Note: The writer of this review watched Mortal Kombat on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
Is it too much to ask that a dumb movie also be fun? Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 adaptation of the fighting game series Mortal Kombat managed to be both: the fast-paced, kid-logic plotting; the goofy dialogue; the camp performances of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Christopher Lambert, and Linden Ashby; the pure good-times-ahead energy of the opening seconds, with its yawps of “Mortal Kombat!” over loud techno beats. Compared to that, the new Mortal Kombat, directed by first-timer Simon McQuoid, barely qualifies as entertainment. It is a patience-testing exercise that repetitively paces a small handful of locations (one of which, bizarrely, is Gary, Indiana) while the audience hopes for something, anything to happen. Call it Waiting For Goro.
To be fair, the four-armed extra-dimensional champ does eventually make an appearance. The titular tournament, in which the best fighters of our dimension (referred to as “Earthrealm”) face the bruisers of the evil dimension of Outworld, does not. There is, technically speaking, no Mortal Kombat in Mortal Kombat. (They’re saving it for the sequel.) There are, however, some unremarkably choreographed fights with sporadic VFX gore and digital blood spatter. Whatever happened to the gnarly prosthetic? The fire-hose-strength arterial spray of bright, bright red? Digital effects haven’t made movies any cheaper, but they’ve definitely made them less interesting to look at.
Between the fights are the character introductions, lots of them, followed by stilted pauses for audience reaction. (At this point, these kinds of properties should just come with a whooping, gasping applause track, à la an old three-camera sitcom’s canned laughter.) The new arrival into the larger MK franchise is Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a down-on-his-luck cage fighter who, in a very literal bit of branding, was born with the Mortal Kombat logo on his chest. This, it turns out, is his pass into the upcoming (in the next film) Mortal Kombat tournament, to which he was destined as a descendant of Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a.k.a. the undead ninja Scorpion.
Soon he finds himself crossing paths with Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), the supernatural assassin with the ice-cold grip, and the duo of Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee). They are cops or special forces operators—it’s never clear what their exact jurisdiction could be, though they are for some reason keeping the Australian mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson, providing “comic relief”) as their prisoner. A significant amount of exposition is dumped via risible dialogue that is done no favors by the uniformly charmless cast—and then it’s off to the inspecifically located desert temple of Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), bored-looking thunder god and ineffectual defender of Earthrealm.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the quarry-esque environs of Outworld, the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is traipsing around with his armored minions, contributing to an overall “R-rated Power Rangers” vibe. McQuoid’s sense of style and pacing approximates that of an anonymously hacked together TV pilot, a dull combination of dark and gritty (represented by Shang Tsung’s evil band of fetishwear aficionados) and overlit and flat. This is supposed to be a world of fighters with bizarre outfits and combat abilities, but a lot of the time, the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that’s mostly rocks.
Will Cole discover his “arcana,” the secret power unique to every champion? Will Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) do his leg sweep? Will Kung Lao (Max Huang) throw his sharp hat? Will Sub-Zero say, “I am Sub-Zero?” These are the questions that are supposed to be burning in the mind of Mortal Kombat’s presumed viewer, who has waited years to hear the catchphrase and spot the reference. In theory, this person exists. As for the rest of us, why bother?
346 Comments
FATALITY!
FATALITY!
Can we please stop pretending that the original Mortal Kombat was a good movie. It’s not..it really isn’t.
Nobody pretends that it was good. But it was fun.
It was good…fun.
It was definitely not good.It was definitely not fun.I definitely was not good fun.
OF COURSE! (Congratulates self on totally accurate reference.)
I don’t ever want to live in a world where it’s ever not applicable.
For you, the day I made that comment was the most important day of your life, but for me it was Thursday.(I am on FIRE with these references!)
I just love that you are referencing my favorite fighting video game movie “Overdrawn At The Memory Bank”.
I understood that totally accurate reference!
I thought it was great! And very fun.
You know a movie can be fun without being good right. The original Mortal Kombat is entertaining.
See the first Fast and the Furious movie. All time bad dialogue and terrible, terrible acting, but it was really fun.
All of the Furious movies are dumb fun.
True, but none of them had the laughably bad dialogue and acting that the first one did—and thats why it remains the most charming of the series, IMHO.
If something actually is fun, then it is good. I get the joy out of trashing bad movies, MST3K style, but that’s not the same as this “it’s not good but fun” or “guilty pleasure” nonsense from people who are embarrassed by their own taste.
I think judging movies on a simple binary good or bad is silly.
I think I actually liked the second movie better. I feel it had better fights. Including the ridiculously cheezy showdown.
Weirdly, it had better fights that weren’t as fun because they weren’t directed as well.
The second had higher stakes, but I saw it again recently and most of it just seemed like random nonsense tossed together. It was fun in a bad way though. I mean, Scorpion teleported away with Kitana while yelling “SUCKERS” and I don’t think I will ever not laugh at that scene. I think Liu Kang and Kitana were the only returning actors from the first film.
It was still more coherent than this film though.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it’s definitely more fun than this new one and actually has a personality.
No pretending here, it’s great.
They understood what people were watching for, though.
Good, no.Dumb fun? Oh, yeah — even Christopher Lambert seemed to having a good time for a change.
Exactly. It’s a well made bad movie where everyone was enjoying themselves and you see an ernest effort put forward.This new one so far, save for Kano chewing the scenery, is taking itself deathly serious and I just can’t help but laugh at it because he’s the only guy who seems to know what kind of movie this should be.
I initial though Kung Lao wear terrible in the new one, but then he was a dick shit egg rolls and totally redeemed himself.
Ernest Goes To Kombat?
By the standards of ~cinema~ it was bad, by the standards of a martial arts movie it was okay, and by the standards of an American martial arts movie it was surprisingly good.
I really think that the critical analysis is broken when “fun” is on another space as “good”. The original Mortal Kombat is fun, is funny, moves fast and Paul WS Anderson does absolute magic with the production design. I liked it quite a lot and I saw it for the first time last year and my favourite movies are Night of the Hunter, Singin’ in the Rain and Babette’s Feast.
I agree with all of this. It’s a good movie. Somewhere along the line, the metric for “good” became… Oscar worthy? “High art”? Like, what is the metric?Is the mk movie cheesy? Sure! But the cast is on board, it looks fucking cool, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, it has some terrific right scenes. Technically it’s done well. Like, what makes it a “bad” movie? Other than its embraces being shlock? Shlock is good. Fun is good.
Bexcuse it had poor cgi, which isn’t a fair criticism, because they had some really good effects… and goro was actually a robotic puppet instead of cgi, which was a feat all on its own back then.
It’s fun to watch The Room, which is also a terrible movie.It’s not fun to watch Snyder’s Justice League, which is also a terrible movie.It was fun to watch the original MK, even though it wasn’t a good movie. It wasn’t fun to watch the second MK, because it was that bad of a movie.It is okay go admit we enjoy things that aren’t good, just like it’s okay for people to not enjoy things that are.
Yeah this is where I disagree with you: one of the metrics for quality of a narration is when that is entertaining. It’s bullshit like “guilty pleasures” what has screwed up critical analysis completely, and it fills me with pain that most of that condescending analysis comes precisely from niche fandom pages. If you think that something can be bad and entertaining, you need to learn a lot yet.
I fully agree with your last point. I also genuinely suggest: the 95 mortal Kombat is a *good* movie. By what metrics is it a bad movie? Other than elitism and cinema snobbery?
The female lead, the long exposition, the waiting?
It’s always interesting to me what “good” even means in these conversations. I think there’s a concept of “good” cinema that’s firmly rooted in the 1970s auteur sensibility, and movies that fall outside that sensibility (including most “genre” movies) are by definition not “good.” That’s also why you run into people claiming that aggressively okay superhero movies are “great,” or talking about movies as “guilty pleasures.”
Part 2 was the greatest action film of all time. You never KNEW that centaurs could do kung fu, did you??
It’s not a good movie. It’s an awesome movie. Johnny Cage is basically written as a Bruce Campbell character, the music stomps all the ass in the world, and the fights are cleanly shot and easy to follow. Nobody other than Cage winks at the camera and everyone fully commits.
One thing I appreciate is that every major fight takes place in a completely different locale. Yes, they’re playing with the concept of stages but as apparently the update shows(haven’t seen yet) and other movies have demonstrated, that isn’t a GIVEN. Not only are the scorpion/cage, subzero/Kang, Kano/Sonya, Goro/cage, Kang/reptile fights all distinct in their action, the settings for each are wonderfully visually distinctive.
It’s relatively good for being a video game film.
Raul Julia chewing scenery in Street Fighter isn’t objectively ‘good’ either but goddamn is it entertaining!
I think Street Fighter is about 50% really good 90s big(ish) budget update of Adam West Batman and 50% dull slog. Still, I’m quite fond of it.
It was everything my little 10-year-old, spazzy video-game-playing self wanted. Take from that what you want.
But it’s a great example of how bad movies can still be fun movies.
What makes it “bad”?
Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole.
Most under appreciated line ever
can we stop pretending people are pretending when they say they like something?
Agreed. “Don’t like that thing you like!” is the worst of fandom.
See: Emperor’s New Clothes, The
It’s absolutely a good movie. Sorry it didn’t elevate the medium or something?
Is it? Me and my high school friends thought it was crap back then, everyone agreed with us.
Yeah it’s absolute tripe
It was good at being what it was trying to be.
It was fun B-Movie fantasy martial arts movie with some campy but entertaining performances.
We don’t just remember it as a movie in a vacuum; we remember it compared to other video game movie adaptations of its time (Mario) and compared to . . . (shudders) Annihilation. I think that movie achieved most if not all of its goals. It was fun, it got attention for the franchise, it made money , and now it’s an effective nostalgia piece. But that’s my opinion. Your is fine too.
I’m still waiting on a live action Sunsetriders film.
That person not only exists, I’m going to see the movie with him on Tuesday because his wife thinks anything with an R rating is a ‘scary film’ and refuses to go, so I’m tagged in. I’ll sit through long monologues on every detail, but I refuse to watch the Netflix MK film beforehand to “get a basic understanding of the lore” as he has repeatedly asked me to.
LMAO
You won’t miss anything by not studying
It’s going to be on the final!
I see Ignatiy is going straight for GENTLEMAN’S FATALITY on this movie.
SNOOZALITY!
FIN-ISH!
THE DAMN MOVIE ALREADY!
Your money . . . is MINE!
“Your Rotten Tomatoes score is mine!!!”
He saves those fatalities for Steven Seagal movies.
Man if this website was to be wiped from the Earth and I could only save one article… it would be Contract to Kill. That shit was Roger Ebert North level quality.
It was a thing of fucking beauty. I love the line about Seagal being lowered like a drawbridge onto a woman.
I have that line burned into my head alongside gives the type of performance expected from someone who died half way through.
Oh yeah, my husband came into the room and asked me what all of the hysterical giggling was about when I read that one.
Its the mount Rushmore of insults.
I would have a hard time choosing between that one or IV’s review of London Has Fallen. Here’s the opening line: “Go back to Fuckheadistan,” growls Neanderthal Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) as he knifes a faceless goon about halfway through the grab bag of dog-whistles and dog-shit filmmaking that is London Has Fallen. https://film.avclub.com/gerard-butler-scowls-his-way-through-the-atrocious-lond-1798186887
I watched that movie purely because of that review. Him calling it a “brain-dead stab-a-thon” stood out for me.
Ha! I could see myself doing the same as I sometimes indulge in total dreck action movies, if not for the fact that I had already tried to watch the first “Fallen” movie and found it too vile to enjoy even on a lizard brain level.
Dammit, I was rooting for this movie on the strength of the trailer, but all the signs were there that it would be this bad.Why the fuck do screenwriters keep taking games with basic, obviously-filmable premises (deadly martial arts tournament, demons on mars, zombies in a mansion) and then just doing their own fucking thing instead?
Protip: If your impulse is to blame the writer, it’s statistically very likely that some asshole studio executive is to blame instead.
Good point, but there’s usually plenty of blame to go around 😛
Eh, there are a few writers who are consistently terrible. Roberto Orci and Akiva Goldsman come to mind.
While I have no *love* for either, your blanket statement about them is silly.
Very true. I’m sure the writers went into this already kneecapped by a studio telling them it’s a franchise, not a movie. These studios just keep looking at Marvel money without realizing that Marvel understood from the very beginning that if the first movie isn’t able to stand on it’s own, there won’t be anymore movies to follow.
You can write a movie to stand on its own but also with a trilogy or franchise in mind… star wars, the matrix, x-men, dark knight trilogy, marvel franchise, etc. Plenty of studios and others have done it.
Even if they want it to be a franchise, they could easily do the tournament in the first movie and then just end on a cliffhanger where either the heroes lose the tournament, or just do what the old movie did and after they win have Shao Khan show up and say “fuck it, I’m going to invade Earthrealm anyway” and then you could get a couple more movies or even a TV show out of that.
I feel for them, they had already compromised their morals and religion having to write a video game movie.
But now they shiver thinking about the dreaded meeting, when they first heard the name “Cole Young”.
I agree on all points. I was excited, but am now a little bummed. Did anyone look at the time proven classic Bloodsport and think “it would have been better if I knew a lot more about the guys beating the shit out of each other?” No one who knows good cinema did, I can promise you that.
lifelong fan of the games and this was a damn good movie. You should actually watch for yourself and not let a sardonic dick on one of the most rapidly declining review websites to exist straight at their word.
I got yer ‘obviously-filmable premise’. . .right here, pal!
I loved this movie. When they had to team up with the old sailors to fight the aliens using the USS Missouri, I almost wept in the theater. Just classic filmmaking.
Lmao!
All you really need to see is the trailer. It has all the best parts except for Kung Lao’s.
If you ask me, a trailer is a work of art in its own right – and a good trailer is a joy in and of itself.
EXHIBIT A:
And why give it to some director who’s never done… Anything?
Same with the writer who supposedly has like a top 50 in the world gamer score but can’t get the details of mortal kombat lore right….
Why the fuck do screenwriters keep taking games with basic, obviously-filmable premises (deadly martial arts tournament, demons on mars, zombies in a mansion) and then just doing their own fucking thing instead?I don’t mind when the filmmakers do their own thing, but the story still has to work on its own terms. Resident Evil ditched most of the game’s story and characters, but it was a coherent piece of craftsmanship. But this new Mortal Kombat movie doesn’t know the difference between a mythology and a plot. The pacing is totally arbitrary. The Outerworld assassins can seemingly find our heroes at a moment’s notice, except when they can’t. They gave away the obvious benefit of building the plot around a tournament: there is no need to explain why the characters are fighting each other, or even when they are fighting each other.
It feels like they wrote out the tournament and then inserted flimsy motivations to cover for it. It would have been so much easier to just rip off Enter the Dragon like the other MK movie.
Well yeah, if they can elevate the source material with their own spin then sure. But what usually happens is that they throw out a solid genre premise in favour of some generic, half-baked fluff (and you clearly think better of WSA’s Resident Evil than I do).This happens with books etc. too, but the problem here is that “conventional wisdom” dictates that games’ plots don’t make good films, and this perpetuates that idea – even though studios aren’t even trying to adapt those plots in the first place, and even though a lot of games wear movie influences on their sleeve.I think they totally should have knocked off Enter the Dragon btw. Thing is, that film found room to introduce the characters and flesh out their personalities and motivations quite deftly, with the tournament as the nucleus of the plot.
I think they totally should have knocked off Enter the Dragon btw. Thing is, that film found room to introduce the characters and flesh out their personalities and motivations quite deftly, with the tournament as the nucleus of the plot.Exactly. And no one will accuse Enter the Dragon of being a sensitive character study, but it does enough to give each of the fighters some individuality and flavor. For the most part, the new Mortal Kombat has costumes instead of characters. And it saddles the lead character with all this legacy baggage, but then it’s not clear what he actually wants. His backstory is vastly more complicated than Liu Kang’s revenge story in the 1995 movie and not nearly as good a plot driver. I hate it when writers and producers both overthink and underthink their stories at the same time.
Or Bloodsport. Which is the other inspiration for the original MK.
They over complicate these things.
I think the beginning was pretty decent, and I wish they could’ve stayed in that lane.
But when the animated movie does a better Scorpian story while also having a good cast, And a Johnny Cage…it’s just sad.
Counterpoint – I thought this new Mortal Kombat was fun. Also, I’m not a fan of the franchise, so I have no skin in the fight.
damn, this review pulls no punches. guess you could call it a
WAITING FOR GORO IS A FLAWLESS VICTORY OF A LINEFRIENDSHIP???
GORO WINS! Existentiality! *rips soul from body and slams into Cure t-shirt*
DOUCHE-ALITY!
Will Sub-Zero say, “I am Sub-Zero?”Pretty sure the advertising answered this one.
Now plain zero!
–Noob Saibot, eventually
Did he just say “making fuck”?
I don’t fuckin’ know, he’s from Russia or some shit.
He’s a fuckin’ character; Olaf, metal!
WHAT A WOOKIE
Of all the various Mortal Kombat media to use as the basis of the film, why would you use Annihilation and The Journey Begins?
Because The Journey Begins is amazing, maybe?
don’t stop believing that
Amazing is not a word I would use to describe that movie…
I’m fascinated by the thought process that led to “No one could possibly be interested in any of the actual characters from the game; we’d better throw in some generic white guy as the main character.” Plus, if you’re determined to do that for some reason, Curtis Stryker is right there.
#JusticeForStrykerI always liked playing as him when MK3 came out, because he was slow and not all that powerful and thus was a blast to nuke the people who spammed cheeseball combos with Kabal (among others) into orbit with.
To be fair, Lewis Tan is half Chinese. But I have no idea why he couldn’t have played a half-Chinese Johnny Cage. Hell, I was expecting the eye-rollingly blandly named Cole Young to be revealed as Johnny Cage at some point in the movie.
If, for whatever reason, the Shaolin monk Liu Kang can’t be the main character in a fantasy martial arts film about shapeshifting sorcerers and millennia-old half-dragon warlords, and you need a white guy to be the POV character, just make him Johnny Cage for crying out loud.
Because WB execs have never met a project they couldn’t fuck up somehow.
To be fair, Lewis Tan is half Chinese. But I have no idea why he couldn’t have played a half-Chinese Johnny Cage.
Because A) based on rumors,Tan is playing a descendant — and inheritor of the mantle —of Scorpion, the most popular character in the game and B) to spare the filmmakers from fans who claim Cage is canonically white he is based on the Belgian Caucasian Jean-Claude VanDamme and C) Johnny Cage is comic relief and never the lead protagonist of MK story.
Tell that to Netherrealms, who made Cage the protagonist of the last two games.
Even while acknowledging his importance, Ed Boon himself says Cage is the comic relief of MK11 in this video.
Yeah, but having played the game, the comic relief Johnny Cage plays in MK X and XI is not that of the clown, he’s just the only character which isn’t 100% serious or melodramatic through the story. You’re really twisting what Boon says out of context. That being said, I’m one of those people who are like “We need Johnny Cage” as the lead. But being Asian, Lewis Tan looks really really white to me, and I can’t help but think that was on purpose.
It’s a misstatement on my part to say Cage has never been the lead in an MK game. What I should have said was given the themes and influences of MK and the nature of Cage’s character (both identity and personality) he’s a creatively problematic choice for protagonist in the first salvo of the franchise, whether it is the game or the movie. It runs the risk of toning the franchise too close to a parody, and that’s not the mood the creators wanted to start with. And in fact, he was a supporting player in both the first game and movie. As he grew as a character and in popularity, he evolved to a leading character.Boon could not have stated more directly that Cage was the comic relief of the MK11 and the series in general. At the same time he is very popular character and his story arc is a major part of the MK11. Boon literally said all of these things. I’m not twisting Boons words, because there is no conflict between being comic relief and being a significant character. Fans are invested in Johnny Cage as a character, and the comedy that springs from his flaws are a big part of that appeal.He and other MK regulars have prominent subplots in MK11, which is somewhat of an ensemble piece, but Raiden and Liu Kang are carrying the core narrative. Cage’s arc is important but its a B story. Finally, I’m not a fan of the creative choices the filmmakers made with Cage and Cole Younger in this story. I was trying to state what I think their rationale and calculations were, and it appears it read more like approval than was my intent. I think the fact that you perceive them as having hired a Caucasian looking Asian man for role strongly coded as Asian indicates that you might agree that they were not beyond some cynical hedging in those calculations.
Sorry, rereading what I wrote and what you wrote there were definitely some issues in my initial post. There’s more agreement than disagreement across the board and I think that got lost in my pre-coffee state and mobile typing skill. I should have said that Johnny Cage was the main character of MKX, and his role had be reduced to that of comic relief role in MKXI. Boon stated that Cage was comic relief in the latter, and not the former, and I can agree to that much, though the extent to which he became that is quite mild by literary standards. That being said, I want to emphasize that there should have been a “not” in my last statement about Johnny Cage being the main character of the film. I definitely didn’t want that, and in some ways I think they did that with Lewis Tan. If we’re going to take that road I would say that it was purposeful attempt to whitewash the lead role for the sake of viewership. I find it about as distasteful as the casting of Henry Golding for the lead of “Crazy Rich Asians.”
though the extent to which he became that (c0mic relief) is quite mild by literary standards.
I would agree that in its purest definition comic relief is usually an inconsequential character (like Luis in Ant-Man), but I would argue that in modern usage comic relief is often combined with a role of significance, like Donkey in the Shrek franchise or Rocket Racoon in GotG2. But that’s a quibble, I definitely agree on the major points. Cole is (in my non Asian opinion) a whitewashed Asian character, a lead meant to appeal to broader (i.e. white) audiences without offending Asian audiences, and appears to have succeeded at neither goal. My one caveat is I don’t put the onus of this decision on Tan — or Golding— it all belongs to the filmmakers and the studio. I haven’t heard anything bad about either actor — they just are who they are imo.
In terms of comic relief, I didn’t mean in regards to their role in the story, but in terms of how much of their role is devoted to comedy as opposed to actual plot progression. Though it’s fair to say that Donkey and Rocket have important moments. I’d ask whether it’s a modern usage, or whether they are simply outliers. It’s purely rhetorical of course, I’d probably have to sit down and start counting in order to get a true representation of who’s right and I’m more than happy to compromise in that respect. You’re also right about putting the onus of the decision on Tan, or Golding for that matter. As much as I was not happy about Golding’s casting, I liked him just fine in the film, and look forward to the sequels, but I personally see it as another attempt to keep an Asian from being a leading man. My gripe with it stems back to the desexualization of the Asian man in popular media, and I’m still cautiously pessimistic about Shang Chi as I only see Simu Liu and Awkwafina. Though shit, if there’s no romance in either I guess I should care less.
The MCU movies are largely chaste affairs. Tony Stark has a few bedroom scenes, Star Lord has one, but otherwise it’s mostly hand holding and shy romantic kisses. I doubt the Shang Chi would veer from that model. Frankly, the Asian martial arts films that are that movie’s primary influences — Crouching Tiger, films by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Gordon Liu etc.— share in that innocence. But I do think the Shang Chi filmmakers are very aware of the desexualization trope and will at least acknowledge the character is capable of drawing and feeling sexual attraction. He just won’t have time to act on it while he is busy saving the world.
Given that most of the Marvel men are written as capable of drawing sexual attraction, they should have plenty of opportunity – America’s ass anyone? The trailer shows that Shang Chi has lived a normal life for X years before being pulled back into his father’s shadow. I’m just hoping there’s going to be more than awkward glances between him and Awkwafina and he’s shown to at least have a normal life with romance. I really don’t want them to use martial arts to shoehorn in the asexual martial arts master trope because that’s also been done to death. Overall, I’m not demanding that MCU movies to be woke, but I’m hoping they don’t squander the opportunity either.
IIRC, Johnny canonically killed the big bad guy and saved the world in one of the more recent games.
But sure, make Tan the new Scorpion I guess, if the perfectly-cast Hiroyuki Sanada isn’t willing to do more than one movie or something. All I know is that so far the movie is hovering around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’m guessing the main complaint of most reviews won’t be “there weren’t enough characters to keep track of.”
Even when Cage saves the world, he’s still comic relief, as Boon notes in this video:I think Cage is cool, but not necessarily the hero an Asian themed franchise starts with and notably, neither the video game or the earlier MK movies did that. I was speculating on the filmmakers rationales based upon rumors, not touting the idea as good or bad. As it turns out, what they did with Tan was disappointing and I have to concede, even though they didn’t fall into the “using a white guy as the relatable anchor”trope, they were in a similar ball park of generic protagonist.
They also said that Kano filled the role of wiseass, comic relief and they didn’t want to repeat the same team as the first movie. Worked for me.
It’s honestly infuriating to me that white people/Americans kept thinking Lewis Tan is white??? He barely looks white despite being mixed!
needs more titties.
And have Johnny Cage played by Nicolas Cage. This movie desperately needed some Nicolas Cage.
“Cole Young” is such a boring name for a mortal combat character too. Like if someone can’t yell it dramatically you chose poorly
“To be fair” undersells it. The “white” main character is at least half-Japanese, has a racially ambiguous surname, is played by a Chinese-British actor and his being Scorpions descendent and therefore prophesied to defeat Outworld in Mortal Kombat is the motivating plot point of the movie. Honestly I am completely baffled by this criticism.Now whether or not a new character was necessary is a fair discussion.
Plus, if you’re determined to do that for some reason, Curtis Stryker is right there. FUCKIN’ A!And I want PAUNCHY Stryker. None a’ this “inner city death squad” shit.
Tan is Asian American.
Lewis Tan is Chinese-British.
Thanks for the correction—I’d forgotten I’d read that somewhere. His accent in this, Wu Warriors and Into The Badlands gave me the mistaken impression he was from North America.
Wu Warriors! That’s where I’ve seen him before!
The show wasn’t very good, but overall was a better showcase for his martial arts skills and his character — a cocky gangster who looked out for his family and friends — was more engaging than the generic hero he played here.
Minus the “American”
Lewis Tan isn’t white.
Stryker and Nightwolf are without question the worst characters in the franchise, so if someone wanted to take a shot at making either of them better, I’m all for that.
Utterly bizarre that white people think someone whose name is Lewis Tan and looks like a Lewis Tan is a “generic white guy.”
If this movie doesn’t have someone doing a split & punching Goro in the balls it’s going to have to work damn hard to win me over.
ha that’s so funny since Lewis Tan is half chinese so you dont actually have a point to make
You have a perfectly good The Miz sitting over there, who would be perfect for Johnny Cage and has wanted the part for years, and you’re letting him go to waste.
TIL that The Miz is Johnny Cage already and I just never noticed before.
It sounds kind of like that Jason Segel Muppet movie where the Muppet lead is an original character, thus relegating all of the known Muppets with decades of history to supporting or cameo roles. Even if this is really a story about how some nobody from nowhere gradually assumes the mantle of Scorpion over the course of multiple movies, who has the patience for that shit?Any Mortal Kombat movie is basically going to be a string of character reveals in which some CGI superpower blast from offscreen teases an entrance, and then we cut to a playable character from the video game stepping out of the shadows to say hi. Like, I’m pretty sure if you add up the run time of the two 90’s MK movies, somewhere around 75% of the scenes include this routine. So I’m unclear on why you would even try to disrupt the formula by wasting lots of screentime on a character who (at least initially) is not in the costume of a playable character from the video games.Making an entire feature in which people talk about the tournament possibly happening in another movie is also an…. interesting choice.
They’re putting the cart before the horse. Assume this will get people hype for a sequel instead of getting heat on the studio.
Wasn’t Johnny Cage enough of a generic white guy already? I mean, he’s no Ken from Street Fighter, but he’s still pretty damn generic and white. And I say this as a generic white guy myself.
Ken Masters is actually half-Japanese in the story. Though Capcom doesn’t make it particularly obvious.
For as tone deaf as WB sometimes is…they probably recognized there could be a problem with making a white cop the central hero of their otherwise fairly diverse fighting game movie.
It’s probably has something to do with character rights and whatnot. If someone buys a Stryker funkopop, probably some percentage of that money goes to the MK people.If someone buys a Cole funkopop, that percentage goes to the screenwriter/director/ whoever invented him.
It better be overweight Stryker with his hat turned around!
I’m curious what it is about Lewis Tan, British-Chinese actor, that says “generic white guy” to you?
I really liked it. It’s a movie based on a near-30 year old video game, and it was fun and filled with really good fight scenes. Literally, other than Jax, Kano, and Cole’s boss/guy who schedules cage matches (??) at the gym, it was AMAZING to see so many Asian men with prominent roles that weren’t stereotypes (not based on their video game characters). The story was decent, in comparison to many other movie adaptations of video games (see Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed), and the acting was pretty good as well.I really wish this nitpicking bullshit about Cole’s half-Asian ancestry was extended to an actress that steals roles from Asian characters (and then defends herself being CGI’d into a vaguely-Asian looking person) and defends pedophile directors. But it won’t and assholes white boys with neckbeards will flock to see said actress in her Marvel movie debut, and jerk-off at home afterward, while shitting on the ONLY movie with more ACTUAL ASIAN MEN than White men, while bitching that a sort-of protagonist is half-Asian. Really fucking shitty.
I think it’s clear that a larger audience would not be interested in any of the characters with or without a white guy. A film like this should be straight to home media with a tiny budget
…the generic white guy whose non-white-ness is pretty obvious on the face of it, especially since his non-white ancestry is a plot point of the film?Like, yeah, I get the reason to not like Cole as a character, but can you at least be a smidge accurate with this bullshit?
A lot of fans were disappointed there was a new main character, and they hoped there would be a reveal that the new guy was actually an existing character. I joked that it would turn out to be Stryker and fans would be even more disappointed.
What I don’t understand is, if they wanted to go this route, of making Scorpian’s heritage a central plot device, why not just use Takeda?
Him and Cole have the exact same mechanized upper body, both related to the Shirai-ryu, and the fans would have instantly recognized him because the last couple of mortal kombat games have been popular.
Was this what they were trying to do? Just put some crazy ass hell amalgamation with a more white male lead?
Which character do you mean?
Cole Young is a bigger Poochie than Stryker, and he didn’t even need the backwards hat to pull it off!
My review of the movie is “when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?”, which is from the Poochie episode.
So there were are.
I’m fascinated by the thought process that led to “Half-Chinese actor Lewis Tan = ‘generic white guy,’” particularly when he was passed over for the lead on Iron Fist because the producers on that show apparently thought he wasn’t white enough.Fuck off.What roles should he be allowed to play, then? Which part has just the right balance of “white” and “not white” that would satisfy you?
They went with Tran so they couldn’t be accused of white washing the lead role, but they also didn’t exactly broadcast his character or his daughter being Asian either. Meanwhile you have far more interesting Asian actors playing the two brothers (and who rightfully should be the lead characters), but they get pushed to the rear. Hollywood.In any case, the movie was terrible. Bad plot, script, acting, VFX, and even the martial arts were iffy. All of the substance of the movie would have been forgiven if they had some Raid Redemption type of martial arts, but it wasn’t even close.
I think adding a character like that is a writing tool—it forces them to leave in enough exposition that the person who gets dragged along by a fan to at least follow the plot. It seems to have worked based on my research of watching it with a semi-fan buddy and another buddy who was largely unfamiliar with it. The unfamiliar friend gave a decent recap of the world of MK, which I wasn’t sure was in there as I watched it.I think that character also gave the movie better stakes. Yes, we know they’re fighting to save the world from an outright takeover by Outworld, but now we had a character we didn’t know who had to figure out how to make it in the weird realm(s) of MK.I didn’t think it was great, but it was alright. I’d watch at least one more installment to see what happens and take it from there.
The thing is though, an existing character could have served this purpose. Just because they exist in the games doesn’t mean they have to know about Mortal Kombat when the movie begins.
This comment is hilarious because A: Lewis Tan is Asian (Chinese-British)B: The director specifically created the character of Cole Young to avoid the trope of having a white guy be the main character in a martial arts movie with a majority Asian cast.But there were so many better approaches they could have taken than creating some random with probably the least interesting powers of the bunch.Just make Liu Kang the main character for Christ sake.
I’m still watching it as soon as I can. No one can take away the time I’m going to waste attempting to enjoy this. I need harmless and silly fun! Damn trailer got me with that ice blood sword.
Yeah, stupid people like stupid things
/watches Bloodsport again instead
But that isn’t the movie where he dances!
Man, I’ve always been baffled by the wardrobe in this one.
You like to torture yourself?
remember that Bloodsport (minus the annoying talky bits) is Trumps favorite movie.
Meh. I’m gonna get blazed to the tits and fire this up. Wouldn’t be the worst decision I’ve ever made.
Vishnevetsky wishes to join you in this, Ugh.
No, just a bad and dumb one that speaks poorly of you
I saw the flick last night while high as balls, and I thought the movie was fun.
Best way to watch ANY action flick.
The opening scene feels like a different movie. The quality of the acting drops precipitously after that scene, it’s almost like you are in a historical drama and then it pivots to a “B” movie. The character of Cole Young was a waste of time. Sonya Blade’s plot was cringeworthy. The only fighter I felt invested in was Lui Kang and he has the only storyline that I find mildly interesting for a possible sequel. Goro’s role in the 95 movie is leagues better than his role in this film. I also don’t understand spoiling the end in the trailers. The most egregious of all though- NO TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!
“…but a lot of the time, the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that’s mostly rocks.”On the next TV ad for this movie:“Mortal Kombat …rocks!” —Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club
“…the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that… rocks.”—Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club
Generally you want the punch-up to be better than the original joke
“…the punch-up…better than the original joke”Thanks buddy!
Well at least you found your audience I guess
I starred you both. Solid comeback!
“…but a lot of the time, the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that’s mostly rocks.”
Wasn’t this the pitch for Dune?
So the main character is some random dude who’s not even from the games and the whole damn plot of the games, that being a silly tournament, is not even in the movie? What parts of Mortal Kombat did these people think was interesting. Just take the script for Enter the Dragon or Bloodsport and just add monsters and magic. It’s not that hard
I can kind of forgive them for that, since a lot of fans tend to find the backstory of these things fun in a goofy soap-opera kind of way and there have been a few official games that didn’t deal with the tournament but still turned out okay.Thing is, they forgot these things only work when they’re on an otherwise-solid foundation. All the bullshit between Sub-Zero and Scorpion is neat, Liu Kang’s increasingly flexible mortality is fun, but if the core holding it all together sucks, who gives a shit? That’s all frosting with no cake.
His mortality’s not the only thing that’s flexible.
BABALITY!
BABA-BOOEY
When are we getting a super grimdark Super Smash Brothers movie, starring Jai Courtney as Mario?
As long as we get a PTSD Samus Aran who’s also got a second personality in the form of Dark Samus, that is the root cause of her destroying entire planets and species in every game.
And while most people think the PTSD is from her time as a bounty hunter, it is really a side effect of the crazy space-magic mass shifting that her Chozo-made suit utilizes in order to let her go into ball form. Each time she goes into ball form, the suit doesn’t put her back 100% when she leaves as it wasn’t made for humans or humans genetically tampered using Chozo tech. Plus Ridley was her pet space-lizard who she thought lost in a Space Pirate attack but was really captured and experimented on by Mother Brain. Of course Mother brain is literally made out of the brains of all the colonists in Samus’ original colony, including her parents. They’re all hooked up as part of the Space Pirate’s plan to achieve the perfect form.
Also Rosalina’s star friends are actual stars and when she hits you with them its the equivalent of being hit with a basket-ball sized sun.
Why is it that I could picture this being the actual result if Hollywood tried to make a Super Smash Bros. movie.
James Corden as Wario. The entire movie is just Cats for Nintendo. Busta Rhymes as Sonic. Jedward as the Ice Climbers and for some reason Tom Hanks is Mr. Game And Watch.
Sonic’s scenes will be shot entirely with a fisheye lens, and will be directed by Hype Williams.
Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo better have a witty cameo, or I’m boycotting.
They’re the announcers, and they have to introduce Mario and Luigi.
At least they didn’t name him Sum-Yun Gi.
My favorite Chinese dish is Cream of Sum-Yun Gi!
The quest is a better jcvd mk movie than bloodsport
Hey, I’ll have you know quite a few South Australians were involved in the making of this movie and were just happy for the opportunity.
Should raise the grade to a D+ for that.
Unless it has a scene where Maggie Beer rips someone’s skin off and douses the raw flesh beneath with verjuice and Hahndorf mustad no one’s gonna care.South Australian hasn’t made a decent film since 1976’s Storm Boy. Come at me, you vestigial appendage of a state!
Surely since Australia was New South Wales first, then NSW today is more accurately a vestigial appendage of a state.
Wouldn’t stating that NSW is vestigial imply that South Australia actually has its own drinking water?
Maybe if our fellow countrymen up-river learned how to share then we could focus on how NSW isn’t really new, Welsh, and as much south of Wales as the rest of Australia. If there’s any state name that qualifies as vestigial it’s theirs.
Still, it’s a more imaginative and evocative name than “South Australia”. Stop trying to farm north of the Goyder and maybe we’ll talk about the water. When you learn to use properly, maybe we’ll be nicer.
Imaginative or evocative wasn’t your argument, vestigial was.
But just as the ship has sailed on NSW and QLD being nicer re: the Murray, so has it sailed on you winning your original argument, let alone just keeping focus on it.
No, no. Don’t start an argument about the naming of something, then try to backpedal when you’ve lost it.
You’re OP argued SA was vestigial. All I’ve done repeatedly is show NSW is more vestigial.
I’d say it’s less an issue of imagination and more an ignorance of basic geography. I have to drive NORTH if I want to visit South Australia!
It can be two things. 😀 Although it’d make more sense if Victoria would get with the program of plain-speakin’ Aussie place names (like Great Sandy Desert) and call itself South East Australia. As a bonus then it’d be easy for everyone else to go over SEA.
Great. I read the articles and comments on time for once and then miss the slapfight between all the other Australians on the AV Club.Well, except for uselessbeauty who lives up to his name by being still yet to show up.
Oh, never too late to contribute. All good fun. 😀
Speaking as a Mexican I don’t have really have a dog in this fight but if you’d spent more time watching films and less time drinking shit beer and salivating over the tedium of State of Origin, you’d have amended that statement to read “South Australia hasn’t made a decent film since 1994’s Bad Boy Bubby”
Bold decision to try to mock Tooheys when you could from the land of VB, a beer which exists only to make Carlton Draught look drinkable by comparison.
Did you just whataboutism beer?
It’s easy to make a point when you keep moving the goal posts of the argument. 😀
Wait, is your whole strategy going to be “ignore current argument, present new argument, then when Cough reacts to new argument accuse him of moving the goalposts”?
Each argument of mine was regarding the use of the word vestigial.
Each argument of yours introduced vestigial, drinking water, imaginative and evocative naming, and farming north of the Goyder.
Who’s presenting new arguments now? 😀
Yeah, and you’re the only one whinging about that. That’s my point – and why I’m gonna keep doing it. You’re introducing new arguments, then cracking a sad about others doing the same.Or you might be right. In my defence, I probably wasn’t paying attention, which is about right when it comes to any Australian thinking about South Australia.
Or you might be right.
I accept your surrender.
Oh VB is utter pig-swill, but it’s iconic pig-swill and that goes a long way! Tooheys just makes me think of aggro bouncers, daft lockout laws and 24/7 Rugby League.I’m originally from the UK which thanks to the EU and our insatiable thirst meant we had bars stocking everything from McEwan’s Export to Budvar to mad Belgian trappist ales. So, as a seasoned pisshead, the first decade I spent in Australia (the noughties) was a tough one. To be honest the only decent standard beers at the time were being made by the South Australians. Lovely beers albeit with a slight hint of homophobia to them.Thankfully, it’s a different story now. Small-batch Craft Brewers are starting to outnumber cafes in Victoria. As is the case across the country. Kids today don’t realise how lucky they have it!
I completely forgot this was filmed in SA and now all I want is for Lee Lin Chin to appear.
That’d be cool, though it’s not a true SA production without Anne Wills. Of course I’d also settle for Shaun Micallef.
I respect your opinion and this thoughtful review. However, I have heard it has a lot of people punching each other, and I think I still need to see that.
I’ll wait for it to show up on HBO Max — which will likely be at the same time you see it in the theater, spike’s dead.
what happened to Spike?
Spikes.
In honor of something I tried and failed at in Mortal Kombat 2, they should let the movie drag on interminably and then have the final denouement be a game of pong.
Jerk! You’er supposed to say ‘*SPOILER ALERT!*’
*Hollywood screenwriters HATE HIM!*
This is a good deep cut of an Easter Egg I never had the patience to unlock!
I have probably about as much time on my hands in COVID as I did in childhood, and I use it probably about as wisely as back then.Hold up, I have to go now – I have an appointment to learn to master playing Mario with my feet.
Confession: about two seconds into the review, I got the original MK theme stuck in my head, and there is now a 100% chance I will get high, watch that first and then this.
Depressing
The crime bill “Stop Asian Hate” didn’t pass quite soon enough today did it?
This, it turns out, is his pass into the upcoming (in the next film) Mortal Kombat tournamentDammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, why, why, WHY are studios still making fucking movies that are two fucking hour fucking advertisements for the fucking sequel?
Did Fant4stic Four not finally kill off that stupid goddamn fucking trend? Or the Tom Cruise Mummy “franchise”? If you want to have a bunch of fucking sequels the first fucking movie should be fucking good by itself. Goddammit.
Especially since, come on, does anyone want to see anything other than a bombastic, violent, martial arts tournament with campy characters being played by people having a blast?
I was excited for this, too. God . . . . . dammit.
It turns out this style of storytelling is quite compelling.
.
.
.
Or is it? Find out what I really think in my next comment!
It’s the moviemaking equivalent of a Buzzfeed article.
WHAT MORTAL KOMBAT CHARACTER ARE YOU? TAKE THIS QUIZ TO FIND OUT!
Refresh results
“World Building”. Everybody wants to be Fast & Furious and Marvel.
Which totally makes sense! Those movies are safe bets to make an absolute fortune in perpetuity. But in trying to do that they completely forget that the first movies in those franchises were not two hours of waiting to get to the fireworks factory only to get a “To Be Continued!” when they reach the front gate.
If Marvel would’ve tried that with Iron Man, we’d have had two hours of Tony doing science in the cave, then he builds the Mark 1, and the movie ends with him leaving the cave and getting rescued. Then there’d be a teaser for when he builds the actual red and gold Iron Man suit we came to see in Iron Man 2!!!
And nobody would’ve watched that movie because it would’ve fucking sucked and that would’ve been the end of the MCU.
But they forget that both of those franchises started outtelling self-contained stories.
The only possible reason I’ll ever see this is because it was filmed in my home town and I never get a chance to see a big-budget movie that I can watch and see if I recognise the locations.
I was hoping that they would have done a twist with Cole. Have it be revealed that Shang Tsung got to him before the good guys and he was always under Shang’s control, spying on Raiden and the Earthrealm defenders. Or maybe have him be Quan Chi in disguise, trying to gain control of Scorpion and mess up both Shang Tsung and Raiden’s plans.
Maybe have somebody kick his head clean off and Jackie Chan crawls out of the neck-hole and says “Haha fooled you!”
So it sounds like this one did one of the things that made the second a harder watch – too many damn characters.I get that everyone has their favorites and wants to see Reptile or whomever, but there comes a point when you’re simply sacrificing too much screen time to introducing “Oh, hey, here comes Sindell, and isn’t that Jax rolling by” that you lose the time needed for a coherent film experience. Sounds like that may be happening here.
Never go full “Mortal Kombat Annihilation”!
A “D”, huh?I thought everything got either a B or B-.
I am disappointed that Scorpion and Sub-Zero are not played by the same actors in the same costume with the colors changed in post. Way to ignore your heritage guys.
killing my childhood.
*now picturing seven copies of the same actor in ninja garb in the inevitable MK3: Ultimate Cut, all pointing at each other like that 60s Spiderman meme*
I am like nine Mortal Kombats (Mortals Kombat? whatever) behind, but I remain baffled by the decision to center Scorpion and Sub-Zero in the lore. Raiden is the best character all-around, and almost all of the others are more interesting than Slippery Ninja and Draggy Ninja. Why try so hard to get us invested in their centuries-long, who-cares family feud, when Shang Tsung has a whole court full of more compelling characters we could be following?
Scorpion and Sub-zero are the most popular characters. They have cool designs and cool powers, and being faceless ninjas makes them easy cyphers for fans (see Boba Fett, Snake Eyes, anyone in a cool mask). Are they the most compelling? No. But they are the most marketable. I’m not up to date with all the muddled MK lore, but they have tried to flesh out a backstory for them at least.
TEST. YOUR MIGHT
What this is testing is my patience!
Okay but how many penises does Goro have?
The sequel is they kill each other.
This is what happens when you inexplicably snub Johnny Cage, fucking morons.
Joel McHale is right there waiting for The Community movie doing nothing. He has the time to learn martial arts. (I may have seen Mortal Kombat Legends recently, where he voiced him perfectly.)
Yes, I thought he was terrific in that! HEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!He has the physique, and the presence to play him very well, if they could train him up as you say.Joe Taslim said he’d like Scott Adkins to play him in any sequel (admittedly while being interviewed by Adkins). That would be pretty cool, too.
And can we get Alison Brie in here…to pretty much do anything?
Kitana
Now that’s what I call a FLAWLESS VICTORY!
I don’t know what’s going on with the extra space in that message, by the way. It wasn’t a deliberate choice designed to annoy, or anything like that.
I knew I was gonna hate this film when I realized they’re gonna fetishize Scorpion. He’s my favorite MK character, but you gotta nail his particular brand of anti-heroism. Giving him heroic chosen one descendants and making Bi-Han straight up evil and not a manipulated stooge take away all the tragedy and nuance that make him work as a compelling “Stone Cold” of the universe.
Yea that was… A choice. But honestly the ninajs come out looking great compared to what’s done to everyone else.
“BY GOD FATALITY! FATALITY! FATALITY!”
I liked that they opened the movie with a flashback establishing Scorpion and Subzero’s ancient rivalry but we get no information at all as to what either clan was and why they hate each other. All we know is that one clan is Japanese, the other Chinese and the Lin Kuei hate the Shirai Ryu. Flash forward to present…
Bi-Han should’ve just kept interrupting Hanzo when he was trying to talk by shouting “什么？”
Yup
It’s fucking ridiculous that Paul WS Anderson continues to lead the pack for video game adaptations by a vast margin. It’s almost proof positive that video game movies can never be “good,” they can only be “stupidly, earnestly fun,” and you need a termite auteur like Anderson to deliver it. I don’t want to believe that, but man, the evidence keeps stacking up for it.
The problem with video game adaptations is that studios continue to tackle games that are either a) next to impossible to translate to film in a way that’s meaningful or b) so cinematic themselves that adapting them is pointless.So this way you get film adaptations of series like Mortal Kombat or Assassin’s Creed, both of which are incredibly “gamey” and absolutely dense with lore and characters – and none of those things lend themselves well to a straight 90+ minute film that has to cater to normies to sell itself. And then you get adaptations like Tomb Raider or Uncharted, films that are utterly pointless because their main hook is that they let you play out sequences and tropes from early ‘80s adventure films like Raiders or Romancing the Stone – so by making them movies you are removing the compelling hook of interactivity, ending up with decent-to-mediocre Indiana Jones clones.I’m holding out hope that Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Metal Gear Solid will nail it, because interviews indicate he knows that the crux of the series is more about intertextuality and interacting with the audience, not necessarily the big nuclear robots and secret agents.
yeah, there are tons of game properties that lend themselves to movies (throw a rock at any PC point-and-click adventure game) but the issue is that it’s always an IP/brand awareness thing.the games that make sense to adapt will never be popular enough to be adapted, and the ones that are popular enough are usually that way because they’re essentially big long interactive movies that overtly reference other movies.i too think the roberts’ metal gear could be good, but i also don’t think it’ll ever get made.
I was just about to say Vogt-Roberts seems to *get* video games in a way that most directors don’t, and his explanation of how video-games influenced the making of Kong: Skull Island is super interesting
You pretty much nailed the reason I have no hope for a MGS movie. Narratively, it’s just so WEIRD in that game-y way in every aspect (an obese mad bomber on roller skates is like the 456th-most weirdest thing in MGS history), there’s no way to make anything resembling a true-to-the-source film without having the non-converted having a big laugh at it. But if you remove the weird stuff and try to make a grounded stealth action movie, now it’s Splinter Cell, not MGS.
Just to be clear, do you mean “live action video games adaptions, or you genuinely mean all of them? Because both Street Fighter II the Animated movie and Fatal Fury the Motion Picture exist.
I still hold a torch for Silent Hill as the best, with MK a close second.
How do you not have Johnny Cage in your movie when The Miz exists?! He basically is Johnny Cage!
First 10 minutes was the last 10 minutes. The originals were excellent without blood spurting and flying in every direction. I don’t know why that shit gets men so excited. Bye.
Death [Match] By Boredom
It doesn’t even have the tourny? What the hell?
Does it have ‘Test Your Might’?
It’s mentioned.
I demand FRIENDSHIPS!
I’ll be your friend.
IIRC, Liu Kang tells Kano, Sonya and Cole that they have to “test your might” in the “pit” (a meager 10meter-long arena) to discover their “arcana” (their super-power). Like the rest of the movie, it’s bad.
Wow, this is certainly a take. I’m used to AVClub grading down, but goddamn. That was a good movie, better than the first which is a hard thing to do. Fantastic, some awesome fights and fatalities, and even a good explanation for the otherwordly powers fighters have.Did you get cheap shotted a lot as a kid on the death bridge level?
Sidenote: jesus fuck some of you folks need to watch the fucking movie and not just whine about it.
Young Cole IS Tan Lewis! He’s young! He’s tanned! FLAWLESS VICTORY!
So what’s the interest level in this movie/franchise? Because when I think of Mortal Combat, I flashback to me as a 9 year old, and how me and my friends saw this game as forbidden fruit because of the gore.
Mortal what now? 🙂
Yeah between the trailer and the director’s interview about how they were taking this project incredibly seriously, this whole thing reeked of everyone being embarrassed of producing anything that actually resembled the games/lore.
I usually movie-live by the Roger Ebert motto of “It’s not what a movie is about, but how it is about it”, but if your movie pivots on a character branded with the MK corporate logo, “how it is about it” should not be “please take all of this deadly serious”.
I’ve never played a Mortal Kombat film and I know next to nothing about it but I liked it. It is what it is, a bunch of cutscenes and then people fight and die. Surprised that they didn’t have Johnny Cage show up but I guess they didn’t want to put all the Mortal Kombat characters in the first film.
It’d be impossible to play a Mortal Kombat film.
Make it one of those Netflix interactives where you choose what characters do.
I never expected this to be good, but how did they manage to blow it this badly? I don’t mind the awkward fan service, MK lives and breathes fan service, but it sounds like this is the exact opposite of what they hyped it up to be. Why is it so difficult to have a solid supernatural kung fu movie with gore and monsters? Just feels like MK movies should be easy slam dunks, especially now that the franchise no longer lives a double life as family-friendly entertainment outside of the games. (I’ve heard Scorpion’s Revenge is a blast, and I still want to watch it some time, but it doesn’t scratch that itch for a big live-action MK spectacle)
Waiting for Goro is a fucking zinger and a half, kudos. But tbh, “R-Rated Power Rangers” is exactly what I think an MK movie should be. Still, if it’s boring then I’m glad to skip it.
The absolute strangest thing about the Tournament not being in the movie is how far out of their way they’d go to drop any and every MK reference or catch phrase you could think of into the movie.
It is indeed a boring movie with nothing really going on.
The opening scene is odd. It’s not only a fairly solid tribute to old martial arts movies, it’s really visually striking and beautifully lit. Then the rest of the movie is shot in the flattest, dullest way possible. There had to be a way to make that fighting pit set look less like a fake rock set from the original Star Trek. They have an incredibly attractive cast but everyone is lit and shot in really unflattering ways. Some of the fight scenes are OK (I liked the nasty brawl that Sonya has in the house/junkyard) but none of them are particularly exciting.
This movie would have been 10 times better if some of the exposition was done in flashbacks instead of just characters talking at each other. And they should split up the non-fighting parts more. If you’re not going to make them interesting at least move past it quick enough that I don’t need to reach for the fast forward button. Sub-Zero is the only bad guy that got a chance to have any personality or motivation. Well, unless you count Kano but he was sorta on the good side for most of the movie… ish.I could go for a supercut of just the action scenes and skip the two hours of blah blah it was packaged in.
Wait, Sub-Zero had a motivation??
Regardless of which version, Sub-Zero must fight Scorpion, and Reptile must die early on. A sad lack of Katana in this film, who’s got my back. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims
What are you talking about Katana in this film? I think you are thinking of Kitana who wields steel fans and is the twin of Mileena who is the evil clone of Kitana. Or not sure if you were making a joke some how?? But Katana is from suicide squad who has a sword that traps the souls of its victims.
The bad guys in this are so boring as characters. The good guys, too, mostly. Like, what’s anybody’s motivation, other than conquer vs. save Earthrealm? Kano wants money . . . I think (no one shows us any money in this movie). Cole wants to protect his family, which collapses into generic saving again. Scorpion at least wants revenge on Sub-Zero. Everyone else just exists.
I think it’s funny that the monks(?) give Jax puny arms just so his arcana can be that they become non-puny.
Just watched it. This review is perfect. As a fan, I wanted this to be good so badly. Against my better judgement, I was optimistic. And look where it got me. ***SPOILERS*** Goro’s appearance takes place at a cabin, where civilians hit him with a car. Sonya and Kano’s big fight happens in a trailer park. Jax *thinks his bionic arms into existence* (after Monks got started on them….with their engineers??) Movies like this make me the ball of hate I am today. Aside from Scorpion and Sub Zero, Mortal Kombat is speechlessly bad.
I guess it’s easier for casual audiences to get into it. I think it’s cool he’s an original character
Movie could of been so much better if it was a little longer and had better character intros and development. Should of actually had the tournament instead of setting it up for the sequel, which we already waited 26 years for this movie and they only build it up for a second one which who knows when it will come out if it even does. The gore and fatalities were good but the fight scenes were to short and rushed. So many characters gone before even the tournament starts. Most will probably be brought back to life but still no mortal kombat. Not as good as I thought it would be after 26 years.
The new movie gets an automatic passing grade because one guy wins a fight by sweeping the leg over and over again. If you played the original game with your friends and one of you was kind of a dick, you know.
There’s just so many unusual decisions in this movie that “not having a tournament” barely makes the top ten. What a total bummer of a time that was.
It’s hard to read movie reviews on this site because after that virtue signaling disclaimer at the beginning my eyes literally roll out of my head.
kill yourself
I can already see the HISHE for this:Raiden: You attack before the tournament? You are breaking the rules of Mortal Kombat, Shang Tsung!Shang Tsung: The Gods do not care, Raiden. Your Champions will die and Earthrealm will fall!Cole: If the Gods don’t care, why don’t you just invade outright?Shang Tsung: …Huh. That’s a good point.Liu Kang: Couldn’t keep your mouth shut could you, new guy?
The Pitch Meeting should be pretty solid as well.
Ohh thanks for the reminder
I sick of people acting like the first MK is good. That’s a D rank movie as well, and it only has any value because it’s so stupid!
my review: a lot of fight action, looks neat, had moves from the video game,
had the “we are assembling a team of . . .” vibe.
i mean it is Mortal Kombat, what did one expect? I give it a B-
Pretty much spot on.
You’d think a movie based on a game that features an over-the-top story about a mythical tournament, with demons, ghosts, magic, kung-fu, exotic locales and over-the-top characters doing crazy and gory, physics defying things, that the sky was the limit on how fantastic and bonkers you could make this thing but all Mortal Kombat really had going for it was the gore and a couple decent action sequences peppered throughout.I remember so many die-hard fans complained that Raiden should’ve cast an Asian to play him in the 1995 movie and 25+ years later, we finally get one and he’s dull, boring and kind of a dick who’s terrible at his job.
Imagine having the leeway to make a brand new Mortal Kombat character, where you’re only limited by your imagination…. And you come up with a MMA fighter whose name sound like a WWF jobber circa 1993.
Bro seriously what the fuck was Raiden doing the whole time??I get they wanted to have him fit the archetype of “powerful character who could single-handedly end the conflict but is forbidden from doing so” (like the Pemalites from Animorphs) but then they reveal he can teleport people anywhere he wants to even against their will, but he doesn’t think to use this ability until Cole mentions it? Not to mention the special dimension he takes them where the bad guys can’t reach, but he doesn’t think to do this while the bad guys were hunting and killing all the other champions and constantly interrupting their training?
I went in wanting to like it and would have if it was just two hours of action-packed fun with callbacks to the games. It has the callbacks but as this review says, just wasn’t that much fun. Kano and Kabal are the only two characters who seem to be enjoying themselves and as a result are the only two characters that are enjoyable to watch.Centering the movie around Cole was such an obvious mistake, it’s unbelievable it happened. Like the vast majority of comments or reviews I’ve read mention this. How is it possible for writers and studio executives to be this far up their own assholes to not realize how colossally dumb it was to make the main character an original idea?On top of it not being what anyone wanted, it forced the movie to center its plot around establishing Cole and his motivations. And that led to nearly every other character being brutally underdeveloped and his oddly aged family (I seriously thought his daughter was his sister and his wife was his mom at start) being in the movie way more than they should have. Did anyone want to see multiple scenes of them being attacked over Kabal’s backstory?I also have to say, the actor who plays Liu Kang is just flat out bad – he constantly has a look of worry / shock on his face and it was distracting as hell when he’s on screen. Maybe it was the direction, but did not enjoy that portrayal at all.
I get thinking the kid was his sister but how on earth did you think that woman was his mom??
Because Cole himself looks pretty young (would have bought he’s a college kid) and Hollywood tends to portray moms as women who just turned 30.
Eh, I kind of liked it.Look, this is about as big and loud and dumb as Godzilla vs King Kong. I really enjoyed GVK because I’ve been a fan of the franchise since watching the goofy as hell 60’s versions on my old B&W UHF TV as a kid in the seventies. It hit all the right beats for me.Same thing here – sure, I’ve played the game here or there, but I’m not what I would call a fan of the MK franchise – but if you’ve been playing since 1993, this will absolutely be your jam. You get all the right bits that will tickle that tiny fanboy part of your brain. The characters are all recognizable, even to a casual like me. There’s tons of action and the script is very snappy. Oh, and I thought it was directed well, especially for a first time director.While it’s not nearly as gloriously dumb fun as Street Fighter: The Movie (the gold standard for Video Game movies), it was entertaining enough.
I feel like this could have worked better if it was either:a: stretched out into a mini-series and the characters were given more time to develop here were less gratuitous exposition dump moments that characters just take in stride.
or b: if less characters were used in the movie
Because as is, yeah the fights and choreography were great, but the pacing of the movie was all over the place.
For how heavily the featured him in the promos, I was shocked they left Scorpion until the literal end of the movie.
I am not sure what everyone was looking for going into this movie? The action scenes were great, there was some sort of a story. I mean, I thought it was great for a movie called Mortal Kombat.
I fucking disagree. I watched it in my home theater with the volume up (great sound effects by the way) with my 20 year old son and we both loved it. The beginning was better than the end but most movies are that way. We both scored it 8 out of 10. Watch it!
Look Mortal Kombat should be the easiest movie to make. It just needs a tournment, some interesting fights in interesting locations.
I love AV Club but I usually think you all are to hard in your ratings….. But after watching this last night, D is a solid grade. I went C- but man this was a fucking bore.Listen 1995 movie was fun and stupid but at least had good music for the time!I popped for one part of this movie and that’s it and it’s not even the ending. The HBO Max movies I’ve seen this year (Counting December 20 which is cheating).Wonder woman 84 CJustice League Synder cut B- (Hurts me it was this good)Godzilla vs. Kong BMortal Kombat C-I maybe too nice but I’m happy to watch movies at home and I love HBO Max.Anyway, fun review. But boring ass movie.
I was really excited to see this, based on the trailer. I enjoyed it somewhat, but the fight scenes didn’t go far enough; it seemed as if they were truncated for some reason and it was dumb to not have the actual tournament take place. For all the mythology around why it has to take place and how it breaks the rules to not do so, but then not have it anyway, made no sense. Also, considering the sheer number of characters that there are across the different MK games, why introduce a completely new character as the central movie character? Do not understand that decision at all.
From the clip embedded above, it looks like a big part of the fight scenes’ problems might the the time-honored “I refuse to go more than 3 seconds without cutting to a new shot” style of modern Hollywood fight choreography.Is it that hard to have a long- or even medium-length shot in a fight scene, or is there some other reason American studios refuse to do it?