REVIEW -- Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat is a 2021 American martial arts fantasy film based on the video game franchise of the same name and a reboot of the Mortal Kombat film series. The film stars Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Tadanobu Asano, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Chin Han, Joe Taslim, and Hiroyuki Sanada. It is directed by Simon McQuoid (in his feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Greg Russo and Dave Callaham and a story by Russo and Oren Uziel.[4]

Following the critical and commercial failure of the 1997 film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, a third Mortal Kombat film languished in development hell for a period of nearly two decades. In late 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema (whose parent company acquired the franchise from Midway Games in 2009) began developing a new film, with Kevin Tancharoen serving as director from a script written by Uziel in the wake of their Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short film. James Wan was announced as a producer in August 2015 and McQuoid was hired as director in November 2016. Production took place at Adelaide Studios in Adelaide and at other locations in South Australia. Principal photography occurred from September to December 2019.

Mortal Kombat was released theatrically internationally on April 8, 2021, and was then released in the United States on April 23, simultaneously in theaters in 3D and on the HBO Max streaming service. The film received mixed reviews from critics and has grossed $66 million worldwide; it was also a streaming hit, becoming the most successful launch item in HBO Max's history.

Plot:

*** SPOILER WARNING!!!***

In 17th-century Japan, Lin Kuei assassins led by the ruthless Bi-Han stage an attack to slaughter the warriors of the rival Shirai Ryu ninja clan led by Hanzo Hasashi. Hanzo kills the attackers before being killed by Bi-Han, resulting in his soul being condemned to the Netherrealm. Raiden, god of thunder, arrives and takes Hanzo's surviving infant daughter to safety.

In the present, the realm of Outworld has defeated Earthrealm in nine of ten deathmatch tournaments known as "Mortal Kombat"; if Earthrealm loses the tenth tournament, the rules state it will be conquered by Outworld. However, an ancient prophecy is uncovered, stating that the "blood of Hanzo Hasashi" will unite a new generation of Earthrealm's champions to prevent Outworld's victory. Aware of this, soul-eating sorcerer Shang Tsung, who has overseen the last nine victories, sends his strongest warriors to kill Earthrealm's champions, identified by a distinctive dragon mark, before the next tournament begins. One such champion, a former professional MMA fighter named Cole Young, is attacked alongside his family by Bi-Han, who now calls himself Sub-Zero. However, Special Forces Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs rescues the Youngs, directing them to find his partner, Sonya Blade, while he stays behind to fight off Sub-Zero; Sub-Zero freeze Jax's arms, shatters them, and leaves him for dead.

Cole tracks Sonya to her hideout, where she is interrogating a captive Australian mercenary named Kano. She reveals that she and Jax have been investigating Mortal Kombat's existence and that the dragon mark can be transferred to anyone who kills the original bearer. The hideout is attacked by Shang Tsung's reptilian assassin, Reptile, but a reluctant Kano kills him with Cole and Sonya's help. They then travel to Raiden's temple and meet current Earthrealm champions Liu Kang and Kung Lao before being brought to Raiden himself, who is critical of the newcomers. They are joined by Jax, who Raiden rescued and fitted with a set of mechanical arms. Shang Tsung attacks the temple alongside Sub-Zero and Mileena, but Raiden erects a shield to stave them off. While Sonya trains and encourages Jax to fight despite his condition, Cole and Kano train with Kang and Lao to unlock their "arcana", a special power unique to all dragon mark bearers.

During an argument with Lao, Kano awakens his arcana, the ability to shoot a laser out of his right eye. Cole is unable to awaken his despite his persistence. Disappointed with his lack of progress, Raiden allows Cole to return to his family, revealing that he is a descendant of Hasashi. Shang Tsung gathers Sub-Zero and his fellow warriors: Mileena, Reiko, Nitara, Goro, and Kano's former ally Kabal, intending to attack the temple. Kabal convinces him to defect and sabotage the shield, allowing the Outworlders to enter, during which Lao battles and kills Nitara while Jax awakens his arcana, which grants him incredible strength using his arms. Concurrently, the Youngs are attacked by Goro. When Cole's wife and daughter are threatened by the four-armed brute, his arcana awakens, giving him a suit of armor and a set of tonfas. With his newfound arcana, Cole kills Goro and helps repel the attack on the temple. Shang Tsung and Sub-Zero are infuriated when Raiden discloses Cole's bloodline before he teleports most of the Earthrealm fighters to the Void, a safe space between realms. Lao, however, sacrifices himself defending Cole from Sub-Zero before Shang Tsung takes his soul.

After mourning Lao's death, Cole proposes a plan to force Outworld's champions into single combat with Earthrealm's champions before neutralizing Sub-Zero together, forcing the tournament Shang Tsung tried to prevent. Raiden agrees, giving Cole Hanzo's kunai before transporting him and his allies to their targets. Kang and Jax kill Kabal and Reiko while Sonya kills Kano and acquires his dragon mark and her own arcana, the ability to fire purple energy blasts, which she uses to help Cole kill Mileena. However, Sub-Zero appears, having abducted Cole's family to lure him into a one-on-one fight. Initially overpowered, Cole's blood ends up on the kunai, releasing Hanzo from the Netherrealm as the vengeful specter Scorpion. Recognizing Cole as his descendant, Scorpion helps him overpower Sub-Zero and free Cole's family before immolating Sub-Zero with hellfire. Thanking Cole for freeing him and requesting that he look after the Hasashi bloodline, Scorpion departs as Raiden and the other champions arrive.

Shang Tsung also arrives, vowing revenge as he sends his champions' corpses back to Outworld before Raiden banishes him. Raiden declares his intention to train new warriors in preparation for the next tournament and assigns his current champions to recruit them. With this information, Cole departs for Los Angeles in search of Hollywood martial artist and movie star Johnny Cage.

Cast:

• Lewis Tan as Cole Young

• Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade

• Josh Lawson as Kano

• Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden

• Mehcad Brooks as Jax

• Ludi Lin as Liu Kang

• Chin Han as Shang Tsung

• Joe Taslim as Bi-Han / Sub-Zero

• Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi / Scorpion

• Max Huang as Kung Lao

• Sisi Stringer as Mileena

• Matilda Kimber as Emily

• Laura Brent as Allison

• Daniel Nelson as Kabal (action and stunts)

• Damon Herriman as Kabal (voice)

• Angus Sampson as Goro (voice)

• Nathan Jones as Reiko

• Mel Jarnson as Nitara

The Verdict:

Originally, I was going to wait until I cranked out my review on Disney+'s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier before I jumped head-first into this review, but after a lengthy conversation with my dentists of all people yesterday during my appointment about this film, I was like screw it. I might as well do this while it's still fresh in my mind. I'm going to have to be honest though. When I first attempted to watch this film that Friday it released on HBO Max, I fell asleep from boredom within the first 20-30 minutes. I tried it again the following Saturday morning and actually made it through it that time, mainly due to one main reason - Kano. Kano saves a vast majority of this film from coming across extremely corny and cheesy from the nonsensical plot at times. Kano serves as the voice and thoughts of the audience more often than not with his witty one-liners and sarcasm to comment on the ongoings in the film. It's a strange decision too, especially when Cole Young seems to be created for that role of being the eyes of the audience since he's an original character created just for this movie. Instead, he's sitting around in the background, dead silent and not saying a single word to contribute to the conversation or anything going on, except for the film's climax where he is all of a sudden setting up the course of action for the finale. 

While we're on the subject of Cole Young, let's just go ahead and get this out of the way too. I don't understand why Hollywood insists that audiences need that stock Shonen hero style narrative for these adaptations of video games and anime where the protagonist has to have his/her friends or family threatened to "unlock" some bullshit new power or mastery over an existing one to save the day. We have seen this countless times in multiple films. It's long overdue to come up with something new. It only garnered an eye roll reaction from me when he "unlocked" his powers while fighting Goro when his family was threatened. Can someone explain to me why the hell does the supposed "professional" MMA fighter gets a pair of tonfas as his special power when he hasn't shown any proficiency with any weapons until now? The literal  "plot" armor manifestation made sense since he was getting his ass kicked the entire film up to that point, but that weapon choice didn't make a lick of damn sense to me. From the opening hour of the film, one would think that this film was setting him up to become Scorpion at first glance though - at least, that was the impression that I was under watching this. If he was merely there just to serve as Scorpion's surviving descendent that would bring Hanzo Hasashi back for the final battle on Earth Realm's side for revenge against Bi-Han/Sub-Zero like he was some Final Fantasy-esque summoning, then what was the point if Raiden (or any other Elder God) could have simply summoned him from Hell to fight for them? 

As cool (no pun intended) as the final battle was between Scorpion and Sub-Zero during the film's climax, it didn't make much sense on how we got to that point narratively. Think about it. Throughout the course of the film, Raiden is constantly stating that he cannot directly interfere with the rules of the tournament and rules cannot be broke while on the flip-side, Shang Tsung is constantly breaking the rules and doing as he sees fit that has won him nine out of ten tournaments so far. This tournament hasn't even started yet and Shang Tsung has gone out of his way to eliminate most of Earth Realm's remaining fighters before they were recruited. But fast forward to the film's climax where Cole Young rallies the troops behind him and gets the not-so-brilliant plan to split every one of Shang Tsung's warriors into 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 battles, where Raiden has no objections to teleporting them all to random locales for these battles. Raiden comes across as so goddamn lazy in this movie. Him AND Shang Tsung are easily forgettable when it was the complete opposite in the original Mortal Kombat film. There's a few minor skirmishes littered between the Reptile fight and Cole's with Goro later as the Earth Realm fighters attempt to unlock their "Arcanas" - the fancy term that this Hollywood screenplay coined to explain how the fighters in this continuity got their powers. Kano manifests his trademark eye laser while Liu Kang shows of his fireballs and Kung Lao gets a razor sharp hat? I don't get how the hell that works out. Later on, Jax manifests bigger and better cybernetic arms as his Arcana, so I guess he's a technomancer somehow? 

(Shrugs) Once again, don't ask me how this shit works out.  

But yeah... Cole manifests his arcana in a battle against a CGI-rendered Goro. Goro doesn't look too bad here. It could have been a lot worse, so no real complaints from me. I just felt like it was a bit of a waste to use him in this first film unceremoniously like that. No wait, I stand corrected. The biggest waste of an appearance goes to Nitara. As awesome as it looked in execution, I can't deny that they did her dirty. That was the "Thanks for comin'" award right there just to give Kung Lao a "flawless victory" before he was "killed" by Shang Tsung. This death bothered me more than any of the others as Kung Lao wasn't merely killed; he had his soul extracted from Shang Tsung. All of the other deaths in this film, I rendered as moot points anyway, given how Mortal Kombat's rules have played out over the years. Characters have been physically killed multiple times, only to show up in later tournaments after being revived by Elder Gods or sorcerers cheating death (i.e. Scorpion escaping Hell to be the pawns of multiple characters throughout the series who exploit his lust for revenge). I GUESS they could bring Kung Lao back after Shang Tsung's defeat but that's wishful thinking at this point. I'm still mad that Cole Young held Liu Kang back from knocking Shang Tsung's block off afterwards. Why the fuck did you stop him? Liu obviously had more of a hand over his arcana than Cole did. 

(Laughs) I could lump Reiko's death (see the gif above) in there as being as dirty as Nitara's but at least we got another awesome fatality out of it. Once again though, I didn't feel any weight to his death since I was under the impression that Shang Tsung was going to revive them back to life anyway for the pending tournament. Mileena's death was justified too, even though she was killed unceremoniously by Sonya Blade who literally just unlocked her Arcana on the fly at that instant. 

I'm no expert on Mortal Kombat's lore, but why was Kabal even on Shang Tsung's side in the first place? I get that him and Kano were part of the same Black Dragon crime syndicate, but Raiden recruits them both in the games to defend Earth Realm before Kano's betrayal and Kabal's disfigurement at the hands of Shao Khan. Instead, Kabal appears in this game already as he does in Mortal Kombat 3 post-disfigurement. I guess they had have SOMEONE on Shang Tsung's forces to coerce Kano to the dark side to set up his betrayal and he was the most logical fit given their history. At the same time though, they could have had Kano betray the other Earth Realm fighters on his own accord without any coercion since it was already established that Sonya Blade didn't trust him in the first place. 

Kung Lao and Liu Kang as a whole were both shortchanged in this film. They were essentially reduced to playing the short fiddle to Cole Young's completely unlikeable character. About halfway into this film, he's regulated to the background to a lot of scenes. You could have taken him out for the most part of this film and it wouldn't have changed most of the story save for the last fight against Bi-Han/Sub-Zero, but it could have been rewritten to have Scorpion/Hanzo Hasashi escape Hell merely to get his revenge without any of the unnecessary baggage that Cole was his present day descendant. 

It doesn't come to a surprise that Cole Young is this film's biggest problem, especially if the alleged sequels want to keep centering the story around him and his ties to Scorpion. This film would have been perfectly fine story-wise if Sonya Blade was the main protagonist as she was doing what she explained via exposition dump about twenty minutes into the film - i.e. researching the mystery behind the "marks" that fighters around the world were brandishing that would be traded from fighter to fighter upon death via combat. It would have led her to the same course of events. Sub-Zero coming after her and Jax since he had a mark from defeating a mercenary. They would have to form an unlikely alliance with Kano, who gained his mark from a contact they were set to link up with on another mission, in order to survive. They would still need "training" from Liu Kang and Kung Lao to unlock their Arcanas while under the protection of Raiden. Maybe they could have gone deeper into Hanzo Hasashi's hatred for Bi-Han fueling his desires to avenge his family and finding the means to escape Hell to confront Bi-Han in the final act. 

The "marks" are another problem all on its own too. Sonya Blade won Kano's mark after killing him in combat very late into the film, yet Cole Young had a mark for his entire life, despite getting the shit beat out of him time and time again in MMA fights without it going to the victors. One could argue that those were fixed fights, so they don't count, but it still muddles the waters on how this concept works. If the marks are passed down through bloodlines, then how does that work? And how were the forces of Shang Tsung unable to locate Hasashi's descendants until now? There's been at least nine other Mortal Kombat tournaments since then right?

It was boggling my mind about all of this film's narrative shortcomings until I found out that the same writer, David Callaham, involved with that glorified piece of shit, Wonder Woman 1984, was behind this too. To be fair, WW84 was co-written with Patty Jenkins & Geoff Johns, so they collectively shit that bed together in unison, but David Callaham has to stand into his pile of shit all on his own with debuting screenplay writer, Greg Russo.

I don't want people to think that this movie was all bad. The saving graces of this entire film are the fight scenes. The fights themselves I have absolutely no problem with as they are EASILY the best things going for this film.  Everything about the flashback sequence that started the film off with Hanzo Hasashi confronting Bi-Han prior to him murdering Hasashi's family was awesome. I was pleasantly surprised that we got that much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero's history/backstory there. The opening battle between Sub-Zero/Bi-Han versus Jax was great to set the tone of the action going forward. That was followed by Kano, Cole, and Sonya struggling against another CGI iteration of Reptile like in the original Mortal Kombat films, but I was fine with this one for the most part as it got the point across. At least this one didn't morph into a random dude though. Plus, we were gifted with the first fatality of sorts (if you don't count Jax getting his arms frozen and broken off in the first fight) with Kano ripping Reptile's heart out of his chest. This fight along with many more throughout the film, especially with the climax between Scorpion and Sub-Zero, completely capture the sheer visceral carnage and brutality of the games. I loved the last fight even more for splicing in Scorpion and Sub-Zero's unique special moves throughout that fight too. I didn't understand why this film felt like it had to rush through the fights in the climax. This film would have benefited a lot more with more screen time devoted to the fights that this franchise is known for and less of the nonsensical storytelling. Instead, it felt like the fights prior to the finale were being rushed or shoehorned/crammed in at the last second just to justify the rest of the cast getting into the action. 

When this film was over, I wanted to see more combat and a lot less of the padding in-between. They could salvage this with tweaks to the story in a sequel, so it's not all bad. At the end of the day, this was a film that you could easily turn your brain off for a bit and enjoy the senseless violence, but the second you try to apply any rationality to this narrative, that's where it all falls apart in my eyes. In that regard, it easily ranks over Mortal Kombat: Annihilation for me, but it pales in comparison with the original Mortal Kombat film, leaving it firmly in the middle of my reception of the film as a whole. I can't compare it to the Machinima films and TV mini-series as I have most of those on either DVD or my watch queue on various streaming outlets and honestly never got around to them, but maybe I will with an update in the future to this post. 

Watch It or Don't Bother?

That's the biggest question with this film. Do you take the plunge and spend two hours of your free time devoted to this reboot of another beloved video game franchise made into a Hollywood blockbuster? If you want to turn your brain off and simply enjoy the well choreographed fight scenes, then by all means check this out. On the other hand, if you're looking for something deeper, much like how NetherRealm Studios have carefully and masterfully set the standard for fighting game lore and storytelling in the genre with every Mortal Kombat entry since the series' revival with Mortal Kombat 9, this film leaves a LOT to be desired. In that regard, it's nowhere as bad as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, but a lot of things have to go wrong before things go THAT bad though, so that's a tough measuring stick to go by. The original Mortal Kombat film wasn't perfect either, but there are plans to make this a trilogy as the reports and interviews are stating, I have a lot of major concerns, worries, and potential fears about this reboot's future.