the monster hunter movie review

Monster Hunter

The story goes that Paul W.S. Anderson has been trying to make a film version of the video game series “Monster Hunter” since 2012, but one would never guess this after seeing the end result. Say what you will about the often critically derided films in the “ Resident Evil ” series, there’s at least a sense of style behind them that’s entirely missing for the first hour of “Monster Hunter.” That hour is bafflingly incompetent, failing to give viewers even the basic action they presume comes with a purchase or rental of something called “Monster Hunter.” At around the 70-minute mark, the Anderson who knows how to use excess for entertainment wakes up, but it will be too late for most people, who will either be asleep or figuring out if there’s a way to get a refund on their VOD rental. And then Anderson sabotages any goodwill he could have left with his viewers by dropping a non-ending designed purely to tease a sequel that seems unlikely to ever be. When it was announced, the hope was this could launch another series like “Resident Evil.” Sadly, this is going to be closer to “Soldier” on Anderson’s resume. Maybe they could get the gang together for more zombie dogs?

“Monster Hunter” opens in a vast desert in country with a group of U.S. Army Rangers on patrol, led by Captain Natalie Artemis ( Milla Jovovich ). What looks like a combination sandstorm/thunderstorm rises on the horizon, and Natalie and her team are suddenly thrust into an alternate universe alongside ours that is basically more desert, but with giant, terrifying creatures. Instead of world-building, which has defeated some of his most enjoyable escapism, Anderson goes for a vast desert wasteland aesthetic, and it’s a fatal flaw. You can’t make a movie called “Monster Hunter” that’s boring to look at it, and this is one of Anderson’s flattest films in every way.

After Anderson dispatches with most of Natalie’s crew, he unites his heroine with someone from this world called “The Hunter,” played by Tony Jaa . If you’re thinking, “Oh, cool, a Jovovich vs. Jaa fight has some potential,” I was on the same page, but Anderson can’t even pull that off. Working with editor Doobie White , he cuts every sequence in “Monster Hunter” into a hyperactive cinematic gruel so everything just looks and feels the same, at least for the first hour. Even when Jaa gets to show off some of his notable skills … we barely get to see them because of the choppy filmmaking.

What about the monsters? Shouldn’t a movie called “Monster Hunter” that’s co-produced by Toho scratch that itch for fans of “Godzilla” movies? Again, that mark is missed. The creature design isn’t even as elaborate or detailed as the games, feeling like the bare minimum required to satisfy a memo to an effects studio that says “make a big monster.” Some of the creature design in the “RE” movies can be grotesquely creative, but the decisions here in terms of monsters feel safe and boring.

And then something very bizarre happens. About two-thirds of the way into “Monster Hunter” it’s almost like Anderson and Jovovich get so bored that they just decide to start the wackier sequel earlier. Spotted briefly in the prologue, a scenery-chewing Ron Perlman drops into the action accompanied by a team of hunters that includes a giant cat who acts like a human. And in this moment you realize that all of “Monster Hunter” needed to be this weird. It’s not a great film at any point, but there’s style and creativity in the last act that’s a stark contrast to the dull noise that came before. If you’re gonna transport a star like Milla Jovovich to a land of monsters, why strand her in the desert for an hour and then basically become a different, more stylish movie in the final act? By the time Anderson figures out the right tone for this project, you’ll be hunting for a better movie. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Milla Jovovich as Artemis
• T.I. as Link
• Ron Perlman as Admiral
• Diego Boneta as
• Tony Jaa as The Hunter
• Meagan Good as
• Josh Helman as
• Jin Au-Yeung as
• Doobie White

Cinematographer

• Glen MacPherson

Writer (video game series)

• Kaname Fujioka
• Paul Haslinger
• Paul W. S. Anderson
• Paul W.S. Anderson

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Monster Hunter is shockingly, bombastically faithful to the games

The Milla Jovovich-led action movie lovingly parrots the Capcom franchise

by Chelsea Stark

I, someone who is happy to admit to having played 140 hours of Monster Hunter World since its 2018 launch, was on board with the Monster Hunter movie adaptation from its opening minutes. In the first scene, we see a pirate-style ship glide across a sea of dunes. Aboard the ship is a woman, peeking out of a candle-lit window with mismatched binoculars. During the film’s publicity blitz, we knew things like the titular monsters would look fairly accurate to their video game franchise counterparts, but I was dumbfounded by how much detail and care went to cribbing every aspect of the game’s identifiable style.

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The woman in the mismatched binoculars is simply known as The Handler, and while she has fewer lines than her chatty, cheery in-game counterpart — who’s essentially your tutorial guide in Monster Hunter: World — visually, they’re near dopplegangers. Her early appearance in the film felt shorthand to me that Monster Hunter ’s cinematic debut was done with a lot of love to the sometimes-impenetrable franchise. This wasn’t just a movie made on top of Monster Hunter, but an actual Monster Hunter movie.

That attention to detail is everywhere. After Milla Jovovich’s Captain Artemis and her Army Ranger squad are sucked through a mysterious storm into “Monster Hunter world” (I’m sorry!), every moment of the film feels primed to reward fans. All the set dressing, clothing, armor, weapons, and hair styles are ripped from the games — except for maybe Ron Perlman’s so-bad-its-bad wig. The monsters themselves are peak CG spectacle, especially the iconic Rathalos, the series mascot who gets the final showdown. Writer-director Paul W. S. Anderson loves to pull in close to the reflections in their (maybe even a bit too detailed) eyes, as they stalk Jovovich, her squad, and the Hunter she meets, played by Tony Jaa.

The movie monsters are far more lethal than a video game power fantasy might let on. Monster Hunter isn’t afraid to drop bodies in some pretty gnarly ways, and the movie’s long first act sends the squad running from one perilous beast to another as they are picked off one by one. Anderson’s Resident Evil films were no stranger to gory deaths, but there’s at least one in Monster Hunter that felt unnecessarily gross, all to drive home the point that monsters can tear through modern armored vehicles like tissue paper. (The lopsided tank-vs.-monster matchups, despite being largely revealed in cinematic trailers, are some of the biggest gut-busting funny moments of the film.)

Naturally, the only way to take their foes down are traps, grappling hooks, and big-ass swords, all of which are equally faithful to their game counterparts, down to the ways Jaa’s Hunter swings his great sword and Jovovich wields the dual blades. The biggest great sword swings are even shot to honor their video game inspiration, often with dramatic wide shots that show the scale between human and beast.

Despite Monster Hunter having a large supporting cast on paper, Jovovich spends chunks of the movie alone, toughing it out through wicked monsters and reinforcing her action-hero pedigree. Many of these moments are tropes we’ve seen before; she kisses a ring inscribed “forever” before cauterizing a wound on her leg with gunpowder and a flare. But the actress’ charisma brings life to the one-dimensional character, and once she teams up with Jaa, the pair’s language barrier doesn’t stop their chemistry. They learn to cooperate in the fights, and while close-cropped editing diminishes the impact of some of their longer brawls, the stunts are dramatic.

The entire movie is light in the story and character department; Jovovich’s entire Ranger squad has names like “Axe,” “Marshall,” “Dash,” and “Linc.” Anderson seems aware — the tropes felt as deliciously campy as the action. Matched with a reverence for the games, Monster Hunter ’s fan service-laden setpieces were the perfect, mindless salve for 2020. It’s hard to say if it’s comprehensible to someone who doesn’t love the series, but its bombastic action hardly lags during its hour-and-a-half run time. It’s a happy member of this new class of video game movies written with an obvious love of its lore, though possibly not able to stand up without a deep appreciation for the source material.

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Review: A funky finish and Milla Jovovich can’t redeem ‘Monster Hunter’

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For roughly two-thirds of its running time, the big-screen video game adaptation “Monster Hunter” feels like an attempt to answer a question no one has asked: What would the “Jurassic Park” movies be like if they were drained of all sense of wonder? The film rallies toward the end with a few genuinely spectacular images, but even its best scenes fail to justify a tedious first hour.

Written and directed by the veteran genre movie impresario Paul W.S. Anderson, “Monster Hunter” stars the battle-tested action-adventure actor Milla Jovovich , who also anchored Anderson’s “Resident Evil” films. She brings her usual spark to the role of Natalie Artemis, a no-nonsense U.S. Army officer who is leading her troops on a desert mission when a sandstorm transports them to another dimension dominated by enormous, predatory, dinosaur-like animals.

After sustaining heavy losses, Artemis makes contact with “The Hunter” ( Tony Jaa ), who first captures her but then joins forces to try to survive the near-unceasing monster onslaught. Initially, the two can barely communicate with each other until they bond over a mutual love of chocolate.

From the opening scene onward — aside from the few minutes of awkward conversation between Artemis and the Hunter — the action in “Monster Hunter” is pretty nonstop. But that succession of large-scale monster-attack sequences comes at the expense of story and character development. Even the mythology from the “Monster Hunter” video game series is minimized, as the heroes are too busy fighting off creature after creature.

Anderson makes some head-scratching choices with the staging of those big fights. In the first one, the attacker is mostly under the sand. A little later, Artemis fends off a wave of behemoths in a dark cavern. In both cases — and with most of the early action in “Monster Hunter” — the monsters themselves are hard to see, and the strategies and logistics of the skirmishes are difficult to comprehend.

Throughout the picture, Anderson and his editors rely a lot on quick camera moves and quick cuts, effectively killing any sense of flow to the action. (Jaa, an accomplished martial artist, is especially ill-served by a visual approach that chops up and obscures his cool moves.) There’s just not a lot of awe here … and since the days of “King Kong” and “Godzilla,” monster movies have relied on awe.

And yet, just when “Monster Hunter” is looking like a complete waste of time, Artemis meets a grizzled warrior played by Ron Perlman , and at long last the movie starts to get a little funky. As the good guys gear up for a grand clash between human and beast, Artemis learns a bit more about the weird world she’s been visiting, with its sand-bound sailing ships and its humanoid felines.

Almost out of nowhere, the muddled and bland “Monster Hunter” of the first 60 minutes gives way to a movie with much more originality and personality. Even the fight scenes brighten up, culminating in a stunning-looking standoff between a dragon and a high-end military-grade helicopter.

Alas, the good stuff comes too late. To be fair, all this movie promises from the start is monsters and hunters, and Anderson delivers both, from the first frame to the credits. But for way too long, the generic title is matched to generic action.

'Monster Hunter'

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of creature action and violence throughout. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 18 in drive-ins and in limited release where theaters are open

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‘Monster Hunter’ Review: Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa Fight CG Beasties in Derivative Video Game Adaptation

'Resident Evil' director Paul W.S. Anderson delivers a stylish parallel dimension where Milla Jovovich acts out a feature-length trailer for the sci-fi game series.

By Peter Debruge

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Everything I know about the “ Monster Hunter ” video game series is contained in Paul W.S. Anderson ’s big-screen adaptation of the franchise, “Monster Hunter.” There will be critics who can tell you who these characters are, or what’s up with the “new world” where monsters live, or why those of us in the “old world” should be worried about them, but that information is not presented in this visually interesting but narratively anemic motion picture (nor the press notes, for that matter), so please accept my apologies in advance: This review will likely be about as coherent as the film itself.

Milla Jovovich , who is married to Anderson and has starred in six of his “Resident Evil” movies (four of which he directed), wrapped that franchise a few years back and could use another. Here, she plays a U.S. Army Ranger (the notes identify her as “Lt. Artemis,” but her squad calls her “captain”) on some kind of U.N. mission tracking the disappearance of Bravo Team. They went missing in the middle of a desert somewhere in “our world” — according to the coordinates provided on-screen (latitude: 33° 56′ 2.54″ N , longitude: 67° 42″ 12.35′ N), it’s the location of a Sheep and Chicken Store in Ghawcqol, Afghanistan, though South Africa supplies the movie’s stunning other-dimensionly locations.

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Suddenly, a dark CG sandstorm manifests on the horizon, sparking blue lightning and closing fast. The digital phenomenon overtakes Artemis and her unit (a short-lived bunch that includes Tip “T.I.” Harris), transporting them, Dorothy style, to another desert — one that looks like Middle-earth, only with much whiter sand. In the distance, a Mordor-like “Sky Tower” looms. Artemis and her unit drive around a bit, singing, until they happen upon a giant skeleton. Whatever this creature might have been, it was big. And whatever ate it was probably a whole lot bigger.

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It won’t take long for Artemis and her team to meet this freaky sand-swimming reptile, which is, truth be told, a pretty impressive CG monster, “Diablo.” That’s what Thai martial arts star Tony Jaa (who’s referred to only as “Hunter”) calls it half an hour later, but first, Diablo has to gobble, stomp and impale a few of Artemis’ men. They run toward the rocks, where some giant bug creatures attack (these look and act like the monsters in the vintage Vin Diesel movie “Pitch Black”). More gobbling, stomping and impaling ensues. This is where Ranger Artemis meets Hunter No-Name. The two of them do not speak the same language, and the chemistry between them is … awkward. They fight, then join forces, upgrading to bigger weapons. Their goal is to reach the Sky Tower, which means crossing Diablo’s desert.

But you’re not reading this review for a plot summary, are you? “Monster Hunter” is one of the few relatively big-budget 2020 releases that hasn’t been pushed off the schedule by the “China virus” (although it was pushed off the schedule by the Chinese government, pulled from theaters in that country over a racist joke that has since been cut from the film). I can think of some other things that might be cut from the film, although it would be a lot more coherent if Anderson and editor Doobie White were to put some scenes back in.

As a filmmaker, Anderson has a take-it-or-leave-it style that confounds many, but pleases enough to sustain a career making hyper-visual effects-heavy movies that play like feature-length trailers: “Event Horizon,” “Alien vs. Predator,” “Pompeii” and the four aforementioned “Resident Evil” movies. “Monster Hunter” is no different in that it moves along at a steady clip, dispensing with all but the most rudimentary character details in order to maximize the stuff that excites the fans — namely, striking compositions and carnage. Most of the time, during action scenes, you can’t tell what’s happening, but it seems to make sense to the characters, and the overripe sound design (which sounds like someone assaulting a couch with a baseball bat or smashing up the produce section at a grocery store) creates a kind of continuity through the Cuisinart cutting.

A bit more plot: After defeating Diablo, the Ranger and the Hunter reach an oasis, where they stumble upon a few more breeds of monsters, as well as another team of what look like pirates led by Ron Perlman, the “Hellboy” actor whose presence confers a strange kind of legitimacy on the project. If I had to guess, I’d say that Perlman’s character, the Admiral — and his mostly nameless fellow pirates, including a human-size CG cat — are probably monster hunters from the game, whereas Jovovich is someone who has been invented for the film. Maybe they’ve all been invented. It doesn’t really matter, because they hardly qualify as characters.

Artemis has some numbers tattooed on the back of her neck and keeps a ring with the word “Forever” engraved inside the band, but that’s just about all we learn about her. Admiral’s team looks like they mean business, although they disappear somewhere during the final showdowns with the Rathalos, a flying, fire-breathing super-monster, so they can’t be that important. Between the moment Artemis and Admiral set out for the Sky Tower and the scene where they reach it, Anderson gives us three long-distance beauty shots covering roughly the same amount of distance it took Peter Jackson two “Lord of the Rings” movie to traverse.

This guy could tell “Around the World in Eighty Days” in 80 seconds. But he’s no Uwe Boll (another video game director with an even worse track record). A better comparison might be Justin Kurzel, who made the “Assassin’s Creed” movie. Very little of “Monster Hunter” makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, Dec. 15, 2020. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 103 MIN.

• Production: (China-Germany-Japan-U.S.) A Screen Gems release, presented with Constantin Films, Tencent Pictures, Toho, of a Constantin Film, AB Digital Pictures production. Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Paul W.S. Anderson, Dennis Berardi, Robert Kulzer, Martin Moszkowicz. Executive producers: Edward Cheng, Howard Chen, Hiro Matsuoka.
• Crew: Director, writer: Paul W.S. Anderson. Camera: Glen MacPherson. Editor: Doobie White. Music: Paul Haslinger.
• With: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung, Ron Perlman.

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Monster Hunter is a CGI battlefest and nothing more: Review

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

There are fantasy films with intricate worlds — sagas of faraway lands with fleshed-out rules. There may not be any elves or demons in real life, but some films work hard enough at world-building to help us suspend disbelief and get engrossed in the various dynamics of made-up places. Monster Hunter (out on VOD this Friday) is not one of those movies.

That's not necessarily a failing, since Monster Hunter isn't pretending to be Tolkien. It sells itself as a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters, and it is indeed a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters — no more and no less. Like Jovovich's previous collaborations with her husband, director Paul W.S. Anderson , on the Resident Evil films, Monster Hunter is based off a video game franchise. It certainly feels like an old-fashioned video game: Plot doesn't really matter, there's not much character development to speak of, but there is a lot of fighting against an endless swarm of enemies.

The opening scene shows us a giant ship crashing in the midst of a supernatural storm, but soon cuts to "our world" — indicated by an empty Coke can on the side of the road, and U.S. soldiers patrolling a desert area. (Credit where it's due: Those are two pretty on-brand descriptions of our modern world.) Jovovich's Captain Artemis is the leader of this squad, but it's one thing to lead your troops into battle against human combatants; it's another to suddenly find yourself pulled into another dimension by a freak storm.

This world is also a desert; it's not actually clear how much the two planes differ geographically. It's just that, while humans thoroughly dominate the food chain on our Earth, this one has a whole different class of apex predators. Giant spiders cause the most problems at first; one poor sucker (played by T.I.!) even gets eggs laid inside him, Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark -style. The rest of Artemis' crew doesn't last much longer, which frees us from having to worry too much about dialogue from then on. A survivor of that opening shipwreck known only as the Hunter (Tony Jaa) finds Artemis and becomes the only ally in her newfound war against monsters, but he doesn't speak English (and we viewers don't even get subtitles). The closest they come to communicating is agreeing that Artemis' Hershey bar tastes good, though one would think that consuming chocolate would be counter-productive in a desert devoid of water. Ah well, hopefully, the product placement was worth something.

Together, Artemis and the Hunter fashion themselves some reasonably-cool armor, weapons, and traps out of both the surrounding desert detritus and the corpses of monsters they kill, so that they can become even better at killing more monsters. This sequence is the heart of the movie, and there's fun to be had with the monster battles — especially when the Hunter shoots one triceratops-looking fiend through the eye with a poisoned arrow, allowing Artemis to mount its back via grappling hook and deal even more damage.

In between, these fights are training montages that raise more questions than they answer. Why do blades forged in this dimension emit blasts of fire? Who knows? The Hunter doesn't even tell Artemis, much less us. Eventually, Ron Perlman shows up as an old ally of the Hunter's, and he can speak the same language as Artemis, so there's a half-hearted attempt to dump some lore on us: Something something ancient race of technologically-advanced people whose reach exceeded their grasp, something something tower that connects these two worlds and must be destroyed for the safety of both, etc.

At a certain point, Monster Hunter just decides to end. As the surviving characters gear up for a final assault on the magic tower, the credits start rolling. A film that doesn't even bother to wrap up its own story, instead gesturing vaguely at a hypothetical sequel, is telling you exactly how much you should care about it. At least some of those monsters are fun and gross. Grade: C

Related content:

• Monster Hunter director and stars apologize after film is pulled from theaters in China
• Milla Jovovich kick-starts hunting season in first Monster Hunter posters
• Wolfwalkers is a refreshing animated fantasy that calls for change: Review

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Monster Hunter Reviews

Paul W.S. Anderson once again takes a CAPCOM franchise and instead of adapting the source material faithfully in any way he just makes sure his wife looks as cool as possible and fills in the rest with light lore and visual nods. I’d avoid this one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 15, 2023

A soulless and apathetic product. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Nov 18, 2022

Monster Hunter ’s story is as simplistic as they come, but for fans of the game and director Paul W.S. Anderson, there’s more than enough exciting action to enjoy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2022

If nothing else, some people will enjoy it just for the non-stop action and CGI spectacle. But that doesn’t hide the glaring lack of story and character development.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

There are entertaining stretches here, but they compete with repetitive and often predictable ones.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | May 17, 2022

It is a series of special effects sequences. Pretty ropey.

Full Review | Jun 23, 2021

It's a shame, because Monster Hunter could have at least been a fun, dumb action movie, but what we're left with is a messy and uninteresting flick that's too afraid to go full camp and have fun with itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 22, 2021

It achieves a kind of jokey bombast.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2021

Despite a muddled final act, Monster Hunter is satisfyingly efficient, a quick-fire thrill-ride of creepy thrills, nasty kills, and of course, monster-hunting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2021

Monster Hunter [is] vapid, empty spectacle that sands down any potential geopolitical commentary.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

A spectacle with no life. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 17, 2021

There is an entertaining, lean action-adventure at the heart of Anderson's film, but either indecision over purpose or studio interference has compromised that vision with unnecessary and extraneous elements at either end.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 2, 2021

Shockingly fun and self-aware, Monster Hunter is a goddamn blast.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 20, 2021

Monster Hunter relies to heavily on Jovovich's screen charm but fails to develop a cohesive universe in which to build an engaging story. It takes itself too seriously to even enjoy it campiness and it is too campy to be considered a serious film.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 8, 2021

The script is bland, the premise seems too unbelievable, and the action scenes are too long.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 29, 2021

We must critique Monster Hunter for what it is, a filmic exercise with abundances and deficiencies. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 24, 2021

It is a relic of sorts, where the guts and action, unrefined and tawdry as they are, are at least based on a genuine creative impulse rather than a fake injection of meaning or purpose either in the form of symbolic social lectures or furthering an IP.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2021

Even if [Paul W.S] Anderson meant to approach "Monster Hunter" as a check-your-brain-at-the-door B-movie style, it lacks that much-needed sustainable sense of mindless fun to last until the end.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2021

The film's overall visual aesthetic is a confused and derivative hodgepodge, and audience enjoyment will depend upon their affection for the over-saturated genre.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 22, 2021

Too bland to be entertaining in a mindless, ridiculous way, and just meandering and monotonous in general.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2021

Monster Hunter Review

An adaptation of the Japanese video-game series, Monster Hunter is heavily inspired by video-game structure – hordes of enemies, distinct environments impossibly conjoined to make different levels, a final boss. The outlandish plot is grounded by the inspired pairing of Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa , as director Paul WS Anderson focuses on their greatest strength: their physicality. It’s thrilling to see the film so fully embrace this; their chemistry thrives because of the narrative restriction of a language barrier, leaving the two to mostly communicate through body language. Jovovich moves with action-hero grace, Jaa is nimble and extremely charming, even with minimal dialogue.

Anderson’s storytelling is spartan, limiting exposition about the world Artemis and her squad find themselves in. This is satisfying for its first two acts — the soldiers’ arrival and their quick dismemberment; Jovovich and Jaa’s characters bonding — but the finale is muddled, suddenly introducing more cannon-fodder for the battle. Still, Monster Hunter ’s leanness is mostly its greatest asset, flying through a surprising variety of set-pieces as Artemis flees from and later slays a range of giant beasties.

As for the monsters themselves, the creature design is fun and faithful to the series, though after a time their scaly textures feel indistinct, which is a shame considering the delightfully outlandish costume and prop design elsewhere. The framing of the story through the eyes of the military initially feels uninspired but it’s less of a frustration once the purpose of these poor soldiers is clear: to make regular weaponry look feeble next to the hunter’s supersized weapons, carved from monster bones. Spectacle is the aim of the game, so to speak — but it’s not thoughtless, the soldiers themselves immediately joking about how their roles as political tools will consign them to the meat grinder. Too bad for them, so much fun for us.

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‘Monster Hunter’ Review: Beasts of Boredom

Milla Jovovich stars as an Army Ranger trapped in an alternate universe in this video game-derived silliness.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

“Monster Hunter” — 80 percent monsters, 20 percent hunter — proves definitively that neither gaping wounds nor a gargantuan armored earwig can stop Milla Jovovich.

Having accompanied the film’s writer and director, Paul W.S. Anderson, through multiple chapters of his “Resident Evil” franchise, Jovovich is well prepared to class up this latest video game-derived nonsense. The opening alone is a hoot and a half: A giant galleon heaving and bucking across a storm-tossed desert, captained by a worried-looking Ron Perlman and pursued beneath the sand by the aforementioned earwig. Someone has been reading too much Frank Herbert.

The sandstorm also strands Lt. Artemis (Jovovich) and her Army Ranger unit in this parallel universe, populated by “Lost World”-style critters and the mysterious Hunter (Tony Jaa). When her team noisily succumbs to cave-dwelling spider-thingies that incubate their young in human skin, Artemis decides to team up with Hunter and, well, do something. He doesn’t speak English and the script doesn’t speak coherence, so their plans are necessarily vague.

Luckily, Perlman shows up again to introduce his personal chef — a man-sized cat wearing a cat-sized hat — and explain about the mysterious tower that opens the gateway between worlds and will no doubt feature prominently in the inevitable sequel. Until then, we’re left to process a Post-it-sized plot, numbing fight sequences and dialogue along the lines of “My God!” and “Aargh!”

Jovovich, though, remains limber, leggy and — like her lipstick — damn near indestructible. And that’s very good news for schlocky pictures like this one.

Monster Hunter Rated PG-13 for spider-filled pustules and poison-filled entrails. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

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Monster Hunter Is Loud, Unapologetic Fun

Paul W.S. Anderson is the rare director who seems to make good movies out of video games , with Mortal Kombat , the Resident Evil series, and now Monster Hunter on his résumé. Each of these adaptations is quite different (and some are better than others), but if there’s one thing that seems to unite the pictures, and Anderson’s work in general, it has to be his attention to the environments in which the action takes place; he’s the most architectural of genre filmmakers. His first feature, the controversial indie British drama Shopping , introduced the world to Jude Law as a nihilistic young hood who got his kicks crashing cars into shopping malls. In the two films that followed, Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon , location became even more critical — particularly in the latter, a horror-sci-fi masterpiece about a spaceship that had gone quite literally to hell and back, in which the ship, a cross between space station and medieval torture chamber, was arguably the central character.

All of this makes Anderson an ideal director for video-game adaptations, because more than action — which, admittedly, he’s quite deft at — the chief appeal of so many games seems to be the ability to both use and lose oneself in their often-otherworldly environments. Monster Hunter — which takes place in a fantastical dimension in which lowly humans are pitted against a variety of humongous, surreal, terrifying creatures — was partly shot on a striking lunar-landscape stretch of desert in Namibia, and it does feel like we’ve been transported somewhere not of this Earth. (The director has the good sense to kick the film off with one of its most striking images: a giant ship sailing through an ocean of sand, rising and falling and crashing with the rolling dunes.)

The “ Wizard of Oz meets Hell in the Pacific ” story follows Artemis (Milla Jovovich), an Army Ranger whose team was swept into this world through a kind of storm portal, and a character known as the Hunter (Tony Jaa), an inhabitant of this land who has been trapped in a desolate stretch of desert after getting swept off one of those aforementioned sand ships. Artemis and the Hunter don’t speak each other’s language, so pretty much all of their communication happens through gestures and glances. They also start off as adversaries, and only begrudgingly ally themselves against the armies of giant spiders and the huge horned underground worm-demons and the fire-breathing armored dragons and whatnot. A proud schlockmeister, Anderson doesn’t play coy or get too subtle with the creatures here: The movie is called Monster Hunter , after all, and dammit, he’s gonna give us monsters. Not to mention some gnarly weapons, from giant scimitars to flaming swords to retractable, wrist-mounted crossbow thingamabobs. (I assume some of this stuff comes from the game, which I haven’t played.)

Yet, there is art in it, too. There’s something truly electric about the pure, visual storytelling of Monster Hunter . After Artemis discovers, for example, that the giant spiders can’t step out into the sun, a couple of suspense scenes turn on the slow, agonizing appearance and disappearance of sunlight; because we’re so embedded in these characters’ perspectives, their gazes and their movements, the experience of watching them becomes more visceral. This is also where Anderson’s penchant for designing his action scenes around the settings comes in handy. The landscape, with its caves and outcroppings and ledges and canyons and different levels, is filled with dramatic potential. It’s there to be used, not just to be passed through, or to have backstory-filled conversations in.

Admittedly, this won’t be to all tastes. There’s a bluntness to Monster Hunter that may turn off viewers looking for something with more grandeur or refinement or ambition. Anderson has always seemed content with his corner of the genre universe — making loud, ruthless, gleefully violent, jump-scare-filled thrillers and action flicks that some of us find irresistible and others find obnoxious. The PG-13 Monster Hunter has some of the rough trappings of a more family-friendly fantasy entertainment than much of his previous work, but as with his period pieces — the underrated Pompeii and Three Musketeers — the director bends the picture to his charmingly barbaric will, not the other way around. The film even contains one classic cat jump-scare … but the cat in this case turns out to be a muscle-bound feline pirate wielding a knife. Which should give you an idea of the kind of movie this is. Monster Hunter is so unapologetically itself, it warms your heart.

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‘monster hunter’: film review.

Video game adaptation king Paul W.S. Anderson is at it again with 'Monster Hunter,' an action flick starring Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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More an expensive VFX demo reel than a story, the latest Paul W.S. Anderson film hopes to take yet another video game, Capcom’s  Monster Hunter , and turn it into a money-minting movie franchise. Teaming again with wife Milla Jovovich , star of his hugely successful Resident Evil series (also based on a Capcom franchise), the writer-director tacitly acknowledges his lack of interest in dialogue by introducing a co-star, Tony Jaa, whose character speaks no English. A few flashes of amused chemistry between the two actors represent all the human interest in this unimaginative sci-fi actioner, but that doesn’t mean the pic’s relentless focus on giant-monster battles won’t please the director’s fans.

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Jovovich plays an Army Ranger, Captain Artemis, who’s leading a search in unidentified desert territory for soldiers who disappeared mysteriously. Suddenly, her team is set upon by an approaching desert dust storm that might look cool to viewers who haven’t seen Fury Road . “Things might get kinetic,” the captain tersely warns her subordinates. Well, they’re certainly not about to get cerebral .

Release date: Dec 18, 2020

Artemis and company get zapped by some lightning and wake up in a much vaster desert than the one they’re supposed to be in. They don’t know it yet, but they’re in another dimension, where giant sailing ships somehow move about on dunes instead of water and remnants of an ancient alien civilization cause headaches for humans. They find the bodies of their lost comrades, incinerated by flames hot enough to turn the sand to glass. Being from the real world, they don’t recognize a dragon’s handiwork when they see it.

A lot of people die, or at least get taken out of the action, when a swarm of giant crab-spider things attack out of nowhere. If the overall action here doesn’t merit a letter home to mom, the pic’s attempt to one-up Alien ‘s chest-burster will at least make viewers squirm for a minute. By the time the goosebumps settle down, Artemis is on her own, trying to make sense of a world teeming with mostly unrecognizable giant monsters.

Jaa’s unnamed character, called Hunter in end credits, has been stranded in this wasteland for a while, with no hope of getting home. Bizarrely, his first impulse upon seeing a fellow human is to attack her. Anderson stages a long, senseless fight before the two inevitably team up to kill themselves some CGI beasties.

Forced to communicate with gestures, the two do manage to give a name to their most immediate enemy after those spider-crabs: Diablos, a snake-with-arms that’s as big as a freight train, travels under the sand, and has gnarly horns befitting its devilish name. Fortunately, Hunter has scavenged explosives to use with his trusty archery gear, and can somehow wield a sword that appears to weigh about as much as he does. The two gather up an arsenal ranging from magic weapons to steampunky ones (the movie relies surprisingly heavily on a wrist-mounted grappling hook) and engage in a familiar gear-up montage. Viewers who find all this martial chest-puffery stale may find themselves unreasonably entertained when Artemis utters a grim “let’s do this” and her partner, who still doesn’t speak English, responds with a puzzled “hmm?”

There’s plenty to blow up after the diablos, and the movie solves its language barrier with the introduction of Hunter’s bilingual old shipmate The Admiral ( Ron Perlman , whose eye-grabbing wig does a lot of the acting for him). The Admiral efficiently dumps a franchise’s worth of exposition into Artemis’ lap, then gathers the rest of his crew so they can all go hunt a dragon. The only question remaining is how much of a resolution Anderson will give before making it clear he hopes to milk this franchise for as many sequels as he can get.

Production companies: Constantin Film, AB2 Digital Pictures Distributor: Screen Gems Cast: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Ron Perlman, Meagan Good, Diego Boneta, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung Director-Screenwriter: Paul W.S. Anderson Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Paul W.S. Anderson, Dennis Berardi, Robert Kulzer, Martin Moszkowicz Executive producers: Edward Cheng, Howard Chen, Hiro Matsuoka Director of photography: Glen MacPherson Production designer: Edward Thomas Costume designer: Danielle Knox Editor: Doobie White Composer: Paul Haslinger Casting director: Tamara-Lee Notcutt

PG-13, 103 minutes

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Monster hunter.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 7 Reviews
• Kids Say 16 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Loud, violent video game adaptation is mostly forgettable.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Monster Hunter is a violent video game-based action/fantasy adventure in which a group of soldiers ends up crossing into another dimension, where giant carnivorous monsters kill the few humans around. The captain of the Ranger unit, played by Milla Jovovich, teams up with a…

Why Age 14+?

Tons of action/fantasy violence: People are attacked, impaled, crushed, burned t

Infrequent: a couple uses of "s--t," several "hells" and "godammits," and a few

Nothing on screen, but the movie is a promotional tie-in to the popular video ga

Artemis and the Hunter drink out of a flask; while it isn't clear what they drin

Any Positive Content?

Promotes teamwork, courage, and perseverance in the face of seemingly unbeatable

Artemis is a brave, strong, and disciplined captain who cares about her crew. Sh

Violence & Scariness

Tons of action/fantasy violence: People are attacked, impaled, crushed, burned to death, and eaten by the giant, animal-like monsters. Humans use a combination of modern and ancient weapons against the creatures: guns, crossbows, hand grenades, tanks, helicopters, fighter planes, explosives, swords, and spears. Monsters are shown eating people or crushing their skulls, with torsos and legs hanging out of their mouths. In one graphic scene, a character's stomach erupts with baby spider monsters. A couple of scenes involve human-on-human violence, with a man punching a woman in the face and soldiers trying to shoot the Hunter.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent: a couple uses of "s--t," several "hells" and "godammits," and a few exclamations of "Jesus" and "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing on screen, but the movie is a promotional tie-in to the popular video game franchise.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Artemis and the Hunter drink out of a flask; while it isn't clear what they drink, Artemis winces/gasps as if it's something strong.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Promotes teamwork, courage, and perseverance in the face of seemingly unbeatable odds. Stresses the importance of mutual respect and collaboration among people who speak different languages and come from different backgrounds.

Positive Role Models

Artemis is a brave, strong, and disciplined captain who cares about her crew. She sacrifices her safety to try to save her team and, later, the Hunter. The Hunter is also courageous and compassionate. The cast is racially and ethnically diverse, but most of the characters don't stay alive long enough to merit discussion. The two main characters are a White woman and an otherworldly character played by an ethnically Asian man.

Parents need to know that Monster Hunter is a violent video game-based action/fantasy adventure in which a group of soldiers ends up crossing into another dimension, where giant carnivorous monsters kill the few humans around. The captain of the Ranger unit, played by Milla Jovovich , teams up with a mysterious Hunter ( Tony Jaa ) to fight the massive. frightening creatures. As in the video games , there's there's violence in nearly every scene, some of it jump-worthy, as the humans try to kill every monster that crosses their paths. Humans and monsters are destroyed by a variety of weapons: guns, grenades, heavy artillery, crossbows, spears, swords, and more. Many characters die: People are crushed, dismembered, burned to death, and eaten. Strong language is infrequent but includes "s--t," "goddammit," and religious exclamations. The movie is likely to appeal most to fans of the game franchise (who will understand the world-building) or fantasy-adventure enthusiasts. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (7)
• Kids say (16)

Based on 7 parent reviews

Great Monster flick, but one TERRYING SCENE with Spiders make this not age appropriate for someone age 13 IMO.

Great imagination of the game, what's the story.

Monster Hunter is an action movie based on the Monster Hunter: World video game. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson , the undisputed king of video game adaptations, the film stars Milla Jovovich as Capt. Artemis. She leads an Army Ranger squad that drives through a desert storm that's actually a portal to another world, where -- one by one -- they're picked off by huge dinosaur, spider, dragon, and sea creature-like monsters that are intent on killing all of them. Emerging as the sole survivor of her team, Artemis teams up with a mysterious Hunter ( Tony Jaa ) who knows about the various creatures and how to best kill them. Together, the Hunter -- who speaks an unknown language -- and Artemis find a way to communicate and train to kill more of the beasts and hopefully find a way to get her back to Earth.

Is It Any Good?

As video game-based movies go, this isn't the worst, because spouses Anderson and Jovovich know what they're doing -- but it's still a forgettable compilation of violent CGI effects. At this point, Anderson owes his career to turning video games into movies, and his Resident Evil star-turned-wife is his fierce, fabulous muse. Despite dismal reviews, the Resident Evil franchise has a sizable following, so it's possible that Monster Hunter will strike the same chord. But for audiences who are unfamiliar or uninterested in the game, the movie has little to offer beyond a seemingly unending sequence of violent battles between humans and beasts. But the tension is underwhelming, as is any investment in the characters (even Artemis and the Hunter remain unknowable).

There are a few moments of levity, such as when Artemis gives the Hunter her stash of chocolate and he demands more, or in the inevitable training montage when she learns to use his armor and weapons, but they fall short of humanizing the characters. This is definitely not a buddy adventure, nor is it a character study of warriors strategizing and overcoming rough odds. It's just a show of humanity-versus-beast violence -- and not a creative show at that. Then again, these movies never pretend to be something they're not, and there's clearly an audience for them. Don't expect substantive world building, back stories, or plot explanations, just artillery-spraying, human-crunching action.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Monster Hunter . Is it necessary to the movie? Does fantasy violence impact viewers differently than realistic violence?

How do the movie's characters demonstrate teamwork , perseverance , and courage ? Why are these important character strengths ?

The movie has been boycotted in China because of a joke about "Chi-knees" included in previews that was later deleted. What responsibility do screenwriters and filmmakers have to be thoughtful about the use of racist or insensitive language in their films?

What do you think about the genre of video game-to-movie adaptations? Which one is your favorite? How does this one compare to the others?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 18, 2020
• On DVD or streaming : March 2, 2021
• Cast : Milla Jovovich , Ron Perlman , Tony Jaa
• Director : Paul W.S. Anderson
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors
• Studio : Screen Gems
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 99 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of creature action and violence throughout
• Last updated : November 24, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Monster Hunter review roundup: here’s what the critics are saying

The Monster Hunter reviews are in and they're... not good

The Monster Hunter reviews are in – and they’re not all that positive. The movie stars Milla Jovovich as Artemis, Tony Jaa as the Hunter, Ron Perlman as Admiral, and T.I. as Link, and is directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Anderson and Jovovich previously teamed up for the cinematic adaptations of Resident Evil.

With Monster Hunter reviews finally reaching the internet before the movie releases in American cinemas this week, we've rounded up the critical reactions. They're quite something. Our own review will be forthcoming.

IGN – Zaki Hasan – 3/10

“We may be barreling towards the tail end of December, but it seems 2020 isn’t done with us yet: under the wire, it’s delivered one of the worst action movies in recent memory, and another addition to the Video Game Movie Adaptation Hall of Shame… here comes the latest cinematic game defenestration, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter, to remind us how rare good video game movies are.”

Variety – Peter Debruge – N/A

“As a filmmaker, Anderson has a take-it-or-leave-it style that confounds many, but pleases enough to sustain a career making hyper-visual effects-heavy movies that play like feature-length trailers: Event Horizon, Alien vs. Predator, Pompeii and the four aforementioned Resident Evil movies. Monster Hunter is no different in that it moves along at a steady clip, dispensing with all but the most rudimentary character details in order to maximise the stuff that excites the fans — namely, striking compositions and carnage.”

Indie Wire – David Ehrlich – D-

“From that point on, “Monster Hunter” is relentlessly terrible even by 2020 standards, as it quickly descends into a dull and colourless bit of bug-hunting that marries the production value of a SyFy Original with the scale of a tutorial level, resulting in one of the drabbest and least imaginative video game movies ever made. Series fans will feel cheated by such a chintzy and incurious take on something they love, while the rest of us will be left wondering how the source material earned itself any fans in the first place.”

The Hollywood Reporter – John DeFore – N/A

“More an expensive VFX demo reel than a story, the latest Paul W.S. Anderson film hopes to take yet another video game, Capcom 's Monster Hunter, and turn it into a money-minting movie franchise. Teaming again with wife Milla Jovovich, star of his hugely successful Resident Evil series (also based on a Capcom franchise), the writer-director tacitly acknowledges his lack of interest in dialogue by introducing a co-star, Tony Jaa, whose character speaks no English. A few flashes of amused chemistry between the two actors represent all the human interest in this unimaginative sci-fi actioner, but that doesn't mean the pic's relentless focus on giant-monster battles won't please the director's fans.”

Entertainment Weekly – Christian Holub – C

“It sells itself as a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters, and it is indeed a movie about Milla Jovovich fighting CGI monsters – no more and no less. Like Jovovich's previous collaborations with her husband, director Paul W.S. Anderson, on the Resident Evil films, Monster Hunter is based off a video game franchise. It certainly feels like an old-fashioned video game: Plot doesn't really matter, there's not much character development to speak of, but there is a lot of fighting against an endless swarm of enemies.”

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Comic Book – Rollin Bishop – 2/5

“Monster Hunter ultimately flirts with being an absolutely fine movie while just managing to miss the mark. It’s not going to change hearts and minds, but seeing a military convoy try to take on Diablos and others is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. It just lacks the attention to detail that, say, Pacific Rim has to its world and characters. By the end of the film, I didn’t really understand why I was supposed to care about anyone still left alive beyond the fact that they remained on the screen. Monster Hunter is the energy drink of movies; a quick shock of energy followed mostly by a headache.”

Monster Hunter is released in the US this December 18 2020. While you wait, check out our guide to all of 2020 and 2021’s movie release dates .

I'm an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English. 

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‘Monster Hunter’ Review: Jovovich and Jaa Team Up for a Virtually Unwatchable Video Game Movie

David ehrlich.

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The opening few minutes of Paul W.S. Anderson ’s “Monster Hunter” are such a delightful eruption of unfettered, goofy-ass, who-cares-what-your-parents-think nerdcore that it seems as if the director of 1995’s “Mortal Kombat” (and the “Resident Evil” series after that) has reset video game movies back to the good old days when they weren’t bogged down by delusions of respectability — when they were memorably bad instead of just dull or “Assassin’s Creed.” If only.

The “Monster Hunter” franchise, which might be helpful for neophytes to think of as the Pepsi to Pokémon’s Coke, has always stood out for its high fantasy trappings, and boy oh boy does Anderson embrace those in a big way right out of the gate. We open on a hilariously self-important quote about “new worlds” that are hidden “behind the perception of our senses” as Paul Haslinger’s glitch-pop score blares in the background, and that’s an excellent start. Cut to: A galleon ship full of sand pirates cutting through a vast desert in the dead of night as a giant subterranean worm of some kind is hot on their tail. Hell yeah.

And it only gets better from there — one of the brigands aboard the boat is Ron Perlman, the “ Pottersville ” star rocking a leather vest and an anime haircut as he plays a “Monster Hunter” mainstay known as Admiral (imagine someone rolled Sabretooth and Cloud Strife into 300 pounds of tenderized meat and you’ll get a sense of what this looks like). Admiral’s best friends? That’s right: “Ong-Bak” ass-kicker Tony Jaa and a giant, ginsu knife-wielding cat known as a “Meowscular Chef.” Jaa falls overboard, the music swirls around the title card in a maelstrom of hot synth action, and the 2099 Oscar season steels itself for the “Mank” that someone will inevitably write about the making of the Chinese-American co-production that brought the globe’s two biggest superpowers together even as tensions between them grew strained on the world stage.

Alas, some hidden worlds should have stayed behind the perception of our senses, and Paul W.S. Anderson — an occasionally form-bending filmmaker who’s never met a beloved franchise that he couldn’t militarize beyond all interest or recognition — sucks any trace of life out of the “Monster Hunter” series the moment his movie exchanges the cartoon sand pirates of its campy prologue in favor of some generic soldier types on our side of the dimensional rift.

From that point on, “Monster Hunter” is relentlessly terrible even by 2020 standards, as it quickly descends into a dull and colorless bit of bug-hunting that marries the production value of a SyFy Original with the scale of a tutorial level, resulting in one of the drabbest and least imaginative video game movies ever made. Series fans will feel cheated by such a chintzy and incurious take on something they love, while the rest of us will be left wondering how the source material earned itself any fans in the first place.

Milla Jovovich , the director’s wife and long-time muse, takes over in the newly invented role of Captain Natalie Artemis, a no-nonsense, no-personality U.S. Army Ranger in charge of a UN military team so bland they make the average video game NPC feel like Chekhov characters by comparison. For all of the unique energy that the likes of Clifford “ T.I. ” Harris Jr., Meagan Good , Diego Boneta, and Jin Au-Yeung (aka MC Jin) bring to the screen, these trigger-happy redshirts don’t share a decent line of dialogue between them (a certain joke has been excised from the film’s American release after causing a, uh, bit of an uproar in China , though the fact that it made the cut in the first place is a pretty damning indicator of Anderson’s meathead sense of humor).

The good news is that none of these characters are long for this world, and not only because they soon get swept up in an electrical storm that spirits them into Monster Hunter land or whatever it’s called — it’s the same stretch of South African desert, but the roads have been replaced by massive, hard-shelled bugs that feed on people and plant larvae in their guts (T.I.’s hilarious death scene is poised to have a long second life on social media). “Monster Hunter” fans may delight at the idea of seeing live-action Black Diablos, but it’s hard to imagine that even the most dedicated enthusiasts will be overjoyed to see how the iconic beast has been rendered with all the artistry of “Eight-Legged Freaks,” and made to look like what might happen if Zuul from “Ghostbusters” ever mated with the mean triceratops boss from the TV show “Dinosaurs.”

It’s tempting to forgive the uninspired creature design (along with the lifeless action scene during which it comes to the fore) in the heat of the moment, as viewers naturally assume that Black Diablos will be just one of many different monsters featured in this blockbuster adaptation of a video game series that contains hundreds upon hundreds of them. Not so fast. Aside from the “Starship Troopers”-like Nerscylla, the Black Diablos is all we get until deep into the second act, as the entire first hour of “Monster Hunter” is entirely, inexplicably devoted to the tentative alliance that forms between Artemis and the titular Monster Hunter (Jaa) who rescues her amidst the sand.

These two characters don’t speak the same language — all the excuse that Anderson needs to paint the Hunter as a useful idiot — but they’ll only make it across the desert if they work together. The hour that follows essentially feels like watching two cosplayers suffer through a corporate team-building exercise as the film around them takes great pains to mute the talents of its stars. Jovovich doesn’t get anything to do besides leap, grimace, and stare longingly at an engagement ring that never becomes relevant in any way whatsoever.

As for Jaa, he’s afforded a small handful of scattered chances to show off his gifts as a martial artist — just enough that even people who’ve never seen his previous work will be able to recognize the extent to which he’s been wasted here. There are screenshots from the “Monster Hunter” games that are more exciting than anything that Anderson has Jovovich and Jaa do together. Here’s one . Here’s another . Look at those colors! The movie only gives us yellow and green. It’s such a relief when a splash of green shows up after 66 minutes that this critic made a point of marking the time in his notes.

The cat chef and its sand pirate friends inevitably return for a climactic fight against the giant wyvern that guards the tower that connects the two worlds, but the movie is too drunk on the darkness of its CGI sludge to bother ornamenting these characters with things like motives, or personalities, or names, or any of the other highfalutin college terms that pretentious film critics have been using to slander video game movies for decades. Perlman’s character mercifully teases some kind of mythology — he learned English as a lark, and totes around some weathered maps that we hope might lead to a better film — but Anderson is only interested in the physical collision between the story’s two worlds.

If the third act kicks off with a dark and stormy “Mortal Kombat” vibe that feels like a throwback to a time when video game movies got most of their atmosphere from bad weather and worse costumes, it soon becomes clear that Anderson is just trying to cross the streams and contrive a way for the wyvern to fight a military plane. Anderson is palpably excited at the idea of using monsters to humble our faith in modern technology, but the Hunter and his pals never wield their signature weapons — giant bows, giant swords, giant bow-swords, etc. — in a way that offers a reasonable alternative to machine guns.

And while the best moments of the final battle come perilously close to being watchable (cruddy special effects and all), the story around is so gallingly hollow that it feels like something between a slap in the face and a self-own when “Monster Hunter” ends with its heroes rushing towards a fight with the biggest, coolest beast we’ve seen yet. Not since Paul Giamatti’s immortal cameo as the Rhino at the end of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” has a film this bad tried this hard to whet our appetites for more. In this case, it’s impossible to fathom how a “Monster Hunter” movie could have given us any less. How fitting that a movie made without any imagination whatsoever should end by defying our own.

Sony Pictures Releasing will release “Monster Hunter” in theaters on Friday, December 18. 

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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The  Monster Hunter   reviews are in for the adaptation of the popular role-playing game series. The Milla Jovovich-starring feature has been in the works for some time, and now, fans will be able to see the iconic Rathalos on the big screen. The movie releases this week in North America, but already saw a release in China before being pulled for a controversial joke .

The Monster Hunter video game series has been around since 2004. The franchise gained notable prominence internationally in 2018 with the release of Monster Hunter: World . In fact, not only is Monster Hunter: World the best-selling game in the series, but also Capcom's highest selling game of all time. Monster Hunter typically follows individuals tasked with defeating numerous monsters around a fictionalized land, but the film adaptation adds a real-world wrinkle. The film follows a military force that gets transported to the world of Monster Hunter . Understandably, not everybody was pleased with this direction. Director Paul W. S. Anderson discussed what he feels is the key thing when making a video game adaption , saying adaptations should be for both fans and those who have never played. If Monster Hunter achieves this difficult balance, it may find considerable success.

Related: Milla Jovovich Is Hollywood's Deadliest Action Star

With Monster Hunter's reviews here, fans can see if the film has achieved the quality of its source material. Does Monster Hunter continue the positive streak of video game adaptations left by Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog ? If one is looking for anything but nonstop action, it's probably best to look elsewhere. Reviews agree that character development is nonexistent. However, the action is fast-paced. Those who had a blast with Anderson's Mortal Kombat movie appear to be in for a treat. Check out the critic reviews for Monster Hunter below.

Edward Douglas, The Weekend Warrior

Monster Hunter is definitely not the kind of movie I recommend to everyone – fans of the OTHER Paul Anderson would turn their noses up at the suggestion – but if you’re a fan of giant monsters and some of Anderson’s earlier work, you’ll probably already know whether or not this will be for you.

Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times

To be fair, all this movie promises from the start is monsters and hunters, and Anderson delivers both, from the first frame to the credits. But for way too long, the generic title is matched to generic action.

Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

Listen: Monster Hunter is all sorts of super-dumb fun. And though its middle section lags – there are only so many training montages audiences can handle – Anderson and his wife Jovovich prove that their long-running Resident Evil franchise was no fluke: this is a couple who know how to take the flimsiest of video games and turn them into self-knowing slices of cinematic ridiculousness.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The AV Club

Anderson’s breakthrough, Mortal Kombat, is still the benchmark for infectiously fun video game adaptations. If Monster Hunter is intentionally a more spartan piece of work, its gamer aesthetics and bare minimums, even at their crudest, still feel like an antidote to the lethargic drag of movies with better VFX and cooler trailers.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire

From that point on, “Monster Hunter” is relentlessly terrible even by 2020 standards, as it quickly descends into a dull and colorless bit of bug-hunting that marries the production value of a SyFy Original with the scale of a tutorial level, resulting in one of the drabbest and least imaginative video game movies ever made. Series fans will feel cheated by such a chintzy and incurious take on something they love, while the rest of us will be left wondering how the source material earned itself any fans in the first place.

Alif Majeed, Battle Royale With Cheese

Despite all the myriad problems plaguing the movie and none of which relates to pun-inducing dialogues, it entertains on an elementary level. That is because Monster Hunter delivers exactly what it promises. Even though that is very little in the end.

Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat

You won't find any substance here, which is fine. Monster Hunter makes no pretensions of being anything other than what it is – a great big escapist creature feature, packed with wild wall-to-wall action. If that's your thing, and it's definitely mine, the movie offers a very good time.

Liam Nolan, CBR

Monster Hunter isn't a good movie. The movie's characters are flat, while its the exposition is clunky and any internal logic falls away the moment one stops to think about pretty much anything that happens. Monster Hunter is, thus, like pretty much every video game adaptation Anderson has done in the last decade, meaning it holds absolutely no surprises for any of his devotees. However, just because Monster Hunter isn't a good movie doesn't mean it's not entertaining while it lasts.

Eric Frederiksen, GameSpot

The parts that work, work really well. The same way that 2014's Godzilla excelled when Godzilla was on the screen, Monster Hunter is a blast when Artemis and the Hunter are fighting the authentically realized monsters. But the movie seems more interested in seeing giant monsters destroying helicopters and Humvees than in exploring its actual interesting setting.

Rollin Bishop, ComicBook

Monster Hunter ultimately flirts with being an absolutely fine movie while just managing to miss the mark. It’s not going to change hearts and minds, but seeing a military convoy try to take on Diablos and others is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. It just lacks the attention to detail that, say, Pacific Rim has to its world and characters. By the end of the film, I didn’t really understand why I was supposed to care about anyone still left alive beyond the fact that they remained on the screen. Monster Hunter is the energy drink of movies; a quick shock of energy followed mostly by a headache.

Christian Holub, EW

At a certain point, Monster Hunter just decides to end. As the surviving characters gear up for a final assault on the magic tower, the credits start rolling. A film that doesn't even bother to wrap up its own story, instead gesturing vaguely at a hypothetical sequel, is telling you exactly how much you should care about it. At least some of those monsters are fun and gross.

For many, the overall reception won't come as surprising. The marketing positioned Monster Hunter as little more than a mindless action movie. Still, it appears those looking for a fun film with monstrous creatures like the Rathalos and Diablos have come to the right place. This kind of mindless, escapist entertainment might just be what some need as 2020 wraps up.

Last month, Jovovich said Anderson was working on a script for a potential Monster Hunter sequel . It definitely appears there's more to be done in the world of Monster Hunter . However, it remains to be seen how well it does at the box office. The Resident Evil movies were lucrative, but Monster Hunter lost a key source of box office gross in China, with no word on the film returning to theaters there. For its release elsewhere, soon it will be known if Monster Hunter 's action and creatures can entice potential moviegoers to venture out.

Next: How Defeat Black Diablos in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

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Monster Hunter Movie Review: A Monstrous Miscalculation

• First Released Dec 4, 2020 released

Paul W.S. Anderson is no stranger to video game adaptations, but he missed the mark with Monster Hunter.

By Eric Frederiksen on December 16, 2020 at 6:00AM PST

If video game movies have a king, that man is Paul W.S. Anderson. Starting with Mortal Kombat in 1995, Anderson is responsible for many of the most middlingly-acceptable video game movies of the last quarter century. That sounds like I'm dunking on the guy, but video game movies have historically bordered on unwatchable. Anderson, meanwhile, directed the first Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil films, which are considered two early examples that both honor the source material and work as films.

Now, Anderson has set his sights on another video game created by Japanese developer Capcom for adaptation: Monster Hunter. The result is a movie that tries to please everyone by both staying faithful to its source material and bending over backward to be "accessible;" it does both to its own detriment as it gets bogged down by reality before leaving many of its most interesting aspects unexplored.

The movie opens on one of the most visually impressive sequences, though it makes a promise the rest of the film can't keep. A sandship--a sailboat moving across the desert as if in water--hurtles across the dunes, hinting at a strange world full of strange technology and even stranger monsters. And then we cut to humvees and a bunch of people in military fatigues singing songs about how much being in the Army sucks, and nothing that matters happens for at least another hour. That's because Monster Hunter actually takes place from the point of view of Milla Jovovich's character, Lt. Artemis. She and her Army Rangers are looking for a missing squad in the African desert when a Mad Max: Fury Road-grade sandstorm sweeps up the characters and they wake up in a different, sandier desert.

From that point, it's almost an hour before we get any real action, and it's over almost before it starts. The 103-minute movie feels like a stretched-out version of the first 45 minutes of a much more interesting movie.

Anderson spoke at length in interviews about wanting the audience to feel like a new player in a Monster Hunter game; a person from our world experiencing the expansive world Capcom has built up over the last decade. That sounds like a smart idea on paper, but it ignores the fact that, over the last decade, moviegoers have been engulfed in nerd culture. Casual viewers of superhero movies know what a multiverse is, and can make sense of the machinations of Houses Stark and Targaryen. They even know that some Mandalorians don't take off their helmets, but others do. Anderson's mistake here is that we don't need onboarding into the world of Monster Hunter. The accessibility angle, largely pinned to the army aspect, comes across as condescending in 2020.

Another seemingly smart idea Anderson had was to be faithful to the games, right down to consulting with the game creators on his translations of the games' monster designs. Anderson has told a story more than once in interviews of having to dull the Diablos' claws at the behest of one of the game designers, because Diablos is a sand-burrowing creature and would have its claws worn down from the friction.

The way that manifests in the film is that we spend a lot of time in training and trap-preparation montages as Lt. Artemis gets to know Tony Jaa's character, "the Hunter" (more on him later). These sequences are full of details that committed Monster Hunter fans will love, but do little to either move the story forward or flesh out the characters in any meaningful way.

It's a shame, too, because Monster Hunter is a gorgeous movie. The filmmakers spent a lot on special effects and set design. Diablos and the other monsters look great, and both their size and threat are conveyed well; watching Artemis and the Hunter fight Diablos brought back memories of doing the same in Monster Hunter World. Anderson went out of his way to make the environments look like something otherworldly; the desert is stark and imposing, the jungle incredibly lush. The cave the Nerscylla spiders dwell in and the field of domes above them gave me the willies.

The movie rides on the backs of Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, and Ron Perlman. Jovovich looks at home in her Monster Hunter outfit, twirling around with twin blades. In addition to being married to the director, she's a veteran of his movies, and it shows. Tony Jaa and Ron Perlman, meanwhile, are wasted. Jaa is one of the premiere movie martial artists in the world, and it's always a treat to see him do his thing. Only here, he's exclusively fighting Jovovich, and these sequences have more cuts than a dead Rathalos. Jaa goes a long way toward making the property's trademark oversized weapons look even a little believable, but his world-class martial arts are otherwise unused, and the character never actually says a word in English and gets no subtitles when he does speak.

Ron Perlman, meanwhile, looks less like a character who grew up in the same world as The Hunter and more like an aging cosplayer with lots of enthusiasm and free time. Plus, he's barely in the movie, and when he does appear, he's saddled with delivering big dumps of nonsensical exposition.

Monster Hunter fans will be bored by the entire first act of the movie, but will enjoy the dozens of Easter eggs and nods Anderson sprinkled throughout, from the game-perfect campfire that Artemis and the Hunter chill at in the second half to the Meowscular Chef (That's his name. Seriously ) that Artemis meets during her second escape sequence. Newcomers, meanwhile, will also be bored by the entire first act of the movie, and will wonder what's happening throughout the rest of it. It's not that the story is incomprehensible, but that very little happens, and it's mostly in the service of setting up an action-packed climax with plenty of room for a sequel.

The parts that work, work really well. The same way that 2014's Godzilla excelled when Godzilla was on the screen, Monster Hunter is a blast when Artemis and the Hunter are fighting the authentically realized monsters. But the movie seems more interested in seeing giant monsters destroying helicopters and Humvees than in exploring its actual interesting setting.

• Leave Blank
• The monsters and world look great
• The monster battles are a blast
• Fans will enjoy Easter eggs and nods to the games
• Movie is bogged down with military exposition that does nothing to forward the story
• Tony Jaa and Ron Perlman's talents are wasted
• Treats fans like they haven't been watching complex geek movies for the last decade
• Those not steeped in Monster Hunter will likely be baffled
• The Meowscular Chef is creepy

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Eric Frederiksen

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An Honest Review Of The Monster Hunter Movie From A Die-Hard Fan

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The 10 biggest video game movie flops, pixar is never going to make an original film ever again.

The Monster Hunter movie had all the makings of a total flop. From the husband-wife creative team behind the Resident Evil film series, Monster Hunter diverged from the video game in a pretty major way. While all of the games take place exclusively in a fantasy world filled with monsters and hunters, the film magically teleports a group of soldiers from the real world into the monster world. Monster Hunter fans were understandably irritated about this change, especially after six Resident Evil films of debatable quality that had very little to do with the source material. What’s more, the film had a complicated and confusing release schedule because of Covid restrictions, and when it finally did come out, it sparked controversy with Chinese audiences thanks to a racist joke (which had been cut out of the version I watched on Google Play). Monster Hunter may seem like a cynical cash-in on the outrageous success of Monster Hunter World, but as it turns out, it’s a surprisingly competent movie with plenty of fanservice and some truly thrilling action scenes. It’s not going to win any Oscars, and trying to follow the story — which is all crammed in at the very end — will make your brain short circuit. But if you love Monster Hunter, the Monster Hunter movie isn’t a betrayal to the franchise, not even close.

Related:  Monster Hunter Film Was Meant To Feel "Like Playing The Game For The First Time", Says Milla Jovovich

I’ll admit that the premise of Monster Hunter did not excite me at all. The “character from Earth has been transported to a fantasy world” is an entire genre that I find to be rather paint-by-numbers and predictable. In anime and manga, this genre is called Isekai, and Hollywood has been doing this to video game movies forever. The Super Mario Bros movie is an Isekai about two human brothers who get transported to Dinohattan, and of course, it’s terrible. I hated when they did this to Sonic last year, and while, admittedly, I think the Sonic movie is decent, I would have much preferred to see a Sonic movie that takes place in Sonic’s world, not ours.

Naturally, it seemed like director Paul W.S. Anderson was just using this “safe” formula for Monster Hunter and that the film would have very little to do with games. Surprisingly, I think going Isekai worked really well for Monster Hunter. The Monster Hunter games are definitely not known for their compelling storylines, but the movie does such a great job of introducing viewers to the world with Milla Jovovich’s Artemis serving as the audience surrogate. The film is nearly as light on story as the games, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was to watch her discover all these things about the world of Monster Hunter that I’m already familiar with. In an interview , Jovovich explained that the story was meant to feel like playing the game for the first time, and I think that’s totally apt.

Most importantly, the movie gets the world of Monster Hunter so damn right. It’s filled with fan-service, including a palico chef that recreates the cooking cutscene from Monster Hunter World. But even when the movie isn’t winking at MH fans with obvious references, it’s always representing the games through the setting and storytelling.

Related:  Tony Jaa Was The Only One Who Could Lift Monster Hunter's Giant Sword

Artemis teams up with a hunter, played by the incredible Tony Jaa, in the film’s second act. Through him, you get to see a variety of authentic weapons, cooking, camps, slinger ammo, part breaking, and plenty of other video game details and iconography. The movie feels like it exists in the actual Monster Hunter world from the beginning until just before the end. The story even mirrors the progression loop of the game. If you’ve got a monster that’s too strong to take down, in this case, Diablos, then you need to first hunt a weaker monster and craft gear out of its parts. All of the Earth weapons that come through with Artemis are shown to be completely useless against Diablos. Only a weapon made from a monster can kill a monster, and Artemis quickly learns how to fight like a true hunter.

The trailers really only ever showed off Diablos, but there are few more monsters. Although I would have loved to see tons of monsters from the games, I also sort of appreciate that the movie features about as many monsters as one could realistically fight in 90 minutes of playing Monster Hunter World. I have to spoil this so no one gets their hopes up though: there are no turf wars in the movie. This is by far the biggest letdown.

During the final act, there’s a huge info dump scene that lays out a bunch of lore and answers to questions that no one would have asked. It’s really dumb, and if you happened to go to the bathroom for just two minutes, you would miss the entire thing. It seems like a big setup for a sequel, but it was the first time in the movie that things got so stupid I that I couldn’t believe what I was watching. There’s some great action at the end of the movie (and even more weapons) but the story also gets even more outlandish and further away from the source material.

Ultimately, is Monster Hunter a cash grab, or does it respect the fans and stay true to the games? I say it’s about 90% authentic, and any Monster Hunter fan will almost certainly enjoy it. I had enough watching it to ignore that contrived lore jammed in at the end. It’s not a masterpiece, but if you love Monster Hunter, you won’t be disappointed.

Next:  Capcom Has Just Reported Its Highest Third-Quarter Profit "At All Levels" In Company History

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How to Complete All The Side Content In Marvel's Spider-Man 2

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Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was released on Oct. 20, 2023, and quickly became one of the most popular superhero games ever released. While its story is astounding, the best part of the game is the rewarding nature of its gameplay and the variety of things that players can do throughout the game. One of the most enjoyable things to do around Spider-Man 2 's New York City is finding hidden items and locations.

The items and locations throughout the game are split into two categories, those being side quests and item searches. For things like The Flame sidequests, players need to go to specific locations to trigger the game's main subplot. For items like spider-bots, players need to keep their eyes out for pulsing frequencies which will tell Spider-Man that there is a robot in the area. Each of these items and sidequests is important and adds a significant amount of enjoyment to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 's already engaging gameplay loop.

Item Collections Are the Most Engaging Side Content

Examples include: marco's memories and mysteriums.

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Throughout Marvel's Spider-Man 2 , players are introduced to many side-missions and collectibles that help the game enhance its stellar worldbuilding . The first of these side-missions is introduced after the game's first boss fight, Sandman. Following this boss fight, Sandman is arrested, but his memories are contained in crystals throughout New York City and the five boroughs .

These memories are guarded by fragments of Sandman's body that need to be taken down to obtain the crystals — once acquired, players can piece together Sandman's tragic backstory and help get him off the hook for his crime. These side-missions, referred to as Marco's Memories, are noted on the mini-map by an orange crystal marker and a puff of sand that can be seen from far away.

Another major Spider-Man villain, Mysterio, is shown many times throughout the game in side-missions known as Mysteriums . These missions are entirely combat-based, and each one has a unique challenge to complete to finish it. They're usually time-based, but can also require players to flawlessly complete them without being hit. By the end of these missions, Mysterio is ready to launch his Mysteriums as an amusement park attraction for the public — these points of interest are marked by an ominous eye shape on the mini-map, and a bright green portal signifies their location.

Spider-Bots are the most plentiful item to collect in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 , as there are 42 of them to collect around the city. Each of these spider-bots gives players tech parts to create new suits for both Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Unlike every other collectible in the game, Spider-Bots are not indicated on the minimap and can only be found searching for the colorful pulsing circles they put out throughout the city. When players find each of the Spider-Bots, they unlock an intriguing sidequest, which makes this grueling search-and-find mission worth it in the long run.

The final item collection in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is also the game's least challenging item to collect, as Photo Ops are easily indicated on the map by cameras that will point out notable locations. Each of the photos gives a player a reason to explore the expansive map while also seeing everything that the in-game model of the city has to offer.

Overall, the item collections are the most plentiful side missions in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 . Each of them gives meaningful upgrades and some of them even unlock notable story content. These collectibles are worthwhile to find and give the game hours of content long past the end credits.

Stellar Side Stories and Smaller Quests

Examples include: the flame and brooklyn visions.

Like many other open-world games, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is filled with an immense number of sidequests with a varying degree of quality. The best of these sidequests is part of the game's most significant subplot, as it features one of Spider-Man's biggest villains, Cletus Kasady (also known as Carnage). Throughout this sidequest, players team up with a former friend, Yuri Watanabe, who now assumes the role of a vigilante known as the Wraith. These quests are the most engaging side content in the game, as they perfectly blend intriguing puzzles and exciting action.

By the end of this sidequest, Cletus Cassidy escapes with the symbiote , which could set up the plot of the game's sequel. These four sidequests are noted on the minimap by a small flame, but only one of them will show up at a time. The FNSM App quests make use of Spider-Man's fittingly titled "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" app to point out to citizens that the famous web-slinger can help throughout the city when he is done taking down Kraven the Hunter and Venom.

Unlike other quests throughout the game, these quests do not have a minimap marker, as players are instead guided to them when they accept the quests through the app. Each of these quests gives players hero tokens and tech parts, along with XP, which helps players make new suits and gadgets, while also unlocking new abilities to use in battle.

The Cultural Museum sidequests are Miles Morales' primary sidequest , as he tries to prevent the robbery of the Brooklyn Cultural Museum and chase down the criminals. These sidequests only become available after completing the "Funky" mission in the main story, so players need to complete a decent portion of the main game before fulfilling the requirements for this sidequest. While this mission is remarkably short and contains only two chapters, it is one of the few quests in the game that directly rewards players with a suit to wear. Because this suit is one of Miles Morales' best outfits, this sidequest is a worthwhile experience.

The final set of sidequests that are contained in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 revolves around Miles Morales helping some of the students of the Brooklyn Visions Academy with various issues, and are unavailable until players complete the "Amends" main story mission. At the end of these quests, Miles is gifted with a suit by the students, who are appreciative of his help. Unlike many other sidequests, this batch of missions is entirely puzzle-based, so players need to utilize their wits to take down these challenges.

Overall, the sidequests in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are varied in quality and storytelling . While some of them are phenomenally well-written and fun, others feel meandering and dull to complete. However, the rewards make each quest a worthwhile experience for players.

Puzzles and Combat are the Best of the Rest

Examples include: prowler stashes and symbiote nests.

How to Do Tricks in Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Marvel's Spider-Man allowed players to perform tricks as they swing through the air and the sequel follows on from that fun setup.

Once players finish their item collections and sidequests, there are still plenty of small challenges to take care of before completing 100% of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 . The first of these is Prowler Stashes, a special collection of tech that Miles Morales' uncle has left scattered throughout the city from his time as the Prowler. Each of these stashes requires players to use Miles' electric powers to turn on power wires and unlock doors to get to the tech. These stashes are some of the game's most enjoyable puzzle segments, and they are indicated on the minimap with a Prowler crest.

Peter Parker performs EMF Experiments as he explores the city on behalf of his new job at the Emily May Foundation. These experiments are a lot like the DNA experiments in the first game, as they help Peter collect scientific data throughout the city. Each of these assignments is marked by an Eily May Foundation crest on the minimap and rewards players with an amount of tech parts and hero tokens.

As players explore, there is a chance to find 1 of 8 target drones and chase them down while they are surveying the city. These missions function as short chase scenes and make use of the best of Spider-Man's web-swinging to help players chase down drones to collect rare tech parts. While these sections can be tedious at times, they are some of the most rewarding things to find if players want to collect every suit in the game.

Hunter Blinds and Bases are the most action-packed side content in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 as they task players with taking down Kraven the Hunter's soldiers and confiscating their weapons. These bases are marked on the map once a player takes down a specified number of Hunter Blinds, so players need to take down all the Hunter Blinds to find each of the 4 bases. Overall, the segments with the hunters are some of the most fun portions of the game, and they are worth the time they take to complete.

Finally, the last bit of side content is the Symbiote Nests that show up on the map after Venom tries to take over New York City . These missions are the easiest to find, as they are shown by the tall tendrils that rise into the sky and surround the buildings. Each of these quests is a time trial, as players need to protect a supersonic device that can take out the symbiote nest. These devices need to be protected for an average of 2 minutes before defeating the symbiote nest.

Overall, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is filled with amazing side content for fans to enjoy long after the end credits for the main story roll. From enticing collectibles to intriguing side quests, every bit of the game is vibrant and encourages fans to sink several hours into the game.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Spider-Men, Peter Parker and Miles Morales, return for an exciting new adventure in the critically acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man franchise.

• Marvel's Spider-Man