Mortal Kombat (1995)

What are the moments in your life that you remember? Which memories have stuck and how come you have forgotten a lot of others? Some say that the reason that some events stick is because there was a strong emotion attached to it. If I think about it, it seems to be valid point if I dig through my own memories. Applying it to movies, it is the reason I can remember a lot about one movie and have no clue what someone is talking about if I didn’t find a movie particularly appealing.

Mortal Kombat is a movie I saw when I was a lot younger and which I remember well. First of all because I used to play a lot of Mortal Kombat with a friend of mine and had a lot of fun playing it. I also strongly remember seeing the movie when it was released, partly because it was one of the first video game movies I saw but also because after seeing it I really liked it and thought the game had translated well to the big screen. Then one of the most well-known movie critics in the Netherlands slammed it and it is that fact I always remembered, because at the time I was quite angry about it. I just felt he was wrong about it. At the beginning of this year I actually met that reviewer (who now also produces movies) and it was the first thing I thought about (although I didn’t talk about it with him). When this movie showed up on the on demand service my cable operator provides I just had to revisit it to see if I was wrong at the time or if I still I thought it was as awesome as I thought back then.

The game itself was originally meant as a fighting game starring Jean-Claude van Damme, but when that didn’t happen Mortal Kombat was made. The idea behind the game was that various fighters wanted to save their world by participating in a fighting tournament. What made the game stand out was the fact that you were playing with real people instead of hand drawn characters and the very controversial inclusion of finishing moves. These finishing movies were very violent (for example ripping out the spine) and called fatalities.

The movie closely follows the concept of the game and is about Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) who is running a fighting tournament. If he wins he will be able to take control of earth and it is up to various fighters to try and beat him. There is a selection of characters from the game doing that including Sonya (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and Liu Kang (Robin Shou). The good guys are helped by Rayden (Christopher Lambert). The characters don’t have too much of a background story, with Liu Kang’s character wanting to avenge his brother and Sonya wanting to catch a bad guy. But to be honest you don’t expect deep characterisation from a movie like this.

The movie uses a lot of elements out of the game succesfully. All the famous characters show up with the standout (from a technical point) being Goro. A huge monster with four arms. If this movie would have been made now this character would have been computer generated, but here it is all practical and it really adds a lot to the believability of the character. He moves and talks convincingly and once again proves that practical effects usually are better than anything a computer can generate. Characters use their signature move, with my personal favorites being Scorpion’s hook and Liu Kang’s bicycle kick. The fatalities are not as brutal as in the game, but that can be forgiven as it would probably be too graphic. Mortal Kombat also uses a lot of CG and as this is a movie from 1995 it means some of it looks quite dated. The film is a lot of fun to watch if you are fan of the game and a character like Johny Cage is responsible for some small jokes.

Watching the movie again I was surprised how many parts of the movie I remembered and I was happy to find out that I still enjoyed this movie as much as I did back when I was younger. Although I can completely understand the feeling the well-known movie critic had now as the movie has some serious flaws (the acting isn’t very good, some fights are laughable as it is clear not all actors know how to fight) it’s those associated memories which make me enjoy it so much.