Mortal Kombat, (the 2021 film, not the cult classic 1995 one) was an aggressively okay video game-to-film adaptation stacked up against a sea of aggressively bad ones, so there’s little surprise it captured audiences decently enough. It’s a film I got on with at the time, but wouldn’t go out of my way to rewatch, mostly because once the novelty of seeing these iconic fighting game characters properly dismembered – at least as far as an MA15+ rating allows – on the big screen for the first time wears off, it’s a movie that awkwardly meanders between earnest and campy without a sense that it’s trying to do either intentionally.
There was also the whole “there’s no Mortal Kombat in this Mortal Kombat” thing.
Right out of the gate, Mortal Kombat II seeks to remedy that last point. This movie finally gets on with the bloody tournament, pitting Earthrealm against Outworld in a series of thinly-regulated fights to the death with the threat of Outworld’s sanctioned takeover of Earth should it win. After Emperor Shao Kahn’s forces attempted to thwart Earth’s chances ahead of time by attacking its champions in the first film, the remaining kombatants find themselves in need of one more fighter, none other than the sunnies-sporting, wisecracking martial artist-turned actor, Johnny Cage.
In turning toward Cage, played by New Zealand’s own Karl Urban, and turning rather emphatically away from the prequel’s stab at an original character in Cole Young, this sequel finally makes a considered choice. You are here for costumed arseholes spouting hammy dialogue and ripping each others’ guts out, and it’s going to give you that in blood-filled buckets.
Urban fills these boots with a knowing grin and just the perfect glint of regret in his eyes, rising to the assignment of ‘idiot on behalf of the audience’ with the most wonderfully fucked accent you’ve ever heard. Almost never fully progressing into the American dialect he’s going for, the Dredd and The Boys star manages pronunciations I’m convinced have never been committed to film, and somehow does it without a hint of his native, Kiwi accent coming through. Something tells me all these years as Billy Butcher have made a dent, but it’s a guilty joy to witness.
Although his utility in fight scenes is left lacking for the bulk of the film, Cage is largely responsible for moving the razor-thin plot forward, as is Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana, an Edenian warrior princess oppressed by Shao Kahn and working on her own designs to take him down. Anything that isn’t about these two tends to be about fighting, which is where Mortal Kombat II smartly hedges its biggest bets. There is far more ‘Kombat’ here than in the previous entry, owing largely to the tournament itself, which also provides a lot of fun escalations like a fight inside a pit of spike traps or an acid-flanked bridge that forces its kombatants to fight on a very narrow plane, video-game style.
Naturally, rivers of blood are spilled, and some pretty gnarly things occur to folks’ limbs, torsoes, necks, skulls and just about anything else a person could possess. Yes, Johnny Cage does get to dick punch someone, and I’m sorry to report that it rules. Also Baraka is pegged for comedic relief in this film, which is an inspired choice that once again shows Mortal Kombat II’s creatives have properly taken into account how goofy this franchise actually is.
The next sign that director Simon McQuioid and writer Jeremy Slater have fully understood the assignment this time around is the return of Kano. That’s hardly a spoiler, either, given actor Josh Lawson has been all over the premiere red carpets despite his character’s assured previously.
Typically I’d despise the whole foul-mouthed Aussie with an overwrought ‘ocker’ accent, but Lawson manages to have a lot of fun with it here and is even allowed to drop a single, perfectly-placed C-bomb that went down a treat in my packed IMAX showing. The script manages to further harsh Kano’s vocabulary while softening his character, and it brings the right amount of levity to the scenes he’s dropped into.
If there’s a recurring theme here, it’s that Mortal Kombat II is a direct response to criticisms of the first film. It wastes less time on setup, opting to bounce exposition off of its new leads, it ups the ante on effects both practical and digital, delivers better fight scenes and more tactful fanservice, and above all there’s actually some Mortal Fucking Kombat.
Reviewed thanks to an invite from Warner Bros.
Great
- Moves along quickly, gets to the gore
- Manages to find the self-awareness the first film lacked
- Karl Urban's atrocious accent is its own star
- Baraka is surprisingly, deeply wonderful
Not great
- Not a lot of actual movie here for non-fans
- Raiden needs to lock his front portal more