By Adam Magara
Mortal Kombat, Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Warcraft, Need for speed and Supermario, all very recognizable titles for a gamer, grew up or spent a lot of time with gamers. Besides sharing video game status, these titles share another common factor that is going through the Hollywood treatment with movies based on their subject matter.
Monster Hunter is the latest in a string of movies to go through the Hollywood treatment and was received the same way the others did when they came out with terrible reviews and negative reactions from their respective fan base. Granted there are exceptions like 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog and “some” of the Resident Evil movies that had more favourable reviews and fan reactions but the odds of that are 1 in 15 which begs the question why such movies keep getting the greenlight.
Monster Hunter was a well received game in that the objectives were clear where one had to hunt monsters, transform such a premise to the big screen minus the audience’s influence and all you have is an audience that feels like they’re just playing a video game without controllers. It puts people in the position of a younger sibling watching the older one play and no one likes that feeling (siblings to gamers can relate…girlfriends too). The only thing the entire movie had going for it were a handful of decent action scenes but without a soul, decent plot, dialogue it couldn’t go far.
Granted there is an Uncharted movie with Tom Holland(Spiderman fame) and a Mortal Kombat movie with a star studded cast gathering a lot of hype this year, video game adaptations have a long way to gain the audience’s trust.
Rotten tomatoes gave the movie a 46%
Critics Consensus
Monster Hunter is mostly a mindless blur of action, held together by the slenderest threads of dialogue and plot -- and exactly what many viewers will be looking for
Personal rating
3/10
