MORTAL KOMBAT GETS ANOTHER SHOT AT THE MOVIES
By John Saavedra
Warner Bros. Mortal Kombat reboot ushers in a new era for the fighting game-inspired franchise. Can this film erase the memory of the questionable movies from the ‘90s?
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While some fans may still have fond memories of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 Mortal Kombat film adaptation, few likely have anything nice to say about Annihilation, the universally panned 1997 sequel.
Annihilation is so bad that it killed the fledgeling movie franchise, even as the video games themselves continued to boom.
24 years later, the James Wan-produced reboot hopes to do things the right way with an action-packed and gory adaptation that leans much closer to the source material.
The first trailer hides plenty of clues about what the movie is about, but the main thing to know is that it’s set to deliver the gruesome, Fatality-filled fights that Mortal Kombat is best known for.
The trailer even teases we might finally get the Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion big-screen fight we’ve always dreamed of.
And the movie’s story seems to be all tied together by a mysterious new protagonist named Cole Young, who’s an original character created specifically for the film.
But is there more to Cole than meets the eye? Some fans theorize that he might actually be fan-favorite fighter Johnny Cage in the making. That certainly would be an interesting twist.
Many other classic Mortal Kombat fighters are set to appear in the movie, including Kano, Raiden, Shang Tsung, Sonya Blade, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Mileena. There will probably be even more fighters.
Jax, everyone’s favorite cybernetically-enhanced soldier, will play a prominent role in the movie too, as the trailer shows us just how he got his famous metal arms in the first place.
The trailer even hints the Emperor of Outworld himself, Shao Kahn, might play a role in the movie…
We’ll know for sure when the movie hits HBO Max on April 16.