It has a lot of potential and anyone saying it doesn't look visually impressive is just hating at this point. That being said, I still have serious fears about:
- Realism - let's start with Outworld, it looks like earth! There is a tendency since the success of realism used in non-earth / fantasy / other worldly stories like a Game of Thrones, most Marvel and DC universe movies etc. NRS has itself has gone in this direction and the director said they wanted to go for a realistic approach and that's fair, but to me takes a big part of immersion away from the movie. I prepared for it, but still was hoping for more of a fantasy otherworldly setting. Only Shao Kahn's scene seems to have some potential in that regard.
Then we have Shang Tsung who just looked gorgeous in the poster and then we see him as just a normal looking guy, all the magical, otherworldly elements are not there. This is concerning. Sure they have the fire dragon - best part of the trailer! - and he might steal souls and glow a bit and get a messed up face in one scene, the fact that everything looks too realistic for a game steeped in mythology doesn't bode well. I mean Reptile looks like Godzilla meets Splinter / beebop rocksteady replacements in the Secrets of the Ooze movie from TMNT. We haven't seen Nitara yet and Goro does look like his MKX gorgeous beastly self, so there's hope, but not a lot.
- Creative freedom - I fear they actually will follow the lore too closely and it won't be surprising whatever they throw at us. Why people want them to actually stick close to what we know is beyond me. I see Metin for example cry about Sub ripping Jax' arms off, who cares?! It's a movie that has 0 impact on the (main) lore.
- Predicability - this lack of freedom also relates to the characters, so I fear will see Sub-Zero, Shang, Goro, Nitara, Reiko, Reptile die and probably every earth realmer live. Sure it was this way in the original movie and it was nice see at least Goro killing a character that at least some relevance, but not so sure outside of Kano and maybe one more character on the good side will even lose a battle.
