Synergy in Resident Evil Media

I wish to discuss convergence within transmedia storytelling using synergy. According to Henry Jenkins, synergy is important to a given story through different media platforms to convey a complete story; or better defined by Wikipedia as “two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently.” On page 107 of his chapter Searching for the Origami Unicorn, Jenkins says “While the technological infrastructure is ready, the economic prospects sweet, and the audience primed, the media industries haven’t done a very good job of collaborating to produce compelling transmedia experiences.” This is very true to my favorite franchise: Resident Evil. Although it is a great franchise, the different media platforms simply do not add up to a complete story.

For a quick overview, Resident Evil is a story about a virus that was created by the Umbrella Corporation that created horrible monsters and ravenous zombies. Main characters were made to survive in situations where enemy numbers were high, ammunition was low, and the characters had to uncover the truth about the evil Umbrella Corporation. Although most of the video games and all of the movies have been touted as huge successes, there have been many examples of how the different media platforms did not contribute to the overall storyline with much of the franchise becoming non-canon.

The movies make no attempt to follow the storyline set in place by the original games; instead, they create their own storyline which is completely independent and use characters differently, such as Chris being a member of the military instead of being Raccoon City STARS team captain, or create entirely new characters as is the case with the main protagonist Alice. Same for some of the enemies like Nemesis, who was created for the second movie by experimenting on a survivor named Matt from the first movie, despite the game making no mention of this scenario. The books are also regarded as highly non-canon. They were created by an independent author who did not collaborate with the game creators; because of this lack of collaboration, the books tend to alter the storyline with events that are never mentioned in the main story of the games and make connections between characters that resemble more fan fiction than actual franchise storytelling.

Although Resident Evil is one of my all time favorite stories, I would have to admit it is a poor transmedia convergence. I do believe it is still a great story and if there would have been better corroboration between the Media platforms to create a more complete story like in The Matrix; Resident Evil could have been an even better franchise with a lot stronger following.