Monster Hunter movie review | action ft. Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa

Monster Hunter is originally a video game series by Capcom, that originally debuted on the PlayStation 2 back in 2004, with many games released ever since. The series has nog eventually received its movie adaptation with this 2020 title. How does it stack up? Let's find out in this review!

No cute animals harmed

When it comes to movies based on video games, I usually have a fair bit of experience of the story and gameplay, but Monster Hunter is actually not a franchise I've yet dabbled with much. I know it's a Japanese action-RPG where you roam around in an open world, and hunt different species of animals, ranging from cute and practically defenceless ones to larger, more predatorial buggers. The idea to barge into some poor creature's land and start killing and harvesting them for loots and collectables, always seemed a bit offputting to me, though. That's mainly why I yet haven't been sold on the games.

Luckily, for us animal lovers, the movie is not about hunting for pleasure (or even for food, for that matter). It's more of a survival thing, where our lead characters are mainly the ones being hunted. And the foes are no cutesies either. Instead, we see giant spiders and other bugs that could have been taken straight out of Starship Troopers, along with huge sand crawlers sweeping across the desert from beneath, and other nasty critters. It even goes full-out fantasy with mighty fire-breathing dragons as well.

Check out the full movie on Amazon

Premise

The premise of the movie is that there is some sort of parallel world where giant monsters exist, and people live in tribes as hunters. In an undisclosed location in the desert, some sort of UN security operations take place. In a violent lightning storm, something goes awry and a portal to that aforementioned other world opens. Artemis; the leader of the UN troop, played by Milla Jovovich then meats a nameless hunter from another world, played by Thai actor Tony Jaa. The latter is most known from various martial arts movies, such as The Protector and the Ong Bak series. Anyway, out of necessity, the two hotheads reluctantly join forces in their fight for survival in this action-packed monster flick.

Story

The above premise is about the only backstory the film offers, before throwing you into the monster-hunting action. This movie is all about action, massive monsters and stunning landscapes that would fit the bill as anyone's favourite Windows desktop wallpaper. If you yearn for more depth, this is simply not the movie for you.

Odd clash between realism and fantasy

In an attempt to make the movie more appealing towards a broader audience other than a specific niche of gamers, they shoved in Milla's character who's not even in the games and made the movie based around her kicking ass and shooting guns, rather than exploring the actual source material, or the game "lore", if you will. This means people who yet aren't familiar with the games, are still in the dark about what the games are about, while fans of the games will likely feel let down by the departure from, or at least how loosely it's based on, the source material. They've clearly made some big compromises here, and it almost feels like two movies slapped together into one, where neither of the two got developed or explored to my satisfaction.

Even though it's a popcorn flick, and you probably mainly watch it for some mindless monster action, I feel that the story is a little on the thin side even for this type of movie, especially when compared to the likes of Jurassic Park. To be fair, Monster Hunter is obviously more rooted in fantasy than it is in sci-fi, but that doesn't mean that nothing going on in the movie needs any sort of reality-anchoring. Especially since the movie tries to be somewhat realistic amongst all the monsters, dragons and talking felines, throwing in some proper UN soldiers and whatnot.

The way the normal world and what I'm guessing is the "game world", is connected eventually unfolds towards the end, but the whole thing just feels tacked on and dumb, and mostly serves as a segue to the big end battle.

Characters and interactions

The characters don't have a lot of personality to offer either, being about as two-dimensional as the sprites in your typical NES game. The interaction taking place between the main characters that isn't pure action is virtually non-existent. I get that Artemis and "Hunter" come from different realities and that they don't have a common language they can communicate in, but everyone watching this movie will figure out right away that they will have to work together eventually. But they sure take their time to settle their differences and the fight scenes just drag on forever. (Why would they cast a martial artist for one of the leading roles otherwise, right?)

Throughout all the tussle and quarrel I just couldn't help but to think "you are two people - TWO! Against endless hordes of giant bugs and sh*t. Get a grip already!!"

Artemis and "Hunter" getting to know each other.

While Jovovich's and Jaa's characters share some lighthearted humorous moments as well, mostly revolving around Hunter's newfound urge for chocolate, they mostly traded punches. It felt a lot like action was shoehorned in where there could be some interesting interactions instead, possibly offering some more moments of emotion and humour that would make the characters more human and likeable. So that was a bit of a wasted opportunity, in my opinion. Forcing action sequences into the story is something to be expected in video games, for the sake of having more playable content. But this is a movie, and I would have liked the people in it to act more like people and less like video game characters. Throughout the movie, I could actually imagine it being a video game, with some cutscenes here and there between the many action scenes.

Ron Perlman doing an 80's hair metal version of Lion King.

Of the other characters in the film aside from Jovovich and Jaa, only a few are worth mentioning. One of them being somewhat memorable is Ron Perlman's character, albeit for the wrong reasons. He looks like he's either in a Lion King musical or some 80's hair metal band. He also has a chef serving him food and drinks, who just happens to be a sassy, man-sized cat who in true pirate fashion also has an eye missing. These two oddballs undeniably bring some comic relief to the movie, if only for a brief moment.

Ron Perlman's chef, proudly serving the whole crew Whiskas on a daily basis.

Resident Hunter

The movie is made by Paul W.S. Anderson, who also brought us the live-action Resident Evil movies. And it shows. For starters, he again cast his wife Milla Jovovich for a similar role. Watching Monster Hunter also reminded me a lot of Resident Evil: Extinction (the third film in the series, which also happens to be in the desert). And ironically, neither the Resident Evil franchise nor Monster Hunter had Jovovich's characters in them, to begin with. Instead the character "Alice" was added specifically for the Resident Evil movies, as was Artemis, for this Monster Hunter film. Both are odd choices that might raise a few eyebrows among fans of the games.

From what I've seen from the actual Monster Hunter games, they seem like grand, colourful fantasy adventures. Here we instead get a survival game...ahem movie, mostly taking place in the desert with muted brown tones, along with some mercs and machine guns. Sure haven't seen any of that in any of the screenshots of the games. The whole concept of a fantasy world blending together with the real world is probably also a departure from the games' original story, I would imagine. It's something we get to see quite often with these video game movies. The Sonic the Hedgehog movie comes to my mind, for instance.

Verdict

Monster Hunter is quite obviously a big-budget production, offering great visuals and action. Not sure how fans of the games will react to it, since it seems like the source material has been taken into account rather loosely. I'm sure they'll watch it in any case, out of sheer curiosity.

For people completely new to the game series, the movie still offers a bit of laid back entertainment without demanding too much from its viewer. If you liked watching Milla Jovovich kick zombie butts in Resident Evil, you'll probably enjoy seeing her take down massive critters in this one. Right now in midst of the pandemic, we aren't exactly spoiled with blockbuster action movies, so Monster Hunter came at a good time. And if a big-budget action with massive monsters sounds appealing, it's indeed worth a watch. Just don't expect too much from the story, and leave your critical thinking at the door.

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