Resident Evil: Apocalypse's Fight Choreography Was Daunting For Milla Jovovich
By the time Milla Jovovich returns to the video game adaptation realm to reprise her role as Alice in "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," her character has already gone toe to toe with the undead. Paul W.S. Anderson's "Resident Evil" sees Alice throwing elbows, snapping necks with her thighs, double-fisting pistols like a post-apocalyptic Calamity Jane, and she even kicks a zombie dog in the face, all in the 2002 film's 100-minute runtime.
For the 2004 sequel, Jovovich was once again ready to bust zed-heads, but didn't anticipate the sheer breadth of fight choreography awaiting her. Indeed, "Apocalypse" has Alice facing not only Umbrella operatives and zombies, but a hulking new Large Adult Undead Son called "Nemesis" — and he's armed and cranky. Director Alexander Witt's sequel begins just after the conclusion of the first film, with the sinister Umbrella Corporation evacuating Raccoon City in an attempt to contain the virus that escaped from their research facility. Armed with vigorous new physical capabilities and no memory of how she got them, Alice joins other survivors (some new, some familiar) and together, they try to get the hell out of Dodge before it's nuked out of existence. In an interview with IGN, Jovovich detailed just how "daunting" the action was for her during production.
Oh my God, what did I get myself into?
According to Milla Jovovich, prep work for "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" was tougher than a T-Virus infected Doberman. The "Dazed and Confused" star told IGN:
I thought I did a lot in the first movie, but I didn't even know what they had in store for me for this one. It was really one of those kinds of surprises when I came for my day of first rehearsal and then saw the scope of the choreography. It was just a little bit daunting ... (laughs) It was a lot. I had something like 800 moves throughout the whole movie ...
The action I love, the martial arts I love. It's something I love to do anyway in my life. I prefer martial arts to the gym any day of the week. Because that stuff is fun for me, the scariest part was dealing with certain fears that I'd had since I was a kid, like a fear of heights and a fear of small places, so, when I had to scale down a five-story building, you know, it was kinda like, 'Oh my God!' It was probably 6 a.m., negative seven below in Toronto and I'm hanging there at 6 a.m. going, 'Oh my God, what did I get myself into?'
Not every stunt you see Alice do is the work of Jovovich; in the interview, the actress claims the fight sequences are all her. But the "Apocalypse" sequence that sees Alice sprint-rappelling over 200 feet down the side of a building, for example? For that, Jovovich got by with a little help from her professional stunt friends, picking up the last 60 feet herself for the camera. And with that comes another disappointing reminder that the Oscars still haven't added a stunt category recognizing your action sequence faves. Shame.