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No one could blame you for not knowing that ever since the first Mortal Kombat movie came out in 1995, there have been five follow-ups: Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997), Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020), Mortal Kombat (2021), Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021) and Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind (2022).
Spoiler: They’re all pretty awful, and while 2021’s live-action reboot was a step in the right direction for fans of the beloved 90s games, it still proved that video game adaptations were still Hollywood’s bête noire. Many will cite the recent Minecraft and Super Mario adaptations as box office hits, but big bucks don’t equate to quality. And Mortal Kombat II won’t be the film that breaks the curse.
It picks up from the 2021 reboot, which bafflingly lacked an actual fighting tournament, and proceeds to change the lead protagonists. Out with Cole Young (Lewis Tan), who is now sidelined to a supporting player, and in with Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) and Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). She’s a princess of a mystical realm enslaved by the villainous Outworld leader Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford); he’s an unwilling and washed-up action movie star who likes to drop a lot of F-bombs.
Kahn and his warriors have won nine tournaments against Earth’s champions; a tenth would mean Game Over for the planet. Let the games begin… Oh, and something about a mystical amulet that will take up a momentum-killing amount of runtime.
If your idea of a good time at the pictures is a gibberish narrative featuring one-dimensional characters kicking seven shades of shit out of each other, then Mortal Kombat II delivers some dumb fun. The action sequences, heavily edited though they may be, are impressively gory – with fireballs, razor-rimmed hats and Blue Portals providing some creative fatalities.
While Urban’s Cage has effectively been Deadpooled, what sinks MKII is director Simon McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater’s failure to achieve a steady balance between the wisecracking and the R-rated gore. The subsequent tonal whiplash makes it another disposable crash-bang-wallop… Which is about everything one could expect from yet another Mortal Kombat movie.
Flawless victory? Hardly. And some of the creatives know it. Producer Todd Garner has already lashed out at some early – and negative – reviews of the film.
Posting on X, Garner wrote: “Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/ canon of Mortal Kombat. One reviewer was mad that a guy “had a laser eye!” Why the fuck do we still allow people that don’t have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.”
He doubled down in replies, repeatedly insisting the film was “made for the fans” rather than critics.
Ah, that old chestnut which suggests that if a movie is “for the fans” it therefore invalidates the opinions of critics.
Mr. Garner, the reason critics are critics in the first place is because they are fans. If poor reviews are something you get rattled by, then either: don’t seek out criticism; find another job; grow thicker skin; or accept that when you put a film out into the world, it is acceptable, expected and valid for film critics to give their opinions. Plurality of opinion is a wonderful thing. Some critics will enjoy MKII; others will say that if you want better reviews, you need to produce better movies.
Mortal Kombat II is out in cinemas now.
Video editor • Amber Louise Bryce