With the Monster Hunter movie releasing in Malaysia January 28th, a lot of attention has been called to the game’s creative liberties.

With the release of the game’s trailers, it’s usually been a matter of eyeballing that many of the monster’s sizes don’t really reflect their in-game counterparts, most famously with their large Rathalos. This was so off-scale that the Monster Hunter event featured their own giant “Greater Rathalos” as the climax hunt.

Now, thanks to the latest promotional materials for Monster Hunter The Movie, we can have a side-by-side of the game’s monsters and their movie counterparts. This is made even easier thanks to Capcom’s Anniversary Size Comparison videos, which even got us putting various monsters next to a scale bar.

The promotional materials were rather limited, only giving some of the movie’s monsters. For more side-by-sides of monsters like Gore Magala, be sure to check out our companion article. 

Diablos

Movie Diablos measures in at 7.6 meters, although the image used is hardly a great scientific measurement. If we’re taking the picture by its word, Diablos is closer to 6.5 meters tall, since the image seems to be measuring it up to its wingtips (considering we’re not measuring Tony Jaa by the tip of his outstretched fingers, this seems unfair).

Now, compare it to its game counterpart:

The squares here are approximately 100cm per unit, as shown at the start of the video. Measuring it at the highest point of the point of its body, its hips, it comes up to ~460cm a whole third smaller than its Hollywood counterpart. Measuring it to the tips of its wings, its actually not that far off from movie Diablos, cementing exactly why measuring that is so bad.

Funnily enough, you can extrapolate quite a lot of interesting information from this comparison, about minute differences in the design that you otherwise wouldn’t see. For example, Game Diablos has longer arms and bigger wings, since their ground-to-height measurements are the same.

Movie Diablos is also a lot bulkier, with a much broader body. You can tell this because if you were to put Tony Jaa’s height on to the scale diagram, you’d get him up to Game Diablos’ knees, which is about the same as where he is in the movie diagram.

If you wanted to go full on speculation with this, you’d say that movie Diablos is built much more like an old-school Triceratops, looking more stocky and tanky than the more agile game Diablos.

Rathalos

Movie Rathalos is laughably oversized compared to the original King of the Sky. Again, if we’re looking at this chart literally, it’s more of a measurement of the length of Rathalos rather than its height like Diablos. It measures in at 14m long from tale to snout. If you wanted to standardize it against Diablos however, you’d need a side shot of the monster. Thankfully, the movie has us covered.

So, it’s pretty obvious that Rathalos in the movie is a big lad. Now, thanks to the Size Comparison videos, you can get a similar positioned Rathalos to stack it up to, bearing in mind once again that each square is approximately 100cm.

Unlike Diablos, the height here is a lot more obvious. Milla Jovovich is barely up to Movie Rathalos’ ankle, while game wise she would be just under it.

If you’re looking at length, however, Game Rathalos actually comes out on top, since the official size given at the bottom actually out-measures the movie material.

If you were to look at this, you’d get the same conclusion you’d get with the Diablos whereby movie Rathalos is just bulkier than its game counterpart. It’s got longer legs though, likely to do with the studio wanting to maintain Rathalos proportions.

It’s harder to talk about the minute details with the Rathalos comparison, however, since movie Rathalos has no reliable way to get a wingspan going. Just from eyeballing it though, it has a much thicker torso, and longer legs making for a way more physically imposing beast.

Those were the two main monsters shown in the promotional materials for Monster Hunter The Movie, though they were far from the only ones. The other two were for Apceros and Nerscylla, which share a lot of the same conclusions we got from Diablos and Rathalos.

That is to say, everything’s bigger and bulkier, but in a way that it’s not noticeable (Rathalos size aside) unless you start getting pedantic and measuring things in units of Tony Jaa. It’s a fun speculative exercise, though I’m pretty sure a lot of the inconsistencies can simply be chalked up to “the studios weren’t expecting someone to be lifeless enough to break it all down”.

Glad to be of service, happy hunting guys.