Betty (Ashanti) tries her
hand at extreme
birdwatching.EXTINCTION (2007)
THE BIRD ATTACK
Alice and her fellow survivors attempt to
cross the Mojave desert to reach
sanctuary in Alaska. The film’s stand-out
set-piece plays like an undead remix of
The Birds with added flamethrowers, as
the convoy battles a swarm of zombie
ravens. It concludes with Alice, now with
telekinetic powers, frying the feathered
monsters in a spectacular skyfire...
Anderson: Each Resident Evil has its own
identity. The original is a haunted-house horror,
the second is Escape From New York with
zombies. For Extinction, I wanted to show the
effects of the T-virus on the planet, so putting
Alice in a desolate, abandoned world was perfect.
I love Mad Max, and there hadn’t been a
post-apocalyptic movie for years. Getting Russell
Mulcahy to direct was a fanboy’s dream. He used
the same sweeping crane shots he perfected in
Highlander for that crow sequence.
Bolt: We shot just outside Mexicali, near Tijuana,
in Northern Mexico. We built Las Vegas on a
deserted dune-buggy track. The heat was insane:
55 degrees in the shade. My main worry was the
crew drinking too much tequila, but the big
problem wasn’t the crows: it was the rattlesnakes.
We’d come in every morning and there’d be snake
tracks all across the set. We had snake-catchers
constantly on call, armed with buckets and sticks.
Jovovich: They didn’t tell me about the
rattlesnakes! That was a gruelling shoot. There
were sandstorms, the cameras kept breaking
down in the heat, and I had to do wirework in the
desert wearing a big coat and boots [Jovovich
designed Alice’s costume herself]. The zombie
extras were sweltering but poor Russell got
dehydrated and passed out on set — he ended up
in hospital for a week.
Anderson: You can’t do a Resident Evil movie
series without the game’s crows. Obviously we
watched The Birds. It’s interesting. Hitchcock
realised birds just aren’t scary in an urban
environment. The eeriest scenes are when they’re
in a sparse, empty landscape, so the bleak desert
setting is really effective. There was talk of
remaking The Birds at the time. I heard later
that Extinction stuck it to them with that
ive-minute sequence.
Bolt: The bird swarm and skyire were all CG: we
only used two real birds on set. No crows were
harmed during the making of that movie. And,
I hasten to add, no rattlesnakes.