Monster Hunter
Trevor Hogg goes on an expedition with Mr. X through the epic world of Monster Hunter…
A look behind the scenes of this video game adaptation
Even though Mr. X has frequently collaborated with British filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil), nothing has compared to the scope and scale of Monster Hunter; this adaptation of the video game franchise by Capcom sees Lieutenant Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her military unit mysteriously transported to an alternate world where they partner with a band of hunters to prevent massive volatile creatures from travelling to Earth.
“Monster Hunter, unlike Resident Evil,
was essentially unknown in the West until Monster Hunter: World came out in 2018,” explains Mr. X visual effects supervisor Trey Harrell. “We were already greenlit and in production when the IP exploded. Kaname Fujioka, the director of the Monster Hunter series at Capcom, was heavily involved in guiding the creatures. So much thought had been put into every feature of the creatures and the ecosystems that they live in. It was important to him and the team at Capcom that Monster Hunter
felt like a real world that had an internal logic. For example, the Nerscylla, a mantisspider hybrid that features prominently in the movie, have these crystalline spikes on their backs. The logic is that they nest upside down in caves and the crystal is the venom secretions through their body that drip and turn into stalagmites on their backs.”
Capcom shared production assets, but everything needed to be built from scratch. “We did have some assets from Monster Hunter: World which were much more detailed than the previous games and were a helpful start, but the level of detail and subtlety that we needed to put into the assets is far more than what you would have for a game,” notes Mr. X digital effects supervisor Ayo Burgess. “We started with the Capcom reference and then went super deep on upping the detail.” Multiple damage states were created for the creatures. “There were many stages of damage and we mapped it out across the sequences. This is where Rathalos’ wing gets cut or Diablos’ horn gets knocked off. We had 12 or 13 stages of damage for Diablos. For Rathalos, it was 10 or 11. That progression helped tell the story.”
“The creatures are characters in their own right and they’re in broad daylight so there is nowhere to hide,” states Burgess. “It was a lot tougher to get everything to sit at the level it needed to because these creatures were front and centre in so many shots in the movie.” Only one of the creatures speak. “It was a lot of pantomime type of action,” explains Mr. X animation supervisor Tom Nagy. “The challenge was that you’re putting these creatures against a real-life person like Milla Jovovich so the acting or emoting has to make sense.” The anatomy had to be believable. “Diablos is an amalgamation of a bird but with a dinosaur head and dragon wings. To make all of that work together we had to be creative. We started designing a skeleton inside so as to drive the anatomy appropriately with the bones underneath.”
An important aspect of grounding the fantastical creatures was shooting in real locations in South Africa and Namibia. “Whenever possible Dennis Berardi [production VFX supervisor] and Trey shot something,” remarks Burgess. “We always tried to anchor our shots in something physical as much as possible.” The production tried to find unique settings that could contain the 40 to 50 feet tall monsters. “It was crazy-remote awesome locations,” recalls Harrell. “We were on the road for three months primarily living in military tents in deserts or canyons. The locations are 90 per cent real and occasionally we add fantasy or Capcom world elements to them, but we’re always building on something real there. When we’re back on the soundstage [at Cape Town Film Studios] there are giant physical sets for the oasis or the ships that were redressed from Black Sails.”
Oversized weapons are a trademark of Monster Hunter and were not entirely CG creations. “I am here to tell you that Tony Jaa runs around and does stunts with 50-pound weapons that are five times bigger than he is!” enthuses Harrell. “Tony is my personal hero just in terms of how much he brought to the table, and how much we could do for real in camera when it came to stunts and blocking the action sequences. Tony got his start as Jet Li’s stand-in way back and has been a stunt coordinator and choreographer. There might be some magical or elemental effects where we change the colour slightly for creative reasons, but the weapons that people expect from the game are absolutely in there and about the size they would expect.”
Just over 1,300 shots amounting to 63 minutes of screen time were created by Mr. X facilities in Toronto, Montreal and Bangalore as well as by South Africa-based Blackginger. “When it came to sharing assets, animation and pipeline, Blackginger is one of the first shops in the world to lean into Houdini for stuff other than effects simulations; their entire pipeline is built around Houdini as is ours in Toronto,” observes Harrell. “There were custom tools that were shared. We shared creatures back and forth. But in the end the Apceros/oasis sequence is all theirs. Their on-set team was with me to scan all the digital doubles and to take LIDAR of all the locations. We had two data wranglers as well. We had an enormous team out on the road for a long time.”
“WE DESIGNED A SKELETON INSIDE TO DRIVE THE ANATOMY APPROPRIATELY”
Tom Nagy, animation supervisor, Mr. X