re: Mortal Kombat releasing at midnight on HBO Max

Man, they suckered me in with this one. I watched the first seven minutes on HBO Max and assumed the rest of the movie would be at that level. We saw it in Dolby and it was horrible.

Boring

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Mileena

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That one can be easily replaced, as Shang Tsung can just make another. In 9, the one you can play as is the 7th attempt at splicing Kitana's DNA with Tarkatan DNA - of course the Tarkatan race (Baraka) needs to be shown.

I’d expect them to write out or sideline the Cole character for the sequel. He’s essentially just a plot device to get the scorpion plot line in there.

Plus he would be pretty redundant with the Cage coming in.

He had some good lines. I enjoyed it and can’t wait for the next

I thought was ok as far as video game movies go but I'm really glad I watched this on HBOMax instead of seeing it in a theater. I think I'd put it on the level of Prince of Persia and the most recent Tomb Raider where they came very close to properly adapting the games but needlessly changed just enough to ultimately drag the movie down.

Positives
Fight scenes were well done from the actual combat down to the sound design.

Scorpion & Sub Zero parts at the start and end were cool (except for Cole trying to punch the ice off his wife and kid in the middle of a life or death fight).

Fatalities and special moves inspired from the games looked cool.

While the acting wasn't great I think they did about as good as they could with such a cheese ball script and a first time director and was really no worse than the average Hong Kong action movie from the 80s and 90s.

Giving a reason for people to have superpowers was a decent idea (though I didn't care for the actual execution of it).


Negatives
Entire Cole story line was awful and a complete waste of time. No idea why they thought they needed to create a new character when there are nearly 100 to choose from the games. Everything he was involved in made the movie worse. Dumping Johnny Cage for this clown was a terrible terrible movie.

Main story was mediocre at best. Not having the actual MK tournament was a terrible choice overall. The telegraphed Kano betrayal was a waste of time that even a person who knew nothing about the games could see coming from a mile away. MK logo as mark of chosen ones that is passed on to a person that kills you was as dumb as expected (so if I accidentally hit one of them with a car I'm now chosen? lol).

Killing off Goro with lame arse Cole was weak as hell. Didn't care for Kung Lao getting killed off by what was essentially a force grab into a soul suck when he'd already shown he had the ability to teleport which I assumed he was going to do in one of his fights but never did. Turning Nitara into a Shan Tsung toady was an odd choice since she really only gives a shite about her realm. Did not care for Sonia needing to earn her mark to fight for Earth but suddenly being in the training ring they had just made a point of saying she wasn't allowed to enter when Shang Tsung and company show up. Also didn't like her energy blast being used as an insta kill when they made Lui Kang's fire balls kind of do jack shite to anyone he hit them with. Also didn't like the "Hey this enemy is super strong so we're going to team up to kill them" shite. Lame.

Most surprisingly, the soundtrack was very generic. I really thought they would have used modern electronic musicians to remix MK music like they did in the original movie. Instead most of the music could have come from any random fantasy movie right up until the end when they finally incorporated the main theme.




Ultimately most of the issues I had with it stem from Cole and his family being a massive drag and the really strange decision to not even hold the tournament. I get that Cole was supposed to be a way for non fans to ease their way into the fantastical elements of the games but there are plenty of established characters that could have been used for that. Not only that, let's be serious, 99.9% of the people who were going to see this were already fans of either the first MK movie or the the games. Thinking that a lame arse everyman was needed to ease the audience in would be like thinking there needed to be a made up wide eyed random nobody human inserted into Lord of the Rings for the audience to accept it. Hell, the place to stick made up characters into the story would have been in the tournament. They could have had all kinds of fatalities that wouldn't have killed off characters that people want to see. I mean I really can't get over how they wasted Goro in a 5 minute sequence where he's little more than a shitty assassin. You have this big arse 4 armed champion of MK, you tease him ripping somebody in half, and then when he actually fights he's not even strong enough to kill Cole's wife w/a single punch and is defeated by some bum who tried to quit after like two days of training? Really?


I'd give a C+ overall.

If not for the bad arse Sub Zero and Scorpion fights and a couple of the cool fatalities (mainly Kung Lao vs Nitara & Jax vs Reiko) it would be a D+ for me. While I would probably watch a sequel but there'd be no way I'd go to theaters to see it. It's at the very least far better than the so bad its funny MK Annihilation but I think the original MK is a better overall movie with a much more cohesive story.


Hell, if they were so dead set on having movie w/o the MK tourney they would have been better off doing a movie about Sub Zero and Scorpion b/c those parts were by far the strongest of the movie.

And keep it shot with a feel of the temple life in batman begins + the last samurai. A western style revenge story, disguised as an Eastern. Warm tones with the Shirai Ryu and cool tones with the Lin Kuei scenes/flashbacks..I dont know, lots of opportunities missed imo

Ive never cared about liu kang, johnny cage, sonya, kung lao or really any of the major babyfaces of the franchise.

It would have been cool to see the scorpion and subzero POV and build up before, and during the 1st tournament. Backstory on clans, show Bi Han and his brother as children..so things coming make sense.

3rd act should've been scorpion deciding to take his revenge at the tournament, and the fall out.

..End credits scene chould have been a tease/resurrection of Noob Saibot.

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Cole just sucks and his power just sucks.

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I'm not even sure what his power really is. When he was getting hit and his armor started to glow I assumed he was like Sebastian Shaw from X-Men and was going to store all that energy so he could use it in a giant energy blast. When his daughter said use the uppercut I figured he was about to punch off Goro's head. Instead all he did was grow some bladed tonfas.

Just watched.

Highly impressed.

That’s all I have to say.

The problem with Stryker is that his storyline is tied into Shao Kahn invading Earth (MK3).