Mortal Kombat (1995) might be my new favourite guilty pleasure. I'll explain why.

Apologies in advance for the length of this; I got a bit carried away!

On a complete whim I decided to watch Mortal Kombat the other day. I remembered it being bad, but I had no idea it was this bad. Yet despite being a complete shower of shit, there were some genuinely great aspects to that film. I'm going to try and put my thoughts down here.

The Bad

Oh boy. Where do I start? There is so much wrong with this film. I should however preface this by saying that the bad aspects of the film contributed to its accidental comedy genius. I laughed so hard at some points that I had to pause it so I didn't miss anything.

The acting - Really truly awful acting from the majority of the cast. Particular nod to Sonya Blade and Kano. Though this is no doubt in part due to...

The script - It's unapologetically a film for fans of the game franchise. Every single character is name-dropped so many times that even if someone shouted "Do you remember this guy from the game? Look! It's Johnny Cage" it would have been less jarring.

The dialogue was so predictable that I found myself guessing what the next line would be with alarming accuracy. There were catchphrases coming out the wazoo too; from the mandatory "GET OVER HERE!" by Scorpion to Shang Tsung's "Flawless victory!" or "Finish him!" every 5 minutes.

Plot holes - One particular: The final fight between Liu Kang and Shang Tsung has LK proclaim that he really is the chosen one! That's the bread and butter for this kind of story but there was no mention of a chosen one prophecy anywhere in the film at all. It came out of no where just in time for him to beat up a dude who has the combined power of everyone he has ever beaten. Considering how much pointless exposition this film has it baffles me how they couldn't find 30 seconds to explain why LK is the best thing since sliced bread. edit - this one is debatable as I was probably just not paying enough attention!

I'll leave the bad there otherwise this would be part 1 of a 12 part epic review.

The Good

I expected nothing good to come from this movie but I was pleasantly surprised on a number of occasions. There wasn't enough to redeem any of the above shit sandwich but hey ho.

Cinematography - The most surprising thing for me was how awesome some of the cinematography was. For some reason the best looking frames followed Johnny Cage around. Here's a few of note.

Locations - There was some great scouting done for locations. The fight between Liu Kang and Kitana is a good example of this. It's such a short, and mostly pointless, scene but they still chose to pick this awesome beach in Thailand for it. Another good example is the temple from the start and end. Generally speaking though a lot of the sets looked cardboardy, so these gems were few and far between.

Goro!! - Just look at this guy! They went all out with an animatronic Goro that still holds up pretty well. It's obviously not Jurassic Park levels of awesome animatronics but they could have just gone for a cop out CGI mess (like they did with Reptile... eurgh). Which leads me nicely to...

The adaptation from source material - It really is a very faithful adaptation. It's to the detriment of the movie's coherence but hey! I doubt anyone was expecting Casablanca. I thought it did a good job of capturing the feel of the games and bringing fan favourites to life.

Choreography - The fight choreography was hit and miss but there were some fun, well executed fights with plenty of spectacle and sometimes hilarity (Goro getting punched in the balls for example).

edit - The soundtrack! - MORTAL KOMBAAAAAT

The Hilarious

I just wanted to quickly highlight an unintentionally funny plothole that deserved a section all on its own. There was an exposition scene where Raiden says "Follow me" to the 3 protagonists. He then proceeds to turn into lighting and completely disappear. I just lost it at that point. Admittedly I'd had a couple of whiskeys by then but it was the hardest laugh I got from the whole film.

Final Thoughts

It really is a truly awful movie. But it's definitely one of the best examples of "so bad it's good". I was laughing and cringing all the way through and still somehow managed to enjoy it enough to feel the need to write this review. I'd recommend it to anyone that enjoyed the likes of "Kung Fury" or "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist"; though it wasn't their intention, Mortal Kombat is undoubtably just as hilarious.

As a side note, i'm currently working on the rules for a drinking game for this. So feel free to contribute rules!

Submitted July 20, 2016 at 05:56PM by SpirallingOut http://ift.tt/2aaoZj1