By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
The MK franchise has been a part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. I still remember how I felt the first time my friend uppercutted their opponent onto the spikes at the bottom of the pit in the original game. I don’t even want to think about how many total hours I’ve dedicated to playing that first one and every subsequent one to this day. With that being said, it’s hard for me to say that I wasn’t exactly blown away by 2021’s “Mortal Kombat”. It’s weird to feel so lukewarm on the new movie. I’ve loved Paul W.S. Anderson’s original film since seeing it opening night and I spent a LONG time hating its sequel, Annihilation, before finally coming around to enjoying it as a fun piece of trash cinema. It’s weird for me but I just can’t seem to find a passionate response in either drection to the new “Mortal Kombat”. All of the fan service and superhero cinema flourishes seem to be aimed squarely at me… and yet, it just doesn’t add up to much.
I guess I should start with the story but that’s really the main problem with this film. The actual storyline of MK shouldn’t be as complicated as it’s been made out to be here. I don’t want to do endless comparisons but that’s a big reason the original movie works better than this one. If we’re being honest, both the original film and the game are basically a ripoff of 1973’s “Enter The Dragon” but with supernatural elements and gore added. Yes, this movie earns its R and retains exponentially more of the gore of the games than 1995’s film did but I’ll get back to that fact. The point is that it should be a very simple story about Earth’s favored warriors facing off against interdimensional beings to save the world as we know it. The main problem with this film is that the actual plot is essentially treated as secondary in favor of almost every human character having a subplot in the hope that it will add up to being a more satisfying whole. It doesn’t.
The only arcin “Mortal Kombat” that ultimately feels important is that of Lewis Tan’s character of Cole Young. He’s the second to last descendent of Hanzo Hasashi aka Scorpion, who is killed along with most of his family in the opening of the film by Bi-Han aka Sub-Zero centuries ago. Why Bi-Han is trying to eliminate Hasashi’s bloodline is something is only vaguely clarified in the third act of this film but it’s a little muddy ultimately. Truthfully, their blood feud was never all that clear in the games either. As a lifelong fan of the series, I can only say that it feels incredibly unnecessary to create a new focal point of in the character of Cole Young when you already have an ludicrously rich cast of characters to draw from. Anyway… Raiden, the god of thunder, saves Hasashi’s infant daughter, preserving Hasashi’s all important bloodline. This eventually leads to Young, who was once a once great MMA fighter but is past his prime and desperately holding on to what he has left. He’s recruited and introduced to the interdimensional mayhem of MK through Sonya Blade and Jax. The former spends a lot of time as a vehicle for exposition of MK lore. Sonya basically explains the concept of the tournament until she, Cole, and her mercenary archenemy Kano actually get to meet up with Liu Kang, Kung Lao, etc. and actually start preparing for the tournament. While these preparations are happening, the sorcerer Shang Tsung is trying to bypass the tournament entirely. His team of fighters (which includes the aforementioned Sub-Zero, Mileena, and Kabal) have the basic plan is to kill or turn everyone they can to their side so the Outworld dimension Tsung is representing will win by default and be able to take over the Earth.
I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time talking about what I don’t like about this movie so I do want to address what I did like. For one thing, the fact that there’s actually not only gore in this version of “Mortal Kombat” but actually cool kills/Fatalities is the major selling point of this one. That’s ultimately what this film really has over the previous adaptations to a large extent. I understand that the people responsible for the original were clearly trying to make sure as many people like me as a child could see the original movie over and over again. They could achieve that better by having a PG-13 rating. However, a big part of what made MK more appealing than anything else in the arcade or the video game shelf was slasher movie levels of gore being present. The original filmmakers clearly did their best but the kills in this movie represent the franchise far better than ever before on film. Also, it bears mentioning that a few of the actors really elevate things higher than anyone other than maybe a couple of the original stars of the 1995 film. The main selling point of this movie (besides the inherent name value) to fans of action films and especially martial arts films is the presence of Joe Taslim. His presence and performance truly bring Sub-Zero to life. This portrayal is more interesting to me than Sub-Zero has ever been previously. I was always a Scorpion guy but Taslim is actually so good, it almost hurts the movie. He’s exponentially more interesting and entertaining than Chin Han’s able to be as Shang Tsung, who’s supposed to be the big bad of the piece. Also, it’s important to single out Josh Lawson. He had big shoes to fill as Kano, seeing as how Trevor Goddard’s performance in the original film informed every portrayal of the character since…but Lawson manages to steal basically every scene he’s in and would probably steal the whole movie if it wasn’t for Taslim’s presence. I will also mention Lewis Tan. Despite being the central character of the piece and de facto star of the film, his character could have very easily just been boring and one-note but Tan manages to make him interesting, sympathetic, and someone I never stopped rooting for. The rest of the cast is generally fine, if unspectacular, but those three stand head and shoulders above.
The main thing I can say annoys me about this movie overall is one of the same things that bother me about a lot of popcorn cinema in this day and age. It seems like it was less important to all involved to make a great movie than it was to set up a series of films. Honestly, I can’t say that concept originated in superhero cinema but it’s one of the main things that annoys me about the influence of comic books on popcorn movies. Something like the MCU is so good and so successful that it ends up creating movies like this in its wake while everyone tries to recreate Marvel’s formula. We now have movies that exist just for world building and universe building. This feels less like a standalone film and more like a trailer for a forthcoming universe that for all we know at this point might never even happen. I get it because there’s so much to draw from in terms of what they’ve done with the games over decades but I’d rather the energy dedicated to setup was instead put into making this film as strong as it could be. The other thing that stands out and nags at me is really a problem with most big budget films these days and there’s really no interesting production design on display at all. Everything you see consists of sparse sets (at best), filled in by CGI. You can say what you want about even “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” but at least the original films were visually interesting in a way that this movie really isn’t. It’s not the worst thing about the movie but it’s definitely not great.
I genuinely wish I had more positive things to say about the current “Mortal Kombat”. I really do. Hell, even if I had enough of a passionate negative reaction that I believed I might eventually be able to enjoy it on some level like I do with the sequel to the original film, that’d be something. The problem is that this “Mortal Kombat” is a pretty perfect example of modern studio filmmaking. In an effort to try to please everyone, you ultimately please no one. It’s not great. It’s not terrible. It has its moments but ultimately isn’t really something I can recommend. I hope they’re able to make another and go all “X-Men 2” on that clearly planned sequel and maybe the unfavorable comparisons to stuff like Timo Tjahjanto’s “The Night Comes For Us” will lead to more people checking out better martial arts films but sadly, as an OG fan of Mortal Kombat, I can only really speak to the disappointment I felt this outing.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch