Mortal Kombat (1995)

Tagline: FIGHT! Subtle.

Curiosity: I’m going through a “How much does my childhood hold up” phase right now.

Plot: In this loose adaptation of the first two video games of the same name, Mortal Kombat tells the story of three fighters (Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Veronica Vau… er, Sonya Blade) guided by the god of lightning, Raiden, on their quest for vengeance and/or saving the world via punching. Standing in their way is Shang Tsung, a soul-sucking sorcerer from another dimension with an army of evil warriors. The opposing sides do battle in a tournament called… MORTAL KOMBAT.

Thoughts: Even when it came out in 1995, conventional wisdom already held that movies based on video games sucked, a la Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and MK’s rival, Street Fighter (for the record, I saw all of these films in theaters when I was a kid). Director Paul W.S. Anderson (who went on to direct Event Horizon, Death Race, and a lot of shit) took a big risk helming this, his second film, but that risk paid off hugely. Mortal Kombat grossed over $100 million dollars, and still stands as the best video game movie of all time.

Mortal Kombat succeeds where numerous Uwe Boll films failed by incorporating enough of its source material to get by. I’ve always preferred interpretations that capture a story’s spirit over every last detail, and that goes double for video game movies. These sort of plots tend to be sparse yet stupid. Anderson and scriptwriter Kevin Droney capture the main points – fighting, end of the world, fighting, palate-swapping, fighting, fatalities, and fighting. They even incorporate phrases from the game – “Finish him,” “Flawless victory,” etc. decently. So while Christopher Lambert’s Raiden doesn’t have much in common with his vg counterpart and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s Shang Tsung is significantly younger, it doesn’t matter, because both actors still kick ass. Lambert is snarky; Tagawa in one evil mother. It’s super weird thinking that he’d go on to play the goofy grandfather in Johnny Tsunami.

The film isn’t perfect – the CGI has aged horribly, the plot gets weaker as it goes along, and there’s a really awkward sexist moment when everyone starts ragging on Sonya Blade as a fighter. Chick stone cold killed Kano! C’mon! But Robin Shou is awesome as Liu Kang. Everything about the guy is exaggerated yet compact – the pecs, the main o’ hair, the bicycle kicks. But as cool as Shou is, soap star Linden Ashby’s Johnny Cage is cooler by a mile.

Cage is the comic relief of the trio, so he gets the funniest lines. His love interest is Sonya Blade, a.k.a. Bridgette Wilson, a.k.a Veronica Vaughn, a.k.a. Whitney from Last Action Hero. And he gets the two coolest fight scenes. First he takes on Scorpion:

If it weren’t for the fact that he gets to do squat diddily in the movie, Scorpion would be the coolest character in the movie. He’s a ninja who can harpoon you with a serpent thingy which he shoots javascript:void(0)out of his hand. But Cage holds his own. Righteous. Then he takes on Goro, who easily racks up the highest body count in the movie, using unconventional means:

It’s a shame the film’s sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation sucked so hard.

Reflection: On second thought, it’s totally bullshit that Johnny Cage can use his Split Punch on Goro. That shit does not work in the game.