Mortal Kombat (2021) Movie Discussion Thread

[Deleted member 5032]

I just thought the mask thing was funny because it's a staple of bad directing and editing. The mask-take-off (or helmet or sunglasses or any face covering) is used to dramatically deliver a line. You're not just talking through your mask like normal, you actually need to take it off to convey the full importance of what you're saying.

So A) it's already comedic that he takes his mask off and puts it back on 4 times in a 30-second period, like a bit from a silly Naked Gun movie, but...

B) because the mask-take-off is supposed to add emphasis to his words, it's like he's typing an entire paragraph in italics instead of emphasizing a specific point.

But legit, it's like a comedy bit. If you watch the Dirty Randy episodes of The League, there's a scene where Dirty Randy wants to dramatically take off his glasses and say an awesome line, but people keep messing it up, so he has to keep doing it. It's pretty funny, but somehow this gritty action film accidentally made a funnier version.

 

[Immortal]

If you lived in the 90's and watched the old films when they where being played, then you know what I'm going to talk about. Some here were TOO young or not even born back then.

The lack of internet, meant we went to see the 1995 film without knowing anything about it... Just 3 or 4 promo pictures in magazines. And that classic Goro-shadow poster outside of cinemas. The critics back then gave mk1995 1 out of 5 stars on average, for the record.
The film had little CGI and a small budget that most of it went to create the Goro puppet (1,5 million). Also, it was pg-13 and it showed. The most violent thing we saw was an extra getting shuttered during an "exhibition fight".
Most fans hated the same stuff which I will talk about further down this post.

The thing most people agreed on, though, was the portrayal of Kano and Shang Tsung and THAT F%#ING music!!! That soundtrack... Not just the techno syndrome, all of it !

So, after 14 years since annihilation and 13 years since TV's Konquest, Kevin Tancharoen comes in and with a budget smaller than my house's worth gives us MK Legacy 1&2.

Then sth happens and suddenly backs of the MK film project when the rumors in late 2013 were that plot was "a normal dude who works in a supermarket and one day discovers he has supernatural powers".


In between those years, people didn't like a bunch of stuff and expressed their opinion over it.

Some of theme were:
- pg-13 MK ?!?
-Mediocre fan service , with SOME special moves here and there.
-poor CGI that aged badly (animalities, reptile, holes in green screen effects etc).
-Liu Kang is bland/boring and the "chosen one" story is overplayed (Cole deja vu?).
- The tournament format is also overplayed.
-Scorpion and Subzero were allies AND jobbers...
- That vagina-like bird out of scorpion's hand.
-Most bad guys are jobbers with no backstory whatsoever in both films.

• People hated , REALLY hated lizard reptile (deja vu?) because mk1,2 and 3 had a ninja-like reptile. It wasn't until MK4 (1997) that Midway re-modeled him after the 1995 movie.
• Casting choices. Always people have their own opinion on casting in any cinema era.

So over the years we 've seen twists being made as an answer to ALL things MK fans bitched about.

-Liu Kang turning on earthrealm (Brian Tee) and kicking earthrealmers' butts.
-Scorpion & Subzero's origins (while talking in japanese, sth that followed us to the 2021 film) being done accurately in an anime style.
-Different takes and styles on different characters' origin story in mk legacy 1.
-A non-classic tournament format, just wandering around an island slaying each other in legacy 2.
-Cole Young as a new face in the franchise, in order for easier exposition and an alternate way to tell the mk story other than "Kang is the man".
-Bad guys finally being a threat and not just extras.
-Great cgi , even greater costumes, gore and fatalities we didn't even dream before 2021 and good casting .
-most important: FAN SERVICE



All I have to say is: WE DO NOT deserve to get anything MK movie-related (animation or live action) ever again. Ever!

This forum , especially , is a good example on why the internet is a bad place to take opinions seriously. Of course everyone has the right to speak his mind, but the fact that the people of the extremes speak their mind so intensely, burying others' opinions with simple phrases like "mk movie sucked-period" or the other extreme, "it was the best video game moive ever-period" and one saying to another "you're an idiot" for not agreeing is more thatn 50% of those last few days of comments.

After years and years of renditions and lots and lots of different takes of MK lore through mk videogames, mk series, mk films, mk comics and mk animation films, fans will always find a way to be totally nihilistic over any attempt that is being made and show little respect to its creators .

Remember when in the MKX days , Shaun Himmerick was bullied and cursed on repeatedly on twitter because there was no reiko in the mkx dlc? Remember when todd garner de-activated his instagram/tiwtter account because he got cursed and spammed over Kano's left eye shooting lazer in the trailer?


Yes, we are that hateful and stupid.
We do not deserve a sequel.
EDIT: I am tagging you because I know you'll be interested in this post of mine, because I know you're civilized and I am interested in your opinion. @Kindred @Art Lean @RoboCop @Jynks

Im just gonna say it - you're wrong. Especially the part about this forum or what we deserve or not.

Most people here as far as i can tell gave the new movie a mediocre score, somewhere between 4-6 / 10. No extremes here.

Of course people like certain things and disslike other especially with MK game story which isn't a masterpiece to say the least but the problem with MK 2021 movie is that it wanted to be its own thing so they put some key things from MK game story on back burner like the actual tournament etc... Instead we got Cole which is the most generic character in last 10 years of cinema with copy paste of Scorpions back story (thats just lazy writing), with power level varing from sand bag to Goro killer and than back to sand bag (cant break Sub Zero ice) and than back to a real fighter (SZ killer pretty much).

The script overal was all over the place and it just didn't make sense overall. Writing was poor, jump cuts ruined many fights and so on. No point in doing a review again.

Also many people here are older than you, me included (if your nick is accurate) and remember 95 MK movie very vividly, watched it when it was in the cinema at the time. It wasn't great even back then and lets not even talk about Annihilation.

The point is most MK fans wanted something better then the original MK movie or at least on par. MK 2021 just didn't deliver for most of us here and we're MK game fans for nearly 30 years now. Most people who dont even know what MK game is or dont care about it thought it was an awful movie. Coz as a movie, on its own... it's a really bad movie, not Annihilation bad but just below even mediocre movies these days.

It's exactly opposite of how you see it - we deserve better, Netherealm deserve better, Boon deserve better. Accepting (at best) mediocre level gets you nowhere in any creative art; it only gets you more mediocre movies/tv series/anime (usually even worse as sequels like to be). Someday, somebody will make a good MK movie, coz it is doable.

I hope they do a sequel, coz i love MK like most here but i also hope that it will be much better than this.

 

[Art Lean]

If you lived in the 90's and watched the old films when they where being played, then you know what I'm going to talk about. Some here were TOO young or not even born back then.

The lack of internet, meant we went to see the 1995 film without knowing anything about it... Just 3 or 4 promo pictures in magazines. And that classic Goro-shadow poster outside of cinemas. The critics back then gave mk1995 1 out of 5 stars on average, for the record.
The film had little CGI and a small budget that most of it went to create the Goro puppet (1,5 million). Also, it was pg-13 and it showed. The most violent thing we saw was an extra getting shuttered during an "exhibition fight".
Most fans hated the same stuff which I will talk about further down this post.

The thing most people agreed on, though, was the portrayal of Kano and Shang Tsung and THAT F%#ING music!!! That soundtrack... Not just the techno syndrome, all of it !

So, after 14 years since annihilation and 13 years since TV's Konquest, Kevin Tancharoen comes in and with a budget smaller than my house's worth gives us MK Legacy 1&2.

Then sth happens and suddenly backs of the MK film project when the rumors in late 2013 were that plot was "a normal dude who works in a supermarket and one day discovers he has supernatural powers".


In between those years, people didn't like a bunch of stuff and expressed their opinion over it.

Some of theme were:
- pg-13 MK ?!?
-Mediocre fan service , with SOME special moves here and there.
-poor CGI that aged badly (animalities, reptile, holes in green screen effects etc).
-Liu Kang is bland/boring and the "chosen one" story is overplayed (Cole deja vu?).
- The tournament format is also overplayed.
-Scorpion and Subzero were allies AND jobbers...
- That vagina-like bird out of scorpion's hand.
-Most bad guys are jobbers with no backstory whatsoever in both films.

• People hated , REALLY hated lizard reptile (deja vu?) because mk1,2 and 3 had a ninja-like reptile. It wasn't until MK4 (1997) that Midway re-modeled him after the 1995 movie.
• Casting choices. Always people have their own opinion on casting in any cinema era.

So over the years we 've seen twists being made as an answer to ALL things MK fans bitched about.

-Liu Kang turning on earthrealm (Brian Tee) and kicking earthrealmers' butts.
-Scorpion & Subzero's origins (while talking in japanese, sth that followed us to the 2021 film) being done accurately in an anime style.
-Different takes and styles on different characters' origin story in mk legacy 1.
-A non-classic tournament format, just wandering around an island slaying each other in legacy 2.
-Cole Young as a new face in the franchise, in order for easier exposition and an alternate way to tell the mk story other than "Kang is the man".
-Bad guys finally being a threat and not just extras.
-Great cgi , even greater costumes, gore and fatalities we didn't even dream before 2021 and good casting .
-most important: FAN SERVICE



All I have to say is: WE DO NOT deserve to get anything MK movie-related (animation or live action) ever again. Ever!

This forum , especially , is a good example on why the internet is a bad place to take opinions seriously. Of course everyone has the right to speak his mind, but the fact that the people of the extremes speak their mind so intensely, burying others' opinions with simple phrases like "mk movie sucked-period" or the other extreme, "it was the best video game moive ever-period" and one saying to another "you're an idiot" for not agreeing is more thatn 50% of those last few days of comments.

After years and years of renditions and lots and lots of different takes of MK lore through mk videogames, mk series, mk films, mk comics and mk animation films, fans will always find a way to be totally nihilistic over any attempt that is being made and show little respect to its creators .

Remember when in the MKX days , Shaun Himmerick was bullied and cursed on repeatedly on twitter because there was no reiko in the mkx dlc? Remember when todd garner de-activated his instagram/tiwtter account because he got cursed and spammed over Kano's left eye shooting lazer in the trailer?


Yes, we are that hateful and stupid.
We do not deserve a sequel.
EDIT: I am tagging you because I know you'll be interested in this post of mine, because I know you're civilized and I am interested in your opinion. @Kindred @Art Lean @RoboCop @Jynks

I agree about the fact that it's horrible we live in an era where negative speaks louder than positivity (hell even I don't particularly enjoy watching movie review shows where the subject matter is just average-to-good, I want to watch a savage verbal dismemberment of a film... so I know I myself am guilty in passively contributing to that).

I'm not expecting everyone to love or even like the new movie (hell I doubt I'd recommend it to non-fans to be honest, my judgement is rather clouded), but as Tabmok and co said at the end of their review, it's important we the fans support it so we get more. I'm not saying don't be honest about opinions, but support the film so they know what they can improve, don't shit on it so much that we never get a follow-up or ignore it because you heard bad things about it. We never got Legacy 3 Generations and no one really gave a fuck (or even knew), so it'll remain shelved. If this conjures up too much negativity from the online community who all feel the need to voice how much they hate it (I loved it, but my half-a-dozen posts on an MK message board don't carry the same weight as a video on Youtube that trashes it), I'm concerned we'll never get another film to build off the things it did really well either.

MKA was trash but we still managed to get Conquest a year later out of it, which fixed a lot of things that film did so wrong. It only lasted a season but it was a major apology with its iteration of Shao Kahn for example. But nowadays the movie industry has become so number-driven, so online-feedback led (I'd far rather have had that real sequel to Prometheus than Alien Covenant which was just an online-feedback designed back-peddling of everything Prometheus built up, even if Prometheus itself had been seriously flawed), that if this doesn't turn a profit that this may be the final nail in the coffin. There's very few second chances anymore.

We all waited 24 years for this and it did numerous individual things WAY better than the majority of previous MK media productions and I'm saying that objectively, even if someone hated it. And yes there are things it did worse that had been previously done better. Do many people prefer Jax in MK95, MKA or Defenders of the Realm? Is there anyone who felt Conquest, Mythologies' FMV or The Journey Begins did the definitive versions of the feud between Sub Zero and Scorpion? Worse still, we're living at a time when cinemas are closed all over the world thanks to a pandemic and here in the UK I had to resort to watching it online for free since it's literally not available in my area, but the moment I can pay for it I will do. I'm hoping that this is popular enough to actually get Legacy 3 finally released with fans crying out for more, I'm hoping this gives us a great sequel in a couple of years to make up for Annihilation, I want to see what characters could turn up in future films. I even bought the digital soundtrack even though I could just stream it from Amazon Unlimited because I really wanted to financially support the film and makes up for the fact I couldn't pay to watch it right now.

A lot of us love the 95 film, warts and all, because of nostalgia, even though we know it was a pulpy cheesy MTV video for kids. But I wonder if that film hadn't come out back then and that same movie was released today for the first time... it would probably be utterly despised.

 

[SHAOLIN]

From what I gathered from social media it's a split, some people were disappointed and some people enjoyed it.

Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Deleted member 5032]

No matter how badly someone trashes the movie, if they watched it, they supported it. You think WB cares whether it's good or bad when it's blowing up like it is? It could be the worst piece of shit we've ever seen, but if enough people watch it, it's getting a sequel. WB is a business trying to make money, not artists trying to win awards.

If you truly want a quality sequel then the best thing you can do is support the movie by watching it, and then give honest feedback about what you did and didn't like. I liked Kano. I wanted Cole to die off-screen. Hopefully they'll just forget he existed and never mention him in any sequels.

 

[Art Lean]

No matter how badly someone trashes the movie, if they watched it, they supported it.

Unless like me, you had to resort to a dodgy 123Movies site because they never made it available where I am. I don't condone it but sadly had no choice if I want to see it when everyone else did. And that's exactly the thing I don't want people doing; watching it for free, then just spewing about how much they hated it. At least if everyone could see it at the cinema it would have earned its real box office and then the critical feedback could be assessed for a sequel if the numbers are strong.

It's why I bought the soundtrack, felt like I'd bought my ticket

 

[NickDaGreek1983]

Im just gonna say it - you're wrong. Especially the part about this forum or what we deserve or not.

Most people here as far as i can tell gave the new movie a mediocre score, somewhere between 4-6 / 10. No extremes here.

Of course people like certain things and disslike other especially with MK game story which isn't a masterpiece to say the least but the problem with MK 2021 movie is that it wanted to be its own thing so they put some key things from MK game story on back burner like the actual tournament etc... Instead we got Cole which is the most generic character in last 10 years of cinema with copy paste of Scorpions back story (thats just lazy writing), with power level varing from sand bag to Goro killer and than back to sand bag (cant break Sub Zero ice) and than back to a real fighter (SZ killer pretty much).

The script overal was all over the place and it just didn't make sense overall. Writing was poor, jump cuts ruined many fights and so on. No point in doing a review again.

Also many people here are older than you, me included (if your nick is accurate) and remember 95 MK movie very vividly, watched it when it was in the cinema at the time. It wasn't great even back then and lets not even talk about Annihilation.

The point is most MK fans wanted something better then the original MK movie or at least on par. MK 2021 just didn't deliver for most of us here and we're MK game fans for nearly 30 years now. Most people who dont even know what MK game is or dont care about it thought it was an awful movie. Coz as a movie, on its own... it's a really bad movie, not Annihilation bad but just below even mediocre movies these days.

It's exactly opposite of how you see it - we deserve better, Netherealm deserve better, Boon deserve better. Accepting (at best) mediocre level gets you nowhere in any creative art; it only gets you more mediocre movies/tv series/anime (usually even worse as sequels like to be). Someday, somebody will make a good MK movie, coz it is doable.

I hope they do a sequel, coz i love MK like most here but i also hope that it will be much better than this.

Οh, no no... I'm not talking about liking or not liking the 2021 film in particular. Nor am I talking about scores.
I'm talking about the general response from fans.
For example, the things that fans bitched about ALL those years (non-asians getting cast as asian characters, "boring" characters, lack of fan service, all the things I mentioned in my post above) , whenever someone actually did do sth different and brought a breath of fresh air in the mk univerese, it was met with fan hatred.

@Immortal I remember your nickname in this forum for many, many years. I know you were here, active during the MK legacy season 2 days... Do you remember the TYM members' reactions over this series?
It was exactly the same as with this film. I remember specific users here speaking about minor details, talking about the scorp/sub backstory and speaking about their favorite characters while being salty about it.
My point is: Fans prefer badmouthing sth than enjoy it. Pleasing them just isn't possible.
By now, we've seen dozens of different versions of the mk lore and I ask you this: When did a specific mk-related product satisfy the fans?

Get the mk games as an example :
We always work with some sort of stockholm syndrome... Meaning, we play mk9 in 2011-2013 and bitch about it being broken, about the top tiers and the 9-1 matchups.
Then we play mkX in 2015-2017 and we bitch about 50/50s, broken variations and infinites while saying how fun MK9 was despite its problems..

Then we play MK11 from 2019 on and we miss BOTH mkx and MK9 while bitching about it being boring and slow paced, the lack of neutral, fatal blows reloading etc.
Those kind of examples go on and on.
And we are talking about a fighting game that -apart from 1v1 like every other fighting game has- offers: the krypt, unlockables, continuous dlc support, STORY MODE (! ! !), tower challenges and countless other stuff.
Really think about it. We have the most content than any other fighting game and we cannot be appreciative about it.

Same for the movies.

Sorry for spamming this thread.

 

[Law Hero]

I agree about the fact that it's horrible we live in an era where negative speaks louder than positivity (hell even I don't particularly enjoy watching movie review shows where the subject matter is just average-to-good, I want to watch a savage verbal dismemberment of a film... so I know I myself am guilty in passively contributing to that).

I'm not expecting everyone to love or even like the new movie (hell I doubt I'd recommend it to non-fans to be honest, my judgement is rather clouded), but as Tabmok and co said at the end of their review, it's important we the fans support it so we get more. I'm not saying don't be honest about opinions, but support the film so they know what they can improve, don't shit on it so much that we never get a follow-up or ignore it because you heard bad things about it. We never got Legacy 3 Generations and no one really gave a fuck (or even knew), so it'll remain shelved. If this conjures up too much negativity from the online community who all feel the need to voice how much they hate it (I loved it, but my half-a-dozen posts on an MK message board don't carry the same weight as a video on Youtube that trashes it), I'm concerned we'll never get another film to build off the things it did really well either.

MKA was trash but we still managed to get Conquest a year later out of it, which fixed a lot of things that film did so wrong. It only lasted a season but it was a major apology with its iteration of Shao Kahn for example. But nowadays the movie industry has become so number-driven, so online-feedback led (I'd far rather have had that real sequel to Prometheus than Alien Covenant which was just an online-feedback designed back-peddling of everything Prometheus built up, even if Prometheus itself had been seriously flawed), that if this doesn't turn a profit that this may be the final nail in the coffin. There's very few second chances anymore.

We all waited 24 years for this and it did numerous individual things WAY better than the majority of previous MK media productions and I'm saying that objectively, even if someone hated it. And yes there are things it did worse that had been previously done better. Do many people prefer Jax in MK95, MKA or Defenders of the Realm? Is there anyone who felt Conquest, Mythologies' FMV or The Journey Begins did the definitive versions of the feud between Sub Zero and Scorpion? Worse still, we're living at a time when cinemas are closed all over the world thanks to a pandemic and here in the UK I had to resort to watching it online for free since it's literally not available in my area, but the moment I can pay for it I will do. I'm hoping that this is popular enough to actually get Legacy 3 finally released with fans crying out for more, I'm hoping this gives us a great sequel in a couple of years to make up for Annihilation, I want to see what characters could turn up in future films. I even bought the digital soundtrack even though I could just stream it from Amazon Unlimited because I really wanted to financially support the film.

A lot of us love the 95 film, warts and all, because of nostalgia, even though we know it was a pulpy cheesy MTV video for kids. But I wonder if that film hadn't come out back then and that same movie was released today for the first time... it would probably be utterly despised.

It's a difficult line to walk when you like the subject material, but the execution is bad. The studios and executives look at the bottom line: did it make money or not? Then they go from there. So if they make a $50 mil low effort film and we all watch it and pay for it because, "Let's show them that we want this but better next time," then they're response will be, "If we can make a decent return off of something like this, let's just do it again." And we'll continue to get nothing but garbage until people stop paying for it and they decide it's not longer profitable.

Conversely, if we all say, "Don't watch or pay for this garbage," they will look at the bottom line and reply with, "Well, I guess they don't want more MK movies, so don't make any more." And then we get nothing. So it's a difficult situation to be in as a fan. You either support trash and get more trash, or you reject it and get nothing in the future. Unless the people in charge have the wisdom and humility to realize their mistakes and improve upon them by utilizing customer feedback, it's a lose-lose for the customers/fans. And I don't know if anyone pays attention to WB and their decisions recently, but they are in the business of making stupid choices.

As a minor tangent, I recall my friend, who is a giant Digimon fan, telling me about the difficulties with getting Digimon games made and localized in the west. He mentioned how he and other fans have been petitioning and begging for some good Digimon games, so Bandai decided to release some shitty Digimon brawler game to test the waters. The fans rejected it because they didn't want some crappy low budget Smash Bros knockoff, they wanted a real game. Bandai then looked at the bad sales numbers and said, "Well, I guess there's no demand for Digimon here." So it was a very a sad situation for fans of Digimon in the west who either had to buy shit they didn't want and hope it sent the right message, or decide not to and hope that sends the right message (which it didn't). That being said, although it took a long time, they did end up getting games they wanted and liked like Cyber Sleuths, so I'd say it worked out in the end, thankfully.

 

[Onryoki]

I’m happy I was able to watch the movie through a VPN and some Russian website lmao, because in hindsight I would’ve regretted even paying money to see the movie. For the people that type entire paragraphs as of why people should like the movie and how we don’t “deserve” a sequel because people dislike it, just stop. I mean clearly threatening people over fiction is unnecessary and shows how unstable ppl are. But I don’t see how fans don’t deserve something new because they didn’t find it good.

I thought the movie was just shit, simply for the fact because of the many missed opportunities, short fight scenes, putting in characters with barely any lines, barely any screen time and mediocre acting. The fact that 50 million dollars went into the distribution of the movie is also astonishing. However... That doesn’t mean I dislike MK or that I am not worthy/deserve getting another sequel. We should normalise calling out shit content.

This whole being happy with the crumbs NRS feeds us mindset gotta stop. To each their own, but acting as if MK fans don’t deserve more MK content because they’re calling out a shitty movie is just dumb. Not trying to attack people here, but that just rubbed me the wrong way.

 

[Onryoki]

No matter how badly someone trashes the movie, if they watched it, they supported it. You think WB cares whether it's good or bad when it's blowing up like it is? It could be the worst piece of shit we've ever seen, but if enough people watch it, it's getting a sequel. WB is a business trying to make money, not artists trying to win awards.

If you truly want a quality sequel then the best thing you can do is support the movie by watching it, and then give honest feedback about what you did and didn't like. I liked Kano. I wanted Cole to die off-screen. Hopefully they'll just forget he existed and never mention him in any sequels.

That won’t be happening since he’s the one searching for Johnny...

 

[GLoRToR]

I, too, have an opinion that nobody gives a fuck about.
The movie was enjoyable.
Some of the stuff in the movie was good, some of it wasn't.
It was better than I expected it to be.

 

[BSJeebus]

A few things:

1. Kano was hilarious

2. Every single piece of marketing for this film was hyping up Sub v Scorp and they only threwdown at the very beginning & end. Ballsy

3. I actually like Cole and I kind of want to see him in a game now.

4. The fact that it wasn't even the tournament bodes well for a hypothetical sequel taking place during the tournie.

All in all I would give it a solid 8-8.5/10. It was not completely faithful to the source material from a storyline standpoint (what adaptation is?) but it nailed the characters.

 

[Immortal]

Οh, no no... I'm not talking about liking or not liking the 2021 film in particular. Nor am I talking about scores.
I'm talking about the general response from fans.
For example, the things that fans bitched about ALL those years (non-asians getting cast as asian characters, "boring" characters, lack of fan service, all the things I mentioned in my post above) , whenever someone actually did do sth different and brought a breath of fresh air in the mk univerese, it was met with fan hatred.

@Immortal I remember your nickname in this forum for many, many years. I know you were here, active during the MK legacy season 2 days... Do you remember the TYM members' reactions over this series?
It was exactly the same as with this film. I remember specific users here speaking about minor details, talking about the scorp/sub backstory and speaking about their favorite characters while being salty about it.
My point is: Fans prefer badmouthing sth than enjoy it. Pleasing them just isn't possible.
By now, we've seen dozens of different versions of the mk lore and I ask you this: When did a specific mk-related product satisfy the fans?

Get the mk games as an example :
We always work with some sort of stockholm syndrome... Meaning, we play mk9 in 2011-2013 and bitch about it being broken, about the top tiers and the 9-1 matchups.
Then we play mkX in 2015-2017 and we bitch about 50/50s, broken variations and infinites while saying how fun MK9 was despite its problems..

Then we play MK11 from 2019 on and we miss BOTH mkx and MK9 while bitching about it being boring and slow paced, the lack of neutral, fatal blows reloading etc.
Those kind of examples go on and on.
And we are talking about a fighting game that -apart from 1v1 like every other fighting game has- offers: the krypt, unlockables, continuous dlc support, STORY MODE (! ! !), tower challenges and countless other stuff.
Really think about it. We have the most content than any other fighting game and we cannot be appreciative about it.

Same for the movies.

Sorry for spamming this thread.

What you're talking about is the most common thing since society has a way to express their feelings publicly - people who are happy with something, rarely bother to say it but if they disslike something or feel hurt by something they go on internet and express their frustration with that thing. It's always been that way. Just the Internet made it easier and convinient. It applies to pretty much everything a person can judge.

I agree with you that competitive MK game players are never happy but i also see many valid points in their opionions. This is normal for me since i work in gaming industry i also understand that making a game for everybody which is your main goal you will make decisions which wont sit well with the small (1%) part of your fanbase. You just go with majority, coz in the end that's where the money come from.

I also agree that it's important to choose a constructive feedback over some pure emotions (mostly negative) but it also important to take that constructive feedback to heart and not repeat the same mistakes nor just ignore it coz "people will always hate or internet trolls" etc...

You can't just go with "people never gonna be satisified" and do your thing ignoring everybody. Not when it comes to things like Mortal Kombat franchise which has millions of fans all over the world.

When you look at a movie just on its own i find really hard to see new Mortal Kombat as a good one. Script is weak, character development is nonexistant, fighting scenes has more jump cuts than an early 2000 TV show. You can do much better these days even in TV series, just look how fights are done in Warrior (higly recommended if you didn't see it already) TV Show where Joe Taslim (Sub Zero) also stars.

As a fan of MK you see all the eastern eggs, callbacks to the game but you also see many weird decisions (Cole character, jobbers characters like Reiko or NItara, no tournament, missing key characters like Cage which make other characters look bland on the screen like Sonya), you also see things that are just not right.

In the end you will never please everybody, that's impossible but it shouldn't stop you from trying.

When it comes to movies, tv shows, anime, games or any other creative art - the final product must be at least decent on its own otherwise there is no way it will be commercial sucess and for a big studios in game, movies etc.. business money is king. They will make a good film if they feel they gonna make money of it but the only way for you to make it happen is to vote with your wallet and opinion (for other people who don't know yet - should they buy it / pay for it or not). You can't just blindly accept subpar product and buy it anyway coz for big corporations this will mean - we're doing it right so lets keep doing it, same way no point in changing (until there is profit in it) and at the end of the day this is something none of us want.

 

[TheJaquio]

Saw the movie the other day. It was pretty much what I was expecting from the trailers: high production-value fights, with some nods to the certain character moves and idiosyncrasies to keep the longtime fans happy, while also taking the lore in a very different direction. I enjoyed it for the fights and easter eggs, but I agree with most people that the lore changes and addition of Cole were needless. It's 2021--even people who aren't fans are generally aware of Mortal Kombat and have a vague sense of who the main characters are, so we really don't need a "family man caught in the middle" type to use as a lens to view this world, because we're already familiar with it. It also baffles me that they feel the need to introduce more complicated story gimmicks to explain away characters having powers, considering that fantasy and superheroes are so mainstream today that audiences readily accept magic and superpowers existing just for the sake of existing. So I feel the lore changes didn't really help guide the narrative more efficiently, and only served to slow it down.

All that said, I still enjoyed it. There was enough in it to make it fun and entertain me, even if it wasn't as good as the '95 movie imo. I'd maybe give it a 7/10.

 

[Rodney Quillz]

I don’t understand why Shang would risk his supposed “best fighters” to invade earth realm.

It’s not like he has an army of a subhuman species who were bred for death, chaos, destruction and to be used as jobber fodder at his disposal right?

 

[Art Lean]

I don’t understand why Shang would risk his supposed “best fighters” to invade earth realm.

It's a time-honoured tradition that he learned from the best.

Shao Kahn did it every week on Conquest

 

[Popegina]

Haven't read through this thread yet, but here's my review -

Overall, I liked this movie, despite its flaws. The fanservice was appreciated, with shit like Sub-Zero's ice clone, Jax's clap, Kabal's parry, etc. Kano is the star of the movie, and even though he isn't Cary Tagawa, the actor who played Shang Tsung also did a good job, as well as Joe Taslim. I could not fucking stand that Cole motherfucker; he has about as much acting talent as Keanu Reeves but minus the personality. Can you imagine how much better this movie would have been if Johnny Cage replaced Cole? The dialogue between him and Kano would have been great. Also, I was disappointed with the abrupt ending. There really wasn't much of a climax, and when it all was suddenly over, I was left with a hollow feeling. My only other main gripe is the underutilization of Scorpion. They made Sub-Zero OP, but hired a senior citizen to play Scorpion.

On a side note, has anyone else noticed the decline in movie quality for post-Covid releases? This is the best post-Covid movie I've seen by far, and still I'd only give it a 7/10.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

I don’t understand why Shang would risk his supposed “best fighters” to invade earth realm.

It’s not like he has an army of a subhuman species who were bred for death, chaos, destruction and to be used as jobber fodder at his disposal right?

I really hope they don't do that. They do it in NRS games and it makes the action scenes snoozefests. I don't want to watch Sonya fight 50 nameless monsters, I want her to fight an actual character

 

[Swindle]

Οh, no no... I'm not talking about liking or not liking the 2021 film in particular. Nor am I talking about scores.
I'm talking about the general response from fans.
For example, the things that fans bitched about ALL those years (non-asians getting cast as asian characters, "boring" characters, lack of fan service, all the things I mentioned in my post above) , whenever someone actually did do sth different and brought a breath of fresh air in the mk univerese, it was met with fan hatred.

@Immortal I remember your nickname in this forum for many, many years. I know you were here, active during the MK legacy season 2 days... Do you remember the TYM members' reactions over this series?
It was exactly the same as with this film. I remember specific users here speaking about minor details, talking about the scorp/sub backstory and speaking about their favorite characters while being salty about it.
My point is: Fans prefer badmouthing sth than enjoy it. Pleasing them just isn't possible.
By now, we've seen dozens of different versions of the mk lore and I ask you this: When did a specific mk-related product satisfy the fans?

Get the mk games as an example :
We always work with some sort of stockholm syndrome... Meaning, we play mk9 in 2011-2013 and bitch about it being broken, about the top tiers and the 9-1 matchups.
Then we play mkX in 2015-2017 and we bitch about 50/50s, broken variations and infinites while saying how fun MK9 was despite its problems..

Then we play MK11 from 2019 on and we miss BOTH mkx and MK9 while bitching about it being boring and slow paced, the lack of neutral, fatal blows reloading etc.
Those kind of examples go on and on.
And we are talking about a fighting game that -apart from 1v1 like every other fighting game has- offers: the krypt, unlockables, continuous dlc support, STORY MODE (! ! !), tower challenges and countless other stuff.
Really think about it. We have the most content than any other fighting game and we cannot be appreciative about it.

Same for the movies.

Sorry for spamming this thread.

You ain’t wrong.

 

[Popegina]

If you just wanna see a dumb ass action movie that is so bad its funny save urself the time and go watch this

Thank you so much for this

 

[LionHeart V1]

The movie was meh for me. Which is unfortunate because the movie started out fantastic and then it went kind of downhill from there. They honestly could have just focused the whole movie on scorpion and subzero and it would have been way more compelling. It doesn't have the charm of the original movie at all. The chemistry of the main Heroes in the original is so much better. And Cole Young is about as generic as you can get and its not Lewis Tans fault the script did him no favors. The dude is walking around in a black t-shirt and jeans for the majority of the movie. He looks so completely out of place. The arcana stuff is lame. And the fights were so rushed at the end.

Subzero, Kano, and Scorpion really saved this movie.

Mortal Kombat would work so much better as a TV series on HBOMAX rather than a movie. It would give time for character development and world building. 6-8 episode seasons is really all they would need so there isn't any filler nonsense.

Season 1 - Mortal Kombat 1 storyline - Touranment
Season 2 - Mortal Kombat 2 - Outworld
Season 3 - Mortal Kombat 3 - Invasion of Shaokahn
Season 4- Mortal Kombat 4 - Shinnok and Co.
Season 5 - Deadly alliance
Season 6 - Deception
Season 7 Armageddon

 

[The chosen puddle]

The definition of meh

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Honestly the oddest casting has to be Cole's family. It just looked so weird. Cole looks like he's 19, his daughter looks 15 and his wife could be in her late 30's

 

[Nephrite]

Mortal Kombat would work so much better as a TV series on HBOMAX rather than a movie. It would give time for character development and world building. 6-8 episode seasons is really all they would need so there isn't any filler nonsense.

Season 1 - Mortal Kombat 1 storyline - Touranment
Season 2 - Mortal Kombat 2 - Outworld
Season 3 - Mortal Kombat 3 - Invasion of Shaokahn
Season 4- Mortal Kombat 4 - Shinnok and Co.
Season 5 - Deadly alliance
Season 6 - Deception
Season 7 Armageddon

I would start from the very begining:
One Being vs The Elder Gods and Shinnok's War against the Elder Gods.
Great Kung Lao saga ending in his defeat to Goro. Two seasons could be dedicated to GKL, first one with him reaching his max peak and being victorious in an MK tournament and the next one ending with his defeat to Goro. You can aso use these two seasons to explore iconic Edenians more as they are thousands of years old so they would have been alive back then as well.
And then your season 1. So, a total of 10 seasons, each 5-7 episodes. That'd be so kool.

 

[Popegina]

The movie has its problems. The forced game lines like "Finish Him" and "Flawless Victory" stand out like dogs balls. With Kano's "Kano Wins" the only one that works. This is probably the films biggest issue, while the dialogue writing is actually really good, particularly the comedic stuff with Kano which is all working, the attempts to call back to the game constantly breaks the reality of the movie.

As opposed to the original movie? "Flawless victory" ugh