Whenever I find out that a game I like has been picked up for a film adaptation, I cringe a bit. We're more likely to get something like Street Fighter: The Movie than we are Detective Pikachu. The people who make these movies so often seem to completely misunderstand what makes these games special. While we won't know if Monster Hunter is another dud until it actually comes out later this month, we at least know that if it fails, it's not because director Paul W.S. Anderson doesn't understand the source material. Talking on a recent Twitch stream with Capcom USA, Anderson revealed that he took some inspiration from the most obscure of obscure places: a side quest in a Metal Gear Solid handheld game.

Anderson is in deep. He's already said that he first played Monster Hunter 12 years ago, well before it hit American shores in any significant way, and has been trying to adapt it for nearly as long. One of the things that worried fans of the games in initial trailers is that our main character, portrayed by Milla Jovovich, isn't a native inhabitant of the Monster Hunter world. Rather, she's from our world; she and her team get pulled into Monster Hunter through a storm, and she has to adapt, working with Tony Jaa's character, "The Hunter," to survive and thrive.

There are two reasons why Anderson made Jovovich's character, Lieutenant Artemis, military.