Production for Mortal Kombat 2 is a bit up in the air due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, but the anticipation for it is very real. The most recent Mortal Kombat tried to put a serious spin on the iconic gaming franchise, with some success. Gone is the campiness of the Mortal Kombat films from the '90s, replaced by a festival of blood, savage brutalities, and spine-chilling fatalities, literally.
With the new film in production (and everyone stoked about Karl Urban playing Johnny Cage), now's a good time to revisit the 2021 live-action movie. With a bit of critical reevaluation, now that we've gotten over the shock of certain characters being omitted or included, the adaptation is actually pretty good. Much of that comes down to the epic violence of the film, which mostly comes from someone who actually mastered the bloodshed behind Kill Bill.
Updated July 22, 2023: This article has been updated ahead of Mortal Kombat 2 in order to include new and fresh content for your enjoyment.
Some wondered just how gory the film was going to be, but director Simon McQuoid put those concerns to rest in an interview with ComicBook.com preceding the release of the film. He revealed that there was a fine balance between not making the gore too over-the-top, but to also make it bloody enough to reflect the legacy of Mortal Kombat. Producer Bennett Walsh proved helpful by drawing on his experiences with Kill Bill.
"Bennett's not someone who spends a lot of time talking about himself, but is really, really important to this movie. So, Bennett worked on Kill Bill, and he knows about blood and knows about ratings and stuff like that, so he was really important and really helped me and the team calibrate where we needed to be. So, yeah, we talked about it a lot, and stylistically, that needed to feel right, too. It was a lot of discussions about blood."
The thing that made Mortal Kombat stand out from the crowd in the gaming sector was its exaggerated use of violence in a fighting game. Over time, the series has prided itself for topping its own gory stunts with each new game. According to McQuoid, the team behind the movie had to think long and hard about how much of the series' bloody example to follow before the whole thing became too much.
"It was something that took up a fair amount of brainpower amongst us, because we didn't want to underdo it, and we didn't want to overdo it. So, overdoing it means [...] when certain things in the game, if you tried to make a real version of that, the film would be unreleasable. That's just the fact of it. But we knew we wanted to get up to the line and not cross it, and that was really [...] the discussions were about that."
A Bloody Mortal Kombat Reunion
Kill Bill is often sited as being a rather brutal film, at least in terms of the action, but it never had to live up to the legacy of a game that was known for its violence. While Walsh's experience may have helped the team to understand what was acceptable in the world of cinema, that is entirely different for video games.
The truth is, there will always be Mortal Kombat fans who will complain that the film is showing too much blood, or not enough of it. What will allow the movie to stand the test of time is the story at the heart of the action, and whether fans agree that the chemistry between the many characters in their many storylines come together well enough to kickstart a new cinematic franchise. With at least one more film on the way, it will be interesting to see if the sequel follows in the game's footsteps and tries to up the gore, or if it will not push the boundaries set by the first.
Directed by Simon McQuoid and produced by James Wan and E. Bennett Walsh, Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson "Jax" Bridges, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han and Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Matilda Kimber as Emily Young, and Laura Brent as Allison Young.
McQuoid and Walsh are back for Mortal Kombat 2, along with much of the cast. It should be a blood good time, whenever it's actually released. In the meantime, the 2021 film is available to watch on Max.