Mortal Kombat (2021) Movie Review

Give them some credit, they did create the film equivalent of a fatality. Based on the popular fighting game franchise, Mortal Kombat is the second attempt at a film adaptation after the 1995 film received backlash for being a PG-13 version of an essentially M for Mature arcade game. Now, it's a hard R for the franchise, and people couldn't be more excited. With that said, will the gore help the film earn a flawless victory, or should you save your quarters? (I refer you to my opening line.)

My Thoughts on the Games

I can't say that I'm a huge follower of the games, so I don't know for sure how closely this movie or the previous movies follow them. I had the Super Nintendo game growing up (which was the version without the blood, mind you), and it was a decent fighting game to pick up and play every once in a while. It had a wide variety of characters with a wide variety of abilities.

My Thoughts on the Previous Movies

At a time when Yoshi was a velociraptor and Guile from Street Fighter was foreign, it was easy to see why this 1995 adaptation was considered the highlight of video game movies, simply because it was the first one to actually look like the games..... But I'm not sure if that alone makes it a good movie. By staying true to the cookie cutter characters that players could easily understand as they're quickly trying to select characters to fight with, the result was.... Well, cookie cutter characters. Besides that, the fight scenes, without the intense gore that the games were famous for, mostly came off as generic martial arts stunt work. It did its job and nothing else.... Which is more than I can say for its laughably abysmal sequel.

Now, on to the actual movie.

The Story

The film follows Cole Young, the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi (aka Scorpion), whose family held the reputation of representing Earthrealm and defeating Outworld in a tournament known as Mortal Kombat. He, along with Sonya Blade, a conspiracy theorist who's been researching the tournament all her life, her friend Jax, and an assassin named Kano, are being hunted down by Outworld's assassin named Bi-Han (aka Sub-Zero) until they retreat to a temple with the elder god, Rayden, to each unlock their "arcana" to defeat Bi-Han, along with his leader, Shang Tsung, and the rest of his assassins.

What's Good About It

The Blood Level is Through the Roof

Like I said earlier, I played the Super Nintendo version of Mortal Kombat growing up, so I didn't think too deeply about the lack of blood in the 1995 film, but if that's your biggest concern, you shan't worry here. This is not only a hard R, it's a creatively hard R. There's hearts ripping out, guts spilling everywhere.... There's enough blood here to fill a pool!

Other Bits:

-The action is well choreographed

-The few moments where the Mortal Kombat theme is played are awesome

-The effects are better

What Doesn't Work About It

The Story is Overly Complicated

Thanks to this film, this is one thing I learned to appreciate about the 95 movie. As cookie cutter as its characters are, the story was straight forward: Three talented fighters were selected to compete in a tournament. This one throws in conspiracy theories, backstories, training segments.... In the 95 movie, they were already skilled, but here, they try to squeeze in this idea of finding their "arcana;" nothing inherently wrong with that, but it leaves little to no room for the fighting, and when they do get to the actual tournament, it comes out of nowhere and catches you off guard.

Kano is Mind-Numbingly Annoying

At first, I liked Kano's sarcastic tone and witty remarks, and I thought he was going to be the energy that carried this movie to the end, and that's definitely what they go for. However, after hearing that exaggeration for about twenty minutes, it overstayed its welcome and I was just about ready to scream "SHUT UP!"

Other Bits:

-The non-theme music is forgettable

-The action is repetitive

-The characters are also cookie cutter here

Where Should I See It? HBOMax

I saw this movie in a Cinemark XD theater, and I don't feel like the theater experience enhanced it at all. It had very few larger-than-life moments (the above picture being the only one I can think of), and it comes off more like the kind of movie that you'd watch at a house party. I could just see a bunch of guy friends shouting "OHHHHH MAAAAAN" at the gory moments.

Final Thoughts

Mortal Kombat is easily the weakest video game movie to come out in the past two years. It was nice of the producers to give us an R-Rated gorefest after the PG-13 snorefest, but by running wild with that gimmick, it forgot the most essential parts of a solid script: a simple story and interesting characters. If the gore and action alone do it for you, power to ya, but for me, this one just eats up my quarters.

My rating: