Mortal Kombat II (2026)

Remember the start of "Galaxy Quest" (1999) when a group of actors are drafted in to help rescue the universe from a nasty megalomaniac bent on intergalactic domination? Well, this time it's poor old "Johnny Cage" (Karl Urban) who's the past his sell-by-date Thespian reluctantly recruited by "Lord Raiden" (Tadanobu Asano) to help save the Earth realm from certain doom. He is to join four other somewhat sceptical fighters, all with various skills, to combat the five soldiers of "Shao Kahn" (Martyn Ford) who has been hitherto indestructable as the princess "Kitana" (Adeline Rudolph) can attest having seen her father slain when her own kingdom fell. Now adopted and trained by this nemesis, and together with her formidable friend "Jade" (Tati Gabrielle), she looks certain to reduce "Johnny" and his cohort to dust. Things become even more doom-laden when an all-powerful amulet is accidentally delivered by Aussie rogue "Kano" (Josh Lawson) into the hands of the khan and getting this sorted out is going to take them all to the perilous netherworld for quite a battle royal. Now this is really quite a good fun action adventure if you take it on face value, and it is certainly no worse than than the first of these Simon McQuoid outings from five years ago, but the dialogue is pretty torrid and even though he looks like his tongue is fixed firmly in his cheek, Urban just hasn't the charisma to pull this off and so he does really rather let this down. That said, along the way there are plenty of homages to other films in this genre; the visual effects are pretty spectactular and there are loads of perfectly choreographed and acrobatically staged combat scenes that are straight out of "Kung Fu Panda" to keep us entertained as the plot heads in a fairly predicable direction. Not great, no - but it passes two hours easily enough.

Unbearably, tooth-achingly bad.

Now, you can only do so much with a plot of a computer game from the early 90s that has been filmed umpteen times already, but this is a new low.

And a cleaned up, one-dimensional version of Butcher can't save it.

Just no.

On first watch of the trailer, I expected that Johnny Cage would be the centerpiece, capitalizing on Karl Urban's name. While the usual formulaic approach and a bit of convoluted and disjointed script, it did pay homage to the previous film (though not the video game). I did appreciate that they gave mostly equal balance to the different characters, though it lacked backstories to everyone but Cage.

We expect the acting to be fun and not deep (except for Cage), which we expected. The special effects were decent, though a few things could have been better. I like the choice of actors, though Urban is a bit too old for the role; instead of many being young and inexperienced, they went with an older, more seasoned cast which gave the characters more weight. Only the Johnny Cage gave notice to the advanced age. Liu Kang's fire special effects were really overdone, but the rest of the movie was not drowning in special effects. Overall, it was a decent film, with a thin plot, okay acting, but a generally fun time. As for the negative, I would say the disjointed script that didn't really refresh any previous plot points was a bit confusing and took away from the experience.

Highlights: I liked the choice of an older cast instead of a bunch of 20-somethings that didn't add gravitas to the characters.
Lowlights: A couple of SFX misses, confusing subplots, and no resolution for Cage's special abilities.

Acting: 5/10
Special FX: 5/10
Writing: 3/10
Directing/Cinematography: 7/10
Editing: 6/10
Overall Entertainment: 6/10

31 years later, Mortal Kombat (1995) is still the best movie in this franchise.

The internet led me to believe that this was a better movie than the 2021 reboot, and it is, in some aspects, but it's still trash. What the !@#$!

Why is the acting so bad?

Why is the choreography so bad?

Why is Shao Khan a !@#$%?! Am I really meant to believe this guy is a conqueror?! How? !@#$in' Cole Young whooped his arse! Liu Kang whooped his arse! Kitana whooped his arse! I assume plot armor is the only thing that saved him from Kitana's dad, since everyone else whoops his arse!

What the !@#$?!

The Punisher: One Last Kill was trash, this is trash, what's next?

What's releasing next?

What has the internet told me isn't trash that secretly is trash? Obsession?! Maybe Obsession is trash! I'll know soon enough!

I liked Kitana, Kano, and Baraka, but even they didn't escape the trash line delivery.

Utter crap. Sorry, but I see no point in wasting too many words here. Lead actors who clearly have little to no actual martial arts experience, a disjointed mess of a story, plus, at times, excessive gore, that serves no discernible purpose. One to avoid.

I am somewhat of a fan of the game and think that this level of violence isn't what the films need to show. I think if there was more violence this would have been perfection.

Not a flawless victory, but fun
By no means is this a perfect movie, but it is a fun movie, for sure. There have been a lot of bad Mortal Kombat movies, but this is actually not just a decent homage to the games, but an actual movie, with a beginning, middle, and end, along with characters, arcs, and a storyline. The casting is good, with Karl being the standout, obviously. It is very polished, and it is a fun watch.

Entertaining enough of a fantasy-horror-actioner that I liked a bit better than the first film from 2021 and is light-years better than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Karl Urban plays a fun Johnny Cage and the fight scenes were good as were the gory deaths. Nothing I'll probably remember years down the road but I liked this well enough. **3.0/5**