Hogan Reviews

A lot of people were really high on this movie so I was expecting another rare positive review in this marathon of almost entirely poor films but sadly I was mistaken, the great opening scene released online was a misdirection as pretty much everything AFTER the opening is … not very good. The movie is lucky Annihilation exists, otherwise this would look extremely poor indeed. Oh well, let’s take a closer look and see if it can at least score as well as the most recent game released before this did!

I mentioned the fun opening, which sees future Scorpion Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) come home to the slaughter of his people and wife by Bi-Han / Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim). We immediately see a key difference though as Hanzo dies we see his infant child survived and is rescued by Raiden (Tadanobu Asano). Fast forward to present day and the descendant of Hanzo, Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is a particularly poor MMA fighter, hard on his luck and… *sigh* my God is he ever boring. Why they thought the entire cast of Mortal Kombat wasn’t good enough that they had to make this “eyes of the audience” character I have no idea, would it have been so hard to say in this universe Liu Kang was taken away from the Temple and grew up in the US unaware of his destiny? That would’ve had the exact same effect but had Kang as the lead character like the games. Here Cole Young has all the hallmarks of an extremely dull protagonist with the added caveat of not even being from the games. No offense to Mr. Tan but he’s not exactly a fine actor either, not that he had much to work with meaning the centre of the film is a devoid of interest.

“When I said ‘Freeze!’ I didn’t mean that!”

Well, anyway, Cole is attacked by Sub-Zero but is rescued by Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and its here we start to hear about more completely unnecessary changes to the lore. Cole has a dragon mark on his body he was born with the Jax tells him he has one too. In this world people born to defend Earthrealm are born with those marks, and later we see if you have those marks you can access your “arcana”, or the special moves like energy projection and fire manipulation, etc. So again instead of just having this be a fantasy world where such feats are a fact they wrote a whole thing to explain why some people can fire beams from their eyes, like they’re embarrassed by the concept and felt a need to explain it in a “real context” or something. It’s completely unnecessary exposition and just part of so many pointless lore changes, and it’s not like MK has deep lore either!

Kano unlocks his arcana! … *Sigh*…

So Shang Tsung (Chin Han, nowhere near as charismatic as the original film’s version!) only needs to win one more Mortal Kombat to be allowed to invade Earth but a prophecy states that the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi will unite the Earthrealm warriors etc etc, which is the general set up, so not only is Cole a dull character be he has a “chosen one” arc. Great. Cole and Sonya (Jessica McNamee) along with criminal Kano (Josh Lawson) are invited to train with Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang), plus Jax (who now has robot arms after a brief tussle with Sub-Zero earlier) and all but Sonya have the special dragon mark. Cole doesn’t do well in training and can’t unlock the power of his arcana so is sent home, despite the fact he is apparently the key to this plan and in his own words he was taken there because he and his family weren’t safe without Raiden’s protection, and wouldn’t you know it he’s attacked by Goro as soon as he gets home (Angus Sampson does the voice, not very natural-looking CG did the body… bring back practical effects Goro! … Okay, maybe not…)

Kano betrays everyone and allows the temple they were training at to be attacked by a few other MK characters at the same time. The fighting is… fine, but quite dull beyond the odd over-the-top gory “fatality”, and apart from Lawson’s Kano being a great cocky villain with some good lines most the actors are pretty… flat. Throw in a really crap non-ending and the film is just not very good, despite the fatalities being “cool”, which I image is what appealed to so many when it first came out.

Overall Thoughts:

The pinnacle of the film, a.k.a. the first 10 minutes.

Mortal Kombat nails the visuals of the more recent game entries but completely fumbles in handling the lore and choreographing entertaining fight scenes. The cast, with one or two exceptions, are extremely flat and our film-exclusive protagonist is among the dullest of the lot. This MK film commits the cardinal sin of being boring, whereas at least the first MK film was so cheesy it was funny, like the source material itself. This attempt at a “realistic” take on the MK lore fails spectacularly.

Kung Lao is killed and everyone else is beaten pretty bad while Cole unlocks his arcana: a full set of body armour that stores kinetic energy and fires it back at his opponent, allowing him to beat Goro with the beast’s own strength rather than learning how to fight himself (cool?) Raiden takes everyone to a special void to plan their next move and Cole suggests pairing everyone up with rivals and then everyone take on Sub Zero at once… which, you’d think sending everyone after one enemy one at a time would’ve made more sense, but hey-ho. Sonya kills Kano and gets his dragon mark and energy-fire arcana, while Tsung’s minions in Mileena (Sisi Stringer), Kabal (Daniel Nelson) and Nitara (Mel Jarnson) are all defeated in their 1-on-1s, but during this Sub Zero captures Cole’s extremely cookie-cutter family and freezes them to the walls of his MMA gym.

I suppose I should really show a picture of the lead character… Well, here he is!

Cole heads there and takes on Sub-Zero by himself, completely going against his own plan, and doesn’t do well until the spirit of Hanzo, in full Scorpion get up, appears and after a quick fight with his assassin teams up with his ancestor to vanquish their family’s foe. It was… not a very interesting fight, probably because Cole kept getting in the way of us finally seeing a big Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion match on screen. The funny thing is that it was so unspectacular that I thought to myself “right and now he reunites with everyone and takes on Shang Tsung for the climax” but nope! Everyone arrives, Shang Tsung acts annoyed and promises to bring an army next time and… that’s it. It’s a complete cliffhanger ending as Raiden says they need to collect other warriors (who I guess won’t have dragon tattoos and arcanas, thus be weak? Perhaps not, going against their own newly established lore it’ll be then!) and we get a fun mid-credits scene of Jax going after Johnny Cage.

Luckily there is a second movie but it was a close-run thing, you should never just assume you’ll do good enough to warrant a sequel and leave this many plot threads hanging, its not a TV show it just makes the film seem incomplete. See the previous review in Monster Hunter!