Mortal Kombat Retrospective

 

The latest film adaptation of a hit video game will soon be upon us in the form of Mortal Kombat, the James Wan produced adaptation of the iconic franchise of the same name. Yes, Mortal Kombat is undoubtedly one of the most popular franchises in the world of gaming. Created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, what started out as a 1992 arcade fighting game that was originally intended to be based around Jean-Claude Van Damme (who, of course, would end up starring in the first film adaptation of the other big fighting game franchise of the ’90s, Street Fighter) would go on to become a bona fide staple of its genre. It spawned numerous follow-ups, is still going strong today with the most recent entry of the series, Mortal Kombat 11, released in 2019 and, as of 2020, has sold over 54 million copies worldwide. However, it’s also worth noting that, amidst all its success, Mortal Kombat also became notorious for its intensely violent fighting mechanics, especially due to its incredibly graphic finishing moves known as ‘Fatalities’. As you might have guessed, this resulted in the series attracting its fair share of controversies over the years, which can best be summed up by the fact that the original game was largely responsible for the creation of the video game industry’s official North American rating system, the ESRB. But for today’s post, we’ll be focusing on the franchise’s feature film outings since this new adaptation of Mortal Kombat is not the series’ first foray into the medium.

In the mid-’90s, the franchise spawned one of the first major film adaptations of a popular video game with a 1995 adaptation that, for the most part, is still widely considered to be one of the better films to come from this subgenre. It was then followed by a sequel in 1997, which is widely considered… to be one of the worst films of all time. We’ll be looking at both of those films today, and just for the heck of it, I’ll also cover a different Mortal Kombat film that came out just last year; an animated feature based around one of the franchise’s most popular characters. To be clear, though, we’re only going to talk about the films, which means that we won’t be addressing any of the franchise’s other spin-offs, which mostly come in the form of TV shows. This includes an animated series, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and a live-action series, Mortal Kombat: Conquest. We’re also not going to go over the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy even though that show did have a notable impact on the upcoming film adaptation since its creator, Kevin Tancharoen, was originally slated to direct it. It’s also worth noting that Legacy primarily came to be after Tancharoen directed a short fan film in 2010, Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, which proved to be quite a hit when it was released on YouTube. But with all that out of the way, it’s now time for all of us to test our might because to quote the iconic tune from The Immortals, it’s time for the one, the only… MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!!

MORTAL KOMBAT (1995)

Let’s flashback to the mid-’90s, where we got our first major attempts at films that were based on hit video games. However, these initial works such as 1993’s Super Mario Bros and 1994’s Street Fighter very much set the stage for the genre’s consistently bad luck as they were poorly received upon their release and attracted some flak from fans of their respective franchises for not necessarily staying true to their source material. But when it comes to 1995’s Mortal Kombat, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson in what was only his second directorial effort, it did manage to capture a lot of what made the Mortal Kombat games so successful, especially from a visual perspective (dated CGI notwithstanding). Granted, I wouldn’t call this a, to quote one of the series’ trademark phrases, “flawless victory” as there are a few things about it that fans of the franchise will probably find incredibly disappointing, such as the underutilization of some of the series’ most popular characters and the heavily neutered nature of its action sequences. Yes, this is a PG-13 rated film, which means that there’s almost none of the series’ trademark graphic violence. Still, for what it’s worth, the film does feature plenty of solidly done fight sequences as well as some incredibly memorable performances from the likes of Christopher Lambert as Lord Raiden, the god of thunder, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as the sinister sorcerer Shang Tsung. In short, it goes without saying that the original Mortal Kombat is far from perfect and will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the series’ upcoming reboot which, by all accounts, will be an even more faithful take on the franchise. And yet, given all the other films based on video games that have been made over the years, this still stands as one of the genre’s best. It may not have been a ‘pitch-perfect’ adaptation, but it did manage to hit just enough of the right beats to avoid being a case where it’d be more appropriate to call it Mortal Kombat ‘in name only’.

Rating: 3.5/5

MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION (1997)

Given that it spent three weeks at the top of the U.S. box office, it’s safe to say that the first Mortal Kombat film was a massive success; thus, a sequel would end up hitting theaters in 1997, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. But since Paul W.S. Anderson opted to direct the sci-fi horror film Event Horizon instead, directorial duties were taken over by the first film’s cinematographer, John R. Leonetti. Upon its release, however, the film fared far differently than its predecessor both critically and commercially. In other words, whereas the original is regarded as one of the best video game films, Annihilation is not only considered to be one of the genre’s worst… but also one of the worst films ever made in general, and to be perfectly frank, it’s easy to see why as everything that worked well in the first film is practically non-existent in this one. Most of the fight sequences are mediocre at best and despite the film boasting a budget that’s nearly twice as big as the original’s, it inexplicably looks far worse by comparison with even cheaper-looking CGI and a blatant overuse of green-screen. It also carries over the ‘underutilization of the series’ most popular characters’ issue from the first film and exacerbates it even further by overfilling itself with characters, many of whom are only in it for like a single sequence at best. And since most of the leads were recast save for Robin Shou as Liu Kang and Talisa Soto as Kitana, there aren’t any standout performances like there were in the first film… in fact, most of them are straight-up bad. In short, as flawed as the first Mortal Kombat is, it’s still a decently entertaining popcorn flick. The same can’t be said for Mortal Kombat: Annihilation aside from a few instances of unintentional hilarity a la another infamous 1997 release, Batman and Robin. Simply put, this can best be summed up by its ironic promotional tagline, ‘Destroy All Expectations’.

Rating: 1/5

MORTAL KOMBAT LEGENDS: SCORPION’S REVENGE (2020)

To conclude today’s retrospective (while also letting us end things on a much better note than Annihilation), we have a direct-to-video animated film courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge. As the title suggests, it primarily follows the franchise’s most famous character, Hanzo Hasashi AKA the undead ninja warrior Scorpion, as he seeks revenge against those who killed his family. And to put it simply, for those who were disappointed by the non-graphic nature of the live-action films’ fight sequences, you’ll find this one to be a lot more satisfying as it goes all out with its ridiculously violent kills straight down to the faithful execution of the brutal X-Ray moves from the most recent games. However, as solidly animated as this film is, especially given its direct-to-video status, it’s a bit unfocused from a narrative perspective as it juggles Scorpion’s revenge plot with the series’ traditional premise of the warriors of Earthrealm (Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage) fighting in the Mortal Kombat tournament. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong about the latter aspect of the plot since that’s what this series has largely been about, it does feel a bit misleading to call this Scorpion’s Revenge because it honestly feels like Scorpion is treated like a secondary character in what is ostensibly his own film. In other words, having it set almost entirely from Scorpion’s perspective would’ve been the much better route to take instead of just rehashing stuff that we’ve seen before. And so, with that in mind, I’ll admit that I’m not quite as positive towards this film as I know a lot of other people are, but at the same time, it’s still a genuinely well-done take on the franchise that’s wholly engaging throughout. That said, though, if they ever do any sort of follow-up, hopefully they’ll be willing to shake things up a bit and do something more character-driven rather than simply relying on the series’ overarching plot.      

Rating: 3.5/5

This concludes Rhode Island Movie Corner’s retrospective on the Mortal Kombat franchise’s foray into feature-length films. Thanks for following along and be sure to sound off in the comments below with your own personal memories of this iconic franchise. And yes, a review of the new Mortal Kombat film will be coming sometime soon; so, with that in mind, hopefully y’all will GET OVER HERE and check it out when it drops.