Monster Hunter–Trailer for film adaptation of fantasy-action game delivers spectacular visuals

If you’re discussing the most compelling and amazing action movie franchise actresses, you’re going to begin with Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton. But quickly you must count Milla Jovovich, whose track record at the box office is hard to match, thanks to her role as Alice in the Resident Evil series. But she’s also revealed her badass prowess in classics like The Fifth Element and Ultraviolet, and she keeps adding to her amped up, tough-as-nails characters. This year that means taking on the role of Lieutenant Artemis in Monster Hunter, an adaptation of the online fantasy-action game. In one word, that overly-used phrase is apt here: Epic. The first trailer for the film (below) is very Starship Troopers meets Jurassic Park.

Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson got buy-in from the original game creators for his spectacular special effects. Anderson knows how to adapt games to movies, with an arsenal of films in his corner that he wrote and/or directed, from several Resident Alien films to Mortal Kombat. Plus add in Event Horizon and Alien vs. Predator and its easy to see how he was tapped for a big-budget, kaiju-style feast for the eyes. Art director Guy Potgieter (District 9, Dark Tower, Resident Evil, Homeland), with production designer Edward Thomas (Doctor Who, Sherlock) has this looking like Jurassic Park with some believable dino-monster Starship Trooper-level battles realized by special effects studio Mr. X VFX.

Jovovich is joined by Tony Jaa (Furious 7, xXx: Return of Xander Cage) as the Hunter, plus Tip “T. I.” Harris (Ant-Man, Entourage), Diego Boneta (Terminator: Dark Fate), Jin Au-Yeung (Fast & Furious 6) and X-Men regular Josh Helman (Jack Reacher, Mad Max: Fury Road), and former star of that fantasy series Jovovich added to her portfolio last year, Hellboy and genre icon Ron Perlman. But most fun is the return of Meagan Good (Prodigal Son, Minority Report), who was fabulous when we last saw her in Shazam!