Mortal Kombat takes itself seriously now, and we’re missing the “so bad it’s good” days
Mortal Kombat 1 is so vigorously earnest that it leaves us pining for the pure fun of 1995's Mortal Kombat movie
Film Features Mortal Kombat
The 1995 Mortal Kombat movie has never been regarded as a good film, but there was at least something perversely appealing about it. Rather than trying to class it up beyond its origins or tell some kind of new story with vague Mortal Kombat-y aesthetics, director Paul W.S. Anderson just kind of took all of the things people would want to see in a Mortal Kombat movie and did all of it—comprehensibility and limitations of special effects technology be damned. The result is a movie that, despite pretty much everything about it, just kinda rips. It’s one of the definitive examples of “so bad it’s good.” Or it was in 1995, and that continued to be true until the last couple of years, when Mortal Kombat decided to grow up.
2019’s Mortal Kombat 11 video game marked an exciting turning point for the franchise after a couple of increasingly well-received entries, with all of the iconic characters you’d want to see, some new delightfully violent Fatality moves, and a time-traveling story mode that reckoned with the silliness of Mortal Kombat without turning the whole thing into a lazy joke. Then, Simon McQuoid’s 2021 Mortal Kombat movie pulled the same trick as the original film, doing the same “here’s everything you want out of something called Mortal Kombat” move but with more competent effects and a little less cheese. If nothing else, that movie will hold up a little better than the 1995 movie.
Now, NetherRealm Studios is releasing Mortal Kombat 1, a reboot/prequel of sorts that seems to fully take the Mortal Kombat mythology seriously. In order to know what’s happening in this game, and why series star Liu Kang has gone from a regular guy to the zombie king of Hell to the all-powerful god of fire, you actually need to know what’s been going on in these games for the past decade. That’s a far cry from the days of just picking which color ninja you prefer and mashing the buttons in hopes of taking somebody’s head off, and it seems to indicate that the series has evolved past the days when “so bad it’s good” was good enough. Now it aspires to actually be good.
But is it really any different? In Anderson’s Mortal Kombat movie, they throw more exposition at the viewer than you ever got in the games at the time, but the details don’t really matter. There’s an inter-dimensional martial arts tournament, the good guys are mostly regular humans and one all-powerful deity who wants to help but can only do so much, and the bad guys are mostly magic monsters. Mortal Kombat 1, the video game, is technically about the exact same thing. And since Scorpion and Sub-Zero are among the most iconic video game characters ever, they’re still in the game and you can still just pick which color ninja you prefer and mash buttons until someone gets their head knocked off.
Mortal Kombat is still Mortal Kombat, which is part of why the newer games have been so good. Very little about the formula has changed, it’s just that technology and modern game designers have caught up to the wacky characters and heavily stylized violence that the games were always going for. It’s like how superhero movies got good when the people making them stopped being embarrassed and started embracing why superhero stories were popular in the first place. The current Mortal Kombat games are good because they’re just trying to do Mortal Kombat as well as they can.
The McQuoid movie was like that too, even if it wasn’t quite as well-reviewed as MK11 and MK1. But is there any room left in the hearts of Mortal Kombat fans for the old Anderson movie? After all, superhero fans don’t really look back fondly on the more embarrassing cinematic entries in their genre, so why bother reminiscing about the thing where Scorpion’s spear is a snake that comes out of his hand and four-armed warrior Goro is some kind of puppet and Christopher Lambert plays immortal thunder god Rayden (not Raiden, as it’s spelled in the game) like he’s in a weird karate stoner comedy. We’ve seen that Mortal Kombat can be good now! MK11 and MK1 are no less silly than other things in the franchise, but they actually make sense out of this saga of colored ninjas and guys with multiple arms and guys with swords in their arms and women with evil magic hair … or at least they put in the effort to try.
But what good is being good anyway? The franchise has grown up and gotten more legitimate, but the thing about the old Mortal Kombat movie is that it still rips. It still captures a specific moment in time for video game fandom, when it was enough to just put Scorpion in a movie and you’d end up with a pretty good movie. No other movies had Scorpion at the time, and very few have had Scorpion since. Mortal Kombat takes itself relatively seriously now, but there’s no point in pretending that was always the case.
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The OG film is pure cheese, but lord, the soundtrack!! The Immortals (really, The Lords of Acid) +Orbital + The Utah Saints… Oh, the memories of gorgeous techno tunes past…
MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!
Orbital will always be legendary all-timers, but Lords of Acid, man, so damn good. Praga Khan is underappreciated.
Yes LOVE that soundtrack, that and Strangeland are probably fav soundtracks.
Mid-to-late 90s movie soundtrack albums had no business being as incredible as they were. From the same year, you have the Batman Forever’s soundtrack— featuring PJ Harvey, Massive Attack, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, Method Man, The Offspring, and, famously, Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose”—which is an all-time great.On a related note, I just recently learned Aaliyah’s sublime “Are You That Somebody?” was written specifically for the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack.
Lords of Acid might be one of the most fun live shows I’ve ever been to. They came to Iowa City when I was still living there in…98, I think? Might be one of the wildest concerts I’ve ever been to.
In order to know what’s happening in this game, and why series star Liu Kang has gone from a regular guy to the zombie king of Hell to the all-powerful god of fire, you actually need to know what’s been going on in these games for the past decade.I don’t think that is the expectation at all. Granted, I haven’t played it yet, but it seems like the new Liu Kang status is meant to provide a sort of retcon, as in “all that convoluted shit that preceded this doesn’t matter, since Liu Kang has rest the timeline”. If you truly care why Liu Kang is the new god of this new timeline, you could always look it up on a wiki; it’s not nearly as hard to catch up on continuity nonsense these days.Really, it was X and 11 that really mussed up the continuity (and possibly earlier…I won’t claim expertise), but, even then, it wasn’t that tough to keep up, because the story-mode cutscenes would usually have a fair amount of exposition dumps.
If anything the canon is even more convoluted than it was previously, as it explicitly sets up a multiverse scenario where every arcade ending of MK11 is canon.
I haven’t played it yet, but it seems like the new Liu Kang status is meant to provide a sort of retconIt’s not a spoiler the say that is absolutely not the case. The teasers/trailers/first looks from NRS even gave away that they immediately acknowledge that this is a sequel…not a reboot.
The new movie was not good.I just finished the story on MK1. It definitely does not take itself seriously. I loved it.
I straight-up cannot understand the thought process behind remaking/re-imagining/rebooting something that was popular because it was pure bonkers, cheesy fun and turning it into an earnest, self-serious affair.It’s similar to what they did with Total Recall but at least with that it was because they wanted to make something a bit closer to the source material in tone. With the new MK movie they tried to make it a Serious, Grown-Up Film(tm) and it fell flat.Maybe it would’ve been better if they hadn’t a) decided to focus on an entirely new character and/or b) if that character hadn’t been dull and uninspiring as hell but I don’t think it would’ve been appreciably so.
It took itself seriously, but then goes COMPLETELY off the rails at the same time during the third act.Literally everybody from the first two acts is completely abandoned for whatever the hell Boon thought he was doing.
It’s kinda fun to go on YouTube and watch/listen to the cutscene lore movies people have edited together for each more modern game.
It boggles my mind that since 2011 we’ve gotten the equivalent of a good 3 hour Mortal Kombat movie roughly every 4 years, but the 2021 MK movie was so dire.
If nothing else, that movie will hold up a little better than the 1995 movie.This may be the wrongest thing I’ve read on A/V Club in a while (and yeah, I know what that bar looks like). The new movie had some impressive gore for fans of fatalities, but that’s the only way it was in any way better than the original.
seconded, I couldn’t take anything else in the article seriously after this. I can’t remember a goddamn thing from the new one except for the part where Liu Kang spams someone with leg sweeps, and something about fighting Goro in a trailer park
How could you forget Cole, our new main guy?!
He’s such a forgettable character that WB didn’t even bother to force Netherrealm Studios to put him in MK1.
Who?
Lol
Haven’t seen (1995) mortal kombat in nearly 30 years… but I still remember every fight scene. In comparison, I’ve forgotten 2021 mortal kombat was even a thing until this article brought it up.
That bar is indeed at the bottom of lake Baikal, but yeah, A/V Club finds ways to lower it. Really, absolutely none ever that has seen both movies will remember the modern one 11 minutes after they left the cinemas or pressed “stop” in their remotes; most people, if sometimes not precisely for great art reasons, will always remember the 1995 movie.
It wasn’t great and thankfully it was released straight to HBO Max back in 2021. My friend caught it on TNT in two separate sittings and both times had to text me about how bad it was.
Literally came here to say this. How fucking dare they suggest the new film is better than the 1995 film. Just a lead up to a tournament that we didn’t even get to see. I think the only time I’ve been more disappointed in a film was Next starring Nick Cage.
The new movie is only good for the opening backstory between Scorpion
and Sub Zero. It’s all downhill from there. I think this article, like
that film, underestimates the Mortal Kombat audience. Fans preferring
the PG-13 movie over the R-rated movie shows that it’s not just about
having fatalities and violence, and people still want to connect to
characters. I was a little stunned in how little the new movie was
interested in that. (Especially when the modern games have now made that
their focus.)
Oh yeah, the opening scene does deserve some props, and would have made a good intro to a different movie.
… Does it, though? Without spoiling anything, the MK1 story embraces its inherent goofiness more so than any other entry (intentionally, that is) except maybe 11, and the gameplay allows for Scorpion to team up with Scorpion to fight Scorpion and Scorpion in a restaurant while people look on with vague alarm at most, and it all still works canonically. Even the truly straight-faced moments are drenched in gallons of pulpiness.
“The 1995 Mortal Kombat movie has never been regarded as a good film”This is very true, its a GREAT film
This is what I cane to say
Aside from the main MK movie theme, we also got this adaptation of Traci Lords’ Control for Reptile:
Also, a little variation here:
The main theme itself:
And a hard trance version for fun!
And the Utah Saints, as mentioned above!
And Orbital – Halcyon was mentioned, so here we have it:
They just arent as good for me since the graphics became ultra real
“Takes itself seriously” is the last way I’d describe this game. Rather, it’s a much-welcomed lean back into silliness.
For me, what’s funny about framing it this way, is that I grew up with those ‘Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat?’ school yard debates. And my argument for MK, which I favored, was that it was ‘more serious.’ But maybe that’s just me. As a kid, I equated ‘mature’ with serious, and it was a bit of a culture shock to discover many view the series as campy.
Lol. You’re to young to even remember the “so bad it’s good” days.
MK1’s story takes itself seriously up until the big bad reveals themselves and then it just abandons everything it was doing for one the stupidest things I’ve ever seen.Yet, the whole time, it takes itself deathly seriously and it just makes it even dumber.