Mortal Movie Monday - Giant Bomb Reviews MK the Movie

Status
Not open for further replies.

Patrick McCarron

TRMK Admin, Co-founder
Staff member
This week's video was pointed out by none other than <b>Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon</b> <a href="https://twitter.com/noobde/status/1663310302">via Twitter.</a> In it, <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com">Giant Bomb's</a> Ryan Davis discusses the first Mortal Kombat movie in <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/tang-mortal-kombat/17-502/">the latest installment</a> of <b>This Ain't No Game (TANG)</b>. In TANG, Ryan dissects video game to movie translations and point out the good, bad and ugly side of each of them. For Mortal Kombat the movie, Ryan discusses how the movie still surprisingly stands up fifteen years later, despite it's shortcomings and cheesiness.

Check the video review out below:
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="640" height="360" id="gb_player" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.giantbomb.com/video/video.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="flashvars" value="paramsURI=http%3A//www.giantbomb.com/video/params/502/?w=1"><param name="videoURI" value="http://media.giantbomb.com/video/vf_tang_mortalkombat.flv"><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://www.giantbomb.com/video/video.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="580" height="330" name="gb_player" wmode="transparent" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="paramsURI=http%3A//www.giantbomb.com/video/params/502/?w=1" /></object>

I personally think Mortal Kombat is one of the better video game to movie translations, and agree completely with Ryan's views. I'm actually still waiting for the movie to be released on the Blu-ray HD format, hopefully with some well deserved bonus materials. But I wont hold my breath.

There is also constant talk of a third movie, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat:_Annihilation#Sequel">Mortal Kombat: Devastation</a> which will ignore the previous movies and "reboot the series." I don't hold out a lot of hope for that, but would love to be surprised. Lucky for us fans, the series would LIKELY be distributed by New Line Cinema again which is owned by Warner Bros. which has a great track record of allowing film makers to stick to the source material.

Come back next <b>Mortal Movie Monday</b> for another great video. We're always looking for great clips to showcase, so don't forget to <a href="http://www.trmk.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12437">suggest us a future video</a> to be featured.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah, while MK:A makes it into the ten top worst v.game movies... MK was a golden example of the right format. Sure it couldhave been better... But it wasn't MK:A.
 
The first film was terrific. I mean, sure it had some inaccuracies but it got the basic premise right and all the characters stuck fairly close to their video game personas. Scorpion got an organic thing-a-majig in his hand and some of the backstory and rivalries were skipped over, but a lot of what was done in that movie had an effect on how the franchise's story developed from then on. Like the Liu Kang/Kitana romance.
 
And Kano.... Boy did THIS film effect his portrayal!

And in my opinion, for the better! :-D
 
Could you guys tell me what was so wrong about MK:A? It was the first MK film I watched (Heck, before I even began to even like the MK series) and it didn't seem too bad.

I did like the first film though. It had more Scorpion and SubZero in it (though MKA did have a pretty ok fight scene between the two).
 
Well it's hard to pinpoint what was wrong in a movie with so much wrong in it. The writing was terrible, the costumes were unconvincing (not like the first movie), and it felt like they were just going down a checklist and ticking off characters. There was that horrible Animality nonsense. Kahn was a god, Shinnok was his father, and Raiden was his brother. That's bad enough.

But while those are the bad points I can't say there weren't good ones as well. Personally, I loved the fight with Cyrax, though I lamented the lack of Sektor...he always gets left out.
 
I know the acting wasn't brilliant in the first movie, but they seemed to be... I don't know... The acting just wasn't the same in MK:A, thats all I know.
 
Not convincing is the phrase I used. I like that one to describe the acting in MK Annihilation.
 
If you don't think Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is that bad, then maybe you haven't watched it in awhile. I watched it again about a month ago, and could barely tolerate the dialogue, which is the main problem with the movie: the dialogue was absolutely ****ing atrocious; it was as if a middle schooler wrote the script.

The massive influx of characters didn't bother me, and I actually enjoyed the amount of characters included in the film. It was simply the dialogue that completely ruined everything for me. It also didn't help that a lot of the movie came off very cartoon-ish and over-the-top. If the movie had the same execution and dark, gritty tone/look as the Conquest series, it would have looked much, much better.

And I dig the Raiden/Kahn/Shinnok connection. Makes perfect sense to me, and adds even more depth to the Raiden vs. Kahn interrealm rivalry. I consider the movie a guilty pleasure.

No one will deny the awesomeness of the first movie, though. Best over-the-top Enter the Dragon knock-off ever.
 
I also had no probs with the Raiden/Kahn/Shinnok relationship. I had to reread the MK4 storyline 4 times afterwards to make sure I had heard right.. lol... But I nevcer had a prob with it. It was the only thing in the movie I was satisfied with, but the MK team always deny it ever was so. Reading the story text released for MK VCs DC, Kahn was mentioned as Raiden's brother in... I think it was his own bio. I was suprise to see it in text what th MK team had always denied by word.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top