‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’ Re-Issue Leaves Much To Be Desired

By: Philip Sayblack

​Just because you can does not mean that you should.  This is one of the most important life lessons that anyone can learn in life.  Sadly, it is obviously a lesson that few have learned, including studio executives at Hollywood’s major studios.  Just look at all of the awful prequels, sequels, reboots, and movies based on books and actual characters that are out there today.  Sadly, New Line Cinema’s 1997 movie, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is among those movies that did not need to be made.  It is a movie that further supports another adage, that being that the sequel is never as good as the original.  Of course, Mortal Kombat (1995) was already itself a movie that would find the majority of its appeal among a very targeted audience.  This sequel to that movie is exactly the same in its reach.  That is due in large part to its story.  While the story and its equally high energy soundtrack do plenty to appeal to the movie’s key audience, the presentation is far from perfect even for those audiences.  The bonus content featured and not, detracts somewhat from the presentation.  This will be discussed a little later.  The story’s pacing rounds out its most important elements.  This will be addressed later, too.  Each item noted is important in its own way to the whole of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.  All things considered they make this movie another presentation that the most devoted Mortal Kombat fans will appreciate.
Arrow Video’s forthcoming 4K UHD re-issue of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which will come June 40 alongside the company’s 4K UHD re-issue of Mortal Kombat, is another work that will appeal to a very specific audience base.  This is proven in very large part through its featured story.  Crafted by the trio of Ed Boon, Lawrence Kasanoff, and Joshua Wexler (Boon also was one of the writers for the first movie while Kasanoff served as that movie’s producer), the story picks up right where Mortal Kombat left off.  Shao Kahn has threatened Liu Kang and his friends after they won the previous Mortal Kombat tournament.  As it turns out, he is able to come into the Earth realm as a result of his father, Shinnok, breaking the rules so that Shao Kahn could try to take over Earth.  So, as a result, it is up to Kang, Sonya Blaze, Princess Kitana, and Sonya’s partner, Jax, to save Earth.  Not to give away too much, but Johnny Cage is offed early on by Kahn.  He is just one of the characters who is killed off pretty quickly, too. 
Along the way, the group encounters both Scorpion and Sun Zero again, even though they were killed off in the first movie.  This is where the problems start to mount.  Audiences who might be less familiar with the story behind the Mortal Kombat games will likely automatically question the pair’s return.  Boon and company explain it away by having this Sub Zero explain that the figure who died in the first movie was in fact his brother.  That actually lines up with the story connected with Sub Zero in the video game franchise.  And Scorpion essentially being an evil spirit, it makes sense that he would be able to come back.  Again though, the only people who would appreciate this are those who know all of this back story.  Otherwise, Sub Zero’s story comes across as being right from some horrible soap opera plot: “Oh, it’s my twin brother!”  Sub Zero and Scorpion are quickly written out after their initial appearance and really never heard from again.  So, therein is something of another issue.  They essentially become secondary characters herein.
As the heroes make their way through Outworld in search of Shao Kahn, they meet plenty of other baddies while having lots more fight sequences with lots of other characters, some of whom had actually been known since the first Mortal Kombat game and others who actually had made their debuts in Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat III ahead of this movie’s release.  They include the likes of Jade, Rain, Ermac, Cyrex, Smoke, Mileena, Baraka, Nightwolf, Sheeva, and Sindel, who herself becomes key in this story.  Boon and company very quickly dispatch Cyrex and Smoke early on along with Rain, while Mileena (who happens to be Princess Kitana’s twin) plays little more than a bit part here in what really can only be seen as a very sexist sequence and an excuse to excite the movie’s then young male audiences.  Mileena and Sonya engage in a fight that results in both of them getting covered in mud.  See where this is going?  Even Jax makes the statement afterward that Sonya “looks good in mud.”  The innuendo is obvious.    Sonya’s comment that she needed a river furthers that issue.  This is a very clearly testosterone-fueled scene that in hindsight, Boon and company should be sorry for having included in the movie.  What’s more, that Mileena was Kitana’s twin sister and that much of the story revolved around Kitana and her mother, Sindel, one would have thought maybe Mileena would have played more of a role but that obviously that did not happen.
Later in the movie, even Baraka is dispatched quickly, go figure by Liu Kang, who also ends up being the Earth’s savior in the end yet again (not to spoil the movie’s finale).  He ends up becoming the big hero interestingly thanks to earlier guidance from Nightwolf, who like Mileena and so many other characters, plays little more than a bit part in this script.  Simply put, the inclusion of so many characters throughout the movie, the constant barrage of fight scenes, and the familiar revisiting of the first movie’s finale really makes Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s script little more than one big piece of fan service that honestly should never have been made even though it was.
While Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s script clearly will appeal primarily to the most devoted Mortal Kombat fans, even those fans will find some problem with the story.  Additionally, they will find just as much trouble in regard to the bonus content featured with the movie’s forthcoming 4K UHD re-issue.  That is because of how little it adds to the viewing experience.  The feature-length audio commentaries, for instance feel like they are just there to be there.  Podcaster Dave Baxter’s commentary, one of two new commentaries featured with the movie, is just him prattling off the back story for the characters through so much of the movie.  This after he openly admitted early on that he was not even a fan of the Mortal Kombat games when he was younger.  There is no discussion on one of the key topics: the recasting for the major roles.  Raiden, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blaze were all recast from the first movie.  Even in the first commentary, which featured director John Leonetti and (let’s be honest, his interviewer) Gillian Wallace Horvat, that item is barely touched.  It would have been interesting to find out why those major roles were recast.
The secondary interviews add little if anything, too.  Musetta Vander, who plays Sindel, only talks about her experience on set and how she got the role in her interview while stunt performer J.J. Perry talks about his own experiences in his interview.  Composer George S. Clinton talks about working on the movie’s soundtrack, combining the familiar EDM sounds of the first movie’s soundtrack with the traditional Japanese drums and the orchestral elements for the soundtrack.  The trio’s interviews are just their own self-contained presentations.  At no point is there any retrospective discussion by anyone on the advancement of CG in movies, comparing today’s CG effects to those used in this movie and in Mortal Kombat.  This is important because, let’s be honest, the special effects here are in hindsight, just as cheesy as those used in the first Mortal Kombat movie.  At the same time, that was what was available to use at the time.  It just would have made for at least some depth had such discussion been there along with discussion on the casting.
There is no doubt that the bonus content featured in this movie’s 4K UHD re-issue detracts greatly from its presentation.  Thankfully what is and is not there is not enough to completely doom the presentation.  To that end there is at least one more positive to note, and that is the movie’s pacing.  Mortal Kombat: Annihilation clocks in at just 82 minutes, which is actually shorter than Mortal Kombat, which ran roughly 90 minutes.  Both times are removing the time for post credits, as a heads up, counting only the story.  In that 82-minute run time, the writing team can be at least credited with having crafted a story that moves along at a relatively brisk pace.  That is largely because there is no need for any exposition or other extraneous items.  The plot is set up quickly right from the story’s outset.  From there it is just a bunch of fight scenes (as with the first movie) as the good guys make their way to their final showdown with Shao Kahn in order to stop him from merging Outworld with the Earth realm.  To that end, anyone who can overlook all of the fan service and shorting of characters’ roles throughout the story will find themselves able to easily remain engaged and entertained by the high energy story and its soundtrack.  Keeping all of this in mind, the pacing of this movie’s story and the story itself work together to make Mortal Kombat: Annihilation a presentation that the most devoted Mortal Kombat fans will find worth watching at least once.
Arrow Video’s forthcoming 4K UHD re-issue of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is a presentation that will find the majority of its appeal among the most diehard fans of the video game franchise on which it is based.  That is proven in large part through its story, which is largely just a bunch of fan service coupled with essentially what is a rehashing of the story at the heart of Mortal Kombat.  The bonus content included in the movie’s presentation adds little if anything memorable or even important to this movie.  It leaves much to be desired in its own right.  The story’s pacing is about the one strongest element.  That is because it keeps the 82-minute movie running at a solid click from beginning to end.  Each item examined is important in its own way to the whole of this movie.  All things considered they make Mortal Kombat: Annihilation a presentation that proves just because something can be done does not necessarily mean that it should be made.
Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation are scheduled for release June 30 in a two-movie 4K UHD box set through Arrow Video.  More information on these and other titles from Arrow Video is available at:
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