Mortal Kombat (2021).

“The word ‘combat’ isn’t even spelled right.”

Directed by first-timer Simon McQuoid

Written by the same screenwriter that wrote Wonder Woman 1984 (yeeeeeeeesh)

Starring Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Joe Taslim, and CGI blood

Spoilers for Mortal Kombat incoming.

The Stage.

Welcome to Mortal Kombat, a tournament between realms with very strict rules that no one follows or enforces. For some reason, if a realm wins ten in a row, they take over Earth or something, so it’s up to all of your favorite Mortal Kombat characters and Cole Young, a charisma-free mid-card MMA fighter that you’d be nervous putting a few bucks on to save Earth.

The Review.

I’ve played Mortal Kombat for years. My dad bought us our first Mortal Kombat game on the Sega Genesis, back when you had to call the Sega hotline to get the “blood code”. I was never tournament-level good, but I could hold my own at the arcade with the first two games. I played pretty heavily up through the N64 games, so I’m very familiar with the series and was genuinely excited for this new iteration, one that promised amazing fights, the characters we know and love, and of course, buckets of gore.

The film starts with a bang as the Lin Kuei clan massacres their rival faction, leading to our first fight scene between the men who would become Scorpion and Sub-Zero. It’s bloody (CGI blood, but better than nothing) and the action is pretty cool. I was excited…then we meet Cole Young.

Cole Young, dressed in his ceremonial garb of plot armor and Lulu Lemon dress pants.

The Mortal Kombat franchise has nearly 100 characters to choose from to build a story around, yet in this film, we follow Cole Young, a character with the spark of a bag of flour and fighting skills that might be good enough to compete in the Rex Kwon Do dojo. He sucked. His story sucked. He comes from the lineage of Scorpion - we’ve got the perfect setup for him becoming the new Scorpion…and then as his powers manifest, it turns out his actual power is…plot armor? Seriously, your plot was already there with Sonya Blade! Have her be the main character, heading towards this tournament without powers, on her quest to receive powers. I’ve heard the studio wanted an Asian lead actor…awesome! You have two great ones in Liu Kang and Kung Lao - develop one of them! Must have been a scenario where they wanted an Asian lead…but not that Asian. Instead, we’re left with the human equivalent of beige and his journey to save the world with his middling fight skills and his Vibranium Wakanda armor.

I know, I know, Mortal Kombat shouldn’t be about the story, it should be about the fights. Unfortunately, most of the fights were short, chopped up messes with some fatalities thrown in. Seriously, what the fuck happened with the editing in this film? It feels like half of the movie was shot during reshoots. Scenes don’t connect, characters jump positions, in one scene, they clearly just removed a fight scene between Shang Tsung and Mileena and it looks so weird. Some of the fatalities are cool, namely Kung Lao using his hat as a buzzsaw and Sub-Zero ripping off Jax’s arms, but others were disappointing. How can you show us the famous Mortal Kombat Pit level and not use the pit in an interesting way!? That whole sequence felt really weird when they split everyone up, as if they were saying, “Okay nerds, here’s two minutes of Mortal Kombat stuff”. The special effects during the fights were pretty good, especially Sub-Zero’s ice powers. Freezing someone’s blood to immediately stab them with it was an amazing moment.

I’ve seen a lot of love for Kano online, I thought he was overly annoying to the point that I just wanted him to bite it as soon as possible. Unfortunately I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of him. Raiden was horribly miscast, and many of the other characters just weren’t very interesting. Kabal stood out to me as one of the highlights, as he was one of my favorite characters to play as in Mortal Kombat III. Kung Lao was great too.

In any video game adaptation, there’s going to be a level of fan service. Unfortunately, most of those moments felt very forced and unnatural. Kano yelling, “Kano wins.” after tearing out the heart of a lizard was particularly cringeworthy, as was Kung Lao proclaiming, “Flawless victory.” The worst of course comes from Scorpion, as the man who can only speak Japanese says in perfect English, “Get over here!”. The better moments were those that felt like you had to be an actual fan to spot, like Shinnok’s amulet or Kitana’s fan. The best of course, happens during the Liu Kang/Kano fight when he spams the leg sweep. That took me straight back to the arcade.

The End.

Mortal Kombat was a mess, and it’s unfortunate. It reeks of studio interference, is marred by a lame character and embarrassing editing, and the fight scenes just aren’t good. There will be a sequel, so here’s an idea - hire someone who’s really great at directing fight scenes. Grab Gareth Evans or Chad Stahelski and pay them to do it right. I shouldn’t be pausing HBO Max to see how much time is left because I’m bored while watching a movie that’s based on a fighting game.

I think there’s still an opportunity for a really good Mortal Kombat movie. This one though…this one isn’t it.