A terrible video game movie from a director that specializes in terrible video game movies avoids causing an international streaming incident

Based entirely on his track record of terrible video game adaptations, if you want somebody to direct a terrible video game adaptation, then Paul W.S. Anderson is your man. That might sound harsh, but the evidence is stacked sky high for everyone to see.

As much as 1995’s Mortal Kombat endures as a cult favorite so cheesy it could kill the lactose intolerant, it’s not very good as an example of cinematic excellence. You could technically count Alien vs. Predator as another seeing as the iconic extraterrestrials happened on consoles before it unfolded onscreen, while he directed four of Milla Jovovich’s Resident Evil outings, as well as writing and producing all six.

That highest-rated of any of those aforementioned titles on Rotten Tomatoes is the very first, with Mortal Kombat boasting a middling 47 percent score. Just behind it is Monster Hunter on 44 percent, which suffered the double-pronged devastation of bombing at the box office after failing to recoup its $60 million budget, and being yanked from Chinese theaters almost instantly after a throwaway joke managed to offend an entire nation.

Maybe one day Anderson will shock the world with a top-tier console-to-screen translation, but after eight attempts with nothing to show for it, that might not ever turn out to be the case. Either way, it’s Monster Hunter that’s been slaying beasts on streaming this week, with FlixPatrol revealing it to be one of the biggest hits on Prime Video, ViaPlay, and iTunes all at once, so at least people are still watching.