“Mortal Kombat” grossed just $84 million worldwide in 2021 (on a budget of $55 million). But that’s only a disappointing result at first glance – and it’s not because the first part didn’t include the eponymous martial arts tournament for supremacy in the six realms. Instead, the magic word is once again “Corona”. With barely any cinemas open, “Mortal Kombat” became the most successful release on the streaming service HBO Max to date – and at the same time the fifth most illegally downloaded blockbuster of the year! In addition, the popularity of the games template remains unbroken: with twelve parts of the main series alone, the franchise has now sold more than 85 million units!
The extremely brutal video game film adaptation has reached more than enough people to justify a sequel despite everything. In “Mortal Kombat II,” again directed by Simon McQuoid, the tournament that was missing in the predecessor is now actually taking place – and fan favorite Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) is finally part of the game. First of all, that means more fights and more fatalities, which once again are served in a wonderfully exaggerated manner! When a “Lord of the Rings”-like mission is launched in the second half with dozens of characters in different worlds, the “epic” story stumbles over its actually unnecessary ambitions.
Outworld ruler Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) will not rest until he has subjugated all other realms!
If you want to take control of another realm without antagonizing the Elder Gods, you have to win ten “Mortal Kombat” tournaments in a row. Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) has already made the residents of Edenia his slaves – including Princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), who as a young girl had to watch helplessly as her father was brutally murdered in a duel against the outworld despot. But that doesn’t quench the masked muscle berserker’s thirst for dominance:
After nine victories in a row, Earthrealm is also under massive threat of being conquered by Shao Kahn. Especially since, despite the support of the thunder god Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), the earth is slowly running out of heroes for the tournament: In addition to Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Johnny Cage is also supposed to compete in a duel against Outworld this time – although he is no longer a real fighter, but a disillusioned ex-Hollywood action star, after which he himself died Fan conventions no rooster crows anymore…
Simple is good!
A tournament tree and a dash of personal thirst for revenge: in the martial arts genre, that’s all you often need to keep the audience on edge – the Jean Claude Van Damme classic “Bloodsport” is the best example of this! Of course, you can’t implement this quite so directly in a “Mortal Kombat” blockbuster; the mythological lore with all the gods, realms, rules and ever more fighters is too complex for that. But the experienced commercial filmmaker Simon McQuoid still gets to the point in “Mortal Kombat II” very quickly: especially in the first half, it feels like one fight follows the next – most of them nice and crisp and just long enough to be able to present a best-of of the specific moves of the varied fighters.
Even the fact that some actors can obviously fight better (or worse) than others and therefore have to be helped with cuts again and again is not as negatively noticeable here as in other martial arts films: If the opponents fight each other not only with the edges of their hands, but also with explosive fireballs and neon green breath of death, it is not primarily about believable, authentic fights. Instead, the question arises during the duels as to what kind of sick shit those responsible have come up with for the final finishing moves this time – and you only get disappointed when the winner shows mercy and forgoes a fatality despite the vacillating opponent. (It makes you question your own morals – but hey, we all know why the latest “Mortal Kombat” games have been excitedly discussed in school playgrounds for more than 30 years.)
Karl Urban as Johnny Cage is an absolute win for the sequel!
The stages are also pleasingly diverse – with a castle dungeon complete with rusty meat hooks and bubbling acidic brew as the main event. The best fight in the film serves as the conclusion of this first half – and it also gets significantly more space as a spectacular centerpiece: with Liu Kang and the now undead hat acrobat Kung Lao (Max Huang), two former companions fight each other, who not only deliver strong martial arts skills, but also end their emotional fight with a fatality that is particularly well suited to their character. However, things go noticeably downhill for “Mortal Kombat II” after this climax:
Instead of the tournament, it’s suddenly all about an all-powerful MacGuffin amulet, for which all kinds of things have to be done in all kinds of places – a splintered fantasy quest in which “Mortal Kombat II” does well to include a tongue-in-cheek reference to “Lord of the Rings”, because the comparison is very close. And of course, in these passages “Mortal Kombat II” is nothing more than a tired imitation, in which the increasingly frayed plot only distracts from its actual qualities.
Karl Urban rocks!
Speaking of pop culture quotes: Johnny Cage offers a lot of them. Not only are there references to “Harry Potter” and “Squid Game”, he also puts forward the thesis that nowadays everyone only wants “gritty” action, in which Keanu Reeves massacres thousands of opponents with a sharpened pencil. However, we also see an excerpt from his 1996 video store smash “Uncaged Fury” – and that’s a lot of trashy fun! In any case, Karl Urban, who is already used to ultra-grotesque levels of violence from “The Boys,” impresses as a washed-up ex-star with a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor.
And indeed, “Mortal Kombat II” has little in common with “John Wick”, but it is probably pretty close to the film that fans of the games wanted when they were presented with “Mortal Kombat” instead in 1995 (and “Mortal Kombat 2 – Annihilation” two years later).
Conclusion: “Mortal Kombat II” really delivers, especially in the first half – before it deviates from the tournament format again and instead indulges in a would-be “Lord of the Rings” plot about a magical amulet.