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For a long time, Mortal Kombat’s 1995 live-action movie set the bar as far as video game-to-movie adaptations go. Now, to be totally fair, that bar was set at a high school track and field level at best, and within the last 10 years has been cleared with relative ease by the likes of Detective Pikachu, all of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, and the first Illumination Super Mario Bros. Movie. But that’s besides the point. The fact is 1995’s Mortal Kombat understood what fans wanted out of a Mortal Kombat movie: great martial arts action, a healthy dose of cheese and camp, respect for the source material, and plenty of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa mean-mugging the camera and saying “Your soul is mine!”
But does that mean Mortal Kombat stands up to time’s brutal Test Your Might bonus level? Actually, yeah. Kinda!
I started by giving Mortal Kombat a bunch of praise, so let’s ease back for a second and be clear right out of the gate: Mortal Kombat is not a great movie. I’d hesitate to even call it a good one. But the important distinction between it and other video game movies at the time was that Mortal Kombat fully, and gleefully, embraced its source material, while other video game movies seemed to do everything they could to distance themselves from their own.
Most of the vitally important elements of Mortal Kombat are accounted for here: You’ve got a martial arts tournament with the fate of the world at stake, wild special moves, cheesy one-liners, and of course, violent fatalities. Or at least, as violent as you could really get on a PG-13 rating back in 1995.
But what about the vitally important parts of a movie? Like the plot, character development, or logical transitions from scene to scene? That’s the stuff Mortal Kombat struggles with. For as much as the film tries to stay true to its source material, the fact of the matter is that the source material wasn’t very deep when it came to the lore of its characters. There were only two games to pull from at the time, and the story modes for these games essentially amounted to a few short paragraphs establishing each character’s reason for joining the tournament, and the hypothetical scenario of what might happen if they win.
As a result, the core cast of heroes that we’re supposed to be rooting for feel extremely one-dimensional. The disparate nature of their backgrounds and how they’re all just suddenly pulled together at the start of the movie means there’s no organic relationship-building between them, even while the writing pretends otherwise. The last act basically hinges on the idea that the trio of Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade have grown to be a tight-knit group of friends who would risk everything to save one another, but there’s absolutely no work done to build those relationships. The most memorable interactions between these characters throughout the movie aren’t exactly the friendship building type: Liu Kang tossing Johnny Cage’s suitcase into the water after being confused as a baggage handler, Johnny telling Sonya to call his agent while she’s trying to radio in for help, and Sonya telling the whole crew that “she works alone,” which is obviously a lie because at the very beginning of the movie she’s part of a special forces task force sent to capture Kano.
The kombat of Mortal Kombat, however, is excellent. Clever choreography and impressive martial arts carry the action, with little winks and nods to the games feeling like extra icing on the cake. I do wish we got a little more Scorpion and Sub-Zero, considering they’re actually the two most iconic characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise, but they at least make their limited screentime here work with two of the most memorable fights of the whole movie.
It helps that most of the cast are legitimate badasses. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s Shang Tsung is absolutely iconic, and would go on to set the blueprint for the character in many of the games to follow. Everything, from the way his words drip with venom to his vicious facial expressions, right down to the way he fights, coalesces into a menacing, intimidating figure you can’t wait to see finally get taken down.
On the other side of that, Robin Shou is the perfect Liu Kang. He nails the look of the character from the games, has a very natural and down-to-earth kind of vibe, and is of course an incredibly skilled and talented martial artist, making the character believable as Earthrealm’s greatest champion.
And of course I’d be remiss to not mention the soundtrack, or at the very least Techno Syndrome, which is probably the most enduring element of the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie. It rocks, perfectly setting the tone at the start. And once the music kicks in during the climactic final battle between Liu Kang and Shang Tsung, it feels like a genuine final boss fight.
