[Credit: Box Office Mojo]

Scott Pilgrim is a fantastic movie packed with video game references and worked on many levels. It made $30 million (half of its production budget) in a month and is already out of most theaters.

Machete is a fun, ridiculous action film that developed an Internet cult following due to Robert Rodriguez’ fake trailer in Grindhouse. It made $20 million over 10 days.

Resident Evil: Afterlife is a giant piece of crap that doesn’t work as an action movie, doesn’t work as a horror movie, certainly doesn’t work as a video game movie, and has almost nothing to do with the video game series from which it takes its name. It made more than $27 million in its opening weekend.

Not much more can be said.

[This review has spoilers.]

I’m not a huge Resident Evil fan. I honestly haven’t played through any of the games. I enjoyed Paul W.S. Anderson’s first movie, and even found Resident Evil: Apocalypse somewhat enjoyable. I have no emotional investment in Capcom’s survival horror franchise at all. That said, Resident Evil: Afterlife is the most offensive movie I’ve seen this year. Oh, it’s bad.

It’s Wing Commander movie bad.

It’s Double Dragon movie bad.

It’s Uwe Boll bad.

I know Resident Evil 4 is only 5 years old. It still deserves its place as this week’s Friday Flashback for a very simple fact: it would be a far, far better purchase than a ticket to see Resident Evil: Afterlife. Currently Amazon has Resident Evil 4 for the Wii for just $12, and the PS2 version for just $10. Depending on where you live, that’s the cost of a movie ticket, or a movie ticket and some soda and popcorn. If you were planning to go see Resident Evil Afterlife this weekend, don’t. Use that money to get this great game instead.

And yes, a review for that cinematic debacle I witnessed this evening will be coming, very soon.

MTV Multiplayer recently posted a short interview Rob Pardo, the EVP of Game Design over at Blizzard about the progress of the World of WarCraft movie. “We’re still super excited about it,” he says, “but it’s still in that story-development phase.”

The World of WarCraft movie is based in the WarCraft universe, the setting of the strategy trilogy and wildly popular MMO. Coming from Legendary Pictures, the movie was first announced in 2006 and Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead and Spider-Man fame, attached to direct last year. Having just released massively critically and financially successful StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, MTV asked if the other Blizzard properties would be coming to the silver screen as well.

“We’ve always had an interest in seeing our stuff on film or TV,” Pardo replied. “It’s just tricky to find the right partners. We probably could have made a ['StarCraft'] movie or something on TV years and years ago, but it’s really important to us that we find creative people that are really talented but also really excited about our properties. That’s always been the challenge for us. I think if Jim Cameron came to us tomorrow and said, ‘You want to make a ‘StarCraft’ movie?’ we’d probably sign that … That’s why we did the ‘WoW’ movie. We were really excited about being involved with Legendary Pictures, who we thought had a really good track record with these sorts of movies that would make sense for our franchises.”

It’s interesting to note that the WoW film is currently in development hell, with few people actually expecting it to go anywhere. That being said, maybe in a few years people will stop attaching such a stigma to films related to video games. Yes, I’m referring to Scott Pilgrim.

If you like video games, you’re going to love Scott Pilgrim.

If you like comic books, you’re going to love Scott Pilgrim.

If you’re a child of the 80′s, you’re going to love Scott Pilgrim.

And in all of those cases, you’re probably going to look at your own life through a bittersweet lens after the credits roll. This review doesn’t have any big spoilers, but it looks deep into the movie’s themes, so buckle up.

On the surface, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (based on graphic novel series of the same name) is an action-comedy-romance with heavy use of video game references and effects. Imagine if Kevin Smith (at least, Kevin Smith in the 90′s) teamed up with Suda 51 to make a romantic comedy. You probably caught the gist of the film through the commercials and the trailer: Toronto resident and career slacker Scott Pilgrim has to fight seven evil exes to be able to date the girl he’s fallen in love with. That’s pretty much the concept.