Monster Hunter - Paul W. S. Anderson & Milla Jovovich

Agent Coulson

It is loosely based on the video game series

The husband and wife team have moved on to a new video game franchise.

Starring Millia & Tony Jaa, Tip "T. I." Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung and Ron Perlman.

pixelburp

I'd wonder if Anderson & Jovovich have kompromat on the Capcom executive board, but then I suppose the Resident Evil films were incredibly profitable all the same...

chrislad

1.2 billion for the series on a 288 million budget. Comparable to Star Wars numbers (specifically The Last Jedi with 317 million budget to 1.3 billion gross)

Obviously doing something right! I did enjoy the first couple of RE movies, but I dropped off after the Nemesis one. This will likely be more of the same, and there's clearly a market for it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(film_series)#Box_office_performance

mikhail

chrislad wrote: »

I did enjoy the first couple of RE movies, but I dropped off after the Nemesis one.

So did the quality.

Homelander

Zero interest in this after the outrageous hack-job he did on Resident Evil.

The first 3 odd movies were actually fairly decent for what they were, but the quality just dropped off a cliff after that - Resident Evil the Final Chapter especially was an absolute joke, didn't even make sense and took a hot dump over the continuity of previous films to boot.

I wouldn't mind but the same guy wrote all the films, how he could be so blase and careless like "ah, sure no-one will notice or care" is ridiculous.

As someone who greatly enjoyed the first 3 as ridiculous, entertaining nonsense - and the following sequels as weak but entertaining - that last RE film specifically was an insult, one of the worst, most shameless, money-grabbing exercises I've ever seen.

Agent Coulson

Well there goes this movie's chance at making a box-office profit, China pulls it from cinemas due to a 10 second scene.

The 10-second scene that has generated an outcry features Asian-American rapper/actor Jin Au-Yeung (aka MC Jin), who at one point riffs to his scene partner, “Look at my knees. What kind of knees are these? Chinese.” This is being linked to a racist playground rhyme used to mock children of Asian origin. Upset, we understand, has further been sown by the scene’s local subtitles.

https://deadline.com/2020/12/china-pulls-monster-hunter-release-cinemas-censorship-1234651005/

pixelburp

Christ that barely qualifies as a joke. What a pathetic scenario. Never ceases to amaze how brittle the Chinese are about their self. Ask Winnie the Pooh about that one lol.

Would be nice to think this finally kills off Anderson's career though, arguably the hackiest hack working in Hollywood

mikhail

I'm really surprised that's considered offensive. It's a harmless piece of wordplay, without negative connotation. But then, I don't know the playground rhyme they're referring to: perhaps that's a bit uglier.

It also sounds like it would have been trivial to cut if it were really that big a deal. There's a cap on the number of foreign films China allows be released every year, and I wonder if this is about that as much as the line in question.#

pixelburp wrote: »

Would be nice to think this finally kills off Anderson's career though, arguably the hackiest hack working in Hollywood

There may be hackier, but on the hackiness / budget axis, he's in the top right quadrant for sure.

Mr Crispy

If it's the rhyme I'm thinking of, it's accompanied by pushing against your eyebrows to make them appear slanted.

pixelburp

Anderson released a statement apologising for the line, which will now be removed from all versions of the film distributed:

https://deadline.com/2020/12/monster-hunter-paul-w-s-anderson-mc-jin-milla-jovovich-apologize-china-controversy-1234652024/

ancapailldorcha

The question of "Why?" springs to mind. Monster Hunter doesn't really look like the sort of licence one would normally adapt.

pixelburp

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The question of "Why?" springs to mind. Monster Hunter doesn't really look like the sort of licence one would normally adapt.

Must be their next biggest money spinner after the Resident Evil series? It's a high fantasy setting IIRC so the movie featuring a bunch of generic soldiers seems a weird move, guess it's cheaper than a bunch of custom fantasy costumes...

CastorTroy

Didn't realise it was already released in places until I saw cams available

ancapailldorcha

pixelburp wrote: »

Must be their next biggest money spinner after the Resident Evil series? It's a high fantasy setting IIRC so the movie featuring a bunch of generic soldiers seems a weird move, guess it's cheaper than a bunch of custom fantasy costumes...

I would have thought Devil May Cry might have been a better choice. This looks like Uwe Boll-grade fare.

y0ssar1an22

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The question of "Why?" springs to mind. Monster Hunter doesn't really look like the sort of licence one would normally adapt.

the 1st question for me is what was said? the article don't allude.

one thing i do know is that every company bends over backwards to break into china to get access to that huge population.

B.A._Baracus

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The question of "Why?" springs to mind. Monster Hunter doesn't really look like the sort of licence one would normally adapt.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I would have thought Devil May Cry might have been a better choice. This looks like Uwe Boll-grade fare.

According to Capcom the monster hunter series has sold 50 million copies while DMC series has sold 21 million units.

ancapailldorcha

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

According to Capcom the monster hunter series has sold 50 million copies while DMC series has sold 21 million units.

Fair enough. RE and DMC are the only Capcom properties that I am familiar with. I would have thought DMC would have been much more appealing due to its protagonist and world but there we are. Then again, if Anderson spends the next decades churning out MH films, he's leaving everything else alone.

B.A._Baracus

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Fair enough. RE and DMC are the only Capcom properties that I am familiar with. I would have thought DMC would have been much more appealing due to its protagonist and world but there we are. Then again, if Anderson spends the next decades churning out MH films, he's leaving everything else alone.

I agree. I would have thought DMC would be Capcom's second most successful series.

Had to google it and also found out Monster Hunter World is their most successful game of all time. Beating all RE games and even beating the likes of Street Fighter 2.

Agent Coulson

That was a fun 100 minutes and exactly what you'd expect from those who made it nothing more nothing less than a popcorn movie.

CastorTroy

On a scale of Resident Evil to Resident Evil The Final Chapter, where would you rank it?

Agent Coulson

Right down the middle of the road Resident Evil: Extinction

Dades

Agent Coulson wrote: »

That was a fun 100 minutes and exactly what you'd expect from those who made it nothing more nothing less than a popcorn movie.

Excellent. I'm in.

CastorTroy

Watched it and enjoyed it for what it was.
Have never played the games but would watch the sequel

drake70

I enjoyed it, but then I liked all the Resident Evil films

brianregan09

I think the same can be said of this of the resident evil movies , Great action flick , but terrible rendition of the source materiel so basically aimed at the casual market , i say this because I really enjoyed this and that's because i know nothing about monster hunter , But i hated his Resident Evil movies because I'm a big fan of the game franchise

Homelander

As someone who enjoyed most of the Resident Evil movies, thought that was an utter turd of a movie.

Dades

Holy crap... that was... a bit of fun.

Preposterous nonsense but that was what one signed up for.

Have loved Milla since 2002 so am somewhat forgiving.

WrenBoy

I cringed so hard when that dragon did a superhero landing in the trailer.

Cotts72

Thought it was a big letdown, I still can't accept that Ron Pearlman wig either! Felt very rushed all the same

Mark Hamill

I've never played Monster Hunter, so I don't know how whether this film adapts the games well or anything, but I thought this was one of the worst films I've ever seen.

It had a grand total of 10 seconds of actually genuinely good scenes -

the bit were Mila Jovovic escapes the spider monsters and has a little freak out after seeing her friend explode out spiders and the bit where she is strapped into the gurney in the plane and it gets attacked and it goes slow-mo while falling and everyone flies up except her because she is strapped down

. These were the only interesting visual and character work/acting in the movie. The rest of the movie was ~25% aggressively mediocre scenes and 75% just painful to watch scenes.

How do I know those scenes were 10 seconds? Because there wasn't as single shot held for more than five seconds in the movie! (

at least from after it brings the soldiers to the Monster Hunter world, that's when I notice it

). The camera constantly spasms around the place, never holding on characters while talking, never really panning to show environments, in fact I don't even think it ever goes back to the same shot angle, even when two stationary characters are just talking to each other. Most shots don't even last 3 seconds. The action scenes are cut like they got the people who cut Marvel movie fighting scenes to cut them, but after they shot them up with caffeine soaked speed-balls.

Storywise, it really feels like

it was supposed to be entirely set on the Monster World with Tony Jaa as the main character looking for revenge for his families death and the other characters from his world making up a multi-ethnic supporting cast.