Mortal Kombat is a pretty good movie in comparison to the other two movies that were made before it. But when you look at it like that, the bar is pretty low. Because the original Mortal Kombat from 1997, and especially Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, were almost comically bad movies. Mortal Kombat from 1997 was watchable. I’ve seen it a couple of times. Annihilation is MST3K worthy. Just sitting there, making fun of it, not even paying attention to what’s going on. It’s bad…
But we’re getting off topic. THIS Mortal Kombat is actually pretty good. Mortal Kombat was meant to be made as a Rated R kind of film. You can’t tone down something like Mortal Kombat to make it a movie. It’s too brutal. The entire point of Mortal Kombat was murder and evil. Everybody was betraying each other so they could kill everybody else. It was an inherently R rated game. Something like that could only be an R rated movie. Which, I’m glad to see they allowed themselves to do the right thing and let the characters play themselves out like they would in the game.
And that’s another thing I wanted to point out. They put in things from the game, but they didn’t inundate you with them. Kung Lao said “test your might” at one point. I think “fatality” was said twice. People were using signature moves in some of the fight scenes. But it wasn’t the entire point of the movie. And that’s an important difference when it comes to a movie like this. The difference between an actual storyline and a movie that’s just pandering to fans with references to content. This movie had an actual storyline.
At the same time, I can see how a movie like this wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea. This movie really appeals to a certain type of fan. You would need to be a fan of Mortal Kombat to want to see this movie in the first place. And you would have to like martial arts and action movies in order to sit through it even if you did start watching it. So, I think we know who this movie is geared towards. Here’s a hint, it’s not your mom or your girlfriend…
So, yeah. Go and see Mortal Kombat. It’s a good live action video game transfer. It usually doesn’t work that well. I don’t know if anybody remembers Super Mario Bros with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo? Don’t look it up. You won’t like the results. But you’ll like this one. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…
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