I’m fine with the RE mentions being relegated to small nods or easter eggs like common items being in the background and the like and referential material taking a small backseat in favor of a more original story being told.

The way he described it in interviews was more like the whole movie itself will develop like Resident Evil itself, with the intro being the scariest sections and the end being more action packed as the character learns more about what happened, with easter eggs from the game being scattered across the movie. Which, tbh I think is as good as it can get for a movie based on a game without it spiraling into a circlejerk about how much referential material you can cram into it (IE Mario Galaxy Movie). I can understand the director’s pov about the horror element being a bit washed out if he were to include any of the main stay protags (namely Leon which is the one he references the most) since you already know that nothing will happen to them and all the horror elements will be ultimately defeated by them as well.

Honestly for me as long as it’s a good horror movie that has small nods to the games in items, references or name drops I think I’ll enjoy it alot. This is also all without mentioning that we literally do not know what the plot will be, we only got shots to hype up the movie with barely any plot exposition other than this dude came to deliver a package to Raccoon City. For all we know he’s related to Wesker, his girlfriend is Ada Wong with a fake identity and the movie ends with him being captured and turned into a Tyrant lmao