Mortal Kombat Kollection
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson/John R. Leonetti.
Starring Christopher Lambert, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Linden Ashby, Bridgette Wilson, Robin Shou, Trevor Goddard, Talisa Soto, James Remar, Chris Conrad, Irina Pantaeva, Tom Woodruff Jr., Brian Thompson, Sandra Hess, Lynn ‘Red’ Williams, and Litefoot.
SYNOPSIS:
Box set from Arrow Video featuring the two 1990s Mortal Kombat movies in 4K UHD.
Video game adaptations are something of a mixed bag when it comes to putting across the excitement, mythology and lore of an interactive gaming experience into a movie, and the 1990s gave us such highly regarded titles as Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros. and Double Dragon to act as companion pieces to the games. However, the results of those adaptations are – at best, if you close your eyes and squint – mediocre, with not even the lethal combination of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue able to rescue any credibility from it.
But Mortal Kombat was always a little different, and years before he divided opinion by adapting hit zombie actioner Resident Evil and comic-book-cum-game Alien vs. Predator, director Paul W.S. Anderson had a crack at turning a game into a movie and keeping it faithful and fun(ish). Clearly inspired by Enter the Dragon, the movie centres around a tournament called Mortal Kombat that is held once every generation that features the best fighters from the realms of Earth versus the otherworldly dimension of Outworld. The fighters of Outworld are on their ninth consecutive victory and if they win this time then their Emperor can invade the Earth realms.
God of Thunder Raiden (Christopher Lambert) is a defender of the Earthrealm and recruits Shaolin monk Liu Kang (Robin Shou), martial arts movie star Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and Special Forces soldier Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) as the fighters to represent it, opposite Outworld sorcerer and tournament host Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and his fighters that include the deadly reigning champion Prince Goro (an uncredited Tom Woodruff Jr.).
All must have gone well as in 1997 there was a sequel, titled Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. This time there was no Paul Thomas Anderson, no Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Robin Shou the only returning actor, with Raiden now played by James Remar, Sonya Blade played by Sandra Hess and Johnny Cage barely in it and played by Chris Conrad. However, we do get Brian Thompson as Saho Khan, the Outworld Emperor, who is going ahead with the invasion of the Earthrealm regardless of what happened in the previous movie. The Earthrealm heroes must retreat to recruit more allies, which they do in the shape of Jax (Lynn ‘Red’ Williams), Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Jade (Irina Pantaeva), but will taking down the mighty Emperor and his evil team minions be quite so easy?
So what we have here are two video game-based movies with paper-thin plots, various degrees of acting abilities and quite possibly the most 1990s title theme ever made, and given that both discs feature said theme on their menu screens it does prove to be quite the accelerator on your finger hitting the play button just to stop it. Both of these movies came out during a time when film studios decided that every movie needed to have a soundtrack featuring whatever artists were popular/on their roster/came cheap, which usually meant pounding techno or nu-metal that kicked in whenever a fight was about to start, and despite the highly irritating main theme – courtesy of Utah Saints – we are far enough away from the ‘90s to get nostalgic about hearing Fear Factory, Type O Negative and Orbital pumping through the home cinema system to accompany the action.
Of the two movies it is the 1995 original that is the best, and by ‘best’ that really means most watchable. Paul W.S. Anderson has had a lot of flack in the intervening years for his style-over-content filmmaking style – and some of it is justified – but when you’re talking about Mortal Kombat you only really come to see one thing, which is big fights with cool kills, and on that level the movie does its job. There are questions to be raised about the casting, as in the games Raiden is based on the Japanese god Raijin but for some reason French actor Christopher Lambert was cast (apparently the role was offered to Sean Connery, so he could have been a Japanese thunder god with a Scottish accent) and did an appalling job. That said, he was award-winning compared to James Remar in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, who clearly had never heard of the games or the character and was not given direction by anybody who knew the games or the character.
And that really is just the beginning of that movie’s problems, as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is terrible on every conceivable level (except for having Megadeth and Pitchshifter on the soundtrack). The always-excellent Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa did not return and so the big baddie was played by Brian Thompson, who is usually a great villain but he was taking this way too seriously and delivering his lines with the balls of a Shakespearian actor, which is not what was called for, although he was the best actor in the whole thing as at least he brought some energy to an otherwise flat production.
Both movies look great on 4K UHD, with the bright neon colours and the fast action all rendered nicely without too much obvious tinkering, although the CGI is 1990s video-game cut-scene level quality. It looked rubbish in the ‘90s and time hasn’t improved it, the cleaner edges and clearer image probably making it worse as it looks more like traditional animation now. There are new audio commentaries with the directors of both movies and plenty of cast and crew interviews to delve into, although maybe an up-to-date retrospective might have been a more interesting and useful approach.
With Mortal Kombat now back in the movie zeitgeist thanks to the two recent (and better) films, this is a timely release from Arrow Video and one that many video game enthusiasts might want to experience, especially older fans who were there at the time. The first movie is a no-brain-required action fantasy that does have some entertainment value as Paul W.S. Anderson clearly read the memo on what was required (just don’t question the casting choices). Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is best avoided as it is woefully bad, but maybe worth watching once for the absurd line deliveries and then put back in the box and treated like an extra feature for the first movie that you’ll never watch again.
Flickering Myth Rating – Mortal Kombat – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – Mortal Kombat: Annihilation – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Chris Ward
