Mortal Kombat Annihilation
I wasn’t going to, but since the new mortal Kombat movie is coming out this coming week. I thought I would rewind to the previous Mortal Kombat movie.
Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997) 90 minutes (SPOILERS)
Annihilation picks up right where mortal Kombat left off. Shao Kahn has begun his invasion of Earthrealm, and it up the chosen warriors of earth to defeated him and save the realm. However, things aren’t exactly like they were last time we saw our heroes. One big change is all the cast has been replaced, except for two. The story is simple, the world is in danger we must save it.
Like the movie before it, this movie takes its ques from Mortal Kombat series, with this one make most its inspiration from MK3, with a lot of creative differences and some things directly adapted. Such as, Johnny Cage being killed off, and the invasion of the Outworld forces merging the realms. While giving game fans just about every character from the game series, except a few; and having some just disappear for no reason at all.
One of the major issues with this film, is a lot of trying to do fan service without thinking it through. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of character’s that do nothing, or just simply fuck off for no reason. Rain is killed for letter Stryker and Kabal live. Sheva is killed by a cage dropping on her. Noob Saibot is just conjured by Ermac during the final fight. Then we have character’s like, Sub Zero, Nightwolf and Scorpion just disappear after their very brief appearance. Which is odd, as at least two of them should be fighting for Earthrealm, but I guess just having them pop up is enough to get fan boys hard.
Something this film has got going for it, is the fighting in this movie is a lot better over its previous entry. There are a lot more fights which show off all the hero character’s abilities. Out of all the character’s Sonia get most of the single fights in comparison to the previous film. As she single handily takes out three of the character’s on screen. Compared to Jax who seems to get his ass handed to him in most of his fights.
Unlike the first movie which keeps the film rather grounded, with a few supernatural elements. This movie decided to just up into the craziness that is the MK universe. As there is a lot of things that just happen, that we as an audience are just meant to go, okay. Like the use of superpowers, by Johnny in the start of the movie, even thought he had not sign of them one movie ago. While also we have animality, which is another game element which wasn’t needed, or wasn’t an idea which wasn’t fully thought through. As it seems to be this big thing Liu Kang needs to win the battle, but in the end amounts to nothing!
Another game element in the move is fatality, even though they aren’t as bloody and violent as I would like. They are present in this movie, even though we only really get one game accurate one. Nevertheless, there is a lot of killing off characters, so at least they were willing to do that. It’s just a shame we didn’t see any more accurate fatalities.
The soundtrack in this movie is quite good. Every fight scene is highlighted with a different dance, techno song. None of which out stay their welcome, as most fights last less than minute. It helps get the audience pumped for what’s going on screen. Sadly, not all the sound design works in the film. There are some weird moments where there are dramatic music cuts, I guess to help with the drama that’s going on. What also doesn’t help is the sound effects for the fight scenes, they try and sell us hard hitting action. It’s just a shame there is not a drop of blood in the whole movie.
I goes without saying this a bad movie. There are lot of reason why it doesn’t work, and I going to list some of them. One of them is the acting, the acting is so bad. The actress who plays Sindel is rather horrendous in her roll. I don’t know if it’s her line delivery, or her bad make up and costuming, it’s just all terrible. An example of bad acting, is right at the beginning where we have Kitana standing in front of a green screen, while the wind blows and wilding looking around.
I should also mention what I’ve called the Power Ranger flipping. For some reason this film was shot with some weird angles. A lot of the time its shot with the camera facing the sky. This most notable when the characters are doing a lot of different flips. In works for kids, but this meant to be a movie for adults, can we do something more interesting. Same with the use of slow motion, its frequent and annoying.
I know I need to cut the movie some slack as it was made in the 90s, but the CGI was terrible even for its time. The animality effect just look awful. As does the greenscreen effects, you can clearly see the outlines as they tried to blend the two. They also made some weird choice with the CGI, as Liu Kang wasn’t transformed to slimmer dragon form. Instead it was given this big bulky body with wings, which probably was harder to render and animate.
I don’t know how this movie could have been a success. There are a lot of maybes I could throw around. Like, having a better cast, better CGI, less character’s, and most likely better direction. If we would have had all these things, we might have gotten a slightly better movie. Which probably is why we haven’t gotten many video game movies that have gotten past a second film.
Unlike Street Fighter, where I watch because it’s so bad its good. This movie is very much bad, and I try to ignore it the best I can. After watching both movies I can certainly say the first is the better one. It just a shame this movie suckered us in with the same start as the first, but it’s downhill from there. If you haven’t seen this movie, or not seen it in a while. I’d recommend you wait to see the new one first, to see if the new one is better or worse quality.
Now I’ve refreshed my memory of what Mortal Kombat movie were like, I can’t wait to see what the new one looks like.
FabEs.
