The 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat starts off strong with a great opening scene (that has already been promoted online) but the rest of the film fails to match that excitement, intensity, or intrigue. What was billed as a more grounded version of the popular fighting game instead features questionable decision after questionable decision – until eventually the feeling is that this Mortal Kombat is not much better than the ‘90s original.
What Mortal Kombat does offer is the closest adaptation to the games in terms of key characters’ move sets. Sub Zero (Joe Taslim) doesn’t just use his freezing powers as a gimmick, but it becomes a useful, and deadly tool. Similarly, Kung Lao’s (Max Huang) spinning hat, while not entirely out of the goofy realm, is more believable than it might be in a different adaptation.
The film is also incredibly violent, something prior adaptations avoided in order to keep a PG-13 rating. Blood flies, limbs break, and characters meet untimely deaths, and it fits the overall Mortal Kombat theme. This is still mostly a martial arts movie where carefully choreographed fight sequences take place within surprisingly confined spaces, but at least it nails the idea that these characters are fighting to the death.
Strangely, though, the fights to the death are mechanisms of survival and not the eponymous tournament that serves as the impetus for Mortal Kombat. It’s arguably the least of the film's problems, but the lack of a proper Mortal Kombat tournament – the film is really about a group of Earthrealm characters coming together to prepare for the tournament – is odd considering how aggressively this film wants to tap into the video game fanbase.
As far as those odd choices, it’s hard to know where to begin. First and foremost, Mortal Kombat decided to create a new character, Cole Young (Lewis Tan), and make him the protagonist. Cole has some connections to important characters in MK lore, but the choice to center all of the action around him is baffling. He lacks personality and charisma, and is only meant to be the vessel through which all the other fighters dump key exposition.
At best, the cast is inoffensive and at worst they are distracting. Aside from Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Sub Zero’s conflict that runs loosely through the film, everything else feels like cherry-picked details from the games. Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is positioned as the villain, but he isn’t really. And his notable minions exist only to give the other hero characters someone to fight. And almost none of those fights are memorable.
For all the pomp and circumstance made about Mortal Kombat bucking trends, it forgot the most important one: don’t make a bad movie. Story choices that range from head-scratching to disappointing and fight sequences whose key moments are shown in every trailer, there is so much about this movie that makes it almost worse than the ‘90s film. At least that one seemed to embrace the campiness of the material. This one is bad without any of that.
Mortal Kombat
