Cinemavenger

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Mortal Kombat (2021)

Movies based on video games are usually as good as meals based on dares, so if you want to chomp on some Tide PODS with a handful of cinnamon and wash it all down with a warm glass of your own urine, then this is the genre for you. Ass.

Mortal Kombat is one of the most successful fighting video game franchises of all time. It took the Street Fighter formula and added gruesome "finishing moves" like ripping the spine out of your opponent or incinerating them until they're a pile of bones. Since 1995, the game has been adapted into multiple live-action and animated movies up to and including 2021's reboot.

Like all the versions that came before it, the latest Mortal Kombat is only slightly less painful than its characters' signature finishing moves. The idea is that Earth is just one of many realms that all want to conquer each other, but it's only "legal" to conquer another realm after you've beaten its best fighters in the Mortal Kombat tournament 10 times in a row.

Ask me if 2021's Mortal Kombat even has the tournament. Believe it or don't, it doesn't. The geniuses who made this spit bucket of a flick couldn't even remember the premise of their own goddam movie, so all the fights happen before the tournament can even begin. It's such a groundbreaking approach that I'm sure all future movies about Super Bowl championships will end before the playoffs.

The "filmmakers" behind this movie clearly gave fewer fucks than a lazy hooker, and the people who will voluntarily watch it anyway won't give a single one. They'll be satisfied when someone onscreen says one of the three or so famous video game lines like, "Finish him!" or "Flawless victory." For shit's sake, they could have had parrots star in this thing and gotten the same result.

The only way this Mortal Kombat outdoes the original from 26 years ago is that the lightning bolt-throwing Raiden is played by an actual Asian (Tadanobu "Gesundheit" Asano) as opposed to Christopher "There Can Be Only One" Lambert. And even then, whitewashing aside, Lambert was way more fun to watch in the role.

Someone needs to rip the head off this series and shit down its neck in hopes that future generations will be saved from more martial arts mediocrity.

April 30, 2021