Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Directed by: John R. Leonetti

Starring: Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, James Remar

So, I actually like the original live-action Mortal Kombat movie, and I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the best video game-based film I’ve seen (either that or Resident Evil). It’s so good because it’s a really good combination of okay action and really retarded everything else, and it never takes itself seriously for even a second. It’s a fun, dumb movie. I think they decided that for a sequel, they should plumb the depths to make it A THOUSAND TIMES MORE STUPID, making it even better! Aw, who am I kidding? They made money with the first one, so they made another one scavenged out of whatever random crap they could find around, including actors and writers.

Taking place directly after the end of Mortal Kombat (except now pretty much all the actors are different), our heroes have to go get some new characters so they can fight the evil Shao-Kahn and keep him from having his shadow world take over Earth. This, of course, is pretty much solved by a good kicking in the face.

I never played a lot of the Mortal Kombat game series, pretty much stopping at the Super Nintendo titles, so I had little to no idea as to who the hell all the new characters were in this movie. Not that it really matters, because it’s just based on a fighting game where there are frequently multiple characters that have the same sprite, only with the colors changed, and there’s about as much character development in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation as one might expect from that sort of thing. Also, as weird as it is to say this, this movie really suffers from the lack of Christopher Lambert as Raiden. I know, I never expected to say that, either.