Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) by Jimmy R — 09 Mar 2008

Something a little bit different this week. My Mortal Kombat game arrived for my DS and I've been thinking it would be fun to get into the MK mindset again. So I played through the first game, watched the first movie, and realised there wasn't much I could get angry about. Luckily my arse was saved when I popped in the disk for Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Oh god, I'm getting angry just thinking about it.

Straight off the bat, this is a video game movie, which are nearly uniformly horrible. There are a few noteworthy exceptions: Resident Evil, Wing Commander, even the first Mortal Kombat movie, however this one slots nicely in between Street Fighter and Alone in The Dark as one of several dreadful game to movie adaptations. This is the sequel to the original MK movie, which was, you know, ok. It had a decent cast, well executed special effects and stayed reasonably close to the storyline of the game. It even introduced several elements that later became Canon, like Kano being Australian. This movie is lacking every single one of these aspects.

Ok, so if you've played MK 3, that's the period we're set in. Liu Kang has returned victorious as Mortal Kombat champion to find his world under attack by Shao Khan and his Death Squads. It's exactly where the last movie finished, except everyone is different. There's a new Sonya, a new Johnny Cage (who is killed before you even realise who the hell he is) and a new Raiden. This fucks you over in two ways. First off unless you are familiar with the movie or games, the plot isn't gonna make that much sense, and if you HAVE seen the movie or played the game, you get very disappointed that the characters you liked so much in the first movie have, in the space of a few seconds, changed clothes, hairstyles and basic facial features. Not that I hold that much of a grudge, the first MK ruined a LOT of careers.

So, back to the movie, Kahn wants control over Earthrealm to expand his Outworld Empire. The only thing standing in his way are Earthrealm's Finest. Kitana goes to try and talk sense into Sindel, Sonya runs off to meet her home boy Jax (see review of MK:SF) and Raiden sends Liu Kang out to meet Nightwolf and learn the rest of his Mortal Kombat powers. It's about this time you start to realise that this isn't so much a movie about Mortal Kombat characters, its a movie which exists solely to ensure every Mortal Kombat character either gets some screen time or is mentioned in passing.

Eventually the movie nearly forces you to stop paying attention to what's going on so you can guess which character is going to show up next, and how badly they're going to get it wrong. It's only fair to warn at this point, being that i'm an absolutely huge Mortal Kombat fan, the next part is going to be VERY geeky. First off, Jade, who is Kitana's ally and in the game plotted to bring down Kahn, turns coat at the last moment and attacks Liu Kang. This feels kind of wrong, mainly because Jade is loyal. That's one of her hallmarks. I'm all for squeezing as many characters into your bloated movie as you can, but come on! At least get it right! Kahn's generals are Ermac, Motaro and Sheeva. That's a sentient collection of souls, some sort of centour and a female version of Goro. They all look like they got their costumes from the kids section at K Mart and they all whine like little bitches. Also, this is, I think, the only time i've ever heard Ermac talk. They got some aspects right. I mean they nailed Sektor perfectly as a cybernetic ninja who shoots missles out of his chest and shows no remorse or wish to be human, which is exactly what Sektor is. Unfortunately Sektor doesn't appear in the movie, only Cyrax, his yellow counterpart, does. He's more than a drone, he's a sensitive soul trapped in a cybernetic shell, not a killing machine like Sektor.

The real thing that bothers me is every time someone shows up and does what their supposed to have done in the game, they disappear just as quickly. The Second Sub Zero rocks up, explained that it was his brother that Liu Kang killed in the tournament, then fucks off. Nightwolf shows the power of his animality, tells Liu Kang to do the same, then fucks off. Oh, and I know it's just bitching, but they mentioned one of my favourite characters once, and completely forgot about another one. I'm talking about Kabal, who in the games was a bad ass with a breathing mask and a set of hookswords, and the other was Kung Lao, the dude with the hats. Both of these characters are killers in terms of gameplay and were easily two of the most popular at the time, but no. In the movie Kabal was mentioned as one of the prisoners that had been captured, and thats it. It was more important to show a fight scene with Noob Saibot, the dark shadow-y thing that nobody had found yet.

What becomes very obvious very quickly is that this movie was built almost entirely for fans of the game, but by someone who couldn't give a crap about the game. It's like the producers just glanced at Mortal Kombat magazine, found out generally what the characters looked like and slapped a story on them. They retained a few things, like the plot of Cindel being married to Shao Kahn, thus allowing them to travel into Earthrealm, Meleena and Kitana being sisters, but really i'm not sure they didn't just read the Mortal Kombat 3 instruction manual, made some guesses and built a script around it. The whole thing smells very half arsed.

Speaking of half arsed, I mentioned earlier that they changed the actors from the first movie. Normally that stuff doesn't bother me, actors move on, get better jobs, I can't hate the movie for that. What I can, and in fact, do, hate about this movie is the fact that the performances from said actors is worse than bad, it's infomercial bad. I was worried Jax was going to try and sell me a Slicer-Dice Deluxe or something. Liu Kang, who was decent in the first movie, is decent again, but everyone else, almost uniformly and without exception, learned to act by watching daytime soaps. Oh, and the special effects! What a craptacular display of mediocrity. It's all quite obviously greenscreened (without the class or style of the first film) and the big beasts, who are supposed to be scary, end up looking pitiful. You almost feel sorry for them. Then they start talking and you hope they get the living fuck kicked out of them.

So at the end of the day, this is not a good movie. It's got a plot nobody but gamers would care about, and they managed to get it so wrong that gamers will complain about it. They got shitty actors and even shittier special effects and sold it purely under the weight of being based, very loosely, on Mortal Kombat. If you enjoyed the games or the first movie, then you'll get some kicks seeing some of your favourite characters rendered into real life, but the rest of the time you'll be bored and annoyed. Stay away unless you like torturing yourself.