messiah figure: the paschal mystery in resident evil trilogy

The Resident Evil trilogy tells the saga of a universal soldier-like woman who got experimented on for her blood’s capacity to bond with a virus that caused the near extinction of the human race and the entire world. In the inaugural installment, she was an amnesiac who must defeat the virus before it spread outside a hidden facility and into the world. In the sequel subtitled Apocalypse, she got infected by the virus but miraculously survived, mutating into an extraordinary slayer of the undead. In the final installment subtitled Extinction, she continued her mission of wiping out the zombie population while a convoy of the remaining humans traversed the desert in search of an uninfected region. This woman, Alice, is the messianic figure in all three films since her sufferings and eventual reawakening parallel Christ’s passion and subsequent resurrection.
In the trilogy, Alice was shown to suffer by means of her loss of memory owing to a nerve gas attack in the secret facility called The Hive. With only a few time left to remember who she was and what her mission was before the mutated humans devoured the surviving people, Alice struggled to recover her memories in order to quarantine the virus before it infected the outside world. Also, when she got contaminated by the virus herself, she was experimented on in order to ascertain the reason for her immunity. She found herself connected to tubes no less than the animals being studied in the laboratory. Finally, when she got cloned a hundredfold, her clones were made to endure test battles with zombies as well as survival stints against machines and lasers. Because the clones were Alice herself, she could not help but somehow experience the same predicaments as those of the copies. She had even lost her privacy because a tracking device enabled her locators to find her whereabouts.
While the sufferings of Alice would pale compared to those of Christ’s, the uncanny similarity of their purpose for such anguish is noteworthy. Alice’ physical and psychological torture could not come close to the physical and spiritual agony experienced by Christ. Nonetheless, they had to put up with these sufferings for what would turn out to be comparable messianic missions. Much like Christ who had to die via crucifixion in order to save the world, Alice had to be laboratory tested and cloned in order to discover what in her body can provide link to human survival against the T-virus. While God the Father had chosen the anguish that Christ eventually accepted, Alice was reluctant over her own since circumstances threw her onto the path of zombie wasteland as well as onto the experimenting laboratory of experts. While Christ had to die as a consequence of his sacrifice, Alice only had to submit her body to inhuman treatments such that her worst sufferings included amnesia, experimentation and cloning. Alice’ agony might not equal the extreme castigation Christ had undergone, but having only one possession to herself that’s her body, her suffering is all the same a great sacrifice that sanctifies her for the act of love involved, especially that her body must survive in order to save what remains alive in her dying world.
While Christ had to undergo literal resurrection after his self-sacrifice, Alice only had to recollect snatches from her memory, survive her viral infection and reclaim her self-control after undergoing her trials. Like the Christ who had to return to life in order to fulfill the prophecy of world’s salvation, Alice had to survive the death of her memory, of her immunity and of her unique personality to fulfill the mission of the virus spread tantamount to the world’s salvation. When she woke up from her amnesia, she tried to piece back her memory in order to stop the virus from leaking out of The Hive. In Part 2 wherein she gained superpower after getting immunity from the virus, Alice began to kill the undead in order to save the rest of humanity from getting bitten and becoming zombies themselves. In part 3 wherein she got cloned, Alice and her first successfully alive clone made a parting shot that all the Alices will be coming for the enemies. While the Alice before and after was essentially the same brilliant woman, the renewed Alice had gained superpowers and had realized a mission to save what’s left of the world with the few humans around. Since Alice practically rescued the convoy of remaining humans from the attack of zombies, they regarded her as Messiah of their lives. The universal soldier that Alice was affected the world by assuring it that she could be a dependable savior.
By creating a Messiah figure in the character of Alice, the writer and the director could have intentionally wove the Paschal mystery in the film. This can be supported by the fact that the original videogame did not have Alice as a character. In the film, the character Alice was created presumably because in the world about to go extinct, only someone extraordinary enough could have the ability to save it. This Messiah figure had to undergo Christ-like sacrifices and revival to put forth the rationale for her existence as a savior. Like Jesus Christ’s Paschal Mystery which shows the triumph over death for the prophetic fulfillment of world redemption, Alice’ renewal of her self in the trilogy manifests her necessary survival that the world may survive too. The resident evil must be extinguished, and that’s why there was the renewed Alice.