Mortal Kombat (Film Review)

Director(s): Paul W. S. Anderson
Date Released: August 18, 1995

The film’s CGI has not aged well at all.  Reptile looks especially bad in his creature form and…

…Oh, sorry, is me jumping into the thick of the review without a proper introduction confusing?  Because Mortal Kombat seems to believe that’s the most efficient way to start a film.

Here’s a video game film adaptation that is designed to appeal to the series’s fans, and only them because anyone new to the series will be thoroughly confused throughout.  It’s a film made for those wanting to see their favorite violent characters duke it out on the big screen with all sorts of game references—from the series's kickass theme to signature attacks to iconic phrases like “Flawless Victory” or “Get Over Here!”  Does it succeed at satisfying series fans?  Eh, somewhat.  With certain characters, the film delivers a satisfying recreation and screen time, while other characters get the short end of the stick.  Sometimes the action is fun and engaging, and other times its lackluster and bland.  It all depends on what a fan desires to see.  As a story driven film with characters and development, however, Mortal Kombat fails big time—arguably the messiest video game adaptation made at that point, and that’s including Super Mario Bros.

The film’s plot revolves around a tournament called Mortal Kombat, where the realms’s greatest fighters meet to battle one another in combat.  What exactly are realms?  Well, in this universe there are multiple dimensions aside from the one where Earth resides (known as Earthrealm).  A conquering realm known as Outworld wishes to invade and take over Earthrealm but can only do so by winning ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments.  Why?  Because in this universe, there are almighty beings known as the Elder Gods who make the rules.  Outworld has since won nine out of ten required tournaments through the use of its legion of powerful warriors such as the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the four-armed beast-man Goro (played by Tom Woodruff Jr while voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson), and the dastardly color trio of blue, yellow and green—Sub-Zero (Francois Petit), Scorpion (Chris Casamassa) and Reptile (Keith Cooke).  On Earthrealm’s side, the god of thunder Raiden (Christopher Lambert) chooses three warriors to represent Earth in the upcoming Mortal Kombat: movie star/martial artist Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), military officer Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson)—who’s out for revenge against her partner’s killer Kano (Trevor Goddard)—and Shaolin monk/protagonist Liu Kang (Robin Shou).

At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat’s plot was the closest a video game film had come to faithfully adapting its series’s lore.  With a plot so outlandish, however, this ends up being more a curse for the film than a blessing.  At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat was commonly known as a controversial video game series.  Even fans of the games may have only known them as a fighter with gory finishing moves.  Imagine going into a movie expecting a straightforward plot about people battling to the death and being thrown into a tale involving gods and dimensional invasions?  Such a plot risked confusing and/or alienating its majority audience, requiring tactful navigation from the film’s writers when adapting the lore to maintain suspension of disbelief.

And maybe if this had been a video game film adaptation directed by the great Paul Thomas Anderson, such tactful navigation could have been achieved.  But no, it wouldn’t be until the next year that Paul Thomas Anderson would grace cinemas with his remarkable directorial debut Hard Eight—instead, Mortal Kombat was placed in the hands of director Paul W.S. Anderson (a name that will appear many times down the road with future video game adaptations), and boy did he drop the ball here.  Now, imagine if you will the premise I wrote above having all its sentences shuffled around randomly.  Now, imagine half of those sentences being rewritten as vague explanations.  Now, imagine spreading all those sentences throughout an over ninety-minute film and you’ve got Mortal Kombat the movie.

Mortal Kombat’s first nineteen minutes are spent throwing s#!% at the viewer with only sprinkles of information.  The film jarringly cuts from character to character, hastily introducing backgrounds and motivations for a plot it has yet to explain.  No central objective is given, nor is a protagonist firmly established.  It takes seven minutes and several character introductions before the film even tries explaining the tournament, yet even then the explanation is hazy while leaving important details out.  A simple opening crawl or narration could have easily fixed such issue, rather than throwing its viewers into a chaotic disarray of names and subplots.

Additionally, Mortal Kombat does a piss poor job at establishing why its chosen Earth warriors are, well, chosen!  Neither Liu Kang, Johnny Cage nor Sonya displays any genuine feats of strength before arriving at the tournament.  Sonya is only shown using guns (which are never used at the tournament), Johnny’s displays are all an act, and Liu’s sole feat is getting his ass kicked by Raiden.  It’s not until thirty-six minutes in that the trio displays actual hand-to-hand combat—up until then there’s no established reasoning why these three are Earth’s best choices as fighters.

  

Well, that's not entirely true.  Raiden does give a really contrived reasoning that it is foreseen one of them will decide the outcome of the tournament—aka the plot says they’re important.  Sonya is the most apparent example of such plot contrivance—displaying much weaker feats than Liu and Johnny.  Shang Tsung even realizes this and takes advantage of such poorly thought out plot device by making sure Sonya enters the tournament and his men go easy on her—giving him a chance to challenge her and have an easy tenth victory to begin the invasion (believe me, Sonya doesn’t prove him wrong either).

Adding on to Mortal Kombat's shoddy storytelling is its near-lack of bonding between the main cast.  The film gives little screen time for the main trio to interact with one another, and when they do it's mostly spent on arguing, listening to Raiden, and, in Johnny’s case, objectifying the other two.  And yet, by the last third, the trio act as if they’re old friends who’ve gotten plenty of screen time together.  In one scene (on a romantic beach setting) Johnny tells Sonya he’s decided to face a tough challenger first since he couldn’t bear to see her killed.  At this point, the pair has had little over a minute and thirty seconds of direct interaction (I timed it), all of which has been spent arguing—yet suddenly, he is intimately close with Sonya (that’s movie magic for ya!)

What the story should have done was:

• Open with a brief explanation of the Mortal Kombat tournament
• Cut to displaying Liu, Johnny and Sonya’s feats of strength in hand-to-hand combat
• Have Raiden collect each of them, explain they’ve been chosen to represent Earth in a tournament for the fate of it
• Have a training montage where Raiden teaches the trio as they bond with one another
• Have the group set off to the tournament

There, now instead of the film’s first third being a chaotic mess, it clearly establishes the plot, characters, and objectives, showcases the trio’s feats of strength, training, and bonding with one another, and sends them—and the audience—off to the tournament far been informed and prepared.

But that’s not what the audience gets, and it's most likely not what they came to see.  If you’re watching Mortal Kombat, chances are you weren’t drawn in to see developed plot and character (no matter how nice such elements would be).  You’re here to see violent action scenes and gruesome fatalities—the series's trademarks.  Well, sucks for you on the latter part because this is a PG-13 rated film, not R rated, meaning no excessive blood and gore here (which is understandable though, considering an R rating would have been the kiss-of-death for Mortal Kombat to be a commercial success).  As for the violent action scenes, the film actually delivers here, for the most part.  Let’s go over the tournament’s many fights and see what it gives.

MAJOR SPOILERS BEGIN:

Round 1: Liu vs Fodder Character

It’s a fun introductory match and goes exactly as expected, with Shang Tsung sucking out the loser’s soul.

Round 2: Sonya vs Kano

An enjoyable match where Sonya succeeds in avenging her partner’s murder.  There’s an entertaining subversion near the end where it looks as if Sonya is going to spare Kano’s life after Shang Tsung commands her to finish him.  Kano asks Sonya to give him a break, and she does just that by breaking his neck.  It’s both funny and satisfying to see one of the good guys not go down the expected path.  Enjoy Sonya’s win here, however, because it’s the last time she fights in the film.  Yeah, the writers decided to make her “character development” be to accept when she needs help from others…by having her accept being a damsel in distress and letting the boys fight for her (hooray for backward development).

Round 3: Johnny vs Scorpion…in a forest for some reason

Yeah, the film just suddenly cuts to Johnny facing Scorpion in a forest.  There’s no transition to it and no explanation given as to why they’re not fighting in a tournament ring (presumably, it’s because Johnny would have lost easily without the environmental advantage).  It’s a flashy cool, albeit lengthy fight with some, very outdated special effects.  The series’s co-creator Ed Boom returns to do Scorpion’s voice and Johnny even does his signature autograph finisher from the games.  For how annoying Johnny can be at times, he does get a funny joke in every now and then—such as an earlier scene where Johnny mistakes Liu for a dock worker.

Round 4: Liu vs Kitana

A substandard fight filled with your substandard tropes.  Badass princess fighter kicks protagonist around for a while as he holds back, teaches him a few lessons, and is then quickly defeated by him.  No one dies here as well (Friendship. Friendship?).

Round 5: Liu…again (not really following any brackets here are they) vs Sub-Zero

Liu defeats one of Mortal Kombat’s most iconic characters with a bucket of water.  I’m not joking.

Rounds 6 through 27: Goro vs Lots of Fodder Characters

First off, I love Goro’s design here.  A mixture of practical effects from a man in a suit to puppeteers controlling his upper half makes for an awesome display that looks far more realistic than the crappy CGI used for Scorpion and Reptile.  The entire section is meant to display how tough Goro is by kicking the ass of every other contestant aside from our main trio, including Art Lean—the film’s token black guy who previously gets about two lines and zero screen time of him fighting before being killed by Goro (who doesn’t rip Art’s body apart because PG-13).  Johnny is naturally, devastated by the death of such a close companion—who’s he spent all of two brief scenes with—and challenges Goro for revenge.

Round 28: Johnny vs Goro

Johnny avenges Art with his signature nut punch (the only dignified way to avenge a death) followed by some sneaky hits to Goro, knocking him off a cliff.  Sonya then gets kidnapped by Shang Tsung—screaming all the way as she’s dragged to Outworld (hooray for faux-action females).  Liu and Johnny pursue Shang Tsung to Outworld with Reptile following close.

Round 29: Liu vs Reptile

Another cool yet lengthy battle (where is Johnny during this long fight?).  The film wisely has Reptile gain a humanoid actor body for the fight, replacing his notably ugly CGI form (the film’s worst CGI) that was shoddy even for the 1990s.

Round 30: Liu vs Shang Tsung

A sweet fight sequence—with that kick-ass theme music—where Shang Tsung summons undead soldiers to fight Liu, who defeats them and proceeds to beat the ever-loving crap out of Tsung in a satisfying defeat.

MAJOR SPOILERS END

What Mortal Kombat ends up being depends on what the viewer is looking for.  The film provides a relatively faithful adaptation of its video game series, though it suffers in recreating the notorious fatalities due to a PG-13 rating.  As a mindless popcorn flick with fun, engaging action sequences, Mortal Kombat can provide mild entertainment.  As a three-act story with characters, however, Mortal Kombat fails spectacularly—providing flat, one-note characters, paper-thin bonds and one hell of a messy plot.  If you're a fan of the games, or just care to watch some fast-food action, then Mortal Kombat may be worth a watch.  If not, then it's best to skip it entirely.