ABOUT THE MOVIE

Mortal Kombat is a 2021 American martial arts fantasy film based on the video game franchise of the same name and a reboot of the Mortal Kombat film series. The film stars Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Tadanobu Asano, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Chin Han, Joe Taslim, and Hiroyuki Sanada. It is directed by Simon McQuoid (in his feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Greg Russo and Dave Callaham and a story by Russo and Oren Uziel.

Following the critical and commercial failure of the 1997 film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, a third Mortal Kombat film languished in development hell for a period of nearly two decades. In late 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema (whose parent company acquired the franchise from Midway Games in 2009) began developing a new film, with Kevin Tancharoen serving as director from a script written by Uziel in the wake of their Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short film. James Wan was announced as a producer in August 2015 and McQuoid was hired as director in November 2016. Production took place at Adelaide Studios in Adelaide and at other locations in South Australia. Principal photography occurred from September to December 2019.
Mortal Kombat was released theatrically internationally on April 8, 2021, and was then released in the United States on April 23, simultaneously in theaters in 3D and on the HBO Max streaming service. The film received mixed reviews from critics and has grossed $66 million worldwide; it was also a streaming hit, becoming the most successful launch item in HBO Max's history.

Plot

In 17th-century Japan, Lin Kuei assassins led by the ruthless Bi-Han stage an attack to slaughter the warriors of the rival Shirai Ryu ninja clan led by Hanzo Hasashi. Hanzo kills the attackers before being killed by Bi-Han, resulting in his soul being condemned to the Netherrealm. Raiden, god of thunder, arrives and takes Hanzo's surviving infant daughter to safety.
In the present, the realm of Outworld has defeated Earthrealm in nine of ten deathmatch tournaments known as "Mortal Kombat"; if Earthrealm loses the tenth tournament, the rules state it will be conquered by Outworld. However, an ancient prophecy is uncovered, stating that the "blood of Hanzo Hasashi" will unite a new generation of Earthrealm's champions to prevent Outworld's victory. Aware of this, soul-eating sorcerer Shang Tsung, who has overseen the last nine victories, sends his strongest warriors to kill Earthrealm's champions, identified by a distinctive dragon mark, before the next tournament begins. One such champion, a former professional MMA fighter named Cole Young, is attacked alongside his family by Bi-Han, who now calls himself Sub-Zero. However, Special Forces Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs rescues the Youngs, directing them to find his partner, Sonya Blade, while he stays behind to fight off Sub-Zero; Sub-Zero freeze Jax's arms, shatters them, and leaves him for dead.
Cole tracks Sonya to her hideout, where she is interrogating a captive Australian mercenary named Kano. She reveals that she and Jax have been investigating Mortal Kombat's existence and that the dragon mark can be transferred to anyone who kills the original bearer. The hideout is attacked by Shang Tsung's reptilian assassin, Reptile, but a reluctant Kano kills him with Cole and Sonya's help. They then travel to Raiden's temple and meet current Earthrealm champions Liu Kang and Kung Lao before being brought to Raiden himself, who is critical of the newcomers. They are joined by Jax, who Raiden rescued and fitted with a set of mechanical arms. Shang Tsung attacks the temple alongside Sub-Zero and Mileena, but Raiden erects a shield to stave them off. While Sonya trains and encourages Jax to fight despite his condition, Cole and Kano train with Kang and Lao to unlock their "arcana", a special power unique to all dragon mark bearers.
During an argument with Lao, Kano awakens his arcana, the ability to shoot a laser out of his right eye. Cole is unable to awaken his despite his persistence. Disappointed with his lack of progress, Raiden allows Cole to return to his family, revealing that he is a descendant of Hasashi. Shang Tsung gathers Sub-Zero and his fellow warriors: Mileena, Reiko, Nitara, Goro, and Kano's former ally Kabal, intending to attack the temple. Kabal convinces him to defect and sabotage the shield, allowing the Outworlders to enter, during which Lao battles and kills Nitara while Jax awakens his arcana, which grants him incredible strength using his arms. Concurrently, the Youngs are attacked by Goro. When Cole's wife and daughter are threatened by the four-armed brute, his arcana awakens, giving him a suit of armor and a set of tonfas. With his newfound arcana, Cole kills Goro and helps repel the attack on the temple. Shang Tsung and Sub-Zero are infuriated when Raiden discloses Cole's bloodline before he teleports most of the Earthrealm fighters to the Void, a safe space between realms. Lao, however, sacrifices himself defending Cole from Sub-Zero before Shang Tsung takes his soul.
After mourning Lao's death, Cole proposes a plan to force Outworld's champions into single combat with Earthrealm's champions before neutralizing Sub-Zero together, forcing the tournament Shang Tsung tried to prevent. Raiden agrees, giving Cole Hanzo's kunai before transporting him and his allies to their targets. Kang and Jax kill Kabal and Reiko while Sonya kills Kano and acquires his dragon mark and her own arcana, the ability to fire purple energy blasts, which she uses to help Cole kill Mileena. However, Sub-Zero appears, having abducted Cole's family to lure him into a one-on-one fight. Initially overpowered, Cole's blood ends up on the kunai, releasing Hanzo from the Netherrealm as the vengeful specter Scorpion. Recognizing Cole as his descendant, Scorpion helps him overpower Sub-Zero and free Cole's family before immolating Sub-Zero with hellfire. Thanking Cole for freeing him and requesting that he look after the Hasashi bloodline, Scorpion departs as Raiden and the other champions arrive.
Shang Tsung also arrives, vowing revenge as he sends his champions' corpses back to Outworld before Raiden banishes him. Raiden declares his intention to train new warriors in preparation for the next tournament and assigns his current champions to recruit them. With this information, Cole departs for Los Angeles in search of Hollywood martial artist and movie star Johnny Cage.

Cast

Lewis Tan as Cole Young
Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade
Josh Lawson as Kano
Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden
Mehcad Brooks as Jax
Ludi Lin as Liu Kang
Chin Han as Shang Tsung
Joe Taslim as Bi-Han / Sub-Zero
Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi / Scorpion
Max Huang as Kung Lao
Sisi Stringer as Mileena
Matilda Kimber as Emily
Laura Brent as Allison
Daniel Nelson as Kabal (action and stunts)
Damon Herriman as Kabal (voice)
Angus Sampson as Goro (voice)
Nathan Jones as Reiko
Mel Jarnson as Nitara
Production
Development

James Wan and Todd Garner (both shown above) serve as producers for the reboot along with E. Bennett Walsh and director Simon McQuoid.
In 1997, Robin Shou's original Mortal Kombat contract was a three-picture deal,and Threshold Entertainment's production on a second sequel was initially scheduled to commence shortly after the release of Annihilation, but it was shelved due to Annihilation's poor reception and disappointing box-office performance. Attempts to produce a third film since then have remained stuck in development hell with numerous script rewrites and storyline, cast, and crew changes. A November 2001 poll on the official Mortal Kombat website hosted by Threshold asked fans which characters they believed would die in the third movie.The 2005 destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina greatly affected one of the film's planned shooting locations.In June 2009, a bankruptcy court lawsuit saw Lawrence Kasanoff suing Midway Games while mentioning that a third film was in the works. Warner Bros. Pictures (which became the parent of New Line Cinema in 2008, after over a decade of both operating as separate divisions of Time Warner) ended up purchasing most of Midway's assets, including Mortal Kombat.
In 2010, director Kevin Tancharoen released an eight-minute short film titled Mortal Kombat: Rebirth,made as a pitch to Warner Bros. Pictures of a reboot of the Mortal Kombat film franchise.In September 2011, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. announced that Tancharoen was hired to direct a new feature-length film from a screenplay by Mortal Kombat: Rebirth writer Oren Uziel,with the intention of aiming for an R rating.Shooting was expected to begin in March 2012 with a budget projected at between $40–50 millionand a release date of 2013.However, the project was ultimately delayed due to budget constraints, and Tancharoen began working on the second season of the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy until problems with the film had been sorted out, but he quit the film production in October 2013.
James Wan signed on as the film's producer in August 2015.Simon McQuoid was hired as director in November 2016, marking his feature directorial debut, with Greg Russo writing the script.McQuoid had turned down the offer initially, but ultimately signed on after reading Russo's script.Russo tweeted in February 2019 that the film's script was complete.In May 2019, it was announced that the film had entered pre-production and would be shot in South Australia,with a release date of March 5, 2021.Russo tweeted in July 2019 that the film would indeed have an R rating and that the games' Fatalities would "finally be on the big screen".
In April 2021, McQuoid revealed that the film came "quite close to the line" of getting an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association, saying in full, "What we had to be a bit careful of was... you can get to NC-17 territory pretty quick. It's different in a video game when it's not real human beings. When you move this across to reality, a different set of things start to happen in your mind, and you get rated slightly differently. So there were certain things that are in the game that would mean the film would be unreleasable. And none of us wanted that. … So we were balancing that stuff all the time. And there's some stuff that you will see that really gets quite close to the line because we didn't want people to go, 'Meh. Seemed kind of lame.

Casting

Joe Taslim was the first actor cast for the production in July 2019, as Bi-Han, the first Sub-Zero.In August, Mehcad Brooks, Tadanobu Asano, Sisi Stringer, and Ludi Lin were cast in the roles of Jax, Raiden, Mileena, and Liu Kang respectively.Later that month, Josh Lawson, Jessica McNamee, Chin Han and Hiroyuki Sanada were cast as Kano, Sonya Blade, Shang Tsung and Scorpion respectively, with Lewis Tan in the role of Cole Young, an original character created for the film.On September 16, 2019, it was announced that Max Huang had been cast as Kung Lao.Stuntwoman Elissa Cadwell was announced as having been cast as Nitara on November 11, 2019.However, in the film she is actually played by Mel Jarnson. Matilda Kimber was cast as Emily on December 4, 2019.

Filming

Production took place at Adelaide Studios and other locations in South Australia,lasting from September 16 to December 13, 2019.[39] In November 2020, Todd Garner stated that "we have more days to shoot" in a statement regarding the film's release delay.The film was shot on the ARRI ALEXA LF and Mini LF cameras with Panavision Anamorphic lenses.
Music
The score for Mortal Kombat was composed by Benjamin Wallfisch.In March 2021, director Simon McQuoid revealed that Wallfisch actually began compositions for the film before he was officially hired on the project and that the film will include a new version of the track "Techno Syndrome" by The Immortals produced by Wallfisch.

Release

Theatrical and streaming
Mortal Kombat was theatrically released internationally, beginning on April 8, 2021,and was later released in the United States on April 23, 2021, in both theaters RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D and on HBO Max.The film was originally going to be released on March 5, 2021 before being moved up to January 15, 2021.In November 2020, producer Todd Garner confirmed that the film would be delayed until theaters are reopened due to the COVID-19 pandemic,before it was finally dated for release on April 16.As part of its plans for all of its 2021 films, Warner Bros. also streamed the film simultaneously on the HBO Max service for one month, after which the film will be removed until the normal home media release schedule period.In late March 2021, the film was delayed one week to April 23.Following its U.S. release, Samba TV reported that 3.8 million households watched at least the first five minutes over its first three days, the most ever for an HBO Max title.
The film is scheduled for release in Japan on June 18, 2021, despite not having any Mortal Kombat games released officially in the country due to CERO gaming rules concerning excessive gore.

Marketing

On May 10, 2020, which was when the film was initially set to release prior to being delayed due the COVID-19 pandemic, Entertainment Weekly released a first look of the film, which contained several behind the scenes photos.On February 17, 2021, a series of character posters were released for the film, along with the next announcement that the film's first trailer would be released the following day.On February 18, 2021, the first red band trailer for the film was released online. The trailer received critical acclaim from both fans and critics alike, with particular praise for the gory action sequences and the inclusion of the game's iconic fatalities. A scene featuring Scorpion saying his iconic catchphrase "Get over here!" was also seen as a highlight from the trailer.The film's first trailer had become the most-watched red-band trailer until the release of the first trailer of The Suicide Squad a month later.
Reception
Box office
As of May 2, 2021, Mortal Kombat has grossed $34.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $32.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $66.9 million.
Originally projected to gross $10–12 million in its domestic opening weekend, the film made $9 million from 3,073 theaters on its first day of release, increasing estimates to $19 million.It went on to debut to $23.3 million, topping the box office.In its sophomore weekend the film dropped 73% to $6.2 million, finishing second behind Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train ($6.4 million).
In its opening international weekend, the film made $10.7 million from 17 countries, with the largest market being Russia ($6.1 million).In its second weekend the film made $5.7 million from 28 countries.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 54% of 233 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Largely for fans of the source material but far from fatal(ity) flawed, Mortal Kombat revives the franchise in appropriately violent fashion." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Alonso Duralde of the TheWrap wrote: "Viewers interested in martial-arts action are bound to find the combat-with-a-C to be lackluster in that way that hand-to-hand fighting tends to be when it gets drowned out by digital effects. More likely to have fun with this latest Mortal Kombat are Sam Raimi enthusiasts who can appreciate the comedy in over-the-top geysers of fake blood, which the film unleashes with increasing regularity as the fights get more serious." The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore said the film was "not exactly a knockout" and wrote: "A B-movie that would benefit immensely from some wit in the script and charisma in the cast, it's not as aggressively hacky as P.W.S.A.'s oeuvre, but it runs into problems he didn't face in 1995: Namely, the bar has been raised quite a bit for movies in which teams of superpowered young people have fights to save the universe." Korey Coleman and Martin Thomas of Double Toasted gave it a mixed to negative review. Both commented that the cast lacked any relatability and furthermore found the character of Cole Young to be bland and uninteresting. However, they did give praise to Lawson as Kano, whom they claimed "carried the movie" due to his more fun and witty dialogue.
James Marsh, of the South China Morning Post, gave a positive review, saying, "Director Simon McQuoid understands and honours the film's video game origins, including memorable lines of dialogue and signature fight moves throughout".
Blaine Henry of The Fight Library, a website dedicated to combat sports, said of the MMA fighting scene, "In the one scene where he’s actually fighting, you can tell that the movie did not watch much, if any, actual mixed martial arts. While there was some decent choreography, the vernacular wasn’t there." He continues saying the movie is great for fans of the franchise. The movie includes all the best dialogue that makes you remember the fun times you had with your buddies fighting each other sharing a TV and two remotes and who gets to pick Sub Zero. The action is frequent and doesn’t leave you thirsty for more.

Future

The film's producer Todd Garner revealed to Collider that there is a possibility of a Johnny Cage-centric standalone film.Taslim revealed that he is signed on for four sequels if the reboot is a success.McQuoid stated that he is open for returning to direct the sequel and revealed while filming on the first film that he banned sequel talks on the set and wanted to focus on making the first one.Co-writer Russo told Collider that he sees the reboot as a trilogy with the first film as a pre-tournament, the second film with the tournament and the third film with a post-tournament.Professional wrestler The Miz has openly expressed interest in the role of Johnny Cage and has even received the support of Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon.