MORTAL KOMBAT!!!
Welcome to another exciting blog posts peeps. Thank you all for the views and we will be getting to regularly scheduled blog posts in the summer. Today I will give a short review on the new Mortal Kombat movie and why it’s a pretty good video game adaptation. Spoiler warning.
I would call myself a fan of the Mortal Kombat franchise, even though the first game in the series I played was 2015’s Mortal Kombat X. I didn’t really get into the franchise until Mortal Kombat 11 and that was when I learned how extensive the franchise really is. MK 11‘s story features time travel, and a lot of things from past entries were referenced in the story so I had to do a lot of research and backtracking because most of the time I didn’t know what was happening. Still a good game though, I recommend checking it out.
Mortal Kombat (2021) doesn’t really follow the games, however. That is normally the last thing you’d want to hear when adapting a video game, but it kind of works out in its favor. The movie follows Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a completely original plot device character, who is a washed up MMA fighter in over his head in this world of sorcerers, cryomancers, and shaolin monks with bladed hats. Cole is not a good fighter, like at all. It’s mentioned that he used to be a good fighter but somewhere along the lines, his skill declined. Now he’s more known for getting his butt kicked on more often than not.
Lewis Tan is an interesting choice for a leading man. His acting skills are subpar, but he can fight and that definitely influenced his casting in this flick. The writing certainly didn’t help him either. Although the writing did improve as the movie progressed it was still full of weird one liners and dialogue that no one would ever say in real life.
I will say that where this movie is lacking in writing, the fights definitely make up for it. The fights are fun to watch and they’re not as edited poorly as one would believe (there still are some weird things that they do with the camera, namely in the Liu Kang/Kano fight). It also helps that you cast actors that look convincing whenever they fight. I think the best fight had to have been Scorpion and Sub-Zero at the end of the movie. It very much reminded me of the game itself and it was really cool to see Scorpion use his kunai in creative ways. I did roll my eyes when Cole joined that fight, not because he didn’t add anything to it, but because I was here to see the cage match 400+ years in the making between the two ninjas, not a two on one.
The cast was also surprisingly good. Before coming into this, I hadn’t seen much of the cast in anything else. Ludi Lin was in Power Rangers (2017) and Mehcad Brooks was on Supergirl when I still watched it. Of course if you look at the tape other members of the cast have been in a lot of things, just things I haven’t seen but probably should see. In terms of performance, Josh Lawson easily gives the movie’s best performance as Kano. Kano steals the show from the moment he’s introduced. Because the movie hangs around with Cole a little bit longer than it should, not all the characters got a chance to shine. I really wish we got to see more of Max Huang as Kung Lao and Sisi Stringer as Mileena. Fingers crossed for Sisi to return in the sequel as Kitana though.
As far as video games movies go, I do believe that this Is up there in the echelon of video game movies. I think it does enough for current hardcore fans of the franchise to keep them interested, and also does enough for the general audience member to go “cool action flick” and carry on about their day. There are definitely some things that could’ve been improved upon, namely Cole, but the rest of the movie works really well.
Video game adaptations have always been cursed, anyone could tell you that. However the last few years have seen a rise in quality video game adaptations with the likes of Tomb Raider (2017), Detective Pikachu, and Sonic the Hedgehog gaining mixed to positive reviews. Mortal Kombat is no different and I’m excited to see where James Wan and company take the franchise from here.
Above and Beyond the Screen 