Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat II
Starring Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Martyn Ford
Directed by Simon McQuoid
When she was a child, Kitana witnessed the death of her father, King Jerrod (Desmond Chiam) of Edenia to the villainous Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) who takes herself and her mother as his new family. Years later, the tenth Mortal Kombat competition is underway, and Shao Kahn wants to take over Earthrealm by defeating its champions. Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mechad Brooks), Cole Young (Lewis Tan) and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) realize they need another champion, so they travel to earth and recruits former action movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), who is hesitant to participate especially when he realizes it's to the death. Meanwhile, Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) attempts to find a way to kill Shao Kahn, who is searching for an amulet that'll grant him eternal life. As Mortal Kombat begins, the violence intensifies, characters meet bloody ends, and the fate of Earthrealm lies in the balance.
It's hard to review a movie like "Mortal Kombat II" because it doesn't follow the traditional movie narrative, even though it tries to. The underlying story is Kitana's desire to stop Shao Kahn from taking over Earthrealm, and his quest to find an amulet that'll grant him immortality. Then there's Johnny Cage's reluctance to be a hero after having been a washed-up actor, along with some other side story struggles that characters have against one another, with a glorified cameo fight between Scorpion and Sub-Zero that is obviously tacked on, but with a film that has such a bare-bones story, no one really cares. McQuoid knew that no one wanted a repeat of the first movie and instead just wanted to see characters fighting to the death, and that's what we get. Two people enter, one leaves. Iconic lines like "finish him!" and "get over here!" sends the audience into cheers while not caring about the characters, since, like in the video games, they keep coming back. It's the cinematic equivalent of "Who's Line is it Anyway" - where everything's made up and the points don't matter.
By that I mean old characters get resurrected more times than Jason Voorhees, so any deaths aren't very impactful because we know we'll see them again in the third movie which is easily going to be made considering the hype surrounding this sequel. Originally planned to be released in October, it smartly moved to May to not compete with fall films and settling in its own place between "The Devil Wears Prada 2" and the upcoming "Mandalorian and Grogu" movie on May 22. It'll easily top the box office for two weeks, giving them permission for the cliffhanger ending to reach full zenith.
Most of the time I hate movies that don't go anywhere, and I was a bit miffed when it came to the characters in this movie. Karl Urban was born to play Johnny Cage, but he doesn't really have any character development outside of the "washed up actor" trope before just coming into his own without any hero's journey moment. It just happens. Still, he gives the quips that we'd expect from Cage, filled with all the Warner Bros. cameo lines imaginable (in one particular scene, Cage mentions "Lord of the Rings" in a wonderful beta moment since Urban was in those movies as well). Kitana (played wonderfully by Adeline Rudolph) has only one character trait: stopping Shao Kahn. You get the picture.
Yet we all arrive at the theater to see the characters compete in Mortal Kombat, and to that end we're given even more than what we asked. The violence is video game levels of bloody goodness. The pairings are inspired and fascinating to see. The camerawork is dizzying and intense. We get more than our ticket admission for the fights alone, so much so we don't particularly care that the events that happen in-between seem like unskippable cut scenes.
The Score: B+
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