Remember the start of "Galaxy Quest" (1999) when a group of actors are drafted in to help rescue the universe from a nasty megalomaniac bent on intergalactic domination? Well, this time it's poor old "Johnny Cage" (Karl Urban) who's the past his sell-by-date Thespian reluctantly recruited by "Lord Raiden" (Tadanobu Asano) to help save the Earth realm from certain doom. He is to join four other somewhat sceptical fighters, all with various skills, to combat the five soldiers of "Shao Kahn" (Martyn Ford) who has been hitherto indestructable as the princess "Kitana" (Adeline Rudolph) can attest h...

Unbearably, tooth-achingly bad.

Now, you can only do so much with a plot of a computer game from the early 90s that has been filmed umpteen times already, but this is a new low.

And a cleaned up, one-dimensional version of Butcher can't save it.

Just no.

On first watch of the trailer, I expected that Johnny Cage would be the centerpiece, capitalizing on Karl Urban's name. While the usual formulaic approach and a bit of convoluted and disjointed script, it did pay homage to the previous film (though not the video game). I did appreciate that they gave mostly equal balance to the different characters, though it lacked backstories to everyone but Cage.

We expect the acting to be fun and not deep (except for Cage), which we expected. The special effects were decent, though a few things could have been better. I like the choice of actors, though...

31 years later, Mortal Kombat (1995) is still the best movie in this franchise.

The internet led me to believe that this was a better movie than the 2021 reboot, and it is, in some aspects, but it's still trash. What the !@#$!

Why is the acting so bad?

Why is the choreography so bad?

Why is Shao Khan a !@#$%?! Am I really meant to believe this guy is a conqueror?! How? !@#$in' Cole Young whooped his arse! Liu Kang whooped his arse! Kitana whooped his arse! I assume plot armor is the only thing that saved him from Kitana's dad, since everyone else whoops his arse!

What the !@#$?!...

Utter crap. Sorry, but I see no point in wasting too many words here. Lead actors who clearly have little to no actual martial arts experience, a disjointed mess of a story, plus, at times, excessive gore, that serves no discernible purpose. One to avoid.

I am somewhat of a fan of the game and think that this level of violence isn't what the films need to show. I think if there was more violence this would have been perfection.

Not a flawless victory, but fun
By no means is this a perfect movie, but it is a fun movie, for sure. There have been a lot of bad Mortal Kombat movies, but this is actually not just a decent homage to the games, but an actual movie, with a beginning, middle, and end, along with characters, arcs, and a storyline. The casting is good, with Karl being the standout, obviously. It is very polished, and it is a fun watch.