New Monster Hunter teaser finally shows a gosh-dang monster

There’s a school of thought that holds that a monster movie’s value is inversely proportional to how willing it is to show off its monster. That is, the more you see of a murderous beastie as it mows down your protagonists, the less likely you are to be impressed by it. Now, this clearly flies in the face of proper kaiju logic—i.e., the idea that we would always like to be looking at Godzilla, pretty much all the time—but it does appear to be the operating principle for the ad campaign for Paul W.S. Anderson’s new Monster Hunter, which has been playing pretty coy with showing off its giant monsters as of yet.

But no more! Sony released the first teaser trailer for the Milla Jovovich-starring video game adaptation today, allowing viewers to get its first glimpse at Black Diabolos, which, as fans of the video game franchise well know, is a sort of giant bull monster who is also—and we’re speaking technically here—a total dick to try to fight. And honestly, Anderson’s take on the franchise (which implants gun-toting military types into a universe that’s usually depicted as borderline medieval in its technology levels) has gone so far afield from what’s depicted in the games, we were mostly just shocked to see one of the series’ signature monsters actually show up—if only through the sand-obscured distance.

Monster Hunter is currently aimed at an April 23, 2021 release date (although, you know, god knows when it’ll actually arrive). We’ll presumably get more detailed looks at the film’s menagerie as that date gets closer, as well as appearances from Jovovich’s co-stars, Tony Jaa and Ron Perlman, who’ll teach her the proper way to hunt a monster, i.e., climb all over it and hit it with swords, instead of blasting it with those wimpy guns.