Show Notes
Mortal Kombat! Resident Evil! Event Horizon! Monster Hunter! These are all some amazing movies! Well, we haven't seen Monster Hunter yet but it looks great! Today Kenric got to sit down and chat with the director of these movies, Paul WS Anderson!
Find Monster Hunter online:
https://www.monsterhunter.movie/
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Paul WS Anderson - Interview
[00:00:00] Kenric: all right, guys. Welcome back. Thank you so much. He wrote the 2008 film, death race. One of my favorites. He took us on a ride to hell in space and he brought resident evil to the masses. And now he's hunting monsters. Paul Wes Anderson. Welcome to spoil the country, buddy.
Paul WS Anderson: Thank you so much.
Kenric: Yeah, I appreciate you.
Coming on. This is exciting. So exciting. I
Paul WS Anderson: bef
Kenric: I have to apologize. I just bought a brand new house and I'm just setting up my studio. And so the sound treatments haven't been done yet. So if I sound a little echo-y, I apologize for that.
Paul WS Anderson: I spend half of my career shooting in tight claustrophobic, underground spaces. So I know all about bad acoustics. Don't worry about it. Good,
Kenric: good, good, good. Yeah. Man. You got a brand new movie coming out this Christmas.
Paul WS Anderson: I should do Merry Christmas. Everybody married. Happy holidays.
Kenric: Happy holidays. Happy Christmas, man.
What is it [00:01:00] like? I got to ask you right off the bat. What is it like to work with your wife? She has become an action superstar in so many words in so many ways that she make your job easy or does she make it hard because she expects more out of you now.
Paul WS Anderson: Well, listen, she's definitely demanding, but I mean, she's amazing.
you know, I love it. I love working with her. I think, to be able to do what you love with the person you love is a real gift. And, I love every single day of it. There's nothing like
Kenric: mean with your best friend.
Paul WS Anderson: Hey, it's been, it's been fantastic and will continue to be fantastic. yeah, I mean, it's, it's just great.
I mean, she's very, very supportive, you know, Mila really gives her all to every single role that she jumps into. I think any directors are very, very lucky to have her on board on their movie. so, you know, I consider myself a lucky man that I get to work with her.
Kenric: She was so good in messenger, Joan of arc.
I think, I, I think I was at the time I was married and we watched that movie. I kid you not, we watched it three times. [00:02:00] We watched it once every week for three weeks in a row.
Paul WS Anderson: And it was fantastic, amazing, amazing performance from her. Some amazing imagery. Yeah. I mean all the sun sunflowers and everything.
I love to see where those cannonballs would shoot out of the bottom of the castle. Do you remember that? And just like tap people's legs off. I don't know how, I don't know whether that was historically accurate, but I
Kenric: there's a scene where somebody gets her head cut off, climbing up the ladder. It was like, Oh my God, it was so good.
So
Paul WS Anderson: the only thing, the only thing I will say about that, maybe for me, that I found very confusing as an Englishman. And, you know, we did burn Joan of arc, was the accents because they, it was like, they had English, people played by French people and French people played by French people as well.
Definitely. So it was, you know, as this Jennifer muck, she is she's offered
Kenric: the accent is just a little off.
Paul WS Anderson: Yeah. Just a touch. [00:03:00] It's not very, not very Downton Abbey
Kenric: Cengiz con
Paul WS Anderson: that was
Kenric: the weirdest movie. Do you ever watch
Paul WS Anderson: that? Yes. Yes, of course. Yeah. Well, the movie, the movie to kill John Wayne as well. That's where he got cancer, right.
Kenric: I guess so,
Paul WS Anderson: no, it was because he was, they shot it, they shot it in, basically they showed them the deserts where they tested the atomic bombs and, you know, John Wayne was such a, he was such a big believer in the American military and, America in general that when he was, when he was told it was safe by some officials, he's like, it's safe.
We're going, we're going into the irradiated desert nuclear nuclear power is good. That's
Kenric: so weird. My grandfather was a golf buddy of his, they played like every Tuesday for 10, 15 years. Are you there?
Paul WS Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Can you still hear
Kenric: me? Yeah. There you are.
Paul WS Anderson: Yeah. I was just [00:04:00] thinking about playing golf with John Wayne.
How fabulous that would have been,
Kenric: would have been weird, right? It would have been awesome. My sister got to meet him. I never got to meet him, but my sister got to meet him twice on the golf course. I was like, well, I didn't even know about it until cause my, my grandfather died when I was very young. So I didn't even know about it until, just a few years ago.
It's kind of weird. So monster Hunter, this is going to be an exciting movie, man. I know I've, I've watched some of your, your previous interviews and I know that you are a big fan of monster Hunter while it was really just known in Japan like 12 years ago.
Paul WS Anderson: And then that's right. I, I played it when it was really, I was in Tokyo and a friend of mine turned me onto it.
And, it was really at that point, a Japanese only phenomenon outside of Japan, almost no one had heard of monster Hunter. And, I played it and I immediately fell in love with it. I mean, I became obsessed with trying to turn it into a movie because. That the landscapes and the amazing giant creatures and the ecosystem that they inhabited, I [00:05:00] just thought was, was beautiful and, and staggering.
And it really was, was jaw-dropping. I mean, you play the game for the first time when you, you can't believe how detailed it is and how, how amazing, how amazing these creatures look, you know, I'm a big fan of like monster movies in general and, You know, I, I felt when I played this, there's a chance to make a great, great monster movie here.
But with these monsters that no one has ever seen before, you know, everyone, everyone knows what King Kong looks like or what Godzilla looks like or what a T-Rex looks like. But these creatures like the black Diablo loss, I mean, the Silla. These are insane looking creatures that, that our general audience has never got their eyes on before.
So, yeah, it's, it's a real passion project of mine, 12 years in the making. I played the game and almost immediately started to talk to cap, calm about turning it into a movie.
Kenric: How do you even start that conversation with them? I mean, do you have to have people in line and say, I want to make this movie look at my track record.
Let's make this [00:06:00] happen. And then to take a decade basically, or more than a decade to get to this. How do you even keep that alive?
Paul WS Anderson: Well, it started, it started very nicely, which was, I went out for dinner with some of the folks from Capcom when we were shooting resident evil afterlife, and they were visiting Toronto where we were shooting.
And, you know, I started talking to them about it and obviously. You know, they were very happy with the resident evil and became even happier with it when it became the most successful video game adaptation ever, you know, $1.3 billion worth of business. So, I mean, I think they felt that, that the movie will be in a safe pair of hands, but, you know, monster Hunter was, it was their crown jewels, you know, they, they, they weren't going to let it go without, you know, Putting me through some testing, which, you know, so there were hoops.
I had to jump through, which I was happy too. And, you know, one of the main things I've done and monster Hunter has helped me do is forge a really strong relationship with the creators. As the game, with Sugimoto Sanam, Fujioka [00:07:00] Sam, the producer and director of the game, because, you know, these are the men who created this world.
And, and I was so impressed with the world when I first saw it in the game that I just wanted to be as accurate as possible when I was putting it on screen. That's awesome. So, it's been, It's been a very long and very fruitful relationship. You know, lots of trips for them to come to America. Lots of trips for me to get to Tokyo.
You know, I would show them all of the stuff we were doing. They got to see every costume design, every weapon design, you know, every creature down to what the creatures toenails look like. There's one, there's one scene. And the bits of it have been in some trailers where the Diablos bursts out of the sand for the first time.
And you see it and the monster looks stunning. And Fujioka San was, ah, his fingernails aren't right. And I'm like, Oh my God, you're looking at his fingernails. He's gonna like, he's going to eat everybody. It's going to rip his head off. But you know, they, he was, he was honing in on the very first fine details.
And I was, so I was so grateful for that because, you know, [00:08:00] we, we listened to every single note he gave, we acted on it. And I think we, we put these creatures on screen as accurate as it's possible. And, I think that for the fans of the game, They will love it because you know, the creators of the game certainly love it.
and then from people who don't know the game, you know, it's a really fun action popcorn movie where people hunt big monsters. So what's not to like
Kenric: about that. I love that. I love it. I know studying some of this, some of your past stuff. I know that you can be very tactile as opposed to green screen.
When you do a movie like monster Hunter or even resident evil or event horizon. How do you keep that fine line between a tactile special effect and a green screen time?
Paul WS Anderson: Well, I, I was very lucky early on in my career to work with the great Richard Eurocell, who. Had worked out. He was my visual effects supervisor on event horizon, and then on the first resident evil.
And, he, he had worked on [00:09:00] 2001 and he'd worked on blade runner. You know, he'd done all the, the miniature opening shots of blade runner that looks so good still today. Yeah, they think about how old that movie is and it really holds up, you know, whereas, you know, even the best cutting edge CG from five years ago starts to look a little ropey.
You know, this stuff still looks magnificent. And I asked Richard about his approach to visual effects and he said, you know, my favorite kind of visual effects. Has no visual effects in it. And that would always be his mantra was he would always push to do things practical. He said, yeah, you know, you can do it as a visual effect, but wouldn't it be great if we could just do it for real.
And, you know, obviously there are times when you can't, but he led me down a path where I try and do as much possible real. As, as I possibly can do before resorting to green screens and visual effects. So on event horizon, that meant deep, uncomfortable, lots of discomfort for the actors because they were constantly hanging upside down and being twisted [00:10:00] around on wires.
the construction of lots of big sets, cause I'd rather build a massive set than do lots of set extensions. And, you know, that's continued through my career to the point where. We did monster Hunter where, you know, I was determined basically to have no green screens if possible. And, we sought on a soundstage for two days.
We shot against a green screen for one day and pretty much everything else was on location. Wow. with that without green screens, And, these locations were insane because the world of monster Hunter looks insane. It's a fabulous looking and we needed, we needed some of the most dramatic looking landscapes on earth to achieve that world.
And I thought I'd rather go and shoot the dramatic landscapes for real than go the easy route, which is she did all on a studio backlog against a green screen and created in a computer. Right. 'cause if you, if you shoot it for real, it's just real. And as Richard said, you can't get any better than that.
And, as a consequence, you know, because I knew [00:11:00] we had to do the monsters in monster Hunter CG, you know, if anyone would let me breed giant monsters, really flights, I, that would be my first choice. No one. No one at Sony was allowing me to do that, unfortunately. So, so the monsters had to be visual effects, but, you know, because the landscapes are all for real.
the animators had reality to lock the creatures into. So any one shot you're looking at, you know, 80% of it is real to start with because the landscape is real. Then the creature is 20% CG in the shots, but that, that CG is locked into reality. It's into real dusk, real lens, flare real wins, you know, real lighting.
You know, none of it is, is kind of bogus on a backlog, created from scratch. And, you know, the, the downside of that is that the movie was, it was incredibly difficult to shoot because I discovered all of these amazing landscapes were basically in the middle of nowhere. So we would add the entire cast, the entire cast and crew ended up [00:12:00] living in these tent villages, you know, 200 miles from the nearest habitation, in, in pretty extreme.
Circumstances, because we realized why we were 200 miles away from the nearest town or village because these environments while beautiful and stunning, they were very inhospitable. There's a reason why no one built anything. You know, we'd, we'd go from. You know, insane, like hundred and 20, 130 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to subzero freezing during the nights with, you know, incredible dust storms that would come up and blow all the tents away.
And when it was real, it was adventurous filmmaking. But you see, you see that on screen. I think it gave the movie a feeling of reality that we just wouldn't have been able to get otherwise
Kenric: trailers. Paul look amazing, like amazing. I cannot wait to see this movie. And I was like, w when I, when I first heard about monster Hunter coming out, I was like, how are they going to do this?
I mean, it's going to look like Godzilla, you know, [00:13:00] and which isn't bad, but I was just like, it's going to be. And then when I saw the trailer, I was like, Oh, this is a whole new game.
Paul WS Anderson: Well, it was very interesting when, while we were shooting, we're in the middle of principal photography. And, when, or just towards the end, when, Godzilla King of monsters, came out and, and, and it got a lot of flack for like doing a lot of creature stuff, in the dark or in the rain.
in the fog, you couldn't see anything. It was all under water. and you know, we, while we do have some stuff, that's, you know, dark, you know, a lot of the movie, I would say 80% of it is shot in the broad daylight and you see the creatures and the broad daylight. And, you know, that's a fabulous thing because there's nowhere to hide when you do that.
The CG has to be amazing. So
Kenric: you got some great people on this movie. What was working with Tony, John, like, because. Man unblock came out and he just kind of blew up out of nowhere of this amazing martial artist, you know, and this guy that's just does some crazy stuff on film, [00:14:00] and then you're bringing him into monster Hunter.
And I feel like it's his first, American movie, I guess it'd be safe.
Paul WS Anderson: It's certainly the first time he's been a lead in, an American. In a big budget studio film. and I mean, what was it like? It was a dream come true. I mean, I'm a huge fan of Tony jars from the first time I saw him in on back where the guy basically revolutionized fight choreography.
By just going, you know, enough of these wires and let's just do the whole thing for real. And, and that, that was, and he's, he still exactly the same, you know, this is a guy who does backflips for fun and, incredibly athletic and, incredibly positive. And, you know, we, we do some really elaborate fight scenes that we assumed would require some wires and he'd go, you know, let me just try that without a wire and bam, he would just do it.
I mean, the guy can defy gravity, which is. Which is great because when you look at the size of the swords and the bows that he has to use in the movie, [00:15:00] because these oversize weaponry era, a feature of monster Hunter, it's great. He can defy gravity because that's almost impossible to pick up and wheeled.
Kenric: Oh man, the guy is so good,
Paul WS Anderson: but somehow, somehow he and Ron Perlman managed it. That's awesome,
Kenric: man. You got T I on there. And the first time I saw Tia actually act was in the movie ATL and he did great. And then he's been in a lot of stuff since then. And he's always really good, but you, you told a funny story and I'm hoping you can reenact it for tell us again, T I takes notes and he'll put in a next to things.
Paul WS Anderson: Yeah. That I've seen that in quite a few actors, scripts, to be honest in the movies I've made it. And, it usually it's, it's either NAA or NAR. it basically stands for no acting or no acting required. And it's because it goes back to me trying to, you know, put the actors in reality as much as possible.
It's [00:16:00] sometimes there'll be in such extreme situations that no acting is required. You know, you, you can just be panicked and scared for real. And, and I think, I think allowing the actors to be in these real environments, I mean, it was, it was challenging for them, but. Everyone was incredibly positive about it.
Yeah. because as you know, Mila would say, and tip would say, and Diego Bernetta, who'd just come off a big green screen movie. They all said the same thing, which is, you know, when you're acting in front of a green screen, you just, you have to imagine so much. And it's very hard to be in the moment. And then sometimes the visual fakes get done and they're not quite what you imagined.
And then you wish, Oh, I wish I'd done something different. Right. When you were in a real environment, that is, is difficult, you know, with the real dust and the real winds and the real, you know, African sun in your eyes, it, it elevates the acting and it, it allows the actors, I think, to kind of come speak to the performance rather than thinking about the acting part of it, you know, [00:17:00] they can just get straight.
It gets straight to it. You know, there's a whole level that if you're in front of a green screen, you have to imagine so much before you even get to the performance. that kind of it's liberating being, being in these situations where, and there's there was one scene, there was one scene in particular where I think all of the actors thought there was no acting required where, we, we built this, this set that would revolve.
It's a, the interior of a Humvee. And, we locked all the actors in, and then basically the Humvee was built on a spit like you would have with a roast chicken over a barbecue. And then we just, we put all the actors in there and then we just started spinning that thing around and ran and ran the base, throw up stuff inside.
And I mean, it was, it was horrific, it was peppery. It was Berry Berry unpleasant. Oh, my God suddenly felt like they were ready to, you know, I, I would never, I would never ask an actor to do something that I wouldn't personally do. And, you know, I went in that thing and it was [00:18:00] just horrifying. It was horrifying.
I mean, it was like, Oh my God. It's like the w like, if you. I'm not a big fan of kind of like roller coasters. But if you imagine like the worst of six flags magic mountain distilled into just 30 seconds of pure terror, you know, that was pretty much what it was like
Kenric: 100 game ride, ready to go.
Oh my God. That's it sounds like you have an amazing cast. I mean, Ron Perlman, Mila Tony jaw, I think you said Diego.
Paul WS Anderson: Oh, yeah, Megan Good as well. I mean, it was, it, it was a fabulous cast and all really positive people as well. Cause that's the thing about, you know, when you, you know, you you'll work at, you're living in tents, you're working in the middle of nowhere.
There's no cell phone, there's no internet, you know, it, it. People have to really get on otherwise, you know, the wheels can fall off the wagon very, very quickly because there's no escape. [00:19:00] Can't go back to your hotel and go out for dinner and try and forget about your horrible day that you had on set, right?
Because your dinner is served in a tent with all the people you spent the day with and you spend the last two months with, but it, because the actors were also positive and so into the movie, it really built a fantastic kind of. Comradery and team spirits that was quite, quite unlike any other movie I've experienced like a family.
And, I was just doing Mila and I were just doing some press with Diego the other day. And, it was wonderful, you know, just to see him. And, we became, we became very close friends with, with people on this movie. It's so nice.
Kenric: I love that. I got to ask you created what you brought to the screen resident evil.
To me for, for my money, Paul that's that's my favorite video game adaptation of all time. And I loved that game. When it came out, I ran a video store and so I took a [00:20:00] Sony PlayStation home cause we've rented them out and I just took it home, took the game home and just played and played and played. And I absolutely fell in love with that game.
And so when that came out, I was so worried that it wasn't going to give me the feeling of that game all over again. And you nailed it. You totally did it. And. What drew you for that franchise? Was it the game itself? Were you playing the game when it came out and you're like, I got to make this,
Paul WS Anderson: or it was an, it was an experience, not unlike yours, to be honest.
I stumbled across resident evil and I played the game in my apartment. I played resident evil one and two. Yep. back to back and I didn't answer my phone. I didn't leave my apartments. I think all my friends were terribly worried about me and, cause no one could contact me. My family. It's like, Oh, what's going on with Paul?
And then I emerged like a week later. Cause I, you know, not, I'm not the best video game player in the world. Took me a while. but I, you know, I hadn't shaved, I hadn't slept. So I've got like, I got beard. I've got like red [00:21:00] eyes and I'm going, Oh my God, this is amazing. We have to turn this into a movie.
And, that was, that was the beginning of resident evil for me. It was really, you know, passionately fell in love with the game and the same, same thing about monster Hunter and the same thing about my first American movie mortal combat. I I've
Kenric: done all three of
Paul WS Anderson: those because I loved, loved, loved the games that they were based upon.
Kenric: I liked that you took that video game and made a cohesive story out of it more than just what the video game offered you. Even though there was, I mean, the characters were there. You wouldn't, you wouldn't play that game or choose different characters if they didn't have some kind of background that you wanted to be a part of and liked, I feel
Paul WS Anderson: a multiple,
Kenric: yeah.
Bringing it to the screen.
Paul WS Anderson: You know, when, when I, when I got involved in this, he, and I was, like I said, it was my first Hollywood movie, but at that time, you know, I was, I was going to take [00:22:00] meetings, a new line with, Mike DeLuca and. People were saying, ah, video gaming, maybe something like that. That's just, you know, that people really look down on it.
And I was really offended by that. I'm like, I love mortal combat. I think it's fantastic. And I'm going to make a fantastic movie out of it. And, and we did. But, you know, people were very against video game movies then, because I think they'd been double dragon and they'd been super Mario and neither had really worked creatively or commercially.
And, so there was this feeling, the video game adaptations don't work, but you know, that was. He for me, that was exactly the same mentors that I had in Hollywood. And when people said, Oh, female led action movies don't work. And I, I just thought it was bullshit, you know? just because there hadn't been a great video game movie up until that point, or they hadn't, maybe in America being a great female led action movie for a while, you know, you can't just write off an entire genre of cinema.
Kenric: Yeah. I kind of felt like Luc Besson really brought [00:23:00] the female action star with lithium Nikita. I bet he, he nailed it and it kind of proved that it can, it can be done. And then when you brought out resume evil with Mila, is that the lead playing Alice? It was like, well, now there's no excuses. You know, you guys, it was completely obvious that, you know, those women kick the shit out of everybody.
And
Paul WS Anderson: it's a lot of
Kenric: fun to watch.
Have we seen the last resident, evil movie, do you think. You,
Paul WS Anderson: I know that there's going to be more resident evil movies, for sure, but not, not ones that I'm involved in. Right.
Kenric: Not even as a producer.
Paul WS Anderson: You know, it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a brand. Yeah. Hollywood loves brands, so I'm sure, you know, there'll be there.
There's a lot of resident evil that's going on there. But for me, you know, I did, I did six movies, $1.3 billion. you know, I, I, I've done my bit for resident evil and, you know, I, I fell in love with Monsanto and for me, I'm kind of all in on that, you know, That's what I
Kenric: always [00:24:00] worry when I talk to somebody that's a, you know, either somebody that has a lot of creative control of a franchise, I always worry when they have three or four different things going on.
I love when I hear I'm all in on this, cause this is what I want to do. And that just means that those, what you're working on is going to have a hundred percent Paul in it. And that's what we want. So I'm excited.
Paul WS Anderson: I got to be, I've never been, I've never been one to kind of like spread myself too thin because, you know, I love the process of filmmaking and, you know, I love being all in on something.
And for monster a hundred, it's been a long journey, you know, not just the, the 12 years since I played the video game to actually develop it and get it in front of cameras. But the actual process of making it as well was a long one, because, you know, there was finding all these incredible locations. They were physically getting to them.
And, and then in the post production as well. it's been a very long post because I'm sure you're familiar with a lot of kind of big visual effects movies. And the way that, you know, the post quite often gets done very fast. [00:25:00] You'll have six months and you know, you've got to do 1500 visual effects shots in six months.
It's very hard to get everything great if you do it that fast because you have. You know, you have your shooting crew and then you have your post-production crew and all of these parameters, you know, if they're working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, you just can't, you know, you can't keep the level of quality up.
And, with Dennis Berardi our visual effects supervisor, who's also producer on this movie, we made a very, I thought a very sensible and quite bold decision, which is we're just going to take. A year to do the visual effects on this. Let's say, let, let the crew work at a really, you know, work fast. But let's not just punish them with kind of endless over time and, and, and like no weekends off, let's get the best out of them by, you know, allowing them to work reasonable hours so that every, every hour they're sitting immersed in the monster Hunter world is the most creative hour they can possibly give us.
And, you know, [00:26:00] and I think that's reflected in the look of the creatures. I think they look fantastic. Yeah. Well,
Kenric: I honestly, I can't wait to see this movie cause the trailers look amazing and. I love monster movies. So it just right off the bat, I was like, Oh my God, I'm so excited for this. I tried tweeted it out to everybody and I was like, have
Paul WS Anderson: you seen this?
Kenric: I can't wait. I know that you're
Paul WS Anderson: you're.
Kenric: A very busy man, especially right now with it coming close to release. I just got a couple more questions for him, but if there's any chance I can get you back on, because I have a million questions for you, Paul, you've done so much and I love the way you do things I've noticed in your movies like death, race.
When you wrote death race, that the script has a very distinct beat to it. And I've always curious when you're writing. Are you listening to music and does it have a, a real big influence in your writing process and even [00:27:00] going into your directing process?
Paul WS Anderson: Hmm. I definitely listened to a lot of music when I write, when I was writing death rates, I was listening to a lot of nine inch nails.
So there's a lot of, there's a lot of Trent Reznor in, in depth rates, which probably wouldn't wouldn't surprise you. Yeah.
Kenric: That makes a lot of sense. And then.
When you watch an event horizon, the there's, the color in that movie is very distinct. Like the greens and the reds, and even the blacks. I know you didn't write that film, but you directed it. And I'm curious when you're directing somebody else's work or somebody else's writing, I should say, how do you find the beat in the aura of the film?
Paul WS Anderson: you know, I think the I'm very led by, by images. So, you know, I think that's how I approach something, whether I'm writing it or whether I'm adapting, somebody else's work, you know, I always go [00:28:00] to, you know, what is, what is the, what's the imagery at the heart of this movie? And for me, going into space was a big challenge because you know, when you're designing spaceships, you kind of need, you need a big idea.
In my opinion, you know, and Kubrick obviously was 2001. He did the, he talked to NASA and he did, his big idea was let's do it for real. What would it really look like? What would commuting to the moon really be like, you know, how do you create gravity? You know, Ridley Scott's was, was very clever and very fortunate to have the work of giga, when he did alien.
Yeah. So, you know, the look of the alien ship, the look of the alien itself, you know, was the distillation of one incredible artist's entire career, you know? so you had a, you had the greatness of giga in, in that, that movie. And we needed, we needed something similar and, you know, at its heart, I felt that.
That event horizon was a haunted house movie, and it was a, it was a [00:29:00] Gothic horror. So I thought, well, let's, let's make a Gothic movie. but in space and, and that's what led me to, the idea of, you know, going to one of the greatest coffee cathedrals in the world, which is not true, damn, and Paris and, and looking at how that was built.
And I thought let's, let's build a Gothic spaceship. So we, we did a really interesting. a project, which was, we built Notradame cathedral in a computer, and then we took its constituent elements and then tried to create a spaceship out of it. So it was like really messed up Lego in a way. Yeah. And so, so if you kind of look, if you kind of break apart, the event horizon, you can see elements of.
Of the, Notradame cathedral, whether it's the, you know, the thruster pods being like the towers, whether it's the kind of antenna dishes, kind of very much being like the goggles, the, the, the, the very detailed, kind of iron work that goes down the length of the, the middle [00:30:00] of the event horizon, the superstructure is all based on designs from the stained glass windows in Notradame.
So it's kind of like, And, and then when you went to the interior sets, there were things like, in the medical Bay, you know, it had those very distinct pillars that kind of flare out at the top and the bottom. And that's the kind of Gothic design style. Because, you know, to make the pillars more load bearing, they would have to, you know, flare out at the top on the bottom.
So, I mean, I, wasn't a practical way to build a spaceship. Probably no one will build a spacial, but it looks like that. But certainly for building our kind of haunted house in space, it gave the movie and incredibly distinct feel
Kenric: well, I was not ready for that movie, Paul. I was not ready for that movie. I brought it home.
I turned it cause I didn't see it in the theater. I saw it when it was on VHS. Turn it on and it scared the shit out of me. It took a while to fall asleep that night and, and, and I was pretty free then or 24. So I [00:31:00] thought nothing was gonna scare me anymore when it came to movies. You know what I mean?
And that one did it because before that it was nightmare on Elm street, you know? So it's, it's, it's a
Paul WS Anderson: great one. It was, it was very unsettling event horizon and it, it. You know, for all the grotesquery in it and, the darkness in it, you know, it also left quite a lot to the imagination. I mean, a lot of people have told me that horrific things they've seen in that movie.
And I'm like, well, you know, I never shot that. You know, so people are, you know, that that's the whole kind of theme of the movie. You know, the thing you find the scariest is your worst is your own imagination. And, no one knows what scares you better than you do. And quite often, you know, not showing things and cutting away from things, you know, can, can create a greater sense of dreads than, than actually, you know, shoving into people's faces.
Yeah. Yeah. Although we are, we are guilty of that a little bit as well in event. I mean, there's some pretty, there's some pretty good tasks stuff in event, but there's people have like told me in great detail of even more grotesque stuff that I'm [00:32:00] like, you know what I. I didn't cheat that, and that's not in my movie, although, although if I were to do the Snyder cut of it, perhaps I'd take that idea and run with it.
Kenric: It's like the Sinbad movie that everybody thinks they saw in the nineties, that it was never created. You know, that, that whole thing.
Paul WS Anderson: I have not ever heard that people send bad fan as well.
Kenric: There's like a genie movie that people, I think it's actually a Shaquille O'Neal movie that came out and people have no, no, it's not the Shakila Neil one Sinbad did one and you can look it up online.
You can Google it. It's crazy. It's a whole, it's become a whole myth because people believe that Sinbad made this movie in the nineties that was never created and people would swear that it was done and they can't find it. It's a lost movie. They say. But it's like, they, they think it's in the nineties.
Paul WS Anderson: Yeah,
Kenric: well, Paul, you know what, man, thank you so much for taking your time today and dropping by and having a conversation. [00:33:00] I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope I can convince you to come back because I literally have like 30 more questions to ask you.
Paul WS Anderson: I just want to, I want to pile only answer 29. Well, I'll have
Kenric: to really, I'll flip a coin on the one we throw away.
Paul WS Anderson: It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
Kenric: I really appreciate it. When can people see monster Hunter and where and where can they watch
Paul WS Anderson: it? Well, if you're gonna watch it in America, you can see a Christmas day, 25th of December. Nothing says the holidays more than giant monsters.
Kenric: That's right. That's right.
All right, Paul,
Paul WS Anderson: and you know, it really, it really is a, it's a, it's a great big screen movie. you know, which we shot on these amazing landscapes. We shot with these large format cameras, but to capture them, we have these 50 foot monsters, you know, it's a great, it's definitely a movie that if you can try and catch it in cinemas,
Kenric: here's a pro tip too, for cinemas.
Is, if you can get like 20 of [00:34:00] your friends together, you can rent out the whole theater for way cheaper than you think. And so they can go and they can rent the whole theater so they can avoid the whole COVID thing. They can do their social distancing and they can enjoy monster Hunter on Christmas day.
That's the way to do it.
Paul WS Anderson: Fabulous.
Kenric: All right, Paul, thank you so much.
Paul WS Anderson: Really? I appreciate it.
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