Mortal Kombat movie review: Not so excellent but complete and enough for entertainment

Mortal Kombat is absolutely good enough for an entertaining movie.

In this review, there will be some slight spoiler elements, readers should consider before reading.

Introduce

The story of Mortal Kombat 2021 has a pretty similar start to the video game franchise. More specifically, the Outworld wants to invade the earth (Earthrealm) and to do that, the warriors of this realm will have to defeat the warriors of the earth in a deadly tournament called “Mortal Kombat”.

However, because to be able to encapsulate the film in 1h50m, director Simon McQuoid had to change some plot elements so that the film’s circuit did not happen too quickly.

Who is Cole Young? Why are you the main character?

The most noticeable change, right before the film’s release, is the character Cole Young. He is an old-fashioned MMA fighter with a dragon-shaped birthmark on his chest.

Basically, the character Cole Young was created to represent audiences who are not too familiar with the game franchise. Cole Young does not know that the earth is not the only world and does not know that supernatural powers exist, which makes him feel lost when he is summoned to protect Earthrealm.

Of course, the role of Cole Young can be completely taken up by Johnny Cage, the martial arts Hollywood actor. However, the producer wants this film to focus on Asian actors, so Johnny Cage will have a place to act in the second part (if it happens).

Furthermore, since there is already a nimble character Kano on Earthrealm’s defense team, the addition of Johnny Cage would throw the cast off balance.

Intrinsic Strength “Arkana”

Not just a simple martial arts fighting game, MK’s characters all possess a special power, skill or tool to make gameplay more diverse.

In the movie, this element is transformed into “Arkana”, an inner power that only the chosen can use. This power is not clearly defined, has both a magical element and a scientific element. Only those who possess Arkana will be able to survive the “Mortal Kombat” martial arts tournament.

Overall, this is not a bad factor because it solves questions like “Why does character A have to represent the earth, while character B is the world champion in ABCXYZ? ?”. The answer would be “they are chosen”.

Martial arts matches – the main reason you watch Mortal Kombat

Sub Zero and Scorpion’s Cold Fire Colgate rivalry is the highlight of the movie

It is an indisputable fact that no one buys tickets to see Mortal Kombat to see the inner acting of the character. We come to Mortal Kombat because the matches and the movie have been very successful in this.

The two bright spots of the main cast are Joe Taslim (Bi Han – Sub Zero) and Hiroyuki Sanada (Hanzo Hasashi – Scorpion). Because of the solid martial arts background, the two’s fight is very beautiful and the scenes are fixed, without the abuse of shaking and continuous cuts like many other movies.

This does not mean that only these two actors, Lewis Tan, Ludi Lin (Liu Kang) and Max Huang (Kung Lao) also had the chance to show off their martial arts skills, however their matches not as beautiful as the two names above.

The remaining main actors Josh Lawson (Kano), Jessica McNamee (Sonya Blade) and Mehcad Brooks (Jax) also gave the audience relatively impressive matches with the little practice time they had.

Is there enough gore for gamers?

Since Mortal Kombat is a franchise where humans can bleed more than they have, gamers will look forward to the game’s Fatality scenes.

While Fatality does actually appear in the movie, we only get to watch the whole thing without too much blood. And the violent Fatality of the game has been partially cut.

The reason it’s called a partial cut is because the moves that lead to Fatality are still there, but the finishing moves are not seen. This feeling can be compared to wanting to sneeze but not being able to.

So in the end is this a good or bad movie?

Overall, if we look at Mortal Kombat as a pure superhero movie (which has been a trend lately), Mortal Kombat deserves a score of 7/10. If it’s a game movie, then Mortal Kombat will score 6.5.

Although the plot is not the same as the original, director Simon McQuoid still tried to create the feeling of “game” as possible with the inclusion of famous sayings of the game into the movie such as “X win”, “Flawless Victory”, “Fatality”. , “Your Soul is Mine” and last but not least “Get Over Here”. Overall, Mortal Kombat is an entertaining movie for a light head after work and certainly not a disaster.