Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

Title: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Director: John R. Leonetti
Released: 1997
Staring: Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, James Remar, Sandra Hess, Lynn “Red” Williams, Brian Thompson, Musetta Vander, Irina Pantaeva, Deron McBee, Marjean Holden, Litefoot, Chris Conrad

Plot: Picking up were the first movie left off, the Outworld leader Shao Kahn (Thompson) unhappy with the outcome of the previous tournament launches an invasion of earth, breaking the rules of the “Mortal Kombat” tournament. Now Liu Kang (Shou), Raiden (Remar), Jax (Williams), Sonya (Hess) and Kitana (Soto) must join forces once again to defeat Shao Kahn, before Earth realm merges permanently with the Outworld.



Review: Over the years I’ve been writing this blog I have covered on several occasions my love for the “Mortal Kombat” series, a series which at times has certainly tested the love of it’s fan base mainly with questionable sequels to the original video game trilogy, which honestly only now has come back to the same standard as the original games, while the live action adaptations have largely been more successful, though this film will forever be the painful exception by being a film that even the fan base struggle to like.

The original “Mortal Kombat” movie I openly admitted in my review is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, so you can no doubt imagine by excitement when I discovered that a sequel was originally being made. Sadly this film was not the worthy successor (an honour later bestowed to the Classic TV series Mortal Kombat Konquest) to the first film I hoped it would be even back then and upon revisiting it now, several years after that original viewing with a really open mind I still found myself really disliking this movie.

While the first film was based on the original game, this film is based on Mortal Kombat 2 & 3, with the focus here being largely on the storyline from the third game, not that you can really tell as the melding of the two worlds is essentially the only real plot link that the film shares, especially with it exchanging the cityscapes of the game for a generic desert setting which was surprising seeing how this film had a larger budget than the original film, though where this budget went is even more confusing as none of it seems to have been put onto the screen, with the effects frequently appearing amateurish and the sets having none of the atmospheric designs of the original film, with there being really only one real set in the form of Kahn’s castle while only other sets are just generally generic ruins such as the one used for the final showdown.

The plotline is almost non existent outside of the heroes traveling to the Shao Kahn’s castle on their own yet essentially identical paths, while Raiden whines to the elder gods about what Shao Kahn is doing and how it violates the rules of “Mortal Kombat”. Needless to say all the characters handily all converge in time for the big showdown, while along the way we get distractions such as Liu Kang learning to harness the power of “animality” something which appeared in MK3 as a new way of finishing off your opponent and following on from the groundbreaking “Fatalities”, which had been joined by the more random “Friendship” finishers and completely bonkers “Babality” two things which are yet to make it into one of these spin off’s, yet for some reason director Leonetti felt he could make work, though for something which has such importance put upon it, it ultimately comes to around two minutes of footage of a couple of bargain bin CGI dragons fighting each other during the showdown between Liu Kang and Shao Kahn, which is an awkward looking fight to begin with, so to have them mutate into dragons, only takes the audience further away from the fight rather than salvaging it, as could have been done with a more capable director.

Despite the popularity and success of the first film nearly all of the roles with the exception Liu Kang and Kitana were recast for this film, thanks largely due to scheduling issues with the original cast as both Bridgette Wilson (Sonya) and Christopher Lambert (Raiden) were attached to other films, much like Chris Cassamassa (Scorpion) who was doing stunt work for “Batman & Robin”. The only exception being Linden Ashby, who turned down the opportunity to reprise his memorable performance as Johnny Cage, after he read the script, which is hard to blame him for especially if was the same as the film seen here. Still what is more surprising is that all the actors being brought in were more Z list than the majority of the original actors.

The main problem the film suffers from is the same as “Street Fighter” by misguidedly trying to please the fan base, by cramming in as many of their favorite characters as possible, but then suddenly finding that it has nothing for them to do, while no doubt further ticking off the Johnny Cage fan’s by killing him off in the first ten minutes. The original film based itself on the original game which arguably had a small roster of characters to feature which made it easier, but by drawing inspiration from MK2 & 3 it really tries to bite off more than it can chew by trying to feature so many characters, so not only do we have a lot of characters not doing much apart from standing around and generally bragging about their abilities, which rarely get showcased something especially true with the character of Sheeva, who was originally supposed to fight Raiden and Liu Kang at the same time, but due to complexities of bringing her character to the screen with the extensive use of prosthetic's and CGI, the scene was replaced with her almost comical death scene. Even worse we also get characters such as Melina suddenly appearing with no introduction and killed off with even less notice. As a result the film could have certainly benefited from just taking the more popular characters and concentrated on doing them well, after all who really cares about seeing characters like Nightwolf and Sindel?? Even more randomly Sub Zero and Scorpion both return, even though they both died in the first film and while their appearance is certainly still welcome (unlike those stupid robots) and they have a decent fight scene, their reapperence rests largely on your acceptance that Sub Zero is actually the brother of the original Sub Zero, a idea only made the less laughable by his sudden ability to fly, while Scorpion’s reappearance is left for the audience to figure out as no explanation is certainly given here.

The sole saving grace of this whole non-event is with the fight scenes, which although they don’t come close to those seen in the original film, we do get a few half decent fight scenes, including a titillating mud pit showdown between Sonya and Melina, which despite Sonya being completely covered in mud by the end of the fight, it has mysteriously disappeared by the next scene as we see what would seem to be a freshly showered Sonya. Still Hess does well in portraying the character while even cheekily getting to pull off Sonya’s “Kiss of Death” fatality. The fight scenes however are heavily affected by the martial arts abilities of the actors who happen to be playing those characters, so ironically as a result of this characters such as Sub-zero and Scorpion who are played mainly by fight trained stuntmen have great fight scenes, while Robin Shou doesn’t get the same showcase for his abilities as he did before largely thanks to Brian Thompson having seemingly zero martial arts ability, despite his resume listing that he has a black belt in Hapkido, though his characters insistence on constantly doing forward flips is almost comical.

“Mortal Kombat : Annihilation” is not just a flawed film, it’s a film lacking any kind of direction and one which makes no attempt to take advantage of the world already established in the first film, while questionable use of budget makes it hard to see what they spent the money on, especially when the acting and script are so awful, while the sole thing which stops this from being sent straight to Video Game Movie hell, along with the likes of “Double Dragon” and “King of the Fighters” are the few good fight scenes we get, which while they ultimately might not cover for the mountain of issues this film has, at least proving enough of a distraction to keep your attention to the end credits. Sadly the planned follow up to this film, which allegedly would not only bring back the original cast, but also make up for cover for the damage caused to the franchise by this film would be closed down, when sets were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

While other attempts to reboot the franchise would follow in this films wake, we still await another movie, with the fate of the series would now seemingly rest in the hands of Kevin Tancharoen, who has so far proven to the unlikely saviour since releasing his test film “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” which gave the series a real life edge, which lead to the web series “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” whose huge success has now lead to him being given the gig of reviving the film franchise in what is expected to be a much needed reboot, much like the recent one which the games themselves were given, though details are still minimal we can only hope that it takes this film as an example of what not to do with the franchise.

Mortal Kombat

Title: Mortal Kombat
Director: Paul Anderson
Released: 1995
Staring: Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert, Talisa Soto, Trevor Goddard, Chris Casamassa,

Plot: Once every generation, there is an interdimensional martial arts tournament held, known simply as Mortal Kombat and designed to limit invasions between the realms. Having won the last nine tournaments, the realm of Outworld and now only need to win one more tournament to allow it’s Emperor Shao Kahn to invade and conquer Earth Realm. Now Shaolin warrior Liu Kang (Shou) seeking revenge against the tournament host Shang Tsung (Tagawa) for the death of his brother, joins the other fighters picked by Raiden (Lambert) The God of Thunder to face against Shao Kahn and the warriors of Outworld in a last bid attempt to save Earth.






Review: Regular readers of the blog will probably know already of my love for the “Mortal Kombat” series and it seemed about time that I actually reviewed the film I consider to be my ultimate guilty pleasure.

Video Game adaptations have in the past (with usually good reason) been frequently greeted with much critical distain and despite Uwe Boll having spent the majority of his career making a vast number of the horrible adaptations there have been to date, which only makes this all the more special let alone the fact that it broke the chain of bad video game adaptations when it was released after the legendry flops “Super Mario Bros.” (1993) and “Street Fighter” (1994) the later of which Jean Claude Van Damme ironically choose to do instead of this film, which unlike those two is awesome! Were this film succeeds were the others failed, is by Director Anderson taking the key ideas from the game and giving them his own twist in almost the same way that was attempted with “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” only Anderson is instead applying those same ideas to a traditional Kung Fu format, while keeping the more fantastical elements to a minimum while still finding a way to make such trademark elements such as the fantastical fighting styles of the outworld fighters like Scorpion and Sub Zero

The other strength here is by limiting the characters to those from the first game, while other video game tie in’s got bogged down with trying to work in everyone’s favourite characters, something especially memorable from the mess which “Street Fighter” became by trying to include every single character and while “Mortal Kombat” throws in several original creations such as Art Lean (Edwards), while the tournament setting allows for these characters to be introduced and serve their purpose before being handily disposed of. Infact the format perhaps works alittle too well seeing how after the first quarter when the Trio of Liu Kang, Movie star Johnny Cage (Ashby) and Sonya Blade (Wilson) arrive on the island, it is essentially fighting from that moment on with little or no break between each sequence, but this what we as fans want to see, rather than clumsy attempts to add depths to what are at their best, as much as we want to deny it are little more than paper thin caricatures, which is fine for the purpose they serve in the video game world and it’s because of this same reason that other attempts to adapt games frequently fail, as directors try to either stick too close to the source material or take it too far from this material so that it alienates even the most hardcore of the fanbase. Anderson would later take his skill of adaptation to the “Resident Evil” franchise eventually taking it in a completly new direction than the games, forming a franchise which currently shows no signs of slowing down, as seen by the success of the recent forth entry in the series “Resident Evil: Apocalypse”, despite the film not exactly bringing much to the Zombie genre they frequently emulate, other than a series of entry level zombie movies, before their fans move onto the more legendry films of George Romero and in way the same thing could be said for “Mortal Kombat” which is almost like an entry level movie for the Kung Fu genre, aswell as a thinly veiled adaptation of “Enter the Dragon” only with the added bonuses of multi armed mutants and soul stealing sorcerers.

The action scenes are all handled well with even the non martial art trained amongst the cast, such as Ashby and Wilson both coming across as convincing martial artists, with the majority of them being handled by Shou, who surprisingly would fall off the radar after this film, which only makes it more of a shame he wasn’t seen in similar roles, with his star pretty much dropping after this films release. All the fighters show off their trademark moves with some such as Scorpions spear and Johnny Cage’s package punch are all accounted for, while Goro is pretty much a perfect adaptation from his video game persona and only benefits further from being an animatronics creation, especially when you look at the seriously dated CGI used to create Reptile, which I remember being alot more impressive the first time I saw this film, but then the same could also be said for “The Lawnmower Man” (1992). Still unlike the CGI the techno heavy soundtrack still kicks ass, with the opening theme perfectly setting the tone for the fun which follows.

The big surprise here is the lack of gore, especially seeing how the Mortal Kombat series are some of the most violent fighting games ever made and while I wasn’t expecting to see Sub Zero performing his fatality of tearing off an opponents head and spinal cord, it is still a tricky game to adapt faithfully enough to stay in tune with what fans have come to expect from the series. Still it does manage to throw in a few surprises in this stake, much like the surprise appearance of the games memorable “Pit” stage and the gory demise of Reptile but its still all fun times even without the gory extremes of the game, but then Anderson it’s also worth remembering is the same director who gave us a gore free zombie movie (See: Resident Evil).

As much as other critics have blasted this flick in the past, frequently trying to lump it in with Street Fighter and while admittedly the humour can seem alitle forced in places and it’s sequel “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” is utter garbage, this still remains a great film. Even now as I try to look at it through a more critical viewpoint, rather than the rose tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia and it did also spawn “Mortal Kombat: Conquest” a great TV show which is still in need of a decent DVD release and while the intregring “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” has now sadly drifted away from its intriguing “Dark Knight” style reimagining into more familiar territory after being turned into "Mortal Kombat: Legacy", proving once more that studio exec’s really don’t know shit.

Mortal Kombat: Legacy

Several months ago I stumbled across the promo trailer for “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” or “Mortal Komabt: Rebirth” as it was known then, which took the Mortal Kombat series and gave it a “Dark Knight” shot of realism, which created a result which honestly broke my jaw the first time I saw it, quickly leading me to spam the hell out of my like minded friends insisting that they watch it, despite the fact that no one seemed to know what exactly it was a promo for.



So time passed on and though it frequently came up in conversations with my friends who I’d shown it to, it had generally fallen off the radar. That was until last night when “Geeks Are Sexy” posted the first episode of the new web series which that promo has since evolved into and suddenly everything was put to one side as I sat down to watch the first episode of this latest attempt at adapting the popular games, which so far has spawned two films, an animated series and the guilty pleasure which is “Mortal Kombat: Conquest” which remains one of the best spin off’s which the games have inspired to date.
So here is the first episode of this latest incarnation which is to be released as a weekly web series by Machinima.com via youtube.



Spearheading the series is director Kevin Tancharoen who is probably best known for directing the “Fame” Remake and is certainly a surprising choice for rebooting / reimaging the franchise, but so far he has proven to be exactly what the series has needed as this latest addition to the franchise has proven with it’s first episode to be more than a glossy promo, for although this pilot episode only shows Sonya Blade, Jax and Kano rather than any of the more fantastical characters, it still moves at a breakneck pace and devotes a good chunk of the episode run time to some great action sequences including a great showdown between Jax and Kano.

The series has some great writing talent behind it, with Tancharoen being joined on writing duties by Ed Boon the creator of the Mortal Kombat series aswell as the memorable voice of Scorpion. Also on writing for the show are Todd and Aaron Helbing who more recently could be found writing for another great adaptation of an established classic with “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”. Although it is early days for the series the writing is still fresh and with a strong focus on action, rather than allowing the action to get too bogged down, with all the characters so far still proving as memorable as their video game versions.

The cast are largely unknowns with a couple of cult actors such as Michael Jai White finally giving us a decent version of Jax, while his martial arts skills are put to great effect here. The only other recognisable face here is Jeri Ryan who made a whole lot more people tune in for Star Trek Voyager and no doubt will have the same effect here as she takes on the role of the feisty Sonya Blade. However when it comes to their casting of Kano, whom for myself was truly nailed by Trevor Goddard who brought a cocky thug like quality to the character, rather than the more Triad esq gangster that Darren Shahlavi has chosen to play him like, but I’m interested to still to see how Kano is used in the latest adaptation, especially with another nine episodes to go in this brief initial run, though a strong foundation has been laid with the first episode especially when combined with the teaser, so hopefully Tancharoen has enough ideas to keep our interest, which if the cast list on IMDB is anything to go off it’s safe to say he has me curious as to how other characters will be introduced and how they will come across in his vision, but will he get close to the gory highlights of the source material? For the moment it is hard to say and while the other adaptations have generally skipped around it, so already I’m keen to see if Tancharoen will choose this safer path aswell or instead surprise us all further by reminding us all what exactly what the selling point of Mortal Kombat was in the first place.

New Mortal Kombat on the way??

Back in the 90's when arcades were the only place to play the newest games, way before having a games console was the social norm, there were three video games which dominated my sugar addled, Godzilla obsessing childhood and they were Moonstone, Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat and despite being ultra violent and utterly amazing Moonstone was sadly forgotten by most, were as the Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, would go on to become video game legends, aswell as spawning their own movie incarnations, which to most would be viewed as cinematic trash and which in the case of Street Fighter was undoubtedly true.
Still there was somthing which grabbed me about Mortal Kombat, with it's kung fu goodness and portrayals of the iconic characters from the game, securing it's place as a guilty pleasure in my collection. Sadly this favourable opinion wasn't shared by many and despite spawning a ropey sequel and a pretty decent spin off series, the first film version was pretty much discarded as being trash like the rest of the video game movies.

Still this morning I stumbled across this trailer for a new film in the series titled "Mortal Kombat: Rebirth"



Within two days of being posted on Youtube it has received over a million views, sparking much discussion as to what it could be a trailer for? Could it be for a new game? Possibly a new movie version?

The truth is that it is a test, made by Kevin Tancharoen (yes the guy who directed "Fame") in a bid to garner studio interest in the project, which at present is still to see the film green lit, but seriously I am already excited about this film, especially in the way that he has given the game a whole new twist, by bringing its characters into the real world and reworking them into slightly less fantastical creations, in much the same way that Christopher Nolan did for Batman, which there is no doubt also opened the doorway for this latest reimagining.
True he might not be the first director to do this, seeing how Robert Rodriguez did a similar stunt, to get "Sin City" off the ground and also to secure the approval of it's creator Frank Miller, but I have to admit it's pretty darn effective and I really hope that this gets developed further, without meddling from studio bosses, who will no doubt find another amazing way of screwing up, something potentially great.

Over at "the collider" is an exclusive interview with Tancharoen, for those who want to know more, check it out here

Your thoughts please