I watched “Mortal Kombat” this afternoon. As you all know well by now I was very pumped to see this movie. The game was taboo when I was a kid, the first movie was kind of blah, later iterations of the game were rad, and this new movie had pretty much everything in its corner to be epic.

Sadly, it is not.

This movie is very cheesy and not very good. I am pretty bummed. I wanted to love this movie, but I just cannot think of more than one character in this whole movie that I actually liked. There were also times that I scoffed, complained how cheesy it was and just found myself bored. I cannot believe it. The first seven minutes of this movie, I wrote about it last week, were great. There were stakes, the fight scenes were dope and the actors nailed everything they did. Then it was just downhill from there for me. There was a quick explanation of what the world has become, and boom, we are introduced to the main character, Cole. The guy who played him was fine, but man he was just a cliché through and through. He’s an older fighter, he doesn’t know why he’s been picked to fight in this other dimensional tournament, he leaves his training, but finds a reason to go back. It is a story lifted right from a bad 80’s movie. Jax, who was my favorite fighter in the video game, doesn’t get enough screen time, and when he’s there, his lines are nonsense. His battle with Sub Zero, more on him in a minute, was rad, and his battle scene at the end had the best fatality, but every other time he’s on screen it’s very blah. Sonya should’ve had a much better backstory, and they could’ve delved deeper into her reason for being here, but they don’t. Her story is all wrapped up way too quick. Kano is an asshole through and through. He could’ve been the comic relief, but he was way too much of a jackass. He has zero redeeming qualities. The “bad guys” from the Other World were all stupid, except for Sub Zero. The two lady fighters have as little brevity as Sonya. One of them is in two scenes, and she gets brutally murdered. The other one was pretty sinister, but she gets zero backstory. We know literally nothing about her, other than she likes blood. The four armed monster looked cool, but that’s it. The iron lung guy was more of a dick than Kano. The dude with the sledgehammer has no lines, and he gets his head exploded by Jax, one of the cooler scenes. And the main baddy, he is so much of a cliché that I groaned whenever he spoke. When Raiden, who was solid in this movie, banished him, I said out loud to no one, “thank goodness”.

On the good side, Sub Zero and Scorpion were the only two characters I cared about at all. They had the best fight scenes. They had the best stories. I would watch an entire movie just about the two of them. That would’ve made for a far better movie. Sub Zero is a great, great villain. He was the only one, well he and Scorpion, that I actually liked. I enjoyed their scenes. I was worried every time Sub Zero was on screen. His visual effects were the best. They should’ve done a series of movies, or a TV show about each character individually. That would’ve been so much better.

The makers of “Mortal Kombat” just tried to stuff too much into a 90 minute movie. And that ending scene, with Cole, that was rough. I really do not want them to make a sequel, especially one focused on Johnny Cage, who was lame as hell in the video game. Just make a stand alone Sub Zero origin movie. I’d much rather watch that. Sub Zero and the fight scenes were good, but everything else was pretty bad in this movie. I wish I was wrong. I wish this was better. But oh boy is this movie a clunker in my opinion. And that really stinks.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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