Film Review

Mortal Kombat (2021)

MMA fighter Cole Young seeks out Earth’s greatest champions in order to stand against the enemies of Outworld in a high stakes battle for the universe.

Most people consider Paul W.S Anderson’s Mortal Kombat (1995) to be the best video game to movie adaptation ever made. It helps that it’s effectively a remake of Enter the Dragon (1973) with fantasy trappings, that teenagers embraced as a new cultural product full of recognisable characters. And after the dual abominations of Super Mario Bros. (1993) and Street Fighter (1994), anything halfway competent was deemed a success, and kids of the ’90s took Mortal Kombat to their hearts. Bangin’ techno theme tune too.

And that brings us to Mortal Kombat 2021, the directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Simon McQuoid, which is a reboot of the franchise after the atrocious Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) killed the ’90s saga in its tracks. Renewed interest in these fighting games came with the console releases of Mortal Kombat X (2015) and Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), which were themselves partly a reaction to short-lived…