A pretty bold claim coming from a man that made this many Resident Evil movies.
Monster Hunter is going to be a film about a bunch of U.S. Army peeps getting isekai’d to Monster Hunter-world. As someone that’s probably played a few thousand hours of MonHun, that sounds like shit to me. But what do I know, after all, I didn’t watch all of those terrible Resident Evil movies.
Well, the film’s director, Paul W.S. Anderson, has made the claim that Monster Hunter may be the most loyal game adaptation yet. Which might sound to some an overly narrow superlative, especially as the bar is set fairly low. And said bar was actually set by Mortal Kombat (1995) which, coincidentally, he directed.
The claim comes from an interview with ScreenRant, below:
Screen Rant: This isn’t your first video game movie rodeo. What did you learn from Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil that helped you adapt Monster Hunter?
Paul W.S. Anderson: I think you learn from every movie that you make. If you ever get to the point where you think you know everything as the filmmaker, that’s when you should quit making movies. Every movie is a learning experience, and certainly in the field of video game adaptations, I’m a lot more experienced than most.I’ve always approached video game adaptations as, first and foremost, a fan. I’ve never adapted anything that I wasn’t a huge fan of, that I wasn’t a player of, that I wasn’t really immersed in the world of. That, to me, has always been the key to my approach – play the games and be immersed in the world.
And I think what I learned on Mortal Kombat was – that was always my instinct – to imbue the movies with as much DNA from the games as I could. And certainly, that was a that was a good experience on Mortal Kombat, because I really learned that paid off. You could tell from the fan reaction when you got things right, that they really appreciated it. There was a set that we built called the pit, for example, and when we tested the movie a whole bunch of guys stood up and screamed, “The Pit!
For you, as a filmmaker, that’s when your heart surges, “Thank God, we got it right.” -People really appreciate it. For a non-gamer, the pit just looked like a really cool piece of production design, but for a gamer, that really resonated with you, as did the accuracy of like costumes for Scorpion and Sub-Zero and things like that. That’s something that I’ve tried to bring into the adaptation of Monster Hunter.
But I will say that in Monster Hunter, I’ve gone above and beyond any of the other game adaptations I’ve been involved in – in terms of involving the game creators in the process of the movie itself. We have Ryozo Tsujimoto, who’s the producer of the games, and Kaname Fujioka, who is the director of the games – they’ve pretty much approved everything that went on screen. From the detailed look of the creatures, the look of all of the costumes, and the landscapes that we chose; they were very, very involved in the fabric of the filmmaking process.
Well, me personally, I don’t remember army-guy isekai in any Monster Hunter games. I think the closest we came to Land-of-the-Lost-ing people into Monster Hunter land were those crossover missions in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
I think I need to go lay down now. This year has pushed me. In bad, frustrating ways.
Source: ScreenRant
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