Mortal Kombat II

This weekend, Mortal Kombat II, the newest adaptation of the hit video game series, releases in theaters. Mortal Kombat II follows Earth's greatest warriors and their newest recruit, Johnny Cage, as they compete in the Mortal Kombat tournament to protect the world from an Outworld invasion. For some perspective, I am not a Mortal Kombat fan. I know the basic premise of the game, know who Johnny Cage and Liu Kang are, and watched the 2021 movie, but that is the extent of my game knowledge.

I actually had a lot of fun with Mortal Kombat II. This movie definitely delivers on both the mortal and the combat. This movie completely centers on the actual Mortal Kombat tournament and delivers a ton of great action and graphic carnage. There are some gnarly kills and almost nonstop fight scenes. This movie takes the things that worked about the first film, the action and characters, and goes all in on those aspects. The movie also pulls back on what didn't work in the first film. People were mad that the movie centered on an original character rather than one of the game's classics, so in this movie, Cole is relegated to a side character with 5 minutes of screen time. People were mad that the last movie didn't feature the tournament, so this movie features the entire tournament. Mortal Kombat II also brings back all of the fan favorite characters that died in the first film. This movie basically undoes everything bad about the first film. This movie is a good example of how to improve on a flawed first film. I thought that Johnny Cage was a great addition to the story. Karl Urban is so great in the world as he plays this over-the-top movie star. I also liked that we got to see Kano again and see a bit of fun dynamic between Johnny Cage and Kano. I also thought that this movie was surprisingly funny. There were a lot of moments where I was laughing out loud. The movie is just very fast-moving, going from one fight scene to the next.

While this movie is very fun, it doesn't have much in terms of a plot or story. It reminds me a lot of the format of the Super Mario Galaxy Movie. It just moves from fight sequence to fight sequence with a paper-thin plot holding things together. This is a prime example of a junk food movie. It is so much fun with all the action and character moments, but it is very sparse on quality writing or a compelling story. But considering this is a movie about fighting, this is probably as good as it can get.

Overall, while I can acknowledge that this is not a quality movie in terms of plot and characters, it is still highly entertaining and perfectly creates an experience that matches that of the games. I think fans

of the game franchise are going to love this movie.

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B-

Recommendation: A must-watch for Mortal Kombat fans; everyone else can wait to stream it