Mortal Kombat Review — Bigger But Not Much Better
It’s sad that a 7 min Youtube video had more style and substance than a 90min movie that cost millions more to make
For those of you who don’t know, about 10 years ago, there was a Youtube short named Mortal Kombat: Rebirth starring Michael Jai White directed by Kevin Tancharoen. It featured a live action version of the Mortal Kombat world never before seen. It was set in the Sin City styled modern world and featured versions of the combatants that were gritty, unapologetically violent & gleefully vicious — fighters that were human or surgically modified to fit the MK character’s mold. Sort of like the direction the Gotham TV series took, but with even less camp, and way more R rated violence. The fighting was influenced by modern techniques infused with specialty moves from within the game, while the fast & furious style and visceral violence was comparable to that from The Raid Redemption. That was how I always envisioned a perfect Mortal Kombat movie would be like.
Unfortunately, this version was anything but.
Granted the start was promising, with the tenacious fight between Sub Zero (Joe Taslim) and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) a delightfully bloody spectacle. But with the tempo set and the audience’s blood pumping, the film strangely decides to slow things down to a crawl to provide incoherent backstory to the tournament and the main characters. Along the way, it forgot to pick the pace up again, until the very last fight. Midway through, it got so meanderingly boring that my friend — who is a movie buff like me and sat through Justice League Snyder Cut with nary a toilet break — fell asleep.
This is mainly due to the fights in the movie. Having seen Joe Taslim’s (Sub-Zero) previous work in productions like Warrior & The Night Comes For Us, the fights in Mortal Kombat was massively underwhelming, with perhaps the final fight reaching anywhere near the standard Joe is capable of. Every other Kombat scene looks overtly choreographed — and not very well done at that — with a over reliance of special effects to raise the level of awe and action. In exchange for realism, they went for fantastical moves that bore little resemblance to real fights, with either the characters suffering little to no injuries at all after a sequence, or getting their torsos ripped via Fatalities, with no middle ground to at least attach some realism to. Take for example Cole Young’s (Lewis Tan) first MMA fight. He was basically beaten to a pulp in the ring, yet the very next shot sees him looking into the mirror with pretty face pristine with nary a bruise or a cut. It was like there was a clause in his contract which insisted Lewis remains handsome throughout the movie.
Or maybe that is his true Arcana?
Later on Sonya gets crushed by a big boulder, so heavy that Jax forced the release of his Arcana with the effort exerted from lifting it. So Sonya should be smashed, broken bones and matter everywhere no? Nope. Not a single scratch, bruise, not a hair out of place. Pristine. I gotta try it sometime.
On the topic of looking pristine, anyone else thinks Ludi Lin as Liu Kang here looks like Boy Band Shaolin? As bad as 1995’s Mortal Kombat was, at least they got the casting of the main characters right. Ludi Lin taking on Robin Shou’s role is akin to a boy trying to fill up a man’s shoes, not just physically, but in terms of fighting skill and acting capabilities as well. And trust me, Robin Shou is no Meryl Streep, but Ludi looks too pretty and is too diminutive to be taken seriously as a battle hardened shaolin trained warrior. And Chin Han -much as I want to scream Singapore pride- as Shang Tsung has about as much menace as a emo rocker dressing up in chinese robes for Halloween, complete with black eyeliner and a touch of black lipstick.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa had more spite in one glace than the totality of Chin Han’s performance. Besides Shang Tsung sucking in the soul of one of the characters and having seemingly a legion of evil warriors to command, one doesn’t really get why everyone is supposed to be frightened of him. His backstory is very underdeveloped, and even if more background was added for him, I doubt the audience would really care more because Chin Han played him with too much camp and too little foreboding anyway. He is a evil warlord or something who wears makeup, has a weird sense of fashion, and can suck the soul out of a guy. I know plenty of guys like that on RuPaul’s Drag Race and they weren’t scary. Ok, maybe some of them were, but … nvm I forgot my point.
On the topic of bad casting, I have to say pretty much everyone with the exception of Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada & maybe Tadanobu Asano (Raiden) could have been casted better. The differences in terms of ability (acting & fighting) was too apparent. For a movie based on a fighting game, its shocking to me that so many actors with no fighting background was casted. And it really shows in the fight sequences, especially if you compare sequences involving Joe Taslim & Hiroyuki Sanada and basically everyone else’s. Both Sonya and Jax, supposedly Special Forces and highly trained, moved and fought as though they were fresh out of cadet school. Some of their fight sequences are cringe inducingly bad and I would honestly rather end my life than to put my trust in them defending Earth realm. Even Max Huang (Kung Lao) and Ludi — both of who are martial artists — looked shackled by run-of-the-mill choreography that looks like it was borrowed from the 1995 version of the movie.
What separates a violent films from horror/torture porn is it’s emotional core. The Koreans have perfected this as can be seen in movies like Man From Nowhere and Old Boy. There were many opportunities to instill that same core within this movie. Like in the aftermath of Goro’s sudden attack, the director could have used Cole’s wife and child to show pure terror and desperation tinged with helplessness, especially after they realise Cole has to leave them to go fight more of these terrible creatures to keep them and the world safe. Instead the director chose to show indifference and little more than a quick hug and goodbye. What could have been the perfect moment to reel the audience’s hearts in with the love and tenderness Cole has for his family, became just another Arcana reveal. At no time did we feel threatened, or truly afraid that something bad was going to happen to Earth. Yes it was talked about a lot, but no one was truly suffering, or tortured or were even mildly inconvenienced. With no stakes, there was no emotional investiture. Thus leading to my friend’s rapid descent into napping.
The editing was also surprisingly shoddy at times as well. Glaring mistakes were made in some of the fights involving Sonya. For example, when Sonya and Cole was fighting Reptile, the “special” move involving the knife abruptly completes on it’s own.
Ok so enough with the bad, what about the good?
Without a doubt, Kano was gold. Not so much the character in that he was a pretty straightforward bad-guy-who-looked-to-have-turned-for-the-better-but-was-really-not, but the actor portraying him was so good with what little he got that he is probably the only character that I truly empatise with. Not in that I agree with him, but his intentions and the believability of his motivations and subsequent actions were crystal clear. He had no illusions of grandeur, not higher cause except his own, and didn’t suffer under any need to be noble. In fact I would say that it was the comic relief that Kano’s wisecracks provided that helped distract us from how one dimensionally boring characters like Liu Kang are. Kano interacting with the other characters made them interesting — alone, they are mere caricatures. Watch the dinner scene at Raiden’s temple and you would know exactly what I mean.
The attempts at showcasing the Fatalities were good, though I do not understand the decision to go full James Wan-esque gory with the Fatalities, yet maintaining such a sanitized palette with most of the other fights. There is a R-rated version in there somewhere just begging to be revealed. Right now it feels like its trying too hard to keep within a M18 rating and though the producer Todd Garner says that
“We’re trying to make a movie where you care about the people, it’s grounded, it has a realistic tone to it, and the violence comes from the rules of the world that have been established, but you’re not just trying to make torture porn,”
having an uneven level of violence within the film only serves to alienate the audience and sever any ties to realism. Having one character’s head bursting under the repeated pounding of Jax’s arm and then having another fight where characters beat each other up with weapons with no blood, sweat, spit or matter flying about, makes no sense at all.
Side note since we are on the realism, Cole’s ability to understand what Scorpion was saying to him in Japanese was just laughable. Like he had Google translate on standby. Or maybe he didn’t, which would explain his expression at the end of Scorp’s monologue, as well as his lack of response. But I just didn’t get why use Japanese when the actor was more than capable of delivering his lines in English. If Sub-Zero could speak perfect English, why would Scorpion not have taken lessons? It wasn’t like he took extra fighting classes because he ended up losing isn’t it? Another insanely illogical point — after the final fight is over, Cole casually heads to some random locker in Sub-zero’s Ice Realm to grab some nice fresh blankets for his family. Fresh blankets. In Ice Realm. For his family who miraculously survived being frozen in ice for a SUPER long time. Maybe it is their Arcana. Or maybe his daughter’s real name is Elsa.
There is still a fanboy within me that hopes that the 7 min short version on Youtube gets realised into a full length feature. This version does little justice to the massive potential it’s source material has. While I would not rate it as a complete disaster, after the 1st watch, it should join the rest of it’s previous incarnations in Sub-Zero deep freeze.
