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Leon S. Kennedy

Leon Scott Kennedy is a character in Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. He was introduced as one of the two player characters in the video game Resident Evil 2 (1998), alongside Claire Redfield. During the events of Resident Evil 2, Leon is a rookie police officer who arrives in the doomed Raccoon City late for his first day on the job and is confronted by a zombie outbreak.

Leon is the protagonist of several Resident Evil games, novelizations, and films and has also appeared in other game franchises, including Project X Zone and Dead by Daylight. He appears in the CG animated films and in the animated miniseries. In later games, such as the remakes of Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 4 (2023), his features were based on Romanian model Eduard Badaluta. Several actors have portrayed Leon, including Johann Urb and Avan Jogia, in the live-action Resident Evil films.

Video game publications have described Leon as among the most popular and iconic video game characters, and he ranks consistently as a fan favorite character of the franchise. Both his personality in Resident Evil 4 and his redesign in the remakes have been highly praised, which also further enhanced the sex appeal of the fetishized character.

Concept and design

Leon Kennedy is an American of Italian descent. He was conceived as one of the two lead characters (alongside Claire Redfield) for Resident Evil 2, as the development staff wanted the game to star characters who had no experience with terrifying situations rather than returning and experienced protagonists. Although director Hideki Kamiya preferred the "blunt, tough-guy type", he created Leon as "someone with weaknesses" in order to set him apart and take the game in a different direction from Chris Redfield and the first Resident Evil. While Leon was originally designed as a veteran police officer, he was changed to a rookie after the original version of Resident Evil 2 (also known as Resident Evil 1.5) had been scrapped. Leon's characterization was further revised by new story writer Noboru Sugimura. Leon's appearance was designed by Capcom artist Isao Ohishi.

In the manual for the original version of Resident Evil 2, Leon is explained as being late to his job due to a fight with his girlfriend, which Kamiya later said was based on Kamiya's own life. In Resident Evil 2, Leon has an ambiguous romance with Ada Wong, which has been further explored in later entries, starting with Resident Evil 4. Makoto Kamiya initially wanted the film Resident Evil: Damnation to follow the dysfunctional romance between Leon and Ada, but that idea was scrapped. For the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake, Leon's design was adjusted to better match the more photorealistic setting; for example, Leon no longer wears large shoulder pads, which were added to distinguish his original, low-polygon model. The story is continued in Resident Evil 4, where Ada saves Leon's life multiple times. The "Separate Ways" DLC also emphasizes how Leon and Ada are similar to one another; they both arrive at this location with a task, but after contracting an infection and developing an emotional bond with other characters (Ashley Graham and Luis Sera), both characters become much more intertwined. Kamiya was surprised at how popular Leon had become and enjoyed his evolution into a "really cool looking guy" for Resident Evil 4, adding that he "fell in love all over again." In a documentary explaining the conception of the game's characters, it was stated that Leon was intended to "look tougher, but also cool". Designer Masaki Yamanaka explained the change as being due to the experience he has gained since Resident Evil 2. He was made to look more muscular, but Yamanaka did not want him "too buffed out". His face was modeled after the game's animation department director, Christian Duerre. The remake of Resident Evil 4 emphasized Leon's experience and ability to show how he had changed between games. He can also now parry and dodge attacks, as well as do roundhouse kicks or suplexes. Before the release of the game, Capcom released a promotional anime of the Resident Evil Masterpiece Theater, which depicted the story of Leon and Ashley.

The biggest issue director Yasuhiro Seto of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles faced as he went from early drafts to the finished scenario was how to show Leon in the game. Leon has starred in two Resident Evil films, Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Degeneration, following his appearance in Resident Evil 2. Instead of just reproducing Resident Evil 2 word for word, they sought to reimagine Leon's first adventure while taking into consideration modern expectations, as the game was released more than ten years ago. With Leon, writer Shōtarō Suga has already written a script for Degeneration. He has made an effort to make Leon's adventures in Raccoon City more in line with the "resourceful special-agent". Resident Evil 6's producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, took a liking to Leon and decided to include him in the game since "he is central to the story." Leon's eventual inclusion led to making his story more horror-based than those of the rest of the cast and gave a sense of incompleteness, as players would need to choose the other protagonists to understand it. His initial design is meant to be that of a civilian, as well as giving the idea of being someone easy to fight. For his Chinese design, the clothing is meant to give an air of stylishness that contrasts with Chris' military equipment. Leon's key color was blue. His initial jacket is also meant to have a civilian look.

Voice-over and live-action actors

Leon was voiced by Paul Haddad in Resident Evil 2 and portrayed by Brad Renfro in the live-action commercial directed by George A. Romero. For Resident Evil 4, Paul Mercier took over the role. Mercier was cast early in production, before the story had been finalized, and was given freedom to interpret and develop the character. The Japanese team was pleased with his work, and when the game was scrapped and restarted, Mercier was called back to voice the new script. Nevertheless, Capcom requested that Mercier re-record some lines because they felt Mercier made Leon sound too old. Mercier reprised the role in Resident Evil: Degeneration and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

Mercier was replaced by Matthew Mercer in Resident Evil 6 and later reprised the role in Resident Evil: Damnation, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, and Resident Evil: Vendetta. Mercer described himself as a fan and friend of Mercier and said that he felt honored to take over as the voice of Leon. In Damnation, which takes place before Resident Evil 6, Mercer depicted him as "younger, cockier", and "actually follows his transition into the more broken, downtrodden Leon that Resident Evil 6 begins with." Mercer likened Leon to the superhero Spider-Man because his "natural tendency is to crack wise" and cut tension with a joke, and through discussions with the director, he was able to improvise several one-liners. For Vendetta, Mercer portrayed Leon as a more terrified character who no longer trusts his own skills as a result of the dark events in 6 and Damnation. Mercer will return to play the character in the 2023 CG animated film Resident Evil: Death Island.

In the live-action Resident Evil: Retribution, Leon is portrayed by Johann Urb. On Urb's casting, the film's producer and director Paul W. S. Anderson said, "You have no idea how difficult it is to find someone with Leon Kennedy's hair [who] has to be manly and has to have these long bangs", adding that "if you put photographs of them side-by-side, it's almost like Capcom manufactured him." Anderson said that the decision to include Leon and other game characters in the film was "fan-driven". Urb mentioned that he learned Leon's mannerisms from watching clips of the video games posted on YouTube, commenting that "he doesn't have a high-pitched voice. I feel like he talks how I naturally talk, which is kind of slower." In Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Leon was played by Avan Jogia.

Christian Lanz voiced Leon in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Nick Apostolides is the voice and motion capture of Leon in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, and in the film Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Apostolides credited his long-time fandom of the series with being able to quickly understand the role. He described Leon in Resident Evil 2 as "bright and driven and his innocent naivety quickly takes a back seat to his training, his wits and his ultimate mission: to serve and protect." His facial features in the remake of Resident Evil 2 were based on model Eduard Badaluta. Leon's Japanese actor, Toshiyuki Morikawa, described Leon as having an unwavering sense of justice and the strength of his convictions. He further described him as an everyman who rises to the occasion, growing confident and secure enough to be a hero. Morikawa had the hardest time in the game, where he played a younger Leon than he normally does.

Appearances

In the Resident Evil series

Every game in the series is set in the fictional American metropolitan area of Raccoon City until its destruction at the end of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Leon debuted in Resident Evil 2 (1998) as one of the game's two protagonists, alongside Claire. In the story, he is a rookie R.P.D. officer on his first day who arrives in the Midwestern United States town of Raccoon City just after a viral outbreak begins. He meets Claire by chance as she is chased by zombies. Together, they flee towards the Raccoon City Police Department building but get separated and go their own ways. They eventually meet again at the Umbrella Corporation underground research complex responsible for the viral outbreak. Along the way, Leon teams up with Ada, a mysterious and charming woman eventually revealed as a spy seeking a sample of the even more powerful G-virus. During the final confrontation with the seemingly unstoppable T-103 Tyrant that constantly pursues the characters, Ada tosses Leon (or Claire, depending on the scenario) a rocket launcher to destroy the creature. In the end, Leon faces and kills the grotesquely mutated Umbrella scientist William Birkin and escapes from the self-destructing facility, along with Claire and Birkin's young daughter Sherry.

Leon is the protagonist of Resident Evil 4 (2005). In 2004, he is a special agent assigned to rescue the U.S. president's daughter, Ashley Graham, who is being held somewhere in Europe. Her kidnappers turn out to be part of an evil cult known as Los Illuminados, which has taken control of local villagers using parasites known as Las Plagas. As Leon searches for Ashley, he is captured and injected with the parasite. With help from Ada Wong and the Illuminados researcher Luis Sera, Leon is able to remove Las Plagas from his body and rescue Ashley while confronting the cult. At the game's climax, Leon kills the cult leader, Osmund Saddler, but is forced to give a Plagas sample to Ada, who escapes in a helicopter, leaving Leon and Ashley to escape on a jet ski.

In Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (2009), he appears as a playable character. It features re-imaginings of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica; it also has a new scenario, set in 2002, that involves Leon and the soldier Jack Krauser on a mission to search for Javier Hidalgo, an ex-druglord who had been said to do business with Umbrella.

He is also one of the protagonists in Resident Evil 6 (2012), alongside Chris, Jake Muller, and Ada. While the game has four player characters with different storylines, Leon was described as the "main character". In the game, he escapes from Tall Oaks, another American town overrun by zombies following a bioterrorist attack that killed the new U.S. president. Leon teams up with fellow survivor and President Benford's bodyguard, the Secret Service agent Helena Harper, to expose the conspiracy that led to the incident.

Other appearances

Leon appears in several of the Resident Evil films. In a 2010 interview, director Paul W. S. Anderson said that, if Resident Evil: Afterlife succeeds, he would do a fifth film and would like Leon to make an appearance in it. Leon then appeared as a major character in the live-action film series Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), "poised to rumble with Bad Rain and the defected Jill Valentine." Leon is the leader of a mercenary group working for Albert Wesker, who teams up with the film's version of Ada to fight Umbrella, save Alice, and rescue Jill. At the end of the film, he is one of the characters to survive. He did not appear in the final film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), apparently dying offscreen. In the reboot film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), Leon teams up with others to escape the city.

Leon appears in the 2008 animated film Resident Evil: Degeneration in order to stop another outbreak of the T-virus on American soil. He returns in the sequel, Resident Evil: Damnation, where he is sent to investigate the use of the Las Plagas during a civil war in Eastern Europe. Starting with Resident Evil: Degeneration, Capcom modeled Leon Kennedy after Jamisin Matthews. A third animated film, Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017), stars Chris, Leon, and Rebecca Chambers. A guilt-ridden Leon joins Chris on a rescue operation and decrypts Glenn Arias's plan for a large-scale attack on New York City. Leon appears in the Netflix series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021). He encounters zombies when the White House is targeted in a mysterious attack and later meets Claire, who has been investigating a strange drawing made by a child refugee while working on a TerraSave-led mission to oversee the construction of a welfare facility. He has also appeared in the 2023 animated film, Resident Evil: Death Island (2023).

Leon is a playable character in several non-canonical Resident Evil games. He appears as a playable character in Project X Zone 2 (2016) and in the asymmetrical survival horror game Dead by Daylight (2016). He also made a cameo appearance in Trick'N Snowboarder (1999), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011) as an alternate skin for Chris, Rainbow Six Siege (2015) as an alternate skin for Lion, Knives Out (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017), as a spirit in Nintendo's crossover video game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), Monster Hunter: World (2018), Tom Clancy's The Division 2 (2019), State of Survival (2019), Puzzle & Survival (2020), and Dying Light 2 (2022) as an easter egg.

Leon features in novelizations of the films and games. He is featured in the 1998–1999 manhua comic Shēnghuà Wēijī 2 ("Biological Crisis 2"). A romantic comedy, centered on Leon, Claire, and Ada, and retelling of the story of Resident Evil 2, was released in the Taiwanese two-issue comic Èlíng Gǔbǎo II in 1999. In printed trading card media, Leon appears as a card in the Bandai-produced game Resident Evil: The Deck Building Game. On Halloween Horror Nights 2013, held at Universal Orlando, Leon was featured as one of two main characters in a haunted house called "Resident Evil: Escape from Raccoon City", based on Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Merchandise featuring Leon includes figurines, outfits, statues, gun replicas, watches, perfumes, and nendoroids.

Reception

Game publications have rated Leon among the most popular and iconic video game characters. Magazines also praised him as the most likable Resident Evil character. His relationship with Ada has been noted as a memorable video game romance. IGN described Leon as one of the best playable Resident Evil characters, saying that Leon "quickly became one of the most capable characters in the series, matching Chris in hand-to-hand combat and being referred to as a genius by Ada", while Zack Zwiezen of Kotaku has cited Leon as the best of the Resident Evil heroes, stating that, "Looks aside, Leon is a cool dude who always gets the job done. I respect that." Nintendo Power considered him a Nintendo gaming hero, stating that he went from a "glorified meter maid with a bad haircut" to a tough guy. Rachel Weber of GamesRadar+ considered Leon an "influential and badass hero", praising his composure and raw endurance, while Rexly Peñaflorida of Tom's Hardware described him as one of the best protagonists in video games, lauding him in particular for his coolness and resolve in the face of all the frightening circumstances that surround him.

Leon's appearance in Resident Evil 4 has generally received positive reviews. Matt Cundy of GamesRadar+ described Leon's design as "David Bowie piloting the Memphis Belle", stating that, while it was appealing, the hairstyle required modifications for encounters in the games. Obi Ony of Complex commented on "his sarcastic and moody attitude", adding that while Leon "stepped it up in the series by maturing and becoming a true hero", they "enjoyed the game more when Leon didn't speak." The VR remake of Resident Evil 4 was also praised for the redesign of Leon and how fitting it is. In the book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games, Andrei Nae described Leon's persona as a hypermasculine persona similar to Ethan Tomas from Condemned: Criminal Origins. Conversely, in Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian criticized Leon's continuous journey to save Ashley. Despite the negative response to Resident Evil 6, Leon's action sequences with Helena were praised, being compared to films directed by Michael Bay. Resident Evil 6 also earned fame for being the first time that Leon starred in a game alongside fellow Resident Evil protagonist Chris Redfield.

In addition to their various settings and how the remake was authentic to them, Michael McWhertor of Polygon has praised Leon in the remake of Resident Evil 2 and said that "the character feels like a human being and moves like a contemporary video game action hero". Cass Marshall described Leon as the"sexy side of its star". Yet according to Ravi Sinha of GamingBolt, the character's revised design is among the worst in video games, and the creators ought to have stuck with his original appearance. GameSpot's Kurt Indovina said the game's remake improved Leon's personality, as he now seemed more human. On the remake of Resident Evil 4, Ana Diaz from Polygon reported that Leon's sex appeal represents the fetishization of the character's looks; this comment was shared on TikTok. Furthermore, thousands of fans admitted to purposefully injuring Leon during the game, according to Ashley Bardhan of Kotaku, which gives the impression that the character is moaning from its wounds, particularly in Dead of Daylight.