Hey everyone and welcome to the Road to Mortal Kombat (2021). Yep, I'm reviewing the live-action Mortal Kombat movies leading up to the new one coming out in April. So let's begin.
Mortal Kombat is a 1995 fantasy marital arts film based on the video game series of the same name. The movie was produced by Threshold Entertainment and distributed by New Line Cinema. Mortal Kombat was written by Kevin Droney and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
The story is Raiden as assembled three warriors named Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage. He takes them to a mysterious island where the will compete in Mortal Kombat, in this tournament they must win in order to stop the sinister sorcerer Shang Tsung from invading Earth.
- Negatives
The big issue I had with the movie was the CGI. It's bad, the worse of it is with Reptile. The best comparison I can make to them is, it looked like something that SyFy would approve of for one of their movies.
- Mix
Now let's get this out of the way, this movie can either be described as outdated or cheesy but yet at the same time it's so much fun. I mean it, you can try to look away all you want with this film but there's just something about it that just pulls you in.
The other mix bag is the acting. Now nobody here is a bad actor it's just unlike some performances were they're going to be remembered for a long time (mainly Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung) others not so much. It's not that their acting was bad it's just they didn't leave that much of an impression.
- Positives
One good aspect of Mortal Kombat was it did get the premise right in a basic way. That may sound like faint praise but you gotta think about most video game movies (with a few exceptions) always seem to get their premise wrong or ignore it for some odd reason. Just look at the two films that came out prior to this one, Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter. For whatever reason those two films didn't follow their premise and become something else entirely.
The other good thing about the movie is the fights. They were awesome. What I especially loved about them was at first they seemed like they were going to be standard but as the film processes they become more and more intense. My favorites were Johnny Cage vs. Scorpion & Liu Kang vs. Reptile.
The last thing I'll give the film credit for is the music. Almost everyone review I've either watch or read always give praise to the soundtrack and rightfully so. Much like the fights it's great. The music especially made the fight scenes even better because not only is the fighting getting pumped but so is the music in the background.
While Mortal Kombat isn't the greatest video game movie ever made it's still has something going for it. What with having the premise some what right, the badass fight scenes, and the great music. The grey areas are how even though it's fun it's outdated and while some performances aren't by any means awful they really didn't leave an impression. The only real downside was the CGI.
My final rating is Okay
Well, I'm all done here. Come back on Monday, Jan 25th for part one of Looking Back at the Films of 2020. Until then enjoy the rest of your day.
The original writer of mortal kombat and the director should have directed the 2021 version. If your goin to do a remake, you have to go back to the original n see what made it so great and see what could b better. The story line should change slightly toward lookin like a brand new film.
ReplyDeleteThen plus the 2021 version didn't have great fight scenes at all. The original film had great fights.