Monster Hunter director Paul W.S. Anderson interview

Perhaps it’s apt that Monster Hunter, one of the year’s few big-budget theatrical releases, made its way to the big screen after clawing its way off of video game consoles. In a year that hasn’t given movie blockbusters many chances to draw a crowd, there’s something almost fitting about enjoying a movie spectacle that has its roots in gaming.

Games, after all, have been one of entertainment’s lone bright spots in 2020, surging in sales and siphoning thousands of hours of screen time away from other media as players have increasingly turned to home-based fun during long months of COVID-19 lockdowns. And all that extra game time has no doubt served to introduce new fans to titles like Capcom’s long-running Monster Hunter action-RPG series, which itself has amassed an enormous fan following since the original first game debuted for the PlayStation 2 all the way…