The Mortal Kombat movie looks bloody, but it doesn’t look bloody stupid
After several delays, magazine pictures and character posters, Warner Bros. finally put out the first trailer for the new Mortal Kombat movie releasing in April. And it is…pretty great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBa_aHwCbC4
Right away, the trailer makes it clear that this film is going to follow through with the games’ penchant for violence, as it opens with Jax Briggs (Mechad Brooks) getting his arms frozen and ripped off by Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim). From there, things just get bloodier with glimpses of action scenes involving klassic kombatants like Hiroyuki Sanada’s hell-ninja Scorpion, Josh Lawson’s cyborg arms dealer Kano, and Sisi Stringer as the kannibal klone Mileena. For a movie that it feels like WB almost forgot they were making, it looks like a solid enough watch on HBO Max, or in theaters if you want to test your luck.
While the movie looks like a fun time, it does feel like it’s missing something, at least for me. It’s got the violence down pat, but the trailer doesn’t do a good job of conveying if it’ll be as well…silly like the franchise has come to be known for. That’s not to say it’s a drag or overly serious — there’s a killer bit of awesome goofiness with a tease of the Scorpion and Sub-Zero fight, and Kano gets to rip the heart out of what looks like a werewolf? But it’s certainly not the excellent reveal for 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, or even 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, two trailers that exude stupidity and awesomeness from their bones.
Stupidity has always been baked into the DNA of the Mortal Kombat franchise. Though this is most evident in the gory (and for some developers, outright traumatizing to make) Fatalities, the silliness is conveyed in other ways. Netherrealm’s reboot trilogy has done a great job of being self serious while also having a sense of humor and fondness for its kharacters. MK11’s time travel story mode features a great Johnny Cage chapter where the older actor has to kick the ass of his younger, much more irritating self. Kombatants will trade barbs or shoot the shit before a match, and the game even lets you dress them up with different pieces of gear and color schemes like they’re toys. Mortal Kombat is self aware and knows that it’s here for a good and a long time, at least until the next installment shows up.
On some level, this silliness is one of the things can you lose when adapting a video game. The trailers for the last two Kombat titles are presented as fights from their respective entries, even borrowing moves from both games and making them cinematic. If there were ever a franchise who’d be able to make that silly style work, it’s the series featuring centaur men and an Aztec warrior who morphs into a panther sometimes.
Then again, this movie was meant to release about a month ago. In an ideal world, this trailer would’ve debuted at Comic-Con back in June, and we’d probably be gawking at a new trailer that features the kast just murdering each other while a version of the klassic theme plays in the background. Under the circumstances, this is the best trailer for that movie you can hope for.
Mortal Kombat releases in theaters and HBO Max on April 16.
