Round Two, Fight!

When going to see a Mortal KombatFunctioning almost like counter programming against the cleaner, brighter, and friendlier fighting games of the era, Mortal Kombat added violence, gore, and bruality in equal measure, creating a fighing game every kid wanted to play (and every adult wanted out of their house). film, a viewer has to ask themselves one simple question: what do they want from a Mortal Kombat film. Hell, this is literally the question I asked when reviewing the first movie... and yet here we are again. There are plenty of martial arts movies out there, many with real stories and great character work. You can point to films from Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and more and find any number of really solid films that provide drama, story, and action in equal measure, and those would all rate highly on any movie reviewers love list of great martial arts movies. But those aren’t Mortal Kombat.

The Mortal Kombat franchise wasn’t built to provide deep storytelling or dramatic character moments. This was a series that said, “fighting games are cool, but we can make them bloodier,” and over the years the franchise has done just that, putting the emphasis on hard hits, broken bones, and spilled guts instead of deep storytelling. Not that there isn’t a long, broad, and deep mythology to the whole franchise, it’s just that the audience knows what it wants and the game makers are certainly happy to give it to them.

As such, a Mortal Kombat film shouldn’t get judged by the same metrics as, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Are they both martial arts movies? Yes, but the comparison is like trying to put Dude, Where’s My Car up against Duck Soup or The Big Lebowski. They’re in the same genre, but they have wildly different goals in mind. Critics out there saying, “the story is basic, the characters aren’t deep, and the film is a vehicle for blood and gore,” are missing the point. A vehicle for blood and gore is a Mortal Kombat fan’s number one request, and if we get that, we’re halfway to having a fantastic time already.

Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to the Mortal Kombat film from 2021, really only needed to make sure we got characters we knew, in a tournament setting, so they could fight. The film does that, but it also does provide some story, some decent characters, and a few laughs. It’s not high art by any measure, but then neither are the games that birthed this film franchise. There’s enough meat here to make any fan of the games (or anyone with a passing interest in Mortal Kombat happy) all while doing the one thing Mortal Kombat has to do: gory fights, almost all the time. This film gives us what we want, and while that doesn’t make it a good film, it does make it a fantastic Mortal Kombat film.

The movie focuses on two main characters. The first is Kitana (first played as a child by Sophia Xu before Adeline Rudolph takes over the role as an adult). As a young girl, Kitana watched first hand when the emperor of Outworld, Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), fought her father, King Jerrod (Desmond Chiam), in combat for the right to rule her dimension, Edenia. Her father lost, the Emperor took over her realm, and he took Kitana as his adopted daughter. Years later she’s one of his most trusted fighters, who would be chosen to battle in the kombat arena alongside her bodyguard, Jade (Tati Gabrielle), in the Emperor’s quest to take over our world, Earthrealm.

But Kitana isn’t really fighting for the Emperor. She’s truly aligned with Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) the lightning god of Earthrealm, and she’s hoping his champions – Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, and Lewis Tan as Cole Young – will be able to win the tournament and save their world. The only issue is that Earthrealm is one fighter short after the death of Kung Lao (Max Huang), and so a new champion must be chosen. That champion is the aged, former action movie star, Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), and Johnny isn’t interested in a battle to the death no matter what might be at stake…

I wouldn’t say that either story in Mortal Kombat II is very deep. Kitana has a standard protagonist storyline, a woman finding the power to fight against a villain she hates. It’s basically the same exact storyline that Gamora had in the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe., so we’ve seen it before, especially on the big screen. That doesn’t make it a bad storyline, and between Rudolph’s performance, and a good bit of character work and back-and-forth action, the film sells it pretty well. When she rises up and takes her power back, it’s an effective character beat.

Johnny’s story, meanwhile, is about as rote as you expect. He’s a reluctant hero that assumes he’s not cut out for the tournament. He does show fighting (even if he was once a champion martial artist), and he certainly doesn’t think he can hack it in a fight-to-the-death battle. He’s better with quips, and his handsome face, than he is with his fists. So his story is all about him becoming a hero and finding his power within. It’s as basic as it gets, but in the context of what the film needs to do – functionally bringing in a new character from the Mortal Kombat universe to act as our everyman in place of Cole – it works well enough.

Cole, it should be noted, has absolutely no real role here in the film. He was created for the first movie because, apparently, the studio didn’t think we’d accept a film filled with colorful characters if we didn’t have some everyman guy there to root for. No one liked him, so his role was greatly reduced here before (spoilers) the character gets killed off in gory fashion halfway into the movie. The film barely reacts to his death at all, and then shrugs and moves on and, well… that does feel right. Even in the first movie Cole really felt like a tacked on guy that didn’t need to be there. This movie course-corrects and it’s better for it.

What really matters is if the film gives us the action, the characters, and the special moves, and on that front it delivers. You get Liu Kang with his fire, Sonya Blade with her glowing rings, Jax with his robot arms, Kitana with her fans, Jade with her glowing staff, and so much more. Each character has their signature look, their special moves, their key phrases. The filmmakers knew what the fans wanted, and provided all that along with enough gore to sate any blood hungry movie watcher. It’s a hard-R film that doesn’t shy away from the content fans crave.

And along with that you get decent character moments, a few amusing asides, and just enough connective tissue that Mortal Kombat II feels like an actual movie and not just a collection of cut-scenes. It’s just about everything a viewer of the 2021 movie said they wanted from a sequel. The filmmakers delivered it and that should make any fan happy. All you have to do is go in knowing what the film wanted to be and accept it for what it is.

Mortal Kombat II isn’t a deep movie. It’s not trying to be Oscar bait. It is a simple film with a single goal: be the best adaptation of the Mortal Kombat story it can be. On that front it nails it, and this fan was happy to see it.