MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)"

The Earth…was created in six days…so too…shall it be DESTROYED!

So sayeth the Emperor of Outworld, Shao Khan (Brian Thompson) in the beginning of Mortal Kombat:  Annihilation, an inevitable sequel brought to us by New Line Cinemas and Threshold Entertainment.  Ironically the same studio that would be producing the Lord of the Rings films just four years after this brings us a film that’s poorly acted, poorly written, and poorly designed.  “But MadCap,” I hear you all protest from your far corners of the internet, “is it really fair to judge a video game movie for poor choices that ended up making it every bit the box office bomb that it was destined to be?”

I reply, “Yes…yes, it is.”

So, our film begins with Raiden giving a brief recap of the events of the first film, careful only to show clips of Liu Kang (Robin Shou) and Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto) in order to hide a crippling and terrifying truth from people who cannot read movie posters.

They’re the only members of the original cast still here!!!

Everyone else of the original remaining cast after the first Kombat film have taken their leave, leading to Raiden (James Remar), Johnny Cage (Chris Conrad), and Sonya Blade (Sandra Hess) all to be recast.  But they all fill the roles they’ve been handed pretty admirably…considering.  That is to say, except for Johnny…but I’m getting ahead of myself.  The Champion of Mortal Kombat and his leading lady, along with their three new friends, return to Earth and a joyous celebration hosted by children jamming to the bizarrely upbeat music from the beginning of Hackers.  All of this being interrupted by the arrival of Shao Khan of Outworld and his generals.  And, already, we start to see the problems.

Scorpion's back...somehow...

The costumes for Sub Zero and Scorpion in the first film were actually pretty decent and looked a lot like their character sprites.  Several of them appear in a similar style in this movie, chiefly among Khan’s generals, and they look like the producers had gone out and gotten the adult sized Halloween costumes and simply gotten them recolored.  For a budget that was nearly double that of the original, a lot of work really wasn’t put into the costuming at all.  And no more apparent is this than in the outfit of our main nemesis, Shao Khan.

THE FACE OF EVIL!!!! Available for $6.99 at Wal-Mart.

His outfit is basically some black leggings with metal suspenders.  They did, at the very least, get his mask looking at least somewhat similar to how it does in the games.  This too, however, suffers from what I’m going to term “Adult Halloween Costume Syndrome.”  Really, in the first few opening scenes, Khan would fail to even be intimidating if it weren’t for Thompson’s rather menacing performance overall...if he weren't hamming it up and chewing the scenery, of course.  But then all the villains are doing that (to a near literal example near the end).

But the beginning of this film is one of several reveals, firstly that Kitana’s mother Syndel (Musetta Vander) is not quite dead and that the Earthrealm and Outworld have begun to merge due to Khan keeping the portals open in spite of the rules of Mortal Kombat.  After some of what could generously be called “fight scenes” – really, the CG here is actually worse than the first movie, if that can be believed – Khan traps the once-more completely useless Sonya and kills Johnny without even having the decency to break his five hundred dollar sunglasses...

…asshole.

The group manages to escape, forced to leave Johnny’s remains behind as Khan’s forces threaten to overwhelm them.  And thus begins a trip to set right what has gone wrong, live through Raiden being completely an utterly useless in varying ways, and bizarre existential dread from Liu Kang about being inadequate at fighting the Judge in spite of the fact he just killed the pirate king from The Phantom.  The two teams split up, Liu and Kitana heading to seek out the warrior known only as Night Wolf (Litefoot) and Raiden and Sonya going to seek out Sonya’s old partner, Jax (Lynn “Red” Williams).  A few asides are had into Outworld - in Khan’s palace which seems to have been created from the plans for H.R. Giger’s Candy Factory – are also had, introducing us to Shinnok (Reiner Schöne), the father of Khan and apparently the true mastermind behind Annihilation.

Raiden used Thunderbolt!

I’m not going to lie here, if the production design is bad, the acting is actually even worse than the previous film.  James Remar, while a great actor in many a production, doesn’t bring even half the gravitas that Christopher Lambert brought to it.  Of course, with his bizarre speech patterns and his rather stern demeanor, one could be forgiven for thinking that Lambert actually is a god of some kind or another, something that Remar really just doesn’t bring to the table.  It really just feels like it's just another paycheck to him.

More than that, though, his version of Raiden is completely different from Lambert’s.  I’ll be the first to admit that Raiden is kind of an odd-ball in the first one, but he acts as a mentor character to the three main protagonists and mostly dispensed advice that was useful to them and their end goals.  Here, Raiden only exists to be breathtakingly useless, state the obvious and give completely useless advice that seems like wisdom but isn't, be constricted by rules that make no actual sense when you stop and think about them, and all but completely wait on the sidelines until the final act…when he gets killed by Khan.

Oh, stop looking at the screen like that. He gets better later…somehow.

Actually, a lot of people get better later…somehow.  It’s not well explained, and by the end of it you won’t care.  I mean, really.  If you actually manage to survive the final fight and the disturbingly horrendous CGI therein, you’ll just be happy that it’s over.  It’s clear that they were proud of it, too, which is the worst part.  It’s prominently featured in fights and even static scenes, and it does nothing to help with any sort of immersion that the film is going for.

Yeah, before you bring this up, I don't know what they were thinking here...

This film also suffers from being extremely lore heavy to the franchise.  Where with the first film you could expect general audiences to get into it, certain things that happen in Annihilation don’t make sense even if you’ve seen the first film.  Why does Shao Khan, the dark sorcerer-god of Outworld, have robot assassins working for him when in the last film all that Outworld seemed to be compromised of was mystical creatures? Who are Cabal and Stryker?  Why exactly did Night Wolf impale Liu Kang with an axe to start a bizarre dream training sequence?  You’d know if you’d played the games…maybe.  This also wasn’t a time when people could just get on the internet and look up a wiki to find out things.

Not that this practice is excusable even now, filmmakers.

And this film isn’t really acceptable even now.  Whereas the first one could just be written off as a cheesy action flick, this one is poorly set up, poorly executed, too proud of CG that would have been laughed out of the post-production department of Sliders, and is actually too wound up in – rather than too divorced from - the lore of the original medium, unlike many video game movies.

Really, it’s depressing when your Hollywood movie with a thirty million dollar plus budget is outdone by an eight minute long trailer.  However, the franchise did manage to get saved by that very trailer, otherwise known as Mortal Kombat:  Rebirth, and the Mortal Kombat:  Legacy web series, both of which are far, far better than this movie and I would definitely recommend this over either of those any day.  As for Annihilation itself…well, I’m sure there’s a cold, dark place in Outworld waiting just for it.

Mortal Kombat:  Annihilation is owned by Threshold Entertainment and New Line Cinemas and is available wherever movies are sold.

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