Studio: New Line Cinema
Director: Simon McQuoid
Writer: Greg Russo, Dave Callaham
Producer: James Wan, Todd Garner, Simon McQuoid, E. Bennett Walsh
Stars: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Tadanobu Asano, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Chin Han, Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada
Review Score:
Summary:
A struggling MMA fighter discovers he is destined to compete in an interdimensional combat tournament involving ninjas, creatures, and people with superhuman abilities.
Review:
Reviews of big blockbusters don’t bring big traffic to Culture Crypt. Since major media outlets cover those films too, readers tend to turn to higher profile people when they’re poking around to find out “what critics are saying.” Better butter for Culture Crypt’s bread can be found on the indie B-movie scene where there aren’t as many voices vying to be heard.
I still review big studio releases. What I’ll sometimes do though, is pick a particular point to zero in on rather than dig out a general assessment of the overall movie. The way I figure it, this isn’t the first source anyone consults when it comes to huge hubbub like “Mortal Kombat.” If you want bulleted breakdowns on acting, cinematography, pacing, etc., you’ve probably already read about the basics somewhere else. Seeing how I end up as only an extra splash of caramel on the discourse sundae, it makes more sense to take one topic related to the film and tie it to a personal anecdote that lets me editorialize a little bit. That concludes the disclaimer for where the rest of this is headed.
Toxic types of fandom aren’t reserved for “Star Wars” and Zack Snyder’s DCU oeuvre anymore. “Mortal Kombat” is popular enough that it too has aggressively possessive people appointing themselves gatekeepers because only they “get” the property in a way casual moviegoers could never understand.
Prior to “Mortal Kombat’s” release, a tweet went relatively viral when someone implied the movie was doomed due to what was deemed a “too short” runtime of 110 minutes, 11 of which are credits by the way. This person claimed “Mortal Kombat’s” mythology requires a minimum of two and a half hours to properly establish stakes, develop backstories, and so on. Self-proclaimed TruFans agreed. They then began preconceiving complaints about the movie’s takes and tone being all kinds of wrong for respectfully representing the fighting game franchise. Meanwhile, rational minds wondered, “Uh, what needs to be complicated about a premise where colorful characters primarily punch, kick, and shoot fireballs at one another?”
Once upon a time, I was a video game producer. The company I worked for picked up a title that was close to completion and I was assigned to manage the project through its final phase of development. For context, the game was an arena shooter a la “Quake” that was a pick-up-and-play digital title for PC, PSN, and Xbox Live Arcade.
One day, stakeholders on our publishing end were summoned for an important marketing meeting. Apparently some folks were concerned that the game’s story wasn’t deep enough, so they proposed having our in-house fiction team draft a new plot, dialogue, lore, the whole shebang. This would have introduced delays we didn’t have time for. Just as importantly, it didn’t make any practical sense for the kind of game we were working on, so I asked, “why?”
Someone said, “We have to give players a reason for fighting each other and we don’t feel the current setup is compelling enough.” Somewhat dumbfounded, I responded, “It’s an arena shooter, not an RPG. You’re on the red team, they’re on the blue team. What more reason does anyone need?” (I don’t know if my reasoning sealed the deal, but we did not do the deep fiction extension.)
I feel the same way about “Mortal Kombat” as both a game and as a feature film adaptation. It should be easy to see which side of the debate I fall on when it comes to determining what’s important about this particular franchise. It sure isn’t story, nor does it need to be. It’s bloody battles, and whoa doctor does this movie have fights by the boatload.
There’s been a trend when it comes to backlash against longstanding properties where those making the noise seem to have forgotten what made a property popular in the first place. I’m specifically thinking of those who revolted against Shane Black’s “The Predator” (review here) for the perceived slight of being too flip with its tone. Their minds misremembered the first film with such nostalgia for something that didn’t actually exist, they neglected that their precious Schwarzenegger original was never intended to be taken with total seriousness either.
What made Mortal Kombat “Mortal Kombat” wasn’t the narrative, which an infrequent player couldn’t possibly recount in detail. It was the cool character designs, the fatalities, and the spectacle of spine-ripping savagery that hadn’t been seen in fighting games before. Maybe an Attract Mode screen had some minimal info about the inter-dimensional fighting tournament. But most of the game’s mythology was added after the fact or existed outside the arcade cabinet. In reality, you inserted your quarter, picked a fighter, and started ascending a ladder of opponents. Even if you paid attention to the text that told you “why” this was happening, you didn’t care.
This 2021 movie is as goofy as all get out, yet that aligns with my impression of what “Mortal Kombat” has always been. In fact, I don’t see how “Mortal Kombat” can be anything other than this movie because of how “out there” the source material is for a live-action adaptation.
In the movie, extra-goopy CG blood regularly defies all laws of physics and human anatomy, but it’s never been realistic in the games either. Several performances lean on the hammy side, like Liu Kang frequently wearing the wooden intensity of someone in a telenovela. But how should anyone act in a version of Earth where lightning-powered demigods, camouflaged reptile creatures, and winged warriors from magic realms interact with humans who have cyborg arms or the ability to fire lasers from their eyes? Raiden’s temple looks cheaply cheesy, with only the size of the space differentiating that set from the fake rocks and stone columns on an old episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But where else would “Mortal Kombat” moments take place?
The point I’m putting together is, anyone itching for “Mortal Kombat” to have a richer story or a more serious attitude isn’t reconciling their wish with what “Mortal Kombat” actually is. You go to a Godzilla movie to watch massive monsters destroy buildings and each other. You go to “Mortal Kombat” to watch handsome stunt actors fight crazy creatures. You could almost argue “Mortal Kombat” contains too much fighting. Then again, what else would it be?
Getting down to brass tacks, “Mortal Kombat” is fine. More to the point, it’s exactly what it’s expected to be. The film builds content from classic catchphrases, signature scenes such as beating hearts ripped out of torsos, and cinematic slaughter that’s inherently silly because of its fantastical scope. I can’t even imagine what two and a half hours of this would look like. It’s impossible to be bored by the eye-popping epicness of everything, but by the climactic battle, I was more than ready for end credits to roll. Complainers might instead be interested in the outstanding animated feature “Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge” (review here) since ironically, the franchise’s style and substance frames better as a cartoon than it does with real people. Everyone else? Like I say, how much motivation does anyone need when we’re talking about wild weirdos beating the snot out of each other?
Review Score: 60
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.