Please help me understand this movie...

[deleted]

It has been a long time since Ive seen it, but I thought it was all to test out umbrella's bio weapon against the survivors and the SS.

I just got done rewatching this, so I think I can maybe shed some light on these questions.

|Why did the Umbrella Corp. send their secret squad to break quarantine?

-They don't know WHY they're in quarantine.The mission is to ascertain what happened. They probably didn't think it would be as bad as it was, and so they sent in their team to investigate and maybe even set things straight. Umbrella certainly couldn't go to the government for help, they had to mop this mess up themselves. The probably thought it was a smaller infection, perhaps of something else they were working on, and that the Red Queen over reacted.

|Why didn't the Red Queen send a status/situation report to the Umbrella's Corp. higher up's?

-I don't know exactly why on this, but it WAS 2002. Maybe they couldn't get cable down that far to get the internet out or something. It probably couldn't transmit through satellite since it was underground. Maybe, for safety reasons, Red Queen couldn't access communication lines by herself. I certainly wouldn't want to give her access to the internet.

|Why didn't the Red Queen gas the team as soon as they came in?

-As was said before, they weren't infected. The gas was a way to control the infection, not just to kill people. Also, like it said, "I didn't expect any of you to make it this far." Red Queen figured they'd be zombie chow long before they were a threat, or at least wouldn't make it to the blast doors in time.

|Why was Alice's nerve gas different? And why erase her memory?

-The gas in the Hive was to kill those infected, preventing them from escaping and taking the virus into the world. It was drastic measures. Memory loss isn't always an effect of the nerve gas, but it can be one. It was, as said before, probably to prevent her from prematurely accessing the hive and releasing those trapped.

|Why create a super expensive, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, pretty much designed to contain outbreaks, if you're just gonna shut her down after it does exactly what it was suppose to do?

-The computer did her job, but they needed to know why. She was keeping all the doors locked, and so they couldn't do any sort of recon until they had unfettered access. They also seemed to be under the assumption that the Red Queen may have malfunctioned. But I assume they never intended for quarantine to be permanent. Like I said above, they couldn't go to any government for help, so they would eventually have to fix the mess themselves. They had far too much invested in the Hive to just seal it away and shrug their shoulders. The business end of Umbrella wanted it back up and running ASAP most likely.

Also, remember that the team is our line of information of why Umbrella is doing things, and the team is obviously not fully briefed on the Hive. Taking laboratories instead of using normal halways to get to the main chamber was kind of a strange route to me, and when they ended up being flooded (more on that later) they went through the "dining hall." It obviously was much more than that, and they had no idea. Clearly Umbrella was hiding many things from them, so the hows and whys of their reasons for entry might never be truly revealed. For all we know, Umbrella sent them in to see just what would happen, for fun.

On the Water flooding the "sealed room," I suspect that was lack of knowledge on the writer or director's part, which is forgivable in some instances, especially back in 2002. However, it could also be that because they were underground, the room would normally connect to the rest of the airflow. In the event of an Outbreak or Fire, personel would shut down the lab and it would seal completely, keeping the air inside, since the occupants would be protected in their suits till they could clean the room. When the outbreak happened, there was no one to inact sealing protocol or something, so the Red Queen had to declare some kind of emergency to get everything shut down and finally seal the rooms (too late, though.)

Anyway, yeah. I know this is late and this is long, but having just seen the movie a few minutes ago, I thought I'd go ahead and answer this as best I could. Hope I helped!

By the way, most of these are just speculations. Its an entertaining movie and I wouldn't get too wrapped up in minute details. It kills the viewing experience.

"The Square Root of Nine is Three!"

Part of the job for the Red Queen was to contain any contamination that could be harmful to the outside world.

Basically all of your questions have the same answer - because these idiots don't know anything about how to write, or Resident Evil. I would point out one thing though - The Red Queen wasn't designed to contain outbreaks. She was the AI that ran the entire Hive. Her job was to run the hive, every day, for eternity until it went offline.

Literally not one single word in the entire script made any sense nor was it proof-read by anyone who understood the RE universe, nor any other "consultant" for that matter. Realistically, Red Queen would have reported the biohazard outbreak to Umbrella HQ immediately. It then would have reported a second time with the results of the quarantine.

This is, of course, aside from the games themselves in which - and the movie attempts to touch on this but failed miserably - the labs are set to self destruct if there is an outbreak, thus neutralizing the virus. No concern about quarantine, necessarily - just eradication.

The premise for why the team went in at all is flimsy, and really non-existent. Not to mention the second movie "I want to know what went on down there." All of that information, like you said, is clearly recorded by the AI and sent to the right people - at least it seems that way to the viewer because it follows that a facility this high-tech can handle some basic 1999 network functions.

The Red Queen killed Umbrella employees so Umbrella send a squad with a mission to disable her. They didn't know about leak of T-Virus and what happend. This is a reason why they re-opened The Hive and lead to the events of Apocalypse.

The simplest answer to your question is that the film doesn't make sense, so the best advice is: don't even try to make sense of it, because that way insanity lies. The only way to enjoy it is just to go with the flow and disengage all critical faculties.

Basically, it's as if Paul Anderson (the writer / director) mashed together half-remembered elements of the first, second, and third games, tossed in a bunch of random stuff that he liked from other films (e.g. Cube), stirred the whole melange together, and hoped it would all gel on the strength of visual style alone.

The "Red Queen" A.I., which is so integral to the first film, has no basis in the games. It's seemingly a mash-up of various "evil computer" elements from films of the past, e.g. HAL 9000 from 2001, WOPR from WarGames, Mother from Alien, etc. And, of course, it's always "creepier" when it's an evil little girl, right? So let's make it that! Honestly, I think the decision-making was on that level.

Case in point: would a corporation really give their miraculous A.I. that controls the entire facility the appearance, voice, and personality of a little girl? It's not exactly a persona that commands much in the way of authority or gravitas. No, it's a little girl because evil little girls are a horror-movie standard - it's as simple as that. Real-world logic is not a factor in this script.

Ultimately, the film is an illogical "cut-up" of borrowed bits and pieces from disparate sources - some from the games, many not - and all of them chosen purely for their visual impact, with little or no concern about narrative coherence.