Mortal Kombat, the video game created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, will be one of those games that will live in the record books forever because of its controversial beginnings in 1992 when its arcade game was attacked by the media for having grotesque gore and violence for something that was easily accessible for kids. This, obviously, made it incredibly popular with kids, releasing multiple different sequels and spin-offs over the years, even getting its own movie release in 1995. While it earned itself a cult following over the years and did financially pretty well, the movie lacked the iconic gore that was part of the game’s charm, splitting fans and especially critics. Making a Mortal Kombat movie was still a plausible idea, enough that Warner Brothers began developing a new movie in the late 2010s and over ten years later, the movie finally was released in 2021 to less than thunderous reactions. In a world where Earth is being threatened by an Outworld run by soul-eating sorcerer Shang Tsung (played by Chin Han), the god protecting earth, Lord Raiden (played by Tadanobu Asano) needs to compile a team of selected fighters to combat Outworld. These fighters include army veterans Sonya Blade (played by Jessica McNamee) and Jax (played by Mehcad Brooks), mercenary Kano (played by Josh Lawson), Earth realm champions Liu Kang and Kung Lao (played by Ludi Lan and Max Huang) and former MMA champion, Cole Young (played by Lewis Tan). Realizing that the newcomers are nothing special, that Cole possesses very little power despite having a possible complicated family history that ties back to an old warrior, and that out-world is preparing to wipe them out before the tournament even begins, the team need to work themselves up to take down the threat in the art of Mortal Kombat. Being a first-time directing job for Simon McQuoid, the movie seemed to win fans over pretty easily yet was met with a pretty mixed response from critics. Both have pretty good outlooks on how to view this movie as despite being perfectly watchable and containing a few nice elements, it’s not the splash-worthy film that arguably a movie about this franchise deserves.

Despite most video game movies being pretty poor in quality due to the handling of several elements that can’t be translated as nicely onto film, especially when it comes to handling its narrative, Mortal Kombat’s story is actually quite basic; Bad guys want to take over the world, throw tournament to do so, good guys come to make sure that doesn’t happen. While it gets a bit stranger as it goes on, that opening mold should be a nice place to start a movie off on and work characters and action within it. While the original film seemed to take its look from the first game, this movie seems to take its look from the reboot made in 2011, with a much darker color palette, painting a picture of not only how it’s going to create its visual identity but also how it’s going to go about telling its story, that being in a much more grounded and even weirdly serious manner. This movie decides to not follow the original basic outline (which is perfectly fine) but what it replaces it with for its own story written by Oren Uziel and screenwriter Greg Russo, is nothing that great. The movie feels strangely packed with so much exposition and characters, and yet seems to move incredibly slow in terms of story progression, creating a meandering pace that never feels high-octane or electric and the limited action, bland dialogue and unmemorable characters keeps things from being entertaining or engaging during these slow moments. Wanting to transform this into a franchise sounds like a good idea with the number of characters on display and variety of scenarios that can be taken within this world (even getting someone like James Wan as a producer is a good start considering his experience in that area), but who knows how long that will be at this pace this seems to be going at. There is a sense of aimlessness to the movie and the direction, where it lacks the correct emotional connections needed, so certain things happen without the proper response being gotten and it never fully hooks its audience in. It’s a very fan-service heavy movie, which means it features a lot of call-backs, easter eggs and references to its source, but when it feels like that runs your movie, it’s not doing it correctly. The actual meat of this story is nothing special; the screenplay written by Russo and Dave Callaham doesn’t allow the story to contribute anything special or meaningful and instead keep it bare bones basic. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad sit, despite being almost two hours, but it’s a movie that doesn’t have much memorability after it’s been watched. The most engaging portion of the film is the opening act involving the characters of Bi-Han (played by Joe Taslim) and Hanzo Hasashi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada). Despite their brief appearance, there is more investment, history, personality, and style in their introduction than the entirety of this movie, and the filmmakers were aware of this as their scenes are plastered all over the trailers despite their limited screentime.

The characters for Mortal Kombat are pretty iconic at this point; their designs, their backstories, their ‘fatal’ finishing moves, people will recognize them by design alone. Their portrayal in this movie seems to get a lot of the basic stuff down in a quick easy to understand format, and even though it would be impossible to fit every single character from the game (fighting games have pretty big roster), the cast they choose for this movie is a pretty good one. They all look the part, have less dramatic, but still appropriate outfits to make them recognizable, and all the actors feel like mostly good picks for the roles. Chin Han and Tadanobu Asano as San Tsung and Raiden are pretty underwhelming and don’t leave much of an impression despite being characters of extreme relevance, but they are still decent actors, they just aren’t given anything to work with and feel oddly directed. That’s a trend that occurs with most of the characters; while they look and mostly act the part, the lack of any real depth or strong motivation to work with leaves them feeling pretty one-note and forgettable. Characters like Jax, Sonya and Kung Lao aren’t anything special outside of their looks, Josh Lawson as Kano is clearly having fun with the role (at least getting in a few good lines in a movie filled with soulless figurines), most of the villains look cool, but don’t have much personality to back it up with, and Scorpion and Sub-Zero (despite looking cool, having some of the best fight scenes and being on the poster for the movie) don’t impact too much in the narrative overall. They, along with Liu Kang (who also feels like a massive afterthought in this movie, you’d easily forget he’s even in the film) feel like they would operate as much better lead roles but aren’t allowed to because that position has been taken. With that in mind, Cole is not a very good choice for a lead, especially for a franchise stacked with pre-established characters that people would rather see in that position. He’s not unlikable in anyway, the stuff with the family is fine (if rushed), the powers are kind of cool, the connection with another character is okay and Lewis Tan is charming enough, but having an avatar-like character lead your Mortal Kombat movie seems like a really weird choice. In a cast this colorful and with pre-set up backstory, starting off with a blank-slate type role within this environment doesn’t fit nearly as well as just sticking with already familiar roles (creating some new is okay, but not as the lead).

One of the things that the original film lacked which was sorely missing was the gore and needed R rated, which this film wanted to rectify and made sure to give it one. Thankfully, this can be felt in the movie; the number of times they throw the f bomb is almost comical, and the gore feels decently utilized, although nowhere near as flashy, extravagant, and involved as you would expect. It is nice to have that element in a Mortal Kombat movie as it really is an essential element to why the games were given so much attention. Combat is also an essential component in this franchise and it’s also handled pretty decently. It again doesn’t feel the best handled throughout the majority of the movie as most of the fights in the middle of the movie have more reserved locations which leads to less movement and smaller windows to film better angles, but the opening and ending fights are actually pretty good. They have great pacing and choreography, the shot composition handled by Germain McMicking is better, how it features a more foreign martial arts style matches the harsh brutality of the moves, and it even allows for some of the visual effects to enhance some of the moves to work in that video game-like way. The effects for the movie are mostly pretty good outside of a certain four-armed warrior; this comes down to most of them aren’t overused to the point where people would notice them, they are used in quick action scenes where they can often times make simple moves look cooler, the style of Mortal Kombat and the games it’s based on allows for this type of imagery, and it offers up some very nice colorful imagery in a movie where a lot of the locations are grainy and even kind of ugly. For a franchise that is known for its vibrant and unique visual style, the production design for this film by Naaman Marshall is really washed out and unappealing. It has a lot of surprisingly diluted and shadowy environments throughout a majority of the movie, and it doesn’t feel like it needed to be like that. The movie isn’t without color, but the heavy use of shadows mixed with the darker shades of color used even in the costume created by Cappi Ireland makes the movie feel less bright and lively, and darker and more intense. Despite the original movies clear faults, it knew to make the environment and the characters look colorful and distinct, whereas by trying to be more grounded and ”realistic” here, it sucks out that distinctness.

Mortal Kombat isn’t a bad movie by any means, it’s a decent fun sit with good actors, cool fight scenes and enough faithfulness to its original source to please fans. It’s hard to say that it’s going to remain as a fully great movie or even be remembered that long in people memories, as its poor script, lack of story and weak character progression, means it won’t leave much of an impact, unfortunately. While the 90s Mortal Kombat movie was a bad film with a lot of problems that make it a bad adaptation, its commitment to its cheesy atmosphere makes it almost endearing, and its flaws aren’t looked upon as bad because of what it did right with its production design and story faithfulness. This movie’s attempts at actually being a good movie ironically make its similar problems more noticeable because it gets closer to being that great video game adaptation. It would be cool to see this turn into a franchise and grow from where it is now, because as of now, it’s a shaky but still a promising starting point to build from. Not flawless, but not fatally bad either, punch and flip your way in and witness a gaming icon on the big screen once again.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,