With Anderson and Jovovich both being huge fans of the games, making a film in the
Monster Hunter world was a labour of love – though knowing that audiences may be less familiar with the source material, they created Jovovich's all-new protagonist Artemis as a way in for the uninitiated. "I wrote the role of Artemis for Milla as the avatar for the player, so she could be a grounded, relatable real-world character who is fresh to the world of
Monster Hunter," Anderson tells
Empire in the
Big-Screen Preview issue. Jovovich continues: "Yeah, she's not based on a character from the game. Paul wrote her as the captain of a team of Army Rangers that go in to rescue their colleagues."
It's not long before Artemis gets herself acquainted with the wild weaponry that the
Monster Hunter world has to offer – and the director and star drew from Jovovich's own experiences playing the game when picking weapons for her character. "Although Milla's character's not specifically in the game, she chose the same armour and weapons she uses in the game, so there were aspects of her game character that got folded into the movie representation," says Anderson. Her weapon of choice? The famous Dual Blades. "I experimented with different weapons during the game and was able to kill more monsters with those blades," says Jovovich. "I thought they'd look really beautiful in an action sequence."
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