If I had done this short continuation of the “Game to Live Action Movie Marathon” last year when I planned I would’ve skipped over this one due to having no strong connection to the game series and not wanting to pay money for another Paul W.S. Anderson “look how bad ass my wife is” movie, but as non-luck would have it the movie popped up on Netflix so I thought “well, no excuse now!” … *sigh* I really wish I had an excuse though. Admittedly the sadness that one of my favourite game franchises was being constantly crapped on is no longer here, leaving me with just a poor film, which I guess is better? Though I know enough about Monster Hunter to know he did indeed “do it again”. Well, enough intro writing: let’s take a deeper look!
In the Monster Hunter series you create your own Hunter and, well, hunt monsters alongside NPCs and other players while upgrading your gear and seeing the world evolve, the lore deepen, all that stuff. It’s absurdly popular in Japan and successful in the West just not to such a crazy degree, so I can see why CAPCOM might think this would be a natural next live action property and sadly while I really disliked the Resident Evil films (as you can find out by clicking on the “Films” tab above!) they did make a lot of money so I can also see why they’d think Paul W.S. Anderson would be a good person to helm it. Sadly I guess doing a fantasy film is something that Anderson just can’t handle, and likewise making a film where his wife Milla Jovovich isn’t the lead and isn’t playing a bad-ass hero character is also something he can’t avoid. It’s funny because the opening scene of the film sees a crew of Monster Hunters on a sand-ship coming under attack and the costumes and feel is really fun and visually on-point for the games, but once it’s over we switch to modern day Earth and see Milla playing Natalie Artemis, a US Ranger who is leading her company on a trip in the desert. For the record I don’t think Milla a bad actress or anything, but being typecast by your own husband is just… weird, and annoying as I’ll get to later.
A screenshot steeped in Monster Hunter lore!
It has all the cringey clichés you can think of: soldiers teasing each other, talking about how brave they are due to what they have to go through and then have a sing-song session to raise their spirits. It’s so… dull and generic, and sure as hell not very Monster Hunter! The group end up caught in the sand storm that sends them to the Monster Hunter world and at least to my relief it doesn’t take long for the whole of the US Ranger crew beyond Milla’s character to get killed off by spider-like Nerscyllas and instead focus on Natalie Artemis surviving in this strange world with a surviving Monster Hunter from the opening scene only referred to as “Hunter” (which lines up with the generic player character role from the games I guess!) played by Tony Jaa. While they initially fight each other and hide from the Nerscyllas (including Natalie being impaled and poisoned but just… gutting through it by being tough, I guess?) they soon learn to work together and take down Diablos, one of the classic Monsters that needs Hunting in the game (classic enough that I know of it, and again I only know about the series due to being into gaming so much and it being a such a big deal)
They manage to defeat it, or I should say Hunter does some things then gets knocked out so Milla can get all the bad-ass points by taking it down with a rocket launcher of all thing, despite her having flaming swords (as in swords on fire, not me getting angry). Seriously the amount of screen time for stuff like the previously mentioned spider stuff, her being wounded and burning the wound shut with gunpowder or carrying Hunter across the desert by herself, just generally scenes of “look how cool she is!”, it’s all so embarrassing. Even if it wasn’t the writer/director’s wife it would be bad, but because it is it really brings it out to the forefront.
That’s more like it at least…. A bit.
As the movie moves on from the desert we meet more of Hunter’s crew, including “The Admiral” played by Ron Perlman of all people, and even a chef that’s a cat-creature called a Palico, again something recognisable enough from the series that I knew of it beforehand. It barely doesn’t anything though, I assume a fully CG character was a bit too costly along with all the CG monster slaying. Some weapons from the game also feature, swords, bows and the like, so it’s not all bad. Honestly if Milla just played a female Monster Hunter from, say, a small village that ended up stranded in the desert with a Hunter from another tribe the film would be exactly the same only fit the source material far better. Instead we get generic solider bollocks at the start, human weapons used against the first “boss” and, well, more towards the end, as I’ll get to in the spoiler section.
Overall Thoughts:
Okay, THAT’S at least very Monster Hunter-y. Shame it gets taken down by a bazooka…
Paul W.S. Anderson once again takes a CAPCOM franchise and instead of adapting the source material faithfully in any way he just makes sure his wife looks as cool as possible, which is this case means “Milla is a brave American soldier” (instead of a bad ass Monster Hunter, which, you know… would’ve made a lot more sense) and fills in the rest with light lore and visual nods. There are worse shot movies and CG monsters are good, but otherwise I’d avoid this one.
Natalie, Hunter and the Hunting party target a mysterious tower that seems to be connecting the two worlds together and to put a stop to it they have to take down fire-breathing dragon and game icon Rathalos (thanks to Smash Bros. Ultimate I’ve actually fought that one!) which they eventually do but the fight goes from the Hunter World to Earth and includes scenes of planes and tanks being destroyed by the dragon, just to really ram home the “this isn’t very Monster Hunter-y” message.
In all seriousness, the CG is good at least.
The funny / sad thing is that after this and right before the credits a bigger dragon called Gore Magala arrives and Natalie, Hunter and Admiral go to attack it, saying as long as the tower stands monsters will keep attacking and the film ends… then a mid-credits sequence the Palico joins the fight and a hooded figure mysteriously watches on from the tower. Yes, Anderson was so sure he had another multi-film franchise on his hands that he straight up left everything on a cliffhanger with several dangling plot threads. Sadly for him (but not for my sanity) lightning didn’t strike twice here…
Hogan Reviews 