Mortal Kombat (2021 Movie)

Spoilers, if you’ve never played Mortal Kombat 1,2,3 or 4 and never seen the original Mortal Kombat (1995) movie.

First 7 Minutes (Free!)

In keeping with good cocaine dealer traditions, HBO Max released the first 7 minutes of Mortal Kombat for free as a promo to drive subscribers.

It is in this 7-minute cold-open that you are introduced to [some dude with a Samurai hair bun] and his cute idyllic family. It is at this point that [some bi-lingual dude in a more sensible haircut] wrecks shop at [samurai guy]’s house.

[Sensible Haircut w/ an Ice Fetish] and [Samurai Guy w/ Avenging Garden Trowels] face off and at the end of the sequence you might start to think:

“Oh, shit - they’ve really laid out a Punisher-style revenge plot here between these guys. I should rewind and catch their names.”

Don’t be silly.

In Universe Contrivances & MacGuffin’s

People with the Mortal Kombat logo mark are chosen-champions to represent earth in Kombat.

Except that normies inherit the champion mark by killing someone that already has one.

Arcana is the supernatural power(s) of a Mortal Kombat fighter. I believe it also means family? :/

Outworld wants some of those sweet-sweet EarthRealm resources. Like, plastic surgery, I’m guessing. The bad guys are winning by cheating, so a rag-tag group of unconnected fighters must team up, find their Arcanas and whip ass to stave off the apocalypse.

In order of Appearance..

Raiden is there doing Raiden things. This guy is an upgrade from Christopher Lamberer / Highlander as Raiden in the 1990’s flick. He doesn’t much in the way of fighting in this one and I’d like to have seen him kick more ass.

Cole Young is a (yawn) is a prize fighter that gets beat up a lot. Two make one of these drinks, you mix 1-part Brandon Lee with 1-part Daredevil’s Dad. Sprinkle in a wife or sister and daughter or niece to taste for motivation. For his power up you mix 1-part Colossus with 1-part C-3PO and two police batons. Cole is the main viewpoint protagonist of this story but I spent a distracting amount of time waiting on him to turn-into someone I recognized from the game. He never did.

Jax (Just Jax) is an immediately likable dude with Rock-sized, non-robotic arms early in the game (ermm, movie..) He’s a vet, he’s a hero and he’s a competent fighter. I like the character he turns into by the end of the film.

[Sensible Hair Ninja] from flashback cold intro aka Sub Zero is a ridiculously overpowered character, just like in the games. In addition to the ability to create ice sheets on the ground and ice-walls in closed spaces, throw ice balls he is a brutal fighter and master explainer of the obvious by saying “I am Sub Zero.”

Sonya Blade is introduced in her junkyard/mobile home bat-cave by showing Cole her Carrie Mathison style red string magazine cutout conspiracy board revealing the existence of the other realms and the stakes of the Mortal Kombat tournament. I actually like this version of Sonya way more than any other I’ve seen in film and game. She’s got the lady-balls to show herself as a competent fighter.

Kano carries the 1st Act with his snarky remarks and Kano shenanigans. Getting to see his fatality is always a plus. His remarks opposite of Kung Lao are worth a chuckle. The fact that he gets his power (laser eye) through a temper tantrum over someone passing an egg roll at dinner is….an interesting choice.

Reptile gets a makeover from pallet-shifted ninja to something more animal like. Just like the game, his invisibility and acidic saliva are alot to overcome.

Shang Tsung is pretty milk-toast in this version of Mortal Kombat. You might even say he kinda sucks.

Liu Kang is strikingly boyish in this rendition of Mortal Kombat. The actor is sufficiently ripped to play the shirtless Bruce Lee stand-in. He still seemed “powerful but small” for this character that is one of Mortal Kombat’s most formidable. I guess the actor is actually in his 30s, maybe he’ll grow into the role for a sequel?

Kung Lao is also quite the baby-faced fighter. I didn’t really like his character design but he has one of the most bad-ass fatalities in the movie.

Mileena, Reiko, Kabal & Nitara round out Shang Tsung’s gang of baddies. They are all thinly developed and strictly serve to give the hero characters an opponent to fight.

Goro also makes an appearance in this movie. They could have done more with him but he was more terrifying than the ninja-turtle era rubber costumed Goro with floppy arms in the 1990’s MK movie.

And that leaves Scorpion. I spent part of the movie puzzling over the Cole Young character thinking he would eventually inherit the mantle of Scorpion. But nope. “I fought my way through hell to come back and kill you.” Scorpion is the vengeful demon-spirit version of the Samurai in the cold-open, hellbent on revenge against Sub Zero.

Final Thoughts

Mortal Kombat (2021) is a solid refresh of the 1990’s version and might kick off a set of sequels. The creators showed familiarity in the material with in-jokes and references. The Outworld Realm wasn’t as dark and dungeon-dwelling as it could have been but they still had good environments to fight in. I think my favorite is the completely frozen gym at the end. The characters are good/ not great and some fan favorites were conspicuously absent but teased for later introduction.

2021’s Mortal Kombat isn’t a good movie, it isn’t a bad version of Mortal Kombat either. If you sit down expecting a character study like Logan, you will be disappointed.

If you sit down with a bowl of popcorn for a nearly 2 hr Mortal Kombat video game commercial, you will have a good time.

Mortal Kombat 11 (Now w/ PTSD!)

Mortal Kombat 11 boasts a strong fighting engine with excellent potential for more technical fighting, diverse combos and amplified attacks. Unfortunately, I found the enhanced gore of the animations to be a heavy distraction from gameplay rather than a motivation to keep me engaged in learning finishing moves.

Tagline, 1993. I’m 14. Living in a new town, 600 miles from everything I’ve ever known. Our house is a strange mix of cable-spools and lawn chairs for living room furniture and the smell of new waterbeds wafting down the hall.. I do have a computer and I eventually have a dedicated modem line to run my OBV/2 BBS, The Graveyard. At night, Razor1911 couriers are dialing into the PC to drop 0-Day Warez and I hear mom and dad in the other room arguing -talking about “maybe going to jail” because of [wah-wah - insurance, something-something - wah-wah] that I didn’t fully understand at the time.

We lived in a hotel the previous summer - The Ramada Inn on the Causeway in Mobile, Alabama that has since been demolished - near R&R Seafood. I suppose we were technically homeless but getting a new start. Growing up on 10 acres on the edge of an Indiana Forestry I found myself for the first time with the suburban freedoms enjoyed by kids in my favorite Spielberg movies.

Me, my bicycle and a BP gas station a few blocks away with a Mortal Kombat acade machine & Taco Bell Express. My teenage mind was blown with the opportunity. I fed so many quarters into that machine and played against football-playing high schoolers that were twice my size and a tendency to menace me when they lost. Admittedly, sometimes I let the Wookie win.

Sometimes, I didn’t.

This person named Hillary Clinton was on the television talking about censoring my favorite albums (2 Live Crew, RATM, Tool, Gravity Kills, God Lives Underwater) and the dangers posed by this new menace to America’s youth: Video Game violence.

- ”Is all the world Jails and Churches?”
(well, that was VietNow (1997) but you get the point)

Agreed that is a long walk to get you into my headspace. Now that you are here, pull up a lawn chair and let’s set at the cable-spool turned-coffee table and have a chat about video game violence, 26 years later.

I remember being annoyed when Mortal Kombat (1 and 2) were finally ported to home consoles with minimal gore, no-blood and paired down graphics. It just wasn’t the same game, anymore. Mortal Kombat 1 was the first arcade game I ever bought. I own and often still play a MK4 w/ MK1, MK2, MK3, Mk4 PCBs in it. I let my 13 and 9 year old kids play it and think nothing about it.

Enter, Mortal Kombat 11. MK11 (I’m playing on the Nintendo Switch) continues a trend in the MK franchise through the introduction of mid-fight super-move sequences that can be triggered during a match when a player’s health bar reaches a critical part. MK9 called these X-Ray moves because they used an X-Ray camera view to show the devastation being wrought to the opponents skeletal structure.

If you think of MK3, where there are improbable grapples where an opponent might crack the fighter’s neck or damage their spine during the match. It’s like that. The moves do an incredible amount of damage at the expense of player control for both players but do not necessarily completely drain the opponent. As unlikely has it might seem, Liu Kang can hop back up and keep fighting after Katana snaps his neck..

Mortal Kombat 11 calls these Fatal Blows and they are a strategic crutch that either player can employ to provide momentum for a comeback or level the health meters. The thing is: Fatal Blows in 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11 are the equivalent of 1993’s MK1 or MK2 Fatalities.

Which means.. the fatalities… are more so.
How much, more?

Maybe, PTSD levels of more.

In my best Obama, “Let… me.. be.. clear:” I’m not saying that playing through MK11 gave me any form of PTSD. But I will say that MK11’s fatalities in particular probed the edges of what I’m comfortable watching and classifying as entertainment. Several points during my initial play through of the game, I had a sensation that I can only describe as my neural-net-firewall throwing a warning. “Hey, there are things going into your eyeballs that you should be aware that we aren’t sure is good for us.”

Sure, previous Mortal Kombat games were equally horrible in the fatality death of a character through evisceration, explosion, decapitation and more. This installment in the franchise pauses at the worst bits of horror while the reward and menu system delay to return user control by to the player.

For instance: You get to see Kronica tear your character in half length-wise. Pause. Put you back together through a time-rewind and then tear your character in half at the waste. Repeat as many as 6 times until the menu renders allowing you to navigate the game.

Most fatalities now end in the complete drawn-and-quartered explosive destruction of the opponent and the game developer seems pretty proud of their bloody accomplishment as featured through the game credits.

Searching the web, I found that there is at least one case of an individual who worked on the game being treated for PTSD:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/05/one_mortal_kombat_11_developer_had_to_see_a_therapist_after_violent_dreams

Take that with a grain of salt, it was picked up as click-bait by half of the internet. No such thing as bad publicity, right?

I’ve met soldiers who operated turrets from inside armored vehicles in Afghanistan. Instead of gunning from an exposed position, “Playstation Johnny" sits in the relative armored comfort of his vehicle as he mows down the enemy from a computer monitor and gamepad. Despite this, Playstation Johnny has just as much potential for combat fatigue and mental trauma as the guy with boots on the ground carrying a rife.

In the mid-90’s I found myself frowning at the Pant-Suited Politician trying to censor my video games and music. 26 years later I find myself wondering if the ratings label on this game is an adequate communication device juxtaposed to the affect it might have on an emotionally developing mind.

I feel like I should love this game but I don’t. The hazards of adulting, I suppose? If my 14 year old self could see me now, he’d probably kick me in the nuts.

“Go get laid, kid.”