Kid Aphex said:
Bullshit. I'd argue Mortal Kombat was a DECENT/ABOVE AVERAGE movie by HOLLYWOOD standards --- not just by Videogame Movie standards.
One of the best soundtracks, to DATE.
Decent acting, story that stayed pretty true to the videogame while standing on its own outside the videogame universe.
MIND BLOWING EFFECTS [for its time]
Great direction, great atmosphere, decent budget.
I mean, really, what's the problem?
Decent to Above Average by ANY movie's standards created within the Hollywood system? Let's take a look, shall we? *Play the
Reading Rainbow theme here for maximum effect*
The soundtrack was pure kitsch, the equivalent of Paul Anderson stopping the movie, walking through the screen like
The Purple Rose of Cairo and saying to the audience, "Are you guys
Pumped or WHAT?! I mean, listen to that
bass!". Fun to listen to in the car, yeah, ridiculous in context ("Test... Your MIGHT!" soundbytes looped through the soundtrack made the ten-year old me giggle; now it makes me shrink into the couch with embarrassment).
The acting's... forgivable. Bridget Wilson's the only one that could make me really cringe, but then again, acting's one of the last things I pay attention to when I watch a movie. The rest of the cast is pretty wooden, Liu Kang doing the best. Unless it's
really noticeably bad, though, it's all good to me.
The story of the video game is ridiculous, as it was just an excuse to rip some guy's head off. The story in the movie, a narrative art form, is just as stupid, almost identical, this time without an excuse. I'm a firm believer that a talented writer can take ANY story and craft a good movie out of it (Kaufman's script synopsises sometimes read like he lost a bet...), but Kevin Droney (who also wrote
Wing Commander, generally considered the worst video game movie of all time) wasn't up to the challenge.
To say the effects were mind-blowing is being awfully nice.
Jurassic Park came out two years prior, and if you want a more comparable film, effects wise, with more rubber and stunts then CGI-creatures,
Aliens came out almost a decade before, and still holds up today, while Reptile looked like a piece of shit then and looks like a PS1 cut-scene creation now.
I have the most problem with saying that this movie has great directing.
Great is better than Above Average,
Great is approaching Spielburg on a bad day.
Mortal Kombat came out the same year as
Heat, an action movie that had honestly
Great directing. It also came out the same year as
Die Hard: With A Vengeance, a movie I would think had
Good directing.
Mortal Kombat has
Passable directing. I can't think of one shot, one directing choice that propelled the movie, even for a moment, past NBC Made-for-TV "Special Event" territory. The ending, when Shao Kahn explodes through the Buddhist monastery like Godzilla was hysterically awful when I watched it back in 1995. It hasn't aged well.
Like Southtownkid said, a movie can be absolute trash and you can still like it (I really do like
Mortal Kombat, for the record - I watch it randomly for fun - Hell, I'll probably watch it right now), but I understand that, objectively, when you put it up against other movies, it falls short on almost every level.