There is a new Mortal Kombat movie on the way, and it will come as a welcome relief to fans of the nearly three-decade old fighting game franchise to know that the upcoming reboot will feature the game’s trademark fatalities. Not only will Mortal Kombat have the gory finishing moves, but they will be game accurate, as the film’s writer Greg Russo explained:
Game accurate? Yes, we are. I can say for sure that the fatalities that we're going to put into the film are from the game.
There you have it, if you have a particularly brutal and gory fatality you love from the video game, there’s a possibility you could see it in live-action in director Simon McQuoid’s movie. That’s because as writer Greg Russo told Comicbook.com, the fatalities in Mortal Kombat will be accurate to the ones seen in the game. The film may be in the early stages of pre-production, but Greg Russo seems pretty sure on that point.
So Mortal Kombat won’t just be doing new things and calling them fatalities, it will actually feature some, but obviously not all, of the fatalities that fans can perform on friends and strangers alike right now in the Mortal Kombat video games. To the average person, game accurate fatalities might not mean much, but I imagine for Mortal Kombat fans, this will be a nice touch that inspires confidence in the film by showing appreciation for the source material.
One of the challenges with adapting any video game is maintaining the defining characteristics of that game and staying true to what fans love and what made it special and worth adapting in the first place, while making it work in a different medium. Game accurate fatalities are just one way Mortal Kombat can be a true video game adaptation.
For those who have never played the Mortal Kombat video games or are only familiar with the property through the 1995 movie, which to be fair is one of the better video game movies, fatalities are the finishing moves used by characters in the fighting game series. These moves are cinematic in nature and see the fighters brutally killing their opponents in the goriest, most creative ways imaginable. Fatalities are ridiculous, violent and even funny and reflect the powers and personalities of the fighters employing them.
There are no tame fatalities so this ensures that Mortal Kombat will be wild and bloody befitting its namesake. But just because Mortal Kombat will be using fatalities and game accurate ones, doesn’t mean that they will be put in just to make fans of the game happy, they’ll have a purpose, as Greg Russo continued:
We're going to come up with some new things that we haven't seen before, but at the same time we want to ... if we're going to do it and use that device, we want to make sure that it's not just in there just to be in there and have that point to the story. So everything will always have that point to what's happening in the story, it will feel awesome and badass, and it's going to play a role, you know, it's not just going to be there just to be showy.
In addition to the game accurate fatalities, the people involved with Mortal Kombat will flex their sadistic creative muscles to comes up with some new things to delight audiences. However, it sounds like the fatality device will be used sparingly and as part of the story. They won’t just be gruesome eye candy, fatalities will be used in a way that is badass, but feels earned.
This sounds like the right approach because if every fight in the film ended with a fatality, it would diminish their impact. Fatalities should be reserved for the most climactic fights and deaths, where they can either establish the stakes or get an emotional reaction. Based on Greg Russo’s comments, Mortal Kombat’s fatalities should delight and surprise fans of the games while also serving a purpose in the story.
If you want to get a taste of the fatalities the movie might have in store, check out the video below to some of the fatalities from Mortal Kombat 11:
Mortal Kombat is still coming together but it has cast its Sub-Zero in the form of Joe Taslim, whose previous work includes The Raid: Redemption, The Night Comes for Us and the TV series Warrior. The tournament begins when Mortal Kombat hits theaters on March 5, 2021. Check out our premiere guide for movies coming this year and stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest video game movie news.
