Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mortal Kombat’ on HBO Max, an Unashamedly Stupid, Action-Packed Reboot of the Uberviolent Franchise

FINISH US: The new Mortal Kombat has arrived on HBO Max for a month (and in theaters), and it’s here to skeletonize you within an inch of your life. First-time feature director Simon McQuoid reboots the live-action film franchise — based on the megaviolent video game series, of course — which has been dormant since the original Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation eviscerated our gallbladders in the mid-’90s. The new film stars, well, a few almost-recognizable faces who won’t distract diehard Kombat fanatics from enjoying shiny new versions of their favorite characters. Should you GET OVER HERE and watch it right now, or is it just a cinematic FATALITY?

MORTAL KOMBAT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Shh shhhh! This is very important: HANZO HASASHI COMPOUND, JAPAN 1617. Got that? It’s a halcyonic scene. Hanzo (Hiroyuki Sanada) tells his wife he is blessed. He fetches water as she tends the garden and their child comforts their baby in the house. This is what Mortal Kombat is all about: Peace and love and family and maybe pretty flowers. The movie will surely be a meditative and reflective drama about daily life in Edo-era Japan, and not a brutal display of dismemberment and organ removal, right? WRONG: An evil warrior who can control and shoot ice and shit, Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), arrives. They stash the baby. Sub-Zero ices the wife and kid, and Hanzo finds a creative use for his wife’s sharp stone gardening spade until he’s sent to the afterlife too. And then a guy who we’ll later learn is Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) but for now is just Glowy-Eyes Lightning Guy lightnings in and takes the baby away. Shoulda lightninged in 10 minutes sooner, buddy.

Cut to the modern day. Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is an MMA palooka who’s highly skilled but always loses because he fights without strategy. He has a wife (Laura Brent) and daughter (Matilda Kimber), who we’ll just call Imperiled Family Member 1 and Imperiled Family Member 2, and also a birthmark shaped like a dragon’s head — a birthmark carrying with it a certain destiny that comes into focus once trouble finds him. RIGHT: He’s OLLLLLLD, he’s COLLLLLD, he’s ICICLE LAD, a.k.a. SUB-ZERO, and he’s here to kill the hell out of Cole, until Jax (Mehcad Brooks) steps in to stop him but gets his arms ripped off, bones sticking out of shoulder meat like the ham emoji. Somebody get the Bactine.

What’s going on here? I’ll explain, but you frankly won’t give two craps in a canister unless there’s action and violence involved. There are two ancient orders of fighting warriors, one good and one evil, who sock the living pus out of each other in Mortal Kombat tournaments to see who rules Earthworld, which I think includes all the countries on Earth and everyone who lives in them, and probably all the worms and bugs and monkeys too. The good guys consist of Raiden, Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Kung Lao (Max Huang), Kano (Josh Lawson) and Jax, who gets metal arms where his regular arms used to be. Some have special powers, like fireball-chucking and such, and others, like Cole, have to find their inner mojo so their powers can emerge.

While that ragtag group of misfits gets to training, the bad guys pose like they’re in print ads for Hell’s sporting goods stores and bellow shit like “THE UNDOING OF THE PROPHECY HAS BEGUN.” Besides Sub-Zero, these f—-faces include leader wizard Shang Tsung (Chin Han), winged demon-lady Nitara (Mel Jarnson), demon-mouthed beastess Mileena (Sisi Stringer), guy with a really big hammer Reiko (Nathan Jones) and armored fella Kabal (Daniel Nelson). There are some other surprises I won’t reveal, but I will say the plot involves the good guys trying to stop the tournament before it starts, which means a lot of ferociously savage fighting has to happen to stop the ferociously savage fighting from happening. Makes sense!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: My wedding video, obviously.

Performance Worth Watching: Drink every time McNamee gets a slack-jawed reaction shot.

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized for comedic purposes:

“F—-in’ A! YEARS of research, just destroyed.”

“Yeah, yeah. Put a f—-in’ shirt on, Magic Mike.”

“You’re a descendant of one of the greatest ninjas to ever walk the earth.”

“I have risen from Hell to kill you.”

“The prophecy is upon us. Which means we could lose the 10th tournament.”

“Where are we?” “We are in the void.”

Sex and Skin: None. TBROSAUPTF: Too Busy Ripping Out Spines And Undoing Prophecies To F—-.

Our Take: This new Mortal Kombat might be the most ridiculous R-rated movie ever made. It’s absurdly gory, moronically plotted and is riddled with dialogue seemingly cribbed from 10-year-olds staging action figure clashes in the rec room. Translation: It’s a movie for adults seeking the state of arrested development that reminds them of the days when they sat on the floor playing the game until their brains atrophied. Translation of the translation: Nostalgia zones, STOKED.

I’m not sure what it’ll offer less invested audiences, though. Brief disclosure, my general indifference to this game-and-movie franchise has less to do with how I spent many an endless night in my dorm room digitally murdering Kombatants on my Sega Genesis, and more to do with a marked lack of bandwidth for any more nostalgic fodder, what with Star Wars, Marvel, Batman and Godzilla so frequently prompting me to mask the pain of aging by immersing myself in the stuff I loved when I was 11. So my giveashit is very much on the cusp, and what pushed me to halfway care about the movie was its keen visuals, which are snappy and colorful; I wouldn’t say they’re inventive or inspired, but creative? OK, sure. McQuoid makes sure there’s some artistry amidst the spilling guts and and close-ups of oozing wounds — nifty set pieces, solid CG effects, and excellent fight choreography.

The film opens with a relatively rousing one-on-one between Hanzo and Sub-Zero, and what follows is fine, but not memorable. Tonally, McQuoid settles with loud and less loud; the intentional comedy (Kano’s running wisecracks) sputters while the unintentional comedy (dozens of expository proclamations) is funny, which isn’t to say anybody involved takes any of this seriously. The movie dawdles during its midsection — when the good guys train in an underground cave lair in a sand pit that would be a great place for a beach volleyball match — screwing up the pace to the point where the buildup to the big climactic showdown gets muddled to the point where it just happens, and we don’t realize it’s happening until it’s halfway over. This may have something to do with it never featuring a true Mortal Kombat tournament, which is already inspiring some fan fuss. So maybe the movie’s not so eager to please after all; maybe it’s just saving the best for the likely sequel.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you shed tears over your beloved memories of Kombat’s gross and hyperbolic violence, it’s a FLAWED VICTORY.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Mortal Kombat on HBO Max