by Nikk Nelson, Cinematic Maniac, Staff Writer

It’s been interesting living through the almost total collapse of shopping malls. The mall always seemed like one of those things that was never going away. I mean, where else could you buy six pounds of gummy worms, a pewter dragon clutching a crystal ball, and a pair of nunchucks pretty much all at once? There was never a better Saturday in 1992 than waking up to your parents, who were hungover from Friday night, shoving a bunch of money at you and telling you to go to the mall. For a very brief, magical time, Wichita had three malls: Towne East, Towne West, and The Wichita Mall. If you wanted to get rid of my older brother and I for a day, any of them would do. Only two places in the mall really mattered to us: the movie theater and the arcade. Walking into Aladdin’s Castle, putting ten dollars in the exchange machine, and filling up my pockets with tokens made me feel like a god. The only better feeling was running a game like Street Fighter II.

Street Fighter II was huge. Everyone played it. And if you were good at it? It was like being a rock star. I was never as good as the older kids at the arcade but I remember watching my brother run chumps by the dozen. My tokens would be long gone and I would stand and watch him play for hours. He would still have tokens left over when it was time to go home. We got a Super Nintendo for Christmas one year, along with Street Fighter II, and I practiced and practiced and practiced, hoping one day I would finally beat my big brother. I vividly remember him coming home from school one day and me, all cocky, had the game fired up, waiting to challenge him and he said, “No one plays that anymore. There’s this new game…” He then proceeded to tell me about Mortal Kombat. 

It sounded made up. Or, like a dream. No way any of this could be true, I thought. They would never allow it. There’s a guy that freezes stuff? And he what? He rips your head off and your spinal cord is still attached? And another guy takes off his mask, revealing just a skull underneath, and he sets you on fire with his breath? This can’t be real. That Monday at school, it was all anyone was talking about—and by anyone, I mean all the pre-pubescent boys. I totally lied and pretended I played it so I wouldn’t feel left out. That weekend, I was adamant. I didn’t care that my brother didn’t want me tagging along with his friends, I was going to play that goddamn game—"MOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!” Mom <hungover> “Goddammit, Loren. Take your brother with you.”

There was a line outside Aladdin’s Castle all the way down to Mr. Bulky’s. It took an hour just to get close enough to see the screen and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Violence in a videogame on a level I’d never seen before. I thought it was against the law. I kept expecting an adult to show up and shut everything down. Blood. Bones. Fire. Spikes. And, holy shit, a guy that looks like the lightning guy from Big Trouble in Little China and a guy that looks almost exactly like Bruce Lee and another that looks like Jean-Claude Van Damme?! I was in love. It took another hour for me to get a turn. I lost immediately. But it was worth it. The guy that beat me knew all of the fatalities so I had the awe-inspiring pleasure of watching my Liu Kang get his head exploded by his Raiden’s lightning bolt. Remember, this was pre-internet. The way you learned the d-pad/button combinations for special moves and things like fatalities was in the school cafeteria, handed down to you on a piece of wide-ruled paper hastily torn out of a spiral notebook and stained with peanut butter and jelly.

Our parents lost their goddamn minds. This was the era of Beavis and Butt-Head getting blamed for a kid setting his house on fire and congressional hearings about obscene song lyrics, so of course Mortal Kombat and violent videogames were right in the middle of the controversy. It was one of the main videogames, if not the main videogame, that lead to the creation of the videogame ratings system, similar to what the MPAA does for films, that is still in use today. I was lucky. My parents had one conversation with me after they read an article about Mortal Kombat in Time or Newsweek or something and once they confirmed I knew the difference between real violence and fake violence, they trusted me to have my own judgment, more or less, around the games I played and the movies I watched. My house very quickly became a refuge for friends with stricter parents. So, when we heard that there was going to be a Mortal Kombat movie, we couldn’t have been more excited. That game was part of our way of life and we were going to see it on the big screen. Life couldn’t possibly get any better than that. To this day, I remember the chills I got watching the trailer, back when trailers still had Donald LaFontaine or the LaFontaine-esque ‘In a world…’ guy: “In each of us, there burns the fury of a warrior…”

I didn’t get to see Mortal Kombat (1995) in theaters. My older brother had moved out of our mom’s house and in with our dad by then so I didn’t have anyone to take me. I totally lied and pretended I saw it so I wouldn’t feel left out at school. When it was finally released on VHS, you better believe I rented it and watched it to death. The taste of thin crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut and this movie are forever entwined in my mind. I’ve owned it on VHS, DVD, bluray, and digital. Whenever I’m in the mood to think about the early 90’s, it’s one of the first things I put on. That New Line Cinema opening and soundtrack title track hits “MORTAL KOOOOMBAAAT!!!” <90’s techno ensues> and it feels like home. Watching it yet again, this time preparing this retrospective, I made myself take off the rose-colored glasses a little bit. 

It does have a few problematic elements that have not aged well. Even though I love Christopher Lambert and thought as a kid that his voice was super cool and fit the Raiden character like a glove, obviously, that part probably shouldn’t have gone to a French actor. However, casting unknown Hong Kong actor Robin Shou as Liu Kang kickstarted his career. So, it could have been worse, question mark? There’s also a very racist moment courtesy of Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage where he tells Liu Kang (Shou) to carry his luggage on to a boat. Liu Kang responds by taking Cage’s money and then dropping one of the bags off the dock and into the water. So, progress, question mark? Other than that, it holds up, especially as a martial arts movie. Most of the CGI effects are noticeably ancient but there’s nostalgia there for me, I have to admit. The costumes, especially Goro, remain impressive and the fight sequences are still great. Johnny Cage versus Scorpion and Liu Kang versus Reptile are especially well done. And, for the first time, I noticed a really cool New Line Cinema moment. In the Liu Kang versus Sub-Zero fight, Sub-Zero runs up and backflips off a wall, and it looks exactly like a similar moment in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. 

Mortal Kombat was a cajunga hit, raking in almost $125 million at the box office, So, of course, especially given the cliffhanger ending of the first film, there had to be a sequel. Few experiences in my cinema-going life disappointed me more than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997). It was my buddy Luke’s birthday and he of course chose it as his birthday movie for all of us to see and we were so stoked to see it. The night started out kind of shitty. I went to rent the first Mortal Kombat from Hollywood Video so we could watch it again before going to see the new one and it was of course checked out. Do you see what life was like for us, you damn kids with your motorbikes and your stream anything, anywhere, ever, way of life? We all had the movie memorized anyway, so no big deal. Let’s do this. I don’t know that I ever before or since got as angry watching a movie in a movie theater than I did watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. 

By this time, Mortal Kombat was enjoying continued success in arcades and on consoles with Mortal Kombat 3. But not with me. I still loved the world of Mortal Kombat, I thought Mortal Kombat II was one of the best videogames ever made, but I hated Mortal Kombat 3. In my opinion, it was crowded with way too many characters and crowded in an uncreative way e.g. let’s take the Scorpion/Sub-Zero character, change the color of the costume six different times, and call it six different characters. And, it introduced a ‘run’ mechanic that needlessly complicated the execution of fatalities. And even the charm of a fatality started to get ridiculous with the introduction of animalities, babalities, friendship “nice” fatalities, etc. To me, it was a world that seemed way too bloated. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation looked at that bloated world and said, “Let’s do exactly that.”

Everything I hated about Mortal Kombat 3 ended up in that movie. It has way too many characters, too much plot to manage, and not enough runtime to manage it. Nothing makes sense at the expense of everything that’s supposed to be cool about a Mortal Kombat movie. Namely, the fight sequences. They are dreadful. The only decent one in my opinion is Sandra Hess as Sonya Blade versus Cyrax. Sandra is probably the best martial artist in the movie but also probably the worst actor. And she has stiff competition on that front, pun intended. In the parking lot after the movie, I railed against it. I burned it worse than an original Scorpion fatality. I remember all of my friends cracking up as I went on a Dennis Leary style unhinged rant lambasting this piece of shit movie until there was a lull and I heard my friend Luke say quietly, “I liked it.” Luke, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I shit all over your birthday movie, buddy. I should have kept my opinion to myself and not compromised the festive spirit of the evening. 

Watching it again now, it’s fucking funny. It so obviously is not meant to be but it really is one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ guilty pleasures. Did they learn their lesson about Christopher Lambert? Fuck no. They cast James Remar. I love me some James Remar but he is utterly laughable as Raiden and there’s even a reverse Gandalf the white-ing transformation he goes through where he’s supposed to be younger and instead of hiring a younger actor they just cut his hair short and dyed it blonde. Brian Thompson brings some over the top Night Slasher in Cobra (1986) energy to his turn as Shao Khan and I’m still uncontrollably attracted to Musetta Vander as Sindel.

Still, to this day, the deal breaker for me happens immediately. Not only does Linden Ashby, my favorite actor in the original, not return as Johnny Cage (Linden, if you’re reading this, you were the bomb in Spy Game), but Johnny Cage immediately dies in the opening of Annihilation. They try so hard to make a special effects bonanza but nothing works. The CGI is somehow worse than the original and they use it so so much. Regardless, the nostalgia has never left me and I cannot wait to see the new Mortal Kombat (2021). I hope the kick-ass trailer delivers on its promises.