A Mortal Kombat: Legacy movie is only going to fail horribly. There is a reason I’m saying that, and a solid one. The original Mortal Kombat movie, which starred Robin Shou and Talisa Soto (the only two who bothered to return for the sequel), was the best one of the two. Yet despite the fact that the first Mortal Kombat was the best, the fans of the video game series still won’t call it “good.” It was just the least terrible according to public opinion, and being among the best of the video game based movies still isn’t saying much.
For more on that, read the critics’ take on the latest one, a little film called Need for Speed .
The meat of any Mortal Kombat game has always been about brutal fighting between outlandish characters, and if you’re good enough, you can beat any title in the series in about ten minutes. That is ten minutes of action devoid of any acting at all, all sensationalized beneath buckets of digitized blood. Ten minutes of action is not enough to keep people in their seats for a Mortal Kombat movie .
Peter Jackson had more to work with when he decided to make the short novel The Hobbit into three films. Every Mortal Kombat game in history has always had a story you could explain in maybe two minutes. That’s not anywhere near enough material to make the Mortal Kombat: Legacy movie into the next Citizen Kane or Titanic , never mind Scary Movie , no matter if Kevin Tancharoen is involved or not.
I would dare say that even the Mortal Kombat: Conquest TV show had more story material than the entire video game series combined. The biggest problem with turning a show into a movie is that any TV series will be toned down to please the censors. The video game was anything but tame at its best. The conflict between the two is pretty large.
Assuming they do manage to get enough material and make it violent enough to match the tone of the video game series, remember that the last Mortal Kombat movie was so bad that it was considered one of the worst movies ever made. Even the TV series that tried to bring it back was a failure, bringing big name actors into a show so boring that there was literally no reason for fans to watch it, beyond nostalgic value.
yea dat mortal kombat legacy movie suck
— turk (@__Slicc__) March 30, 2014
Mortal Kombat is supposed to be about extreme violence on a horror movie scale, and you won’t get that from a TV show. The fans will never be happy with a Mortal Kombat: Legacy movie anyway. It will either be full of terrible acting because the director had to pad it out too much, or there won’t be any acting at all, just a bad Kung Fu movie from start to finish.
The critics and the fans will both hate it.