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What Went Wrong With Monster Hunter (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-04-21 20:01:00 +0000 UTCHave you ever found yourself like Stu Pickles from Rugrats? Just...just up at 4 in the morning making chocolate pudding because you lost control of your life? That’s kinda how I felt watching this movie...
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Readers, I admit that this might have been an absolutely foolish decision on my end.
But, considering everything, I decided that I was gonna give Paul WS Anderson’s next video game adaptation Monster Hunter a chance.
I wasn’t gonna pay MONEY to give it a chance, but I gave it a chance.
So earlier on in the year 2021 I did just that. I...watched Paul WS Anderson’s Monster Hunter (pause) I don’t know what I expected
Okay. I might be jumping the gun here, so let me backup and better explain things.
Because while I, like I’m sure a number of you Readers, was right in realizing that the premise was going the route of an Isekai anime -- aka the trope of the main character or a group of characters being transported to another world -- there were other things about this movie that both worked, didn’t work, and due to the unfortunate situation of being a Paul WS Anderson joint, a few things within the movie that hindered its possible success more than they actually helped.
So I’ll get this out of the way now. The one thing that WASN’T a hindrance were the movie’s visuals
/One thing I’ll give Anderson. When he’s enough of a fan of a video game franchise, he’ll spare no expense to make sure that the creature and costume designs are 100% faithful to the source material. Even if the story is 100% original./
After all, this is the same director that -- in Resident Evil Afterlife -- did a shot-by-shot replica of the fight with Wesker, Chris and Sheva from Resident Evil 5. I know people like to make fun of him for that, but I constantly look at that fight in AWE in how much of an exact replica that shit was, and I just gotta give kudos where they’re due.
In the case of Monster Hunter, that still holds true; Diabolos was beautiful, Rathalos was spot on, and Gore Magala? Perfection.
And that goes double for Tony Jaa’s Field Team Leader, Yamazaki San’s Handler, and Ron Perlman’s Admiral despite that horrible-ass wig, Jesus Christ...
/But once you see how the “our world” talent was utilized throughout the whole first act of the movie outside of Milla Jovovich, see how it cut corners with its editing to get its 90 minute runtime, and find out that it’s budget was only 60 million, you can start to figure out that the aforementioned portions of the movie is where most of the budget went./
/And considering that damn near all of the live-action portions of the movie were filmed in the desert and the only use of greenscreen to further explore the Monster Hunter universe outside of the gateway and sandship was a small oasis, what they could do was extremely limited because of it./
Then there’s the writing, and whether or not going with an Isekai-like story was the proper route to take it. And honestly, I wouldn’t have had that much of a problem with the angle if the writing was...better.
/Not only did the movie fail to make me care about the soldiers that were Isekai’d to the Monster Hunter universe -- despite people like Megan Good being part of the number (Not TI though, I was fine with him dying; he can choke, real talk) -- but I didn’t even care that much about Milla’s character, or her will to survive, even when we finally learn her name in the third act of the movie. But because there was nothing making me invested, I felt like I was just watching a very smartly budgeted CGI tech demo for whenever Hollywood decided to make an ACTUAL Monster Hunter movie./
Because that’s all Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2020 Monster Hunter movie is, Readers. It’s a tech demo to show off how accurate the monsters, the costume designs, the set pieces and the CGI locations would be if someone put a team together that cared and truly appreciated the Monster Hunter franchise, and wanted to bring it to the big screen.
/But because so much work was put into making it, Paul W.S. Anderson decided to throw a half-baked quickly put-together Isekai narrative around it, and try to recoup some of what it cost to make it./
And let me tell you. While some folks will blame the fact that it only made 28 million on Sony deciding to release in theaters during the current health and safety crisis of 2020, something tells me that number wouldn’t have been big enough for them to break even, even if that wasn’t the case.
Nevertheless, I hope Sony doesn’t look at this flop as a complete loss and still sees the potential in the property. Because there is DEFINITELY potential in it.
/We just need to find someone dedicated to finding the proper tone, story and pacing for it that matches Paul W.S. Anderson’s energy regarding his attention to visual detail and faithfulness to the source material./
Y’know, so that he’s not tempted to always make his wife the star of the movie.
So with that being said Readers, YOUR homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below how YOU felt about the 2021 live-action Monster Hunter movie if you’ve seen it.
And since you’ve already came up with BRILLIANT ways on how you would’ve handled a NON Isekai pitch for a Monster Hunter movie in my previous video about the subject, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, if you think there’s ANYTHING worth salvaging from Paul WS Anderson’s take on the game franchise.
It doesn’t matter if it's incredibly obvious or impressively trivial. I’d love to know your thoughts either way!
