Paul W.S. Anderson has built his entire career on effects-heavy genre movies that don’t tend to find a lot of love from critics, but can always be relied on to do solid business at the box office. Over the last quarter of a century, the filmmaker has been responsible for Mortal Kombat, the first installment and final three sequels in the Resident Evil franchise, Alien vs. Predator and the Death Race remake, among others.
None of those titles are what you would exactly call classics, but his filmography has collectively earned almost $1.9 billion globally, so there’s clearly an audience keen to see what he comes up with next. And on that note, Anderson’s latest movie sees him on familiar turf, as he directs an effects-heavy video game adaptation that stars wife Milla Jovovich in the lead role.
Monster Hunter was originally set to hit theaters last month, but like everything else, it was delayed as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. The first teaser has now arrived online, though, and while it doesn’t offer much in the way of footage or plot details, it does promise that we’re in store for another larger than life video game adaptation cut from the same cloth as most of the director’s previous efforts.
Again, there’s not much to go on here, but so far at least, the film looks like the kind of mid-range blockbuster catered to appeal to a very specific demographic that want nothing more than big, loud, stupid entertainment. The title tells you all you need to know about it, too, even if the story is set to make some major deviations from the video game source material, and we imagine a full-length trailer surely isn’t too far off now that we’ve had our first glimpse of the pic.
Published: Oct 3, 2020 02:24 pm