In short: Mortal Kombat (2021)

There’s really no excuse for a film with a budget this big to be as dreadful as this adaptation of the traditionally gory fighting game series directed by Simon McQuoid turns out to be on a technical level. Let’s start with the script: apparently believing that every viewer will have a sound base in the lore of the Mortal Kombat games, the film doesn’t even bother to explain what the motives of the good guys and the bad guys are (or indeed who the good guys and the bad guys are – am I supposed to root for “Earthworld” or for “Outworld”, and why?). There’s some stuff about a prophecy concerning a magical martial arts tournament “Earthworld” has apparently been losing nine times in a row, and where a tenth win would allow “Outworld” to invade (why? how? who knows?), but people carrying the “Blood of Hanzo” (an old-time Japanese guy killed off in the prologue) will save the day.

Some guy played by the woefully underused Joe Taslim who has been murdering people for centuries – and is the Hanzo killer - explains that he is no longer Bi-Han but now Sub-Zero, without the film ever having bothered to actually call him Bi-Han (or to explain why I should care about his name one way or the other). Characters are introduced and killed off in the next scene. There’s no definition to the narrative at all, everyone involved apparently believing that you can get through mainstream effects cinema by simply mumbling something about the Hero’s Journey and ignoring everything else, despite now more than a decade of blockbusters that do actually give the impression of being made by filmmakers who care for what they are doing.

On the direction level, this is ridiculously bad: action and effects sequences show no creativity and little style, and everything around them looks overdesigned and underthought. Once things and people don’t explode in ways I’ve seen much better done on TV budgets, the director proves he has not even the tiniest idea how to direct a dialogue scene, or what a reaction shot is for. This is indeed the braindead, artless nonsense too many mainstream film critics pretend all effects heavy mainstream cinema is; it also manages to look surprisingly cheap and ugly.