With Hitman: Agent 47 festering into theaters this past weekend, it’s as good a time as any to remember how, 20 years ago this past Tuesday, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat film adaptation jump-kicked its way into the public's eye. The video game-to-theaters process hasn’t gotten a lick better since, especially if the reviews for the aforementioned IO Interactive movie are to be believed, and the jury remains out regarding whether or not the transition can produce something worthwhile. I mean, surely someone out there can make at least a halfway decent adaptation one-of-these-days, right?
The law of averages suggests it’ll happen sooner-or-later, and some even believe it happened with Mortal Kombat’s cinematic introduction. By some, I’m primarily referring to Mayer Nissim of Digital Spy who — just last week — called the one-time blockbuster “the greatest video game movie ever made.” Granted, in the one-legged race known as video game adaptations, that’s like picking out the least mud-soaked clothes to wear to your friends’ bar mitzvah. I’m not sure what scenario would case such a decision like that to be made, but let’s move on. Mayer’s not alone. The same day, Dan Seitz of Uproxx proclaimed its 33% on Rotten Tomatoes was in error. Mortal Kombat also became the first USD chip-to-celluloid crossover to actually premiere at #1 at the box office, proving there was a financially lucrative business to come from such an entertainment fusion.
With my knowledge of game consoles/electronic games barely exceeding past the PS2, I’ve never developed a habit of checking out too many entrees within this scathed genre. Some slipped through the cracks. For reasons beyond my understanding looking back, I’ve seen the first four Resident Evil movies. Similarly, I faintly recollect watching the likes of Hitman, Max Payne and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time some moons ago, but can’t really recall being enthused or filled with any emotions beyond sheer boredom. I do remember 1993’s Super Mario Bros., though, distinctly for being among the very first films I truly despised. It took me three separate viewings for my young mind to comprehend hating something with both Mario and Bob Hoskins.
Beyond wasting a few hours of my youth on this dreck, however, I never delved too far down this rabbit hole. I missed the Tomb Raider features, skipped out on Doom and (most of) Silent Hill and promptly avoided Uwe Boll contributions, like House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne and Postal after the misfortune of viewing In the Name of the King: A Dragon Siege Tale. All this is to say: I never found a reason, until now, to watch 1995’s Mortal Kombat.
Such praise, if mildly faint, peaked my interest in Anderson’s newly praised feature. Had I actually missed out on the one truly decent video game movie all these years? Is it possible Anderson, a director I’ve detested as a hack for years (and not to be confused with the brilliant Paul Thomas Anderson), actually made a pretty fun little send-up to martial arts films from the decades’ prior? Ninety minutes later, I’m here — with a definitive stance — to say: I haven’t. The sci-fi/Kung Fu movie isn’t without merits. The production design is highly inspired from the original pixelated backdrops. The action choreography is occasionally decent, especially when it’s acted out by star Robin Shou as Liu Kang. Every now and then, its cheese-ball sense of humor wins out, particularly under Linden Ashby’s restrained comic timing as egomaniac blockbuster superstar Johnny Cage. And seeing Christopher Lambert, Highlander himself, devour the scenery like Thanksgiving dinner as mentor Lord Rayden can be deliriously entertaining at the right times. Ditto to Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung, the story’s primary villain who spouts out all the iconic phrases from the source material at any moment’s notice when the fighting commences.
All of this, in addition to opening Mortal Kombat ‘95 with the iconic theme song, lets in an airy, almost ironic charm that’s actually kinda fun, at first. But the novelty wears off quick and, when it does, the cheeky fun — almost on the so-bad-it’s-good levels of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li — immediately gets kicked to the ground. Then slammed in the face, and then has its soul sucked out from underneath. Between the boringly hammy performances from the rest of the cast, including Billy Madison love-interest Bridgette Wilson as Sonya Blade (a character who stars off pretty badass, then turns into a pitful damsel-in-distress in the last act), the terribly flat dialogue uttered and the horribly-aged CG effects — easily among the worst to be produced by a major Hollywood feature — the plotting becomes haggard, and even the unintentional entertainment dissipates.
Boringly confined to the fight/exposition/fight/exposition story pattern on loop here, it’s soon an entirely predictable and mind-numbingly dull recreation of the thinly plotted game, killed with a samurai sword by its PG-13 rating. While Anderson’s movie often celebrates the violence, it never can do anything particularly creative thanks to these MPAA restrictions. Its bloodless, heartless combats only make Mortal Kombat uglier by design, and, once again, its wonky creature designs and mucked-up visual effects don’t overcome these shortcomings by any means.
Worse of all, though, like so many sucky video game movies, it loses what made the games so great: the interactivity. Crippled by poor character development and carelessly placed mythology, it’s impossible to become attached to anything beyond the fighting and, with the joystick out of the equation, it’s about a boring as watching your friend play an old arcade box by himself. Video games don’t need story, but films do. Granted, advancements to gaming have been made, like any art form, and we’re at a point where — with Assassin’s Creed and Duncan Jones’ Warcraft coming next year — the bad video game movie mold may soon be broken. Developments to the source material create inspiration for the filmmakers, and give these fellow creative figureheads the tools they need to craft something compelling.
In my opinion, video game movies got closer than ever to producing something decent with last year’s Need for Speed — a mediocre action flick aided by some nice car chases, decent performances and some enjoyable supporting characters — and it’s hard to imagine things getting any worse, even with another Resident Evil on the horizon. With better storytelling comes better movies, and with this development comes the promise of something good, maybe even great, in the near future. It hasn’t happened yet, though, and Mortal Kombat — no matter what some people may say — is nowhere close to good. Stupendously sloppy, and expectedly stupid, Anderson’s profile-builder is just another bad video game movie, even if it’s the first one to make a profit. It’s by no means a flawless victory, and it deserves to be finished.
Image courtesy of Amazon