a
very different way and for avery different reason.

SPEAKER_02 (01:22:22):
That's a good point.
Um, I think wherever impossiblewherever you have power to
demand transparency, do it fromour government, from the place
you work, which obviously, likemany of us are in positions
where you just gotta do whatyou're told, you know, just
gotta do what you're toldbecause you gotta survive.
But that's again why we gottathink about ways we can help
each other to slowly but surelycreate more pockets outside of

(01:22:44):
this fucked up system we're in.
And how many Zeds are we givingthis, Dan?
I'm gonna give it seven and ahalf.
I liked it.

SPEAKER_05 (01:22:51):
I think that's pretty fair.
I was gonna say seven.
Um, yeah, and I think I think Ionly give it a little bit less
than you because um I don't likethat they're in the hive the
whole time.
I when I'm in the zombieapocalypse, I want to be out in
the open air.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:06):
Well, it doesn't that happen in the future
movies?

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:08):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:09):
Okay.

SPEAKER_05 (01:23:11):
Which is why I like uh Resident Evil 2 more.
But um I was I was uh I wassurprised.
I was it was nice.
It was nice to go back and watchthis movie because I had I had
not the best memory of it, andI'm glad that I watched it
because now I I appreciate itmore.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:29):
And I appreciate it for the first time.
So thanks everybody for therecommendations.
Um I don't know, you know, I Ithink I know why I didn't watch
it because I just thought it'dbe naked lady the whole time.
But turns out that was a smallsubplot.
Uh, and you know, not the worstversion I've seen.
So hey, worth watching.
Uh in the meantime, nextweekend, we have Zombie Wien

(01:23:50):
Game Show 2025, the highlight ofmy year.
Um, possibly the mostembarrassing episode because I
do speak in an old Englishaccent pretty much the whole
time.
I'd say half.
Half.
Half the time.
Yeah.
It's coming out next Sunday,November 2nd, so a couple days
after Halloween and um Sawin,the pagan celebration, but it is

(01:24:11):
gonna be good enough because wehad to delay it uh because I
wanted to make sure we had timeto promote it appropriately for
all the folks who took the timeto be contestants.
The theme this year is Game ofThrones, hence the weird English
accent.
Um, but also Jeopardy.
But also not Jeopardy, becauseyou don't actually have to know
the answer or rather thequestion.
You just have to make Dan laugh.

(01:24:31):
Dan was the judge again thisyear.
Yeah.
Uh players collect beans forsurvival instead of points or
money.
And there were some wageringmoments and very high stakes
rounds that frankly changedeverything.
Yeah.
Called the Daily Beans.

unknown (01:24:47):
Oh.

SPEAKER_05 (01:24:48):
The Daily Beans.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:49):
What was your favorite part of this episode?

SPEAKER_05 (01:24:52):
Oh boy.
Um I don't know if it's my Idon't know if I'd say it's my
favorite part, but I I just wantto say that there's somebody who
probably should have won becausethey won more beans than anyone,
but got screwed over the most.
And absolutely did not win.

(01:25:13):
Um, that's all I'm gonna sayabout that.
I'm sorry, you know who you are.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:17):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:25:18):
I I think you should have won if we were just if if
if things if things didn'thappen the way that they
happened, I think you shouldhave won.
That's all I'm gonna say aboutthat.

SPEAKER_02 (01:25:29):
Um, I I really enjoyed the fact that despite
there being two folks who weresupposed to participate, we're
supposed to have a uh around uhfive people participate.
Two folks had personalemergencies.
I swear this happens every yearfor Zombie Wien.
Whenever we try to have morethan like one guest, there's
always at least one person whocan't make it.
Uh so two people could not makeit.
But Jack Callahan, I'm gonnaannounce right out right now,

(01:25:51):
one of the contestants again forZombie Wien Game Show 2025.
Literally asked him the morningwe were recording.
And our wonderful friend Jacksaid, you know what?
Yes, I'm probably not gonna win.
Also, what are we doing?

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:05):
Thanks, Jack.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:06):
Um, and as usual, absolutely one of my highlights.
Uh fucking hilarious.
We love Jack.
Who else is our contestants for2025, Dan?
Oh, are we doing that right now?

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:17):
Yeah.
Well, uh we have our reigningzombie ween king of 2024.
2024, Sylvester Barzi.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:26):
Yeah, back to defend his crown.

SPEAKER_05 (01:26:28):
Yeah, to defend it um and maybe do more with it.
Uh, we also have Lori Calcatera,former um Zombie Wien Queen of
2023.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:38):
Uh, she's seeking redemption for her lost title in
2024.
But I think it's also importantto remember that Lori has
already had to defend her titleas 2023 Zombie Wien Queen from
Brandon Staraki, who challengedat the summer in the Summer Wien
slam down, whose mustache waswagered and lost because he
tried to get her crown.
Brandon, you didn't show upagain for 2025's game show,

(01:27:02):
despite repeated invitations.
And we have not seen evidence ofyour shaved-off mustache.
Yeah, you owe Lori a mustache.
You are the villain of ZombieWien.

SPEAKER_05 (01:27:12):
I still love you though.
And um last but certainly notleast is uh Alice B.
Sullivan.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:19):
Yeah, who showed up despite having a serious sinus
infection.

SPEAKER_05 (01:27:23):
That's right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:24):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:27:24):
Alice was like super sick.
Yep.
I think Sylvester was also alittle sick too.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:29):
Yeah, it's I think everybody was sick.
Yeah.
We were uh we were uh dressedup, ready for a wedding.
I will say this episode isgreat.
I laughed so hard that I ruinedmy makeup for the wedding.
I had to redo it in the car onthe way there because we
scheduled this to be buttingright up against the time we had
to leave for a wedding becauseI'm I'm me and I make those

(01:27:50):
kinds of silly choicessometimes.

SPEAKER_05 (01:27:51):
I also ruined my makeup.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:52):
Yeah, but I literally died.
Well, I didn't die as I am stillhere, but I cried laughing.
Um, you will know the momentwhen you listen.
It is absurd and my own faultbecause I created this
particular prompt, not knowingjust how insane it would get.
Um, what's on the line for thecontenders for the throne, the

(01:28:13):
folks who have not yet ever wona crown?
There is uh on the line again ahomemade, um, handmade custom
zombie meat crown that I will bemaking the winner if one of the
contenders for the throne wins.
If it's Lori or Sylvester, I'mgoing to make a meat scepter.
I have no idea how I'm gonna dothis or what it will look like.

(01:28:34):
But if I can make a meat crown,I can make a scepter.
So somebody could, if they haveone, uh add to their collection.

SPEAKER_05 (01:28:42):
Yeah.
I I don't know, I don't knowwhat would come after a scepter.

SPEAKER_02 (01:28:46):
I don't know either.
I mean a meat robe.
I really don't I don't know howto sew, so this is gonna get
real strange uh over time.
Uh and also if you aredissatisfied with who we choose,
and by we I mean Dan.
Dan was the ultimate decider,even though he has regrets,
apparently.
Are you putting that on therecord that you have regrets?
Look, things did not go the wayI thought they would go.

(01:29:10):
Are you saying the person whowon didn't deserve it?

SPEAKER_05 (01:29:12):
I'm not saying that, because obviously I wouldn't
have picked them if they didn'tdeserve it.
That's right.
Um I feel like we're about tocreate online beef here.
But let's just say there wassome chaos.
Some chaos reigned.
Yeah, choices were made.
I thought things were gonna goone way, they went a different
way, and uh and and I think Iyou know we're gonna need people

(01:29:33):
to weigh in to see where theystand.
Yeah.
Because for the first time ever,we're going to have uh a
listener's choice.

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:40):
It's called the Zombesties Choice Award.
You can pick any one of the fourcontestants, even the person
that Dan deemed winner.
Yeah.
So they could be a two timewinner if you wanted, and they
are going to get a tiny crown ortiny scepter, depending on.
I don't know.
As tiny as I can make it with mywith yeah, I.
Thinking like a ring.

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:01):
Yeah.

unknown (01:30:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:30:02):
Yeah.
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:30:04):
Um, because they deserve that too.
I will say everybody whoparticipated was a winner.
They're gonna get a t-shirt.
There's going to be a poster anda shirt that you can purchase.
I haven't even made it yet, butit exists in my head and it will
be available by next week.
Nice.
Yeah.
Uh voting's going to open onNovember 3rd, the day after the
episode comes out.
And it is a good one, y'all.
You can make fun of me becauseit's I sound like a fucking

(01:30:27):
idiot.
But the contestants, as always,are hilarious.
Congratulations to the winner.
You did deserve it.
Um, and again, this is allarbitrary.
That's all I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_05 (01:30:37):
Yeah.
Thanks everyone for joining uson the Zombie Book Club.
Uh what do you think?
Did we nail it?
Did we fail it?
This episode?
This episode?
What do you think?
I don't know.
Yeah.
It was a journey.
Um, if you want to give us somesupport, you can leave us a
rating or a review.
Uh you could send us a voicemaileven.
On the telephone, you could callus with your telephone.

(01:31:01):
You know, you pick you you pickit up and you say, Gladys,
connect me to the zombie bookclub.
And then Gladys types uh dialsin 614-699-0006.
And then you could leave us avoicemail up to three minutes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:31:13):
Yeah, and uh a couple episodes ago there was
somebody who called in aboutsome uh gaggle of zombies,
granny zombies, right, yeah,eating construction workers, but
we don't know what they wereeating because it wasn't what
they thought they should beeating.
So could you please call with anupdate?
We're concerned.

SPEAKER_05 (01:31:28):
Yeah, they were they were eating them and then they
were doing other things.
Yeah, yeah.
So we need to know more.
Um, you could sign up for anewsletter um so you can stay in
touch with us or follow us onInstagram uh at zombiebook club
podcast.
Um, you could also join ourDiscord, the Brain Muncher
Zombie Collective.
Everything is in thedescription.
You just click the link and ittakes you there.

SPEAKER_02 (01:31:49):
Yeah.
And uh when we make some uhpromo announcements for the
Zombie Wien Game Showcontestants coming out next
Sunday, go give them your loveand support.
You can't vote yet, but youcouldn't declare your intentions
or predictions.
There could be friendly wagers,you could bet money if you want.
I'm not in charge of this.
Yeah, they have apps where youcan just bet on anything.
You could bet beans.

(01:32:11):
As we discussed in the episode,you can indeed mail beans.
So if you want to bet somebeans, go for it.

SPEAKER_05 (01:32:17):
You can mail anyone you want beans.
Yeah.
You can just pick a name, mailthem beans.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:22):
And in the meantime, the end is nigh.
Bye, bye bye.
Baby bye, bye bye.
Bye bye, bye.
Please don't die.
We love you.
Don't die.
Also, tell us if we're idiots.
Okay, bye.
Goodbye.

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Resident Evil (2002) - Corporations are the real monsters | Zombie Book Club Ep 119

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Resident Evil (2002) - Corporations are the real monsters | Zombie Book Club Ep 119