Mortal Kombat (2021) - Joe Taslim, Ludi Lin, Jessica McNamee, Hiroyuki Sanada

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

32 minutes ago, AlbertV said:

There has been some fan dream casting for Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2 should it happen. Who would you want as Cage?

 

 

Thug Rose should play johnny cage. 

[laagi]

Well the trailer sure got me fooled. After watching this I sadly have to admit I'm leaning more towards @Drunken Monk opinion. The opening scene is great and got me really hyped but after that. For a large portion of the movie I was pretty disengaged with what happened on screen. It's also unfortunate that most of the fights are poorly choreographed and cut to chunks. On top of that you get lots and lots of (trash) talking which gave me a few light chuckles I admit. Last but not least you got a bland main character in the form of Cole. One think that also puzzled me was the varying level of CGI. Goro IMHO looked crap which actually made me appreciate the 1995 version a lot more. Most of the characters were pretty uninteresting as well and didn't really convey their specific personas. With the exception of Sub Zero and Scorpion. Which thankfully put a bit of a high note to the end of the movie. One last thing they did try to incorporate some of the VG feeling with some one liners which don't really work. At least the few fatalities do deliver the gore and blood to a certain degree. And finally the whole thing feels extremely rushed with little to no background story. Consider me overall disappointed. I'd watch it for the opening scene and the end fight. That's it! Hopefully they'll do better in the next part.

[Ah_Tao]

I was really hyped for this movie but I thought it was a load of garbage. I'm glad i didnt waste my time seeing this in theaters. Very rarely do I say a movie is garbage, but this falls into that category. Opening 7 minutes was amazing, it really set the standard for the rest of the movie. I think theyre making it fit the new canon (ala Mortal Kombat X and 11). It was seriously very confusing.

 

Off the top of my head, best characters had to be Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Jax, and Cole. Okay characters: Mileena, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sonya. Garbage: Raiden, Shang Tsung, Lord Reiko, and Kabal. I would put more but the others I honestly forgot about. Dishonorable mention: Reptile- He was absolutely horrible. He was literally only just a reptile. Raiden couldve been more "godly." All he ever did in this movie was complain and shoot lightning to protect the temple or teleport people. 

 

Fight scenes could've used a lot more work. You could see who the actual martial artists were and who was just an actor. Best fights were in the beginning and the end- which of course were performed by amazing martial artists. 

 

This movie was very forgettable and I'd very much would rather watch Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. It's fun to watch when you need to pass the time, but you got some big shoes to fill when the previous installments done a way better job.

 

Another dishonorable mention: We went from "Youuuuur sooooul is miiiine" to "your soul is mine." I felt more cheesed out than watching the "long live the king" scene in the new Lion King

 

Rating: 4/10

[mark187]

Ok, here’s how I would rank the films

#1 Mortal Kombat (1995) best movie, plot, acting, music, fight scenes, nostalgia, entertainment.

#2 Mortal Kombat (2021) a good attempt to reboot the film series, Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim were the best cast as Scorpion and Sub and their 2 scenes together were the best parts. The film really REALLY needs an extended cut as almost all the other fights were way too short.

#3 Mortal Kombat: Annihilation 

this movie was actually entertaining and not as bad as people make it out to be, but it certainly doesn’t compare to the first film and it isn’t as good of a “film” as the new one. It did offer  better pacing and music than the new one though, plus the nostalgia 

 

 

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

I revisited the 1995 version this time around and the movie was not good at all. It's really cringe and the fight scenes and SFX was trash.  Sonya Blade, Lui Kang, JOhnny Cage,Scorpion,Sub Zero were all trash. Like come on guys, really? 

[AlbertV]

9 minutes ago, OpiumKungFuCracker said:

I revisited the 1995 version this time around and the movie was not good at all. It's really cringe and the fight scenes and SFX was trash.  Sonya Blade, Lui Kang, JOhnny Cage,Scorpion,Sub Zero were all trash. Like come on guys, really? 

I liked the 1995 film but I only watch Annihilation if I need a good laugh. Although I will say I like the Liu Kang-Baraka fight, perhaps because it was mostly Tony Jaa doubling for Robin Shou in that fight. 

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

7 minutes ago, AlbertV said:

I liked the 1995 film but I only watch Annihilation if I need a good laugh. Although I will say I like the Liu Kang-Baraka fight, perhaps because it was mostly Tony Jaa doubling for Robin Shou in that fight. 

holy shit, that was Jaa? Ok, I take that back, 95 version rules! 

[AlbertV]

Just now, OpiumKungFuCracker said:

holy shit, that was Jaa? Ok, I take that back, 95 version rules! 

Well, Jaa doubled Shou in the 1997 sequel Annihilation, but I think it was all Shou in the original '95 film. This is the fight scene in Annihilation I'm talking about. And playing Baraka is former world champion kickboxer Dennis Keiffer, who would be more known as the bullwhip sporting henchman of Christopher Walken's villain in The Rundown.

 

[Super Ninja]

The cinemas finally opened here after three weeks so I rushed to see MK last night. Disappointing. They screwed up the fights... the movie's not all that bad, I enjoyed Kano being a cunt, loved Taslim as Sub Zero, fatalities were bloody great! But there are two good fights here, the first one and Scorpion vs Sub Zero. Yeah, Sanada's the best thing about the movie. As @laagi said it, the opening gets you hyped but it's all downhill from there. Yeah, it's the best MK movie of the three but that's because the first two are rubbish. And who the f... is Chan Griffin?! The guy choreographed fights on The SpongeBob movie, are you kidding me?!! Let the pros do it.

[Gaijin84]

I only managed to watch bits and pieces of this yesterday on HBO. First, don’t want to sound prudish, but is the amount of swearing necessary? After the 30th f bomb it’s just repetitive and boring. To me it’s a sign of a crap script writer. Second, after watching some of the fight scenes, the first thing I said to my wife was “man, they really don’t know how to choreograph fights anymore.” Like laagi said, every move is a separate cut. It’s like the antithesis of shapes, there is absolutely no flow whatsoever. In the end just felt like an attempt to cash in on a franchise that has a lot of hard core fans that they knew would pay to see it. Don’t be fooled... skip it and wait for a free showing.

[DiP]

22 hours ago, Gaijin84 said:

Like laagi said, every move is a separate cut.

That's an overstatement. The fight scenes may not be the greatest that the filmmakers were promising us but the editing was far from being a mess. You can still see and imagine what's going on in the fight scenes, it's far from the MTV-style editing of action scenes we used to get alot in the past.

[J.J. Hayden]

I wasn't expecting much and yet was still disappointed.

The absence of Johnny Cage (and the shameful reason for it) aside, everything was pretty poor.

The plot, the acting; the dialogue; the comedy (although there were a few laughs); the pacing; the action (partly due to US style of cam being too close, but also it seemed like they didn't know martial arts); the overuse of CGI and the quality of it is all sub-par at best. But most jarring were the plot holes and nonsensical moments that kept popping up. It was just a mess.

It was nice to see Sanada doing some action again and his final fight with Sub-Zero is probably the best (though that's not saying much) but his rope dart scene is deflated by it being GCI for alot of it.

It wasn't as bad as Annihilation but MK1 (despite it's own many flaws) was better.

[ShaOW!linDude]

More and more I am disinclined to subject myself to this movie. The final paragraphs of this review tell me exactly what my gut was feeling regarding it.

"Yet to call the film “repellent” would do it too much credit. The combat itself (sorry, kombat) is so clumsily shot and edited that the fights have no discernible dramatic shape or flow, while the fatalities are rendered in bland, businesslike computer graphics that have you yearning for the honest, artisanal gloop-by-the-bucket of a Hellraiser or Nightmare on Elm Street.

Here, then, is the killer blow. We no longer live in the 1990s. The films that inspired Mortal Kombat in the first place – the transcendently violent, witty and graceful kung fu classics made by Shaw Brothers in Singapore and Golden Harvest in Hong Kong, plus early Western imitators such as Sworn to Justice and Bloodsport – no longer languish in a cinematic twilight zone, but are freely available to stream on Amazon Prime and Netflix.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Five Deadly Venoms, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, The Mystery of Chess Boxing: a five-minute chunk from any of the above will yield more spectacle and style than $55 million of present-day Hollywood capital can apparently buy. Why waste your time and money on a knock-off of a knock-off when the glorious originals are right there?"

Full review here if anyone is interested.

Telegraph's Mortal Kombat review

[One Armed Boxer]

Slightly off topic but....

17 hours ago, ShaOW!linDude said:

kung fu classics made by Shaw Brothers in Singapore

[Super Ninja]

16 minutes ago, One Armed Boxer said:

Slightly off topic but....

I'm glad somebody else pointed that out, I thought maybe I'm lacking knowledge on the subject.. If I remember correctly Shaws made movies in Malaysia but Singapore? Never heard of that...

[J.J. Hayden]

On 4/28/2021 at 4:14 PM, AlbertV said:

Jaa doubled Shou in the 1997 sequel

That's cool, I knew he did stunts in the movie but didn't know he was the double, but it has been many years since I watched it and seeing the footage now, it's easy to tell.

 

On 4/28/2021 at 4:14 PM, AlbertV said:

Baraka is former world champion kickboxer Dennis Keiffer

I thought I'd heard somewhere that Ray Park played Baraka and doubled for Raiden. But looking at this clip, I'm sure you're right. I'm pretty sure he's Raiden's double though, he certainly moves like Park  when you can't see his face.

I know J.J. Perry played several characters too. Just goes to show it takes more than MA masters to make a decent movie.

[sym8]

I thought this started off quite well but after the promising start it just fell apart,some of the action is ok and then it just becomes blah,seen it all before and that’s in the same fight sequence.Hit the fast forward a lot then just went straight to the finale and eventually turned it off halfway through that.

[laagi]

 

[laagi]

After watching this special I'm seriously pissed on how this turned out. More so on how they chopped the fight scenes. Total waste of talent! I don't get it

 

 

Edited May 16, 2021 by laagi

[mark187]

Blu-ray and 4K koming out on 7/13. Unfortunately no mention on the cover of any kind of extended cut. Maybe it’ll have deleted scenes though but this is a movie that would have benefited from an extended version 

[Karlos]

Just wanted to say this stank, and it's a real shame.

I was never a MK fan (Street Fighter II for life), but even I know there is a decent enough mythology to utilise here, but it's just all over the place.

The "super power" thing was...is that from the games? Very poorly done.

And yeah, the sparse fight scenes are just a mess, which is it's biggest crime.

By the end of it all I looked as bored and tired as poor Hiroyuki Sanada.

[Koravec]

Someone asked me how it was and I said “eh, was kinda just a movie” basically all I could really say about it. 

The opening cinematography really set a high precedent that the rest of the film could never hold up to. My surprised initial engagement quickly diminished.

The cave training battles were cool. Hated the main character.

Will anticipate the sequel for the actual tournament, honestly dont really see how they could miss making that intriguing based off the lackluster plotpoints and fights this one offered. So all in all, didnt feel it was that terrible or the fights bad in any way.

[Cognoscente]

I had more fun watching MK: Annihilation.

[laagi]

2 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

I had more fun watching MK: Annihilation.

Now you're just trolling 

[Cognoscente]

That sequel had Ridley Tsui as one of the choreographers. This reboot didn't have any HK input.