Mortal Kombat (2011) review

    I am a huge MORTAL KOMBAT nerd. I played the first three arcade games in movie theaters and have kept abreast of the series in various formats across multiple consoles since. I can tell you who Nitara is and what elements of the original movie were incorporated in the greater canon. The fact I know there is a canon is something of a feat in itself but Mortal Kombat has always had more of a story than most fighting games. I even watched the cheesy television show but I'll be honest that was 90% for Kristanna Loken.

This feels like a different movie.

   When I heard there was a new movie, I was skeptical but that's because the original is one of the few examples of video game tie-ins that didn't completely suck. It managed to find a decent balance between cheese, humor, and martial arts action. The new movie promised to treat the material more "seriously" and I wasn't exactly sure that was a good thing. So what did I think of the film? Eh, it's okay.

    Don't get me wrong, whoever wrote this movie is clearly an enormous Mortal Kombat nerd too. We get Sub-Zero referred to by his real name, the origins of Scorpion, and Kabal voiced by the actual video game actor due to his mask covering his face. However, there's also a very large number of flaws that keep this from being as enjoyable as the original film but much better than the godawful Annihilation.

    Part of the biggest problem is the introduction of an entirely new character in Cole (Lewis Tan), who is a down-on-his-luck MMA fighter who discovers he has a great destiny due to being one of Scorpion's descendants. I don't want to sound like one of those fans but there's like 200 characters and a good sixty of them are ones that would make good introduction characters to the weirdness of the setting. 

Why is Kano the best character?

    It gets worse because Lewis Tan would have been able to play a good chunk of them. Johnny Cage, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sub-Zero II, Scorpion (via possession!), Kenshi, Takahashi Takeda, and so on. Cole is an okay character but his role as the everyman isn't something we really needed to create a new character for. It's like doing a Street Fighter: The Movie remake except the protagonist is a blond red-gi wearing American karate champion named Bill. Worse, maybe get him played by someone too good for the part like Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds.

    If I'm being overly harsh on Cole, it's also because the other Kombatants (see what I did there?) are all undercooked. The movie has Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Raiden, Sonya Blade, Jax, Scorpion, Nitara, Goro, Shang Tsung, Kabal, Mileena, Sub-Zero, and Kano. Now if you told me that I was going to have this cast of characters and the most entertaining of them would be Kano then I would have called you a liar. Except Kano is, by far, the best part of this movie and the sole source of badly needed comic relief. No, let me correct that, Kabal also provides some and I'm now down for a Black Dragon movie.

Mileena has almost no lines but is awesome.

    Really, the movie is too packed to be able to properly develop anyone beyond being exposition machines with three or four characters filling the role of the Obi-Wan to Cole. The first movie made the correct choice that we had multiple people serving as the everyman and able to develop relationships with each other. 

    Cole doesn't get to know any of his fellow Kombatants and is primarily worried about his wife and daughter that play no role other than to give him emotional support while being endangered. I mean, reveal the wife is Jade or Frost or something. For a franchise that has a huge chunk of ass-kicking women, this film has a lot of them murdered to motivate our heroes.

    Another small complaint is this feels more like the first few episodes of a Mortal Kombat HBO series than it does the actual Mortal Kombat movie. Which is a pretty poor complaint because it would have been a pretty good miniseries, I think. It probably would have been better than this film because with ten episodes we could have gotten to fill out the backstories of the bloated cast of mooks and supporting protagonists. Bi-Han Sub Zero feels like he should be a more developed character than the randomly evil chief henchman he is. It's also hard to take him seriously as Shang Tsung's chief henchman when Goro is RIGHT THERE. Hell, Kabal solves the primary problem of our villains in like five minutes while Bi-Han can't kill our protagonist before he gets powers.

This would be a better movie.

    If I sound like I hate the movie, I don't. Not by a long shot. What the movie lacks in plot or character, it more than makes up in hilarious video game violence. I mean, I'm not 100% sure if there's actually a Mortal Kombat tournament or what the rules are but I don't care. I mean, Shang Tsung cheating is fine but is double-teaming Sub-Zero with your ghost ancestor allowed? I feel like our heroes should be sticking to the rules since you know Shao Khan is going to rules-lawyer that shit. Plus the violence goes from cartoonish PG to ripping hearts out and bisecting people with magical hats pretty quickly. Which is as it should be.

    In conclusion, this is definitely a movie to watch if you have HBO Max as its fun and utterly brainless. Unfortunately, it seems to think it is a lot smarter and more serious movie than it is. There's like a 15 minute opening of Scorpion's family being massacred that feels like it belongs in a different and better movie. Normally, you don't open the film up with the origin story of someone other than your protagonist. Watch it for Kano making fun of everyone, the over-the-top action, and goofy faux-seriousness. Just, next time, we need someone other than the scummy bad guys as comic relief.

6.5/10