pure.Wasted
'ello baby, did you miss me?
I'm still digesting all my feelings about the MK story mode, but the first thing I had to get off my chest is, holy fucking shit is the time travel in MK11 ever fucking dumb.
I know, MK isn't supposed to be the height of sci-fi, it's just a cheesy action movie. But this was a whole new level of stupid. I wasn't expecting 12 Monkeys, Primer, or Lost. I wasn't expecting intricate internal consistency. I was just expecting a bare minimum amount of sense. And this is not that. Shit, MK9 looks like it was written by astrophysicists by comparison. Let's break down just how outrageously dumb it is.
#1. "If the past self is injured or killed, the present self will be as well."
OK game, I'm gonna stop you right there. This is a really dumb way for time travel to work in a story.
The game's logic (what little there is of it) is that if Johnny's face is grazed by a bullet in the past, in the future he'll have a scar. Because the past and present aren't two different characters, they are the exact same character, co-existing. But why does that only happen in relation to bad events (e.g. injuries and deaths)? If past Johnny and present Johnny are the same character, then EVERY SINGLE THING that happens to past Johnny should be affecting present Johnny. Not just wounds and scars.
If past Johnny is forming all sorts of new memories (in the future) that future Johnny never had, it should be rewriting future Johnny's memories on a moment to moment basis. His personality should be in constant flux. In fact, everything should be in constant flux. If Past Johnny has the power to alter what happens to future Johnny through time and space, then anything that happens to him should have a butterfly effect on EVERYTHING that happened in the intervening 20 years. And I mean EVERYTHING. Themselves, other characters, the world they inhabit.
But wait a second... if a past self dying is very bad for a future self... then shouldn't a past self LIVING be equally as bad for a DEAD future self?
Shouldn't Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Kitana, Jade, and Kabal being brought back from the past -- and saved from death in MK9 -- mean their Revenants instantly get wiped out of existence? Since time was altered and their deaths were prevented, there's no reason for the Revenants to exist anymore! So why do they continue to exist?! Why? Why? I don't understand. Why? Why is this so mind-bogglingly stupid?
#2. Stop hitting yourself.
But OK, we're committed to this stupid premise that for some reason injuries and deaths are tracked cross-time and space, while literally nothing else is. OK. And we see a strikingly visual example of this during Sonya's fight scene with both past and future Kano. OK, game. OK. We're committed.
Except... wait a second... if hitting a younger self injures the older self... how can old Johnny... beat... younger Johnny...? How can Hanzo Hasashi beat Scorpion? How can Jax, Revenant Liu Kang, and Kung Lao do ANYTHING to their younger selves?! Shouldn't fighting your own younger self be like fighting a 1v2, because not only are they whooping your ass, but you're also whooping your own ass? Every time you throw a punch at your younger self, it should send YOU flying back too. Except it doesn't. There are so many moments in the story where we see both the young self and the old self of a character on screen at the same time, and plain as day the young self getting injured has zero impact on the old self.
Where are all the scenes of Revenant Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Kitana randomly flying around because their younger selves got punched or kicked? Nowhere, because it would look fucking dumb, because it IS fucking dumb.
Not only is the premise dumb as balls... but the writers aren't even committed to it. They just randomly pick and choose when they want the "rules" to work, and when they don't. So as a result, when Sonya shoots Kano, I'm not sitting there thinking "wow Sonya is so clever, she out-witted Kano and beat him at his own game." It's a huge, dramatic moment, the first time she's killed him since 1995, and instead I'm sitting there trying to figure out why previous scenes played out completely differently.
#3. Time God Liu Kang
And then they give up completely when they decide that Raiden + Liu Kang = Time Immunity, because... reasons.
We've seen first hand that Raiden is EXTREMELY not time immune. Kronika herself has told us that Liu Kang is not time immune. But them joining forces somehow results in magical time fuckery immunity? That is the most random ass-pull superpower I've ever seen, an almost literal deus ex machina, all because the writers had an ending in mind and didn't know how to have Liu Kang fight through it.
That's so lazy. Especially because there were ways to do the exact same thing without introducing nonsense into the plot. Fuck, just establish that Kronika's crown makes the wearer immune, and have Liu Kang break off a piece of it when he breaks into her chamber at the end. Kronika is immune to time shit, her crown increases her power, so it kinda sorta makes sense that maybe it helps someone be immune to time shit just like her. Bingo bango, problem solved in a way that makes a bare minimum amount of sense. But no, let's introduce a brand new "rule" to the time travel logic, right before it's time for the climax. That's obviously much better.
#4. So why DID Kronika bring back all the good guys?
Raiden and Liu Kang I get, I suppose, because apparently their ultimate battle of ultimate destiny is supposed to buy her enough time to enact her plan, blah blah blah. But Kung Lao, Kitana, Jade, Jax? If any of their younger selves die, she'll be left without an army. And as for Johnny and Sonya, sure they might not be insta-kill-a-Revenant buttons like the others, but there was never really a chance of them joining Kronika. So again, why are they brought back? Is Kronika NOT in control of who she brings back? But then if she's really been at it for hundreds/thousands times like she tells Raiden, that means there must have been a timeline at some point where she didn't bring back Raiden and Liu Kang, meaning they didn't split the forces of good, meaning the forces of good should have vanquished her a long time ago? Why... does it all make... so little sense? Why...?
Fuck. It's so dumb. It's so god damn dumb. This might legitimately be one of THE dumbest time travel plots I've ever seen in my life. The rules don't just not make any sense, they don't make any sense in ways that are inconsistent and contradictory, from chapter to chapter, scene to scene, which undermines ALL of the stakes and ALL of the drama the story is trying to establish. Because the time travel is ALL OVER this story. It's not like MK9 where one character travels in time and then there's some nifty butterfly effects, NO, literally the entire plot is time travel logic, and none of it holds up to even thirty second's worth of scrutiny.
I was dreading this from the moment we found out the story would involve time travel, but I could never have imagined it would be this bad.
I know, MK isn't supposed to be the height of sci-fi, it's just a cheesy action movie. But this was a whole new level of stupid. I wasn't expecting 12 Monkeys, Primer, or Lost. I wasn't expecting intricate internal consistency. I was just expecting a bare minimum amount of sense. And this is not that. Shit, MK9 looks like it was written by astrophysicists by comparison. Let's break down just how outrageously dumb it is.
#1. "If the past self is injured or killed, the present self will be as well."
OK game, I'm gonna stop you right there. This is a really dumb way for time travel to work in a story.
The game's logic (what little there is of it) is that if Johnny's face is grazed by a bullet in the past, in the future he'll have a scar. Because the past and present aren't two different characters, they are the exact same character, co-existing. But why does that only happen in relation to bad events (e.g. injuries and deaths)? If past Johnny and present Johnny are the same character, then EVERY SINGLE THING that happens to past Johnny should be affecting present Johnny. Not just wounds and scars.
If past Johnny is forming all sorts of new memories (in the future) that future Johnny never had, it should be rewriting future Johnny's memories on a moment to moment basis. His personality should be in constant flux. In fact, everything should be in constant flux. If Past Johnny has the power to alter what happens to future Johnny through time and space, then anything that happens to him should have a butterfly effect on EVERYTHING that happened in the intervening 20 years. And I mean EVERYTHING. Themselves, other characters, the world they inhabit.
But wait a second... if a past self dying is very bad for a future self... then shouldn't a past self LIVING be equally as bad for a DEAD future self?
Shouldn't Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Kitana, Jade, and Kabal being brought back from the past -- and saved from death in MK9 -- mean their Revenants instantly get wiped out of existence? Since time was altered and their deaths were prevented, there's no reason for the Revenants to exist anymore! So why do they continue to exist?! Why? Why? I don't understand. Why? Why is this so mind-bogglingly stupid?
#2. Stop hitting yourself.
But OK, we're committed to this stupid premise that for some reason injuries and deaths are tracked cross-time and space, while literally nothing else is. OK. And we see a strikingly visual example of this during Sonya's fight scene with both past and future Kano. OK, game. OK. We're committed.
Except... wait a second... if hitting a younger self injures the older self... how can old Johnny... beat... younger Johnny...? How can Hanzo Hasashi beat Scorpion? How can Jax, Revenant Liu Kang, and Kung Lao do ANYTHING to their younger selves?! Shouldn't fighting your own younger self be like fighting a 1v2, because not only are they whooping your ass, but you're also whooping your own ass? Every time you throw a punch at your younger self, it should send YOU flying back too. Except it doesn't. There are so many moments in the story where we see both the young self and the old self of a character on screen at the same time, and plain as day the young self getting injured has zero impact on the old self.
Where are all the scenes of Revenant Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Kitana randomly flying around because their younger selves got punched or kicked? Nowhere, because it would look fucking dumb, because it IS fucking dumb.
Not only is the premise dumb as balls... but the writers aren't even committed to it. They just randomly pick and choose when they want the "rules" to work, and when they don't. So as a result, when Sonya shoots Kano, I'm not sitting there thinking "wow Sonya is so clever, she out-witted Kano and beat him at his own game." It's a huge, dramatic moment, the first time she's killed him since 1995, and instead I'm sitting there trying to figure out why previous scenes played out completely differently.
#3. Time God Liu Kang
And then they give up completely when they decide that Raiden + Liu Kang = Time Immunity, because... reasons.
We've seen first hand that Raiden is EXTREMELY not time immune. Kronika herself has told us that Liu Kang is not time immune. But them joining forces somehow results in magical time fuckery immunity? That is the most random ass-pull superpower I've ever seen, an almost literal deus ex machina, all because the writers had an ending in mind and didn't know how to have Liu Kang fight through it.
That's so lazy. Especially because there were ways to do the exact same thing without introducing nonsense into the plot. Fuck, just establish that Kronika's crown makes the wearer immune, and have Liu Kang break off a piece of it when he breaks into her chamber at the end. Kronika is immune to time shit, her crown increases her power, so it kinda sorta makes sense that maybe it helps someone be immune to time shit just like her. Bingo bango, problem solved in a way that makes a bare minimum amount of sense. But no, let's introduce a brand new "rule" to the time travel logic, right before it's time for the climax. That's obviously much better.
#4. So why DID Kronika bring back all the good guys?
Raiden and Liu Kang I get, I suppose, because apparently their ultimate battle of ultimate destiny is supposed to buy her enough time to enact her plan, blah blah blah. But Kung Lao, Kitana, Jade, Jax? If any of their younger selves die, she'll be left without an army. And as for Johnny and Sonya, sure they might not be insta-kill-a-Revenant buttons like the others, but there was never really a chance of them joining Kronika. So again, why are they brought back? Is Kronika NOT in control of who she brings back? But then if she's really been at it for hundreds/thousands times like she tells Raiden, that means there must have been a timeline at some point where she didn't bring back Raiden and Liu Kang, meaning they didn't split the forces of good, meaning the forces of good should have vanquished her a long time ago? Why... does it all make... so little sense? Why...?
Fuck. It's so dumb. It's so god damn dumb. This might legitimately be one of THE dumbest time travel plots I've ever seen in my life. The rules don't just not make any sense, they don't make any sense in ways that are inconsistent and contradictory, from chapter to chapter, scene to scene, which undermines ALL of the stakes and ALL of the drama the story is trying to establish. Because the time travel is ALL OVER this story. It's not like MK9 where one character travels in time and then there's some nifty butterfly effects, NO, literally the entire plot is time travel logic, and none of it holds up to even thirty second's worth of scrutiny.
I was dreading this from the moment we found out the story would involve time travel, but I could never have imagined it would be this bad.
Last edited:
R: time travel is always wack and is never logical. It is impossible.
