Mortal Kombat II (2025)

This guy didn’t like it… but its yahoo, so a liberal goofball highly likely.

Fuck it. Even when the Cole bullshit character, this and the first one are probably the pinnacle of video game movies. Which is a bit like saying the most polished turd but whatever. This was fun.

A bit too boss babe with Kitana at the end, but that might be the actual lore? I only sporadically played MK after Deception. I don’t even know who the big bad is outside Shao Khan and Shang Tsung.

Other than the song I feel nothing for the original 1995 one. I missed most of it when I saw it at my hometown white trash theater because I was screwing a gal I went to HS with in the back row. Core memory. skanky but no regrets.

Caeden said:

A bit too boss babe with Kitana at the end, but that might be the actual lore? I only sporadically played MK after Deception. I don’t even know who the big bad is outside Shao Khan and Shang Tsung.

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Some minor spoilers below.


Kitana's lore was pretty much untouched from the games, if anyone deserves to kill Shao Khan it's her.

Though with the introduction of necromancy (also from the games), they don't even try to hide the fact they'll just keep bringing people back whenever they get popular enough, so we might see him again, plus there's always timey-wimey shenanigans or multiverse, etc..

It was pretty funny they even introduced a rule to necromancy that you need to have a non-smashed skull for it to work, right after Shao Khan completely splatters Cole Young's skull and then dissolves his body in acid for good measure. He ain't gonna be in Rush Hour 3.

I was surprised they never introduced Mileena, since she is pretty much Kitana's rival for Shao Khan's favor, and also half-Tarkatan (which they did introduce). Perhaps they'll reveal her in another film.

As for the big villain, the main one would be Shinnok, an Elder God whose amulet appears in this film. I'm assuming Quan Chi will soon enough evade his Earthrealm captors and summon Shinnok to replace Shao Khan as the ruler of the Outworld Empire, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung are kind of rival sorcerers and often trying to take over the throne of Outworld too.

If they want to keep introducing new characters for future Mortal Kombat films, they're already starting to run a little low on not-too-silly characters.

They've established this Mortal Kombat universe as rather realistic for Earthrealm and more of a fantasy setting for the tournament, so I'm not sure they'll want to introduce all of the cyborg-ninja characters, so that removes a bunch of possible ones already.

The ninja recolors like Rain and Smoke also probably not going to work out. They can do Ermac because the recent games have changed his design and powers enough that he's his own thing now, and he's quite badass with cool visual abilities so I think he'd be a good pick.

Reptile also could work, since he's not really a human character they can go in the direction of him having a reptilian face and claws and spitting acidic venom, anything would be better than the CGI abomination of 1995 Reptile.

Nighthawk obviously isn't gonna be a thing in this day and age, Stryker probably not for similar politically correct reasons. Kotal Khan also probably not gonna work out in case you offend 3 Aztecs somewhere.

I'd like Kenshi to be introduced, he has cool abilities and it would make for some great fight scenes I think (blind guy who can control his katana with his mind, it flies around).

Erron Black is a little silly as a concept (basically a cowboy mercenary in Outworld), but he's pretty badass. However, I think guns would kind of go against the current vision they have for the tournament, we've only seen blunt or bladed weapons.

Kintaro would be too much of a Goro redo, Sheeva also plus you can't really do much with four arms for cool choregraphy I think that's not already been done for Goro. Motaro is a bit silly.

And obviously the "kids" from the recent games (Johnny and Sonya's daughter, Jax's daughter, and a few other young characters) aren't a thing in the movie timeline.

My predictions for the next film characters :

Sonya
Raiden (just mentor role, might pass the torch to Liu Kang early into the story)
Liu Kang (as Fire God perhaps)
Kung Lao (brought back to life as per Liu Kang's vow)
Sub-Zero (the nice one, Bi-han's brother)
Kano (comic relief in every film)
Johnny Cage (if they spend money on Karl Urban again but I'm not sure he'll be the main character this time around)
Jax (resurrected)
Kitana (eye candy and token girl boss)
Jade (would be cool if she wasn't bald this time around, and also pretty)
Mileena (important role if they want to do a girl boss story)
Reptile (throwaway character for one fight)
Ermac (throwaway character for one fight but memorably badass)
Shang Tsung (different actor because he becomes young again, which is his objective in several games)
Quan Chi (plot necromancer)
Shinnok (big bad)

Read it in an interview somewhere after the first one that Ed Boon doesn’t want a bastardization of the lore anymore and the current cannon is the time reset story. After the first movie he was reportedly pissed enough that from now on he demanded script oversight.

If he sticks to that I’m not sure how they can ignore their kids stepping in for their parents unless they intend to stop with the 3rd just being a Quan Chi revenant rebellion against all the realms.

Im not really sure if Urban is the real main star in the movie, yes he's awesome but feel like Katana was the the big focus

Homsar said:

Im not really sure if Urban is the real main star in the movie, yes he's awesome but feel like Katana was the the big focus

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As much as I love Karl Urban in pretty much everything he's in, he's too old to play a convincing main character Johnny Cage and he can't fight either. Even Jean Claude Vandamme who inspired Johnny Cage's original character design is too old to do it now.

I too was surprised that Johnny Cage doesn't really feel like the main character in this film, but on the other hand if you want it to be a Mortal Kombat film with actual combat, you're gonna need a bunch of other young and spry actors to do the kicking and jumping and flipping around. If you center the whole movie around this Johnny Cage, it's just a comedy with a few fights sprikled here and there.

I liked the way they handled it, but it makes me think Johnny Cage won't be the star of future films unless they go back in time to a younger version or something (the young Johnny Cage in the movie is actually played by Karl Urban's son, Indiana Urban).

Haus said:

I kept thinking about this and think I should add a couple spoilered bits.... Obviously don't read if you don't want key movie points ruined for you...

• Spoiler: Spoilery bits...

  First , Katana isn't a girl boss, she's a teammate. She was only able to do her job because she was literally enabled by a white guy having his moment of clarity. (i.e. he figured out how to hit ← → + LK ) So if anything it's while male enablement letting women succeed.
  [*]In theory since it's MORTAL Kombat shouldn't the bad guys have been DQ'd by the gods once one was immortal and using a God's power? Yes, I know I'm not picking a fucking MK movie, but it stuck in my OCD brain for a few minutes there.....
  [*]Jade appeared to be the same age, or possibly even younger than Katana... How had she been her body guard for 20 years?

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To be honest, if this does well, urban might be within budget of 3. It’s not like he’s peak tom cruise or Matt Damon. He’s mostly done genre action and television lately. Hell, this is his type of movie.

Caeden said:

To be honest, if this does well, urban might be within budget of 3. It’s not like he’s peak tom cruise or Matt Damon. He’s mostly done genre action and television lately. Hell, this is his type of movie.

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And I'm perfectly ok with that.
I've never had a problem with actors "staying in their lane". Gimmie all the Arnold/Sly action movies where they only exist to destroy the bad guy, or to make the movie fun like Sam Rockwell or Bill Paxton. Are they Tom Cruise? Nope. But if they're in a movie, I'm fucking watching it. Which makes them A+ Actors even if Hollywood doesn't give them the credit they're due.

Finally got a chance to watch a rip online of what I assume to be the entire movie…

…and I’m more convinced than ever that this reboot should have been a HBO television series with 12 solid 1 hour episodes per season and capped at 3 seasons with the destruction of the Amulet and death of Quan Chi and Shinnok, or simply follow recruitment for the tournament -> Mortal Kombat tournament -> death of Shao Khan and end there. There is just way too much to cram into a single movie that it’s nearly impossible for anyone outside of the MK universe to enjoy as much as they should in movie format lore/story wise. I think the reason the pacing doesn’t really feel right is because it doesn’t have time to properly establish (and allow the viewer to appreciate) the typical skeleton outline of what a story is with exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. The vast majority of the movie is fight scene after fight scene (which I liked) but with most of the dialogue and story conveyed during the actual fighting and rushed. Someone dies and 10 seconds later we’re onto the next scene (and usually fight) where someone else tends to die and then immediately next scene, ect. The end result for me felt like a sprint of action without any real story payoff at the end. Pretty good if you’re just interested in the fights but thats about it.

This is one of the rare times for me where I agree completely with most reviewers that this movie is a solid 6/10 that easily had the potential to be a solid 9+ if it had the format it needed to unravel.

Literal plot armor Cole getting killed by literal god mode villain was funny though.