 Welcome to the first ever episode of the Adam Rantz Movies podcast. It's kind of a, I mean, it's a podcast, I guess. I'm going to try to make them around 30 minutes plus in length. There will be video accompanying them on YouTube. In fact, it's where I'm going to be posting them first to see how this goes. But the goal is to do one of these a week, not really jump into any like personal stuff or side, you know, stories, really just focus on the films. That's the problem I have with a lot of podcasts in general is I want to get to the meat of it. You know, I want to hear someone talk about movies and experience it through their eyes. And you know what, we might find out we have a lot in common. So as of now, it's just me solo. I might have some friends come on from time to time. But now, you know, we're just going to, it's going to be very chill and laid back going through a movie. I think in the future, I want to do the Harry Potter series, but today we're doing Mortal Kombat 2021, the pros and the cons. We're going to break this down in a spoiler fashion. I'm still going to be putting out my regular movie reviews, my regular rants, which will run around eight minutes in length. And then you'll get the spoiler version here, which, you know, as I stated, I'll try to try to do within a half hour. That's it. That's the full spiel. Let's dive right into it. First off, I want to point out that the movie started with around two minutes of HBO Max buffering. So that was fun. That's how I like to start my movie experience on pause. I don't, I don't know what it is about HBO Max, but every single time I try to watch a movie, it happens. Netflix doesn't have this problem. Hulu doesn't. Then we finally get into the film after a nice restart or two and we find out that this was directed by a guy who's done pretty much nothing prior and it was written by the guy who did Wonder Woman 1984 strap in is basically what this film is telling you. Now the first seven minutes were released early on YouTube and other streaming platforms for free. And I can see why it's easily the best part of the film. It gives the illusion that there is some sort of a story structure with with arcs and payoffs and interesting characters and none of that's the case. No, but what we do have is a very solid opening seven minute section. We we open on Japan back in the day. I forgot the year, so I'm not even going to guess. Hanzo, I wrote down notes here. Hanzo hasashi family is kind of living their best life out on their little farm. You know, he's he's tending to the crops. The the Mrs is kind of wandering around. He makes eye contact with her says he loves her so much. She's kind of a little bit like stand stand office about it all. I don't know. There was a weird kind of look from her. Clearly there's a little bit of history that we don't ever really find out about with this family. But things get bad within like a good minute. You know, it doesn't say peaceful long beyond shows up beyond. I think I'm saying the names right. I just watched this today again to take notes and I'm bad at I'm bad at names. I butch him a lot. Anyway, he shows up and slaughters the whole family using ice powers. This this this has Hanzo kind of freaking out. He drops his bucket of water, which I believe is a callback to the 1995 film where Liu Kang takes out sub zero with the same style of bucket and water inside. I think it was a tip of the hat. There's a few of those in that in this film. I should say. So he there's a really cool action scene to start things out where Hanzo takes out these minions that are working with who's not known as sub zero yet, but soon enough will be will be called that he slaughters them. It's the best action scene in the film. Rivaled, you know, by the final scene, which also features him in sub zero will get there eventually very cool visceral action. He's you know, he's a makeshift spear, you know, hook that he that he makes and throws through guys faces. It's very R rated. It's telling you this isn't your grandma's mortal combat. This isn't 1995. We've come a long way. We have CG blood. We have choreography. That's better than just like grappling with each other and pushing each other backwards. We have trained martial artists. It's going to be a wild ride. Okay, eventually he goes one on one against his rival. We know they have history together. It's alluded to via just a few sentences. One of them's I believe beyond Chinese and scorpion is Japanese because they can't understand each other. I don't think I don't know. It's I'm an uncultured swine, but I think that there was a there's something about different tribes with these guys and and scorpion did him dirty. So he's getting revenge, but this film once again has no time to waste on this topic. Behan eventually wins the day kills. Kills our boy Hanzo who kind of erupts into flames for some reason again, not explained. He just disappears with with magic and he leaves his orphaned child in a crib inside. I mean, it's it's a wooden I mean, it's a bass. It's a wooden box. Basically it doesn't end there though. The God of Thunder, the Lord of Lord of Electricity, Raiden comes down. We don't know him yet. The ordinary normal audience goers aren't going to know who any of these people are, but gamers who I assume most are are most of the ones watching this. They know who these characters are. They don't even need to be explained or have their names uttered for us to know, but I'm taking this from, you know, like the way a movie is supposed to construct itself and it's doing a really piss poor job so far. Okay, so Raiden gets the kid title comes up. I'm all in. I'm fully invested and then we cut to a black screen with a few sentences explaining what mortal combat is. I've seen plenty of films where the movie starts out with, you know, a paragraph or two explaining the plot of the film. I always find it to be incredibly lazy storytelling. It just screams to me that they ran out of budget and test audiences had no idea what was going on. So they put this in. Star Wars is one of the few exceptions, but even then I don't like, I don't get jazzed about the scrolling title credits or the, you know, the title crawl doesn't do anything for me. I just wanted to be over and I imagine most kids at least watching Star Wars feel the same like, oh goody six paragraphs of floating yellow text. Oh, and it's also done in a weird font treatment and set it a, set it a weird scaling. So I have to read it really quickly. And yeah, anyway, not, not good. Not good when a story does this. We then jump to our, I guess, real lead of the film. It's debatable. The best way to describe Cole would be to say he's like the custom creator default skin. I make this joke in my real rivalry coming up Friday on screen rant. I'm, I'm feuding Mortal Kombat 1995 versus this 2021. And so some of these jokes might be recycled. I apologize, but you know what? I wrote them down and I was proud of them. So I'm going to use them as I see fit. So yeah, Cole has no personality. He's, you know, clearly I, you know, props. I like the actor. I like all the actors in this. I haven't heard of almost any of them, but they're doing, they're doing their best with the material they're given, which unfortunately for Cole's case is none. Okay. He, he's fighting. He's an MMA fighter. He gets his butt kicked. His family's, you know, whatever they're, they're, uh, they're cheering him on anyways. They're very supportive. We see Jax. He's, he's got both of his arms. They're not metal yet. He's kind of wandering in the background, checking things out, a little mysterious. We then have a very abrupt and very jarring cut to Shang Tsung. He's at his kind of rocky throne area. I think it's in Outworld. I believe is what it's called. I get, I have a hard time with Mortal Kombat lore. I played all the original games, you know, like the first three or four before they went 3d and then I, they lost me until the more recent ones like MK, I think I jumped background. Mortal Kombat nine is when I thought they started getting really cool again. So nine, 10 and 11, but I have no idea what the plots are. I don't give a shit about the plots. And I can't imagine even the most diehard of Mortal Kombat fans could tell you what's going on in that franchise. There's so many betrayals and, you know, twists and red herrings and all sorts of stereotypical storytelling tropes that can throw you off. And I just, I can't keep up with it. I can't possibly keep up with it. Okay. So Shang Tsung, he's talking to his boy, Bihang on this rock bridge and Bihang now makes it abundantly clear that he goes by the name of Sub-Zero that, okay, listen, this movie really likes to drop names. Every freaking character gets this slow zoom in the slow pan and they have to announce who they are. How do I, how do I even explain this? Um, the people that know who you are, know who you are when they see you in the costume. You dropping your name is not new information. Those that don't know who you are by looking at you, saying who you are means absolutely nothing to them. Saying your Kung Lao, for instance, to a stranger watching this movie for the first time is going to say, okay, is that an important character? Like, know your audience and know how to make these reveals more impactful. Now, if Sub-Zero, like he's wearing the blue with the mask and it zooms in, he's like, I'm scorpion. Then every video game nerd on the planet is going to be like, what? Whoa, what? That's a huge bombshell. That makes sense because it's unexpected. And it doesn't make sense. But I think you get what I'm saying. Okay, Shang Tsung reveals that he wants to cheat in this final Mortal Kombat. This is the 10th time that they could win and that allows them to enter the other realms and enslave, you know, all the different races of people. I believe is the, it's funny. The games all have the same centralized plot point. Even the old movie and I still don't give a shit. I never understood. It was such a bizarre concept that they had to win 10 of these in a row and that would allow them access to enslave mankind. I like the logistics makes no sense and I just really don't get the purpose. They're just bad guys. They're just evil dudes that want to take over. All right, fair enough, whatever. It's nonsense. I'm still on board with this film. It hasn't lost me yet. Okay, so he admits that they've cheated every time so might as well go out with a bang, cheat again, even though he's taken a look at the character lineup and he is not impressed. Yeah, I feel like for the 10th time, they could just maybe win legitimately since he thinks that these guys are a bunch of clowns, but no, he just wants to keep cheating. So he sends sub zero and and a few others eventually to go kill these these new characters before they even have a chance to compete in the tournament. It's pretty low blow. Okay. We're now back to colonists family again. They're celebrating his loss by having some ice cream treats. Then it starts to snow, which is very uncommon. I don't remember what city or I don't even know where they're at California. Maybe I don't know. It doesn't matter, but it's snowing and that's uncommon. So and I've seen this twice and I still I still don't know where they're at. Jax is watching. He's on looking. He sees trouble. Winter is coming. That's right. Sub zero shows up. He wants to kill Cole. The family gets in with Jax who they don't know, but Jax is, you know, he makes it very clear that this guy is out to kill him at any cost on the drive away. He also reveals he has the same birthmark as Cole and that it's not a birthmark at all. What wait what that dragon shaped emblem on my skin isn't a birthmark. Cole thinks to himself. No, it's actually an invitation to Mortal Kombat. He has to compete or die trying to get there. After a cool chase with some, you know, Elsa action going on with snow falling. Jax decides, you know what? I can't outrun this dude. You guys need a bounce. I'm going to take a shotgun and go at this guy one V one, which is a huge mistake. Sub zero is the the boss of this film. Not even Shang Tsung really does much of anything. He does later, but I mean sub zero is clearly the big bad of the picture. And I'm cool with that. He's he's a cool enough character. He's one of the best. He's OG. So Jackson sub zero fight. All the fights are really good. It's really well done. He loses. He loses badly. He loses both of his arms in a the CG for the most parts really. I think well done in this. It's pretty grounded until later. The you know, the effects of his arms icing over before shattering is kind of disgusting. You see the blood like pulsing through chipping away and then jacks gets thrown over the side of you know this ledge hits his face falls to the ground. It would kill any mortal man, but maybe the maybe the emblems give you a little bit more more power. I don't know. I mean, he's a big dude. He's served in in six. Six something or another. He says he's he's served in six missions or whatever it's called. I don't I don't know army speak and I forgot what he said, but he's been Afghanistan a few times. So I guess that's supposed to be impressive. Anyway, he's out of the picture seemingly until he's not later, but we'll get there as well. What do we move to? I'm looking through my notes. Bear with me. Why is Lord Raiden? Okay, I put down why is Lord Raiden not intervening with any of this nonsense? And that's a good point. I asked myself in these notes Lord Raiden. We find out later his whole his whole job as a as a God, I guess, is to look over Earthrealm and the fighters. It's his only job as far as I'm concerned. And holy hell, he's doing a piss poor one of that. How is he letting Sub-Zero and these characters get to his fighters? Why isn't he intervening? I mean, we saw him save the baby long, long, long time ago and we're going to find out later he has all sorts of magical tricks. He just he just doesn't seem to really give a shit. Why not warp your fighters right away? As soon as the tournament's announced or when we get closer to fight time, you know, get get these guys out of their houses, get them in a safe, secure location. I'm overthinking this. I know that, but I have to have some sort of, you know, it's got to make some sense, you know. I'm already, I'm already I'm already switching the brain off when dudes are making fire dragons and shooting ice out of their hands with no explanation. You know, I'm already a believer in the magical stuff, but you have to ground some of it in some plausibility or you lose me altogether. Anyway, keep in mind, I'm still invested in this film. I still think it's still solid. It's still good. I'm liking the fights. The story stuff isn't the worst I've ever seen, so let's just push through. All right, we then get a really quick sequence introducing Malina talking to Shang Tsung. I have to say this right now. I don't know who the actress actress is who plays Malina. I'm floored by her. I'm quite smitten with this actress. Maybe it's just the outfit. Maybe it's the blood smeared across her face. Maybe it's the tight pants on the thick THICC frame, but I'm I'm all in on Malina. Would have liked to see more of her if it's unfortunate that we don't. But you know, that's that's my own journey to that's my own journey to overcome. Okay, anyway, short scene. We're then back to Cole who's once again getting his ass kicked. It's brief, but it's the introduction to Sonia who is really her main arc is that she's super jelly that everyone is invited to this tournament but her like everybody she knows and talks to is going and is invited except for her and she just can't get over it. She's been studying this thing for a long time. She's military. She's living in a camper that doubles as a chamber for all of her research. So she's got printouts. She's got magazine clippings. She's got a whole whole mess of how you know how to trace a serial killer type shit, including a nice little tip of the hat for Nightwolf fans. I'm sorry Nightwolf fan out there. You get to see you get to see Nightwolf in a little newspaper clipping. That's fun. Okay, we then get the reveal of the best character in the movie by country mile and that's Kano. He's chained up in the corner talking shit him and Sonya don't get along. That's been established since the first game of the series all the way back in 1992. I believe is when it came out. Who I'm a young I'm a young guy. You know I'm a spring chicken as they say that's for sure. Anyway, they they kind of chatted up for a while exchange blows verbally and then reptile shows up. He's a big character change as far as I know. I always knew reptile as a human. You know reptile hybrid, you know, he spit acid, but he still stood on two feet. He had arms and legs like a human body is what I'm getting at. He just had an uglier face. This version. He's more akin to I'd say lizard man from Soul Calibur. If anybody's familiar with the Soul Calibur franchise, I played the shit out of that game on Dreamcast. I am I am young. I'm a young man. I'm a young man. Moving on. Anyway, he looks cool though. I don't have any like hang up. I'm not some hardcore Mortal Kombat fan that just gets or I'm not hardcore into anything and I don't think anybody really should be. I think it's unhealthy to be too invested into anything because you're always going to be disappointed at different versions at different interpretations. Just don't go all in. Except for Molina. I guess I am a I am a Stan when it comes to Molina. Okay, they fight Reptile. This leads to an awesome first fatality. I guess. Yeah, it'd be a first fatality. Jackson died so we can't count the arm break. But Kano absolutely make sure that Reptile doesn't get up as he pulls his heart out still beating from his lifeless corpse. This is a tip. I had to Mortal Kombat one Kano's Kano's finishing move looks awesome. Reptile looks awesome. The one thing that I will they'll note that Disney seems to be doing a lot wrong with is CG. They think their CG is so fucking good to the point where they'll just put these animated characters right in broad daylight. And it's a mistake because it looks aged right away. And Mortal Kombat, you know, the director, the credit here is that he knows this stuff is going to look bad. If you just put it under a or if you just put it in front of some high beam lights. Instead, he lights him using, you know, some red lights in the room. There's fire on the side. So you're getting that those different exposures. It's bouncing off the skin. It gives it texture. You can cheat a little bit to make it look more detailed that way. And it looks great. And Reptile's only on screen for just a few seconds. Most of the time he's invisible. So props props to the CG department there. Props to the animators. Okay. Oh, I have to point out. I noted that Sonya does a really dumb screwball attack where she twists the knife into him. It's Sonya does this a couple times in the movie. They're really into the screwball attack. And I don't remember her ever doing that move in the fighting games where she spins where she spins horizontally through the air. I don't remember her having that move. She was all about the leg stuff for a long time, which I ate up love love the leg stuff in the 95 version. Fantastic. Moving down our list of notes. Kano gets conned into showing them to Raiden's temple. That's true. I put it and it's true. Sonya with her vast knowledge of, you know, thinking like a criminal mastermind such as Kano. I guess he's just a mercenary piece of shit. But she tricks him into thinking she's a multimillionaire who's able to pay him $2 million to take them to Raiden's temple, which he kind of knows the location of for reasons. He's a very worldly traveler. He knows a lot. He agrees to this with no money down and really not even a second thought after hocking a loogie on a garden gnome in one of the grossest scenes in the film. This is a movie that has people getting cut in half. Limbs ripped off, eyes gouged out, and I found the the loogie to be absolutely disgusting. Probably because it was real. Looking, you know, it's it's an actual element of the earth that I can see oozing down the side of the statue. And if that if that loogie was fake, holy hell props to the animation department again because it looked real. Okay, anyhow, he knows some imbred cousin or friend or something that takes him on this massive plane that they have presumably stolen, and they they jump out they parachute out. Kano pushes Cole, who up into this point has said maybe three sentences total. And then they traverse the deserts, hoping to find something that will reveal the temple. And they do, they find Liu Kang after after Kano and Sonya scramble for a little bit to have a little bit of a tussle in the in the dirt. Kano sits on a comically small rock for a while to take a rest and Sonya is not having it. She can't finish the job though. She can't kill this murderous traitor to the country who's probably killed tens of thousands of people with you know, horrible trade deals against US soil who's probably killed many by his own hands. She can't seem to finish him off even though at this point they they kind of know where they're going. So I mean, whatever, I'm sure that won't bite you in the ass later Sonya. Okay, so then Liu Kang shows up, throws a fireball at the dude, and I noted this and I have to kind of just look down my list. This is great though. Let me find it. Hang on. I'm looking. Okay, Kano and Sonya fight. The actor, Josh Lawson, he made me care about the character Kano. A video game character. I couldn't even give a single shit about and he's been there since day one of the video games had no interest in this guy and the actor, Josh, he brought him to life. Dominated the film, overshadows everyone else and he delivers the greatest line when Liu Kang puts his hand on his shoulder in a consoling fashion. He just he sets it there and Kano looks over the fuck. It was just perfect. It was effortlessly delivered. Great comedic timing. Tons of props to Josh for that. Very much steals the movie. It's a shame that he's gone. MIA in the second half, which turns into a complete and total cluster fuck. Okay, at this point, I'm still into the film. It's still pretty damn good. Honestly, I'm liking it. I'm digging it. I am assuming I'm assuming there's going to be backstory to Scorpion and that whole intro and we're not going to have to wait to the final minutes and get none of that. Who knows? Maybe this will just maybe this will be great all the way through, right? Even though I've already said that it won't be. Okay, they enter the Temple of Raiden and look at some high res murals. Sonya says, I knew it. It's all real. Hmm. What I, this is where the writers really have, have let me down. I knew it. It was all real, she says as she looks at some murals of dudes fighting. She says that after she watches a guy literally shoot fire out of his hands. She says that after she helps to defeat a walking lizard man creature. She says that after studying and researching this shit for years and years after listening to her partner radio that there's a guy throwing ice out of the sky. I mean, are you kidding me? That was the tipping point. These 4k digital readouts of some of the past events. That's what tipped you off that this was all real. Sonya, come on writers, do better. Oh my God. Okay. Liu Kang explains that they have an inner power to unlock. Except for Sonya, except for Sonya might add who hasn't even been marked at this point. This begs the question that I often find myself reveling in for the rest of the film. Why are you there Sonya? Who invited you to this? How are you even allowed inside of this temple? As an unmarked, unpeer fighter of the tournament. Is this thing open to the public? Could I could I just do a tour of this place? Check out the fighting pit. Check out Raiden's throne. I mean, what is happening that she's allowed access to this place? Okay, rant aside. This is a big deviation from the games as far as I know. Maybe I'm wrong. Correct me if you want, if you must. I don't believe the markings that these characters get unlock a special superpower in any of the gaming lore, but in the film that that's what Liu Kang explains happens. You find your inner there is a term for it. I wrote it down later, but I don't see it yet, but you find your inner power that you can release onto the world during your matches. Okay. Let's move through this. We then get our first treated view of Jax who's very much still alive and being worked on by some monks. He has baby t-rex arms. They're so ridiculously stupid. I don't know how anybody didn't say anything on the on the team, but my God, it's it's really really comically bad. Raiden shows up. He sucks so bad in this is what I put down. He delivers all of his lines with zero emotional energy, which is a pun because he's made out of it. He explains for the 30th time that outworld will enslave the human race if they lose mortal combat. They just keep drilling the same one or two points home without going in any further detail about anything else. Raiden then tells Cole to basically fuck off because he's garbage and go back to your family. Shang Tsung and my dream girl show up along with sub zero. They attempt to kill Raiden's champions, but he puts an electrical barrier around the place, which which saves them. Now this leads to one of my other many questions. This is the 10th time. This is the 10th fight in a row that if they lose, they will lose everything. Why don't you have better security Raiden? How about you have that electrical force filled up day one? And we'll even find out later that there's more stuff he could have done to protect his fighters, but this guy sucks hard in this film. Really, really bad. Okay, Kung Lao shows up. He, you know, he's revealed to be Liu Kang's cousin. I don't know where he was at. His brother says, welcome back. He I guess he was on a he was on a holiday or something a siesta vacation. He has to also do the name reveal in like this cheesy cringe, turn to the camera, look, touch the hat, wink at the audience that his name is Kung Lao. Nobody cares. Saying your name is useless. Then they start training. This is where the fun begins. They start training and Liu Kang announces that Sonya can't because she doesn't have the mark, which is referred to as Akana again. Why is she still there? Okay, there's a fun sweep the leg joke that gamers will appreciate. It's one of the most annoying moves in Mortal Kombat where you can keep sweeping the person while they get up. It sucks. It's annoying, but it happens. Liu Kang gives some vague backstory about his childhood with Kung Lao working under Raiden's tutelage says something about being an orphan which resonates with Cole. Okay, that's I put those notes down. I don't remember much of that. Now we're treated to baby arms jacks boxing, looking like a complete jackass. Sonya is encouraging him talking about their time together in war times and how jacks never gave up when he ran long distances and he shouldn't give up even though he has embarrassing arms. Personally, I think he should give up. Okay, we then jump to Kung Lao and Kano exchanging insults at dinner. This is unfortunately one of the last times we'll really get to be treated to Kano doing fun stuff. And it also unlocks Kano's interability because he gets mad, which is shooting a laser out of his eye. Yeah, the idea of giving these guys superpowers to unlock already starting to already starting to sound kind of stupid. Okay, Cole sucks. Oh, I you know what? I'm out of order. I'm out of order here. Cole doesn't leave yet. This is where Cole leaves. He's crying because he gets his ass kicked again and then Raiden tells him to piss off. That okay. I'm sorry. I'm out of order. Okay, we're now back to the shitty rock throne. We see a few new characters. Cabal is in this and unfortunately he talks. Worst voice acting choice ever. He looks like this kind of cool militaristic dude robotic. It's kind of he's very fast, but then he's like, hey guys, he's just it's not like that, but it's bad. Then we have Natara, Batgirl I call her General Raikou or Raiku. I don't know he hammer guy, hammer brother. These are like E string Mortal Kombat characters, I guess that they just wanted in the film because they could kill him off and give another tip of the hat to old fans, new fans. And then there's my girl thick Malina song really wants to cheat. That's that's kind of the point of this. Even though he knows Raiden's champions are trash. He really wants to speed this process up and start taking over and enslaving people. Okay, Cabal convinces Kano to switch sides. Kano never brings up the two million he's supposed to get. I guess he forgot. I mean, of course he did. Who would remember something so small as a $2 million check? Okay, he does. He's he's trash. He destroys the Raiden shield generator, even though Raiden made the shield with his staff. I guess it needed to maintain power somehow and Raiden's a God so he can't can't do it himself. I guess. I don't know. Whatever. Goru comes out of a barn to fight Cole. Who's back home with his family. They don't seem too scared of the of the giant monster hulking dude. Props to them for keeping their cool. The wife even at one point attacks him. A mistake, but one that she'll live to to regret. Not the greatest fighting location. Also, not the greatest person to match up against go go. How come I can't say his name right now? Goru Goru Goru Why the fuck did I put Goru? Goru Goru Forearmed Goru. Holy shit. Okay. Goru and Cole fight and now it just sounds weird coming out of my mouth. Now. Now this is something I have to just push through. Okay. They fight for a while. There's other characters fighting. Things are going on in tandem. Everybody's losing. Did I miss the part? We're No, I didn't. I get my notes are okay. Okay. Molina leaves Sonya. Okay. So Molina's got Sonya pinned down. She's licking those size, making me think all sorts of just beautiful things about her. But then she realizes Sonya's garbage. She's she's not pure. She doesn't have the marking and she bounces. She doesn't even bother killing her. It's a waste of a kill. I respect that. I respect that. Molina's got some pedigree to her name. You know, she wants to keep it. She wants to keep that respect. So she leaves so Sonya kind of pathetic on the ground. We have Kung Lao bestine the bat girl. He's one of the only ones that wins the fight, but he's going to lose the war in the long run. He gets the best fatality in the film, throws the hat down. Does the hat buzz buzzsaw? Bat girl flies through it, gets torn in half. A nice tip of the hat, pun intended there, to one of the later video games. It's his fatality. Okay. Oh, and then he ruins it by lamely saying flawless victory. God damn. Mmm. Would have worked if Shang Tsung said it, but Shang Tsung's trash in this anyway. So who cares? Cole finally unlocks his ability, which is a Black Panther esque outfit. Except for it doesn't look cool. It's made out of basket weaving material. It's not black. It's gold. It's Black Panther esque because I think it gives him the ability to absorb punches and then he can dish it out even more more powerfully, which he doesn't uppercut with, which is another nod to the games. He then kills Goro with batons that he also manifested out of his ass. It reminded me of Stryker, the one of the lamest characters ever from MK3. Goro is killed by Cole. He's killed by terrible DLC. Huh. And why is Cole's interability close? This whole movie's it's just the wheels are fully off at this point though. Jackson locks his ability, which is robotic arms that are large. He has cyborg abilities. What if he didn't lose his arms to begin with? Would he never unlock his power? Would his arms get ripped off and robot ones would grow? Would he get a different power? What is happening now? The best part is he fights hammer brother on the pit. One of the staple Mortal Kombat levels from the early games where if you uppercut the dude, you fall into a pit and die a horrific spiky death. They give us the location and they don't use the stage fatality. How do you not use it? It's right there. God, what? Okay, Kung Lao then dies at the hands of of Seng Shung. Seng Shung. I wrote down T S H A T S my spelling here is atrocious. My notes are are going off the off the rails. Seng Seng kills Kung Lao by force pulling him in and then sucking his soul dry. No consequences for that. Just outright kills a dude before the tournament starts. Lord Raiden just doesn't give a shit. I guess about anything. Nobody cares. Why not break all the rules all together? Who's running this tournament? Why doesn't Seng Seng just do this to everyone? Nothing makes sense. Okay, Raiden then pulls the remaining champs into what he calls the void. A white background where they're free from everyone. Why didn't you pull them there to begin with? Why have them go to the crappy rock quarry to fight when you knew Seng Seng was trying everything he could to kill your your champions? Pull him into the void right away. Raiden's the worst in this. Wheels are fully gone. Roller coaster is broken. I don't know if it's a car or a roller coaster. Everything's off the rails and the tracks and the road. God. Okay, he then gives them a pep talk, sends them all back conveniently where they need to be and they fight again this time. They're wiser, I guess, and just more willing to win. Nothing's changed in the last few minutes. Outside of the fact that now I know Raiden can teleport people anywhere at any time. Whenever he wants, he knows the locations of everyone. He knows what they're doing at any time. You suck so bad, Raiden. Okay. I also have to point out that the music is not great in this. There's some decent songs, but nothing's ever getting you pumped up. It all kind of just blends together. So the emotions are zero to be found. All right. Jack's fights about I already did this. I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself. We're now at the pit part where Jack's fights and beats that guy. We'll gloss over that. Okay. Sonia and Kano fight in a poor kill bill to rendition inside of a trailer park. He dies by the lawn mow. He dies by the lawn gnome teased earlier. So that's fun. Gets it in the eye. Okay. What else happens here? Oh, yeah. Okay. Because Sonia defeats Kano finally, she gets the emblem. She gets invited to Mortal Kombat, which they're already they're already doing basically, but the look on her face. Man, if I could satisfy a woman to the point that Sonia was right there in that moment. I'd be a God, I guess amongst men because that face she gives looks like she just had the best sex of her life. She's a troubled woman. If this is what's getting her off, being able to fight to the death in Mortal Kombat. Liu Kang does my favorite move in the game, which is the bicycle kick. I always love that move. Always a big fan since Mortal Kombat 2 when it was introduced. Followed by a hybrid of his animality where he he makes a fire dragon instead of a regular dragon or turn into a dragon. I guess is what he does in the games and in that beautiful Mortal Kombat annihilation, which is just one of the worst movies ever created that I love to watch and make fun of. Okay. This kills Kabal who kind of sucked in this film. Molina gets blasted by Sonia's purple death power beam that she unlocked instantaneously. She just knew how to she knew how to do that thing right away. Doesn't make any sense with anything, but what does? You know, Jack's had metal arms who has metal ability. Kano had kind of a a pink eye. He kind of had some scratches by his eyes. So we got laser vision. Why did why did why did she get purple shooting powers? I don't know. Who cares? Molina is dead. I'm sad. My girl, my girl went out dirty. Guess she should have, you know, the moral of the story is that you should have killed these people when you had the chance. Molina could have killed Sonia earlier, didn't. Sonia could have killed Kano earlier, didn't. And look what happened. Bad consequences. Anyway, Sub-Zero kidnaps Cole's family and leads him to the final showdown, which just so happens to be at his old MMA stomping grounds, a frozen cage match. Okay, I put a lot of notes here, so I'm just going to kind of read them off. I said, this is the best fight in the film. Oh, I guess I'm kind of kind of going against my own thoughts earlier, where I said the opening number is, but we'll go with it. Mainly because Hanzo finally shows up. Oh, shit. Remember Scorpion? I brought him up a couple of times and now I've already forgotten. It's just in time to save Cole his long, his long, long ago, ancestor or whatever. Doesn't matter. There's almost no explanation for why Hanzo went to hell to begin with. Guess he was a really bad guy. Also not explained how he was able to return when he did. How he even got out of hell outside of a throwaway line where he says he learns to harness the power which gives him the ability to blow fire. I don't did did sub zero get cast a Sunder to Antarctica where he learned how to harness ice. Who the fuck knows? This thing is a disaster now. You can't just have him come back and expect me to be excited about this. I know nothing about this guy. I know nothing about his journey. I know nothing about his trials getting here. It sounds like it was pretty epic though. Whatever was going down in the hell or what what events led him to get there. Okay. Anyway, he does the get over here which is cool. I like to I like how it sounded. God damn. Okay. Again, it's a great fight. Not thrilled. It had to be two on one considering Cole sucks and Scorpion. They don't even know each other. They have no rapport. Oh yes. He calls himself Scorpion now. He makes a note of that. He takes off his mask which he does like six times. Takes it off. Puts it on takes it off. Puts it on. Just keep it off. I don't even think you can die anymore. You you you are made of hell's fire. It appears. Can you die? Your guess is as good as mine. Unless you're a hardcore fan of the game. Then you maybe know. He says I'm Scorpion now. I think that's exactly verbatim. I'm Scorpion now. Okay. That means nothing. All right. So bad. Okay. He then says remember this face which is the last thing he said to him before he died. He's like remember this face. Yeah. You had some crazy story to get ice powers and now I had crazy story to get fire powers who would have guessed it who would have thunk it. Okay. They then they done fight some more. While they're fighting Cole runs over to chip away at his family who has been encased in ice and is still somehow alive. I don't know how but they are. I guess Sub-Zero didn't want to like fully kill them for reasons that don't make even a lick of sense. But it's funny because he's chipping at him while Sub-Zero is very much alive and fighting right behind him. So he's like punches him twice runs over and then goes back to him again. It legitimately felt like a video game moment like fight the boss then go over here and activate the switch then get back to the boss then do this. Really stupid nonsense. Okay. Um they defeat Sub-Zero save Cole's family and there is a hilarious part. I I mentioned that already. All right. Sorry. My notes. My notes mentioned the ice picking. Okay. The rest of the crew warps to Cole. Shang-Sung is pissy that his fighters are dead. He says there is always another portal and collects his dead players. Yeah. I don't I that line. I was lost on me so you can bring all these guys back. Whatever we're moving on. I don't care. I honestly was so checked out at this point that nothing mattered at all. Raiden tells his champions to go collect other fighters for the next tournament. I guess they they won this one because they killed all Shang-Sung's men before they could officially begin. I don't know when the next tournament takes place. I don't know if this was just this one didn't count if it was a forfeit. I don't know the rules because there's no one enforcing them. There's no one to speak to them outside of the black screen with the the white text. Maybe that's the guy doing it all. The TV screen. Okay. No idea what they're supposed to do. Are they champions for the next one. Do they still get to be the fighters going forward until they die for an eternity of mortal combat fights. This is such a disaster. We then get a Johnny cage tease on a poster a shitty mortal combat song remake ends the film appropriately and I die a little bit more inside after watching this a second time. That's it. That's mortal combat 2021. Half of it's good. But then the second half ruins everything the first half go had going for it all the good will is gone. Had the film stuck to a narrative maybe going with backstory scene. His rivalry with sub zero and then following him through hell and back again. That's an interesting storyline. That's a storyline I can get behind. And that and that's taken into account this is the way they went they chose to have sub zero as the villain here with the scorpion kind of revenge arc. So if you're going to go that route you need to go all in instead of kind of doing the half-ass 1995 version again with a lot of the same characters to be focused on. And then adding in Cole for some reason who is supposed to be I guess kind of the fish out of water character that we could all kind of see through the eyes of but he barely talks. It's just it just was bad I'm sorry it's a bad movie if you liked it that's great there's definitely plenty to like it moves very fast. The action is very good it's way better than what we've seen previously that's for sure. And the actors are all likeable especially that he was gone. Later. So yeah I I totally understand enjoying the film it really reminded me of the recent Kong versus Godzilla really really stupid but you have fan service action and a lot of times it's all people want to escape the real world nonsense and in that regard props to you props to the film but now I look for a movie that has a story to tell and can do it in a unique way that draws in both that want to get invested in this I want I want characters that are compelling I want a story that works on multiple levels I want the cool action but I I just I want it all I'm selfish okay I want it all alright that was my rambly talk about Mortal Kombat 2021 not a lot of cuts here I don't think that I have to edit out so that that makes me happy thank you for joining me if you're a patreon at patreon.com slash you to you I'm doing these long-form videos because I've they've been requested for a long time now it gives me a chance to really express my full thoughts on a film without trying to do this tight 8 10 minute production that's more polished and I hope to do this weekly like I said starting next week we are going to be going through the Harry Potter films we're taking them one at a time so if you're a fan of Harry Potter or not and you just want to hear me talk to a fan spoiler you have that to look forward to and then I'm also going to rank them as far as where I think they fit within the 8 film run fantastic beast movies can go to hell they're garbage I don't even want to talk about them the fact that I did them now kind of makes me also die a little bit inside all right that's mortal combat if I'd rank this in the lineage of the three films not counting the animated one I haven't seen I'd say mortal combat one is still the best even though the fighting sucks and it's super cheesy and and kind of cringy the actors are all fun engaging it's creative it it just has a charm to it some of that's maybe branded by nostalgia I don't know like I was whatever you're going to you're going to label how you label and then this one and then annihilation is the worst although I annihilation is probably the most fun you can have watching a bad film all right thanks for watching like the video if you liked it I'll talk to you soon bye