FATALITY ATTRACTION

MOVIE
Mortal Kombat
Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson
Director Simon McQuoid
Review Ray Chan

You’d be surprised to learn that for every person who has played Mortal Kombat – considered one of the best fighting video games of all time – there’s an equal number, or indeed more, who’ve never even heard of it.
    So let’s briefly recap for the uninitiated. At the heart of the game is the tussle between the player and an opponent of his choice in a one-on-one match, involving various combat moves and attacks. The  trademark feature is the Fatality, a finishing move executed against a defeated rival to kill them in a gruesome fashion, some of which have become almost iconic. Indeed, it is often the prime reward for many victorious players, who take macabre pleasure in seeing what form the Fatalities take.
    In the single-player game, the player faces each of the seven playable characters in a series of battles, after which he must then fight in three endurance matches, each of which involves two opponents. After the third endurance match, the player fights the four-armed Goro, followed by a final match against Shang Tsung, the main villain of the piece.
    The challenge for any moviemaker then is to take the simplicity of this fighting platform, and build any sort of storyline around it, incorporating all the various characters, elements, and yes, even the Fatalities. Especially the Fatalities, in fact.
    This 2021 cinematic version of Mortal Kombat follows on from two previous efforts, the second of which was universally panned for its low budget effects, poor plot and endless fight scenes. So this time round, screenwriters Greg Russo and Dave Callaham, director Simon McQuoid and producer James Wan have been careful to learn from previous misjudgments,  pulling out all the stops with the aim of making it the necessary reboot this title required. 
    Here, the lore of the series is brought to a grand and epic scale, showing off the crowded roster of individuals.
    Backed up by some beautiful cinematography, stellar fight choreography and physical stunts that defy logic and gravity, the impressive action sequences brim with energy and excitement, with many based on those found in the video game, such as bicycle kicks and juggling maneouvres.
    It’s replete with lashings of gore, violence, and blood to echo everything that’s a staple of the enduring legacy of this brutal series. There are enough scenes of exploding heads, severed limbs, people split in two, gored bodies and entrail displacements to warrant the extreme R rating, but really, these days the shock effect is minimal because almost everyone has been accustomed to the wizardry that special effects creators can generate.  
    There’s a stronger attempt than in the previous movies to tie up the settings into a cohesive story, although as might be expected, personal development is light and the premise slightly stilted.
    But there’s one definite character improvement which stands out, which truly sets this apart from other video game adaptations where the cast consists of humdrum individuals.
    The scoundrel Kano, played brilliantly by Josh Lawson, has been transformed into a dinky-di Ocker with wisecracking one-liners and a foul mouth that would make a sailor blush.
    The interpretation completely steals the show, bringing pure, unadulterated joy and injecting some much-needed levity at every turn, so much so that when Kano is not on screen, he is genuinely missed. 
    Essentially though, Mortal Kombat is a film crafted almost exclusively for diehard fans, but this time arguably done correctly.
    Despite McQuoid’s claim of taking one step at a time, this movie is clearly planned as a new franchise for Warner Bros, with many Easter egg references and enough bait to set up a sequel should this entry perform well at the box office. 
    And if the wait for a follow-up is too long, surely an interim one-off featuring Lawson as Kano would be worth considering.

*The Australian force is strong in this production. Lawson, McQuoid and Wan all hail from the big country, with most of the movie also shot in South Australia.*

#mortalkombat #universal

MARTIAL MAYHEM MARCHES ON

MOVIE
Mortal Kombat II
Director Simon McQuoid
Review Ray Chan

Nobody  is turning up to a movie called Mortal Kombat II hoping for restrained character studies and tasteful emotional subtlety. 
   They’re here to watch impossibly-good-looking or grotesque gnarly-faced characters punch each other through walls, tear spines out with varying degrees of theatrical flourish, and exchange one-liners that sound like they were forged in a 1993 gaming cabinet. On that level, the film delivers a flawless victory.
   Structurally, it is very much more of the same as the 2021 movie, and the interactive entertainment upon which it is based — Earthrealm versus Outworld, grim prophecies, escalating tournaments, and enough slow-motion grimacing to power a small hydroelectric dam. 
   But the producer/director team of Perth boys Simon McQuoid and James Wan are fully aware that the plot is mostly connective tissue between acts of gleeful dismemberment. The audience — most of whom would have known the game and characters intimately — came for imaginative gore, and the film serves it up with the enthusiasm of a chef unveiling a degustation menu made entirely of severed limbs.
   Like the first instalment, the movie leans hard into playful genre riffing, with several sequences being obvious affectionate nods to the 1986 classic Big Trouble in Little China — especially whenever mystical alleyways, ancient sorcerers in wide conical hats, and bewildered wisecracking Americans collide in gloriously neon-lit chaos. 
   There are also unmistakable visual winks toward the TV show Squid Game, as certain tournament arenas resemble death tournaments staged by someone who clearly has a Pinterest board labelled “Murder, But Make It Fashion”. 
   Rather than feeling lazy, these cultural references become part of the film’s charm: Mortal Kombat II knows it exists in the same gaming-pop soup as every cult action movie and streaming phenomenon of the last 40 years, and it enjoys tossing in cheeky little acknowledgements.
   The Easter eggs come flying almost as quickly as the body parts. Longtime fans will spot familiar game moves, classic sound effects, arena callbacks, hidden character cameos, and even sly references to the original games and 1995 film adaptations. Several scenes recreate signature attacks almost frame-for-frame, while background details reward anyone who spent their childhood pumping coins into an arcade machine instead of developing social skills. 
   Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage swaggers into the franchise like he was genetically engineered in a laboratory devoted entirely to smug B-movie charisma, but fellow Amtipodean Josh Lawson once again steals scenes as Kano — largely because the Australian ruffian treats every life-or-death situation like he’s midway through his fourth beer at a suburban barbecue. 
   His resurrection is absurd, completely unnecessary, but absolutely the correct decision. Even the writers have admitted they simply couldn’t resist bringing him back because he was too entertaining to lose. 
   In fairness, this is Mortal Kombat lore: death is less a permanent condition and more a temporary scheduling inconvenience.
   But this creates one lingering problem for future sequels. Once a necromancer like Quan Chi can simply wave his hands and revive fan favourites whenever the script requires another crowd-pleasing entrance, the stakes start feeling delightfully flimsy. 
   Characters can now die in sprays of arterial fireworks, only to wander back into the next movie looking mildly inconvenienced. It is tremendous fun for now, but there is a risk the franchise eventually turns into supernatural Whac-a-Mole, where no fatality is truly fatal anymore.

#universal #mortalkombatII