Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020)
Voice Cast: Patrick Seitz, Jordan Rodrigues, Dave B. Mitchell, Joel McHale, Jennifer Carpenter, Ike Amadi, Robin Atkin Downes, Grey Griffin, Steve Blum, Artt Butler, Darin De Paul
Director: Ethan Spaulding
I find it
interesting how much Warner Brothers manages to do great work with
their IPs when it comes to animated films, but fail consistently when
it comes to live-action adaptations. Most people will agree that the
DCEU was a major failure in comparison to the first three phases of
its rival, Disney’s MCU. But starting with Batman:
The Animated Series and continuing for
the past 30 years, almost every animated outing of DC has been pure
gold. I was never a DC person, but their cartoons—even in the form
of shorts and reels—are infinitely more memorable and interesting
than any Marvel cartoon made since the 1990s Spider-Man
cartoon. I don’t know how either
studio can account for such a drastic gulp of quality between
animated and live action, going in either direction.
Warner Brothers’
luck with animation also seems to be true for Mortal
Kombat, which became Warner property
after they bought up New Line Cinema. The general consensus of the
2021 reboot is that the fight scenes that bookend the movie are good,
but everything in between ranges from “Meh” to “Awful.” This
film, announced a year before its release, came with limited fanfare,
but ended up being the movie that fans wished the reboot had been. In
fact, story-wise, Scorpion’s Revenge
feels like a retreat of the 1995 film,
but with the Scorpion backstory (and the character’s promotion to
anti-hero) from the 2021 live-action film. So if you watched this
after the
2021 movie, you probably had a feeling of déjà-vu
upon watching the opening scene.
The film opens with
Hanzo Hasashi (Patrick Seitz, whose VA credits include One
Piece and Bleach),
a Japanese ninja from the Shirai-Ryu Clan, and his young son Satoshi
observing a scorpion fighting off a literal army of ants. Hasashi-san
observes that the scorpion is a great animal because of its tenacity,
even in the face of greater numbers. The two return to their village
only to find the entire place devoid of life, save for the dozens of
ninjas from the rival Lin Kuei clan that are after Hanzo’s head. In
the ensuing bloodbath, all of the Lin Kuei assassins are brutally
(and I mean brutally)
slaughtered by a berserker-mode Hanzo, although he ends up getting
killed by their leader, Sub-Zero (Steven Blum, voiced the character
in the the MK:X and MK11 games).
Some time later, the
Mortal Kombat tournament is about to start. As usual, Earth has
already lost the last nine tournaments and if they lose this time,
then mankind is doomed to conquest by Shao Khan and the Outworld. The
God of Thunder, Raiden (Dave B. Mitchell, best known for voicing
Knuckles in the last few Sonic games), has chosen a rather
interesting group to represent the Earth realm. Liu Kang (Jordan
Rodrigues) is the sort of spiritually-inclined fighter you’d expect
to be called on for this sort of thing—setting him apart from Robin
Shou’s (initially) unwilling hero portrayal. The next is Sonya
Blade (Jennifer Carpenter, of “Dexter” and The
Exorcism of Emily Rose), a female
special forces operative known for her unwavering dedication in the
face of being a “woman in a man’s world.” Finally, there
washed-up (and financially-strapped) martial arts actor Johnny Cage
(Joel McHale, best known for “Community”), who enters the
tournament, Tropic Thunder-style:
he spends half the film thinking that he’s part of some sort of
cinema verité project.
Meanwhile, Hanzo
Hasashi has been condemned to eternal torment in the Nether Realm,
which is the MK’s universe’s answer to Hell. However, Hanzo is a
plucky fellow. He escapes from his torturer, massacres an entire army
of demons all on his own, and confronts the de
facto leader of the realm: the sorcerer
Quan Chi (Darin de Paul, of the “Skylanders” and “World of
Warcraft” games). Quan Chi is “temporarily” filling in for the
chaos god Shinnok, who has been imprisoned by Shao Khan of Outworld.
Quan Chi makes a bargain with Hanzo (who assumes the moniker
“Scorpion”): if he represents the Nether Realm at the tournament
and steals the key to Shinnok’s prison, Quan Chi will resurrect his
dead family.
Just like the 1995 movie, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya take a rickety ship to Shang
Tsung’s island, which looks like it’s located on Earth, but is
actually located in a transition space between the two realms. The
opening festivities include some pretty morbid entertainment: Sonya’s
trainer and mentor, Jax (Ike Amadi, who voiced Shao Khan in the 11th
and 12th
MK video games), has been captured by Kano and is forced to fight,
gladiator-style, against Prince Goro. I think you can imagine how
that ends for Jax…
Anyway, the
tournament begins and our Earth heroes find themselves having to take
on a series of superhuman opponents whose abilities far outshine
their own. And when Shang Tsung tries to stack the deck in his favor
by “accidentally” allowing Kano to bring his Black Dragon
mercenaries to the island, they find themselves making an uneasy
alliance with Scorpion in order to stay alive. But will it be enough?
All things said,
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s
Revenge is a bloody good time. The plot
is MK basic, with most of the character development going to
Scorpion, who goes from hero to potential villain to honorable
anti-hero. Johnny Cage gets an arc as he slowly figures out that he
is not making
a movie (I laughed out loud when he’s connecting the dots and
exclaims that he must in a snuff movie). Cage gets the film’s best
lines and Joel McHale’s voice work makes his portrayal of the
character a worthy follow-up to Linden Ashby’s fan-favorite
portrayal. Later this year, we will get to see just how well Karl
Urban does as Cage, whom the trailers also portray as being in the
“has been” phase of his career.
I do have a couple
of complaints, but they are minor. First of all, the relationship
between Quan Chi, the Nether Realm, and Shao Khan is a bit fuzzy.
Apparently in the game lore—I haven’t really followed the games
since Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3—the
Nether Realm and Outworld are separate realms with their own rules,
rulers, and the like. But in this movie, Quan Chi talks as if he is
ultimately subservient to Shao Khan, as if the Nether Realm lost 10
tournaments at some point and became subject to Outworld’s rule. I
wish that had been explained a bit better.
My other complaint
is the same complaint I had against the 1995 movie: the actual
tournament set-up doesn’t make much sense. Fighting tournaments
make more sense, especially in a movie, when they’re done in a
bracket (or double bracket) format, like in The Quest or Undisputed III. In this movie, it sorta
makes sense because the tournament itself is disrupted by the arrival
of the Black Dragons. But when Liu Kang storms the castle to
challenge Goro at the end, I was just wondering, “What about all
the other fighters we saw in the great hall earlier? Where were their
fights? Wouldn’t Liu Kang need to
advance through a few more rounds before being able to do that?”
But then again,
there is so much carnage on display that I’m sure most viewers can
easily ignore those two points. I mean, this film is almost non-stop
graphic violence and gore. Bones are smashed. Head are crushed. Limbs
are sliced (and sometimes ripped) off. One poor bastard gets his skull pulled out of the back of his head, leaving a floppy face lying on the ground. We get lots of X-Ray vision of
skulls being completely mangled by Scorpion’s trademark weapon, or
something along those lines. And the fights find that healthy balance
of well-animated martial arts, special moves, and gore. Most of your
favorite special moves and fatalities get showcased and if you liked
the fights in stuff like the Street
Fighter II animated movie (that’s
still my reference for great animated fighting—I really need to
update myself on that front), then you’ll get more than your fair
share here. And at 79 minutes, the film accomplishes everything it
sets out to without overstaying its welcome, unlike the reboot’s
99-minute run time.
