‘Mortal Kombat II’ Review: Not a Flawless Victory

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s and ’90s all had parents, grandparents, and teachers who warned us that video games were stupid and bad and would rot our brains.

If that sounds like someone in your life, do me a favor: Do not let that person see Mortal Kombat II. It is bad enough —and dumb enough — that they might try to use it as proof that they were right about video games all along.

I look back at my review of the previous Mortal Kombat film from 2021, and see that I gave it a 6/10 rating, complimenting its “sheer visual panache” and “intricate fight scenes.” I guess I was feeling charitable that day, although I also wrote “one must not think too deeply about [the story], or much of anything, to enjoy the film.”

Warner Bros.

Turning my attention back to Mortal Kombat II, I must now go further: If you intend to use your prefrontal cortex for any reason during the two hours you plan to watch Mortal Kombat II, I strongly suggest seeking entertainment elsewhere. Only those who consider live-action recreations of Mortal Kombat moves, characters, and stages the absolute peak of human artistic expression (and maybe Karl Urban superfans) will be satisfied by this sequel.

That’s because this unbelievably silly film continues the story of Mortal Kombat (2021) while shoving most of its main characters to the background in order to focus on several new fighters. Urban plays one the two key additions, washed-up 1990s action movie star Johnny Cage. The other new fighter is Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), the princess of a mystical realm enslaved by Mortal Kombat II’s villain, Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), whose allegiances are torn by a dark secret from her past.

2021’s Mortal Kombat contained so little narrative momentum that the sequel recycles the exact same premise: The warriors of a dimension called Outworld, led by the enormous and nigh-omnipotent Shao Kahn, have won nine straight tournaments against the champions of Earth. If they win a tenth, they earn the right to conquer and enslave our planet. (Bummer.)

The lightning god Raiden (Tadanobu Sato) assembles Earth’s greatest warriors to defend their home, with the pompous, disinterested Cage selected as an unwilling alternate because another member of his team, Shaolin monk Kung Lao, died in the last movie.

Warner Bros.

He’s not alone. While Mortal Kombat II is theoretically about a tournament to decide the fate of Earth, an absurd amount of screen time — maybe 40 minutes? — revolves around the recovery of some mystical amulet that can grant its holder eternal life and the powers of a god. If Shao Kahn gets it he would supposedly become immortal and thus unstoppable.

Except Shao Kahn’s already pretty unstoppable when the movie begins. And even before he snags the amulet, he seems to have a pretty good handle on the whole immortal life thing. In fact, he resurrects the obnoxious Aussie mercenary Kano (Josh Lawson) because he’s the guy who stole the amulet he so desperately covets in the first place.

A couple scenes later, we learn that Shao Kahn has also kept his queen, Sindel (Ana Thu Nguyen), alive for hundreds of years. “I was freed from my mortal bonds! Shao Kahn showed me the pleasures of a life eternal!” Sindel boasts. Okay ... but if you can resurrect anyone you want without the amulet, why in Raiden’s name do you need the amulet in the first place?!?

Warner Bros.

Director Simon McQuoid has neither the time nor the inclination to address such trivial matters. Instead, he’s focused on cramming as many fights into this motion picture as humanly possible. A couple of them are decent. The one between fireball-flinging Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and the also-resurrected-without-an-amulet Kung Lao (Max Huang), is kinetic and fun, with Lao hurling his razor-brimmed hither and yon, and ultimately deploying it like world’s least sterile table saw.

But a lot of the action sequences are very heavily edited. (Karl Urban appears to use as many stunt doubles as Johnny Cage.) After a while, they get very repetitive. The creators of the old Mortal Kombat II arcade game had the good sense to save Shao Kahn until the tournament’s championship fight; you had to work your way through 14 other matches before you confronted the final boss. The creators of the Mortal Kombat II movie sprinkle Shao Kahn throughout; he headlines the very first fight before the opening credits, the big battle at the climax, and quite a few others in between. Imposing though he may be, by the fifth or sixth time he tries to bludgeon someone with his big mallet, he’s lost all of his mystique.

Warner Bros.

The notion that an aging, down-on-his-luck actor might get Galaxy Quested into the role of a lifetime saving the universe could have some juice. The original Johnny Cage character was heavily inspired by Jean-Claude Van Damme, so turning movie Cage into the equivalent of modern-day JCVD makes a ton of sense. And Urban absolutely looks the part, swaggering around in a leather jacket and sunglasses. He also makes the most of his handful of solid zingers. (I liked when a character insults his fighting bona fides and he responds by proudly citing his Saturn Award win for one of his many forgotten action movies.)

But Mortal Kombat II is way too busy with gaming Easter eggs and choppy fight scenes to actually spend any time on Cage’s character arc. Urban mostly just preens and cracks jokes and then looks slightly perturbed when Josh Lawson’s Kano, the comic relief from the last Mortal Kombat film, reappears to also preen and crack jokes and steal some of his screen time. The sequel has two tones it whiplashes between: Isn’t-this-all-so-ridiculous? wisecracks and excessively bloody violence.

Warner Bros.

That, I suppose, marks this as a faithful Mortal Kombat adaptation. No video game franchise has gotten more mileage out of over-the-top gore than this one, nor undercut that gore with so many goofy sight gags. (Remember the Mortal Kombat where you could turn your opponents into babies? They need to put that intoe Mortal Kombat III.) To hardcore MK fans, this would likely count as a feature, not a bug — and they will definitely appreciated the sequel’s very R-rated bloodshed and Urban’s F-bomb laden dialogue.

But I would hope even a Mortal Kombat fan — and I played so many hours of Mortal Kombat in my teenage years — could at least acknowledge the absurdity of a film version putting lines like “Strength is not a closed fist” into the mouths of one of its heroes. Strength is not a closed fist in Mortal Kombat? The game where Sub-Zero’s Fatality is literally punching a guy’s head off with a closed fist? That seems pretty strong to me!

Warner Bros.

Mortal Kombat games may not be Tolstoy, but at least when you’re playing one you get invested in who wins and who loses. In Mortal Kombat II I truly did not care who lived or died for a single second — mostly because the film made it very clear that death is basically meaningless in this story. Anyone bashed or sliced or maimed can (and do!) get brought back, whether or not there’s a magic amulet handy. Maybe our parents were wrong about video games. That still leaves the possibility, though, that the video-game movies were the real problem.

Additional Thoughts:

-2021’s Mortal Kombat made the bold decision to center its story around a totally new character who had never appeared in any of the games: Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan, a former MMA fighter descended from the chain-wielding MK Scorpion who finds his calling fighting in the Mortal Kombat tournament. The sequel demotes Cole from protagonist to glorified extra, retroactively making all the screen time they devoted to him in the last movie look awfully pointless, diminishing both films in the process. Is it too late to change my rating for the first Mortal Kombat? Either way, I’m giving the sequel...

RATING: 3/10