Mortal Kombat: A Flawless Review or Fatality?
- Vega
- Apr 24, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 27, 2021
In 1992, American video game company Midway Games released an arcade cabinet that contained what would become one of the most successful fighting games of all time: Mortal Kombat. The game's reputation was boosted mostly by its very generous use of blood, gore, and violence, such as its inclusion of finishing maneuvers labeled as Fatalities. There were also other variations of the Fatality introduced to the games, such as Animalities and Brutalities, but the Fatality has maintained its hold on being a staple of the franchise. The hyper-violent nature of the game has even had an impact on the video game franchise as a whole, by being one of the games that put the creation of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) in motion.
If you are unfamiliar with Mortal Kombat and its lore, it is set in a world with various realms of existence, with humans existing in Earthrealm. The Elder Gods, the deities of the Mortal Kombat world, created a precedent for realms attempting conquer other realms: in order to do so, they must first defeat that realm in a fighting tournament called Mortal Kombat. While the stories across the 11 main video games include a lot of sorcery, world ending catastrophes, and even time travel, the core idea of Mortal Kombat as a whole is keeping the realms separated and stopping anyone attempting to conquer other realms.
The concept of Mortal Kombat was prime for a cinematic adaptation, of which it received two: Mortal Kombat (1995) and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997). The sequel has garnered a lot of hate from fans over the years and the first has become a bit of a cult classic. While I enjoyed both of those movies as a child, they are definitely products of the time and way too campy to accurately reflect the violence of the franchise. The franchise was also adapted into a couple of web series, an animated series and two animated movies, as well as into comic books. However, the longing for a proper and updated Mortal Kombat movie was thrown into hyperdrive in 2015-16 when James Wan was announced as a produced and Simon McQuoid as director. That continued building up to February 2021, when the official trailer was released for the film.
The trailer was lauded for the graphic violence, its initial portrayals of fan-favorite characters like Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and for the fight choreography. While I agree with all of those sentiments, I also appreciated the expansion on the legend of the Mortal Kombat tournament and how the film will honor the source material but also help make it fit more naturally to help it feel it bit more grounded. The biggest controversy heading into the film is also the aspect I am most interested in feeling out, the inclusion of an original character named Cole. The franchise is rich with characters to choose from, and while I won't condemn the decision to make the main character somehow new, I am not celebrating it either. Of course, if it works in the story, my review may paint it is a strong decision. As a huge fan of the video games who has played on the arcade cabinets to the Gamecube to the Xbox, I will be looking for more than just eye-popping violence, but a respectful treatment of the franchise's concepts.
Before scrolling down to the review, please play the following track from the official soundtrack as a musical intermission to build your hype for MORTAL KOMBAT!!!
Mortal Kombat (MK) may have committed the mortal sin of adaptations, being too cheeky with what it directly adapts while leaving out the most important aspect of the franchise. The film follows main character, Cole, a former MMA fighter who finds out that he is one of the chosen champions to represent Earthrealm in the upcoming Mortal Kombat tournament against the realm of Outworld. The movie follows Cole and the rest of Earth's champions (Liu Kang, Jax, Kano, Sonya Blade, Kung Lao), being led by Raiden, as they stave off assassination attempts from Outworlds champions, led by the evil sorcerer Shang-Tsung, before the tournament even begins. The opening of the movie establishes an underlying plot that serves as the heart of the movie, that of the rivalry between the men we know to become Scorpion (Hanzo Hasahi) and Sub-Zero (Bi-Han) as they come from warring clans. Bi-Han establishes his goal to end the Hasashi bloodline, and believes to have done so. That story will serve important to Cole's development and the final act of the film. Like any adaptation, it is easy to fall into correlating the movie's accuracy with its effectiveness, so this review will be split into two parts: the movie on its own and the movie as a Mortal Kombat adaptation.
Standing on its own merits as a film, the movie is a bit shaky. The editing, especially in the beginning, felt off at times, with ill-feeling cuts to different character scenes, only to quickly return to the characters we were just witnessing. That choppy experience did not help with the pacing of the movie, which was very inconsistent, but that is very common when it comes to action/fighting movies. You typically get a lot of exposition leading to a fight that runs its course quite quickly before getting slowed down again. For a lot of people, this probably will not mean much to them, but I think there were too many characters to focus so much exposition on just two or three. Having an original character (Cole) take the lead became more problematic in this sense of the movie than in the fact that he does not exist in MK lore. Since, for a lot of viewers, there is already a familiarity with many of the characters, Cole naturally gets the majority of character-building and development since he is new. But when you are presenting characters in a new medium (from game to movie), you have to properly develop them in the new world the film creates, and there was not enough of that for many of the characters in the movie.
While I was not a fan of the movie's pace, I was a very big fan of the fight scenes, the choreography, and the senseless presentation of violence. The fights were the core of the movie's enjoyment, as they probably should be, but the story surrounding it made them feel less important than they were probably intended to be. Everything about the character's development was about preparing for the tournament, the tournament would decide Earthrealm's fate, without discovering their arcana (hidden supernatural power) they will not survive the tournament. There was no tournament. The movie never made it that far. That is simply poor writing, even if the plan is to have the tournament in a sequel, that leaves this movie not able to stand on its own as well. While this bleeds into the adaptive nature of the movie, it seems really odd to leave out the most essential aspect of Mortal Kombat lore. While they did not all receive their due diligence, I think the characters were well-balanced between their personalities and felt distinct from one another, with Kano far exceeding all entertainment expectations.
Moving into analyzing the movie based on its adaptation decisions, I really enjoyed a lot of the original ideas it brought to the MK lore. I originally thought the whole idea of having the birthmark of the MK logo meaning you were selected as a champion of Earthrealm was silly. In the story, though, I did not mind it at all, but especially loved the idea of that power transferring if a champion is killed by another. That opens the story up to a lot of future possibilities and, more importantly, it can help with character management if there are only so many birthmarks to go around. The dialogue had a lot of borderline cringe moments as they attempted to incorporate many key phrases from the game, such as "fatality, kano wins, your soul is mine". Some were hit, but most were a miss and were too obviously fan-service moments.
I enjoyed the little camera tricks they used during the fight scenes, such as the brief pauses before a major attack. It emphasized the violence without drawing too much attention to itself, as opposed to using something like slow motion, which disrupts the fight flow. Of course, this is a technique that was pulled directly from the game. It was smart for them to touch on character's having specific arcana's and having to tap into them, it helped with their grounded approach to the movie while still allowing for those supernatural elements without being completely out of place. Where the movie lacked, though, was on its focus of the antagonists. Little exploration of Outworld or motivations of its champions held the movie back from making them feel like a true threat (outside of Sub-Zero, but that's because of the beginning scenes). It was almost as though their oddities were supposed to push the idea of their threat level. Of course, we didn't need full backstories for all them, a little background info to invest in the heroes triumph could only help.
Ultimately, this movie became a series of really cool fights and powers. For a lot of the audience, that may be enough and maybe that is all it needed to be. I mean, that alone gives it great re-watch value. But with the potential we have seen within the fantasy/action genre with the rise of superhero films and what not, there was a lot of depth that this movie missed out on. I think it actually tried too hard to be a superhero movie (there were so many Power Ranger poses) but leaving out the layers we have seen those movies develop, where it may have been better served in a more John Wick-style aspect. The most complete story was the side plot between Scorpion and Sub-Zero, with Cole being one of Scorpion's descendants and Scorpion returning to save Cole's family, which is something he could not do for his own. The rest of the film felt more like a prequel movie and if there is a second film, that will be the TRUE Mortal Kombat reboot.
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