I hold the dubious honour of holding what is probably the most positive opinion of the Monster Hunter movie on planet Earth. I thought it was great! Spiders exploding out of a guy's chest and then eating him: what's not to like?
Plenty, according to everyone else, with the film sitting at around a 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with a slightly higher audience score of 70%. Pour one out for Lori, who found a movie about military grunts hunting down fantasy monsters "totally unrealistic and gory."
The Monster Hunter film released in 2020 but had been brewing in the mind of director Paul W. S. Anderson since the late 2000s when he'd become a fan of the series. And the particular point he got into the wonderful world of Monster Hunting seems to have had a huge influence on the movie's slightly odd setup, whereby the focus is on a US / UN military team that gets sucked into the world of Monster Hunter and oo-rahs through various encounters (with limited success).
A lot of folk didn't like this side of it, but it turns out I'm a sucker for watching a Rathalos fight a tank. In an interview with Social Dissonance Anderson explains that this setup, and Milla Jovovich's character Natalie Artemis in particular, was inspired by a crossover in the PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
"Well it kind of came organically based on where Monster Hunter had been before," says Anderson. "I was very influenced by a crossover that Monster Hunter had done with Metal Gear Solid. That already existed, it's part of the mythology of the game. I thought this is great imagery, y'know, to juxtapose a man with a machine gun against the creatures."
MGS: Peace Walker features a series of missions where Big Boss goes out and, essentially, hunts monsters with ludicrous military hardware. The crossover has three monsters: Rathalos, Tigrex, and the hybrid Gear Rex. They're deeply silly but great fun, and Peace Walker also pushes the boat out by incorporating elements like Felynes, smaller raptors, and cooking steaks.
It's this combination of rocket launchers and dragons that caught Anderson's eye, and made him think it could not only work as inspiration for Jovovich's characters, but also the wider themes of the film.
"I thought what great fun to play with the hubris of the modern world," says Anderson. "We put our faith in technology so much, in fact too much in my opinion, and of course in the movie it doesn't go so well, these people who have all these weapons and all these vehicles… they just end up getting fucked up."
Spoiler alert there! Don't worry: Milla Jovovich's character survives. I doubt Anderson was ever going to kill off his IRL wife. The good news (for everyone else at least) is that Monster Hunter underperformed at the box office, so a sequel is unlikely.
