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The Mortal Kombat video game series debuted in 1992 and has had 11 proper entries in that time. It's also seen a pair of live-action movies, the first of which is often cited as one of the better examples of a video game adapted to film. Now a new movie is set to try to improve on that, as a new Mortal Kombat is on the way. And based on a new video that shows off most of the key players, it may very well succeed where so many other video games turned movie have failed. Now a new video showed us more of the fighter's powers.
A new video has been released to promote the April 23 release of Mortal Kombat, both in theaters and on HBO Max. It works as both trailer and a behind-the-scenes sneak peek, as it features interview footage with the director and most of the main cast. But it also shows off that main cast in character, displaying everything about the Mortal Kombat franchise that fans love. We see people throwing, fire, ice, lightning, and more. Check it out.
Mortal Kombat the video game is a fairly simple story. For one reason or another a collection of wildly unique characters with equally unique abilities find themselves fighting against each other in a tournament to the death. Originally that was basically as much story as the game had. The first Mortal Kombat was designed as an arcade game, so it had even less space for storytelling than your average console game of the era. While the lore has certainly become deeper since then, many of these characters were developed more as archetypes than fully flushed out relatable characters. Their fighting style was more important than their motivation.
Mortal Kombat the movie promises to give us both. The new video calls the movie "grounded" and "dramatic" while also showing us people generating fire and ice from their hands. It's certainly possible to make something set in the fantastic dramatic, the best superhero movies do exactly that, but it has seemed to be difficult for those making movies based on video games to find that perfect balance. Frequently we get stories that are either too grounded, that lose what make them special as games, or that are so fantastical that characters are unrelatable.
The first Mortal Kombat movie did an admirable job of this. If there was one place where the film faltered in recreating the atmosphere of the games, it's that it wasn't nearly violent enough. Mortal Kombat was infamous for its violence when it was new, and the new film is promising to recreate that as well, in a rated-R movie. Originally planned to open next week, Mortal Kombat was pushed back a week and will now open April 23.
