Mortal Kombat (2021)
Directed by Simon McQuoid

It’s such an interesting cultural shift that took Mortal Kombat from a series decried by censors and cultural critics to a movie that has had the biggest streaming release on HBO’s new streaming service, HBOMax. More than Wonder Woman 1984, more than Tom & Jerry (to the surprise of no one) more even than Godzilla vs. Kong, and it wasn’t even close, Mortal Kombat had more views in the first 3 days than GvK had in its first 5. I’m happy that Mortal Kombat is back in the mainstream, I’ve been a fan of the series since I was a kid and had to toggle the blood effects off before I was allowed to play it. I love the 1995 Mortal Kombat in all its shlocky nostalgic glory, and I was really looking forward to this reboot to bring old fans and new fans together. Unfortunately, it’s terrible. Also mild spoilers.

Well This Story Isn’t What I Expected.

If you’re reading this you probably know the basic story of the Mortal Kombat franchise pretty well: a ragtag group of expert martial artists come together to fight in the Mortal Kombat tournament to protect Earth (aka Earthrealm) from the evil forces that can only invade our world after winning this tournament. Shockingly, literally none of that happens in this movie. Following an MMA loss, Cole Young and others are targeted by otherworldly assassins who seem to be going after people who have dragon tattoos which spontaneously appeared on their body. This group, who coincidentally is also not great at fighting and get point-blank told they suck in multiple scenes, just so happen to make their way to an ancient temple dedicated to training people to eventually compete in the Mortal Kombat tournament, which doesn’t even happen in this movie, and also to unlock their arcanas, a nonsense superpower concept that for some reason is a huge part of the movie. Training happens. Pointless, badly edited fights happen. Raiden could easily solve the entire plot at any point but chooses not to. I am painfully sober during all this.

NO. FUN. ALLOWED.

Some of you reading this are probably already scoffing and rolling your eyes. Of course the plot is bad, you may be thinking, it’s a cheesy martial arts gorefest, after all, and no one is here for the plot. You’re right. But there’s a difference between a token plot, a bare-bones setup of a fighting tournament deciding the fate of realms, and a stupid plot that constantly introduces elements that make no sense and never has any stakes. The story is simultaneously oversimplified and overcomplicated, which is a feat in and of itself, and nothing seems to matter. Even then, I could forgive a bad plot if the characters were fun and the fights were good. But we get neither of those.

You May As Well Be Moving Cardboard Cutouts Around The Sets.

Designated protagonist and Chosen One Cole Young is the most boring character I have seen in a movie in I don’t know how long, and the rest of the cast isn’t much better. No one has any motivation to do anything except to keep the plot going, there’s no character drama, no character growth, just pointless scenes of expository dialogue explaining a plot that really shouldn’t be as complicated as it is. And then the movie goes to great lengths to show how much Cole, Sonya, and Kano all suck at fighting and need to improve. Why not have them just be good at fighting? We could skip 30 minutes of training sequences and lectures from Raiden if the heroes were even slightly competent. Not every movie needs to be an origin story! Just have cool things happen!

Can We Get To The Fighting? Oh God, Please Stop Fighting!

The visuals and editing…hurt me. Credit where credit is due, there was generally an attempt to match the visual style of the games, which I appreciated. But there isn’t enough of a translation from game to movie, and a lot of the visuals end up looking off. I can’t put my finger on exactly why it doesn’t work, could be bad angles, the lighting might be just slightly off, but everything looks a bit wrong to me. On the flip side, I can tell you exactly what’s wrong with the editing. Every single fight is so choppy and full of quick cuts and camera shifts that even if a decently choreographed fight is happening, I’m so completely disengaged from what’s on-screen and it doesn’t feel real.

Yes. Scorpion And Sub-Zero Are Awesome.

Before I wrap this up I will talk about the best part of the movie, the sequences with Scorpion and Sub-Zero. It’s like another team handled these scenes, because they’re shot and edited radically differently, actually pretty competently and showing off the skills of Hiroyuki Sanada (who has tons of cool Samurai movies under his belt) and Joe Taslim (most famously known as the kickass Sergeant Jaka from the awesome film The Raid: Redemption). These two have the best story too! With easily understandable character motivations and drama, when these two fight it looks cool, it matters, and there is fun to be had! Whenever anyone defends this movie they bring up Scorpion and Sub-Zero to shield it from criticism, which, fair enough, yeah, their scenes are good. But they are together in TWO SCENES. There are 90 minutes of this movie without the only good part of it! That’s a bad ratio!

I Am Completely Baffled By The Amount Of Praise I Have Seen For Mortal Kombat.

I don’t understand Mortal Kombat. The characters are dull, the story is a pointless prequel that ends with no resolution, 90% of the fights just don’t look right, even the gore is just CGI mush. I could forgive all of that if there was some fun to be had here, but there isn’t any. Mortal Kombat is tedious, bland, and dumb, the only good parts being the Sub-Zero/Scorpion scenes and I’m sure someone has already edited those two scenes together and put them on YouTube. I’d recommend watching those two scenes and nothing else. This isn’t the worst Mortal Kombat movie, Annihilation still holds that dubious honor, but it sure isn’t the best. It may be nostalgia but I still love the 90s Mortal Kombat.