A teaser trailer for Paul W.S. Andersonās upcoming Monster Hunter film has leaked. The trailer was recorded on a cell phone by an audience member at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
Film adaptations of video games have a long and troubled history. The first wave of Hollywood game adaptations in the ā90s leaned heavily on cheap sleaze, sometimes just painting over generic scripts with iconography from the hit game du jour, as in the 1994 camp classic Street Fighter. As the years have gone on and games have become a more mainstream phenomenon, adaptations have slowly become more respectful of their source material, though not necessarily better films overall. Christophe Gansā Silent Hill was a passion project that was both aesthetically and narratively recognizable, and it was, you know, alright.
Anderson is already an old hand when it comes to film adaptations of games, and his trick so far has been to keep a foot in both of these camps. His Resident Evil films are visually reminiscent of the Capcom games, often importing creature and character designs unaltered, and their off-the-wall scripts are faithful to the spirit of the games as well. Other than that, though, theyāre largely original stories set in the Resident Evil world, overlapping with the gamesā canon only here and there. Itās been a successful approach for him, for certain definitions of the word āsuccessful.ā The Resident Evil films have always gotten death sentences from critics, but they make money hand over fist.
Itās early days, but Andersonās Monster Hunter looks like itās going to stick with this half-faithful, half-original formula. In fact, an early plot synopsis, in combination with this leaked teaser, suggest heās pushing both of these approaches to their extremes. Andersonās film will star Resident Evilās Milla Jovovich as the improbably named Lt. Artemis, a modern day American soldier who gets transported somehow to the Monster Hunter universe. Thereās sheāll meet Tony Jaaās Hunter, a stand-in for Monster Hunter Worldās player-created main character. Jaaās character, the world he inhabits, and the monsters he fights all appear to be game-accurate representations of their equivalents from the Capcom series, of which Anderson is reportedly a fan.
In other words, Andersonās Monster Hunter is gearing up to marry the hyper-faithfulness of notorious bomb Warcraft to the hyper-bizarre ānormal person travels to a video game worldā conceit of notorious bomb Super Mario Bros. I wonāt attempt to make any predictions about the quality or box office viability of such a project, but I will predict this: Some time after this filmās Blu-Ray release, some guy on Reddit is almost certainly going to make a fan edit of this movie that gets rid of all the modern day army stuff, leaving behind an actual game-accurate Monster Hunter film, starring the Ong-Bak guy. And Ron Perlman! Heās in this too.
Monster Hunter hits theaters September 4, 2020.
Published: Jun 18, 2019 01:00 pm