I Watch Films: Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat

Outworld has beaten Earthrealm in the last 9 Mortal Kombat tournaments and if they win again they’ll invade. So they’re trying to tip the odds in their favour by sending Sub-Zero to Earth to kill the Mortal Kombaters (“champions” identifiable by a dragon mark, and each with an “arcana”, a special ability). There are a bunch of them, one being the prophecied heir to a legendary warrior, a woman who has Chekov’s-no-dragon-mark, an Australian mercenary who doesn’t care about Earthrealm, an American special forces guy who loses his arms (it’s pretty brutal) and some others in a temple I didn’t really focus on. One had a hat that he fought with.

It's based on the long running fighting game, and the plot related elements are there to efficiently move us into the fight scenes, just like the game. Since I haven’t cared about Mortal Kombat for 25 years I can’t say I was super impressed by the story and characters. The film tries to give weight to CGI blasts and gravity defying leaps, but it’s probably at it’s best with close up fights and stunt work.

Watch This: Fights, magic, the fate of the Earth(realm) in the balance!
Don’t Watch This: You prefer mashing the buttons when Sonya Blade fights a weird guy in a mask with swords (? I’m not doing a lot of research for this but I assume this is a Mortal Kombat character)