Mortal Kombat

I believe I was 12 years old when the first Mortal Kombat came out at the arcades, I would stand in lines meticulously destroying my competition. Watching this movie brought back memories that I hadn't thought about since I was young . To make this short, The nostalgia was perfect, they had all the old champions with a few new mixed in..The beginning was awesome, I really thought it was going to be a different Mortal Kombat movie, However, the beginning is the only drama you see after that its all fights. WHICH WERE AWESOME, but for people looking to see some sort of drama or decent script writing it falls very short.

The good: the story mostly works, the characterizations are insanely good (from costumes to personalities), and the movie is as gory and brutal as needed, actually way funnier than expected, and the CGI for the powers really great.

The bad: the story is a bit messy, the characters motivations and reactions not always 100% natural and/or coherent, and the action and fights (with the exception of the ones with Scorpion) are fine, but the choreography and/or filming is kind of weak (easy to improve with a bigger budget and more talent on board).

I don't really play Mortal Kombat or even follow the concept behind it. But even so, I enjoyed this movie. The fighting choreography is top notch! The costume, the cgi is also worth the hype. I love that they decided to make it rated R. But there's also some things that bothered me, like some bad cinematography, cheesy dialogues, and the somehow boring protagonist. The act 3 of the movie really felt rushed like the writers only had 5 minutes left to finish the script. I hope the sequel will have a better act 3.

Great action and fight choreography as was to be expected from a movie with this title, special effects regarding characters and their abilities were also very well done especially considering the budget constraints this movie had. Storyline was predictable from the beginning and the writing itself isn't gonna win any awards, characters say their catchphrases from the games in key moments of the film, however, one big surprise for me was the character of Kano. He was the biggest and funniest comic relief character in the whole movie, constantly throwing jokes and insults at other characters. Probably one of the funniest, self aware movie characters I've seen in a long time.

There are also weird editing jumps in the movie, one moment you're looking at characters interacting and in the next you're looking at something completely different. The movie suffers from a few of these, but given this is the directors first foray into the world of movie making, I'll take that L, most of the other important things were handled with care,

If you know what you're getting and your expectations are right, this movie isn't gonna let you down with violence and gore, if you're expecting more then it's gonna be a letdown.

Great visuals, excellent fight scenes, good choices on most of the cast (e.g Kano, Scorpion, Sub-Zero) and just a fun movie overall. If you are familiar with the game, you will like it.

Keep in mind that it's a trilogy, so this first film tries to add some background! Luckily there's not much time spent on meaningless conversations and the scenes get into the action parts faster than you would expect. Runtime of 1h 50min is works well; you will not be bored.

Fight scenes get more rewarding halfway through, closer to the game style.

Also, the idea to rotate this film's story around the rivalry between scorpion and sub-zero worked; it gave some background. Maybe the lead protagonist is not that interesting compared to the other characters but he seems necessary to keep the story moving forward.

So, this first film does the job and although not everyone from the game is in it, I m sure all the other favorite characters will appear in the next 2 films and I m looking forward to that.

6,5/10 good effort bringing the game on film screen.