Mortal Kombat (2021 Director, Simon McQuoid)

Let’s get it out of the way. This is an ancestor of the 1992 Midway arcade fighter game, Mortal Kombat and the Paul W.S. Anderson 1995 spin-off film of the same name. I’ll say this from the outset; if you have played the games, you’ll like the film. If you have never played the games then you may feel at a loss as to quite what the hell is going on. I liked the film quite a bit. Not just for the air punching moments after hearing, ‘Test your might’, ‘Kano Wins’, ‘Finish Them’, ‘Flawless Victory’, ‘Fatality’ or ‘Get over here’ but also for the appearance of the characters I have known and loved for years.

I grew up playing Mortal Kombat on the Amiga 600 (this was a very, very early version of a Playstation for those who are wonder what, or whom, Amiga is). I would spend hours trying to complete the game, trying different characters, reading and re-reading the manual the learn the different joystick movements and presses to perform different moves. I also was delighted when the ‘95 film was released and, although quite young at the time, I watched it aghast seeing all my heroes brought to life.

I was into this franchise in a big way! I had a birthday cake with the Mortal Kombat logo on it, I’d talk about it all of the time at school and even try to act out some of the moves. I’d also watched a not-so-bad television series called Mortal Kombat: Conquest which ran from 1998-1999.

There have been plenty of other television series from, what I’d like to call, the Mortal Kombat Universe (MKU), fan-made shorts, graphic novels and there was a sequel to the 1995 film, which I found… meh. So far there have been around 14 game sequels released, so there has been plenty of development in the MKU.

Films developed from games has always been a thing, but for me the ‘95 MK was a clear winner from the 1990s game-to-cinema releases like Street Fighter (1994), Double Dragon (1994) or Super Mario Bros. (1993).

I’ve always quite liked arcade fighting games, not so much into Street Fighter but I was really into the Tekken games. Tekken also has a few films in it's universe. Films with a genuine concerted effort to be taken seriously, with Tekken (2010) and Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge (2014). Which is also, what I feel Mortal Kombat is trying to do here. This Simon McQuoid's debut feature-length film, so I was very excited to see what he'd be doing for this franchise.

The film opens in a forest, we see a remote country dwelling in Japan 1617. A man, Hanzo (Hiroyuki Hasashi) has been working the fields with the help of his young son, who he is bringing home to his mother and her new-born child. Hanzo leaves and returns to his work. There’s a lot of commotion outside of the dwelling and quite a lot of sword play. Bi-Han (Joe Taslim) a sinister looking chap enters the house and proclaims he is looking for Hanzo. Basically, Bi-Han is a bad man, who also has the ability to sort of, freeze the air and produce ice from his finger-tips. Bit strange.

Now, as I’ll say again and again, ‘if you’ve played the games’ you’ll know who this is, did I mention he’s dressed in blue? Eventually a fight breaks out between Bi-Han and Hanzo. What’s interesting is that Hanzo has a hidden rope with a blade on the end of it, which he hides in the sleeves of his robes but can throw, and recall, this rope blade concoction from great distances. Did I mention Hanzo is dressed in sort of brown-yellow-orange? If you’ve played the games..

Hanzo is sadly defeated but not killed, he makes it back to his house only to find his wife and son frozen and, with sadness, he passes away. It begins to rain and we hear thunder… Wait, thunder? Enter Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), God of Thunder who finds Hanzo’s abode with a crying baby, hidden beneath the floor-boards and takes the child away to safety.

We have a little text exposition “Earthrealm is on the verge of catastrophe. Should it lose one more tournament the savage realm of Outworld will invade. But an ancient prophecy foretells that a new group of champions will be united by the rise of Hanzo Hasashi’s blood”. So, there we go – it’s all set up.

Our first encounter of our protagonist is in an MMA locker room. We find Cole Young (Lewis Tan) a struggling fighter who isn’t really all that much. He can take a punch but he doesn’t seem to be able to throw one. Hmm… if only there were a bunch of bad asses who could enlist him to take on a bunch of supernatural enemies! That could really draw his abilities out.

Enter Jax (Mehcad Brooks), ex-military and quite a bad-ass. Good with his firsts. I have to say, this is our first encounter of a real overt Mortal Kombat game character (although not in the original 1995 game). He’s come to find Cole with the help of Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) who had served with Jax. Whoohoo another character and, this time, from the original game. I’m a happy boy already.

Jax and Sonya have been looking for people who have a strange mark on them, kind of like a birthmark but it’s in the shape of the 1992 Midway game logo of Mortal Kombat! Jax and Sonya are looking for ‘chosen ones’ to fight in a tournament called Mortal Kombat. Fighters are chosen from different realms to fight to the death. Now it seems that Earthrealm has lost 9 of these tournaments against the Outworld realm, so if they lose one more, they’ll be 10-0 and it’s a flawless victory!

Some fantastic scenes follow where Cole is pursued by a man who can seem to freeze the air (that can’t be the same dude from 1600’s can it?). Cole ends up with Sonya who has taken a foul-mouthed, Australian mercenary, Kano (Josh Lawson), prisoner. Sonya was tracking a potential ‘chosen one’ but it seemed she arrived just Kano has killed them, and this, somehow, means Kano now has the mark.

We also get a glimpse of the Outworld Realm, where Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is having a natter with Bi-Han (oh it is him from the 1600s). He should be really old. He corrects Shang Tsung, saying he is no longer called Bi-Han, he is called Sub-Zero. It turns out their plan is to kill the fighters before they can even make it to the tournament.

Cole, Sonya, and Kano all travel in search of Raiden and hopefully Jax who are held-up in an old temple. There we find a host of other MK characters and when Shang Tsung comes to visit with his cronies, we get even more! The fighters realise they must train hard to discover their inner strength or as they call it Arcana, which, in game terms, would be like a character’s special ability. They’re given training from Lui Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang).

In the games, Lui Kang would have the ability to throw fireballs and Raiden can harness lightening. The abilities aren’t all elemental, some of them are pretty cool. Kung Lao has a wide, sharp, metal hat that can act as a boomerang or it can perpetually spin and act like a sort of table-saw. I mean, I think that’s pretty cool. My favourite character in the games was Lui Kang, chiefly because he reminded me most of Bruce Lee. That’s the same reason Marshall Law was my favourite in the afore-mentioned Tekken games. I won’t go in to my love of Bruce Lee just now, I’m sure there’ll be a review soon of Enter The Dragon.

There now ensues fight scene after fight scene, very well-choreographed scenes; plenty of slow-motion, plenty of CGI and VFX with some of my beloved characters performing some of my favourite moves along with plenty or blood and guts. We are also treated to an orchestral version of the ‘95 MK Theme which really kept me engrossed. Throughout, what helped was these little snippets and references to the games and the ‘95 production.

It’s hard to talk about the film’s climax and what follows it, but there is a remix of the ’95 theme song as the credits roll – an absolute banger! I will say; that a character is mentioned when ‘Hollywood’ is discussed… Hhhmmm?

For me, Mortal Kombat feels like it stalled. It was geared up and got us ready for some class fights and real insights in to the characters and their motivations, don’t get me wrong, it delivered on the fights but it never quite felt like it got anywhere. There was a clear 3 acts which was all well and good, but it just had an overwhelming feeling of ‘we’ll do more in the sequel, don’t worry about that we’ll get to that’. There were too many fights and too many characters introduced at once and as exciting as that was for me, someone new to the MKU will be quite confused. This left me feeling that every character except Bi-Han and Hanzo was one-dimensional as they only had little crumbs of their background dropped, which I think relied too heavily on you having played the games or watched the films to further your knowledge of them.

A great example of this is that I know Sub-Zero is always paired with Scorpion. The ’95 film just explains that they are the “deadliest of enemies”. In the games they are dressed exactly the same, except Sub-Zero is wearing a blue tunic and Scorpion wears a sort of yellow/orange tunic. We’ve never really seen them apart, not in the games, television series, graphic novels. Just look at the film poster. So when these characters are announcing “I’m called Sub-Zero” and “I’m called Scorpion”, that’s going to mean very little to anyone unfamiliar with the games apart from, they’re just cool names.

I did feel that it attempted to give a legitimacy to what they were doing, like they were giving us a ‘grown-up’ version to enjoy much in the way Tekken or Tekken 2 tried to do. That’s not to say I wasn’t entertained, and I was coming from a place where I have a history with the franchise, so for me this delivered. Chris Wins!