Resident Evil - Virgin Vampire Wine Mom vs Chad Magnetic Lebowski

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Zenos Yae Viator said:
its happened to worse characters, but usually in more light toned stories, like Vegeta.
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Any character who is shown to possess some kind of humanity is capable of redemption.

A character like Vegeta was able to be redeemed once you had him begging Goku to avenge the Saiyan race as he lay dying, whereas prior it wasn't narratively possible since Vegeta hadn't shown any signs of caring for anyone or anything else. Once you humanise someone like that, it kind of becomes impossible for a writer to not make them morally grey at the very least because very rarely do people do evil acts without some form of moral rationalisation. Edit: In the movie, "Look who's back," they took any possibility of Hitler being redeemed by taking away one of his most well-known "human" aspects: his love of animals. They do this by having him shoot a dog relatively early, thus removing any possibility of Hitler becoming "good" by modern standards. Ironically, Vegeta's humanising love for his people thus qualifying him for redemption would've qualified Hitler for redemption narratively because any show of "love," the most human and empathetic of emotions, puts your foot in the door for a redemption arc.

Spencer feels so weird to redeem because his show of humanity (adopting baby Grace) and redemption (Elpis) all occur within the span of 10 minutes. "Unconvincing redemptions" are a thing you can look up and receive a list of them because it's a semi-frequent occurrence in badly written stories. A somewhat recent example of this is Kylo Ren, where, similar to Spencer, hus show of humanity and subsequent redemption all occur within the span of 5 to 10 minutes.

People can change, but you can't flip a switch and suddenly reorient someone's entire moral structure, which is the issue with Spencer's redemption because it feels like that. Nowhere in any other game did Spencer show any regret, remorse, or restitution—he was a crazy old man who wanted to make cool BOWs and become a god.

Thinking about it, I don't recall whether or not Resident Evil has even tried to do "morally grey" before, or a redemption arc. The most we see is good people unaware to the true extent of the evil they work for (Mercenaries in Resi 3, Ada Wong in general), mind control (Jill RE5, The Baker family RE7). Maybe Heisenberg in RE8, but he still wanted to be evil, just not evil under Mother Mirander.
 
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>IMPLYING said:
he was a crazy old man who wanted to make cool BOWs and become a god.
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Just the last part, he never gave a fuck about BOWs, the virus was always entirely for transhumanism for him, initially he was willing to sell viral agents as weapons to the US Government because the Progenitor Virus was likely capable of being made to just straight up kill people like a mega-Influenza, but Marcus found it could be weakened and stablized with Leech DNA, making the T-Virus, which was utilized and pushed to make weapons by Birkin, by this point, Spencer was long since out of control over his own Company as he was already fucking old as shit by the 90's It wasn't really by his hand shit like Hunters, Tyrants ect were created, the Racoon City Incident was entirely inter-company politics gone awry, and also Ada honeypotting "John", and finally Birkin getting properly paranoid, because they really were out to get him.

He is absolutely culpable for all that, and evil as fuck, and to me.. irredeemable, but its nice he at least attempted to right some of his wrongs.. remember, all of his "good" actions come decades after his death, it isn't like he gets any sort of Kudos in life, he'd still be excuted for his crimes regardless, but this does humanize him and highlight that Spencer's motives and actions and the evil of Umbrella aren't a perfect circle on the Venn Diagram.
 
Zenos Yae Viator said:
He is absolutely culpable for all that, and evil as fuck, and to me.. irredeemable, but its nice he at least attempted to right some of his wrongs.. remember, all of his "good" actions come decades after his death, it isn't like he gets any sort of Kudos in life, he'd still be excuted for his crimes regardless, but this does humanize him and highlight that Spencer's motives and actions and the evil of Umbrella aren't a perfect circle on the Venn Diagram.
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A lot of rich assholes decide to do something crazy when they realize they have been rich assholes their whole life and make amends. Look at Fordlandia for a fun example. He tried making American suburbia in the Amazon.
 
TV's Adam West said:
A lot of rich assholes decide to do something crazy when they realize they have been rich assholes their whole life and make amends. Look at Fordlandia for a fun example. He tried making American suburbia in the Amazon.
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Yea but in this case Spencer isn't just Rich, he's a Royal, and he set out from like, his early youth to try and uplift humanity into godlike evolution, him living through WW2 and the Cold War convinced him humanity was doomed, and Miranda convinced him humans could be evolved through an infectious agent.

While he did rubber stamp and approve all the BOWs, its likely he never really gave a fuck beyond their use in procuring funds for more research into transhumanism, don't get me wrong, Spencer absolutely killed people by the buttloads to keep everything tidy and "loose ends tied up", but none of this was supposed to spill into the "real world" and wipe out Cities he paid for.
 
Zenos Yae Viator said:
Yea but in this case Spencer isn't just Rich, he's a Royal, and he set out from like, his early youth to try and uplift humanity into godlike evolution, him living through WW2 and the Cold War convinced him humanity was doomed, and Miranda convinced him humans could be evolved through an infectious agent.

While he did rubber stamp and approve all the BOWs, its likely he never really gave a fuck beyond their use in procuring funds for more research into transhumanism, don't get me wrong, Spencer absolutely killed people by the buttloads to keep everything tidy and "loose ends tied up", but none of this was supposed to spill into the "real world" and wipe out Cities he paid for.
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Still not redeemable.
 
Ly Erg said:
Spencer's "redemption" has the same amount of bullshit as a Youtuber Apology video.
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I mean he did actual things rather than talk about it, he also never asks for redemption, never promotes what he's doing and it MIGHT actually all just be a big Fuck You to all the Scientists who failed to make him a god.
 
It's also worth pointing out that Grace's own post-game records mention that Spencer is unlikely to be considered redeemed for what he did, more that he simply threw out a fix for his mess.

Yeah it should have had more, actual focus in the narrative, but the writers were aware of it at least. I'm reminded of one of the few things I liked in Star Wars' EU, where Vader's redemption was purely in the eyes of Luke: he remained a monster in the eyes of the galaxy.
 
I Prefer my villains to have conviction, Zenos, the character I made my profile named after, killed buttloads of people, destroyed his own nation, almost destroyed the world, all so he could get the cool duel with his rival, incidentally saved the Universe to get it, then died, utterly convinced it was the meaning of his entire existence, and that all of it was worth it.
 
Coldgrip said:
I give it 50/50 odds they try to give Irons a tragic backstory.
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they would have already tried that in the remake, which only made him look even worse, adding Pedo shit to his list.

HOnestly almost every Resident Evil villain are comically evil, Spencer is the only one to get any sort of hubris in his arc, Carla Radames in a distant 2nd, as at least you can kind of understand why she went insane, though she was morally empty before getting Caccoon'd.
 
The dumbest part of 9's ending is "when"? When was the cure made? It was made in a lab in the center of racoon city that nobody went anywhere near after the events of 3? What? How?
Zenos Yae Viator said:
they would have already tried that in the remake, which only made him look even worse, adding Pedo shit to his list.
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This never happened and he was already a rapist in the original.
 
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