Christopher Lambert : Lord Raiden
Robin Shou : Liu Kang
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa : Shang Tsung
Linden Ashby : Johnny Cage
Bridgette Wilson : Sonya Blade
Talisa Soto : Princess Kitana
Trevor Goddard : Kano
Chris Casamassa : Scorpion
Francois Petit : Sub-Zero
Keith H. Cooke : Reptile
Written by Kevin Droney
Directed by Paul Anderson
THE PLOT
 |
| Liu Kang. |
Three of
the best martial artists in the world – Liu Kang, Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade –
are lured into a one-on-one fighting tournament to determine the fate of their
realm by a mysterious sorcerer named Shang Tsung, who Liu Kang holds
responsible for the untimely death of his younger brother. Although the fight
seems impossible for them to win, they’ve got Raiden, the God of Thunder and
Lightning on their side.
THE BREAKDOWN
You want to
hear something really ironic? I heard about the movie beforehand, just a while
after Street Fighter had come out, but the first trailer I saw was included on
the Batman Forever VHS my mom bought for me. Batman Forever (God bless the soul
that movie never had) spawned a video game. That video game sucked some
humongous balls, but what makes this important is that the video game actually ran
on the Mortal Kombat engine!
 |
| Sonya Blade. |
Anyway,
back in 1995, the trailer did a good job in totally driving me and my best
friend insane out of pure joy. You see, back here the movie went straight to
video, as far as we know – we were living in the backwoods where only the
biggest blockbuster movies made it to the local cinema. Even as kids, we
acknowledged that the Street Fighter movie, that came out a year prior, was
horseshit, but the gamers in us always hoped for the best when a new
game-to-movie came along, especially if it concerned our favourite franchises.
Street Fighter failed, big time. The movie remains an utter failure to this day.
Mortal Kombat, on the other hand, was unbelievably very entertaining, to say
the least. What’s even more unbelievable is that almost two decades later, the
movie still hits all the right spots, and very few wrong ones!
 |
| Johnny Cage. |
The plot,
loosely based on the plot of the first Mortal Kombat game, is quite good. The
movie starts with Liu Kang (Robin Shou) having a nightmare about Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki
Tagawa) killing his brother Chan and then claiming Liu’s soul would be next.
Then we find out that Chan has actually been killed, and Liu has to return home
to the Shaolin temples. Then we meet Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) – accompanied
by Jax who’s merely a cameo – in a nightclub on the hunt for Kano (Trevor
Goddard), who killed her partner. Shang Tsung is there as well, talking to Kano
about how Sonya “needs to be at the tournament”. Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) is
up next – in a scene that strangely reminds me of Beverly Hills Cop for some
reason – beating up a group of thugs like a boss until we realize that he’s
actually filming a movie. One of the crew guys says that someone’s waiting for
Johnny backstage. That someone turns out to be Master Boyd, who I’m guessing is
Johnny’s mentor. Johnny’s career is going downhill as the press has deemed him
fake, so Boyd encourages him to take part in a fighting tournament in an
undisclosed location. As Boyd leaves the set, he morphs into his true self,
Shang Tsung. We see a pattern forming here.
 |
| "HEH-HEH-HEH! ...Sorry." |
As the
three fighters come together, all for their own reasons, Lord Raiden
(Christopher Lambert) appears and tells them what Mortal Kombat is all about:
the preservation of life on Earth. In order for the emperor of the Outworld –
that’s Shang Tsung’s boss – to seize Earthrealm, he needs to defeat Earthrealm
in ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments. They’ve won nine. This will be
the tenth tournament. “The fate of billions depends on you. Heh-heh-heh-h…
sorry.” Gotta love Lambert – where is that dude?
Mortal
Kombat has a very linear plot, and the dialogue takes good care that we
understand what’s going on, all the time; actually, the script tends to be a
little too explanatory from time to time. There are scenes wholly dedicated to
explanation, disguised as something else – they’re awkward, even stupid, but
they are the only scenes that prevent this movie’s perfect flow. There are
absolutely no other filler scenes in this flick. It’s Mortal Kombat to the
core. It’s a great video game movie, made with just the right attitude. The
main focus is on a handful of characters, and the few cameos actually support
the movie instead of turning against it. The fighting scenes are good, I’ll let
a few embarrassing moments pass, and most of the cast deserves kudos for taking
their portrayals seriously, with reception from Mortal Kombat fans firmly in
mind. I love this movie – but amidst all the cheesy punchlines, gratuitous
amounts of flashy ass-kicking and a stunningly faithful atmosphere, lies a turd
or two.
 |
| Almost toasty! |
I LOVE how
they brought the groin punch from the original arcade game to the movie and
made it such a crucial part of such a crucial scene that it became legend. I’m
quite all right with Shang Tsung shouting out “Finish Him!” and congratulating
winners with “Flawless Victory”. I can even live with the fireball Liu Kang
unleashes in the climax of the movie, but I think the line between what’s
necessary to bring in from the games and what isn’t fades at times, especially
towards the end of the movie, but the scene I’m thinking is the fight between
Johnny Cage and Scorpion. Scorpion gets the upper hand and is about to finish
Johnny with his famous Fatality of removing his mask to reveal a skull (what “fabulous”
special effects there…) and scorching him with his fiery breath. Well,
resourceful as he is, Johnny grabs a jagged metal shield – they’re fighting in
some ancient armory – and covers himself with it before sticking a spear in Scorpion, running up to him
and cutting him to pieces with the shield. What remains of Scorpion, explodes.
Like “KA-BOOM”. That’s awkward, but what’s most awkward is that Johnny leaves
behind a signed photograph, which reflects on his Friendship finisher in Mortal
Kombat II. These few seconds are way too cheesy, even for this movie – I was
expecting to see something like this transpire in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
They went a bit too far with this one – you can laugh it all off pretty easily,
though.
 |
| Way less laughable than Arnold in Batman & Robin. |
The
character design is good, but not perfect. I was prepared to criticize how the
writers suddenly made the age-old arch rivals Sub-Zero and Scorpion best
buddies, but for the first time, I interpreted Shang Tsung’s words correctly,
and figured it was not the case at all. “Scorpion and Sub-Zero – the deadliest
of enemies.” I always thought he meant “deadliest of enemies” as in opponents
to the three main characters, but he meant that they were deadliest of enemies
to each other, but sworn to Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung’s cause. Well… Sub-Zero
is a kick-ass character in the flick, while Scorpion gets the shorter straw.
Once again, the line between necessary and unnecessary is stretched a bit too
far with his detached cries of “Come over ‘ere!”, “Com’ere!” and “Come down
‘ere!”. He sounds like a fucking retard, I wish they’d just shut him up
entirely like they did with Sub-Zero. Also, I understand that Scorpion’s
trademark harpoon must’ve been difficult to implement to the flick, but I don’t
understand why they had to replace it with an ugly CGI snake.
Speaking of
CGI, why is Reptile in the movie? Does he have any actual purpose? His
inclusion grants the movie one more good fighting scene, but at least they
could’ve previewed the CGI bits before letting this one off the belt. You see,
Reptile is originally a huge CGI lizard. The first time he comes into full
view, be sure not to eat or drink anything while you’re watching; it looks
fucking horrendous, abysmal, to be frank. This CGI bastard attacks the gang a
couple of times, and every time, the CGI looks more and more detached from the
movie. Near the end of the movie, Liu Kang accidentally allows Reptile to take
a human form – which is kinda based on how he was introduced in the game
franchise – and fights him in one of the best fighting scenes of the movie,
which gives Reptile purpose. Why the CGI scenes, why not just this one? This
one time, I don’t care about character development. I fucking hate CGI. Look at
Goro – he doesn’t need CGI to look awesome and just like his video game
counterpart.
 |
| Five-hundred dollar sunglasses... |
The
underlying romantic subplots between Sonya and Johnny, and Liu and Kitana
(played by the always gorgeous, but always pretentious Talisa Soto), never grow
into anything bigger, and I think that’s good. A force-fed romance would’ve
just ruined the movie. I’m already a bit disturbed by the flirty dialogue, the
movie didn’t need an epic kiss to prove a point, and I’m glad the film makers
realized that.
Robin Shou,
Mr. Kung-Fu Stock, does a good job as Liu Kang, and is one of those
Chinese-American actors whose speech you can actually understand immediately.
Linden Ashby is kind of a funny choice as Johnny Cage; he does have the look,
but you know what this guy’s most famous for? Soap operas and teen drama. Surprisingly,
this guy prevents Christopher Lambert from stealing the show; Johnny has all
the best punchlines. Bridgette Wilson… is Bridgette Wilson. Oh, sorry: an ANGRY
Bridgette Wilson. I loved this chick when I was a kid, she looked awesome in
Last Action Hero, and she looked awesome in Mortal Kombat as well – it was only
later I realized how much she sucks tennis balls (HA!) as an actress, good
looks or not. She just can’t hit the right notes. Actually, as long as she
remains passive in this movie, has that “look at me, I’m Sonya Blade and I’m
fucking angry” face on, and just speaks, she’s watchable. Put her in a scene
that requires just some emotion, or hell, a fighting scene, and you’ve got
yourself an embarrassing bomb. She does deliver one of the movie’s best lines,
though, and does it good. You’ll know it when it comes.
 |
| Liu Kang wins. Fatality. |
Christopher
Lambert, who I will always remember as Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, owns
as Raiden… all the glorious 15 minutes he spends on the screen. Oh, wait… not
all 15. The movie takes a turn for the worse only to get better again later,
right after Goro’s death. It’s not any of the actors’ fault – I guess the
writers just had a bad day when they were coming up with the events that take
place during the five to ten minutes into this obvious breakpoint in the movie.
Anyway, it’s kind of ridiculous that Lambert’s billed first, ‘cause he’s rarely
seen on the screen more than a minute at a time, and he appears only in a
handful of essential scenes. But, they’ve got to have a name – and Lambert’s
the only semi-high-profile actor in the movie. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was also a
semi-high-profile actor in the category of “Asian dudes” back at the time.
Seriously, this guy had a small part in almost every movie and TV show that
needed an “Asian dude”. If I’m not mistaken, the role of Shang Tsung was his
first major one, and although he overacts a lot, he does a fair job, and I
consider his overacting pure, honest enthusiasm for his character. It has that
sort of enthusiastic vibe. Last, we have Talisa Soto as Kitana. Not only does a
good, interesting character go to complete waste in this movie as some sort of
an Outworld expert and mentor/lover/whatever to Liu Kang, but Talisa Soto just
isn’t a good actress. I don’t have anything against women in this movie, I
swear. The guys just do better jobs.
THE SOUNDTRACK
 |
| Liu Kang: "What is that?" Raiden: "A bad sequel." |
The music’s
just awesome. There’s some metal there, industrial music and techno, all in the
good spirits of Mortal Kombat. The recurring lead track is called “Techno
Syndrome”, and it was actually composed back in 1993 by The Immortals (Maurice
Engelen and Oliver Adams) for Mortal Kombat – The Album; this movie made the
song popular and it has since been associated with the franchise. It’s one of
the hardest-hitting movie themes ever made.
THE CONCLUSION
Overall, Mortal
Kombat is very possibly the greatest live-action movie ever to be bred from a
video game franchise, and I think it set an example… but you know what? It had
a sequel, which set an even finer example. An example of how horrendously bad a
video game movie can be, that is. Up next, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
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