The master of unlocking, Jill Valentine, will return to the big screen inResident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Previously played by Sienna Guillory in Paul W.S. Anderon’sResident Evilseries, a new incarnation of Jill is featured in the new movie from writer-director Johannes Roberts with Hannah John-Kamen in the role. Like the other characters, this version appears to be much more closely influenced by the games.
Roberts spoke more about what fans can expect from Jill inWelcome to Raccoon City, stressing the importance of the character to the story. While Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) had more screen timein the trailer, Roberts says that Jill is just as important to the ensemble. In fact, as the filmmaker said on the ComicBook Nation podcast, efforts were made to make each of them unique with their own interesting storylines. This avoids having the characters feel too similar.
“Jill Valentine is one of the leads in the movie so it’s ensemble. It’s pure John Carpenter. It really is an ensemble movie. Jill is f****** great in the movie… What was really interesting with the whole Jill Valentine thing was one of the big challenges of combining the two games is gaming is … you pick your characters and you live through them and you’re sort of experiencing the world through them and it’s all about the world rather than your character in the way that a movie is. The problem became, particularly, it’s very, very apparent in the remakes of 2 and 3. You put Claire and Jill together, they’re very similar. It’s just kind of the two same characters, and you have to be very careful and need to develop one character one way and one character the other.”
Johannes Roberts also addressed whatHannah John-Kamenbrought to the role The director previously spoke about how the casting forResident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon Cityhinged on which actor delivered the best performance for the role they were shooting for. Roberts also said on the podcast what it was like working with John-Kamen and how she was perfect for his Jill Valentine.
“With Hannah we really explored, I mean she is because like she herself is like a live wire. She’s f****** bonkers. Trying to talk to her is like … you just never quite know … she’s just a little bit all over the place. She’s a crazy woman. That live wire aspect of her really came to life with the Jill Valentine in the movie. I think people are going to really have fun with her. She’s very funny but she’s kick ass. I really liked working with her. Bonkers, bonkers woman. That was cool.”
Thecast ofResident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon Cityalso includes Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker, Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy, Donal Logue as Cheif Brian Irons, Lily Gao as Ada Wong, and Neal McDonough as William Birkin. Fans of the original video games will recognize all of these names as characters from the first twoResident Eviltitles. Roberts has suggested that more characters and elements fromResident Evil 4could be in a potential sequel.
A synopsis for the movie reads, “Once the booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation, Raccoon City is now a dying Midwestern town. The company’s exodus left the city a wasteland… with great evil brewing below the surface. When that evil is unleashed, the townspeople are forever… changed… and a small group of survivors must work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella and make it through the night.”
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon Citywill be released in theaters on Nov. 24, which is sure tomake fans of the game happy. This news comes to us fromComicBook.com.
