PLOT: Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a washed-up action hero from the nineties, is chosen to join the champions of Earthrealm as they try to win a tournament against the evil Shao Kahn who, if he wins, will become Earth’s new merciless ruler.
REVIEW: 2021’s Mortal Kombat was a movie I liked more in theory than execution. As someone who grew up with the games, as well as the nineties movies (for both better and worse), I liked the fact that it was being made as a large-scale feature with an R-rating, but the finished film just didn’t do much for me. While many classic characters made their way into the movie, none of them had much personality, and the film was surprisingly dull and by-the-numbers — although it was a significant box office hit despite its simultaneous HBO Max release. Ask any fan, though, and they’ll tell you exactly what the movie was missing — Johnny Cage.
Thankfully, the same creative team who made the first one, including director Simon McQuoid, has taken the opportunity to improve things, namely by introducing the character we all wanted to see the first time around, with Karl Urban well cast as Johnny Cage. Despite not being a martial artist, Urban has the personality needed for a film like this, with him bringing his chops and some much-needed attitude to a movie that — while still far from perfect — is a lot of fun. Like the first, it’s unapologetically R-rated, with lots of gore and F-bombs.
You probably don’t even need to have seen the first movie to get into the sequel, as many of the characters who were prominent previously have been sidelined. Most notably, this is true of Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, a controversial addition to the franchise, who was the lead in the last film but has a minor role this time. Other actors return, including Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Tadanobu Asano as Raiden, and Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, and while they’re around for much of the film, they support the movie’s two leads — Johnny and Adeline Rudolph, who plays Kitana.
In this sequel, Kitana is the daughter of a fallen king who has become Shao Kahn’s adopted daughter, but she is secretly allied with Earthrealm and looking to end his reign of terror. It’s really her and Cage’s respective journeys that take up much of the running time. At some point, Josh Lawson is also brought back into the story as Kano to liven things up a bit, with him being a fan favorite from the first movie. Hiroyuki Sanada, whose profile in the West has risen significantly since Shogun, also returns as Scorpion. It takes some time for him to show up, but he plays an important part in the last act.
As for the action — because it’s a video game adaptation, it can be forgiven for relying so significantly on VFX and wire work. Mortal Kombat isn’t Bloodsport — it’s fantasy, so the fact that Karl Urban may not be a real martial artist doesn’t really matter, with a lot of the moves Johnny Cage pulls off (being right from the game) not being in the realm of human ability. You either go with the fantastical vibe or you don’t. The fights are fine, but — and this is my main gripe with the movie — none of them stand out in a huge way. Johnny has a fun fight with Baraka, and there’s a cool match between Liu Kang and Kung Lao, but none of them really impress. I suppose we’ve been spoiled by too many great fight scenes in recent years, but part of me yearns for the comparatively simple fights from the first Paul W.S. Anderson Mortal Kombat movie, whose budget probably wouldn’t pay for the catering on this one.
As is the trend these days, Mortal Kombat II is getting an IMAX release, but to me this isn’t one of the movies that really benefits from the format. It does expand to the IMAX aspect ratio quite often, but in an irregular, distracting way. During the build-up to the Johnny/Baraka fight, the aspect ratio opens up in a dramatic way, only to immediately revert back in the next shot. I also saw this fight scene in the conventional format at CinemaCon, and I found it came off better that way — so this is a rare occasion where a trip to the IMAX screen may not really be worth it.
While Mortal Kombat II isn’t quite the knockout follow-up some of us might have been hoping for, it does improve on the last film, and is night and day compared to the last time we got a Mortal Kombat II in theaters (folks of my generation can remember feeling ripped off when we saw Mortal Kombat: Annihilation). Karl Urban gets a great showcase here, and even if you can’t help but feel the action could have been a bit more memorable, I had a fun time watching it.