Mortal Kombat: Movie Review

Round 1! Fight! Whether you remember the arcade game or have played the newer iterations on modern consoles, Mortal Kombat is a long standing staple in the gaming world since 1992. But now it’s time to turn our attention to Mortal Kombat, the 2021 movie, and how it does in telling a story based on the 1v1 video game. Is it a flawless victory or a fatality? I guess we’ll find out after the trailer and, as always, spoilers are on their way.

The Mortal Kombat movie is a 2021 action fantasy film directed by Simon McQuoid (his directorial debut). The main cast includes Lewis Tan as our protagonist Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano and Mehcad Brooks as Jax while two of the best know character, Sub-Zero and Scorpion, are portrayed by Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada respectively. The film as a whole does tell a complete story without a real foray into the Mortal Kombat tournament that was mentioned but with how the plot ends that’s understandable.

The film follows former MMA fighter, Cole Young in his efforts to avoid the attacks of one of Outworld’s most feared Mortal Kombat champions, Sub-Zero, before reaching the Temple of Raiden who will train him to be one of Earthworld’s Mortal Kombat champions. Along the way, he meets Major Jackson ‘Jax’ Briggs, Kano, Sonya Blade and, upon arriving at Raiden’s (Tadanobu Asano) temple, Liu Kang (Ludo Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang). If you’re a fan of the games, those names will mean something to you; if not, well these are who the plot revolves around so they must be the good guys. Or are they? Dun dun dun!!! Our heroes must unlock their arcana which are hidden powers that are unique to the fighters that bare the dragon symbol identifying them as a champion for Earthworld. Otherwise they will be a liability in the Mortal Kombat tournament that is fast approaching. Meanwhile in Outworld, the leader, Shang Tsung, is doing all he can to prevent Earthworld’s victory so that Outworld can take over Earth. Those are the stakes of Mortal Kombat, not that there’s any real weight behind those stakes in the movie; it’s mentioned a few times and left at that.

First things first, if a film is going to hint at a sequel like Mortal Kombat did, you’d better hope it’s already in pre-production because, if it isn’t, the possibility of a sequel is in the hands of your audience. So either make a fantastic movie that is beloved by die hard fans so much that the demand for a sequel is there or just pray that the film makes enough profits to warrant a sequel. Either way, don’t hint at a sequel without a guarantee for said sequel. Plus, for the beginning of a rebooted franchise, two of the bigger characters of the original games were excluded so don’t expect to see Johnny Cage or Kitana in this movie. However, the fact that there was a hint towards a sequel does suggest that we may see new iterations of characters that were killed off, much like how the games have dealt with killing off characters and alternate timelines.

On the plus side, the score throughout the film was amazing. Tension oozed from the huge bass notes heard during the film and really amped up the action and fight sequences in the film. The fight scenes themselves were well choreographed and slick and the stunt crew definitely earned their wages in this movie with a stunt crew that looks to contain more people than the actual cast. The action is heaped with plenty of gore and video game quantities of blood and guts so it’s not for the faint of heart. Costume choices and designs are very well done and make the in-game outfits suitable for the real world and were, overall, a good translation of the costume designs provided from the source.

Overall, the film is probably a good starting point for a franchise if they do continue down that route but, personally, I would have preferred a bit more Kombat and a little less Mortal in my Mortal Kombat movie. Of course, I get that the aim was to tell a story based on the video game but only time will tell whether or not there will be a demand for a sequel and if the story telling will be allowed to continue. If the plot is allowed to continue, writers may need to consider speeding up less action packed plot driven aspects of the film as, at times, the plot began to drag during the middle of the movie. It’s not a bad movie and even if it does have some moments of dodgy CGI, overall, it’s not the worst video game movie I’ve seen (That spot is reserved for that Street Fighter movie with Kylie Minogue in it). It’s a victory for Mortal Kombat but it needs some work to make it a flawless one.