im really curious to hear ur thoughts on ada wong!! me personally as someone who consumed every single information available about her in the internet and games, really despise the fact that she only appears when leon is just there. like dont get me wrong, my fave is leon im batshit insane for that man, i just cant with capcom... her backstory is nonexistent too 😭😭 the fact that we got robbed from this design was also agh ??? 😭 #icantanymore
I totally agree. She’s a unique character due to her position as morally gray. Almost all of the characters in the franchise are either protagonists or antagonists, Ada simultaneously exists as both. She works with the “bad guys” against the protagonists, but she’s also not really one of the bad guys. Her being reduced to “woman Leon interacts with sometimes,” especially in the fandom, drives me up the wall. I think it’d be really neat for her to have her own story, perhaps delving into how the hell she got involved with this stuff to begin with, or literally anything about her. That design concept is so fucking cool, I love the plague doctor aesthetics so when I saw that for the first time I was so disappointed they didn’t use it.
All of that being said, I really hope Capcom starts giving the characters backstories in the future. While we know especially little about Ada, none of the characters really have much in the way of backstories.
Death Island pushing that Leon is the government’s bitch so hard makes me hopeful that we’ll actually get some development on the “he was kidnapped and threatened into government service and has been mistreated by the government ever since” narrative. Up until this year, it had only been mentioned twice in the entirety of the franchise– once in the interrogation scene from Darkside Chronicles and once in the original RE3′s epilogue– so 2023 really going ham with it makes me hopeful that we’ll see some development, especially with Leon becoming less and less loose-lipped about his disdain for the government.
If you look carefully at the intro for the movie, Leon’s face is the only one on screen when “pawn” pops up on the computer, and while Dylan labels them all pawns, he seemingly knows that Leon is aware of his position. The marking for the movie repeatedly named Leon as “the government’s best weapon against bio-terrorism,” and note the phrasing there– not best solider, not best agent, best weapon. An object. Leon is just an object, a pawn for them to send into battles left and right. Furthermore, during the whole conversation where Dylan calls out the hypocrisy with the DSO and how the government is causing the problems they force Leon to solve, Leon doesn’t disagree. Instead, he snarks “Yeah, well, at least it makes a living.” Dylan also comments on how Leon’s “all burnt out” as a result and, again, Leon doesn’t disagree. That’s building on what we saw in Vendetta– Leon’s seemingly no longer drinking on the job and is generally more up beat than he was, but the root of Leon’s issues are that he’s trapped in an endless cycle of bullshit with the government, and that hasn’t changed.
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize that Leon could’ve left the government a while ago since Sherry is well over 18 and both Simmons and Benford are dead, but Leon’s deal with the government was about more than just Sherry. Sherry was the main reason Leon agreed, but she wasn’t the only part of the deal. Leon is one of the few people who survived Raccoon City and thus knows the truth about what happened, specifically the government’s involvement, and the government needed to keep that quiet. In addition to protecting Sherry, Leon “knew too much” so it was very much a deal where if he didn’t agree to join them, they would kill him. And now that they know that Leon is useful, and he knows even more state secrets, I doubt they’d just let him walk away from that. If he’s their “best weapon,” I don’t see them letting him quit his “job”.
I’m not sure what direction this will end up going, especially since he don’t know the full details of Leon’s situation nor if the other characters are aware of what happened to him, and considering we only know what happens to Leon up until 2015, this could go anywhere.
This is why I hate so much that they just,,, decided to not work on why Leon is now so" yiippieee yaaay" in Death Island (aka, has Hope again, LMFAO). Nothing is really fixed, nothing was fixed in Vendetta. More than giving Leon an opportunity to realize that he deserves more, that he SHOULD have autonomy, that it isn’t fucking fair that the government treats him like an object.
Tho, in Vendetta I must say that Chris convincing him to help him reinforced the “no matter how much he doesn’t want to go through his trauma again, he will have to, because people need him and he can’t let them down.” Aka, he has no autonomy anymore, it all belongs to those who need him and to those who use him (government).
Leon didn’t need to know people needed him (turns slowly to Leon’s VA interview). That’s his whole fucking thing, he KNOWS people need him so that’s his whole motivation, saving people, making the world a better place. But with the government and bioterrorism only getting worse so in the end, no matter how much he fights to help people, they will end up dead. So what’s even the point anymore? His efforts amount to nothing.
That’s what his little monologue in Vendetta was all about. His view on the world, his “job”, himself was finally completely shattered after his team died, after even more civilians died (supposedly) thanks to a goddamn mole. And he was left, yet again, the sole survivor left to kill his own team of undead.
I honestly just wish for Leon’s character to finish properly, because if the route they’re gonna take is for Leon’s character to now be “fixed” after Death Island, I think I’m gonna jump off into the zombie shark’s tank.
TW// mentions of suicide, depression, and alcoholism
It is irritating that we didn’t actually get to *see* Leon get help or the progress he made. Honestly, I didn’t expect to see it ‘cause this is Capcom after all, and I think they’d rather reboot the damn franchise than give us any details on the characters, but I still wish we’d gotten *something,* even something small.
The “I need you” was less about motivating Leon for the mission and more about motivating Leon to *not* continue to spiral and to get help. It’s a double meaning– Chris needed Leon’s help for the mission, but he also needed Leon as a person, as a friend. In the novel (and in the movie too although it’s shown rather than told there), it’s expressed that Leon is passively suicidal. He doesn’t care what happens to him anymore and throughout the entire battle he was like “well of this kills me maybe it won’t be so bad”. So while the “I need you” was Chris putting more emphasis on “you’re extremely valuable to this mission, I need your help so that more people don’t die” in the end, it’s Leon realizing that he’s not alone. Chris’s “pep talk” was extended in the novel as well, and he opens up to Leon about his trauma and what motivates him to keep going. The whole thing with the interview was more about Leon knowing he isn’t alone and that he has friends that care about him and people he can rely on– something very important for people struggling with depression, alcoholism, and suicidal ideation like Leon. I just wish we got to SEE that rather than hear about it in an interview.
None of it’s perfect, especially for a mental health story, but I guess we can’t realistically expect much from Capcom (as sad and shitty as that is). I hope they do more and do better moving foreward, which is looks like they mighttttt (I say this cautiously) due to the flashback scenes and letting Leon be more emotional in re4r. Really, I need it to come out– what the government did to him. I need Leon to finally be freed from that bullshit and I need someone to find out what happened to him, for him to have someone he can talk to about it rather than holding it all inside.
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at 😅
He knows he’s crucial and that’s a crushing responsibility on him at this point, since he does no longer have the energy for it. He is burnt out because of his situation; and lack of dealing with the trauma that comes with it (on Vendetta, at least).
I feel like the:
“well if this kills me, maybe it won’t be so bad”
Is more of a:
“I’ll finally be freed. I finally won’t have to deal with the crushing weight of a sense of duty that leads nowhere; I won’t have to deal with the guilt of people dying around me I couldn’t do anything about; the anger about my efforts going to the shitter because the government is as bad as the bioterrorists at this point 😭”
And less of a:
“I don’t matter, so what does it matter if I die?”
He knows he matters or deserves something, hence the “is this what my life is supposed to be?” line. But the pain of living is greater than his sense of duty, especially now that it pretty much is “for nothing” in his eyes.
One of the core things for Leon to get better, is indeed, to have reliable and consistent people who can actually help his situation (keep his alcoholism in check, help him to get out of the government’s grasp, convince him to get therapy, etc). Because he can have all the friends he wants, and not get any better.
But yeah, knowing Leon, I know that will defo give him a boost towards not being passively suicidal. Sadly, I don’t think his alcoholism and depression would get any better if Chris isn’t there consistently. And we don’t get to see that at all in Death Island, not even a hint of Leon getting help after Vendetta, or having Chris be something consistent, or anything at all, soooooo that’s a bummer.
In the end, I just hope that Leon’s story gets a proper ending, just the bare minimum of what actually needs to happen for Leon to do better. A passing line, anything to indicate he’s been actually working on himself to do better, or that people are consistently trying to be there for him. Not be there for him for a single mission, then a year later they see each other again, that isn’t exactly the consistency someone like him needs.
Capcom please, have common sense, I will explode 😭🙏
Also sorry if I didn’t get the point of what you were talking about, I am super sleep deprived 😅Hopefully I did tho :]! It’s fun to be able to discuss this stuff !
Haha I think we’re saying pretty much the same thing, just in slightly different ways 😂
The only note I have is with Chris– realistically him and Leon probably talk frequently behind the scenes. It’s heavily implied both in re6 and in Vendetta and due to Capcom’s refusal to show the characters outside of the field or give us any insight into their personal lives, it’s very easy to miss. But we do know they’re pretty close and with Chris having also struggled with alcoholism, I think his friendship and the stability and advice he could/would offer Leon would be crucial. There’s a lot of unknowns, and Capcom just being like “yeah he’s fine now his friends helped him” doesn’t really make that better, so we can only take what we know and go from there.
As far as the novel goes, it’s canon. I’m the one who translated it haha. It’s essentially a “director’s cut” of the movie and gives details that weren’t in the movie. There are definitely some parts of it that were like uhhh wtf (a lotttt of the Arias and Rebecca stuff for example), but… that’s just how the novel was written. I didn’t alter it or censor it in any way so the weirdness is completely on Capcom 😅.
I’ve been biting my tongue about this for a while now because I
don’t want people to misunderstand what this post is about and use it as
an incentive hate on Death Island, but the more I think about it, the
more it irritates me, and I think this is a very important discussion. I
loved Death Island, I really did. It has it’s flaws, but everything does,
and it was very enjoyable to watch. That being said, the fact that this
is supposed to be Jill’s movie and her subsequent return to the franchise, yet her character was sacrificed in a way that doesn’t sit right with me.
By this point, I’m sure most people who have seen this movie are aware of the hand-wavy, flimsy explanation for why Jill doesn’t look a day over 24 in 2015 despite it being 17 years since she last appeared the way she did in DI. And in addition to not physically looking any older, she’s wearing almost the exact same outfit too. Many people have called Capcom out for their laziness and refusal to treat women characters as well as they treat the men, but I’d argue this is even more egregious for Jill specifically. I think it’s important to understand that prior to the release of Death Island, she never had the slowed aging thing. It was never mentioned, never hinted at– nothing. It’s also important to note that Capcom’s official explanation is that the slowed aging comes from her exposure to the t-virus and how that affected the cell division of her DNA. She was infected with the t-virus back in 1998, but she appeared in other games after that and clearly having aged, so apart from just being a half-assed explanation from Capcom, it doesn’t even make sense with the pre-established lore. It’d be one thing if this done was to progress her character in some way– something for her to struggle with, a physical remind of her trauma, literally anything– but it serves no purpose for her as a character, rather it’s a means for Capcom to try to cover their asses.
We also know that the production staff had already prepared several age-appropriate models of Jill during the 3+ years of production leading up to Death Island’s release. The models appear to have been based on the actress Cara Delevingne.
In the booklet for Death Island, one of the staff interviews revealed that they were told to change Jill’s design, to scrap everything and make her look like she did in RE3R because Capcom higher-ups were worried that fans “wouldn’t like” a newer, “older” version of Jill– as if those same fans who were excited for her return didn’t plat Revelations and RE5 where Jill looks older than she does in Death Island.
In short, I think it’s very clear what they really meant. They were worried that male audiences wouldn’t find her attractive if she looked older than her early 20s so they recycled her design and botched her character for sake of making her have sex appeal for men. Everything about it, even down to the tank top, was specifically designed to make her attractive. They’d even tried to make the RE3R model look slightly older, which is still on the packaging for the DVD and the posters, but had to make her look even younger for the movie. I don’t think I need to explain any further to convey how completely ridiculous all of that is.
And as if all of that wasn’t bad enough, we get to the Licker scene. I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt– maybe Jill wearing a low-cut tank top on a mission and then the camera giving us a top-down view while a Licker’s tongue moves around her was just a coincidence– but no, Capcom put their foot in their mouth once again. Right there in the booklet for the movie, they revealed that the scene was intentionally sexual, and they wanted it to be even more sexual, but were instructed to “tone it down” some.
So there you have it everyone– Jill’s big return to the franchise! Even starring in her own movie, she’s not allowed to age past 24 for fear of her no longer being attractive, stuck in a low-cut tank top she’s been wearing since 1998, and felt-up by a tentacle while the camera gives us a view down her shirt, all for the sake of the male audience Capcom wanted to cater to. Apart from the blatant misogyny and ridiculousness of this whole situation, it’s irritating to see how far they fell with Jill. Let’s not forget that when her character was originally created back in 1996, they designed her specifically to combat the misogynistic tropes and sexualization that most other women characters faced in 90s video games.
I still enjoyed the movie, don’t get me wrong. I think she was fairly well written and they certainly didn’t skimp on letting her be badass and tough, but it’s still disappointing to see that her character design for this movie was seemingly heavily based on if she would be hot enough to men. It’d be one thing if they just gave her the anti-aging thing, but the blatant refusal to allow women characters to age and instead recycling their designs, including their clothes, is just irritating. Notice how Chris and Leon look older than they do in Vendetta despite it only having been a year, both get entirely new outfits as well. But Claire’s stuck in the red jacket she’s been wearing since 2006 and they didn’t even bother to alter her design from Infinite Darkness. Jill is forever 24 and Rebecca looks somehow younger in Death Island than she does in Vendetta. No one is campaigning for them to have “gray hair and wrinkles,” in their 30s and 40s, we’re campaigning for equal treatment and for them not to be diminished as characters for sake of appearing “sexy” to men. Women age too, and aging shouldn’t be treated like a bad thing, or something that makes someone less valuable. Let Jill be a milf.
Just saw someone say that Leon was toxic to Ada in RE4 remake and I'm? So confused? Acting a little coldly to someone who let you believe they were dead for six years is not toxic? He's a better person than me, that's for sure.
