We won’t blame you for not knowing that since the release of the first film Mortal Kombat in 1995, five sequels were released: Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997), Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020), Mortal Kombat (2021), Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021) et Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind (2022).
Spoiler alert: they’re all pretty bad, and while the 2021 live-action reboot was a step in the right direction for fans of the cult games of the 1990s, it nonetheless confirmed that video game adaptations remain the bête noire of Hollywood. Many will cite the recent adaptations of Minecraft and Super Mario as box office hits, but big numbers don’t equate to quality. And Mortal Kombat II will not be the film that breaks the curse.
The film picks up where the 2021 reboot left off, which, shockingly, didn’t even feature a real fighting tournament, and changes main protagonists along the way. Exit Cole Young (Lewis Tan), relegated to the background, make way for Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) and Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). She is a princess from a mystical kingdom enslaved by the evil leader of Outworld, Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford); he is a has-been and reluctant action movie star, who says “fuck” all the time.
Kahn and his warriors have won nine tournaments against Earth’s champions; a tenth would mean a game over for the planet. Let the games begin… Ah, and there is also talk of a mystical amulet which will eat up a good part of the footage and break the rhythm.
If for you a good movie session is an abstruse scenario with monolithic characters who happily get on their faces, then Mortal Kombat II offers its share of guilty pleasures. The action scenes, although very choppy in the editing, are of quite enjoyable graphic violence, with fireballs, sharp-edged hats and Blue Portals which give rise to some inventive fatalities.
If Urban’s Johnny Cage has clearly been “deadpooled”, which weighs heavily MKIIit’s the inability of director Simon McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater to find a stable balance between the permanent valve and the R-rated hemoglobin. basically, is exactly everything you could expect from a new Mortal Kombat movie.
Flawless victory? We are far from it. And some of the creators know it. Producer Todd Garner has already attacked some of the film’s early – negative – reviews.
On X, Garner wrote: “Some of these reviews make me die of laughter. It’s obvious they’ve never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat. A critic was furious because a guy had a laser eye! Why the hell do we still let people who don’t like this genre review these films? Astounding.”
He drove the point home in the responses, repeatedly emphasizing that the film was “made for the fans” rather than the critics.
Ah, that old chestnut who would like that, because a film is “for the fans”, it de facto invalidates the opinions of the critics.
Mr. Garner, if critics are critics, it is precisely because they are fans. If bad reviews destabilize you, then either you don’t read the reviews, or you change your profession, or you steel yourself, or you accept that, when a film is released into the world, it is normal, expected and legitimate for film critics to give their opinion. A plurality of opinions is a wonderful thing. Some critics will appreciate MKII ; others will say that if you want better reviews, you have to make better films.
Mortal Kombat II is currently in theaters.
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