Mortal Kombat – 1995 Movie

When I first saw the Mortal Kombat movie, thirteen years ago, before I was even ten years old, I think I enjoyed it. Mortal Kombat was cool, so a Mortal Kombat movie must be cool too, right?

Well, I watched the movie again yesterday. And to summarize, in one word, my thoughts on what should happen to whoever was responsible for this film:

Fatality.

Watching that abomination was an awkward experience in shame and embarrassment, as the horridly portrayed and miserably acted characters stumbled from one disjointed scene to another, with the occasional tidbit of uncomfortably unfunny humor thrown in like bacon bits sprinkled atop a chocolate cake.

I wanted the movie to be great, or even decent. I wanted to be able to at least say, “Well, it may not appeal to the average movie-goer, but at least it appeals to us MK fans.” I half expected someone to walk on stage halfway through the movie, directly face the camera, and say, “Just kidding. Well show you the *real* movie now.”

The plot was solid – well, solid enough for an action flick. Warriors are chosen to fight in the Mortal Kombat tournament in order to save the world from complete destruction, because of some silly rules set by gods or demigods or what-have-you. Fine. In fact, keeping the plot as simple as the games was probably the smartest thing the producers did – too often do movies based on a game lose the essence of what made it great by throwing in some indulgent plot.

Other than the serviceable plot, this movie’s only redeeming quality was the Mortal Kombat theme song, played in full at the credits, like some form of reward for having endured the horrendous movie. I try to ignore the fact that they played terribly cut versions of the song during two fights scenes.

With a minimal plot, the focus of the movie was on the abysmal characterization. Here’s a rundown on the characters:

Johnny Cage. They actually managed to find an actor that seems to be as much of a loser as the character. And then they one-upped the loser aspect by making him wear some office shirt with rolled up sleeves. This was actually the best-acted character. Which is surprising, given that Johnny Cage is an action movie actor: he’s the one character I expected to act over-the-top while constantly showing off his bad acting talent. Brownie points for throwing in his shadow kick.

Goro: The four-armed beast was portrayed decently, though far more verbose than I imagined. His lower arms seemed to be a bit too low, giving the impression of a giant insect.

Kano: More like lame-o. Even if you ignore his striped parachute pants and complete lack of any decent fighting skills, the movie reduced this criminal mastermind to a boorish brute that seemed unable to handle anything more difficult than bouncer work at an unpopular club. He uses his trademark knife to threaten Sonya, before getting his ass handed to him. What happened to his summersaults and laser-eye? I guess they decided to replace it with a lot of “suck.”

Kitana: The only similarities between the movie character and the game character are that she is the step daughter of the emperor, Shao Kahn, and that she fights. No war fans, no mask, no blue outfit. Her only purpose in the movie is to give some unnecessarily cryptic hint to Liu Kang on how to defeat Sub-Zero: “Use the element that gives life.” Why not simply say, “throw water at him while he’s casting his freeze shit”? Useless character.

Liu Kang: Yeah yeah, everyone loves Liu Kang. Well I don’t. He’s a staple of Mortal Kombat, and I would miss him if he was ever written off, but he’s always been vanilla for me; nothing but wallpaper. The movie rendition is just as bland. But at least they got an actor to portray him well enough, and managed to throw in his bicycle kick and a close-impact fireball.

Raiden: Ugh. They took the wise and powerful god of thunder, and turned him into the Jar Jar Binks of the movie. His voice, aside from being poorly acted, had some ridiculous effect applied to it, and he would make the occasional wise-crack which no one found the slightest bit humorous – neither the other characters, nor the audience. He uses his teleport and lightning bolt abilities, but both effects were poorly rendered. Easily the character I hated the most in the movie.

Reptile: This character starts off as a small, Gollum-like bipedal chameleon lizard, rendered in terrible CGI. He later gets thrown into a statue and transforms into a human ninja form for some reason, gets his ass kicked, transforms back, and then dissolves into roaches and worms when he dies. Apparently, things don’t have to make sense in movies.

Scorpion: I’d like to point out that all three ninjas (Reptile, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero) have their arms hidden under black cloth in the movie, as opposed to exposed in the game - undoubtedly to hide the fact that they couldn’t find actors with muscles. His signature harpoon attack was altered to a living snake-like being with a beak that shot from a slit in his palm, and promptly died when it struck a tree instead of Johnny Cage. Ridiculous change, especially given that, based on the movie alone, we have no idea what that snake-thing would have done. Scorpion, being a revenant of sorts, is supposed to have clear, white eyes, with no iris or pupil. For the movie, the actor wore some kind of white contact lenses, which instead made it seem like he had cataracts. He says his trademark “get over here!” but follows it up with “come here!” and “get down here!” Once is enough, kthxbai. We get to see him take off his mask to reveal his flame-spitting skull, which was well-done, compared to the rest of the movie.

Sub-Zero: I suppose they did the best they could with this character, although the events leading up to his death involve him using some freeze ability that seems to take an eternity to charge up, giving Liu Kang plenty of time to think up a plan: throwing a bucket of water towards the ninja, passing through the aura of cold, somehow freezing the water into the shape of a stalactite, which proceeds to impale Sub-Zero through the gut.

Shang Tsung: Possibly the most believable character, though he made incorrect use of the classic “Fatality” phrase. But I forgive him, because Liu Kang made incorrect use of the classic “Flawless Victory.” Shang Tsung did show some shape-shifting abilities in the movie, but never used them in combat, nor any other sorcerer powers other than summoning a bunch of easily-vanquished warriors.

Sonya Blade: After just about everything this character said, I thought to myself, “what a bitch.” It’s as though the producers did everything in their power to make her unlikable. If so, it’s the only thing they succeeded in accomplishing.

Sad. Just sad.