Director: Simon McQuoid
Writer: Jeremy Slater
Stars: Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee
Synopsis: The fan favorite champions — now joined by Johnny Cage himself — are pitted against one another in the ultimate battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders.
Video game movies are slowly but surely becoming a new certified staple within the Hollywood zeitgeist. Although the industry once couldn’t seem to figure out for decades, it has finally cracked the code, as franchises like Minecraft and Mario break box office records. What’s more fascinating than the new rise of these films, however, is the circumstances of how they occurred and how the movies changed quality-wise. You could realistically argue the quality of video game movies on average isn’t better at all, but rather the corporate management behind fan satisfaction is within a post-comic book movie peak era. Enter the Mortal Kombat film franchise which has swung and missed on 3 attempts at adapting the material to a cinematic landscape. While the 2021 film wasn’t a very good movie, it had enough setting up and exposition dumps of memorabilia to reinvigorate the film franchise and while Mortal Kombat II is the most successful in the franchise yet as an adaptation that still isn’t saying much in the grand scheme of things. For every step forward the sequel takes as an improvement within more creative fights, and taking itself a bit less seriously, it takes a few back with even worse dialogue and exposition dumps, weird miscastings, and rough CGI that tends to take away from the weight of some fatalities. Mortal Kombat II isn’t a complete failure of a sequel, but it’s certainly a deeply flawed attempt at victory.
The sequel picks up not long after the events of the first film, with champions Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Liu Kang (Judi Lin), and Jax (Mehcad Brooks) preparing to defend Earthrealm within the tournament alongside their leader, Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano). We open, however, with a new character, Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), a princess whose realm fell to evil emperor Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) and Outworld after Shao killed her father in combat. As Kitana works behind the scenes with the Earthrealm to stop her new father’s reign, the champions officially find and recruit Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a washed-up ’90s action star who believes his best days are behind him until it seems that getting transported to a new realm to fight for the world might give him some new purpose. With Shao Kahn about to retrieve an amulet that grants him immortality, and using sorcery to revive old foes and allies of our heroes, the stakes and fights are higher than ever to save Earth from Outworld’s dominance.
It’s a shame that Mortal Kombat II isn’t able to completely save itself from many of the pitfalls of its predecessor, since there’s actually a fair amount of aspects that are actually upgrades. For one, there’s *gasp* a tournament in a Mortal Kombat? You don’t say? Silly quips aside, while many of the film’s fights still retain the same core issues, Simon McQuoid’s direction is certainly more innovative in both choreography and creative deaths. The constant succession of fights throughout the film is also when it tends to best balance its campy sensibilities and stakes between battles. Johnny Cage’s fights have a particularly delightful, silly energy to them, despite the deeper problems with the character’s presence in the narrative.
Unfortunately, the positives to Mortal Kombat II tend to always have consistent caveats that always end up hampering the material. It will not be utterly confounding that despite the fact that the ‘95 film is rated PG-13, it manages to have more kinetic fight sequences than almost anything that happens in these new R-rated films. Even when you witness the brutal nature of fatalities unfold within the fights, there is absolutely no weight to them because of the poor CGI and incoherent editing that surrounds them. Once the fight scenes start to pack zero punch behind them, it only makes all the other problems with the sequel even more egregious.
Jeremy Slater’s screenplay is all around abysmal. Both old and new characters have virtually no substance to them besides acting as placeholders for what people know from the video games. The dialogue is particularly bad, ranging from a bit clunky at best to spouting exposition like a robot at worst.
Many will likely argue that “It’s Mortal Kombat! The character writing isn’t supposed to be that great,” or that the nonsensical campiness of its narrative is an added value to its enjoyability. One of the film’s biggest issues, however, is that while yes, it tends to have more fun with itself, it wants to have its cake and eat it too, never fully committing to either ridiculously silly one-liners or strong developments between its characters, particularly well. The clearest examples of this lie within both the characters of Kitana and Johnny Cage, who both get the most depth here.
Both characters have the same issue of having the beginning of a character thread that is never fully followed up on by the time the film reaches its conclusion. The idea of Johnny Cage being a past his prime actor finding new meaning through fighting to save his world isn’t a bad concept, but there are large gaps within the writing missing. For instance, his reason behind why he ultimately decides to go through with competing in the tournament after choosing to refuse the first time, and being brought back against his will the second are never explained. There are threads of it that exist that are never followed up upon.
We also never know why exactly Cage would be useful to Earthrealm’s fight besides the fact that he’s a big part of the games, so he has to be here. It doesn’t help that Karl Urban feels bizarrely miscast even as an aged version of the video game character. Sometimes he’s able to make the cheesiness work, but whether it’s because of the screenplay or him not quite fitting the archetype, many of his line deliveries tend to be off.
Most fans will be pleased with the many game references and sound bites to recognize within all of Mortal Kombat II’s constant battles, but its lack of virtually anything else of substance ends up still holding it back in the end. Sure, it’s a technical improvement upon most aspects of its predecessor, but the sequel often ends up a one step forward two steps back scenario where its haphazard dialogue, lackluster visuals, and inability to commit to full tilt camp or narrative structure make it the latest in the line of recent videogame films to place fan appeasement first, and being a good movie 20th.
