Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (2020)

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 11^th and 12^th 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.