Michelle Rodriguez discusses her return to "Resident Evil: Retribution"
Michelle Rodriguez has dipped her toes in plenty of franchises, but she doesn't always get out alive. She died on "Lost," she died in "Avatar," she was killed in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise, and yes, her character Rain Ocampo got killed in the first of the "Resident Evil" movies. So how, the, is Ocampo reuniting with director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich for "Resident Evil: Retribution," the fifth film in the series, which is due out in September? Good question, and one that Rodriguez, ever boisterous, did her best to deflect when asked by journalists at this year's Comic-Con.
Upcoming-Movies.com: So, what's it like being back?
Michelle Rodriguez: I love it!
It's been awhile since you've been in this franchise, right?
Michelle Rodriguez: Ten years.
Yeah, what's changed in terms of the experience?
Michelle Rodriguez: Everybody's married with kids and like, you know, people aren't partying anymore and everybody has grown up.
You don't sound bitter at all.
Michelle Rodriguez: Well, you know, I'm the slow evolutionary process. I like to take my time growing.
How was the experience different from the first time around to this one?
Michelle Rodriguez: It was kind of like I just came back and it felt like, you know, we were doing the first one, really. With the exception of everybody being adult and all nowadays. Other than that, man, everything felt so familiar, you know? We've got pretty cool kinetic energy. I mean like we flow. There's no politics behind Milla and Paul. Like what you see is what you get and that's the kind of person I am. There are no veils with me. I'm pretty much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person, so we get along really well, which is kind of tough to find in Hollywood, you know. I've only had like a few productions where that kind of flow you get, you know. I'm grateful.
So what do you make of this whole Comic-Con experience?
Michelle Rodriguez: I love the weirdoes, man. These guys get mad at me because I like stop every five seconds to take a new picture. With something like a dog licking my face on top of a motorcycle or somebody walking around in his underwear. It's cool. I love Comic-Con. If you don't keep the imagination alive, man, we're all doomed.
You always do a lot of training for your movies, so did you do anything that was different on this or was it just sort of like --?
Michelle Rodriguez: Nothing exciting. Nothing extraordinary. I mean, I had one fighting sequence because see my character split up with her personality. There's the good aspect of her and then there's the negative one. Good bad Rain. So, you know, when I am bad Rain it's half the time, so that personality is the one that gets all the fighting sequences in and she's limited with that. There is a massive sequence at the end and that's the only thing that I had to train for and it only took two weeks, so it wasn't anything strenuous.
What kind of training was it?
Michelle Rodriguez: It was mostly lots of kicking and punching and, you know, all the wire work I wasn't allowed to do myself because I'm not Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan, wah wah wah. Or Milla. Because she's been doing this for like how long, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm new to the wire work stuff. I mean, the last time I did wire work was running on top of a gas truck for "Fast and Furious," and that doesn't involve doing spin kicks. You know what I mean?
So, what exactly – in this movie, what do you do?
Michelle Rodriguez: Ha ha. Wouldn't you like to know?
You've got to give us something. How are you alive?
Michelle Rodriguez: How am I alive? How blatant and to the point.
Did they show your character dead? Or were you just hurt for the first one?
Michelle Rodriguez: Are you kidding me? I got shot in the head, dude. And not only did I get shot in the head in the first one, the bullet went through my head, and wait, there's a splat seconds later through the other side. So that's why the split personality, the brain has been split. There you go. You are just hating me right now. Right through the pineal gland and right through the pituitary, it just split that sucker right in half.
How does one survive that?
Michelle Rodriguez: Exactly. And that's the question that is going to be answered when that film premieres. Baboom!
Let me ask you this: Are you satisfied with the explanation, and does it make sense to you, within the world of the film?
Michelle Rodriguez: Yeah. Definitely. Definitely yes. It makes sense to me. A lot of sense. The speed up as of to which the process occurs makes sense because it's been ten years, you know what I mean? And since it doesn't have a time frame and all this other technology exists and all these other ideas exist there is a possibility there, somewhere. Stop trying to dig it out of me.
No, no. It's got to have something that makes sense within the world at the moment and that's what I mean.
Michelle Rodriguez: Of course and it does. In my eyes, yes.
You are in the entire movie though? Can you at least say that? Or do you just show up and you're there? You're not going to give us anything?
Michelle Rodriguez: I almost made this mistake once with "Avatar" and they almost chewed my head off.
How about this, was there a good memory on the set that you think you'll always remember about this film, without giving anything away? Just something fun that happened?
Michelle Rodriguez: You know what, I just, I love the idea of being in Tokyo. I love the idea of seeing Moscow. I love the idea of walking in all of these realms and getting to see the zombies within these realms -- different cultural versions of the same virus. That was really great. And when you see the action sequences you're going to be like, in 3D, I mean, it's going to be – I think it's going to be more of a ride than you sitting there trying to listen to a story, you know what I mean?
Can you give us any spoilers for "Fast and Furious?"
Michelle Rodriguez: Absolutely none. I haven't even really gotten the story yet. So until I get a script that I can agree to do, I don't really know what that's all about yet.