How did the new Mortal Kombat movie hold up? Spoilers Ahead.

Along with the recent string of movies that were released with Hollywood giants and big names like “Justice League” and “Godzilla Vs. Kong,” came a third competitor: “Mortal Kombat.” This new film is a reimagining of the older series of movies that wasn’t good at all to a good amount of reviewers including Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. How did the new one turn out?

So first things first, here’s the good news. The movie wasn’t actually terrible like “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.” It had a good cast of characters and some really eye-catching action scenes. The fights and CGI were really well done. Kano, was of course, one of the best characters, and always will be. He provided some really good jokes throughout the film, as did most of the characters. The characters weren’t just carbon copies of the game counterparts, they actually had little bits of depth to them with excellent development for the most part. The environments for the fights were exceptional, and it can not be expressed how good the fights themselves were, especially the final one between Kabal, Liu Kang, Scorpion, and Sub-zero. That’s about where the praise ends however.

The first complaint comes when the studio decided to just use an original character instead of, you know, the literal rogues gallery of characters Mortal Kombat had accumulated up to that point. Cole, the new character, was just about the definition of a cardboard cutout protagonist. He is basic, and the audience has no reason to cheer for him. He is the only character that wasn’t really amazing. Next, the movie used some of the most uninteresting characters from the games themselves. Kabal was interesting for the first time, but it is astounding that they didn’t choose some more iconic characters like Johnny Cage or Shao Kahn. The villain is way more obscure than most others from the franchise, and characters like Kronika or Shao Kahn would have been much more interesting to watch. Next off, the main antagonist did absolutely nothing but kill Kung Lao and leave. This just led to a very anticlimactic ending to the film, the ending doing not much but setting up the sequel, whenever that comes out. 

Nevertheless, the movie is definitely worth watching. The fights alone were outstanding. Thanks to both it’s faithfulness to the games and the way the story is told, “Mortal Kombat (2021)” was a success overall.