Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) by Jonathan G — 06 May 2016

Well, time to choose your fighter, because my brutal review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation starts now...

FIGHT!!!!!!!

So the first thing one would notice when this movie starts is the CGI. Yes, you can see where they imposed CGI and where a character is moving against a blue screen. The "special effects" are F-grade, the kind you find in a hapless hacker's basement.

The second thing you'll notice right away are the character designs. Never mind the latex on Sheeva, what made me laugh was Motaro's design. Wow, I didn't think that Tenacious D's devil from The Pick of Destiny would be more threatening than that. The dialogue is corny and idiotically spoken right out of the gates, and I know it's going to get worse.

So obviously, one of the things they try to do is make this more serious by having Johnny Cage become a classic red-shirt and get his neck snapped only 6 minutes into the film. That might be beneficial to preserving his character by having Cage cut from the cast list right away. I wouldn't be surprised if he refused to show up for the premiere of the film at the local AMC or even see it in theaters.

I should mention that Shao Kahn in this film looks like someone I would hang out with at the gym. The game's Shao Kahn is a mix of Tarkatan face and human; this one is not. That's not the image you want to give me. I thought that scene was a decent TV level conversation, but it could have been a bit better.

And of course, the final fight with the infamous CGI. It doesn't last long, but the CGI returns at the end of the fight.

So what can I say about this that hasn't already been said before? I know this film has already been dealt with by so many people, but I wanted to do my own look at it. Here's how I sum it up.

The dialogue is not particularly memorable, there are a lot of weird yells and grunts that did not endear me to the Kombatants not named Jax, and the CGI is awful. The only Mortal Kombat game I've ever played is the Sega Genesis version of the original, and I can say with full confidence that that game looks a hell of a lot better than this movie.

MKA is just a dumb-ass attempt to be a fantasy martial arts film, and surprisingly a step down from the original film. Next time, talk to Jackie Chan, Michael Dimartino or Bryan Konieztko regarding that idea, not the dummies who made this.