Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

I had seen bits n pieces of it in the early 2k on a cable tv channel.

Saw the entire movie recently on a fast forward mode.

This is the second installment in the Mortal Kombat film series based on the video game and the story picks up immediately after the last film ended.

While the first part was at least entertaining, this one is sheer lousy.

We have James Remar's body double doing all the wire fu stunts and unlike Christopher Lambert, James Remar got bored with his long hair n white monk gown. He does a crop cut n wears a designer waist coat n military boots.

I found Sandra Hess as Sonya Blade more attractive than the previous part's gal.

Talisa Soto who played Kitana is only 4 years younger to Musetta Vander who played Kitana's mother. I found Musetta more attractive than Talisa.

Brian Thompson as the main villain is no match to Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" is an Action - Fantasy movie and the sequel of "Mortal Kombat", in which we watch some martial arts warriors trying to save the Earth by an invasion but they have only six days to do it.

I have to admit that since I had already watched the previous movie I had high expectations by this one and unfortunately I was disappointed by it. I did not like that Christopher Lambert was changed by James Remar on the role of Lord Raiden and the visual effects which were simply horrible. The direction which was made by John R. Leonetti, it was below average and I believe that he did not reach his potential. To sum up, I have to say that "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" is not a good movie and even if you are a fan of "Mortal Kombat" I am sure that you will be disappointed by it.

I have been a huge fan of the MK videogames practically since the beginning, and I really enjoyed the first Mortal Kombat movie. It wasn't a work of art, but it was fun, funny, colorful and had some great fight scenes. Anihilation, though, suffers from an extreme case of sequelitis, with about half of the characters re-cast, all of which were a step down, a dumb story line, wooden acting, effects that were less advanced than the ones in the first movie, and a feeling of blah pervading the whole thing. Perhaps the worst thing is the fight at the end with the two really bad CG "animalities", a cheesy idea from the game that should have stayed in the game. Liu Kang's dragon looked like a pear with wings and a tail. Definitely avoid this one if you wish to keep your glowing memories of the arcade game intact.

I'll only say one word to this movie! Inferior, compared to the first movie! The worst thing about the movie is the dialogue which sickens me! Whole things are garbage that can never be disposed of!!!

The problem with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation isn't that it's stupid, with no significant plot, dialogue or characters. That is undebatably true of Annihilation, but that was also true with the first Mortal Kombat movie, and that was a great movie. The problem is the HUGE let down in the martial arts and special effects scenes. MK had some terrific fight scenes, such as the brilliant Cage/Scorpion fight in the forest, the great Liu Kang/SubZero fight, and the cool finale with Shang Tsung. Annihilation didn't have any fight scenes up to the quality of those three, many of the fight scenes made no sense, and the finale was horrible. In addition, some things in Annihilation I would really like an explanation for:

• Why did Raiden dress up like Aladdin half way through the movie? Was looking like a complete dork part of becoming mortal? And where was Christopher Lambert, anyway?

• What was the third test? Where did that Wolf-guy go? What happened to Sub-Zero?

• Why did they do that stupid thing with Jax' bionic arms? Stupid movies should admit they are stupid movies. Stupid movies which try to have serious elemends become bad movies.

• Same deal with Katana's mother.

• What was point of that huge monster that came out of nowhere to attack Sonya, then immediately went back to it's whole when Jax hit it on the head? Was it a whack-a-mole?

• How is it that Sonya and Jade began to fight IN A DESERT and they immediately fell into a mud pit?

• Why did Smoke maticulously break every window in that random building before fighting Sonya and Jax?

• What was the point of having Liu Kang turn into a dragon? He just turned into a human again, without having done anything effective as a dragon. How was that useful?

• Why didn't they spend more then $80 on the special effects for that dragon? I could do better then that with miniatures and clay animation.

• How is it that this movie could have been made so badly, with such bad cinematography and such pathetic martial arts effects, after the first one was so good?