Mortal Kombat (2021)

Honestly, he's pretty easy to just ignore. He was in one game in the original series (minus "EVERY FIGHTER EVER" titles like Armageddon or Trilogy), and then again in the first reboot when they remade the events of that one game he was in.

He's as series-critical as Hsu Hao.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 18th 2024 at 4:15:46 AM

Oh come on.

Maybe he's not that important, but don't put him anywhere near Hsu-Hao.

I don't think anyone deserves to even be in the same sentence as that guy.

I do agree he's easy to ignore. Maybe he might have worked in this film instead of Cole, but it is what it is. Better to forget him.

Except with actual fans and no creator with a grudge.

Thing is the iconic MK characters are front loaded into the first two games, when they were focused on clean character designs and distinctive movesets. MK III was when they started going overboard on introducing more ninjas, cyber ninjas and scantily clad female characters, which made a lot of them feel interchangeable. The fact Johnny Cage was deliberately excluded from the first film of a reboot series was quite bold, all things considered.

Alternatively just do Stryker anyway.

Maybe they should've had Sonia and Jax as the novices coming in instead.

Come to think of it, they still could've done the "descendant of Scorpion" thing. Who's a pre-existing character they could've tried it with?

Being charitable... Takeda which would still welcome an Asian lead playing a canon character rather than an OC but that's old hat at this point maybe being retconned into Scorpion's descendant, especially because he was pretty much Scorpion Jr in the games. And in the current canon Kuai Liang adopts Hanzo as his protege presumably in the modern day, so it kind of fits that we'd see a "younger reincarnate Scorpion" of some kind.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 21st 2024 at 6:51:53 AM

Again, both probably would've been better choices.

You look at how the animated movies were received and WB should've had both the confidence and courage in the material to not make them write around something like that. Be interested to see how much more confidence they have going forward now. Here's hoping.

The animated movies have a mixed reception (especially the first two), but are somewhat better at reflecting the source material. That said, reflecting the source material is only part of what makes an adaptation work.

It pains me to admit that after years of preferring The Stations Of Canon and despising adaptations being ruined for me by dumb changes made to be "different," but yeah.

I don't like Arcana but as long as you remove stuff like

• "He's about to get his soul sucked." ^note (Shang Tsung's most iconic line "your soul is mine" getting referenced like this is So Bad, It's Good, but it doesn't fit the tone the movie was going for at that moment)
• Raiden didn't realize that his team could cheat too for generations ^note (it fits in a roundabout way because Raiden never considered cheating in the games, but I'd rather Raiden have to resort to this in all of his infinite wisdom rather than having just never thought about it until Cole Young arrived)
• The poor pacing and usage of rivalries between characters like Jax and Reiko ^note (Jax and Sonya are supposed to hate Kano, and Reiko's not even the one who crippled Jax, but Scorpion needed to have his battle with Sub-Zero so they fed Reiko to Jax instead)
• Sub-Zero being wraith-like for no established reason ^note (we know he becomes Noob Saibot in the games, but its the movie's job to explain this since it's an adaptation, especially so because it wants to ease a non-fan audience into the MK setting)

I'd call 2021 a decent movie. I don't even hate Arcana that much, I don't agree with its necessity but its otherwise inoffensive. Its just with the above points it comes off way worse than it is in the list of narrative decisions I disliked.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 21st 2024 at 6:59:47 AM

The 2021 film benefitted from being bloodier than the 1995 film was certainly. A sequel that goes crazier will hopefully be a good thing.

"Thing is the iconic MK characters are front loaded into the first two games"

Which is hilarious because MK really move on from that, like in MK 1 it have a tournament, they win....and the story continue, in fact the story pick up AFTER the tournament.

If anything this movie just show how much an artefact the tournament have become.

And about stryker, I think he will be omited for another simple reason: he have not powers, he is VERY much a badass normal, so arcana will make him....what? aim better? his bullet will curve to track every no white person?.

Like Arcana ensure you get powers and stryker in the story have none and given he is a secondary chararter, you remove him or just put him as secondary chararter who get killed.

See to me, what would be fun about a character like Stryker in this movie is that he doesn't have powers. Having an established power system and then having a character who just breaks that power system is amusing to me - Dio in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Maidens in RWBY, Mereum in Hunter X Hunter, Raizen in Yu Yu Hakusho, Superboy Prime in DC Comics.

Everybody in MK 2011 has an Arcana that looks cool and stuff. Stryker? His special moves are a gun and a taser. The party will see him fight a four-legged, fire-breathing centaur and kill it with a gun and a taser.

It fits too because Stryker somehow defeated a telekinetic mummy, said mummy having enough power to crush a grown man's arms into stumps, and Stryker beat this same guy after getting separated from his partner and thrown into a subway terminal, hitting the stairway rail before slamming into the floor.

How did he do this?

By sweeping Ermac's legs, kicking him in the shin, and socking him in the chin several times until Ermac eventually went down.

Stryker beat a person who could move objects and people with a thought by punching them in the head enough times.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 28th 2024 at 9:51:08 AM

They will add him, but his gun and taser will be his arcana

Edited by Freshwater on Jan 27th 2024 at 6:03:51 AM

The 1995 movie benefitted on the other from knowing just having the characters fight was enough for the most part. While the 2021 movie had that too, it also wanted to build to the tournament as I said rather than actually have it front and center—as well as build multiple movies around it too.

If you can do Robocop, you can do Stryker.

And it's not like cops aren't in any movies now.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 28th 2024 at 8:46:15 AM

Mortal Kombat does indeed look like a series that has plenty of characters to involve and select from a wide array. I would suspect it's not a problem.

I mean by movie the only MK to exist was MK 1,2 and 3 while this one have waaaaay more. so it clear the director play MK 1 more or less stright as it was: enter the dragon with operation dragon(both movie that audience at time probably knew to well).

Granted I will said the issue is thanks to Arcana it does a "you are special" or "you are chosen" and Stryker being utterly normie fighter probably will get the shaft.

Wondering how much of the story of the 1995 film would continue to be adapted. That movie from what I hear at least got the basics down. I liked it back when I first saw it over a decade ago too.

Mortal Kombat is 1 of those rare instances where the movie adaptation influences the source material more than the other way around such as the requirement to win 10 straight Mortal Kombats, Kano being retconned as Australian (he was Japanese-American in the game prior to the movie) and Shang Tsung's catchphrase.

Also, Raiden's characterization. Originally, Raiden was just an arrogant deity who entered the Mortal Kombat Tournament to prove the superiority of gods above mortals. And. Uh. Then got his ass kicked by someone. Probably Liu Kang.

Mortal Kombat 2 softened him up and made him more of a protagonist figure, having him enter Outworld to try and thwart Shao Kahn's wicked scheme against Earthrealm - but from the perspective of "Raiden finds out 'cause Godly Wisdom and then runs off and tells the other fighters that Kahn's up to shit!"

MK 2 set the stage for Raiden becoming one of the Good Guys (TM). But the concept of Raiden as Earthrealm's Protector God, who does not compete and is instead charged with the burden of shoring up Earthrealm's forces and guaranteeing its safety from Outworld at a distance, was introduced in the 1995 film.

And then swiftly accepted into canon, with Raiden's appearance in Mortal Kombat Trilogy in 1996 marking the first official mention of him being Earthrealm's "Protector".

(Though, honestly, it's kind of a shame that this wound up applied retroactively. The idea of Raiden as this egotistic dickweed of a god who then received such a humbling ass-kicking at the hands of a mortal that he chilled out into the wise and empathetic Raiden we know today is actually kinda fun.)

By contrast, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to add Arcana and Cole Young to official Mortal Kombat continuity.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 31st 2024 at 9:13:22 AM

Actually tobias said raiden chararterization as mentor of liu kang was already there, we dont know if Liu kang beat him because how the tournament went was never detail until MK 9, on which 1) there is way more chararters as cyber ninjas and nightwolf and 2) it seen it was more arbitrary with shang tsung deciding combat at will.

What it did the movie was more or less said Raiden didnt participate because of the rules and becoming a sort of Zordon. the mentor of sorts

Hsu Hao gets memed on so much that I genuinely remember him more than a good handful of other ps2 era MK characters. Like Dairou, Hotaru, Kobra and Kira.

At least hatred is a feeling.

But does it make you want to dance on the ceiling?