Mortal Kombat (2021) - Film Review

It's a fairly common trope in Hollywood these days for video game movies to suck. I'm not sure why, but Super Mario Bros. and Double Dragon kind of started the awfulness and the train wreck has found a way to keep going all the way to modern-day. Some may argue that Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokémon Detective Pikachu have since saved the genre, but I'd disagree. Two middling movies hardly makes up for decades of awfulness. Many say that the original Mortal Kombat movie is the best of the bunch, and while I tend to agree there, I would say it's not entirely fair as that movie blatantly rips off Enter the Dragon. Of course, I can enjoy schlocky video game movies, as my reviews of BloodRayne and Max Payne can attest to, but I certainly would never call them cinematic achievements.

*

Where You Can Find It: I saw this on HBO Max where it is available for all subscribers, however it is also currently in theaters.

General Information 
Mortal Kombat is a martial arts action fantasy movie that was first released on 23 April 2021 (it was released on 8 April 2021 internationally). The U.S. version of the film was simultaneously released in both theaters and on the video app, HBO Max. It is Simon McQuoid's first feature film as a director, and is based off of the popular Mortal Kombat video game series. It is also the third entry in the Mortal Kombat movie series with New Line Cinemas producing along with Warner Bros. Pictures distributing. As of 27 April 2021, the movie has nearly recouped its $55 million budget, however the fact that it is on a subscription service as well may muddy the financial returns. Thus far, it seems to be more of a commercial success than a critical one as it has a less-than-stellar 44 Metascore on Metacritic, as well as a 55% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes.  

The Story

Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is a below-average MMA fighter who happens to also be the descendant of a long line of Japanese ninja warriors. Part of his ancestors' dynasty is that they have ties to what is known as Mortal Kombat, which is a martial arts tournament held between the representatives of Earth (known as "Earth Realm") and an evil dimension called "Outworld." As the next tournament nears, Cole is approached by military soldiers, Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to help defend Earth Realm, but Cole's ancestral nemesis, Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), shows up and begins hunting them. Sub-Zero's boss, Shang Tsung (Chin Han), has a nefarious plan to kill all of Earth Realm's forces before the tournament begins so Cole will have to rally the forces of Earth Realm together to fend off the apocalyptic threat.

Generally speaking, my assessment on this movie's plot development is that whatever drugs the writers were on during its inception must have worn off by about halfway through as everything quickly falls apart. The first act sets up a decent enough premise that martial artists are protecting Earthy by competing in a high-stakes tournament, however we never see a tournament, and apparently the gods that keep the two realms separated are "too lazy" to prevent Shang Tsung from cheating. The first act is high-paced with a genuine sense of urgency, however everything grinds to a halt during the second act when plot contrivances like teleportation and magical barriers start to pop up. The third act essentially outright forgoes any plot at all by just having characters fight each other in random places with little to no reasoning behind it.

**

This is the best explanation we get for why the plot of this film happens

The greatest sin of the film though is undeniably its awful protagonist, Cole. Cole is not an original character from the Mortal Kombat franchise, which is fine, but the audience is never given a reason as to why he was injected into the film. He's wholly unremarkable and uninteresting, which is only enhanced by some of the awful dialogue written for him. One could argue that his character was made as a vessel for the audience so that they could be introduced to the Mortal Kombat world, however other characters like Sonya and Kano (Josh Lawson) are also new to the setting and are far more interesting to see. Considering there's a part of the movie where Cole is essentially removed from the story for a time, it feels like even the director didn't want him in the film.

Special Effects/Atmosphere

If a movie is going to focus on martial arts, it is likely reasonable to expect that the fight choreography should be good. To its credit, this film's choreography isn't bad per se, but I've frankly seen better. There aren't as many jump-cuts as there might be for something like one of the awful Resident Evil movies, but it still lacks anything that makes it particularly stand out. I will admit that the fight scenes are easily the best part of the movie, but I'm not sure if that's due to the scenes just being good or the story being so bad.

***

The fights between Scorpion and Sub-Zero are the best

I thought the special effects were pretty cool to look at. I loved the fireballs, lightning bolts, and magic on display and some of the CGI was pretty cool to see. One of my more favorite effects was the CGI version of Reptile that could go invisible. Not all of the special effects work though. For some reason Shang Tsung and Mileena (Sisi Stringer) had audio mixing done to their voices, which made them sound uncomfortably peculiar.

The Acting

Josh Lawson and Horoyuki Sanada (Scorpion) are the best of the lot and somehow dodged the awful writing. Lawson is possibly the only one in this movie that looks like he's having fun and his enthusiasm is infectious while he's on screen. Many of his lines of dialogue were snappy and actually felt organic, which makes me wonder if he simply ad-libbed most of his lines as opposed to following the dull script. Sanada has a lot less to say and do, however he maintains an intimidating presence in all of his scenes and I can say he certainly elevates the scenes he's in.

****

At least Josh Lawson had fun

The rest of the main cast are entirely forgettable, which is a darn shame as I was particularly disappointed with Chin Han's performance as Shang Tsung. Moving past the fact that his performance pales in comparison to Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's flair in the 1995, it just feels like Han was wasted. I've seen Han perform well in other work and his performance in the Marco Polo series is probably the best part of that entire show. It seems we may see him again if there's a sequel to this, but I think his time is best spent elsewhere as I honestly think he can do better.

The Best of the Best: The cool fight scenes.

The Worst of the Worst: The boring protagonist.

Calhooey Score: 3/10 - Bad

Would I Recommend?

*****

Even Raiden knows this is bad

The more I think about this movie, the more I dislike it. The plot gets worse as it goes on until it outright expires before the viewer's very eyes. There's nothing of quality that particularly stands out when you compare this to anything else. If you want a decent Mortal Kombat movie, watch the 1995 version. If you want a Mortal Kombat film that is so bad it's good, then watch the sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annhilation. Martial arts fans would likely more enjoy Bloodsport or Enter the Dragon. As it stands now, this latest entry in the franchise only perpetuates the belief that video games simply don't translate well to film.

-------------------------------------------------Spoiler Comments-----------------------------------------------------

• Cole's arcana appears to be that he's really good at getting his ass beat.
• Jax walking around with his baby arms cracks me up so much.
• I guess he got sponsored by Tesla when he needed to save Sonya.
• Also, I can understand losing the arms was bad enough, but crashing one's skull on rebar and concrete from multiple stories seems almost worse...
• Outworld must not have many fighters if they still use Sub-Zero after nearly 300 years.
• Since the gods are too lazy to be in the movie, is there a particular reason why Raiden didn't want to help fight off Shang Tsung's forces, or are gods lazy in general?
• I wish my fights with Goro in the video games went as easily as the one in this movie went.
• I'd feel more bad for Liu Kang if he had actually tried to save Kung Lao. Standing off to the side and shouting "no" while Shang Tsung sucks the soul from his body does not count as something productive.
• How did Cole's family survive being frozen in blocks of ice? You know what, never mind. I stopped caring by this point.

----------------------------------------------------References--------------------------------------------------

*Wikipedia. (2020). Mortal Kombat film image. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_(2021_film).

**Mortal Kombat. (2020). Shang Tsung image. HBO. Retrieved from: https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GYGYKfQwaKLheqwEAAAEC?af_channel=Owned&pid=hbomax&c=buy_flow_complete.

***The World is Yours! (n.d.). Sub-Zero fighting Scorpion gif. Tumbex. Retrieved from: https://www.tumbex.com/mortal-kombattore-115.tumblr/posts?tag=sub+zero.

****Mortal Kombat Movie. (n.d.). Kano with laser gif. Giphy. Retrieved from: https://giphy.com/explore/eye-laser.

*****Mortal Kombat. (2020). Raiden death image. HBO. Retrieved from:  https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GYGYKfQwaKLheqwEAAAEC?af_channel=Owned&pid=hbomax&c=buy_flow_complete.