Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s Goofiness Has Aged Perfectly

If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet, you’ve probably seen the most infamous moment from the 1997 bomb, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. A woman in purple strides onto the screen to take her place between two ninjas standing in fight positions. When a young lady below says, “Mother… you’re alive,” the camera cuts to a close up on the purple person. “Too bad YOU… will DIE!” she declares with an ostentatious point.

That bit of dialogue occurs just four minutes into the film, and for nearly 30 years, it solidified fans’s opinion that Annihilation represented a serious step-down in quality from its 1995 predecessor, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet, when revisited three decades later, just as the latest big-budget and very respectful Mortal Kombat II is about to hit theaters, anyone watching the scene has to ask: What, exactly, would be the realistic way for a benevolent queen of a perfect realm, now corrupted by the magic of a pan-universal conqueror, to tell her daughter that she lives and now plans to conquer our realm, with the help of a four-armed lady and some centaur/dragon guy?

Without question, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is goofy, plotted with indifference, and filled with effects that looked cheap in 1997 (despite having a $30 million budget, higher than the first film’s $20 million). But now that we have two respectful and impressive Hollywood films to look at, Annihilation can remind us that maybe there’s something deeply silly about the franchise that gave the world Noob Saibot.

A Test of Might

Directed by John R. Leonetti, from a script credited to Brent V. Friedman and Bryce Zabel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation begins right where the previous film ended: the victory of the Earthrealm heroes gathered by the thunder god Raiden—Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage—over the sorceror Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament meant nothing. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), emperor of the Outworld still plans to invade Earthrealm, with the help of his generals: Queen Sindel (Musetta Vander), Sheeva (Marjean Holden), Smoke (Ridley Tsui), Ermac (John Medlen), and Motaro (Deron McBee).

Despite the strict continuity in plot, the end of Mortal Kombat and the start of Annihilation look very different. Robin Shou and Talisa Soto still play Liu Kang and Kitana, but James Remar is Raiden instead of Christopher Lambert, Sandra Hess has replaced Bridget Wilson as Sonya, and Chris Conrad takes Linden Ashby’s place as Johnny Cage, at least for the five minutes he’s on screen, before Shao Khan snaps his neck. Later, Red Williams joins the cast as Sonya’s partner Jax, replacing Gregory Williams, who portrayed the character in a brief cameo in the first movie.

It’s not really the cast changes that mark a difference between the two films. The original has all of the features that people love/hate in Anderson’s later movies, manifested in a goofy performance by Lambert and some shoddy plotting. The second film has all those problems, only more so. Characters such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion pop in and then disappear from the story, Thompson, who has an otherworldly presence in The X-Files and Cobra, feels like a regular dude than a great conqueror, and a giant CGI-monster fight in the climax is both nonsensical and ugly. B-movie king Remar seems half-asleep while delivering his lines, and Williams is asked to do little more than shout slang as Jax.

Not Flawless, Still a Victory

Yet, the corniness of Annihilation matches the corniness that’s always been present in the games, even when it was freaking out parents and legislators in the mid-’90s. The spine-ripping always has more Looney Tunes to it than Faces of Death, and no series that includes babalities and “Toasty!” can have too many pretensions. Nor can a series that built half of its roster out of palette swaps complain about any filmmaker’s frugality.

If Annihilation treated those strange aspects to Mortal Kombat with derision, then it would deserve the fan’s ire. But instead, the movie seems to lean into the silly parts of the games. We see this with the introduction of new characters Nightwolf (Litefoot) and Baraka (Dennis Keiffer). Neither character arrives with the best effects, as Nightwolf transforms from a wolf to a person with all the prestige of an Animorphs cover and Baraka’s giant head and flailing arms make him look more like a confused high school magic than a blade demon. But look at how unabashedly Keiffer throws himself into playing Baraka, or how Litefoot delivers the clunker “Cool, huh? It’s my animality.” with conviction. These guys are clearly having fun.

One gets the same feeling watching the pay off of the animality plot, when Lui Kang becomes a dragon and Shao Kahn becomes a gorgon thing. It looks horrible, and the mechanics of the fight make no sense, especially when Lui Kang’s dragon—a famously flying creature with giant wings—gets scared about falling off a cliff. At the same time, you have to respect the filmmakers for trying to do a big kaiju battle at the climax of their movie, even if it looks janky.

In fact, all the clunky visuals now come off as charming instead of irritating. The shots of Jax punching toward the camera aren’t as cool as a middle-distance shot of him actual grappling with a monster, but they have their charm. The endless shots of ninjas twirling through the sky recall a ’90s screensaver, in a way that feels nostalgic now.

Even the infamous introduction of Sindel ages better because of the silly visuals. Her line delivery is ridiculous, but actor Musetta Vander puts everything into it. And all the actors around her are just as over-the-top, standing there with the dukes up and making mean, growly faces… just like the models in the games’ character selection screens.

Friendship!

To be clear, this isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is good, nor does it mean that all of the flaws have become charming. For as much as their co-stars pour themselves into their roles, Remar and Reiner Schöne, who plays Elder God Shinnok, don’t quite have the same gusto. Nor can anyone claim that the martial arts action is as clean and propulsive as the first film.

But we still have that first film to provide the cleaner martial arts action. Moreover, we’ll soon have two classy, expensive, and mostly respectful (give or take a Cole Young) Hollywood takes on the franchise.

With those other entries in place, Annihilation can now be praised for retaining the series’ silly, janky, and altogether embarrassing side. When examined from that perspective, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not too bad at all.

Mortal Kombat II will get over to theaters on May 8, 2026.