Mortal Kombat The Movie – A Flawed Victory?

Scroll below and enjoy

presents a


A Flawed
Victory?

Plenty Of Cheese But Hold The Blood

“You will be next !” Ahh the Mortal Kombat movie. I was a little surprised that this wasn’t complete crap after the debacle of Street Fighter. The film basically made a similar approach in the hype department with cool movie posters and advertisements so at first, I was hesitant to embrace the idea with open arms since I felt like a lover scorned after Street Fighter sucked so hard. The bitterness swelled within as the excitement grew for this movie.

“Dude, I hope it’s like the goriest movie of all time!” “Can you imagine how cool this is gonna be?” “They gotta have Goro in it!” These are an example of the thoughts of many of my friends and kids at school at the time but they definitely were not mine. “Why are you people so excited?” I scoffed with disgust as I recounted my horrifying experience of Street Fighter. “If they can’t get Street Fighter right then what chance do they really have with Mortal Kombat?” While my initial prejudices were certainly a bit too harsh (these Street Fighter colors don’t run!), I was elated to report to my friends the disappointing news that the movie would in fact be… PG-13. Wow… gonna be kind of hard to have decapitations and death spikes now!

Also, besides Chris Lambert  (who I remembered from The Highlander series) there wasn’t any actors that I recognized which certainly did not have me nearly as geeked out as Street Fighter did with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Oh no… have I become cynical? I realized through all of my negative dribble that I was listing reasons why not to like the movie (without even having seen it yet no less) instead of looking for reasons to possibly find enjoyment in it. After all, Mortal Kombat is one of my favorite video games of all time and just as prime for a movie adaptation as Street Fighter or any other gaming series for that matter.

…NAHHHHH!!! Screw that man! I was convinced that this was gonna blow chunks big time! All I had to go on which made me feel this way was the fact that every video game movie (up to this point… and pretty much ever since) had completely and utterly sucked royally with cheesy acting and lousy plots. Still though, despite all of my grim murmurings about the potential of this movie I was excited to see it if for no other reason, to test out this new critical brain that had materialized thanks in large part to my innocence being trampled on by Street Fighter (gee, thanks a lot ).

Well the time came for the films release in theaters and I sat down in that seat not sure what I was going to get but I did know one thing, Mortal Kombat would not dupe me in a similar way like Street Fighter did before and I was as prepared as I could possibly be for anything (heeding the advice of the marketing gimmick found on the movie poster which had become synonymous with the series). It was hard to not get instantly pumped after that wicked opening! MORTAL KOMBAT!!! The characters are easily recognizable (although live-action Shang Tsung looks a little different from his gaming counterpart … alright A LOT different but who cares- he rules) and they act as they should which is cool and helped me jump into the story right away. The plot is okay… I guess (centered around a mystical tournament to defend Earth) but at the very least it’s better than Street Fighter’s clumsy story so that’s another plus. Also, Johnny Cage totally owns it in this and cracks me up in most of the scenes that he’s in .

So yeah… it’s not putrid and that’s great because it’s already ahead of any other video game movie at the time (and arguably today) just by default. It’s kind of funny how little I needed in order to feel some satisfaction from this genre because Mortal Kombat is far from perfect. Most of the acting is sub-par to say the least (I’m looking at you Kitana ) and the fight choreography would fit right in with the Power Rangers. Not to mention, how the hell can you not make this a complete blood party? Mortal Kombat was/is one of the most recognizably gory video games of all time so I feel that this movie really missed the boat by going PG-13 and it’s hard to forgive.

Besides Johnny Cage and Shang Tsung(…all right and Kano ), none of the other characters are really that memorable and don’t bring a lot to this movie in terms of dialogue or action. Also worth mentioning, the CG is some of the worst I have ever seen in a film and hasn’t aged well at all but I don’t want to be too harsh on it since I’m sure they didn’t have a super-duper budget or anything. Still, I wish they avoided the awful looking “Geico” lizard Reptile and just had him in his ninja outfit or not have him in the movie at all since he was a hidden character in the first game anyways. I have mixed feelings about Goro as well. I give the filmmakers credit for setting a high bar and taking a risk by going with an animatronic suit instead of relying further on their underdeveloped CG however he was way too stiff and did not look good when he was moving and fighting at all which makes the movie seem more b-rated to me.

So its got flaws for sure but sad enough to this day I still haven’t seen a closer to-the-game adaptation in film than this which is either a feather in this movies cap or extremely saddening for the prospects of the video game motion picture genre as a whole. It’s pretty funny to me that I would recommend Mortal Kombat the movie now seeing as how grim it looked to my young judgmental self but it turned out okay in the end. It’s pointless and lacking in quality but at least they tried… I suppose . I like the look of all the characters and many of the sets are quite visually appealing as well . In the end, Mortal Kombat is a cheesy and harmless video game film that is far from being great by any means but it’s a whole hell of a lot better than Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon or (HACK… clears throat) Street Fighter and that makes it a victory in my mind even if it is a flawed one.

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