Right around vaccine time in 2021, WB dropped a new Mortal Kombat movie in theaters and on HBO Max. It was one of the first new theatrical movies in a post-pandemic world, and did just fine. The only issue: there was no actual Mortal Kombat tournament in the movie, just random fights and exposition. Mortal Kombat II would prefer you didn’t remember that film at all, going so far as to omit the “II” from the title card. This is a soft reboot of a reboot, focusing more on the game characters and less on the original protagonist created for the first film, whose fate is quite obvious from the jump. Skulls are crushed, organs are liquified, and Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) drops a Lord of the Rings reference. If we’re stuck in this era of video game cinema, we might as well get a movie that is, somehow, almost entirely about Kitana (Adeliene Rudolph).
After a dramatic prologue in which a young Kitana watches her father King Jerrod (yeah…) fall to the menacing helmethead Shao Khan (Martyn Ford), we’re thrown back into Lord Raiden’s (Tadanobu Asano) Earthrealm temple with the tournament that decides the fate of our world about to begin. The Earthrealm fighters, including robo-armed Jax (Mehcad Brooks), brawler Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), fire-wielding Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), and the aforementioned doomed Cole Young (Lewis Tan), are trying to recruit their final fighter chosen by the gods, the washed-up movie star Johnny Cage. Urban is down to move and bop around the well-choreographed fights, even with a shaky American accent holding him back. The stakes are easy to understand, though “plot” is not really a factor.
Outworld and Earthrealm clash and our heroes are thrown into classic Mortal Kombat stages with classic enemies, forced to fight to the death or until their dazed opponent collapses. Characters do their arcade idle poses; there are breakable stage objects galore; Cage stands dazed and awaiting a Fatality; everyone tosses off a one-liner before getting down to business. It’s quite a close adaptation in spirit, even if the score is sorely lacking. You have the greatest song of all time with Techno Syndrome– why aren’t you using it at every single opportunity?
Is there a real difference between this and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Not particularly. Both films have endless fanservice, references to both original game mechanics and deep, esoteric lore (which my audiences loved). Mortal Kombat II comes out slightly better because there are actual bodies getting tossed around, except when those people are replaced with squishy CGI. In those moments, the films are one in the same. But at least this one has Kano (Josh Lawson) annoying everyone around him, including the necromancer who brought him back to life. Big mistake, buddy!
Mortal Kombat II
2026
Dir. Simon McQuoid
116 min
Opens Friday, 5/8 @ Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport, and all local AMCs
