The Mortal Kombat movie reboot has been garnering a lot of attention since its release last weekend. The new adaptation of the classic fighting game franchise has drawn in commercial success in a box office that's struggled over the past year. Amid mixed critical and fan reception, the movie did a lot to bring in new and long-time fans of Mortal Kombat. Unfortunately, one of the series mainstay characters, Sonya Blade, wasn't given the same level of care in her adaptation from the games onto the big screen.
Up top, it goes without saying that the current MK11 iteration of Sonya Blade has a clear advantage over the new movie version simply due to amount of time she's received. MK11 is the third game since the franchise rebooted its timeline with MK9. So, digital Sonya has the benefit of three games' worth of time for character development over the new movie Sonya's origin story. But while the Mortal Kombat movie had plenty of lore to reference over MK's long history, its depiction of the Special Forces character fell flat in a lot of respects. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mortal Kombat Movie Misses Mark for Sonya Blade
Again, to give credit where it's due, the new Mortal Kombat movie had to balance quite a few plotlines at once in order to properly set up the story for not just Sonya Blade but all of the core cast. But while a large part of the success for the new MK movie came from its adaptation of Scorpion and Sub-Zero's rivalry, Sonya felt specifically spurned by the end of the movie.
In MK11, players see Sonya both in her youth (the version in the film) and as a more wizened leader of Earthrealm's forces in the fight against Outworld. In the game world, young Sonya's hatred for Kano is personal and believable. Yet in the film adaptation, her relationship with the Black Dragon felt tacked on at points, and many felt it robbed Sonya of a motivation that felt realistic among a technicolor rainbow of different super-powered ninjas.
The choice for Sonya to not have been one of the chosen warriors from the jump is also a poor choice in many regards. The MK movie gets a lot right with other characters, but Sonya's capacity as a warrior is called into question, immediately, by the film itself. This doesn't square with the woman portrayed throughout the storyline that culminated in MK11, who is regarded as dangerous even by Raiden himself. This ends with a very tired trope being used in a somewhat painfully literally way. Movie Sonya's powers and acceptance into the fold of champions is utterly dependent on Kano, without going too far into spoiler territory, and even then it can feel ill-paced.
Hopefully, as it's seeming likely that there will be sequels to the Mortal Kombat movie, Sonya will receive a treatment more similar to her much more fleshed-out character in MK11. The MK movie's director is reportedly listening to fan feedback closely, so that seems a good sign for fans that would like to see a more important role given in the movie to Sonya, one more in line with her portray in Mortal Kombat 11.
Mortal Kombat 11 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.