The Original "Mortal Kombat" Movie is Not Good

In preparation of the new "Mortal Kombat" movie I decided the other day that I wanted to revisit the original two movies that came out in the 90's. I haven't seen them in quite some time, and from what I remembered, I liked them but they were also kind of dumb.

I don't play many video games unless it is college football related. But the "Mortal Kombat" games I always found to be exciting for a little bit. I liked that I could mash buttons and win fights. I also liked to do the fatalities when I learned how to do those. I also remember being intrigued by these games because adults said they were violent. That was almost all I needed before turning the game on. So in playing the game with friends, when they announced a movie was going to be made, that had me stoked. I could not wait to see it. And when I went to the theaters, as a 13 year old mind you, the movie lived up to the hype for me. Yes, it was dumb and didn't follow the rules of the game, but hey, they said the famous lines and I got to hear the crazy techno song. That was all I needed at that time in my life. I don't remember "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" at all, but I will rewatch that because I'm a completionist and have OCD. The movie that came out in 2021 was great for about four minutes. That opening scene is one of the coolest fights put to film. And they finally got an R rating, so the movie was filled with swear words and gore. But after that first scene the movie fell off a cliff. They focused on a character they created for the movie and that took away all the fun of what the game was all about. They also, and this goes for every movie, say there's going to be a big tournament, but they never really follow the rules of a tournament. The fighters just fight whoever they want and the only reward is their life. And even though I am ragging on the movies to this point, I'm still going to see the new movie and I'm sure I'll have some kind of complaint coming out of it. But that is not the point of my blog today. After rewatching the 1995 "Mortal Kombat", I have some thoughts.

First off, it is a dreadfully boring and bad movie. The fight scenes are lame. They only go on for about a minute. There's one fight where Liu Kang gets to go off for a little longer, but it still was very boring. The effects were horrendous as well. This came out in 95, so that means special effects were getting so much better. I mean, we got "Jurassic Park" two years before this movie. That movie gave us real looking dinosaurs. Hell, in the 70's we got great effects with "Star Wars". In this movie the effects were so lazy and slapdash. It was like looking at an old screen saver on a computer. You can literally see the green screen behind the actors. It is a true mess. It feels like they had some new people on the job, or they just decided to throw some nonsense together and put it on screen.

Then we have the actors. They were very bad and over the top. The scenery chewing was just bad too. It was not funny bad either, it was annoying. It really got to me. I despised Johnny Cage as well. I never liked his character to begin with, and this actor's portrayal really frustrated me. He was quippy and tried much too hard to be cool. Sonya was fine, but that is because I have enjoyed that actor's work ever since she was in "Billy Madison". And to cast Christopher Lambert as Raiden is problematic in every possible way. The voice he used was offensive. He wore Raiden's signature hat and that felt very wrong seeing it on screen. He had long white hair, which is fine, but it still felt weird to me. Raiden is an older lord who should be played by an Asian actor. They messed up in the second movie as well, casting James Remar. I hope they clean this mess up if he is in the new movie. To have two older white actors play him is very, very wrong.

But what made me most upset was the whole plot and story of this first movie. They kept mentioning a tournament and how they were going to fight the best fighters in the world. They said it over and over again. But when they get to the place, they all pick and choose who they're going to fight. There's no tournament. There's no climbing up the leaderboard. They all just decided on the spot who they were going to fight and they fought wherever they happened to be at any given moment.

I loathed this rewatch. I couldn't believe that I used to like this movie. Don't do what I'm doing unless you're a glutton for punishment. These movies are not good or fun at all. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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