I was surprised at the hype around Mortal Kombat II. I didn’t really like the first one: too polished and annoyingly self-serious to capture what makes the video games so special in the first place. But when you’ve got a LOT of money riding on your movie succeeding, and devoted fans not totally dismayed by what they saw, it’s like we lost the first round to Shao Kahn, on the ropes but still alive hoping for a “GET OVER HERE!” Scorpion comeback.
But II isn’t about Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) or Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). It’s about Kitana (Adeline Rudolph). Youngest daughter of King Jerrod (Desmond Chaim), Kitana is forced to watch her kingdom Edenia fall to Out World 10/10 matches, letting Shao Kahn take over her people, leaving the princess as a slave to the champion. Not giving 2 f*cks about this is Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a past his prime Van Damme like action movie star relying on convention money to drink himself to death. The gods summon Cage to join Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mechad Brooks), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Cole Young (Lewis Tan) as the 5th of Earth’s mightiest fighters. Earth is currently loser of 9/10 battles, meaning Shao Kahn is 1 more win away from Out World doing to Earth what it did to Kitana’s Edenia.
Mortal Kombat II is a great example of how to address problems with a movie. You don’t have to destroy EVERYTHING, you just make some small changes here and there. Previous writing team was replaced with Jeremy Slater, who has handled silly kaiju fighting before, so some video game characters shouldn’t be a problem. With him comes a new tone: 80% silly, 20% serious, much more befitting of a movie the fans want to see. Characters from the old film that don’t fit into that? They’re either changed (Jax is a wisecracking sidekick now), elevated (Kano’s having a ball), or relegated to supporting player (poor Lewis Tan, who I like, but Cole Young is kinda a nothing burger). That leaves room for new blood: time to honor 1995. That means the trio of Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage have to team up as we’d expect them to, filling the roles we want: Liu the serious one, Johnny the wisecracker, and Sonya walking the line between. Slater smartly keeps the hard R rating, allowing some coarser dialogue, but more importantly, keeping the best part of the original: the gruesome fatalities. Here they’re even more gruesome, so over the top that you will look away, but chuckle at how silly what you’re watching is.
The best trick Mortal Kombat II pulls off is finding ways like the 1995 movie did to set the stage for its one v one battles. This tournament randomly transports the participants to random locations (sure, why not?) to battle it out. Where are these locations? A pit with spikes, a small platform over gross water, and some spectral random dimension bursting with color, not too mention multiple hellscapes, whether they be bone or flame forward. This is a sneaky fun way to get the video game into the movie, and providing intermediate fun martial arts battles with those gross fatalities that technically work within the plot. Nice job Jeremy! Slater also does just enough at the top to make these fights at least a little personal, making the stakes actually work better than they did in 2021. Meaning we have simultaneously Johnny Cage proving he’s not a loser arcing at the same time with Kitana trying to find revenge for her father and her people’s dimensional death, a pairing so preposterous it could only fit inside Mortal Kombat II as a nice counter balance to one another.
Crazy battles. Kooky stakes. Daffy storytelling. That’s all I really want from Mortal Kombat II, and it delivered. Keep making little tweaks here and there boys, and at some point, we might have a real banger on our hands. Like I said after your 2021 movie, have Joe Taslim call his friends to take part please! They’ll make the martial arts really pop, I guarantee it!