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Review of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) · The Recess Bell

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  My name is Justin Greenberg, and this is film Real. On last week's
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  episode, we ended with the epic conclusion to Mortal Kombat, the movie from
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  nineteen ninety five, pathetic fools knife coming from the shows. I don't think
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  so. Surely they would have to make a sequel to this film and it
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  will be fantastic. Yeah, was created in six days, so true?
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  Shall it be destroyed? What if that's supposed to me? Oh? Oh
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  no. On a twenty million dollar production budget, the original Mortal Kombat film
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  grossed over one hundred and twenty million dollars worldwide. I mean that's a lot
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  of money. Of course, they definitely will be making a sequel. It's
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  gonna be it's gonna be unbelievable. You're life too bad, you will die.
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  Oh they got to bring back the entire crew. Director Paul W.
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  S Anderson's vision for the original Mortal Kombat film and the chemistry of the main
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  lead actors is what really made the film. Oh oh my, oh wow,
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  what the what what am I seeing right now? Why does Raydn look
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  like that is not Veronica Vonne? They just kill off Johnny Cage in the
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  first five minutes. Oh okay, Mortal Kombat Annihilation was released on November twenty
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  first, nineteen ninety seven, and was a critical and commercial failure. Shom
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  somehow costing ten million dollars more to make than the original movie while looking significantly
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  cheaper, The film would gross a little over fifty million dollars worldwide and put
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  an end to any Mortal Kombat feature film getting released for over twenty years.
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  Your planet outworld had begun to emerge into one realm. Think of it as
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  hell on her I thought I would victor youstost photos if I don correct your
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  mother som Dell is the key to all of this uniting in the cause spell
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  was broken. This is the beginning of the end. So what is my
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  story with this movie? Like I said on the previous episode when discussing the
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  original Mortal Kombat, when you were a kid, you really didn't know what
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  movies were coming out. The way you would find out that a movie was
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  being released would pretty much be exclusively by watching movie trailers before you know the
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  feature film that you were watching. But I remember finding out about Mortal Kombat
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  Annihilation a different way. I was at my buddy's birthday party at an arcade
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  and I was leaving that party and I looked to my left and I see
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  a poster for a new Mortal Kombat. I'm like, oh, they're making
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  another Mortal Kombat game. That makes sense. They're you know, it's in
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  an arcade. They're they're promoting No. Oh, there's there's actors attached to
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  this at the bottom. This is a movie. They're making a sequel to
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  one of my favorite movies ever. This is going to be fantastic. By
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  the time nineteen ninety seven rolled around, Mortal Kombat was not the phenomenon that
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  it was, you know, Biden nineteen ninety five when the original movie was
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  released. In fact, just a few months prior to the release of this
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  movie, Mortal Kombat four was released in arcades, and I don't know,
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  something about the jump to three D didn't work in my opinion for that Mortal
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  Kombat game. Eventually, the Mortal Kombat games, I think would regain their
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  footing when the PlayStation and Xbox titles would be released a few years later,
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  But Mortal Kombat four never really did it for me. On top of that,
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  you had games like Mortal Kombat Sub Zero Mythologies, which is one of
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  the worst games ever released coming out around this time, so Mortal Kombat sort
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  of lost some of that luster, you know that it was gaining in the
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  mid nineties. Other things were taken over. You know, my mind was
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  occupied at this point with pro wrestling and South Park and sports. I was,
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  you know, big into sports around this time, really getting into the
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  NBA and NFL in nineteen ninety seven. But I was still a Mortal Combat
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  fan, and I was still excited to see this movie. And I remember
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  going to the cinema with my grandma this time and my brother, and what
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  happened in the next ninety minutes is something that I really can't explain because when
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  you're a kid, you know, I was not even I was just over
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  nine years old when this movie came out. And when you're nine years old,
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  you like everything. I mean, you're not really a cynical asshole like
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  I am today. You know, you watch a movie and you don't really
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  critique it. But I remember while watching this movie being very very disturbed,
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  embarrassed and disappointed. In fact, when I left the theater, I me
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  and my brother got into a huge fight after what what, And I think
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  it really stemmed for our hatred of this movie, and the only way we
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  knew how to release our anger was fighting with one another. And I remember
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  saying the line to my brother. I remember saying, you're only upset because
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  Johnny Cage died in this movie. And I think that stopped him dead in
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  his tracks because he realized, what, yeah, I think that. I
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  think that is why we're fighting. We didn't like the movie. We didn't
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  like the direction they took characters. We knew what we saw was crap.
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  I don't know how my grandma was probably in her seventies at the time,
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  you know, could could put up with this crap, but she did.
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  I think the highlight of the movie was actually the trailers before because I remember
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  seeing a preview from for a movie called Dark City, which ended up being
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  one of my favorite movies of that year. I was terrified of the trailer
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  as a kid, and that's something that really stood with me. I remember
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  just kind of talking to my grandma. I was like, this is this
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  is really frightening. I remember her saying, it's just a movie. You
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  know, it's just a movie preview. It's not real. But that if
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  that's the best memory of this movie, that is just showing how awful Mortal
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  Kombat Annihilation is. That all being said, there's something about this movie that
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  reminds me of two things. First of all, another movie from nineteen ninety
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  seven, Batman and Robin Wrtch Kilt the Dinosaurs, coming off the huge success
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  of Batman Forever from nineteen ninety five. It's actually now that I'm talking about
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  there's a lot of parallels between these two franchises. You know, Batman was
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  at its peak probably in the mid nineties, and then by ninety seven maybe
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  it lost some of its you know luster that that was, you know,
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  kids found other properties to attach to, and I think the same thing happened
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  with Mortal Kombat. And they both got sequels in nineteen ninety seven, and
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  they're both disastrous films that took really weird turns for the franchise. But again
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  that being said, both of these movies now as an adult, I actually
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  kind of enjoy watching There's something weirdly satisfying watching these disastrous films. It's that
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  old adage of you know, it's so bad it's good, and I really
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  actually do feel that way with Mortal Combat Annihilation. The cheese it is so
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  cheesy, and corny, and it's like the first movie. Though it's quick,
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  there's not much story development. This is a movie you could just have
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  on in the background, have a few beers, hang out with some friends,
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  and just laugh at how stupid it is. The other thing I think
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  I could compare it to is pro wrestling, specifically mid nineties pro wrestling.
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  So before the likes of you know, the Rock and Mankind and Stone Cold
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  Steve Austin and that whole attitude era of pro wrestling, there was an era
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  called the New Generation. And I grew up with this era of pro wrestling,
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  and there was a lot of corny, cheesy laugh both characters. You
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  know, there's Joint, the Clown. There was Duke the Dumpster, Drowsy.
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  I mean, there was a guy who was literally a garbage man who
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  is a pro wrestler. There was a guy who called the Goon, who
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  was an ex hockey player. You know what is like his way? It
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  looks like a half half man hab What is a halfman Hastar? What do
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  you call him? Mantar Mantar. That's right, there's something I don't know
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  that I can relate to with the cheese factor of that mid nineties wrestling with
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  Mortal Kombat. Again, there's there's another connection with that because Midway, who
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  you know, made the Mortal Kombat games. They made some wrestling games.
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  WrestleMania, the arcade game from the mid nineties has a Mortal Kombat feel to
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  it. So I don't know. I think it's just all of that that
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  nostalgia. Even even the fight with my brother, I'm sort of nostalgic for
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  it. That makes me have an appreciation for this movie. That all being
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  said, this is one of the worst films of all time. I have
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  to let you guys know, Mortal Kombat Annihilation is actual trash. As I
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  mentioned, they recast, you know, majority of the main characters that we
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  grew to appreciate in that original Mortal Kombat movie. They're gone. The film
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  looks cheap. I don't know how it looks so cheap because the movie that
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  came out two years prior, with probably less advanced special effects and as we
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  saw as I read earlier, a smaller production budget. Somehow this movie just
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  looks cheap. They tried to use CGI. They tried to use way too
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  much CGI. And if you listen to the last episode I talked about how
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  ninety CGI if it's not Jurassic Park or Starship Troopers. For the most part,
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  ninety CGI looks like actual shit in a twenty twenty four you know mindset
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  and this is the shittiest of all the shit. The CGI that they use
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  in this film is laughably bad. It's something that I think a high school
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  student could create today, and this is in a big budget film. I
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  think another thing that this movie tried to do it tried to introduce way too
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  many characters. Now, of course, the Mortal Kombat roster had expanded by
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  this point. You know, you had Mortal Kombat one, two, three,
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  you had a few special editions of these games, and then, as
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  I mentioned, Mortal Kombat four was out around this time, so the roster
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  in the games were bigger. But you can't you can't put too many characters
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  in one movie. Again. You learn that just from that Batman and Robin
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  movie. You know, I hate to go back to that film, but
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  again, you have too many villains in that movie. You can't focus.
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  There's a lot of problems with that movie. But one of the problems is,
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  you know, you have too many characters, so you can't focus on
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  anything. Characters in this movie are just introduced out of nowhere, and then
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  they're killed off out of nowhere. There is one scene in this movie that
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  I felt a little tingle in my nether region. If you will swing swing,
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  there's like a full on cat fight in mud involving Sonya, Blade and
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  Molina. And he introduced a character like Melina, who's such an important character
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  in the MK franchise, and she's just introduced, has a fight dies.
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  There's no purpose for her to be in this movie. They just you know,
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  oh, she was a character in the game. We got put her
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  in there. Kill her off, but put her in there. The character
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  of Johnny Cage, as I mentioned in the last episode, really really struck
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  a chord with my father. He really liked that character. As I mentioned,
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  I don't think he ever saw Mortal Kombat Annihilation, but I know what
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  they tried to do with the character of Jack's. Jackson's a character that had
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  a brief little cameo in the original movie. But they recast him, of
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  course they did, and they tried to take that humor that Johnny Cage had,
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  which felt really organic. That was the big word that I used last
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  week. Organic. It felt organic that film, it didn't feel forced.
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  The jokes in this movie, particularly the ones with jacks, just don't work.
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  I mean, we're talking the cheesiest of cheese with the humor from this
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  film. Yeah, now that's what I'm talking about. The fight choreography,
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  it's fine. You know, you get Robin Choue in there, who plays
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  Luke Kang, he's you know him and the girl who plays Katana. Really,
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  I think the only two characters, you know, the actors that actually
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  return from the franchise. And you know, Robin Cho's a great martial artist,
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  so any fight that he's in looks good. Unfortunately, it's not shot
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  well. It's an ugly looking movie. The locations are ugly. A lot
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  of scenes just in like a desert land, and then anytime they try and
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  do anything extravagant, it just looks cheap. It looks like green screen,
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  it looks like something like I said, you know, a YouTuber could create
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  today and look even better. In fact, there are YouTube videos of Mortal
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  Kombat fights that look monumentally better than anything we got with Mortal Kombat Annihilation.
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  I think for me, though, the biggest flaw in this movie is the
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  dude who plays Shao Kan, the Emperor, the main bad guy of the
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  Mortal Kombat franchise, and what we talked about at the beginning of this podcast
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  when he made that brief cameo at the end of Mortal Kombat. I want
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  to say that was Frank Welker's voice, the famous voice actor, because it
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  sounds just like doctor Claude. But it's like this big, menacing looking character.
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  And what we caught with Mortal Kombat Annihilation, this might be the worst
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  actor ever. Father le Merger has is under a tame and glorious what do
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  you call him? Manar the person who plays Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat Annihilation,
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  And you know what, maybe he's done better stuff. It could be
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  a problem with the direction, could be a problem with the screenwriting, but
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  whatever they created altogether, you know, the acting, the screenwriting, the
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  directing is probably the biggest embarrassment for any big budget film ever released that I've
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  personally seen. So you got a horrible bad guy, you got laughable in
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  a bad way, jokes, cheap looking costumes and sets and visuals, all
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  that combined with a just this plot that really, if you break it down,
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  makes absolute zero sense. At least there was some structure with that first
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  Mortal Kombat movie. You know, I wanted a little bit more story with
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  that, but it made sense. It's, you know, it was a
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  tournament bad guys. When bad things happen. In Mortal Kombat Annihilation, it's
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  it's just shit. It's just plained and simple. It's actual shit. You
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  just have to watch the movie. I do recommend this movie because it's like
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  a study. It's, you know, watch the movie to figure out how
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  to make bad movies. Let's introduce night Wolf, you know, one of
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  the coolest characters from Mortal Komba three. Oh, he's just gone. He's
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  just there. He teaches an animalty and then he's gone. Okay, good
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  seeing, and night Wolf, you're not gonna help out in the final battle.
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  This all being said, I would much rather watch this movie than what
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  we got in twenty twenty one with the new iteration of the Mortal Kombat franchise.
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  And that is gonna be a different story for a whole different day,
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  because I did not expect me to go on rambling about Mortal Kombat Annihilation for
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  this long. But we will eventually get I don't know if it's gonna be
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  the next episode, but we will eventually get to Mortal Kombat from twenty twenty
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  and why I think that is the worst of the franchise. I don't know
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  why I watch shitty movies. I just I guess I'm a masochist, all
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  right, So long, everybody have a good one. This has been film
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  real. Bye Bye Tosty