Review: Mortal Kombat 2 – Player 2 ready

Directed by Simon McQuoid
Starring Adeline Rudolph, Karl Urban, Jessica McNamee, Martyn Ford, Josh Lawson 

6/10

Computer game adaptations possibly have a lower win-loss ratio than adaptations of Disney theme rides. The good are precious few, and the bad are horrifically numerous, especially for fighting games. Can the sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat break the curse?

As the tournament between Earthrealm and Outworld draws near, we see the fate of those realms that are conquered by Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). Snatched from her fallen father’s side, the conquered princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) is trained to fight in the tournament to expand Outworld’s dominion. Meanwhile, Earthrealm recruits to replace its fallen heroes, and destiny sets its sights on reluctant washed-out action star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban).

The first Mortal Kombat reboot had a lot of setup to do in terms of lore, setting, and characters. It wasn’t entirely helped by introducing a brand new creation to act as the point of view character for the audience, therefore having to establish their backstory as well as everything else. The sequel compensates for this (perhaps a little harshly) by focusing on two characters that are familiar to fans of the game and finally showing the tournament that the last film spent its run time building up.

So with this adjustment, and all the groundwork laid out by the previous film, does this make a great sequel? Well…hell no…but Karl Urban certainly is great and does a lot to lift the film by his screen presence. Most of the best moments belong to him (with a few stolen by Josh Lawson) as he brings life to a washed-out action star catapulted into a mystic martial arts tournament set across multiple dimensions. From the tongue-in-cheek look at a VHS action film from his glory days to his wasteland punch-up against Baraka (CJ Bloomfield), Urban manages to deliver.

Additional kudos to the stunt team for grounding Cage’s fighting style in ’80s-’90s era genre-appropriate moves that also match the game. It’s fantastic to see those moves parodied in the “action film” sequence and then given a more modern and fluid take in the later fights. In fact, the fight choreography team did a fine job of incorporating the moves and the feel of the fighters from the game. The staging can occasionally let these fights down, with some of the digital stages not allowing the actors enough of an environment to interact with. As such, some of the fights feel a little repetitive, especially when these sets are recycled for multiple fights (ironically, the worst offender in this regard is a physical set).

The main issue is the over-stacked character roster makes the story a little unfocused. There’s a lot to cover between the main two story arcs and the host of characters and locations associated with each. By shifting between both Kitana and Cage, we really don’t have enough time to breathe and develop characters.

Still, go in with the right spirit, and there’s some fun to be had here, but Mortal Kombat 2 is certainly an uneven and imperfect film. Fans of the fighting game may get more out of it than the general public, but even they should go in with lower expectations.

DAVID O’CONNELL