Following a new teaser and premiere date for the Monster Hunter live-action movie, some new details have come out regarding its story.
Reportedly, the main characters in the film coming from our world is due to wanting a character that feels like an outsider, like a new player to the game series. Monster Hunter movie director Paul W.S. Anderson revealed (via IGN) the new details in a panel at New York Comic Con this past weekend.
“I wanted to recapture the feeling of when I first played the video game. I came to the game not knowing anything about it,” Anderson said. “And as a stranger, I was immersed in this world containing these amazing landscapes and these amazing creatures that would kick my ass. And I thought, ‘I want that. That should be the film going experience as well.'”
Anderson’s wife, Milla Jovovich, has starred in his other video game movie adaptation for Resident Evil, and she stars in the Monster Hunter film as Captain Natalie Artemis, a military officer whose unit gets mysteriously transported to the world of monsters.
Anderson said Artemis is “a very, very different character for her to play. She’s never played a character like this before.” He teased that Milla playing Artemis is “the avatar for the audience. She’s the newbie going into this world. She’s the person from our world. Then there’s nothing about the Monster Hunter world that’s going in for the first time.”
He added, “What’s nice for the game players about that is it recreates your first experience when you first played Monster Hunter. But also what’s nice is that it doesn’t exclude anyone because if you don’t know anything about the game, she’s the character who goes, ‘Oh my God, what are these creatures? What is this world? How does it work?'”
Monster Hunter is premiering on December 30th, 2020.