Paul WS Anderson on Monster Hunter: Wanted to recapture my feeling of playing the game for the first time
If you are even remotely interested in live-action movies on popular video-game franchises, the name of Paul WS Anderson’s name must be familiar. Although he did not direct the first video-game movie, he did pioneer the genre with Mortal Kombat back in 1995. Later, with Resident Evil movies, he established himself as a bankable director. While critics rarely like his movies, more often than not, his films deliver commercial success.
His latest, Monster Hunter, is a movie that has become an unexpected champion of the theatrical business with many a cinema chain counting on it to lure moviegoers to theatres. Based on Capcom’s video-game franchise of the same name, it does have the blockbuster trappings with giant monsters, a popular martial art actor in Tony Jaa, an epic scope and so on.
But why Monster Hunter specifically? What is so special about this particular franchise that Paul WS Anderson chose this as his next big thing?
He told Indianexpress.com in a Zoom interaction, “When I played the game in Japan 11 years ago, I thought the landscapes and the world that they had created was incredible. I’ve always been a massive fan of the Japanese design — and these monsters just looked awesome.”
