Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) by Liukang95 — 02 Dec 2009

Shao Kahn: THE EARTH, WAS CREATED IN SIX DAYS, SO TOO, SHALL IT BE DESTROYED, AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY, MANKIND WILL REST, IN PEACE!!!

After the box-office success of Mortal Kombat back in 1995, the producers decided to greenlight the sequel entitled Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, however, the sequel did poorly at the box-office, and caused the Mortal Kombat franchise to die out around the 90's until a decade later when Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was released on home consoles and reboosted the franchise, so why was this sequel an "Annihilation"?, let's find out.

Shao Kahn: PREPARE, FOR FINAL BATTLE!!!

The story picks up where the first film left off, Liu Kang (played by Robin Shou) won the Mortal Kombat tournament, defeated Shang Tsung, released the souls absorbed by him, went back to Earth with Kitana (played by Talisa Soto), Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage, and they lived happily ever after...OR DO THEY?!, the emperor of Outworld Shao Kahn (played by Brian Thompson) and his warriors invade the Earth anyway, and plan to merge the Earth with Outworld, in the middle of all of this, Kitana learns that her mother, Sindel has been resurrected as Kahn's queen and general, Johnny Cage dies, Kitana is captured by Kahn's extermination squads, and Rayden (played by James Remar) becomes mortal, Liu Kang and Sonya Blade have six days to save the Earth from annihilation, Rayden believes that the only way to stop all of this is to reunite Kitana with Sindel, they learn that Kahn broke the sacred rules of Mortal Kombat to open the portal to Earth, so they go out to rescue Kitana, reunite her with Sindel, save the Earth, and stop Kahn once and for all, joining them is Sonya's partner named Jax, and a female ninja assassin named Jade, they're Earth's last hope.

Nightwolf: Pretty cool, huh?

The story in this movie is weak, here, it's your basic "must stop the bad guy from taking over the world" scenario, and the way it's played is like a bad Saturday morning cartoon (which is funny because there was actually a Saturday morning cartoon based on Mortal Kombat called MK: Defenders of the Realm), I also find it confusing that this follows Mortal Kombat 3 when it should really follow Mortal Kombat II, after all, this is supposed to be the second movie, right?, the acting is weak except for Robin Shou as Liu Kang, and Talisa Soto as Kitana, unfortunately, the only two that reprise their parts from the first movie, we get different actors/actresses playing Rayden, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage, as much as I liked James Remar as Ajax in The Warriors, he does a poor job as Rayden, he doesn't even hold a candle to Christopher Lambert, the new actress that plays Sonya is miscasted here, and as for Johnny Cage...I can't say much about him because, he dies, :(, it's really a shame when, in a sequel, they kill off such a likeable character from the predecessor, the special effects are horrible, they look like something that might as well be deleted scenes from Spawn, especially the animality fight near the end between Liu Kang and Shao Kahn, the fight scenes are not-so-impressive here, most of the time, it's just people jumping around wire-fu style (WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!), the costumes are poorly made, they look like something straight out of Power Rangers, and here's the biggest problem I have with the film, there are so many characters in this movie that get like only 2-3 minutes of screen time, yeah, they managed to stick in almost every single character from MK2 and MK3 like: Liu Kang, Kitana, Sonya Blade, Jax, Johnny Cage, Rayden, Shao Kahn, Sindel, Jade, Motaro, Sheeva, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Ermac, Rain, Mileena, Noob Saibot, Cyrax, Smoke, Nightwolf, and Baraka, IT'S A NIGHTMARE, ALMOST THE ENTIRE WORLD IS THERE, IT'S LIKE A MORTAL KOMBAT CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!, however, there were some things that I did like, the soundtrack was pretty good, lots of good techno/electronic tracks in there, and the sets look decent, but that's about it.

Liu Kang: It was a mistake, even coming here!

Overall, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is a really dissapointing sequel, it's a shame really, this could have made the Mortal Kombat film franchise, in my opinion, one of the greatest longest-running action film franchises in cinema history, but like they say, "you win some, you lose some".

Johnny Cage: This is not good.

My rating: 2/10.