Mortal Kombat

CinemaSerf

So, after years of lethal "Mortal Kombat" competition "Outworld" is poised to complete it's tenth victory over "Earthrealm" entitling it to take it over. It falls to defender "Rayden" (Christopher Lambert) to recruit three warriors who might just be able to thwart the ambitions of his nemesis - the sorcerer "Shang Tsung" (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). The three he selects would not have been the obvious choice. "Liu Kang" (Robin Shou) and "Sonya Blade" (Bridgette Sampras) are driven by the need for vengeance of their own whilst the outwardly shallow "Johnny Cage" (Linden Ashby) is an actor just out to prove there is more to him than his acting. Can they defeat the champions of "Outworld" and their own demons? It is only 100 minutes long, this - but somehow it seems so much longer. The story takes far too long to get going, the character establishment introduces us to three people that have axes to grind, but they are not particularly interesting or characterful - and neither is their dialogue. The nature of the fight scenes is repetitive and shows a startling lack of imagination as does the really drawn-on look of the special effects. Lambert makes only the briefest of appearances as the guru in the white suit; indeed the star of the show is probably Tagawa who hams up wonderfully as the baddie. The narrative does try to combine action, adventure and mysticism - but neither the writer nor the director have anything like enough flair to make this anything other than a predictable, candle-lit, martial arts flop.

JPV852

I had not seen this in at least 10 years and with the new Arrow Video release I bought and gave it a watch and while nothing amazing with some stilted acting and dialogue (beyond the lines from the game), but it is a lot of fun and enough cheesiness to make it re-watchable. Overall really enjoyable. **3.25/5**

Vinicius Monteiro

Adapting video games to movies has always been a rough ride, but the 90s gave us a relic that shaped a whole generation. However, taking off the nostalgia goggles exposes a lot of flaws. Revisiting this first attempt to bring arcade fighting to the big screen shows that simply staying true to the game's premise isn't enough to make a solid film. Once you strip away the childhood affection, you're left with technical and narrative holes that time hasn't forgiven. The movie suffers from a major identity crisis from start to finish. Director Paul W.S. Anderson can't seem to pick a lane, bouncing awkwardly between overly serious melodrama and unintentional slapstick. Without nostalgia to protect it, it feels like an uncohesive, poorly written mess that just throws superficial references at the screen to get a cheap pop from the audience. It survived back then mostly on its marketing, but it completely fails as a legitimate movie for adults today. It also heavily disrespects the original lore. Fan-favorite rivals like Scorpion and Sub-Zero are reduced to voiceless henchmen, completely ignoring their fascinating backstory. Other legendary fighters are treated as disposable punching bags just to make the heroes look good, turning the fights into lazy, empty spectacles. Sonya Blade gets it the worst. She starts off as a badass, independent Special Forces agent but is slowly downgraded into a tired damsel in distress who has to be rescued by the guys. Her fight scenes lack the energy of Liu Kang's, totally wasting the franchise's toughest female character. Anderson also drops the ball on the action. He struggles to build tension or maintain a good pace, resulting in choppy editing that cuts away right when a scene needs to breathe. His lack of experience with martial arts really shows—the camera angles are usually wrong, and the confusing edits try to hide the actors' slow, stiff choreography. The mud fight between Sonya and Kano is a perfect example of this, looking more like a sloppy bar brawl than a mystical tournament between deadly warriors. The acting doesn't help either, often bordering on amateurish. Linden Ashby's Johnny Cage lacks the arrogant charm the role needs, while Bridgette Wilson-Sampras and Talisa Soto deliver their lines like robots. Robin Shou brings the right physical skills as Liu Kang, but he lacks the emotional weight of a leading man. Even Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's Shang Tsung is sabotaged by a script full of shallow catchphrases. But the biggest miscast is Christopher Lambert as Raiden. He plays the Thunder God as a raspy, apathetic guy who just smiles ironically, totally ruining the gravity of the mentor role and weakening the movie's main conflict. One of the most unforgivable flaws is the total lack of gore. The studio completely sanitized the game's famous, blood-soaked Fatalities to get a PG-13 rating and sell more tickets to kids. Because of this, the finishing moves are terribly anticlimactic. Without those lethal stakes, the inherently dark universe turns into a generic, low-budget martial arts flick, losing the subversive edge that made the arcade games so popular in the first place. On a technical level, it’s pretty disastrous. The constant 90s techno soundtrack gets exhausting and ruins any chance of building real tension, making the whole thing feel like a long, dated music video. The low budget is painfully obvious in the sets, which look more like abandoned warehouses with cheap fog than an epic alien realm. The CGI for Reptile looks like a primitive console game, and the costumes look like fresh, clean Halloween outfits rather than real combat gear. Even the practical Goro animatronic, while ambitious for the time, ends up looking stiff, badly dubbed, and unintentionally funny. Ultimately, the movie collapses under its own limitations. What should have been a heavy martial arts epic gets ruined by lifeless acting, dated effects, and bad action choreography. The studio's censorship gutted the franchise's aggressive edge. Still, watching a movie is a subjective experience. While a critical analysis exposes its broken structure, you might still have fun watching it. It’s a great case study on how hard it is to adapt a game into a movie, so watch it yourself—your nostalgia might forgive its flaws a lot easier than I did.