The biggest issue with 2021’s Mortal Kombat was that it felt more like proof of concept for a new Mortal Kombat movie than the real thing, exacerbated by the fact that the titular tournament didn’t even take place during the film. Still, all the right ingredients were there—even if poor Lewis Tan’s character, Cole, might as well have been a giant studio note on two legs. The team just needed the greenlight to actually cook with them.
Mortal Kombat II, by contrast, is done waiting around. It’s ravenous to get down to bloody business. And though that anxiousness comes at a dramatic cost, it’s easily the most complete and gleefully kinetic live-action adaptation of the games since 1995.
Like that first film, Mortal Kombat II announces itself right up front, showing us the last time the dimension-hopping monsters of Outworld won a Mortal Kombat tournament. Specifically, it was the moment that King Jerrod (Desmond Chiam), monarch of a neighboring realm Edenia, was mauled to death by the hammer of Outworld’s emperor, Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), thus taking not just the kingdom, but also the king’s wife and daughter under his wing.
Not even a minute later, we’re introduced to Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage in a hilariously over-the-top ’90s action flick, which plays on a VHS as the man sits alone at a comic convention. The Thunder God Raiden (Asano Tadanobu) tries to recruit Johnny to fight in Mortal Kombat to replace the recently (but not permanently) deceased Kung Lao (Max Huang), and as our hero is reliably reluctant, he has to be dragged literally kicking and screaming into the fray. We also briefly catch up with King Jerrod’s now grown daughter, Princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), and her handmaiden, Jade (Tati Gabrielle), as they prepare for the tournament.
Could Mortal Kombat II have spent another half hour letting its heroes re-establish themselves, or even made room for a tender moment or two? Sure, but Jeremy Slater’s screenplay is smart-dumb enough to know its audience. This is, after all, a sequel to a film based on a hyperviolent fighting game that was already dragged over the coals for spending too much time on foreplay. It knows not to get too precious about drama, even if it means losing a less dedicated viewer right around the moment a brooding wizard named Quan Chi (Damon Herriman) starts sending minions out to find magical MacGuffin amulets and whatnot.
The Mortal Kombat tournament begins with not much in the way of pretense and the film shifts into gear with wall-to-wall hard-hitting fights, and just the right dollops of extreme violence, reserved for the big finishing moves, and each and every one is lovingly crafted to make gorehounds jump for joy and horror. All this is held together by a rich paste of hilariously profane quips from Johnny Cage and the newly resurrected Kano (Josh Lawson).
Mortal Kombat II preaches to a bloodthirsty choir, making no concessions for anyone who has to question why Liu Kang and a man wearing a sawblade hat are fighting in front of a color-changing portal. As a series of games, Mortal Kombat has always existed in the weird nexus of Shaw Brothers-esque Asian mythmaking, high-fantasy adventure, Saturday-morning cartoon silliness, and Hellraiser-style gore, and unshackled from the 1995 film’s baffling PG-13 rating, Mortal Kombat II stands victorious as the first adaptation to get all the proportions right.
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