Friday 27 April 2012

Retro Friday: Mortal Kombat Movie


MORTAL KOMBAT! *Screams* now that we have that out of the way, lets talk about one of my favourite franchises of all time. Mortal Kombat was a brilliant little game, I remember being 5 and one day there was a game that my mum gave me to make up for me being really ill. I popped the game in and the blood, gore, kick-ass fighting had me addicted. Even though my dad hated the game, I always played Mortal Kombat, stuck to it through good times and bad. Speaking of bad times with MK lets talk about the MK movie.

One day whilst flipping through channels I landed on a very generic looking movie with an asian guy fighting. Being the little kid I was I kept watching and after a few minutes, especially after seeing Sub Zero I realised that it was a freaking MK movie! I loved this movie. It is actually still holding up as one of the best video game movies of all time, which isn't much thanks to Hollywood and its sh*tty takes at our beloved games.

The MK movie came out at the peak of the franchise as Ultimate MK had just come out and everyone was in the craze, or should I say Kraze. The movie had a lot of casting choices, it actually considered Johnny Depp, Tom Kruise and John-Klaud Van Damme (okay I'll stop with the 'K's) for the role of Johnny Cage but actually ended up choosing an unknown actor I don't even want to Google. This movie was also wanted to cast Cameron Diaz for Sonya but she ended up breaking a wrist in martial arts training. Hell, Steven Speilberg was also gonna do a cameo in the movie but had to back out due to some issues. So a lot of weird casting stuff went down for this movie, in the end though this was still a well casted movie, I bet Van Damme wishes he didn't put down this movie to do the Street Fighter movie. Its that cheesy type of acting which worked well for a laugh back then and works well now for some 90's nostalgia fans unlike Van Damme in Street Fighter, okay I'll just focus on MK for now.

The plot of the film is typical MK elder gods nonsense which everyone just nods to because we know what follows the plot, some badass fighting. Scorpion, Sub-zero, Liu Kang, Kano, Sonya, Johnny Cage, Raiden, Shan Tsung and even freaking Goro. This movie had the full on cast and it performed well. I freaking loved this movie as a kid and even like it now due to its cheesy nostalgic value. Its good action if you like MK, don't expect professional Bret Lee action and you'l be satisfied.
The only problem I have with this film is with its age rating, a 13 age rating for MK does no justice. MK needs an 18 rating and that could have made this film so good, especially due to some annoying characters I would have loved to see getting decapitated (fatality). 

The film had success and well, that spawned it a sequel which is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. So never mind the sequel just be happy that in 1995 a movie on Mortal Kombat debuted at #1 in the world on the movie charts. This is a film I actually still recommend for fans of the game and fans of old 90's nostalgia, just keep you expectations low and you will enjoy .... MORTAL KOMBAT!

God dammit I can't get the catchy techno theme out of my head




2 comments:

  1. A neo-classic! I remember when this came out. I listened to the soundtrack on cassette over and over--definitely one of my favs.

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  2. Awesome! I was way too young so I just played the game to hear the music :P

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