Woo-hoo, check out my latest article in Film Stories, the UK’s biggest film magazine! Issue 61 has just hit the streets with two collectible souvenir covers, and features my 6-page interview with veteran VFX supervisor Dennis Berardi, twice BAFTA-nominated for his work on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and The Shape of Water and founder of Toronto-based visual effects studio Mr. X Inc.
On this occasion, I spoke with Dennis about his long-standing relationship with film director Paul W. S. Anderson, known for pulse-pounding movies like Event Horizon, Alien vs. Predator and the Resident Evil series. Here’s a brief extract from the article, in which Dennis discusses his experiences on the set of Anderson’s 2020 fantasy adventure Monster Hunter:
Having completed his sixth zombie movie, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Anderson took on the sweeping fantasy adventure Monster Hunter. Another Capcom videogame adaptation, the film propels U.S. Army Ranger Captain Natalie Artemis (played, naturally, by Milla Jovovich [Anderson’s wife and perennial leading lady]) to a world teeming with unbelievably ferocious creatures. The strange planet’s rolling dunescapes came courtesy of the Namibian desert, while Cape Town Film Studios hosted an ambitious stage shoot. “Namibia is just this crazy landscape,” Berardi says. “I’ve never seen spiders so big in my life! We built a tent village, and we were tying up our boots to the top of the tents so scorpions wouldn’t get in. It was quite an experience.”
The Namibian creepy-crawlies were nothing compared to the film’s voracious predators. The monsters of Monster Hunter include the insectile Nerscylla, the sand-swimming Diablos and, a favourite of the fans, the dragon-like Rathalos. Berardi recognised the fine line between honouring this lethal menagerie’s gaming origins, and meeting modern audience expectations in terms of realism. “Jurassic World had just come out,” he notes, “and, what with Game of Thrones as well, dragons and dinosaurs were everywhere. We really felt the pressure to achieve that level of quality with our creatures.”
Like all the monsters in the film, the Diablos was primarily a digital creation. However, for a scene in which Artemis battles the beast while clinging to its horny skull, Jovovich donned a safety harness and rode atop a full-scale Diablos head. Mounted on an articulated gimbal, the SUV-sized noggin threw the actor around like a bucking bronco.
“Milla was like, ‘Why is this thing so big?’” says Berardi. “It was crazy, and the fact that she was willing to do it … amazing.” For Jovovich, riding the Diablos was the latest in a long line of action scenes in which she performed her own stunts. “Milla’s very physical, very fit. The amount of times I’ve scanned her, poked and prodded her, put her in contorted positions, hung her from wires upside down, thrown her against the wall! Each time I approach her, Milla will be like, ‘Okay, what’s it going to be this time, Dennis?’”
To learn more about the globe-trotting adventures of Anderson and Berardi, grab yourself a copy of Film Stories and read the article in full.
