Mortal Kombat II
If you’re a fan of the 34-year-old fighting game Mortal Kombat, chances are you’ll be satisfied with Mortal Kombat II. If you’re a newcomer merely looking for a well-scripted action programmer, you might want to look elsewhere.
Arriving five years after the successful — if somewhat forgotten — series relaunch, Mortal Kombat II operates just as much as a reboot as it does a direct sequel to that first film. While most of the original cast returns, many of them are put on the sidelines to make room for our two new leads: Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana and Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage.
With both of these characters taking lead roles, Jeremy Slater’s script often struggles with fitting both of their vastly different arcs into a single narrative. One wonders if these storylines would’ve been better suited with one film focusing on Kitana and the other on Cage. It doesn’t help that the chemistry between the core cast is practically non-existent and that both Kitana and Cage are kept so separate from one another throughout the film that neither serves the other’s narrative in any substantial way.
Back for round two is director Simon McQuoid (whose background was limited to Australian TV commercials before landing the previous Mortal Kombat film). He does a respectable job with the fight sequences, but seems completely lost when dealing with more intimate moments. The disorienting editing of basic dialogue exchanges is so noticeably clunky at times that one has to wonder if the film was severely cut as a result of studio pressure. This could very well be the case, seeing as initial production began in June of 2023 and concluded as early as January of 2024.
For all of its issues, however, there is still fun to be had.
If you’re even a casual fan of the games, as this author is, there’s an undeniable thrill seeing characters such as Cage and Kitana finally get the limelight. Small touches like the actors recreating their characters’ famous combos and fatalities as part of their fight choreography is also quite charming and a certain cameo that honors the roots of the franchise will undeniably prompt certain gamers to recreate the Leo pointing at the screen meme.
As expected for a Mortal Kombat movie, the sequences in which characters are trading blows are more successful than the sequences of characters trading banter. While that banter might include some real groan-worthy one-liners, a couple members of the cast elevate it by playing up the campier aspects of the screenplay.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in Urban’s scene-stealing performance as Johnny Cage. Playing up the cartoonish aspects of his character, Urban elevates the movie into something more accessible even as it threatens to become bogged down in lore dumps and mindless brawls. One sequence in which Urban takes center stage, insulting and eventually battling the fan-favorite antagonist, Baraka, is where the film peaks.
Despite these attributes, nothing in Mortal Kombat II rises above the level of passable. There’s solid action and it plays great with a crowd of hyped up fans, but thanks to a weak script and an anonymous directorial vision, it never even reaches the level of enjoyment that comes with simply playing Mortal Kombat with some friends at home.
That being said, the movie did inspire this author to immediately turn on his PS5 and play a match on the most recent Mortal Kombat game entry almost as soon as he got back from the theater.
That’s gotta be enough to warrant at least a C+.
Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: Warner Bros.)
