I think I read somewhere that 73% of all homicides are due to sweet karate and kung fu fights in side alleys, underground bloodsport arenas, and other decrepit city locations. 17% of coroner reports list cause of fatality as a totally rad, merciless removal of some part of the human anatomy entirely by hand, like the full spinal column or still-beating heart. This is why my uncle Vinny totally had to register his hands as lethal weapons.
I digress.
Video game movies are having a bit of a renaissance at the box office, and with Mortal Kombat 2 receiving better critical reception than the first film (the reboot, not the original, which is delightful cheese), I’m not surprised that this R rated sequel released on Mother’s Day weekend made money. I mean, there is a lot of crossover in the MK2 / Devil Wears Prada 2 demographic.
The 2021 film, Mortal Kombat, has the honor of being the first movie I ever fell asleep to twice. And one of the most head scratching-y ideas from MK1 was the protagonist Cole Young (played by Lewis Tan). Who? Right … the entire Mortal Kombat universe has over 100 characters to pick from and the writers made up a whole guy who turns partly into rock?
I’ll never get why they didn’t just have Cole be Liu Kang in that film. Nothing against Ludi Lin but Tan is a better actor and you could very easily have adapted the story beats to have him be Liu without changing too much. You could have replaced the movie version of Liu Kang with Kung Jin and not lose anything. He was another Shaolin monk who was a relative of Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat X, and ironically enough that character was also played by Lewis Tan in an unreleased web series that was supposed to be a follow-up to Mortal Kombat: Legacy. I honestly thought the reason they had Shao Khan kick Cole into the green liquid (which reads as “acid”) was so that they had a justification for not bringing him back in future films, since the Necromancer could just say “oh, I can’t do it without a body.” Nobody’s going to a Mortal Kombat film for a deep dive on how necromancy works in the setting so you can leave it at that.
Also, I don’t think the sequel delivered on what audiences really want.
People want Mortal Kombat for disgusting, over-the-top kills. Watching fighters murder each other in the most graphic, disgusting, sociopathic ways imaginable. Balancing all the self-serious AND ridiculous at the same time. Why isn’t anyone being choked with their own intestines? This isn’t prestige material, It’s a Mortal Kombat movie. Stupidity and low expectations are kind of baked into the equation. You just need enough story and silly characters splashed with some lore to push you to the next fatality. Lean ALL the way into that.
Josh Lawson (Kano) was the only one having any fun in two dull and dreary installments in this franchise (so far). However, It makes me pretty happy that despite how stupid and bad most adaptations of Mortal Kombat have been, we all more or less still agree that the opening theme from 1995 absolutely rocks.
-Dagobot