How does that even work? Stupid.
If this movie is a 6/10, I will be absolutely psyched
No idea, but Kitana brought literally nothing to Annihilation, in fact she may have even been a detriment to it, and Mileena's place in that film was just pointless.
Therefore I don't wish to be a Negative Nancy and I don't want to make any assumptions about anything. However I am truly grateful that we are getting a new MK movie 23 years after the last (the last film being so shit its infamy still exists to this day), especially after the development hell of the cancelled MK Devastation as well as MK Legacy Season 3: Generations X being shelved even though it was fully completed; so I want to remain optimistic after the Reddit test screening responses all seemed positive.
MK95 easily proved to us that Kitana can be introduced without Mileena necessarily needing to be at her side, so arguably couldn't the same be done with Mileena where we meet the monstrous sister first, then in (possibly, hopefully if it's any good) a sequel, the respectable sister second? They don't have to come as a package if the storyline is any good. You can easily introduce one without the other to keep the plot lean, and I'd like to say it doesn't matter which one is introduced first if the movie's enjoyable.
Will the movie be good? I don't know. Reddit responses were all very positive. How many of them are true; no idea. As a Mortal Kombat fan, I'd like that to be true and have something to look forward to after a really really rotten year that I'd love to erase from my life and just focus on a stupid movie about a violent video game I've loved since I was a child. I want to hold my arms in the air and yell "MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAT" as grungey teens rally to my call, but instead I'll be back to calculating social benefits next Monday whilst a huge chunk of real-world-shit pollutes my mind and emotional happiness whilst I do so. i want this film to be fun, to make me feel like a kid again, I want to support it and just have a ball of a time watching it.
To curse it with assumptions of how bad it will be takes away from one of the few things I'm currently looking forward to in the horrible state of affairs the planet Earth currently exists in. And yes I'm a movie pessimist, I expect most new films of a franchise I like to be garbage, but I just want this to be 'better than Annihilation' and then even then, I've watched Annihilation like 50 times and laughed my ass off with pizza and beer so often that really all I want is it to be entertaining. I'm not expecting 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' of inter-dimensional martial arts movies, yes I'd love it to be 'A Chinese Ghost Story' fused with 'Enter the Dragon', creating the perfect marriage of Shinto Hong Kong supernatural cinema with classic Kung Fu action film-making, but I don't expect it to be. However as long as it meets at least MK Conquest levels of entertainment, with apparently (from what I've heard) MK Legends: Scorpion's Revenge levels of gratuitous violence, I'm sure there's an MK production worth biting into another slice of mozzarella and pepperoni to whilst blasting Juke Joint Jezebel.
Are my standards low? Maybe, but I'd just like to smile watching this. And sadly I've not smiled in a while.