Mortal Kombat II and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Simon McQuoid

These days, we’re used to faithful adaptations of geeky properties, but that wasn’t always the case. Movies based on video games, comic books, and other non-traditional media would often struggle to make the leap to the big screen as the filmmakers were too shy to put anything to weird or niche into a movie meant for general audiences. If these films were successful, however, it would give the greenlight for the follow-up to hew closer to the source material and would often lead to a better film. That’s what I kept thinking about as I saw the trailers for this movie which was making a conscious effort to give us something closer in tone and aesthetics to the games; an admirable enough goal as far as I’m concerned, but this is from the same team that gave us the borefest that was the last Mortal Kombat movie, so I’m still rather skeptical. Can they find a way to get in touch with what fans love about the game series, or are we stuck with yet another attempt to take the material far too seriously? Let’s find out!!

 Following the events of the last Mortal Kombat, where the warriors of Earthrealm successfully fended off Outworld, we follow the aging and washed up B-Movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) who is stuck in a fate worse than death; working the convention circuit with nothing more than a folding table and a stack of old DVDs. Of course, he’s not stuck with this gig for much longer as Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) summons him to be the newest member of Team Earthrealm in the upcoming tournament. Things are different this time around, however, as Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is no longer running the show, rather, the true emperor of Outworld Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) is leading the charge himself along with his adopted daughter Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) and her bodyguard Jade (Tati Gabrielle) as well as other fighters that fans of the game will recognize. With Outworld bringing their A-Game and Earthrealm stuck with Johnny Cage to buff up their ranks, does Earth stand a chance against a renewed and very ticked off enemy? What other tricks does the duplicitous Outworlders have in store, and are they all fighting on the same team? Seriously, Johnny Cage is the best we could do? We couldn’t get Jason Statham or that guy from Kung Fu Hustle?

It’s clear from the marketing that Warner Bros wanted us to think this is a fun go-for-broke sequel to the very dull and gun-shy adaptation from a few years ago, but sadly, that is not the case here. There are improvements to be sure, but where the first one at least had a competent structure to it, this one is neigh incomprehensible as the plot keep shifting around , rules keep being established, and characters never get a chance to do anything other than react to the current situation. It’s a mess, and all the story elements being mashed together ultimately overwhelmed whatever improvements were made this time around.

As I said, the movie gets several things right this time around, though the improvements are mostly in isolated pockets. The fight scenes are the major improvement over the last one and there’s an absolute banger of a match early on with Liu Kang that I would put up there with some of the best the genre has to offer. We also have a strong cast of new challengers with Kitana and Jade both having plenty to do and interesting arcs to explore, and while most of the villains are disappointing this time around with an astonishingly dull Quan Chi on hand for no reason, our big-bad is absolutely fantasticc. I don’t know who this Martyn Ford guy is that they got to be Shao Khan, but the dude deserves a freaking medal for giving us such an iconic villain performance. He exudes a terrifying presence that genuinely sends chills down your spine, yet he’s not a mindless brute and carries himself with a certain amount of dignity and respect that makes you forget that he’s wearing a goofy Halloween mask the whole time; complete with LEDs in the eye sockets.

Everything else, however, is a complete wash. Johnny Cage is horribly miscast, but it’s not like the script is doing him any favors. This is the first time we get to see Johnny Cage in this film series and I have no idea why they decided that he’s a washed up star from the outset, other than to give us a reason for the over fifty Karl Urban to be cast. Perhaps if the movie cared to make him the central figure of the movie, then we could have worked something out with this premise, but he’s sharing screen time with Lui Kang, Kitana, Sonya, Raiden, and all the other mooks filling out the cast, so he’s just another tag along in the story that has way too many characters. What this ends up feeling like is an eight episode Netflix series that was mercilessly vivisected and stapled back together to fit a two hour run time which would explain the abundance of characters with hastily wrapped up arcs and no strong central idea to carry the whole story. It’s a testament to how poorly paced and structured this movie is that I’m somehow pining for the dull as dishwater plotting of the first one which may have been clichéd and boring, but it at least held together as a series of events that had a beginning, middle, and end. Here, we can barely get started with one idea before we’re switching gears; following up on a completely different thread, pointlessly referencing something from the games, or giving one of the characters five minutes to wrap up their arc. It culminates in a finale that is fairly well executed in terms of choreography and spectacle, but feels utterly hollow as we check off plot points one after the other with little fan-fare or a sense of consequence; especially with resurrection being introduced as an all-purpose plot-fixer. A movie with so much violence and death shouldn’t lack tension, and yet the breakneck pace and contrived circumstances leave us with nothing to grab onto. Characters come and go with little more than a sad sigh from the rest of the cast before we jump to the next fight scene or unfunny witticism, and while a certain amount of campiness would have been appreciated, it’s clear that the movie doesn’t want to be that. What it wants to be, though, seems to be nothing, given how it never commits to a signature style or tone, and that’s what I felt watching most of this; nothing, mixed with boredom and frustration.

Where the first film felt like a misguided attempt to take the lore seriously, this one comes off like a misguided attempt at pandering to the fanboys. True, it has more of what the first film was lacking, but in shoving all this fan service in, they pushed out anything resembling a story, and it only highlights the craft with which something like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie pulled off its paper thin storyline in service of its spectacle. Still, I can’t deny that what works about this movie and how much it does improve upon its lackluster predecessor in fits and spurts, but ultimately it’s a toss-up for me which one is better. Maybe the individual clips that will eventually show up on YouTube will be enough to carry this for some, but they would probably be better off watching those fatality compilations instead. At least there, you’ll have a more authentic Johnny Cage, and he can even fight The Terminator!