Matrix Resurrections

I give Matrix Resurrections 1 out of 5 quarters.

When our only local Dolby Atmos / 4k Laser movie house announced that they’d be relegating this Matrix release to their 2k screens, I suspected this movie would disappoint. The first two times I watched it (in 4k w/ Dolby Atmos but at home) I was fighting a case of pinkeye-related light sensitivity. I walked away hating… no.. resenting this movie but suspected maybe it was on account of watching it through squinted eyeballs.

All healed up, I watched it a final time. Still don’t like this movie.

The beginning gave me hope. It was great seeing Reeves and Moss back in these roles. During the first Act, I can’t help but think of the ST:TNG episode “Frame of Mind” and the “is this a dream, am I going mad?” emotional thrill ride that Riker experienced. I warmed up to all of the meta-stuff in the first Act of this Matrix installment hoping they’d do something interesting with the Thomas Anderson: Make him question his own sanity and leave the viewer’s wondering: “Was this all a dream?”

During the second Act, I enjoyed the new cast members more than I expected but the third act was mostly a mess and to me, failed to deliver a good story.

Pros

Opening Shot: Puddle, Reflection & Distortion - Nice!
Seeing Neo and Trinity again is a Treat
The new cast was better than I feared
Not properly explaining Neo’s lack of abilities
Doogie Howser as a Villain I dig it, NPH is a fine actor.
Swarm Mode: Neat Horror Visual

Cons

Distracting misuse of “modal” concept.
Smith doesn’t use the “Mr. Anderson” callout enough.
Homeless Merovingian? WWHHHHYYY!?!
Swarm Mode: A bit much.
Not properly justifying Trinity’s power levels in relation to Neo
Closing Fight Gag with NPH
Out-tro to a horrible cover of Wake Up.

Ultimately, The Matrix Resurrections wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen recently but it also failed to live up to the hype. That (more than bullet time, even) appears to be the legacy of The Matrix sequels. The first installment was such a well told story with well executed cinematography, stunts & character beats that it has become an impossible act to the follow.

BattleZone!

Ever since I fell in love with Ready Player One (the book) I’ve wanted to have a Battlezone cabinet (Planet arcade, reference) but my basement can be a little limiting in cabinet size. I’m stoked to be the proud owner of a Battlezone Cabaret!

Santa’s Sleigh!

Control Panel Stuff

Given the age of the machine and general reputation of frailty of the control parts, I was happy that it was mostly in tact and working.

The right stick appeared to have no real resistence on it and the left stick felt pretty good. The screws had been replaced on one.

ref: https://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/B/Battlezone.pdf

A little research seemed to show that getting game-specific parts would be a little bit of an easter-egg hunt shit-show. It seems that the NOS control panel parts in the community are highly overpriced ($90 for the control panel disc- with free blemishes) and that many of the parts are out of stock or difficult to find.

Awhile back, aluminum reproductions of the CP stick surrounds were made by some enterprising individual but the parts were marred in drama related to unfulfilled orders, reports of burned buyers and general sketchiness. The bellows (big rubber grommet thing) were being reproduced by a well-meaning community member but I didn’t hunt down exactly where to find them.

The Bellows / Grommet-Thing

The reason that my right stick was floppy (umm…) was b/c the rubber bellows grommet-thing was blown out. I started here, taking rough measurements with the optical meat-orbs in my head and more detailed measurements from the original part with a micrometer and using a 3D Scanner. I then rebuilt the part in Shapr3D out of primitives by slicing and tracing the scan until the dimensions matched my original broken grommet.

The original is constructed from inner and outer stainless steel metal rings glued to a rubber insert. For convenience and time: my replacement part is one piece. It wouldn’t be difficult to reinforce but I’m hoping material science has improved enough in the last 40 years that my replacements will hold up. Might be inferior / might not - time will tell. At a cost of a couple dollars per print, I’m happy to replace it in a decade, as needed.

STL File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uudyixb8z7vda9d/Battlezone%20Grommet.stl?dl=0
Shapr3D Src File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctku8s7wo5a1mhq/Battlezone%20Grommet.shapr?dl=0

I printed a few with various types of TPU (flexible filament) - the NinjaFlex and Kodak Flex98 were my favorite. The Ultimaker Branded TPU95 I had was too rigid in the final print. Infill will help determine the resistance of the stick, I settled with Ninjaflex with a 20% infill for mine.

The Control Panel, Stick Bezel-Thing

The original parts (nylon, i guess?) on mine have thread insets for a 1” 10/24 course thread machine screws. The aluminum reproduction parts that are floating around in the arcade supply chain normally attributed to RAM Controls have the finer 10/32 thread insets.

B.Y.O.T. (Bring Your Own Threads)

I painted my cracked original part with a flat spray paint to keep reflective errors at a minimum and did four scans of the original part. (2 close, 2 far, upside and downside) After importing them into Shapr3D, I rebuild the primitives using the original scans as a sizing template. For this version, you could thread the legs with a very hot screw or you could use it cold with a sheet metal or drywall screw instead of machine screw.

STL File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1csfy8e6ut5rqzq/BZ%20CP%20BYOT%20v1.stl?dl=0

Shapr3d SRC: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdptm0ugb4ty0bk/BZ%20CP%20BYOT%20v1.shapr?dl=0

Glue-Nutty-Version

A made another version that can accept a #10 nut for threading. The idea being you could melt or glue a nut or standoff into the holes and use them to keep to the original machine-screw design. In order to accommodate the negative space to accept a #10 nut, the legs are slightly thicker (about .65 mm) than the original. I believe it would still fit in the original board but honestly, I didn’t test this one thoroughly.

STL FIle: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1p3cnrz4l5o6a1m/BZ%20CP%20Nutty%20Inset%20v1.stl?dl=0
Shapr3D Src: https://www.dropbox.com/s/que2p3tby1y9tdg/BZ%20CP%20Nutty%20Inset%20v1.shapr?dl=0

PETG, Face down print - strong but a little stringy on the center cut-out bezel and internal camfer. Doesn’t play well with other materials as a scaffold.

Kodak PLA+. Very ABS-Alike in rigidity and finish, seems to work well enough with PLA or other PLA+ as a scaffold. Less stringy than the PETG. This is what I used in my final parts.

Getting a completely smooth finish out of a filament printer can be pretty tricky. Printed on glass, we tend to get waves from the adhesive substrate or printed with supports at a 180, you can get fine filament lines in the result. I’ve found that if I print it inside a dissolvable scaffold material (like PVA), you can end up with a pretty smooth surface. That is a trade off, though in that PVA doesn’t play nice with all build materials. I’ve also found that some materials (PLA+, ABS) tend to smooth out naturally or the lines are smooth enough that a few coats of paint do nicely to fill the 3d print lines.

The original parts seem to have been Vinyl or Nylon (or something like it) but the way this part is used, really any material will suffice. I’ve tried PLA, PLA+, PETG, Tough PLA and Nylon. Nylon & Tough PLA would be strong enough to drive a small truck over but the extra strength comes with some tradeoffs in getting clean removal of support material, at least with my limited setup.

Kodak PLA+ was my favored result considering all things. Material cost comes out to about $2 and a 7 hour print job on my printer.

3d Models for BattleZone parts:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lsrehk5g4rfjmxt/AAC1iHikChVlAG6Cj3jABPvta?dl=0

The Expanse

I’m going to keep this mostly spoiler-free because you just need to experience this as it is meant to be experienced.

The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video
The Book Series

Primary Factions and Overview

Earth has a unified government, the United Nations. Earth is crowded and the majority of the citizenry are on a subsistence-level universal basic income with better opportunities being doled via a series of Lotteries and internships.

Mars, a former Earth colony, comprises of citizens organized around terraforming and spreading the Martian work ethic and ideal. Their culture is marshal and collectively focused. Martians, in this case, aren’t little green men, simply 3rd and 4th generation of humans that colonized Mars.

The Belt is comprised of humans that have grown up outside of a planetary gravity well. These humans subsist as miners and engineers and their cultural touchstones are forged through experiences surviving in the vacuum of space. They settle asteroids and low-gravity moon bases, their language is a polyglot creole english-mashup with numerous cultural influences. Their physiology, living in low-G environments tends to make them taller and less muscular than their inner-planet counterparts but they tend to be scrappy and cunning warriors nonetheless.

The Inner Planets: Earth’s space-navy is dated but large. Mars space-navy is modern but smaller.
The Outer Planets and Belt lack a formal navy.

Story Overview

The First 3 Seasons (and Books) introduces us to a future (around 2350) where mankind has begun to exploit our solar system for natural resources. This first portion of the story uses a number of potentially interconnected mysteries to introduce the factions and setup tensions between those factions.

The story establishes and follows the Crew of the Rocinante, a Corvette-Frigate-Gunship and her unlikely crew as they coalesce and they unravel a series of mysteries in a politically charged, cold-war scenario. In addition to the crew of the Roci we are introduced to a slew of well-written characters to follow the perspective of the superpowers, the downtrodden and shadowy power-players with opaque motives and interesting pathos.

The storytelling here is fantastic with a great balance of political intrigue buffeted by impressive character work. The writers handle multiple POV characters with confidence and the characters feel realistic, aided by dense dialog and smart interactions. New viewers might find the Belter language difficult at first but it gets easier as the actors find their voice and the Belter Creole is well-justified through the in-universe cultural mechanics of the story.

As the mysteries of the first three installments unfold, the middle portion of the story shifts focus to a interplanetary gold-rush of sorts and all of the interesting things that happen when evolved chimps are given an unexpected boost in technical capabilities.

The last portion of the story explores the culmination and resolutions of the tensions of established factions, emerging powers as demagog leaders co-opt exploited populaces in an all-too-familiar power gambit.

Space is Brutal

One thing that makes The Expanse stand out from other sci-fi offerings is that the story tries to stay grounded when possible in physics. This isn’t a pew-pew-pew space-wizards sort of show. Space wants to kill you.

Critical Analysis

I’ve read the series twice (once in print and once on Audible), including the available novellas with their in-universe character gardening. I’ve also watched the series twice. The series has a lot of the same first-season challenges as the actors learn to inhabit the characters but also does impressively subtle foreshadowing of future events.

The series was on Sci-Fi through Season 3 and was sold to Amazon starting on Season 4. There are some mild location / set continuity shortfalls in the Amazon produced episodes but that is largely a nitpick. Probably some of the shooting locations were not available post-sale or potentially the practical sets didn’t convey to the new production.

The show is dense and demands your attention, you will become lost quickly in a background-watch scenario. Blink and you may miss it.

The effects work is really good throughout the series, lending towards realism with a few exceptions. The cast and crew really work their asses off and their love and dedication to the work shines through.

Themes, Concluding Thoughts

It is rare to find a Sci-fi series that competently juggles heady themes and even more rare to find a series with complex politics and a webwork of characters that sticks the landing. The Expanse does both. The writing duo got their start through affiliation with George RR Martin but haven written 9 books and stewarded their show to a satisfying conclusion, I wish George would tap them to help finish TSoIaF / Game of Thrones.

The Expanse TV Series effectively stops at the conclusion of book 6. Books 7, 8 and 9 cover the state of affairs after a significant time jump (~30 years) after the events of book 6. That said, the TV Series does find a satisfying conclusion despite the material left for future storytelling.

The Expanse explores themes of found family, prejudice, humanism, exploitation, radicalization, colonialism, acceptance, human suffering and grace; just to name a few. The show does a fantastic job of showcasing a diverse talent pool in a believable way with in-universe rationale. It does all this without coming across as preachy, hostile, or forced. The writers shine a light on the human condition and if you are uncomfortable with this reflection, then perhaps that’s the first step towards a better tomorrow.

More important that someone else's life gets better than for you to feel good about yourself. You never know the effect you might have on someone, not really. Maybe one core thing you said haunts them forever. Maybe one moment of kindness gives them comfort or courage. Maybe you said the one thing they needed to hear. It doesn't matter if you ever know. You just have to try.

-Naomi Negata

Further Analysis & Commentary

One half of the “James SA Corey” writing duo: Ty Frank & Wes Chatham: the actor that plays Amos have a great podcast:
Ty and That Guy

The duo has good friend chemistry, they spend about half of most episodes covering background detail about the episodes and production and the other half exploring their mutual love of cinema or storytelling, like hilarious recollections of trying to buy recreational drugs while on vacation in Costa Rica.

I give The Expanse 5 out of 5 Quarters.

Rock 'N Roll Pinball

Some things belong together

Peanut Butter & Jelly. Draught Beer & Pizza. Wine & Cheese. Some things are meant to go together.
Rock and Roll & Pinball belongs on this list. Some clever Pinballers in Opelika have made the perfect case in support of this.
Check out Rock ‘N Roll Pinball the next time you are in the Opelika, Alabama region.

There’s something idyllic about being able to text your friend group “Hey, want to meet up for drinks?” and that is all that necessary. They already know the place, they already know the time.

”..where everybody knows your name..”

The How I Met Your Mother crew had McLaren’s Pub. (McGee’s IRL) The Friends crew had Central Perk. The Cheers folks had… well, Cheers of course.

I’m constantly searching for my “Cheers”. Alas, living in a rural suburbia nightmare hell-scape of poorly engineered traffic flow (Mobile, AL area), I always come up empty-handed.

“..and they’re always glad you came..”

Like a Collection

Rock ‘N Roll Pinball is more like visiting someone’s private collection than visiting a bar. Though, they do have a thought out selection of drinks to choose from as well. It creates a nice family-friendly vibe without being too stuffy. (more on that below)

Say what you will about Nic Cage’s acting career. He makes me actually feel a little sorry for this car salesman. That’s something.

But what kind of collection?

I’m fortunate to have gotten to visit a bunch of Pinball and Arcade collections. They typically range anywhere from
“Come check out my pinball shed”
- (which is pretty close to my gameroom vibe)

to

”Be sure to wash your hands and wipe your feet before you enter the pinball wing of my mansion.”

On the Roger scale (see video) Rock ‘N Roll Pinball falls into the connoisseur side of the scale.

When you have a place with The Beatles, Deadpool, Tommy, The Incredible Hulk & Grand Prix under the same roof, you can just tell: “Yeah, these people actually play pinball here.” The selection of games feature a great variety of era, design & gameplay type. The type of insights you really can’t gather by buying games out of the Pinside Top 100 which always skews towards recently new-in-box titles.

No Quarters Needed

My good friends know that I keep a pill-bottle full of quarters in my 4Runner just for classic arcade and pinball discoveries in the wild. But I’m a weirdo.

The guys at Rock ‘N Roll Pinball have removed the pain of quarters through a simple and very reasonably priced wrist-band. Options available for hourly play or all-day.

Why wouldn’t you do all day? I mean. Do All Day. Right now. Go. Play.

Why are you still reading? :)

Game selection aside, the games are well maintained. From every game I played, the switches and lights worked, you could progress through modes and each table was balanced, despite historic-era flooring beneath the leg levelers.

They really sweat the small stuff.

Keeping 30 games across 4 decades under one roof in playable condition is no small feat. Seriously - bravo guys!

Ran by Pinball People; for Love of Pinball

It has been pretty common to see barcades and pinball spots pop up from people that are in it from an outside perspective or who make a half-hearted go of it. Locally, we had an out of state attorney who, in his retirement, opened a Barcade downtown for about a year. His heart wasn’t into it and you could sort of feel that vibe based on the game selection and quality.

The thing that strikes me about Rock N’ Roll pinball is you can tell they are in this for the love of pinball and you can feel that in the bones of the place. From awesome decor and creative lighting, to great game selections and machine quality - this place really impressed me.

I tell you with no reservation, if I lived closer Rock N’ Roll pinball would absolutely be my weekly hangout spot.

One of Rock ‘N Roll Pinball’s co-owners and fellow acolyte of the silver ball showed Nathan and I around and was just super gracious with his time. Pinball people are the best people and Ernie really exemplifies what keeps me in this hobby. In an after-hours hang session Ernie took us to school on Beatles and we had a killer time!

Rock ‘N Roll

Balancing live performances, loud music with a room full of Pinball machines can be a real challenge. The people that want to play pinball want to hear the games (and the music, usually); the people that are in it for the band, might just want to hear the band.

Put yourself in the band’s shoes, would you want to play a gig on a casino floor over all of the electronic sounds and bells?

These guys have an answer for this two. Enter, The Jail House.

Through the back door of the pinball room there is an extremely cool courtyard and a second building. The Jail House has a cozy bar, extra seating, awesome murals and a nice performance stage. While we were there, they were using the space for Trivia night but I could see this being an awesome place for live performances!

Smiling Faces Enjoying Pinball!

I left my camera on one of the tables while we played. A cute family started playing with it, taking pictures, passing the camera around.

It is pretty awesome to see families playing pinball together! Look at those smiles :) Legit.

A Bar, without feeling like one

I can appreciate a drink menu with a sense of humor. The beer cocktails are clever and tasty. Given Alabama’s tiered liquor license extortion scheme, this is a great way to get mileage out of a beer and wine license.
The Millennial menu is worth a laugh but also has some great choices.

They also have light snacks and the surrounding area has several eateries within walking distance. This part of downtown historic Opelika is very cool.

SFGE 2021

Note: I’m still updating parts of this post. I’m behind this month :)

In 2019 when I bought my tickets for SFGE 2020, COVID wasn’t even a thing. As the scheduled shifted, then shifted again towards the fall, things were looking pretty optimistic in the deep south. Restaurants and Theaters were open and we tossed our masks into a box in the back of the closet near the flying toaster screen saver tie and two sizes-too-small dress shirts.

Then, as August approached, the ICU beds in my county had been full for several weeks straight and our State in general was feeling the Delta Coronavirus wave. I thought seriously about not attending SFGE. In the end, I landed on “F-It, I need a break” and I back-justified the trip via my Pfizer vaccine jabs in may and historically resilient response to pulmonary illness. Both of my parents passed from Pulmonary issues but I’ve been fortunately healthy in that respect.

So, I went to SFGE and as always I’m really glad that I did.

Leading up to the show, I had every intention of bringing a game but just didn’t get a chance to make that happen. We stay perpetually understaffed and over prioritized at work these days, it has been putting a squeeze on my hours remaining for hobby endeavors.

Layout

SFGE was located at the Cobb Galleria again this year.
To be completely honest, I don’t really like the Cobb Galleria space for this show. It is big, it is concrete and it is loud. Did I mention it is loud? Also loud.

The old layouts that were at the Atlanta Renaissance Waverly Convention area were carpeted and multi-room. There was a sense of discovery as if you were Link or some other hero in a dungeon crawler. It felt a lot like walking into an arcade at the mall.

Cobb Galleria area? It feels like an expo floor. Because it is an expo floor. All of the charm of an expo floor. Yay for expo floors.

I suppose that the vendors love the new space because of game load-in simplicity. Heck, Marco drives in their trailer and uses it as a partition for their booth. I guess the good old days of carpeted flooring and themed rooms with arcade music are over.

Anecdotally, this year seemed to have fewer games and fewer attendees but I haven’t seen official numbers. The space was laid out with ample spacing between the games, so it didn’t “feel” empty and they used portions of the space that remained unused during the last show. I suppose the extra spacing might have had something to do with social distancing, as well.

It was sort of nice being able to play a two player game with a friend and not have someone completely crawled up your butt recording intros for their youtube channel.

Marco

In a slim convention season, I was grateful to see Marco was back at SFGE this year. Getting lots of mileage out of their very cool Iron Maiden release era expo pyramid. They brought plenty of Mandos, LZ’s and a few TNMT’s and a few other recent titles. All of the show games they kept stayed up for the full weekend and it was pretty easy to hop on a game.

There was also some strange partnership between Marco Specialties and Classic Game Rooms that I’m not sure I understand.

Mando

GNR

Spooky

A Nice Showing of Classics w/ Diverse Types of Play

Arcade Stuff

Discs of Tron!

A fun addition to SFGE this year was the Atlanta Historical Computing Society’s Vintage Computer Festival.

Vectrex!

Deep Crap for Deeproot

If you’ve ever listened to interviews between various pinball personalities and Robert Mueller, he talked a big game. Deeproot promised to revolutionize pinball manufacturing, flood the market with games and blow our minds with new experiences.

Run faster, jump higher. Increase flavor and lower calories. All the things!

There was to be a big deep root event adjacent to TPF back in 2018. Lots of hype. They hired and contracted a stable of actual talent since 2018, including laid-off Disney Interactive animators. I paid extra attention to these 2017-2018 interviews and podcasts because I was considering a career change and thought it might be interesting to go work in the pinball industry. A new pinball company might have been a neat opportunity. I didn’t pursue it; weird vibes.

One claim was that deep root would ship more pinball machines per year than all other manufacturers combined. That struck me as a pretty fantastic claim. I also wondered if there was demand to support that release cadence.

Well, it seems like deep root is in trouble.

In a filing over the weekend the SEC is charging Robert Mueller (and by extension: Deeproot) over fraud claims valued at nearly $58Million. These charges are civil in nature (not criminal) at this point. Among other things, the filing accuses Mueller of misappropriating funds from two investment funds for personal trips, property and gifts; as well as a “Ponzi-Like” payout scheme. Scuttlebutt being that at least some of those funds probably went to the pinball venture.

This is ongoing and Mueller has every right to defend himself. Either way this is a bummer for pinball. More drama for the sharks.

For more details, check out the excellent article at Pinball News or your favorite pinball news podcast.

Monster of a Game

So... two July's ago, I had this machine set up from SFGE and Marshall comes over and drops a 62,700,000 point game on the board. I had it set pretty hard but there was some scandal from those that witnessed the game that maybe one of the multi-balls lasted an unnatural time. Hard to say since this game offers the ability to extend multiballs through spider wheel awards but I always took the score seriously as the one to beat.

Maybe too seriously...

For nearly two years at least twice a week, I go downstairs, put on some tunes and have a go at his score. Down to the point that I really didn't want to change the rubbers and swap the original pcb back in until after I beat that score.. After dozens of 50million point games and even one 60million, 96 million finally happened.

Game details:
3Ball Game. Earned an EB from the Bat ramp, another EB from the leaper mania. Finished the Stiff O Meter/ Monster Multiball twice and finished Spider Mania. The trick to the spider wheel I found is there is a bounce off the locked crate from the left flipper that usually deflects into the pops and dribbles into the spider hole. I also used the monster lab orbit shot as a spider hole technique. I think my GoPro battery died sometime after spider mania - will check in a bit. All this time I was focusing on Monster Multiball but Spider Mania - is where the points really happened.

Just glad to knock that one off the OCD/ bucket list 😜

Now, time to freshen the rubbers and put the WMS PCB back in..

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.