Does Mortal Kombat II, the followup to the first fighting-game adaptation five years on, completely abandon its original protagonist to instead follow someone more popular? Yes.
Is new hero Johnny Cage a remarkably shallow character whose actor, Karl Urban, appears to have more fun sneaking in Lord of the Rings references than actually exploring his pathos? Sure.
Is this whole thing a crowded collage of equally ridiculously dressed cartoon characters, each finding increasingly convoluted, hard-to-follow reasons to stuff sawblades into places sawblades should never, ever go? Of course.
But is what is clearly little more than a fan-service action vehicle — scraping the bottom of the lore barrel of a game with little more story than scantily clad psychopaths ripping spines out of their opponents — somehow actually good? A little bit. Maybe. Sort of?
The movie knows what it is
The movie’s conceit is argued most directly this time around by Cage: an out-of-work, former action hero who now struggles to get a single person to walk up to his autograph booth at the local fan expo. He is a onetime karate world champion who now bites the head off eagle-eyed fans who spot him in bars and try to convince him to stage a comeback.
WATCH | Mortal Kombat II trailer:
That’s a ridiculous idea, he growls. Because, obviously, nobody wants what he was selling in the 1990s — the flamboyant excesses of telegraphed judo throws, Wilhelm screams and cool-as-ice quips delivered before knocking a guy into next week. What they want is gritty realism, mood lighting and Keanu Reeves murdering 1,000 guys with a pencil.
In short, he says — taking on the supposed persona of everyone desperate for Hollywood to stop being so unrelentingly dour and let us enjoy the simple hopefulness of a story unconcerned with moral realism — they don’t want silly.
They don’t want what we have here: a movie about glowing men and women in tights and masks, arbitrarily forced to fight to the death in single combat to save the world from spooky gods and muscle-bound monsters. They don’t want Mortal Kombat II.
Uttered like a dare, you can see how director Simon McQuoid and writer Jeremy Slater could use that to focus the rest of the movie: pairing Cage’s personal growth with some sort of “RTVRN”-coded argument for crowd-pleasing, anti-art house films.
That does happen, somewhat — when the Marvel Cinematic Universe-style problem of an overcrowded cast, all demanding attention of their own, does not get in the way.
There’s Cole Young (Lewis Tan), the family-focused hero of the first film, brought back to occasionally riff on the concept of having royal fighting blood … or something. There’s Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks) and Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), the robot-armed boxing champ and his hard punching friend, still wrestling with the value of loyalty — and the challenge of having robot arms.
There’s Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), the mystical —literal — firefighter, searching both for his true purpose and for a way to save his brother Kung Lao (Max Huang).
And there’s the whole reason we’re back for another round this time at all: Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), the muscle-bound monster himself, who has organized an interdimensional fighting tournament to win dominion over Earth.
Commanding a squad of fighters that includes fan-blade-wielding Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) — whose father Kahn already killed when taking over their realm — the only thing that stands in his way is Cage and his ragtag group of misfits. Will they be able to defend the world one last time?
Fan-service film
Yes, it is a silly and contrived repetition of the first film, and an overextended expansion of the Mortal Kombat games’ already stupefyingly insane backstory.
Add to that subplots involving a magical immortality-granting amulet, a race of anglerfish-looking orcs and a twisty revenge arc for nearly every character on screen, and you have a grab bag of more randomly assorted sci-fi and high-fantasy tropes than a Stranger Things-themed trivia night.
Part of that may be due to the fans. After a mixed-to-positive reaction to the first film, original property creator Ed Boon — who had, in theory, little input into or oversight of the 2021 outing — opted to get more hands-on this time.
With reportedly more than 100 easter eggs from the games, a stronger focus on the lore and a full swap of main characters in direct response to fan complaints about the first movie, Mortal Kombat II tries hard to make fans smile.
That does not undo its many flaws. Along with the story cribbed from a million other — and better — action movies, Mortal Kombat II‘s embrace of one of video games’ biggest staples — endless character reincarnation — drains away literally any sense of stakes.
From the beginning, seemingly dead characters are brought back to take part in the story, undoing any emotion found in the first outing. And with an ending that directly states a followup film is coming based on the idea of reviving this film’s fallen soldiers, the gruesome battles are virtually sucked dry of any suspense. Why should it matter who wins any combat when the “mortal” part clearly has no meaning?
Then there is the weak underperformance of Urban’s Cage, partly because the character lacks memorable or unique traits that would justify centering a story on him in the first place. But it is also partly because Urban seems unwilling to add anything interesting to his interpretation, instead relying on the middle-fingered salute delivered straight down the barrel of the camera.
Where the movie lands a punch
The many shortcomings are somewhat made up for by the impressive performances of Rudolph and Lin — and definitely Tati Gabrielle as Jade, a staff-wielding bodyguard who puts as much effort into the acting as the aerial combat.
But what else makes Mortal Kombat II worth watching? What about its lowest-common-denominator aims makes it a success, when crowd-pleasers The Devil Wears Prada 2, Michael or “Wuthering Heights” missed the mark?
You could applaud the main selling point: fight choreography that, especially in Cage’s triumphant comeback moment against the desert-faring Tarkatans, is genuinely thrilling to watch.
Or you could point to the self-aware, campy plot that, however head-scratchingly convoluted, does its level best to steer us right back to another excuse to see a blade go through another body part.
But perhaps most important is how little Mortal Kombat II is set up to have anyone expect anything from it. There are no Michael-esque court cases to immorally elide. There is no genre-defining, legendarily iconic Devil Wears Prada or Wuthering Heights original that it must fail to live up to. There is only the question of how many butt-kickings you can stitch together in a row — and whether Cage’s challenge to the audience is right.
Which does not make for a great film — one that likely is not better than The Devil Wears Prada 2 or even, potentially, “Wuthering Heights.” But it does allow for a fun one that, in a loose but satisfying-enough way, undoes Johnny Cage’s point for him.
That is, assuming you just want to see some guys ripped in half.
