flash-hammer's Full Review: Mortal Kombat - Annihilation
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
The impact of Mortal Kombat Annihilation upon the life, death and subsequent rebirth of the MK franches shouldn't be underestimated, with the film coming in-between games, and having a colossally negative impact on people's views of not only the movie series, but of all things going by the MK name. The fact that the games on either side of it were of a rapidly decreasing quality from the excellent second game didn't help, and the fact that this was naturally going to be compared to it's predecessor, arguably the only successful Videogame - Movie translation, meant that Annihilation, a poor movie in it's own right, all but sealed the fate of the MK name as far as non-game related projects was concerned.
I don't know if MKA actually played in cinemas in the USA, but I'm pretty sure it went direct to video in the UK, because I've always been a big fan of the series, but I still remember my shock when it just appeared for rental one day, after me being completely unaware there even was a second movie. I honestly can't recall exactly what I felt about it on my first watching of it, when I would have been about 12, but I do recall my reaction when watching it again for the first time in years last year, which was complete disgust. I didn't even mean to buy the DVD, I actually wanted the first movie, but wasn't really paying attention, and as punishment ended up with a copy of this instead.
The movie opens right where the first left off, with Liu Kang(Robin Shou - Honour & Glory), Princess Kitana(Talisa Soto - License To Kill),Johnny Cage(Chris Conrad - The Next Karate Kid) and Lord Rayden(James Remar - The Quest) have saved our Earth-Realm from the evil forces of Outworld after winning the Mortal Kombat tournament, and have just arrived back at Liu Kang's home at the Temple of Light.
However, their celebrations are short lived, as the sky turns purple, and Shao Kahn(Brian Thompson - A.W.O.L :Absent Without Leave), Emperor of Outworld, emerges with his armies, lead by his generals, Ermac(John Medlen - Highlander: Endgame), Rain(Tyrone Wiggins), Sheeva(Marjean Holden - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure), Motaro(Deron McBee - T-Force) and most shockingly of all...Kitana's mother Sindel(Musetta Vander - Project:Shadowchaser 3).
The Earth Warriors, still trying to figure out what is going on, are stunned when Kahn announces that there are only 6 days left until he merges the Earth and Outworld realms, and in the ensuing scuffle, Johnny Cage is killed, forcing the remaining Earth Warriors to escape to a secret underground passage. Raiden tells them that he doesn't know how Kahn has managed to bend the rules, because with Liu Kang winning Mortal Kombat, Earth Realm should have been safe for at least another 100 years. They split into pairs, with Raiden and Sonya going to find Sonya's partner Jax(Lynn Williams - Middle Man), before Raiden goes to the temple of the Elder gods to find out what is going on, ordering all of them to meet him there. Liu and Kitana are sent to find Nightwolf(Litefoot - Kull The Conqueror), to teach Liu how to grow powerfull enough to beat Shao Kahn, but en route Kitana is kidnapped, and Liu is forced to seek him out solo.
Afterwards, he manages to enlist the aid of a sexy female warrior named Jade(Irina Pantaeva - Zoolander), and they set off to find Raiden at the temple of the Elder Gods.
After recieving no help from the Gods, Raiden renounces his status as a God,and, with Kahn's extermination squads in hot pursuit, they must move quickly to get to Outworld, to come up with a plan to stop Shao Kahn's nefarious schemes, schemes in which he is being aided by a man named Shinnok(Reiner Schone - Ice Planet), a man more powerful than any of the Earth Realm fighters can imagine.
If that write-up seems to be a little convuluted, squashed, and packed with characters I hardly mention, then I know I've done a good job or conveying how the movie goes. The film is famous for trying to cram too much plot into too little space, haphazardly chopping off bits of plot here and there and trying to weld them together into a completely silly fim that seems to have undone all of the good the first movie achieved.
While that film done the sensible thing and focuses mainly on the events of the first game, only bringing in a few elements of the second to add some flavour to the plot(Kitana etc), this tries to cram in the plot of the second and third games, and at very least name-check every character that appears in either one of them.
Now, a lot of people criticise the fact that Stryker and Kabal are relegated to one line references, but I feel this is hypocritical. When X-Men 2 was released, everyone creamed themselves about the fact Gambit and Maddox were listed on a computer screen, which really isn't any better. What I do object to, is the introduction and sudden dropping of characters, most notable in the case of Sub Zero and Scorpion, who appear, one plays a fairly pivotal role in taking the plot along, then we never see or hear from either one again.
That also brings me to another point, in that it's questionable if the makers of the film even read up on the characters they were putting in the film. Smoke, appearing in Cyborg form, manages to use Sektor, another Cyborg character's special moves, Scorpion once again is given an allignment he has never had, Jade's character likewise...and the less said about Shinnok the better.
The film's problems aren't only game-story related, the character issue is just jarring for viewers, seeing characters appear and disappear with no explanation, and often no names even mentioned. The plot just generally isn't all that great.
By trying to merge two game plots together, a lot of the elements that made those stories work are missing. Mileena isn't Kitana's clone here, she's just a nother throwaway Shao Kahn lackey, the same goes for her partner Baraka. Smoke and Cyrax, who have nothing to do with him are given similar treatment, which is made all the more hilarious by the fact Outworld does not appear to have any advanced technology, let alone Cyborgs, and if it were capable to make them, why would you have an army of guys in turbans and parachute trousers?
The plot isn't even the film's only shortcoming, the acting is nothing short of shambolic. Robin Shou isn't the worst offender, but at times he just seems to realise he is on a sinking ship, likewise Talisa Soto. They are really the only remnants of the original cast, with Christopher Lambert, Bridget Wilson and Linden Asby all bailing out. Seriously, it should tell you something when not one, but 3 of your main actors refuse to take part in a sequel. The film also sorely missed classy B-movie baddie Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa, but at the same time I'm kind of glad they didn't try to re-hash his plot.
Brian Thompson is another, usually good, B-Movie villain, but to be honest...Shao Kahn he isn't. He seems to have a rough idea of how he should be playing the role, but can't quite pull it off.
The rest of the cast simply ranges from miscast(Remar) to quite bad(basically everyone else).
Speaking of miscasting and wholesale character changes, there is a whole lot of it going on. While I am a fan of transforming Sindel from a Goth-y...thing to the sexy Musetta Vander, James Remar is just...not Rayden. Rayden is meant to be an imposing God of Thunder, he wields a war-hammer and blasts lightning...I actually quite like James Remar, but that isn't what he plays. Possibly the worst offender is Shao Kahn. While I realise Kahn's size would have been very difficult to find an actor suitable for, and Brian Thompson's physique is about as close as they could have come...his oufit is just wrong. For a start, he hardly wears his skull-faceplate, which is more a mask than the front of a helmet, as it should be, and his armour looks more like evil Lederhosen than spiky-battle gear. I also object to the fact that while Ed Boon provides Scorpion's voice, as he did in the games, they don't use Shao Kahn's videogame voice, which is almost as distinctive as the character himself.
I guess that brings me to the special effects. While I will concede that the sets are well made, and give off a really cool sense of armageddon and doom, every other effect in the movie, most notably the CGI, is dreadful. The (completely 'original' and pointless) monsters look like something that could have been achieved on a Nintendo 64, the horrific 'animalities', which are also wrong(Liu Kang should turn into a Chinese Dragon and Shao Kahn doesn't have one), are of the same quality. In fact, the only computer generated effect I was pleased with was the morphing of a wolf into Nightwolf, which completely lost it's appeall when the human character started talking.
Even the suits used for characters are terrible. Cyrax and Smoke look like bad action figures. Surely they could have borrowed the actual costumes from Midway, makers of the games? (maybe Midway read the script...) the less said about Baraka, who looks like a bad Halloween costume, the better. Speaking of those, my Scorpion Halloween costume, used when I was about 10, is more convincing than the ninja outfits, which have cheap-plastic faceplates and solid rubber torsos that look awfull. While it may sound like the hormone driven male in me talking, the female Ninja's outfits are lame. It's like they tried to go for the sexy, revealing outfits worn in the games, but then copped out, to the ladies wear the top half of an all-in-one swimsuit, made out of varying, horrible materials, and black trousers, making them look more like dancers from a Britney Spears video than seductive warrior women.
Even the film's action sequences are, almost universally, uninspiring. While it's clear some martial arts prowess was available(hell, Tony Jaa, recent star of Ong-Bak, and Ray Park is a stuntmen), it's poorly utlised, and most fights end up being marred by either choppy editing or the fact they all seem to revolve around the same moves.
Music in the movie consists of similar sounding tracks to the first movie's score. Gothic and moody themes for the dramatic scenes, and cheesy techno rock for the fights. It works very well actually, and the film is actually made more bearable, especially the fights, by the music, which is one of it's few true highlights.
While it isn't, as some claim, the worst movie ever, or even the worst video-game movie ever(I still rate it above Resident Evil. Just.), there still really isn't much to like about Mortal Kombat Annihilation, especially not for fans of the games. While I'd say the music, the fine bevy of attractive women on offer and the sets manage to scrape it an extra star, it's certainly not coming anywhere near to being recommended by this viewer, and I would thouroughly recommend viewers to stick with the first movie, or the games themselves.
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