Originally published on April 26, 2021.

This review contains spoilers for Mortal Kombat 2021 and 1995.

Let me preface this by saying I am not a big Mortal Kombat fan. My most notable interaction with the games was when I went to a friend's house to play MK1 on his N64, where I watched Raiden fall down a pit for what felt like five full minutes to get gorily impaled on a thousand spikes, and that's how I had my first existential crisis at six years old. So what I'm saying is, my only real exposure to the MK universe was through the 1995 movie, and now Warner Bros.' new film that just premiered on HBO Max... and man am I glad I watched it there instead of paying money at a theater.

I honestly don't have a lot to say about Mortal Kombat 2021. This isn't going to be a multi-page dissertation (like some of my other reviews) - more so a collection of random thoughts about the movie. That being said, I did go back and rewatch the 1995 version as well, and I want to compare the two. It's really easy to compare the two movies, especially since they have almost entirely the same cast of characters, so I might as well just go down the list. Keep in mind that I am only comparing the two movies as movies -- I can't comment on how either movie follows the games' continuity or characterization. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to the old and new movies as MK95 and MK21, respectively.

Spoiler alert: I like the old one better.

MK95 sees a motley collection of the world's greatest fighters being summoned to a mysterious island where they must battle supernatural enemies from other dimensions in a tournament to prevent Earth from falling into the clutches of the villainous Shang Tsung, who oversees the Mortal Kombat tournament with a ruthless but fair judgement. Over the course of the movie we see our three protagonists - Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage - grow to trust each other and work together as a team, even though they've each joined the tournament for their own reasons. MK21, on the other hand, does not actually feature a tournament of any kind, and instead sees Shang Tsung trying to sabotage Mortal Kombat through underhanded trickery. Our three protagonists - Cole Young, Sonya Blade, and Kano - learn nothing and have no growth or chemistry of any kind. They fight because they are told to by the script and have no personal reasons for wanting to enter of their own free will.

Cole Young vs. Liu Kang. Fight!

Cole Young is a bad MMA fighter who loses so often his own wife stopped watching him fight. Things happen to Cole and he just kind of rolls with it, even when that means fighting a six foot tall invisible lizard. He has no personality or wants beyond the most basic "protect my family from bad man", and he achieves that goal with little effort or struggle. Cole experiences no personal change or growth aside from getting Black Panther's vibranium suit and remembering to throw an uppercut in the final boss battle.

By contrast, Liu Kang in MK95 has a personality, wants, and conflicting desires that make him feel like a person. He was raised to be a combatant in the Mortal Kombat tournament, yet he abandoned his monastic order because he didn't believe the tournament was real. He initially joins the fight only to seek revenge against Shang Tsung for killing his brother, even though his trainers and the lightning god Raiden tell him that his anger will get him killed. Once he discovers that Mortal Kombat is real, he plays by the rules of the tournament in order to get to fight Shang Tsung fairly, instead of rushing into danger. That's like, a character arc! Literally just as a side note, Liu Kang does appear in MK21, but he's been reduced to a boring Eastern philosophy monk who says vague mystical things and tends to Raiden's temple. It's truly not worth talking about.

Sonya Blade Mirror Match

I'll be honest, Sonya is pretty lackluster in both movies. MK95 Sonya is your basic "tough-as-nails, take no shit, badass 90's woman" trope, and she has all the personality of wet cardboard. Her character arc is supposed to be that she learns to accept help from other people and that she doesn't have to shoulder all the burden herself, but instead of learning that on her own and asking her friends for help, she gets kidnapped and put into a stupid leather skirt as a damsel in distress to be saved by Liu Kang and Johnny Cage. So her actual character arc is that she is forced to accept help because she got kidnapped because the is The Woman. Okay. At least she has a reason to want to join Mortal Kombat: Shang Tsung has recruited Kano, a mercenary who killed Sonya's partner, and now she wants revenge.

MK21 Sonya is still pretty basic and boring, but now she's Sarcastic Special Ops Badass 2000's Lady, and she lives in a shitty trailer her whole life instead of buying a real house. She has no personal motivation to join the tournament at all, yet for some reason she is jealous of the others for having been chosen by magic to be combatants. This could have been a really interesting character arc; why does Sonya want to join Mortal Kombat so badly? What's in it for her? We get none of that, just a few remarks about how Kano "isn't worthy" to be chosen. Okay, but then why are you worthy, Sonya?

Johnny Cage vs. Kano vs. ...Kano?

I like Johnny Cage. I like his motivation the most out of the MK95 main trio. He's a Hollywood actor known for his martial arts movies, like a likable, non-Nazi Steven Seagal. The problem is, the tabloids label him as a fake and people don't think he's actually an accomplished martial artist. He wants a real challenge, and he wants to prove that he actually has the skill, not just a handsome face. He joins Mortal Kombat as a way to prove himself, but it comes across as ego-stroking because of his sarcastic, self-absorbed personality. He's the comic relief of the main three, and even though he's not funny in the slightest, he's a likable hero who pulls through in the end. And he punches Goro in the nuts. Everybody likes Johnny Cage.

So why am I comparing him to Kano here? Because MK21 decided to leave out Johnny entirely and give his comic relief spot to Kano. Now, having a villain on the main hero cast can be interesting, if he's given an interesting character. He should either be a total scumbag asshole like in MK95 and his evil personality clashes with the heroic natures of Cole and Sonya, or he should have a moment where he comes around and joins the side of good, even if it's mostly for selfish reasons. As it stands, MK21 Kano is... just a pretty likable jerk. He's honestly not that bad. He's crude, sure, and hits on Sonya like a dick, but he doesn't come across as really evil. 1995 Kano, on the other hand, is a real piece of shit. He's rude, he spits food while he talks, he disrespects Shang Tsung, he taunts Sonya for killing her partner. He's a nasty, sweaty, mean, unlikable prick. He's a great villain, and his killing of Sonya's partner is a good reason for her to join the fight. In MK21, there is no personal history between Sonya and Kano, she just caught him because it's her job. I even kind of got the feeling that they had a sort of playful cop/criminal relationship, like "Oh, you caught me again, look at you! I'll get you one of these days." That kind of thing.

Shang Tsung

I swear to God if I accidentally type "Shang Stung" one more time I'm gonna Frisbee my laptop.

1995 Shang Tsung is a great villain. He's evil as SHIT and he LOVES it. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is having so much fucking fun being a bad guy, you can't help but love him. But also, Shang Tsung is a great villain because he understands the importance of Mortal Kombat and he respects the ritual greatly. He gives a little speech before the tournament begins: "You are witnesses to one of the greatest turning points of your planet. Treasure these moments as if they were your last." There's a sincerity to his words and his delivery that show how much he really believes in Mortal Kombat as an important event that needs to happen. Tagawa's performance is so believable and earnest, and he puts so much ferocity into the final fight with Liu Kang, and all of that puts him miles beyond MK21's version.

MK21 Shang Tsung has no honor or respect for the tournament. In fact, the entire movie is about Shang Tsung cheating to prevent the tournament from actually happening. He uses underhanded tactics, tries to kill the Earthrealm fighters before they even have a chance to compete, all to give Outworld the upper hand. On top of that he's just fucking boring. MK21 Shang Tsung is a feeble old man who orders others to do his dirty work, and he completely disrespects the tournament. In 1995, he kidnaps Sonya to force her to fight him because he knows she'll lose, but he did so because he bargained with Johnny Cage when Cage challenged Goro to an early match. This version didn't technically break any rules, because he made a special arrangement with Johnny and he agreed to the terms.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero

I'm never one to complain about adding more story when remaking a previously story-light film, but this time I'll make an exception: I honestly don't care why Scorpion and Sub-Zero are enemies. In MK95 they work for Shang Tsung and he explains it away in one line: "Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Deadliest of enemies, but slaves under my power." That's literally all I need to know. I don't need seven minutes to explain their boring backstory in Japan. MK21 doesn't even tell us why Sub-Zero killed Scorpion's family, so why should I care? He got all these ninjas together to go kill this dude's wife, and we don't even get to know why. Sub-Zero becomes hired muscle for Shang Tsung anyway and has one fight with Scorpion right at the end, with all the emotional weight of a bunch of loose tissue paper. Also, is it just me, or is Sub-Zero super lame in this movie? His ice powers suck. Instead of just killing Cole and his family like he was told to do, he makes snow fall (in Chicago, a place that gets snow) then hurls dinky little ice balls at a car. They don't even crack the windshield. In 1995 Liu Kang threw a bucket of water that Sub-Zero accidentally turned into a huge icicle and impaled himself to death, and that's a better use of the ice powers than the entirety of MK21.

Alright, I think that's enough for the character comparisons, I've still got other gripes with the movie I haven't even talked about. First off, the fight cinematography sucks for real. American action movies have this problem in general, horrible fight filming and editing. This video, while specifically about action comedies, gives great examples of what I'm talking about. The MK21 fight scenes are all filmed from the elbows up so you can't see any of the fighting, and there are so many quick cuts that no hits feel like they land at all. It's an incredibly boring and ineffectual way to film and edit fight scenes; we should be able to see the fighters' full bodies, so we can see every punch and kick and flip land and hit hard. MK95 treats its fight scenes much better, with wider shots and fewer cuts. When it does cut, it cuts to a close up of a fist or a foot to emphasize a hit, not distract from it.

But at least the movie looks great, right? Not really, no. It's really pretty boring and forgettable. It's a given to say that the CGI looked really good compared to the 1995 movie, that's just how technology works. The CGI is really good, but the movie it's in is really bland. Outworld is literally the California desert or something just color-corrected to be gray. It just looks like they filmed at a construction site. "Raiden's Temple" is a hole cut into a nondescript pile of rocks, it looks like a landfill. The climactic Scorpion vs. Sub-Zero fight happens in a dirty MMA gym. ...Okay? '95 Outworld is a hellscape of crumbling castles and mummified bodies stuffed into statues shaped like bigger mummified bodies, it's fucking sick. Johnny Cage fights Scorpion in a beautiful forest, and then a completely insane red void filled with random bamboo scaffolding. Liu Kang fights Shang Tsung over the Mortal Kombat logo with spikes coming out of it. There's a scene on an eerie magic dragon boat covered with mist. Goro and Kano hang out in a feast hall with a mountain of weird fantasy food. The sets in MK95 look kinda cheap, but they're really inventive and iconic! I can remember all of those locations really clearly; Cole Young fighting Goro outside his tool shed isn't iconic, it's boring.

Tell me this set doesn't look cool as shit.

On the topic of Goro, let me talk about the villains in MK21 real quick. Good on them for getting some different villains, like Kabal and some dude with a big sledgehammer, but for the most part the villain team is super god damn lame. Gogo was a real character in MK95. He was arrogant and cocksure, a respected leader and prince of his world. He had lines. In 2021 Goro is just more hired muscle, a four-armed goon who doesn't say a word and gets taken out in one fight. Which is weird because '21 Goro has more clothes, so he looks more culturally advanced than '95 Goro, but he acts like a mindless bull. And then there's Nitara. Poor, poor Nitara. I don't know what her deal is (the wiki is telling me she's a vampire?), but she fucking sucks. She's just kind of annoying to look at, and she is completely and totally ineffectual. Kung Lao kills her in about 40 seconds and sucks his own dick saying he got a "flawless victory". Now, while he did technically get a flawless victory, it is wasted on this encounter. In MK95, Sub-Zero fights a nameless goon to kick off the tournament and freezes him solid before the other guy can even throw a punch. Shang Tsung declares it a flawless victory. This fight is thematically important because it shows our fish out of water trio of Liu, Johnny, and Sonya, that they are unquestionably out of their depth. They're facing real magic with their normal human abilities. This moment is supposed to make them feel helpless and weak, and question whether they'll even survive one round against these monsters. A hero offing a villain in a sub-minute long fight isn't badass, it just shows that Shang Tsung's team are total chumps. You're not a real threat, Kung Lao just sawed your vampire girlfriend in half without breaking a sweat! It just takes all tension out of the conflict. Also Kung Lao just seems like a tool constantly spouting game lines; Shang Tsung did it in MK95 because he was the judge and host of the tournament, he wasn't trying to make himself look cool.

What a tool.

The big bottom line here is that MK21 is booooooring. The very first sound you hear in MK95 is that iconic "MOOORTALKOOOMBAAAT" and it's sick. You get the dragon logo and flames and that badass theme song and it sets the mood for the crazy, imaginative, aggressive movie you're about to watch. MK21 does set its mood with its opening, it's just that that mood is boring and unimaginative, with some cool gore shots sprinkled in here and there.

Paul W.S. Anderson hasn't made a good film since Resident Evil (and even that's pushing it), but he put a lot of imagination into Mortal Kombat, and I think it's a real achievement for being only his second film. I think I can boil down the two movies this way: Mortal Kombat 2021 feels like someone made a movie using the wiki entries of all the characters -- "Shang Tsung is bad man." "Sonya hates Kano." "Scorpion and Sub-Zero are enemies." Mortal Kombat 1995 feels like someone wanted to tell the story of Mortal Kombat. There's more emotion and weight in the final Liu Kang vs. Shang Tsung fight than in the entirety of MK21, and that's a real shame. I won't go as far as to call MK21 unwatchable slop, but I'm so tired of living in this era of nine-figure-budget Boring Naptime Movies that could have been fun if they'd had a little less money and a little more give-a-shit.

In other words: Mortal Kombat 1995 wins. Flawless victory.