A decade ago, it could be said that Hollywood was in it’s Super Hero era as comic book movie adaptations were dominating the box office off the backs of what Marvel and DC were bringing to the big screen.  But now, it could be said that Hollywood has shifted into a Video Game era.  What once was considered box office poison has suddenly evolved into powerhouse in the cinemas, with movies based on video games now becoming some of the most successful films of the last several years.  It could be said that the surprising success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies helped to propel us into this era, but when it really began to go to the next level was when The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) broke all sorts of box office records.  Then, just a couple years after, A Minecraft Movie (2025) defied all expectations and grossed nearly a billion dollars at the box office.  Now, Hollywood studios are looking around at what other game franchises could possibly make the transition to the big screen.  These games have built in fanbases already, and that proves to be a strong asset in helping to launch a new film series.  Video games are even having that same effect on television, with hit shows like The Last of Us and Fallout performing well in both ratings and in awards season accolades.  But, video game movies aren’t entirely new.  Even back in the 16 bit era when Nintendo and Sega were the only two competitors in the market, there were some ambitious attempts to try to bring video games to life as movie franchises.  Most of them didn’t work, like Super Mario Brothers (1993) and Double Dragon (1994), but there were a couple that while not smashing success did still at least develop a following over the years.  The fighting games in particular managed to spawn some cult hits, such as Street Fighter (1994) and Mortal Kombat (1995).  Mortal Kombat in fact did well enough at the box office to get a sequel, though Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) pretty much killed any chance of there being another film in the series for a while.  But with video game movies now becoming a genre with box office potential again, it seemed worth it to try once again to make something of the Mortal Kombat brand.

Mortal Kombat (2021) had a fairly rocky start to it’s theatrical debut.  It was delayed for months by the Covid pandemic, and then when it finally was set to debut in theaters, attendance was stunted by the gradual re-opening which saw reduced capacity in most auditoriums.  Not only that, but Mortal Kombat was also one of the movies that fell under Warner Brothers’ ill-fated “Project Popcorn” initiative, which saw their enitre 2021 slated released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming.  Suffice to say, the box office ticket sales were pretty low when the movie first came out in April 2021.  But, the movie somehow managed to find it’s audience through streaming.  Critical reception was fairly indifferent to the movie, but general audiences seemed to really dig it.  The film began to win praise for it’s well-choreographed fight scenes as well as a general fun atmosphere, with plenty of humor mixed in with the fight scenes.  While no one was saying that it was a great movie, nor even a good one, most still came away from the film saying that it was entertaining and more importantly, in the spirit of the original game.  One thing that really helped the movie out was that it stuck to it’s “R” rating and seemed to wear that like a badge of honor.  The movie wasn’t afraid to be a little gory at times in a very over-the-top way, which has always been the thing that set the original games apart; it’s unsensitized excess.  Most video game movies of the past tried to sanitize and de-fang video game violence in order to gain a broader audience.  2021’s Mortal Kombat embraced it’s violent edge, and that’s what ultimately helped it to become an underground success, even despite it’s suppressed run in cinemas.  Given some time, Warner Brothers (or more specifically it’s specialty label New Line Cinema) saw how well Mortal Kombat was performing as well as the growing video game genre as a whole, and decided it was worth it to give the movie a sequel.  So, now five years later and under a much different management team at New Line/Warner Brothers, Mortal Kombat II is finally continuing this franchise and expanding it’s roster of fighters.  But the question remains if this movie manages to make it to the next level or is it game over?

In another dimension, the land known as Outworld has been ruled with an iron fist by the warrior emperor Shao Khan (Martyn Ford).  Every several decades, tournaments between the greatest warriors of the realms are held to decide the who rules over those realms, and this time Outworld is set to battle Earthrealm.  Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), the god of thunder and protector of Earthrealm, means to assemble the greatest warriors Earth has to fight Shao Khan’s forces.  On his team are Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) Cole Young (Lewis Tan) and Jax (Mehcad Brooks).  But, they are still short one more to compete in the tournament.  Fate ultimately brings the Earthrealm warrior to a washed up action movie actor with a karate background named Johnny Cage (Karl Urban).  Cage at first is reluctant to join Raiden’s band of warriors, knowing that he will be easily outmatched by all the super powered beings that he would have to go up against.  But, he soon learns that he has no choice in the matter, as the Gods have chosen him specifically to fulfill a purpose.  Meanwhile, in order to boost his roster of fighters, Shao Khan has enlisted the necromancer Quan Chi (David Herriman) to resurrect some of Earthrealms’ fallen warriors.  They bring back the warrior Kung Lao (Max Huang), brother of Liu Kang, and the foulmouthed mercenary named Kano (Josh Lawson), who has managed to plunder an artifact from Netherworld that can steal the power of Lord Raiden and help make Shao Khan immortal.  But, unbeknownst to Shao Khan, his adoptive daughter Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) has been aiding Lord Raiden in secret.  Their hope is to neutralize the artifact in order to keep Shao Khan from achieving immortality.  And that would require the warriors having to go to Netherworld, the land of the dead, where two mortal enemies known as Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) reside.  Will the warriors of Earthrealm be able to win the tournament and defeat Shao Khan, or will their world become another realm fallen into Shao Khan’s unholy empire.

A lot of people’s response to a movie like Mortal Kombat II will likely be depend on what they expect from it.  I get the feeling that most people aren’t going to see this movie expecting it to be an awards worthy achievement.  Mortal Kombat II is pure and simple popcorn fare.  There’s nothing particularly enriching about the plot and the characters are about a fleshed out as they are from the video game selection boards.  But, if that’s all that you’re looking for in a Mortal Kombat movie, than you’ll likely be satisfied by this sequel.  Mortal Kombat II pretty much delivers on exactly what it needed to, and no more.  We’ll, I wouldn’t say exactly no more.  The best thing I can say about the movie is that it is an improvement over the first film.  The stakes feel higher in this one, and it’s clear that they were granted a more substantial budget for this movie, which the filmmakers do put to good use.  At the same time, it still has some of the shortcomings of the first movie, namely in some of the characterizations as well as some of the pacing issues.  For those who like combat, you will be satisfied as this entire film does feel like one great big fight sequence, which makes sense given the tournament plot device.  But, by focusing on the fight scenes, the movie takes away time to focus on the characters.  Especially early on in the film , there is a heavy amount of exposition dialogue, mainly so that they can fit a movie’s worth of character motivation into these short little scenes so the film can get back to the fighting.  I would have liked a little more character interaction, just so the context of each fight scene could make more sense.  But, at the same time, the fight scenes are easily the highlight of the movie.  Most of the fights don’t quite feel as iconic as the ones in the first movie between Sub-Zero and Scorpion.  But there are a few in this sequel that do come close.  And the movie thankfully doesn’t minimize the gore either.  There are some great kills in this film (or should I say “Fatalities”) and it’s with these where the movie does feel like it does justice to the original games.

One thing that I do appreciate about this film is the world-building.  A lot of the movie takes place off Earth in another realm, and the movie does a good job of establishing the atmosphere of the Outworld.  Shao Khan’s palace in particular is a wonderfully gothic looking structure, and it provides a nice spooky backdrop for some of the more intense fighting.  One thing that a lot of fans of the games will appreciate are the faithful re-constructions of actual battlefields from the games.  It isn’t just done for nostalgia bait purposes (though I do think that some of that might have been a factor).  The battlefields in this movie do indeed have context within the story, and it’s great that the filmmakers managed to find a way to incorporate that into their overall world-building.  There are even some moments in the movie when the camera pulls away from the actors, until they are framed on screen just like the side-scrolling perspective that fans of the games will recognize immediately.  The visual effects are also very much improved in this film over the last, which allows for some more creative elements in the fights.  Sub-Zero for one has a new skill set that allows him to dissolve through solid rock and even make clones of himself with a inky substance.  The visual effects also grants a better sense of scale to the film.  The first Mortal Kombat was confined to a lot of small sets with narrow passageways.  The sequel has nice big open spaces that allow for more freedom with the stunt work in the fights.  The way the environments are used is also well done in the movie.  An early fight between Kitana and Johnny Cage is especially effective given how both fighters are forced to reckon with the fact that they are battling in the middle of town, and a few of the buildigs around them make for great obstacles in the course of the battle.  While the story is just barely above par compared to the last film, it is definitively the case that this movie is very much an upgrade in the visual department.

The cast is a mixed bag overall.  Most of the cast from the first film make a return here, including Japanese actors Tadanobu Asano and Hiroyuki Sanada, hot off of their award winning success on the hit show Shogun.  For the most part, they are all doing okay with the material given to them.  Interestingly enough, the lead character from the first movie, Lewis Tan’s Cole, is pushed to the background this time in favor of focusing on the new characters; which isn’t a big loss given that Cole made for a fairly weak protagonist.  Instead, the movie most focuses on the characters of Kitana and Johnny Cage.  Kitana is a decent lead, with a very predictable hero of destiny arc, as she fights to reclaim her throne.  But, the standout in this film is without a doubt Karl Urban as Johnny Cage.  Urban does a fantasitc job of playing the iconic game character, capturing exactly the kind of brash and self-indulgent character traits that Johnny Cage needs.  Urban brings plenty of fun swagger to the role and is a lot of fun to watch.  I’m glad they waited until the second film to introduce him into the story, because Cage is the kind of character you build anticipation for, and Karl Urban does not disappoint.  Also stealing plenty of moments in the film is Josh Lawson as Kano.  He was already the best part of the first film with his hilariously over-the-top Austrailian bravado, and he brings even more of that here, and still manages to go more over-the-top.  I also like the fact that the movie manages to have both Lawson and Karl Urban share scenes together, and it doesn’t feel like either steals the other’s thunder, but instead they work off each other’s energy to create some of the movie’s funniest moments.  Another highlight in this movie is Martyn Ford’s work as Shao Khan.  He spends most of the movie with his face masked behind an effectively creepy element, and yet he still manages to create an air of foreboding menace on screen, even when he’s not fighting in battle.  Shao Khan stands outs as a particularly effective villain as a result, and that’s helped in large part (and I do mean large) by the performance of the very statuesque actor behind the mask.

One other thing the movie does right is that they keep the fight scenes from feeling mundane.  There is a little bit of inspiration here from the John Wick movie franchise, in that this movie does a good job of making each fight feel different from the last.  Each fight in the movie has it’s own identity, whether it’s fighting in a small room in a dungeon, where sharp spikes pop out of the floor, or fighting in the grand hall of Shao Khan’s throne room.  One mistake that action movies make is to have every single one of their action scenes feel the same.  A lot of that has to do with limited budgets, which is why you see so many action movies set themselves in places like abandoned warehouses.  But, the fight scenes in Mortal Kombat II all feel unique because they all take place in different places.  The other appealing thing about the fight scenes is that they are brutal.  One of the worries about this film being made by a major studio was that it would cause the filmmakers to dial back some of the violence in order to make the film more palatable for younger audiences.  Thankfully, the filmmakers behind these Mortal Kombat movies have demonstrated that gory violence is their goal, and this sequel is prime evidence of that.  There is a lot of gushing blood in this movie, and characters meeting their end in pretty gruesome ways.  What helped Mortal Kombat stand out as a game back in the 90’s was the fact that it was super violent and filled with blood.  It’s one of the games that actually led to the adoption of a rating system for video games, as the gaming industry was starting to feel pressure from the federal government who were threatening censorship.  It’s hard to believe that the furor over the release of Mortal Kombat the game would become one of the defining free speech moments that defined the industry for many years after.  By keeping these movies excessively violent, almost to the point of parody, they are helping to honor the legacy of the games, both as a work of art but also as a statement about the right to make and play any video games we wish to.

There is a lot to like about this new Mortal Kombat movie, but it still is not a masterpiece by any means.  It definitely falls into that category of “dumb fun.”  You’ll know right away that this is going to be a film with fairly mediocre dialogue and an unfcoused plot.  But, the whole cheese factor of the movie is also what helps it to succeed as a popcorn flick.  The plot and some of the lines in the movie are definitely the weak points of the movie, but they are easy to overlook when the movie shifts to combat more, which thankfully takes up most of the film.  The stunt choreography in particular is really top notch, and the stunt directors and coordinators did a great job keeping things fresh and different from scene to scene.  In addition, it’s great to see Karl Urban absolutely nailing the role of Johnny Cage.  This was honestly the hardest role for the filmmakers to get right, because so many people have a certain idea about what Cage should be like, from both his persona presented in the games, and also from numerous year’s of casting speculation.  Urban has been around for a while, from top tier franchises like Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, not to mention his starring role on the hit Amazon series The Boys, so there was a risk that he may have been too big of a name to cast as Johnny Cage.  A fresher face might have helped to define Cage anew compared to all other versions of the character, but having Urban there as a veteran actor also works pretty well.  He helps to make Johnny Cage feel like a real character, and it looks like he’s having fun making this movie as well.  It’s also great to see this franchise getting better when it comes to the visuals, showing that Warner Brothers was confident enough with this franchsie that the determined it necessary to grant it a bigger budget.  The film does end with a tease for more adventures to come, and I welcome that.  I just feel that there needs to be more polish put into the scripts for these movies.  Things could be worst, and the movie knows that audience doesn’t want to wait too long to see some action, but I do wish they did more to flesh out some of the characters.  Certainly this isn’t supposed to be Shakespeare, but a more thought out presentation of exposition and character motivation would be appreciated.  In any case, Mortal Kombat II should please many longtime game fans, and even some who’ve never played the games at all.  You want some mindless fun at the movies, then perhaps you should “GET OVER HERE” and enjoy a little mortal kombat.

Rating: 7/10