For the past five years, I was under the impression that the live-action Monster Hunter movie never came out. I merely laughed after watching its trailer, thinking it was another audacious project by the director-actor duo of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich that vanished into oblivion. I did not hear a single comment from people who enjoy criticizing live-action video game adaptations on social media, so I assumed we collectively imagined it. Last week, Hulu gave me a double whammy, revealing that the live-action film was released in 2020 and is streaming on its platform just in time for gamers diving into Monster Hunter Wilds to rubberneck at it. Like a crab in a barrel, I persuaded my partner (who has been enjoying Wilds as her first MonHun game) to watch it with me this weekend, expecting a shitty movie.
Moments into Monster Hunter, I had the niggling feeling the movie wasn’t trying to be a movie. Follow me here: I think Monster Hunter was made to be a feature film ad that entices both general audiences and Call of Duty players into giving the Capcom series a whirl. Knowing that Monster Hunter: World and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 were released at opposite ends of 2018, and that the film released a month after Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War feels purposely marketed to court CoD Blops normies, and the film does a lot of work to show how much cooler hunting monster is compared to mindlessly shooting things with a gun.
Case in point: After copy-pasting the opening cutscene of Monster Hunter: World, the movie cuts away from shipwrecked MonHun-looking characters combating an ambush to a bland scene where a bunch of modern-day military guys drive around in their humvees. As if aping the painfully dull and patriotic directorial style of Michael Bay’s Transformer trilogy, we see the group, lead by Milla Jovovich’s Artemis, rapper T.I.’s Link, and Megan Good’s Dash singing military chants before a storm teleports them into another world. Almost immediately, the group’s machine guns and grenades prove futile against titular monsters like Diablos and Nerscylla, and all but Milla are killed off. Good’s Dash, true to her name, dies in the most unceremonious matter in the film’s early going, continuing her trend of never being the final girl in any movie she’s randomly starred in. However, the funniest death goes to T.I., who awkwardly yells about his tummy hurting before a bunch of spiders scatter out of his armpit, leading him to cry, “YOU GOTTA GO!” to Milla before getting ripped in half. From here on, Milla runs into action movie star Tony Jaa, who plays the stand-in character for MonHun, and the $60 million ad truly begins.
In contrast to Jovovich and Anderson’s past works with the Resident Evil films, which would’ve been unoffensive romps had they not had the zombie shooter’s name attached to them, Monster Hunter nails the whole onboarding process and appeal of the game it's based on. After witnessing Jaa and Jovovich become friends thanks to a Hershey’s chocolate bar, we see the pair overcome each other's language barrier and get in sync, setting traps and working together to capture and slay monsters. We see them use each other as bait to lure monsters into Home Alone traps, harvest said monsters to upgrade their armor and concoct poison attachments for weapons, and lab combo strings and grapple hook techniques. We even see their raiding party (which includes Ron Pearlman wearing a lousy wig that makes him look like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz) go to shit when they challenge a Rathalos without a gameplan. If anything, what the film lacked in compelling character writing it more than made up for in encouraging cross-talk between my partner and I talking about the film not quite nailing Rathalos’ weakness, how she should use the bow and arrow more, and how the bone saw sword rips. My partner, with all of a week of Wilds under her belt, whispered, “They need an Alma in their life” after their epic fail.
The saving grace of this unabashed advertisement of a film was that it did not skimp on making its CGI monsters look fucking sick. Each creature has a Land of the Lost mix of claymation-meets-CGI while scratching Godzilla fans' itch to give them as much screentime as the boring humans. The film’s finale, pulling a reverse isekai by having the big bad Rathalos follow Milla through the dimension portal and tear military tanks and heli-carriers to shreds, did something for me carnally as a kaiju sicko. Had the film left well enough alone by omitting its shitty reshoot sequel-bait ending, the film would’ve been a solid C+ experience. I can confidently tell you that we’re never getting Monster Hunter 2: Electric Boogaloo, no matter how enticing that final shot of the Gore Magala was.
Make no mistake: Monster Hunter is not a competent film with bells and whistles like compelling characters and a story woven into the connective tissue of its CGI monster fights. It is, however, a serviceable 100-minute feature film Super Bowl that’ll make you want to pick up the game.
