Directed by John R. Leonetti
Starring Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, James Remar, Sandra Hess, Brian Thompson
RATING
1/10
The tagline for the film literally says "Destroy All Expectations". I couldn't have picked a better tagline myself. If you read my review of the first "Mortal Kombat" movie, you see that I quite enjoyed it and accepted it for the cheeseball it was. I also somehow applauded Paul W.S. Anderson, and that's quite shocking to me, knowing I have the capability to praise a reasonably terrible director. Well, I'm about to sing some more praises to Mr. Anderson today, because I really wish he directed this movie instead of John R. Leonetti. Then maybe we would've had a cheesy but highly entertaining flick like the last one. But alas, Hollywood realized the potential of this actually being a decent video game-to-film adaptation, and completely f***ed it up to make a quick buck.
"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" picks up from where the last film left off. Liu Kang and his sunshine pals arrive in the temples of the monks to celebrate Shang Tsung's defeat, but are quickly interrupted by Shao Kahn, ruler of the Outworld (aka. Bad Guy world) and his henchmen consisting of a constipated-looking faun, a muscular indian woman with four arms who couldn't act her way out of a cardboard box, a red guy who basically has no distinguished qualities, and Shao Kahn's undead wife who is ridiculously hot but unfortunately void of any acting abilities too. Long story short, Shao Kahn kills Johnny Cage very anti-climactically, and Liu Kang and sunshine pals are forced to literally go underground to fend themselves against the wrath of Kahn (bad pun).
Believe me when I say, this movie has no redeeming qualities. At all. None. Not even the music. Yeah, the opening credits gets you pumped and the fight between Sub-Zero and Scorpion is only decent, but there is nothing else I can give this film credit for. Not even Robin Shou is likable in this film because, well, he's a wooden puppet for 99% of it. Then a giant, terribly rendered CGI dragon, but we'll get to that later. I really don't care if I'm going to spoil things in this review because I strongly advise you, for your own health and state of mind, to avoid this trainwreck. I thought it would be something nostalgic, and hopefully let the nostalgia overpower the weak points of the film. I remembered watching it religiously as a kid. Well, now I just want to build a time machine so I could go back and beat that little kid across the face with a steel bat. So let's talk more about the acting... There is no acting. It's a freaking staged opera with rave music and one-liners so cheesy, they actually hurt. In case you also didn't notice, a lot of the original cast is replaced by new actors. I'm assuming that's because they read the script and probably threw up on it or used it for toilet paper afterwards. Christopher Lambert said "hell no" to Raiden returning and passed it over to James Remar, who gets a crew cut. Yes, they gave Raiden a crew cut hairstyle... Besides that, Ashby who played Cage in the last movie was replaced by a generic-looking dude. He gets killed off literally four minutes into the movie, without a word of dialogue. I can see why he passed on that glorious opportunity to be in for four whole minutes. Replaced in the movie is also Sonya. She's just about as useful as a piece of sticky tape that gets stuck to your shoe, only the tape can act better too.
Moving onto the action scenes... When the first scene in the entire film is a fight between Raiden and Shao Kahn, and it sucks, you know you're in for something special. The editing is so extremely choppy and distracting, it makes the technical work in wrestling look professional. You can't tell whether someone lands a hit or not, and it all amounts to a game of "guess who's winning". Chances are, you'll always lose. And while there are twice as much fights in this as the first film, it hardly means anything other than to introduce characters from the game for a few minutes before killing them off, and they don't even have the courtesy to do with a fatality. There's clashes between Sonya and Mileena, Jax and Cyrax, Liu Kang and Smoke... oh yeah, Shao Kahn kills Rain. I didn't even know he was in the movie until he died. Poor bastard. The visual effects? I bet they just hired a bunch of five-year olds to be on the visual effects team, and paid them in Pokemon cards. The climax of this film was a display of some of the absolute worst CGI I have ever bared witness to. Shao Kahn and Liu Kang inexplicably transform into giant monsters. It's never explained why or how, but it just happens. I guess because the director left the set of the film an hour before and gave the director's seat to a chimpanzee. You may have realized I didn't go too deep into the plot, but considering there is no plot to analyse, I'll just pretend the random chance encounters and incomprehensible twists actually meant something.
In short, "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" is a gigantic fart bomb on the legacy of this great franchise. Why anyone would dare make such a movie, I don't know, but it seemed to earn its bucks in the end of the day. It is one of the worst movies in the world, and I beg everyone to never go near this. If you're into laughable dialogue, random and poorly conceived fight scenes, a lack of substance or character, virtually no plot, and an abundance of bad CGI... I still recommend you see those cheesy kung-fu flicks at 3 in the morning on the week day.
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