With Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge coming out soon, I decided to review the first animated Mortal Kombat flick....boy was this a bad idea.
Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins is a 1995 animated film/an unofficial tie-in/prequel to the 1995 film Mortal Kombat. The movie was produced by Threshold Entertainment and distributed by New Line Home Video. Mortal Kombat: The Legend Begins was written by Kevin Droney and directed by Joseph Francis.
The story is three combatants named Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage are traveling to take part in a tournament called Mortal Kombat. During this journey not only does Raiden tell them how to survive this tournament but also tells the tales of Shang Tsung, Goro, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero.
- Negatives
Right off the bat you can just see how awful the animation is. Now this movie had two kinds of animation, one was your traditional 2D animation and the other was 3D, and they're both awful! The 2D side apparently only had like I don't I want to say like 10 loops of animation. Because there's so many times when it's the exact same shot over and over and over again. I mean count how many times you see the same exact shot in this movie. And the 3D animation is outdated. Don't believe me well get a load of this...
This came out in 1995 folks. The same exact year as Toy Story. And just make things even more worse, they try putting the 2D animated characters up against a CG background, but it's just off-putting. Because our characters look like they were photoshopped into the movie.
The other awful thing about this movie is the art style is always changing. I mean it, One moment someone like Johnny Cage goes from having very detailed muscles to a more simple design back to a more detailed look back to more simple. It's like the filmmakers couldn't decided which style they wanted to use so they "Screw It! Let's use all of them."
Another thing that makes Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins a true disaster is despite saying it's a tie-in to the 1995 live-action movie, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE! Other than Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, and Liu Kang being on a boat meeting the other fighters nothing about this movie was brought up in the live-action flick. NOTHING!
The last thing I criticize the movie for was it's editing. Boy is it bad. They try doing slow-mo shots but instead of looking epic like a slow-mo shot should look it's just awkard.
- Mix
The I guess somewhat of a saving grace is the voice acting. It's not anyting spectacular but the actors do just a good job. It's most definitley not Oscar worthing but hey atleast it's decent.
- Positives
There's nothing good about this movie so let's just move on.
Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins is truly something else. And that something is a Mortal Kombat product that the fandom wants to act like doesn't exist. What with it's awful animation, ever changing art styles, a tie-in product that's not a tie-in, and it's bad editing. It's voice acting is fine, for the most part but that really doesn't make the movie worth watching.
My final rating is Awful
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