Mortal Kombat gave some of its fans a 'Krushing Blow' after the reboot film got delayed one week later. However, Warner Bros. is very keen on making up that small inconvenience, having just released Mortal Kombat's opening 7 minutes for everyone to go watch right now.
In the previous weeks, only journalists and critics had been afforded privileged access to Mortal Kombat's introduction, with most outlets praising the action sequence and also the way it’s used to present newcomer audiences to the origin story for two of Mortal Kombat's most emblematic characters. As if that weren’t enough, early reviews from overseas call Mortal Kombat a definite win for video game movie adaptations.
Now fans can start forming their own opinions as the movie’s opening scene has been officially shared on social media. As was already known, Mortal Kombat's intro starts off with Hanzo Hasashi (a.k.a. Scorpion) enjoying a pleasant life in his family home until, suddenly, Sub-Zero’s Lin Kuei disrupts all peace in their mission to assassinate Scorpion and his family. The outcome is well known to anyone who’s played Mortal Kombat and sends Scorpion on his long quest to exact revenge on Sub-Zero.
Aside from the shocking shot of Scorpion discovering his family has been to frozen death by Sub-Zero, perhaps the most interesting part of this whole Mortal Kombat preview is watching both ninjas refer to each other only by their former names in their native languages, since both Bi-Han and Hasashi still retained their human forms back in 1617. Also, Sub-Zero’s frosty powers are shown to inflict some bloody strain on himself, which is just too much of an impressing detail to overlook.
Overall, the first few minutes do seem to fulfill the promise of everything that’s been said about the film so far, which is especially true in the way Scorpion proceeds to absolutely annihilate the trespassing Lin Kuei in such bloody fashion. Regarding the plot, there is a shot of Scorpion’s own dragon birthmark, meaning fan theories pointing to Cole Young being a Shirai Ryu descendant might have been spot on.
With a total runtime clocking in at 1 hour and 50 minutes, so there’s still a lot of film to unpack after this teaser. However, if the rest of the film is anything like the opening seven minutes, Mortal Kombat will indeed be a flawless victory that will carry the movie onto a guaranteed sequel, much to the delight of fans.
Mortal Kombat will be available in theaters and on HBO Max starting April 23, 2021.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures|YouTube