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Monster Hunter reviewed in Montreal Gazette

A WHOLE LOT OF SOUND AND FURY Monster Hunter a noisy survivor tale that leaves the viewer wanting more

  • Montreal Gazette, CHRIS KNIGHT

SONY PICTURES Milla Jovovich, left, and Tony Jaa star in Monster Hunter, a dull and familiar tale of survival in a sci-fi wasteland.

In the latest video-game-inspired shoot-’em-up from director Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil), Milla Jovovich spends the first 30 or so minutes being targeted by a variety of giant dragon-esque armoured beasties that travel beneath the desert sand.

She stars as Artemis, a U.S. solder who has somehow got whisked into an alternate reality by a giant electrical storm. It’s a bit of a Wizard of Oz scenario, if the flying monkeys were the size of airplanes. Also, in place of Munchkins, giant spiders.

Artemis loses touch with her fellow soldiers early in the confusion, but picks up a companion played by Tony Jaa, who somehow combines the heart, brains and intellect of Dorothy’s companions from that other movie. Since neither of them speaks the other’s language, the conversation is modest, consisting mostly of nouns — “Chocolate.” “Velcro.” “Bait.” — and the occasional scream of pain or fear. All Artemis wants is to get home, which in this case requires a visit to a place called the Sky Tower. It looks as if someone had moved into Mordor at the end of The Lord of the Rings and then really let the place go.

The special effects are decent, and fans of the video game will either be amused or horrified to see what the movie has done to Meowscular Chef, a sentient feline pirate and cook. Also in the cast is Ron Perlman, whose unique bone structure needs no computer enhancement to make him look otherworldly. His character informs Artemis that he’s been studying her language, so well that he even uses English slang and contractions. (“S’matta” for “What’s the matter?” etc.)

In our own alternate universe (i.e., a world without COVID-19), Monster Hunter would have opened in September and probably have been forgotten by now. Dec. 18 was the original release date for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, another science-fiction story featuring huge subterranean predators.

I fear that between the ones in Monster Hunter and the recent sand-worm-type creatures in The Mandalorian, Dune is going to look like an imitator by the time it finally comes out next Christmas.

But that’s likely to be the only comparison between Dune and this noisy, dull survival story. Monster Hunter rambles on to a final act that will only surprise those who have never played a video game or watched a movie based on one. And it ends on a huge tease, like a game from another era asking if you’d like to insert another quarter to continue.

Thanks, but I’m out.

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A Game that wasn’t Balderdash!

At the February 2018 meeting, we played a game! It wasn’t Balderdash.  😉

Pick out the correct synopsis for each story, among the many alternate-timeline versions devised by MonSFFA members.

Here are the titles of 11 SF/F stories, along with several descriptions for each one. Can you figure out which description is accurate (albeit perhaps misleading and/or grotesquely oversimplified), and which are too silly for this timeline because they were invented by members of MonSFFA?

Participants: Keith, Jay, Joe, Marquise, Alexis, Adam, Agata, Yvon, & Yves   [note: not everyone participated in every round]
Leader: Danny Sichel

1: SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN

* life in a photo archive is futile

* robots live and look like humans but cannot reproduce and all of their emotions are preprogrammed

* cyborgs are angry because a scientist wants to fill spaceships with oysters

* the intergalactic rock band, “Scanners”, play a concert in Vain, Colorado, and solve a mystery in the process.

* a gang of mediums organize a community in which they try to manage the ever changing future they see, to save their jobs

* a world where body scans have no effect on humans because the technology is obsolete

* mind reading serves nothing

* police radar speed scanner goes too high and kills all policemen

* in a futuristic world, aliens charged with reading the minds of humans mysteriously start committing suicide

* life is a digital fake

2: WHEN IT ENDS, HE CATCHES HER

* the story of every boy-meets-girl-meets-bug-eyed-monster film.

* a dying alien finally catches a fleeing human woman after a thousand-year chase across the universe, but dooms himself in so doing.

* a pilot is lost in his derelict spaceship, until the planetoid he is on in extremis is saved by her.

* android opera in china

* the last man on earth dies of the flu

* the zombie apocalypse makes a ballet dancer sad

* how a hint force runs every space ship

* men are enslaved for reproductive purposes but one man falls in love with a client and plots to run away with her

 

3: THE TROUBLE WITH EMILY

* doctors at a space hospital teach a brontosaurus to be telekinetic

* Emily has a bad habit of starting fires with her brain.

* A small cooing furry ball travels with Emily

* Emily the sentient communication AI has a bug.

* a man’s pet spaniel has cold feet about the upcoming wedding

* AI goes rogue and annihilates all life

* Woman AI goes mad

* A sentient octopus wants to rollerskate

* Emily is a bitch android

 

4: UNICORN VARIATION

* multicultural unicorns

* drunk chess against a unicorn, for the fate of humanity

* farmers were fed up with growing just one type of corn, and demanded variations

* someone tried to make unicorns exist via genetics

* genetically altered horses

* unicorn composes music

* teen girl gangs in the Arctic

* hypothesis about death of universe

 

5: THINGS WITH BEARDS

* what is a story set on jeopardy?

* MonSFFA’s vice-president was not as human as he appeared to be, despite the beard

* Oxhorns vanquished poverty in his life the day he grew a beard, and taught modern people to do the same.

* the Bearded Lady has new competition at the freak show, which has just introduced android members

* The Thing From Another World moves to New York and gets involved with activists

* Remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

* Someone tries to invent a spell to banish beards

* A walrus floats on radioactive waste in Miami Beach

* The first men on Earth

 

6: LOVE IS THE PLAN THE PLAN IS DEATH

* a James Bond story that was never made into a film

* aliens threaten humanity with death, until they are made to understand love

* a mantis falls in love with an Earthling

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* coming of age during the era of AIDS

* sequel to the Fifth Element

* an alien spider tries to survive winter, until his mate eats him

* a Satanic couple take up competitive boxing

* future management of population growth

 

7: GO GO GO, SAID THE BIRD

* Instructions to a young bird flying over a statue

* British go-go dancers take over London

* An alien civilization attempts space travel after having been in contact with humans

* An android story about a Paul Klee painting

* Lady Byrd sends her lover home

* Adventures with a bird-shaped spaceship

* A patient breaks out of a mental institution

* A woman flees cannibals, but her family are cannibals also

* Evolution of space flight

 

8: BOOKWORM RUN!

* The story of a bullied genius

* Batman warns his latest nemesis to run, lest he take a batarang to the crotch

* Society invented a way to publish minds, but there are concerns about privacy

* A superintelligent chimpanzee flees the US military

* A worm farmer’s experiments run amok

* Someone goes to all the greatest libraries of the galaxy

* Sequel to ‘Book Thieves’

* A nerdy high school student gets recruited by murderous cyborgs

* Knowledge revolution

 

9: HUNGRY DAUGHTERS OF STARVING MOTHERS

* a Dr Who episode set in Venice

* the zombie apocalypse begins to wind down

* people are concerned their mutually-forming star systems are dying because of the state of their dying nebulae

* story of alien incest

* story about a world where all males have disappeared

* sequel to Book Thieves

* a nerdy high school student gets recruited by murderous cyborgs

* larvae of extraterrestrial nature

* a psychic vampire eats the badness of people she meets on dating sites

 

10: THE ENDANGERED CAMP

* Dinosaurs were going to the moon but then the asteroid wiped out their civilization

* Hikers are put upon by a sasquatch

* Xenoarchaeologists cannot find the object of their search because they are camping directly over the dangerous location

* Camp comedies come with a severe penalty

* Someone stalks L. Sprague de Camp

* Four astronauts on the international space station try to set up a tent, but end up murdering each other

* Planet destruction

 

11: YELLOW SNOW

* Sulphur mining on the moons of jupiter goes horribly wrong

* a volcano erupts sulphur after which a flying saucer crashes into a mountain, resulting in sulphuric acid snow precipitation

* Time-travelling drug dealer genetically engineered to pee heroin

* A lethal form of cocaine is distributed in a Martian colony

* Father Christmas laughs himself silly

* sequel to Snow Crash

* a UFO from Uranus experiences a fuel leak, is stranded on Earth

* pollution ending humanity

ANSWERS ARE HERE!