Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins

Released by Turner Home Video and produced by Threshold Entertainment, "Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins" is a very peculiar 90's relic made to cash in on the video-rental market craze and the ever-growing popularity of its video-game source material. And while I will admit it does have a certain nostalgic "so bad, it's kinda good" charm for me as a man who actually rented the the VHS tape repeatedly from my local Video King as a kid... it's a pretty sad and obvious gimmick release looking back. Essentially an overlong commercial made to promote a massive media franchise.

1995 was very much the year of "Mortal Kombat"- not only ushering in the release of the third game in the series, but also seeing the launch of various merchandise and tie-in media, including toys, a live-tour based on the games and the incredibly popular theatrical film adaptation by Paul W.S. Anderson. "The Journey Begins" is essentially a very crafty, trendy cash-in on the "Mortal Kombat" tidal-wave, produced as more of a marketing piece to promote the live-action feature than as an honest film in itself. Methodically pieced together to have as much appeal as possible without actually making much effort.

The short film (accompanied on the original tape by some other franchise-related content to pad out the runtime) is presented as an "official prequel" to the feature film adaptation. It revolves around the characters of Liu Kang, Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage as they board a rickety old ship on their way to the Mortal Kombat tournament, in addition to some early adventures they encounter upon arrival. On their adventure, they learn the fundamentals of the tournament and what it represents, and we are also given a bit of backstory on several characters that the film adaptation had to leave under- developed due to the plethora of characters featured. So we finally learn more about fan-favorites like Scorpion, Sub-Zero and even Goro.

Problem is... the short doesn't work as either a prequel or as a standalone project, and it's reliant solely on trendy, dated effects to snag a quick buck from kids. It's a wholly cynical affair. Despite billing itself as a "prequel" to the movie, it's barely connected. Characters not only look, sound and act differently... but even the story itself is radially altered at times. What makes it all the more confusing is that this is supposed to take place BEFORE the events of the film. (It's a "prequel" after all...) And yet, it portrays the same basic events we see in the first act of the movie. Huh? OK, so maybe it's better viewed as a sort-of child-friendly remake of the film? ...Nah! It doesn't work that way either, because it's only presenting part of the story and lacks resolution. (And that's not spoiling anything at all... they advertise it as such.) So on one hand... it fails as a prequel to the film. And on the other... it fails at being its own thing. Whose the target audience supposed to be, again? And I say that knowing I rented this at least two or three times growing up. But looking back... I can't see why I did that.

A big part of the push of this release was also the then cutting- edge combination of classic 2D and modern 3D animation techniques. This was one of the first releases to really push the fact that the filmmakers used motion-capture technology- a technique that allowed real-world movement from actors and stuntmen to be mapped directly onto digital models. And, yeah... I guess it was kinda cool seeing a direct-to- video movie that incorporated about 10 minutes or so of purely- digital fight scenes, in addition to mapping 2D hand-drawn characters over 3D backgrounds. But the problem is... that's all the short really has going for it. The writing is incredibly shoddy, and characters are all pretty unlikable as presented here, with some of the lamest gags thrown in for cheap laughs and a lot of really cringe-worthy moments. A far-cry from the excellent casting and good humor of the movie this is supposed to precede. So the animation is to the service of really sub-par material, and thus feels flat and pointless. There's also the fact that the film came out at a time where digital effects were still in their infancy, so within a year of release, they looked instantly dated.

This is also a very cheap experience despite the motion-capture and 3D animation technology being presented. Outside of sequences involving those techniques... the rest of the film looks rushed and patched together. Animations are often repeated 2, 3, 4 or more times. There's a lot of lazy padding with artificial slow-motion that's created by repeating frames and adding a vague blur-effect. And any time more than a few characters on screen, you'll notice that the majority of them won't move, or that they'll only move one at a time.

Still... for fans of the overall media franchise titan that is "Mortal Kombat", I'd say it's worth watching once for laughs. Don't get me wrong... "The Journey Begins" is terrible from any conceivable standpoint. But it's still a piece of "Mortal Kombat" history, and it's got a certain kitschy charm to it, especially if you grew up watching it or the other movies and cartoons associated with it. Also, it has the wonderful Jim Cummings providing several of the voices. So there's also that.

I give it a terrible but very mildly entertaining 2 out of 10.

Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins is pretty much a fatality to any good hope for a animated series of Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat is one of the biggest successful game series in the 90s but this film was pretty much a let down.

It is a "Prequel" To the event of the first film but it just don't hold up.

It would had appear that the writers clearly wanted to have a cash in on the success of Mortal Kombat.

The animation is a cross between Hand drawn and CGI mixing the two together make it looks down right awful the characters are clearly hand drawn as they are like they were paste together on the screen.

The film is just downright boring from the story to the animation Jennifer Hale, Jim Cummings and Jeff Bennett are amazing voice actors but they couldn't save the film from it's boring script to the downright God Awful animation.

Do yourself a favor and never watch this film it just boring that needs The MK voice say "FINISH HIM"!

I give Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins an 2 out of 10

Those are the only three words needed to describe this abomination, "Ugly Anime Wannabe." The only thing worse is when it goes into poor quality CJI. Now the fact that it was made in 95 is no excuse for that. Toy Story same out in the same year. As for the non CJI animation, well Little Norse Prince was made in 1968, 27 years before MK:TJB and the animation in LNP is still a hundred times better. So knowing that the CJI is poor quality for it's time and the animation would have been poor quality if it was made 30 years ago, IF you can forgive that, how is the story? Well it is competing with the CJI and animation to see what can be the worst. You get a bit of info about why they are going to the island. Raiden has 3 boring flashbacks all in that terrible quality CJI and it ends with them going to compete. So no tournament. Just 3 boring flashbacks and one or two badly animated fights. As I said before, Ugly Anime Wannabe.

I didn't even know that they had made an animated movie for the "Mortal Kombat" franchise, before now in 2025 as I happened to stumble upon it by random chance. And of course I opted to give it a fair chance. Not that I was harboring any grand expectations as the older "Mortal Kombat" movies were pure cheese.

The storyline was actually fair enough. Nothing outstanding or innovative, nor did writer Kevin Droney bring much of anything new to the franchise.

With "Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins" being an animated movie, having a good voice cast ensemble is an important thing. And luckily, I would say, the voice acting was actually fair.

But that leads us on to the eyesore that is "Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins". The art style, both in the drawn parts and the CGI animated parts. Let's start with the worst of the two; the CGI animated stuff. The CGI animated parts were insanely crappy. It looked like something that was discarded from a PC game in the early 1990s for being too lousy. It was so bad that I was laughing a lot whenever they used the awful CGI. "Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins" also has ordinary drawn animated art style, however, don't get your hopes or expectations up. It doesn't look good. Again, it looks like something that was discarded from a 1980s animated cartoon series for being too shoddy.

"Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins" was abysmal, no doubt about it. And no wonder I had never heard about it, because this animosity deserves to remain buried.

Don't waste 39 minutes of your life on this. Not even if you are a diehard fan of the "Mortal Kombat" games or movies. Trust me, this is just simply not worth the effort.

My rating of director Joseph Francis's 1995 animated eyesore "Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins" lands on a one out of ten stars.

I'm still trying to understand what they were thinking when they realize it would be a good idea to publish this. Those changes of graphics modes made my head crash!!

I'm a huge fan of MK saga, since the first video game but this show is really disappointed. More than Annihilation movie!!!

Fight secuences are just awfuls even for the 90s , there were other animated actions shows and movies which had very good movements! They try to impress with 3d animation but it didn't help to much just because the models weren't very good, comparing them with others from other games they lack modeling !!

Maybe it was a kind of experiment but theyd had to keep it for themselves!!