MONSTER HUNTER

Name: MONSTER HUNTER
Item: MONSTER HUNTER
Author: Tess Farrand

"Heroic B Movie"

Content: -2 Extreme caution for older teenagers and adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

MONSTER HUNTER is a lively B movie. A giant sandstorm filled with lightning mysteriously sends an Army Ranger, Captain Artemis, and her small platoon into another world with huge armor-plated dinosaurs, including flying dragons. She and her platoon barely survive an attack from a giant horned sand monster, but she’s the sole survivor of an attack by giant armored spiders. Artemis runs into a local monster hunter equipped with a large crossbow and arrows tipped with explosives. She and the hunter must evade the horned monster to get to a tall tower that’s generating the mysteriously lightning. The tower may hold the key to get Artemis home.

Based on a video game, MONSTER HUNTER is a rousing action thriller. Milla Jovovich as Captain Artemis and Tony Jaa as the monster hunter create appealing characters. MONSTER HONTER has a strong moral worldview with Christian allusions to the Devil and deadly flying dragons. However, there’s a fair amount of foul language, plus scary battles with the giant horned monster, fire-breathing dragons and creepy, armored giant spiders. MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong caution for MONSTER HUNTER.

Content:

(BB, C, FR, LL, VV, A, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong moral worldview of heroic characters fighting huge devilish monsters, with some Christian allusions to the Devil and dragons like the demonic Dragon in the Book of Revelation, plus man has built a little shrine with candles for his dead wife and child but it’s not clear if he’s praying to them or to something or someone else (the heroine later comes to respect his beliefs, though she doesn’t understand him because he’s from another planet and doesn’t speak English

Foul Language:

18 obscenities (mostly “h” and “d” words with a few “s” words), one GD profanity, one Jesus profanity, four light profanities, and woman retches but doesn’t vomit

Violence:

Strong, often scary violence with many explosions includes soldiers and people fighting giant horned monster, fire-breathing dragons and scary armor-plated spiders with guns, an RPG in one scene, grenades in one scene, giant blades that can generate fire, people thrown from vehicles, horned monster attacks a sailing ship with wheels or sleds that rides giant sand dunes, horned monster flings vehicles and people into the air, people go flying and sometimes hit rocks, armored siders pierce a few soldiers with their stingers, fire-breathing dragon burns three people alive during battle, wrist device can fling a grappling hook for climbing, woman uses gunpowder to cauterize an ankle wound, woman fights a man who doesn’t trust her in a long fight scene with martial arts flips and kicks and knives, giant flying armored dragon rips a turret off a tank and rips wings off a plane, giant dragon attacks army vehicles and helicopters, giant armored spiders swarm but hate sunlight, man’s body is covered with tiny newborn armored siders and it’s implied they are going to eat him, etc.

Sex:

No sex

Nudity:

No nudity but woman wears a tight green Army T-shirt (nothing salacious shown, however)

Alcohol Use:

Man and woman share an alcoholic drink of some kind from a flask

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drug references; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Nothing else objectionable.

More Detail:

MONSTER HUNTER is a lively B movie about an American Army Ranger who gets pulled into another world full of huge armor-plated dinosaurs, including flying dragons, and must battle her way out to find a way back home. Based on a video game, MONSTER HUNTER is a gratifying, action-oriented science fiction thriller with appealing, heroic characters, but caution is advised for older children due to some foul language and scary, intense battles with frightening monsters.

The movie opens on another planet with a sailing ship rolling over sand dunes toward a dark, mysterious tower surrounded by lightning. Suddenly, the ship is attacked by a huge horned monster burrowing just under the sand’s surface. As the ship is thrust into the air by the monster’s large horns, one of the people on the ship, a young Asian looking man, is knocked overboard and lies unconscious on a sand dune.

Cut to Earth. A group of American Army Rangers on two armed vehicles are working as a security force for the United States in a desolate wilderness. Led by their tough female leader, Captain Artemis, they’re looking for another team that hasn’t returned. Unexpectedly, a gigantic sandstorm filled with lightning transports them to the monster planet. They find the other Army team and their vehicles burned to a crisp. The horned monster then shows up and attacks them. They barely survive his attacks. During the whole time, they are watched from afar by the Asian guy standing on a rocky summit.

Captain Artemis and her platoon think they’ve reached safety in a giant cave system when they’re attacked by some giant armored spiders. Only Captain Artemis survives. Shortly thereafter, she encounters the Asian man from the sailing ship, but he doesn’t trust her. So, they fight and end up tying each other up, first one, then the other. They slowly manage to build trust, however, though Artemis has to make the first move. He sees the Ranger title on her uniform and starts calling her Ranger. So, she calls him Hunter because of the crossbow and explosive-tipped arrows he uses to stay one step ahead of the horned monster and the giant spiders.

In the distance, the mysterious tower surrounded by lightning suggests to Captain Artemis that the tower holds the answer to how she can get home. However, how can she and Hunter get past the horned monster lurking in the sand dunes between them and the tower?

Based on a Japanese video game, MONSTER HUNTER is a rousing action thriller. Milla Jovovich as Artemis and Tony Jaa as Hunter create appealing heroic characters. Milla has a marvelous way of using her eyes to generate emotion and intellect. Her growing friendship with Hunter is fun to watch.

MONSTER HUNTER has a strong moral worldview with Christian allusions. For example, the horned monster is called Diablos (or Devil). Also, later in the movie, Hunter’s leader, played by Ron Perlman, informs Captain Artemis that the ancient race that built the tower and the portal to Earth left Diablos and a group of fire-breathing, flying dragons to guard the tower. He says the people destroyed themselves through their advanced technology. He wants to stop the tower’s machinery from creating the portal to Earth, to protect both planets and to destroy the monsters, especially the fire-breathing dragons, which are the hardest to kill.

MONSTER HUNTER has a fair number of obscenities and profanities. Also, Hunter seems to venerate two small, hand-crafted figurines he’s made. The figurines represent his wife and his child, who both died. Finally, the intense battles between the people and the armored monsters, especially the spiders, are pretty scary. At one point, Captain Artemis has to crawl out of a webbed cocoon that one of the spiders has wrapped around her after stinging her with some venom. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong caution for older children and other sensitive viewers.

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Quality:

- Content: -2