How Every Second of RE:5 Could Have Been Better With Claire

Well, that's a good question, Alice. Neither Redfield is in Resident Evil: Retribution. Personally, though I like Chris well enough, I was prepared for him to be gone. But Claire has, at this point, been in two consecutive RE movies, and an informal poll of no-seriously everyone I know says that she's a fan favorite. The Alice/Claire match-up is pretty much perfect.

So in this series of screencaps from RE: Retribution, I'm going to detail the many places where the movie would have been vastly improved by Claire's presence. I know what the title says, but taking a screencap of every second of the movie would have been excessive.

It will document almost the entire movie. Spoilers, in other words.

Skipping the requisite "It's an Alice clone" scene, where it wouldn't make sense for Claire to be because Alice-clones don't have a Claire (which is arguably why they're not as good), Alice escapes from her torture cell and stumbles upon this familiar Tokyo scene - we saw this, sans Alice, in a previous movie.

Alice stands around in the rain, staring in bewilderment at all the people. Claire would not have been standing there like a derp. Claire would have kept Alice moving and they would have been away from the crosswalk when the simulation started.

Here, Alice finds the control room, and sees the guns. She then throws her pistol away before she reaches the other guns. Claire would never take her hand off her weapon.

After we meet Ada Wong - more on that later - Wesker then confronts Alice via television. Alice throws her knife at the television, a totally futile action that leaves her unarmed. Claire would have a) already had most of those gun on her person somehow, and b) been like, "Dude, Alice, if you don't like this show we can turn it off."

Luckily Ada turns out to be an ally. With Claire, Alice doesn't need luck, because: Claire.

They have to walk through several simulations in order to reach the rendezvous point. Alice meets a familiar foe:

Actually, two of them. You will remember (because it was the best thing ever) that Claire and Alice killed one of these together in RE:4, in what was the action movie equivalent of a wedding. What is Ada's response to these monsters?

To totally separate herself from Alice and then scramble around like a pansy inside a bus. The monster is like, Hey, I have this giant can opener. Alice has to defeat the monsters basically by herself. Ada magically appears at the end of the fight like, "Oh, hey, I'm useful," but really she isn't at all.

In this simulation, where we watched Alice-clone earlier, Alice has seen motion in this house. So they go in to check it out. Neither one of them has their weapon ready. Claire would have been in full-on SWAT mode.

They find Becky (Alice-clone's Daughter-clone) and Ada argues with Alice about whether or not to take her with them. Claire would never have wasted time arguing this decision. Claire has experience rescuing civilians.

So Ada wastes time being heartless, and there's an ambush waiting for them outside. Ada then has to apparently sacrifice herself in order for Alice to escape with Becky. If Claire had been there instead of Ada, all three of them would have run out the back door to begin with and it wouldn't even be an issue.

Becky is Deaf. Alice inexplicably knows sign language. Here's the thing: if it had been Claire who knew sign language, I totally would have bought it. Claire has useful skills and a past in the real, human world. Alice is, at this point, possibly a second or third generation clone with some kind of memory transfer from the original Umbrella Head of Security Alice (question not answered: is there even an original Alice, or were they all made by Umbrella? What about Rain, Oliveras, etc?). Alice has no reason to have learned sign language before now. Maybe Claire had a Deaf best friend in college or something.

So then they meet Rain-clone (the good one) - actually Alice-clone and Becky interacted with her earlier, but OUR Alice meets her for the first time. I feel these next three images speak for themselves:

There is just no possible way Claire would be that ridiculous. THERE ARE ZOMBIES, RAIN. GUN CONTROL MEANS NOT EVER PUTTING YOUR GUN DOWN.

So Alice has to leave Becky in the hands of this nincompoop, and go and get the rest of the good guys, who are bogged down in a Moscow simulation. Alice drives up in a car, smashes a giant licker, and then actually has to tell them to get in the car.

Claire would already have had her seatbelt fastened.

Then as they're escaping, being pursued by more Las Plagas zombies, Alice actually has to ask the dudes in the back seat to start shooting the zombies.

No, seriously. Look:

Alice is surrounded by incompetence.

Somehow, Rain-clone manages to hide successfully with Becky, and they all proceed towards escaping. Rain-clone carries her machine gun like it's a handbag.

And then when they're all clearly bracing themselves for some kind of shit to go down, Rain-clone lets this happen to Becky:

Which, I mean I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure Claire would have at least moved them both to the side so they weren't such a massive, delicious looking target.

So then, ostensibly of shame, Rain-clone dies in easily the most pathetic way possible, by being swatted like a bug and hitting the column in such a way that her neck breaks. Claire would never die like that. Ever.

Alice is also not very sad when Luther tells her Rain-clone is dead. I believe this to be because she can't believe how pathetic it is, either.

So then Alice has to go and get Becky, because Rain-clone lost her, which as mentioned would not have happened if Claire was there instead. And I was so upset by all the lack of Claire that I neglected to take screencaps of the final fight scene showdown, except for this before scene, where Alice is taking a nap. Claire would never have allowed them to relax:

So then they get Jill Valentine back, which is AWESOME, except she's not Claire and she lets Wesker separate them from each other so he can reinfect Alice.

Personally, I never bought that Alice was totally uninfected, because she's a little too awesome for a human, but Claire would totally have been shooting that whole place up the second they were like, "Nope, sorry, only Alice can come into this room with a person who has totally tried to kill her before."

All I can say is that RE:6 had better have Claire back.