Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat (2021)

Starring: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Mechad Brooks, Chin Han, Max Huang, Sisi Stringer, Laura Brent, Matilda Kimber
Director: Simon McQuoid
Action Director: Chan Griffin

Although I am one of the few people who do not actively hate Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, most people do and that was reflected in its disappointing box office returns against a higher budget than that of the first movie. Plans for a third film were underway—Robin Shou had signed a contract for a trilogy—but numerous script issues, cast changes, and what have you just kept on pushing the project back. The project was postponed indefinitely and one of the producers went so far as to try to sue Midway Games for claiming that a third film was still in the works. When Warner Brothers bought up New Line Cinema in 2008 and later Midway’s assets (Midway being the publisher of Mortal Kombat). They eventually opted to reboot the franchise rather than continue it.

The first attempt was when Warner and New Line hired director Kevin Tancharoen to adapt his Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short into a feature-length film. A budget of about 40-50 million dollars was allocated to the project, but it ended up not being enough for what Tancharoen wanted to do. About four years later in 2015, James Wan, best known for the Saw movies and the Conjuring universe, signed on as producer for a new adaptation. First-time Australian director Simon McQuoid signed on the following year to put Greg Russo’s script to film. It was another three years before the script was complete and the film began production.

The movie opens in early 17^th century Japan, where a ninja named Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada, of Royal Warriors and Shogun’s Ninja) of the Ryo-Shirai Clan is spending some time with his wife and son. While he’s out getting water for the garden, a band of blue-clad ninja show up and start murdering everyone. When Hanzo returns, he finds his wife and son frozen to death outside the house…despite being a nice, sunny day. Hanzo goes into shinobi slaughter mode with the ninja that attack him before coming face to face with his family’s killer: Bi-Han (Joe Taslim, of The Raid: Redemption and The Night Comes for Us). The two go at it until Hanzo sustains mortal wounds from his own rope-dart-kunai weapon. His body bursts into flames the moment he expires and the lightning god Raiden shows up to rescue his infant daughter.

Cut to the present time. Cole Young (Lewis Tan, of Deadpool and Wolverine and Fistful of Vengeance) is a struggling MMA fighter whose greatest days are behind him. These days, he mainly gets his work playing the fall guy in smaller venues for up-and-coming fighters. After one such fight, he is visited by a mysterious guy named Jax (Mehcad Brooks, of “Supergirl” and “True Blood”), who notices his dragon-shaped birthmark during the fight. Later that evening, Young is having some ice cream with his wife and daughter when they witness something strange: a localized snowfall right above their table. The snow quickly becomes a deadly hailstorm and they are rescued by Jax, who drives them away from the source of the ice storm: Bi-Han, who now goes by the moniker Sub-Zero.

Jax eventually gets them trapped in an alley with Sub-Zero on the other side. He quickly pulls out some heavy-duty military-grade assault rifle and faces off with Sub-Zero, telling Cole to get his family to safety and look for a Sonya Blade in Gary, Indiana. Jax throws down with Sub-Zero, but exits the fight minus two arms (an obvious reference to Jax’s own fatality in “Mortal Kombat 2”). Cole takes his advice and goes to Indiana, where he meets Sonya (The Meg’s Jessica McNamee).

The following scene is an exposition dump where we learn that she and Jax were special forces operatives on the same team. They once met a target who had the same dragon-shaped birthmark that Cole (and Jax) had, who murdered the entire team with superhuman abilities before Sonya and Jax brought him down. They started researching these birthmarks, which ultimately led to the discovery of the Mortal Kombat tournament. I really would have liked the writers to explain a bit more how they would have uncovered this sort of thing. It might satisfy viewers unfamiliar with the games, but if there is a tournament between warriors of different realms, it would either have to be a very well-kept secret or it would completely re-write everything from world history to religion. Exactly where would records of the tournament and its participants be kept?

In any case, what our heroes don’t know is that the tournament acts as sort of a Hall Pass for different realms to invade others: win ten and the portal opens on a world scale. What they also don’t know (yet) is that Earth has lost the last nine to the Outworld and upcoming tournament will literally decide the fate of the entire world. And finally, what they don’t know (but will soon find out) is that the sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han, of “American Born Chinese” and Skyscraper) has decided to stack the deck in his favor by having his forces (including Sub-Zero) kill all of Earth’s champions before the tournament can even begin. Can Sonya, Cole, and Kano (Josh Dawson), a greedy asshole mercenary in Sonya’s custody, find Raiden and the other champions before Shang Tsung gets to them?

What most reviews of this movie focus on in the inclusion of an original main protagonist—Cole Young—as an audience proxy. That is, someone for other characters to spout exposition to so that we the viewer know what’s going on. I am not sure why they did that—I mean, it was mandated by the execs at Warner Bros, but I’m not sure what made think that was a necessary thing. I understand that the Mortal Kombat game series has a lore that has gotten progressively more involved as the decades have passed, but for a first film based on a fighting game, there is not a whole lot of background that needs to be explained. The original film simply had Raiden as the exposition dump for the three main protagonists—Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade. I don’t know why something similar couldn’t have happened.

The other aspect of the plot that sticks out is that the film ends before the actual tournament. The entire gist of the plot is that Shang Tsung is trying to kill everyone before the tournament, or at least as many possible. As I write this, it has been a week or so since the trailer for Mortal Kombat II has come out, which promises to focus on the actual tournament, apparently with the focus being on Johnny Cage. I appreciate that the film did not simply rehash the original Mortal Kombat film and am personally fine with the story they went with as an introduction to the world and rebooted lore. I mean, a handful of our favorite characters are present and get to fight each other, so whether the fights are in-tournament or out, it doesn’t matter too much to me.

The acting is decent. I like that they got an Asian actor—especially one with such a solid résumé as Tadanobu Asano—to play Raiden, the Chinese god of thunder. I do wish they had given him more of a personality, since his main purpose in the film is to complain about Earth’s fighters not being ready. I preferred Christopher Lambert’s take on the character, to be honest. Shang Tsung was distracting, not because of his performance—although I don’t think there is anyone in the business at the moment who can beat Cary Tagawa’s scowl—but his appearance reminded me too much of Takao Osawa’s General Wang Qi from the Japanese Kingdom films. One of the villains turns out to be Kabal, although his general appearance and portrayal in the film gave off serious Deadpool vibes (his super speed, his double swords, and the fact that his character never shuts up).

The fighting is a mixed back. On hand for the fight choeography was Chan Griffin, a Hollywood stuntman who has done stuntwork on a number of DC and Marvel films. As a fight choreographer, his résumé includes Alien: Covenant and Shazam! This appears to be his first “pure” martial arts film, although that ends up not really being the case here. You see, the action in a Mortal Kombat film is expected to find a healthy balance between the martial arts, the powers, and the graphic violence. The first film placed an emphasis on the fighting, with the powers reigned in (probably for realism’s sake), and the violence muted to bring in the largest possible audience. The second film kept the martial arts intact, but upped the power usage, and continued keeping the gore down.

But now the generation that grew up on the original Mortal Kombat games are now adults. As a result, it would make a bit more sense to thrown in the extra gore and go for a hard-R rating. And given producer James Wan’s pedigree, it would be surprising if it shot for PG-13. So, they do go in for the extra gore and apparently came very close to getting an NC-17 rating. There are some really gruesome fatalities, with the showstopper being the end of Nitara (Witchboard’s Mel Jarnson), who gets the wrong end—which would be any end—of Kung Lao’s hat.

So, they got the gore down. But the problem is with the fighting. The opening fight between Hanzo, the Lin Kuei, and Bi-Han is pretty cool, mixing kenjutsu and the rope-kunai weapon, which obviously resembles a rope-dart in usage. The finale, which pits Cole Young and a newly-resurrected Scorpion against Sub-Zero is even better, mixing fisticuffs and swordplay, plus some strong two-on-one choreography. The fights in between are just okay, however. Some of the training one-on-one’s, especially between Liu Kang and Cole, are decent. The other fights often feel like they depend too much on Special Moves rather than pure martial artistry. There is a balance to be had, but I don’t think that the fights between the Earth Champions and the Outworld fighters that make up much of the second half of the film found that balance.

Beyond that, the production values of the film are just fine. The movie was shot near Adelaide, Australia and they found some great locations to film in and around. The first film had a lot of scenes shot in Thailand. The second film took part of the filming to the cliff city of Petra. This one has some neat looking locations. The costumes are also very solid, although I think it is missing a lot of the color of the other films and the earlier MK games. The characters looks—especially Mileena—feels a lot “grittier” instead of colorful, which I personally lament. Also, Reptile shows up in his Saurian form, so I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get a green ninja. Goro as a CGI creation—with two stuntmen playing his arms and legs—actually looks good and has a better fight against Cole than he did against Johnny Cage, although Tan lacked Linden Ashby’s charisma and one-liners.

In the end, Mortal Kombat (2021) is a pretty good movie from my point of view. It starts and ends strongly, but doesn’t do well enough in the middle hour or so to completely overshadow the original. But with better effects, more graphic violence, and overall good production values, it may win over more than its fair share of fans, especially among the younger generations of MK fans.