| “ | Evolution has its dead ends. | „ |
| ~ Timothy Cain |
Major Timothy Cain is the main antagonist in the 2004 film Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Cain, as he is also called, is a retired US Army Major who went on to become a high-ranking employee of the Umbrella Corporation.
He is portrayed by Thomas Kretschmann who has also voiced Professor Z from Cars 2 and Wolfgang Von Strucker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Biography
Early life
Cain was once born in the Warsaw Pact-allied Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) under a different name in East Berlin, Germany. He, along with his siblings, emigrated to the United States of America at their father's behest, who also gave them new Anglicanized names and would beat them if they used their old German ones. Cain's childhood in the United States was filled with suffering, as while he learned fluent English fairly quickly, he spoke with a thick German accent, causing Cain to suffer bullying problems.
Time in the Army
Major Timothy "Able" Cain
On his eighteenth birthday, Cain immediately enlisted into the US Army and soon began serving and fighting in the deserts of Iraq during Operation: Desert Storm. It was here Cain felt more emotionally alive than he ever had, and soon gained remarkable skill and a reputation for success during military operations, which resulted in a promotion to Sergeant and gave him the nickname of "Able", due to Cain believing he had discovered life's secret; it was cheap.
After finishing his tour of duty, Cain gained his officer's commission and enlisted in OCS. After years as an officer, Cain reached the rank of Major.
Umbrella Corporation
Cain was approached by representatives from the Umbrella Corporation, who wished for Cain to become the new head of their Security Division. Cain agreed and left the US Army, but on the condition he retained his hard-earned rank.
Cain often preached efficiency and productiveness to his subordinates. While Cain gained the respect of his fellow soldiers, many others felt he was grossly incompetent, having no sense of collateral impact on decisions and was short-sighted. Nevertheless, Cain soon ascended to become both Umbrella North American Operations Director & Vice President in Charge of Operations, recommending his old friend from his Army days; James Shade, to replace him as head of Security Division.
Cain, now a high-ranking employee of Umbrella Corporation.
Cain used his success and obscene wealth to benefit his family. First, he bought his beloved father a house in Florida, secured his brother Michael a position as head of security at Umbrella's Chicago office (after being shot in the line of duty for the CPD and going slowly insane after his injuries got him reduced to desk-duty) and tracked the long missing second brother named Anthony down to a crack house and paid for his detox (though Anthony shortly afterwards committed suicide). When his sister Mary divorced her husband upon finding out he was cheating on her, Cain paid for one of Umbrella's high-priced lawyers to take him for all he was worth ("and then some"), and later tracked him down and murdered him in revenge.
Hive Incident
While at his office at Raccoon City, Cain received word from Shade, over an emergency line, that The Hive, the top-secret bio-weaponry development facility underground Raccoon, had shut-down and the Red Queen, the artificial-intelligence controlling the bunker, wasn't responding. Concerned for what was going on, Cain gave permission for Shade and his hand-picked commando team to enter the Hive, shut down the Red Queen and retrieve it's hard-drive and escape.
As it turned out, the T-Virus, Umbrella's greatest bioweapon, had escaped into the facility and the Red Queen killed all inside to prevent it from escaping. Shade and his team were all killed by a combination of Red Queen, zombies and a Licker. The only ones to escape the facility were Alice, a security operative he hand-picked, and an environmentalist named Matt Addison.
At the time, Cain and a large division of troops were at the Hive's emergency entrance, and Cain overheard the duo's plan to use a salvaged case of t-Virus samples as proof of Umbrella's illegal activities. At this, Cain had his troops overrun and capture the two.
Noticing Addison's mutation at exposure from the virus by the Licker, Cain ordered him and Alice placed in the Nemesis Program, under Cain's rival Samuel J. Isaacs.
Raccoon City Incident
Cain would then experience his greatest failure; at his direction, the Hive was unsealed, releasing zombies and Lickers into the city, and resulting in a catastrophic outbreak of the t-Virus. All efforts to contain the virus failed, and Umbrella sealed off the city in preparation for a nuclear strike. This did not bother Cain in the slightest, as he believed that life was cheap.
It was Cain who woke Alice and Addison, now known as Nemesis, and let them loose in the city, hoping to test them against one another. His plan was undermined by Dr. Charles Ashford, creator of the t-Virus, who enlisted the aid of the survivors in the city to recover his daughter. Although the two subjects engaged each other, there was no clear conclusion to the battle, with Cain finally ordering Nemesis to disengage.
It all came to a head at Raccoon City Hall. In order to convince Alice to fight Nemesis to the death, Cain shot Ashford down in cold blood. When Alice emerged as the victor, Cain tried to convince her to become a part of his plans. When she refused, he ordered Nemesis to kill her.
It was not to be. Matt Addison regained control of his mutated body and the two bioweapons, along with Jill Valentine, Carlos Olivera, and Lloyd Jefferson Wayne began assaulting the Umbrella forces gathered there. Cain then fled to the helicopter, ordering the missile to be fired. He then asks the pilot why the helicopter hadn't taken off yet, to which LJ was revealed to be in the pilot's seat and punches Cain in the face, causing him to fall to the floor. The battle ended with Nemesis being crushed under a helicopter, and the survivors fleeing on a stolen helicopter. Cain tried to bargain for his life, remarking that killing him would not put things right. Alice responded that it wouldn't, but it was a start, and threw him out of the helicopter.
Death
Cain fell to the ground and broke his leg on impact, leaving him incapacitated and at the mercy of the undead, who surrounded and marched towards him. With a nuclear strike moments away, Cain knew he was going to die, but was determined to do so on his own terms. Initially he tried firing a retrieved gun at the approaching zombies, succeeding in killing one, but quickly realized that resistance was pointless. In an attempt to spare himself a painful death at the hands of the zombie horde, Cain put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger only for it to dry-click, having run out of ammo.
In an act of poetic justice, the first zombie to bite Cain was the last person that he'd killed: Ashford, having reanimated due to either the t-Virus in the air, or the possible t-Virus in his body, meant to restore his handicap like it restored his daughter's. As the zombie horde dogpiled on top of him and slowly ate him alive, Cain came to realize that life was precious, and not cheap, and at the same time, came to see just how cheap he'd allowed his life to become.
Legacy
The events Cain had set in motion led to the Global T-Virus outbreak; the nuclear strike on Raccoon City did not stop the virus, and it spread throughout the entire planet, drying up lakes and streams, reducing forests to deserts, and infecting humans and animals alike. Within five years, the vast majority of the Earth itself is little more than a barren wasteland, and only slightly over a million humans remain uninfected. For this, Isaacs regarded Cain as "the man who single-handedly destroyed the world.".
Gallery
Trivia
- Producer Paul W.S. Anderson wrote an alternate ending that was never filmed in the movie. The ending involves Cain actually surviving the zombies and nuclear blast by escaping through the sewers leading outside the Raccoon City limits. He would be called and told that Alice had escaped the Umbrella Detroit facility. The scene would then skip to Cain cleaned and talking to Umbrella executives, telling them he will find Alice. He leaves his office and enters his limo, pulls out his laptop and tracks Alice via POV. The POV would show Alice walking towards the limo. She would enter it and kill him while the limo drives away. The ending was scrapped due to the highly unlikely advantages he would make it through the horde of zombies eating him and having time to run into the sewers before the nuclear blast.