Capcom’s Monster Hunter video game series is heading to the big screen with a feature film adaption starring Milla Jovovich and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Unfortunately, reviews for the Monster Hunter film are now arriving and the negative reactions are unlikely to instill confidence in fans of the video games.
In the action role-playing video games on which Monster Hunter is based, players assume the role of a hunter tasked with slaying or trapping large monsters by the locals of various landscapes. The feature film adaptation finds Jovovich’s Captain Natalie Artemis and members of her elite United Nations task force trapped in such a landscape after falling through a portal into an alternate dimension. The task force then joins forces with a hunter to prevent the monsters from venturing to Earth through the same portal while trying to find a way home themselves.
Anderson was rumored to be interested in adapting the Monster Hunter games in 2012 and considered it to be a passion project. Eight years later, the film has finally been realized for the silver screen, but critics are now lambasting the filmmaker’s take on the material. The general consensus among critics appears to be that Monster Hunter ranks among some of the worst video game adaptations, with one review likening the film to Anderson’s panned Alien vs. Predator and Resident Evil films. However, the film is credited by some for delivering on the premise of Jovovich battling giant monsters with action sequences expected to satisfy fans of the director.
Here’s what critics are saying:
The Hollywood Reporter (John DeFore)
“More an expensive VFX demo reel than a story, the latest Paul W.S. Anderson film hopes to take yet another video game, Capcom’s Monster Hunter, and turn it into a money-minting movie franchise. Teaming again with wife Milla Jovovich, star of his hugely successful Resident Evil series (also based on a Capcom franchise), the writer-director tacitly acknowledges his lack of interest in dialogue by introducing a co-star, Tony Jaa, whose character speaks no English. A few flashes of amused chemistry between the two actors represent all the human interest in this unimaginative sci-fi actioner, but that doesn’t mean the pic’s relentless focus on giant-monster battles won’t please the director’s fans.”
IGN (Zaki Hasan)
“We may be barreling towards the tail end of December, but it seems 2020 isn’t done with us yet: under the wire, it’s delivered one of the worst action movies in recent memory, and another addition to the Video Game Movie Adaptation Hall of Shame.”
Variety (Peter Debruge)
“As a filmmaker, Anderson has a take-it-or-leave-it style that confounds many, but pleases enough to sustain a career making hyper-visual effects-heavy movies that play like feature-length trailers: “Event Horizon,” “Alien vs. Predator,” “Pompeii” and the four aforementioned “Resident Evil” movies. “Monster Hunter” is no different in that it moves along at a steady clip, dispensing with all but the most rudimentary character details in order to maximize the stuff that excites the fans — namely, striking compositions and carnage. Most of the time, during action scenes, you can’t tell what’s happening, but it seems to make sense to the characters, and the overripe sound design (which sounds like someone assaulting a couch with a baseball bat or smashing up the produce section at a grocery store) creates a kind of continuity through the Cuisinart cutting.”+
Indie Wire (David Ehrlich)
“[…] “Monster Hunter” is relentlessly terrible even by 2020 standards, as it quickly descends into a dull and colorless bit of bug-hunting that marries the production value of a SyFy Original with the scale of a tutorial level, resulting in one of the drabbest and least imaginative video game movies ever made. Series fans will feel cheated by such a chintzy and incurious take on something they love, while the rest of us will be left wondering how the source material earned itself any fans in the first place.”
Entertainment Weekly (Christian Holub)
“It sells itself as a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters, and it is indeed a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters — no more and no less. Like Jovovich’s previous collaborations with her husband, director Paul W.S. Anderson, on the Resident Evil films, Monster Hunter is based off a video game franchise. It certainly feels like an old-fashioned video game: Plot doesn’t really matter, there’s not much character development to speak of, but there is a lot of fighting against an endless swarm of enemies.”
Comic Book (Rollin Bishop)
“Monster Hunter ultimately flirts with being an absolutely fine movie while just managing to miss the mark. It’s not going to change hearts and minds, but seeing a military convoy try to take on Diablos and others is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. It just lacks the attention to detail that, say, Pacific Rim has to its world and characters. By the end of the film, I didn’t really understand why I was supposed to care about anyone still left alive beyond the fact that they remained on the screen. Monster Hunter is the energy drink of movies; a quick shock of energy followed mostly by a headache.”
Monster Hunter was initially slated to hit theaters in September 2020 until the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Sony to postpone its release until April 2021. However, the studio would move up Monster Hunter‘s release twice before finally settling on a mid-December debut. The latest decision to move up the film’s North American release was partly prompted by its disastrous debut in China, where outrage sparked over a controversial scene that has since been removed from the final cut.
While audiences may not be surprised to hear negative reactions towards Monster Hunter considering video game adaptations have a poor track record, it didn’t necessarily have to be this way. After all, Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog were able to debut to generally positive reviews and box office success.
Monster Hunter will be released in U.S. theaters on December 18, 2020.
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