Movie Plot – Mortal Kombat: Three ignorant martial artists are invited to a mysterious island to participate in a Mortal Kombat tournament whose outcome will determine the world’s fate.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Kevin Droney
Cast: Christopher Lambert, Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras

A Ridiculous plot

First I’ll give you a slightly larger summary of the film.

The best warriors, the Mortals, fight evil in the terrifying kingdom of ‘Outworld’. The stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world and all its inhabitants. Shang Tsung invites the three Mortals for the tenth Mortal Kombat, and under the guidance of the mighty Thunder God Rayden, they learn to overcome their own inner fear. When the four-armed prince Goro wins this tournament, the earth is forever immersed in great darkness. But the Mortals have a secret weapon, the beautiful Princess Kitana. But will they succeed in restoring peace and tranquility to ‘Outworld’?

After reading this plot, it is clear that this is a videogame adaptation. On top of that, you just know in advance that the movie is going to be horrible. Although I always say that you can turn a bad movie into a good time as well. You just need to know that it’s going to be terrible and laugh with it.

Mortal Kombat has a very thin story, which is the glue to stick fight scenes together.

Let’s fight!

In short, ‘Mortal Kombat’ is a fight film. The origin of the film lies in the arcades. In addition, the name ‘Mortal Kombat’ first appeared in the world of video games. When the game was released, it caused a lot of controversies. Unlike other fighting games, Mortal Kombat was extremely violent. Mostly because of its complete fountains of blood sprayed across the screen. However, the video game became a huge hit. That resulted in a cartoon series, many sequels to the game, and of course the inevitable movie. Director Anderson decided to release the controversial fighting game on the big screen as a full-length movie. The result is a fun, mindless fight movie.

The fighters use their own “special moves” with favorites like Scorpion’s hook and Liu Kang’s “bicycle kick.” The “fatalities” are not as gruesome as in the game, probably because otherwise, the film would have had a hard time finding an audience with a +18 rating. Mortal Kombat is a fun movie if you have enjoyed the game and contain regular humour to keep the whole thing light-hearted.

The fight with Sub-Zero was disappointing. I expected more of this. This one was over so fast. The special effects are cheap, and there are some unnecessary tricks here and there. Sometimes they just kick in the middle of nowhere to look cool. But it is and remains a Mortal Kombat movie, so that’s all okay. That one reptile looked really overly fake. It looked like it was a cut scene of a Playstation 1 game.

B-Cast

The strongest point of the movie has become the light-hearted, no-nonsense approach of the game. Anderson knew he didn’t have any Shakespeare material in his hands, and you notice that. The cast is perfectly in place. The actors are all from the B-productions, and it’s clear that this film falls into that category as well. On top of that, the actors also realize that they’re not in a high quality, artistic production, so all the acting is bold and there’s a lot of craziness. Especially Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who plays Tsang Tung, plays wonderfully exaggerated. Only Robin Shou, who plays Lui Kang, occasionally seems to think he’s playing in a serious, epic production. The rest of the cast skillfully pronounces the cheesy one-liners.

I sometimes wonder what it’s really like behind the scenes. Do they go for a drink and have fun, laughing with their own movie? I know that if I were a professional actor, I would want to make a really bad movie.

Conclusion

A lot of movies go down with poor visual effects and a razor-thin story. Mortal Kombat’ doesn’t. It manages to survive that. High-likely thanks to its fanbase of the game. On top of that, Mortal Kombat’ doesn’t take itself seriously, and the amusing play of the cast provides 93 minutes of carefree entertainment.

I still hope future video game adaptations will do well. We already had Sonic The Hedgehog, which turned out to be a fun movie. Also, a new Mortal Kombat movie is in the making, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that one.

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