Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild (2021)
For these villagers, peace is zinogre.
Said I wanted to do it, so this week we get to do it. Sure, I was excited by the visuals of that live action Monster Hunter movie - but much like the same director’s Resident Evil series it quickly felt not like the game. That made me a little sad, but the costumes and the effects work had me happy at least. Now though, Netflix drops a movie that’s just an hour long, and looks to be about on par with the games in looks - but will it be a better adaptation then just inserting some throwaway soldiers into a movie where they arguably don’t belong? Let’s find out my opinions, it’s time to watch Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild.
Right off the bat, I’ll be honest - it doesn’t look as good as the live action one does. That being said, I’m sure that had way more a budget than this - that being said, this thing feels relatively on par with most family-oriented movies like Shrek or that one about the secret lives of pets. Is it the most impressive looking? Not really - but it’s good enough where it doesn’t hurt me to watch it. Some might not be as accepting of the looks and animations - but I’d throw it at a solid mediocre at worst, and actually quite charming in it’s finer moments. Regardless of the general crowd, the franchise fans will find themselves feeling incredibly at home with the looks and animations, and I can say you’ll find yourself enjoying it more as a fan of the games more than a general person.
Acting here could probably be better, but it’s also not horrible on the same grounds as the animations and looks. If you were to go into this thinking “hey, it’s a family movie” then you’ll probably find the level of acting to be quite on par with expectations. Sometimes it’s a bit overly animated, sometimes it can be a bit tame. There isn’t much to read from body language, but the animations do sometimes provide some good moments - particularly on the monster side of things. Yeah, sometimes the animations go over-blown when the situation doesn’t call for it on the people side of things, but most the time they are pretty okay - it’s just not really super emotive thanks to the aesthetic choice of the characters. You might be able to tell someone is thinking hard or having a conflicted moment, but it’s not as obvious or stand-out as a heavily mo-capped offering or a well acted live-action movie.
On the monster front, there is so much more this movie has to offer than that live action one. What did that have? Spiders. A Diablos, and then towards the end two or three others? Every single thing you see in this - from big to small - is a critter from Monster Hunter the games. Heck, even some of the slang terms made it in! Even if we only count the decent screen time monsters, we are easily look at at least 5 - with a nice spread throughout the runtime. I mean, look, I love the fact that the monsters that did appear in the live action one looked as good as they did, but here it might as well be a game-lovers dream movie, complete with the monsters doing attack patterns that they normally would - even if it’s a weird monkey-beast farting paralyzing dust and a giant pickle trying to eat everything at all times. It also gets the feeling of it all right - and part of that is because it’s not a bunch of modern-world soldiers with machine guns trying to fight something that obviously can’t be weak to normal human bullets or the movie would be over in ten minutes. See, when you build a movie around the actual world it’s in without the self-insert cross over stuff, it can make a heck of a lot more sense when it does things like that, and feels more believable that these three of four people could take down something using wits, knowledge, and some big old weapons.
Clever girl could use better camo.
The story here is actually kind of basic - perhaps too basic for a general person, but I don’t feel something that most game fans would fault, given it’s about as solid a story as any of the games were really. A big super-strong Elder Dragon is going to roll through a bunch of towns on it’s way to migrate to a new land, and a hunter is warning the towns to get out of there before they get got. A upbeat kid who thinks himself a hunter to be manages to convince the hunter to get a team together and try and defend the town by turning the dragon away. Preperations, fights, classic family-movie tropes like insightful learning and the power of friendship happen, and it all culminates in one big knock out final boss fight with a body count. Now, that last bit might be the key for folks to perhaps check it out themselves before setting their kids upon it - stuff dies in this and it’s not just monsters. Sure, it’s not graphic about it, but I would say that doesn’t make it any less brutal and I am so glad in the games it would just be a cart back to base camp instead of me having to restart the entire dang game.
The line deliveries are all totally understandable, and comes across mostly as you would expect - overly cheerful or sad depending on the mood the movie wants. Again, I can’t really harp enough how much like an animated family movie this feels like - except maybe that final battle segment. The rest of the music and sound follow suit, making the entire thing feel like someone made a movie that takes place in the game world and not just inspired by it. A few cat-related puns make it in there thanks to the cat character, but you’ll also find the majority of puns coming from the main character, who is constantly dropping monster on liners - and yet the movie, in it’s incredibly short run time, felt the need to even give him a backstory formative event that explains why he does it. It’s a nice touch.
And nice touches are sort of what it feels like this is all about. This doesn’t feel like it set out to be the best movie ever to exist in every way - it feels much more like a passion project, something made by people who’ve played the games and love the universe in which it is set. They didn’t have a super huge budget, or perhaps the time, so they condensed everything down and made it super focused - which means the movie is short - barely feature length by most definitions - and things are constantly happening. That could be problematic to some, as those who aren’t familiar with the world or just not processing things as fast because of getting distracted by all the little details or whatever might start to get a little lost or left behind. It’s not that anything is that complex - i mean, seriously, it feels pretty paint by numbers in many regards - but that constant flow of either action or information could give some a minor neck injuryl
The party is full, it’s time for a quest.
Did I like it? Yeah, I actually loved it. I enjoyed my whole time with it, it got quite brutal when I didn’t really expect it to, and most of all it felt like what I really wanted when someone said “here’s a Monster Hunter movie.” Give these folks a huge budget and the most up-to-date motion capture gear and whatever else they need, and they could easily make something that knocks the other one out of the water. That being said, that’s a dream scenario. If you want something that looks great, you go and check out the live action movie. if you want something that feels great and is just seems like a way better adaptation - then give this little shorty a try, you might find that it’s not just the big monsters that can throw some good punches.