Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick:
You would not necessarily expect a video game built around crudely animated characters ripping each other’s spines out to have a great deal of longevity and influence, but the original Mortal Kombat game launched in 1992 and here we are almost thirty years later, still ripping each other’s spines out. The animation has improved.
Mortal Kombat’s success (and controversy) was such that it was one of the first video games to get a big screen adaptation (give or take a Super Mario brother or two) in 1995 with Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat ’95 did well enough to spawn a sequel, Annihilation, which promptly annihilated the movie franchise.
But Mortal Kombat kept on (mortal) kombatting, and so for years another film has been kicked around. For the last decade, horror maestro (and octopus-playing-drums GENIUS) James Wan has been attached as a producer.
Mortal Kombat ’21 finally arrived in theaters and on HBO Max, directed by first-timer Simon McQuoid and featuring all the fatalities you could ask for. The film stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, a wholly original character whose life of regular combat gets turned upside down when he learns he is destined to fight in a new kind of kombat. The kind that is spelled wrong, and is mortal.
You see there’s this tournament between the different realms and…you know what, don’t worry it. Suffice it to say there are good kombatants and bad kombatants. You got Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and a guy with robot arms named Jax (Mehcad Brooks), and an ice guy named Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), there’s a dude with a hat that’s like a murder-hat and another guy with fire powers and a girl with a skull face and a dude that’s just, like, a lizard, and there’s a wizard, and an Australian, and then there’s a guy who is wizard-esque but is actually a god and I think one guy was like a robot but like a ghost-robot? One dude was large and had four arms. Look it’s a whole…it’s a whole thing.
Mortal Kombat ’21 has proven to be somewhat divisive. Some viewers have delighted in the loopy and gory fare, while others have raised objections over the proficiency of the (often non-stop) fight choreography and shooting/cutting, while fans of the game have been both receptive to the movie’s copious amount of fan service, and aggrieved by some of the big choices made in adaptation (such as making a movie about the Mortal Kombat tournament in which said tournament never actually takes place).
Where does the Two Cents team land on all this? Read on to find out!
— Brendan
Next Week’s Pick:
Warrrriorrrrrs… Come out to playyyyayeay!!
Action classic The Warriors is on HBO Max in its original unmolested theatrical version! For many viewers who have some to the film more recently, the abysmal director’s cut — the only version on Blu-ray — may be the only version you’ve ever seen. Come watch The Warriors as God intended, completely free of Comic Sans. (They also have the director’s cut if you wanna watch that one too).
— Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
The Team:
As a diehard fan of the video game series since I first played in the arcades as a child, Mortal Kombat was probably my most anticipated film of 2021. Likely my favorite game of all time, I’m a sucker for the cheesy original film and was stoked on a fresh take. The games has rich storytelling and lore, so I was curious what direction they’d go.
With a new story that took pieces from various games and peripheral tales the series has told, I rather enjoyed this new take. It has some inconsistencies and varies in tone from campy to serious at times, but it all worked for me. Bloody fatalities, solid fighting, and beloved characters… what more can I ask for? (@thepaintedman)
Well, I liked it.
I come to this movie knowing/caring nothing about the games or previous movies beyond the most meme-worthy elements. Watched with no frame of reference for a larger franchise, Mortal Kombat ’21 was a perfectly entertaining use of two hours. Some of the fights were cut a little too quick and shot a little too close for my personal tastes, but McQuoid largely does right by his talented cast and the big, gooey fatalities are all impressively staged and executed (natch). There’s a death by spinning hat that got a howl out of me, and another kill paying off a throwaway joke in the first act that had me gasping for air.
Mostly, I want to highlight how game the entire ensemble is for this material. I’ve seen some refer to this film as being overly serious (especially in comparison to the colorful, campy ’95 film) but that’s not really it. Like the best B-movies, Mortal Kombat ’21 presents its baffling universe and ludicrous mythology with an absolutely straight face, and the cast delivers every painful line of dialogue like they’re doing Shakespeare in the park. It’s walking a wild tonal balance where you’re invited to laugh at these proceedings, but the movie never once lets on that it’s in on the joke. Which makes the joke that much funnier.
Look, someone gets killed with a hat! I don’t know what more you want me to say, that shit ruled. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Perhaps a compelling plot or emotional connection is a little bit much to ask of a fighting game turned into a movie in which the cast of characters are most of what matters to the intellectual property as a whole. But part of the challenge of adapting a wildly popular thing from one medium to another is to find a way to make what works in an arcade cabinet work for the passive watcher of the silver screen. I read that co-writer Greg Russo is a genuine fan of the Mortal Kombat game series and knew deep down what fans of the franchise were really hoping to see and worked hard to be faithful to the game lore. And I suspect he may very well have been on to something and that many massive Mortal Kombat fans will find much to like in this latest big screen adaptation. General audiences, on the other hand, may scratch their heads at a sprawling cast of characters all defined more by a costume, catch phrase, or signature move than any crucial narrative reason for them to exist.
But, never fear Mortal Kombat fans… most of your favorite heroes and villains will indeed make an appearance on screen in 2021’s edition of the franchise. And in many cases they’ll at least be played by actors of similar lineage to the characters (i.e. it’s not a white dude playing Lord Raiden). Most of them will provide a somewhat slavish representation of the characters you know from the games. They’ll perform some kind of familiar fatality or martial arts move that you may recognize. They’ll probably say something like “test your might” or “flawless victory.” Russo is either giving fans what they want or just cramming as many game references as possible into his movie. (@Ed_Travis)
Read more of Ed’s thoughts HERE.
Mortal Kombat is one of my favorite game series and I very much looked forward to this new screen adaptation. One of the most interesting aspects of getting a new MK movie after a couple decades is getting to see this expanded version of what was in 1995 a nascent concept — the franchise has a deep lore which has been greatly expanded over the course of more than a dozen games, with all kinds of rivalries and backstories for an ever expanding lineup of characters and factions.
The film gets into some of this, opening with the tragedy of Hanzo Hasashi, though a lot is left oddly unexplained: the rivalry between Hasashi and Bi-Han or their respective clans isn’t expounded on. Some additional exposition here would’ve lent more weight to the setup.
The film’s most worrying aspects from the trailer were the rando protagonist (who needs a new character with dozens to choose from?) and the depiction of Kano as oddly charming, but both of these threads were handled pretty well — I found Kano’s scene-stealing arc particularly satisfying.
There’s been some hand-wringing about the movie not depicting the namesake tournament, but I’d venture to guess that the folks complaining about that are the same ones who’d take issue with that version of the film as too similar to the prior one. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick:
https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GXxWcggKPnsPDwgEAAAoE:type:feature