Review of Monster Hunter (2020) by Kelmon — 24 Feb 2021

As a fan of the game series, it was a bit of a letdown. For someone who isn't a fan of the series, its fine, but not great. Without a question the best part of this movie is the CG for the monsters, the textures and animations are very high quality and were a treat to see.

Tony Ja's character was great, and there were some genuinely cool moments, but overall the story wasn't that great. It's obvious the writers really wanted to focus on the main character gradually learning more and more about this new world she's in, but the execution doesn't quite stick, and it feels like they focus on this particular aspect way too much.

I was constantly finding myself wishing that they'd just removed the concept of the portals altogether and had all the characters be from the Monster Hunter universe. Overall, the movie is just okay, but not really anything spectacular.

For someone unfamiliar with the series already, its probably worth at least watching for the effects. However if you're already a fan of the series I wouldn't get your hopes up, the fights aren't really that good and the only part that really got my hopes up was seeing Gore Magala make an appearance, though it unfortunately doesn't really go anywhere.

I would NOT go out of my way to watch this movie a second time, though I must say that the CG and Costuming teams really outdid themselves, the outfits based on characters from the Monster Hunter World game are pretty spot-on and the monsters look awesome.

If they were to make a sequel, my advice would be to please focus more on the monster hunting and less on the main character trying to figure out how stuff works in this universe, let the viewers try and figure some of that out for themselves.