REVIEW: Mortal Kombat (2021)

The elder gods have decided to grace us with another Mortal Kombat movie in the year 2021. Mortal Kombat is a video game series where ‘kombatants’ from an evil, hellish, monster-filled world fight kombatants from Outworld for universal supremacy. The series is notorious for its fights that contain over-the-top gore, post-fight murderings, or the most extreme punishment: turning your opponent into a baby.

Overall, the Mortal Kombat series (video games, TV series, cartoons, movies) has a checkered past. The original Mortal Kombat movie, while flawed, is still the fan favorite (Robin Shou was the bomb as Liu Kang, yo!). Does this new reboot test your might? Let’s find out!

PROS!

• The opening prologue of the movie is the best part of the movie. The audience sees the brutal feud between Bi-Han (Joe Taslim) and Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) set in old timey Japan. The first 10 minutes are the best part of the movie and I wanted more of Hasashi McGyver-ing weapons out of garden tools. Why didn’t the movie director just give us a 10-minute movie? That would’ve been enough. Oh god does this mean I want Quibi back?!

• A guy wins a fight by constantly low-kicking his opponent. This might seem lame to the outside gamer, but this was a klassic move in the video games. Spamming low kicks to kill your opponent is straight cheesy – Imagine defeating an 8-foot centaur monster by sweeping the legs until he passes out. Many times it was the best way to victory and the perfect way to enrage your friends until they threw their controller out the window.

• But no seriously, give me more of Bi-Han and Hasashi ninja fighting and freezing things and putting blades through skulls. I don’t care about these other losers.

CONS!

• Once again, a Mortal Kombat movie fails to cast my favorite OG kombatant: The Guy Who Yells “TOASTY!” He’s one of the best MK characters and yet they leave him out once again. What Change.org petition do I have to sign to get him into a movie? Why do they have this Cole character? Make The Guy Who Yells “TOASTY!” the main character. I want to see his “arcana” and how he got his power to run real quick into a room and yell “TOASTY!” in a loud, high pitched voice.

• The movie has a lot of winks and nods to the video game series, yet the movie didn’t feature a guy repeatedly flailing his arms and squatting while trying to frantically perform a fatality before the other guy faints. Feels like a missed opportunity.

• Kabal was underutilized and eventually (spoiler!) murdered because the plot said he was a “bad guy.” He was my favorite MK video game character and look what they did to my boy! Can we just have a prequel with Kabal and Kano causing trouble together like a Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid buddy comedy?

• The klassic Mortal Kombat theme remix ‘Techno Syndrome’ has been remixed into an abomination. How can you have a Mortal Kombat movie without the original high-intensity battle theme? The guy yelling “MORTAL KOMBAT” is probably rolling in his grave/spike pit/acid pit after hearing the new version. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation played it during the opening logos ipso facto, Annihilation is a better movie than this one.

979,834 STARS

out of 1,000,000 stars

It’s impressive you finished another Cinema Listed dot com article. Most impressive. Now, here’s the Mortal Kombat klassic theme for you to get pumped to go play Street Fighter 2: Turbo and watch Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (Ming-Na Wen and Kristen Kreuk were the bomb as Chun-Li, yo!):