MORTAL KOMBAT II
2026
Directed by Simon McQuoid
Written by Jeremy Slater (actually based, remarkably enough, more than anything else on the video game Mortal Kombat II by Ed Boon and John Tobias)
Behold: Mortal Kombat II, the fourth theatrically-released, live-action* Mortal Kombat film, is actually good, the very first time in that many tries and thirty-one blasted years that any such attempt at adapting the iconic 90s-born fighting games has ever been good, the last time it got anywhere close being with the first one back in 1995, even if that film's only real legacy (besides Paul W.S. Anderson's career) is still just 1)"Techno Syndrome" and 2)an affection that's mostly the result of it being compared to other video game movies. So: on one level I'm actually not surprised it's good—I had a feeling about this one, my friends; and anyway, good God, if any film franchise was ever due—but I've certainly got no right not to be.
The 2021 go at the property was one of the most contemptibly wrongheaded works of adaptation in recent memory, a film about a video game series that had provided as many as half a dozen compelling protagonists centered instead around the most flabbergastingly featureless and dull original character conceivable, while being about a mystical fighting tournament, where two hours are passed talking about a fighting tournament that never actually comes; it's a movie that I'm not sure is truly better than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, often considered one of the worst movies ever made. Mortal Kombat II retains the earlier film's director, Simon McQuoid, which isn't a great sign even if we should acknowledge that new filmmakers frequently do make good on their second chances (and Mortal Kombat '21 was McQuoid's first feature). Meanwhile, we can readily imagine a great deal of discussion at and between Warners and James Wan's Atomic Monster company—perhaps including long-time Mortal Kombat rightsholder Lawrence Kasanoff, co-scenarist of Annihilation amongst other sins—regarding the 2021 film's reception, not least whether Mortal Kombat II should be made at all. (I'd guess it was hard to evaluate MK'21's "success," for while it was much-streamed, it was, after all, covid—kovid?—so who could say if there was any audience for a theaters-only sequel, especially given the first one, at a maximum, had satisfied only the fandom's basest desires for a more R-rated kind of kombat?) Adjustments clearly were made, above all the enlistment of a new writer, and of all people they hired Jeremy Slater, a candidate for literally the worst screenwriter in modern Hollywood, or at least the unluckiest, whose resume is an unholy and heinous thing, from Fantastic Four—yes, that Fantastic Four—to Death Note—yes, that Death Note—to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire—not even Godzilla vs. Kong!—altogether a list of the worst movies (and worst IP adaptations) of the last decade, or at least sufficiently close to such a list that even with my late-coming premonition of goodness, if I'd realized this, I honestly might've stuck to my initial plans for Mortal Kombat II, which were to completely ignore its existence.
There's some a lesson to be drawn here, regarding how screenplay credits get awarded and how much blame can be fairly placed on any individual inside the bad machine—in respect to the other movies mentioned, Slater always had co-writers, and in the case of Fantastic Four he'd like us to believe that he didn't write it—because Slater wrote this one solo, or at least he's the only writer credited. And I do not like to use a word like "elegant" to describe Mortal Kombat II, for it is indeed not (I will eventually have some unkind things to say about it, as distinct from unkind things to say about its makers), but there really is a kind of gracefulness at the center of it, a wisdom in its approach to the challenges inherent to adapting a fighting game with a zillion characters and still doing that inside a film that, removing credits, I'm not sure runs 110 minutes. But, for absolute starters, in this Mortal Kombat there's a fighting tournament.
So we begin in other realms and long ago, establishing (rather charmingly) that the fighting tournament is nothing less than the foundational cosmic principle of this universe—perhaps it's more civilized than our fallen earthly ways—and the Emperor Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) of Outworld has challenged the tall hobbits of Edenia to Mortal Kombat, with the stakes being the fate of both realms. Shao Kahn achieves victory, albeit not flawlessly. (It's gracefulness again: the movie has a surprising amount of what seems like it should be "boss battling" with our evil emperor, but it's very well-balanced stuff, mostly showcasing his might, requiring rather little Shao Kahn dialogue hence avoiding the Annihilation trap, and nonetheless affording substantial personality and style to the warlord, who isn't really presented as the most talented fighter, just capable of bulldozing through his enemies and able to absorb enormous punishment even before he's acquired godhood—in our instant case, disarming his opponent by virtue of his indifference to a sword getting stuck in his flesh. Visual effects have also improved since 1997, so now you can scale his sprite up just like they did in the game, though Ford is already one big dude, even in our reality.) Well, Edenia's king and champion (Jerrod? ha, alright; Desmond Chiam) dies right before the eyes of his queen Sindel (Ana Thu Nguyen) and daughter Kitana (Sophia Xu now, but Adeline Rudolph soon hereafter), and, besides Edenia, Shao Kahn claims his fallen foe's family as his own too. By the time we catch back up with the Kahns at home, Sindel has been utterly broken to his will, possibly through the ministrations of one or both of his deputy sorcerers Shang Tsung (Chin Han) or the necromancer Quan Chi (Damon Harriman), though either way she's explicitly a corpse now; Kitana has vowed vengeance upon the usurper, but has all these years concealed her true intentions from her mother, "father" and her friend, personal bodyguard, and Shao Kahn's spy, Jade (Tati Gabrielle), allowing herself to be counted amongst Shao Kahn's warriors.
If we were to make a criticism, it's that perhaps Mortal Kombat has been too domesticated these last three decades, because in conjunction with where the film goes next it feels like this supernatural and otherworldly prologue should be a rather more mysterious thing—it obviously doesn't help that MK'21 already exists—but let's grant that something like the form of mystery is maintained, which is almost as good, when we hard cut to the much more quotidian baseline that's going to be our entry into the affairs of these gods and monsters. And let's note that amongst the adjustments made to Mortal Kombat II at the conceptual level, there's a clear intent to be something of a soft reboot. You see, the other really, extremely obvious thing about a Mortal Kombat adaptation (that is, besides "there should be a tournament") is that the need for an "in" to its story had already been satisfied by the games, and when I wrote about the 2021 movie, I listed the characters who could have served that function. Mortal Kombat II grudgingly includes Cole Young (Lewis Tan), gives him almost five lines, and kills him in an (un)shocking display of Shao Kahn's power; but I think there's an earnest argument that watching Mortal Kombat would only be to the detriment of understanding and enjoying Mortal Kombat II. Anyway, they heard the complaints, and our "in" this time is the one that I believe always made the best sense because of the beautifully unique conception of the character: this, of course, is Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), cannily repositioned almost like a legacy version of himself, a big deal action star from the 1990s on the Jean-Claude Van Damme model who once headlined many cheesy martial arts movies, but who has deteriorated into riding the convention circuit and is mostly ignored even in that milieu, and yet, by will of the Elder Gods whose minds are beyond our ken, is Johnny chosen for Mortal Kombat. (He is, to be fair to the Elder Gods, a substitute, because Kung Lao (Max Huang) died, and I suppose I trust Mortal Kombat II enough to believe it when it says this happened in 2021.) Johnny first confuses Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) with a Big Trouble In Little China character, and even after being teleported declines to fight. Even after being outright drafted into battle, he's immediately beaten by Kitana, though he arguably gives a better showing of himself than you'd expect from a 53 year old has-been faced with a martial artist from beyond space.**
The main thing is that we can now experience Mortal Kombat through the lens of a real personality (it is to its overwhelming benefit that Karl Urban is a genuinely good actor, himself the biggest movie star to ever grace any Mortal Kombat); the word is they avoided Johnny previously because he's too big a personality, which I think sums up MK'21's problems; and he gets an arc, not an unexpected one but a time-tested one. There's canniness here, too: he's still the deuteragonist, and the harmony we get between the arch, straight-faced classicism of Kitana's heroic journey and Johnny's funny, self-lacerating underdog story finds them reinforcing one another—even though they barely even interact again, which is smart in and of itself, because their tones can't cancel each other out—all told offering a movie that's basically just a series of weirdos having fights in recreations of video game levels the kind of incredibly strong narrative bones that I would never have expected it to have.
The outcome, anyway, is Johnny blundering through realms with Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamnee), and Jax Briggs (Mechad Brooks), being an amusing dipshit (the interlude in the Outworld wastelands is fantastic, featuring an arguably off-brand Baraka (CJ Bloomfield), yet having a real idea behind being "off-brand") but with, as they used to put it, heart.*** I have also said "funny" or a synonym twice, and the humor is mostly a strong point, with quibbles; Johnny is a walking situation, and Urban is tremendously game (Kano (Josh Lawson), MK'21's sole vector for any kind of personality, even a defective one, is also resurrected by Outworld; naturally, a whole act of the movie pairs him with Johnny), and in this regard the screenplay feels sort of out of time, like it's been sitting in a drawer since 2009. It is, for example, heavy with pop culture references (noticeably a lot of Warners pop culture references), that aren't always hilarious and can be a bit lazy but, astonishingly, feel germane enough not to be totally asinine—mind you, the references to the in-universe pop culture of Johnny Cage's filmography are wonderful; I did guffaw at the title "Citizen Cage"—and it manages to do "undercutting insincerity" well, in part because even its insincere parts have their buried sincerity, and in part because Johnny is a good (and frequently-punished) vehicle for that kind of attitude, firewalled off into his part of the plot. It feels like, and I guess I mean this as a compliment, the old MCU.
And in many ways: it's been shifted in its priorities (this is more of an action movie than most superhero movies manage, even if that sounds strange) and genre (it's got obvious superheroic flavor but the overriding texture is "80s fantasy"; overlapping both those genres, there's a dumb maguffin to go after, but it's functional). And maybe MCU-style dialogue works better when you have access to R-rated swearing, which tends to remind you that there are emotional stakes. But, I mean, do you remember all the idiotic fawning over The Avengers for managing to make a two and a half-hour movie that had six whole characters in it? I guess people eventually realized that wasn't actually impressive, but Mortal Kombat II really crams its source material in, surprisingly densely for a contemporary film (the first thirty minutes of this has more story than the '21 edition), and with efficiency, even managing the martial arts movie thing of turning action beats into character beats. Hell, I'm not sure the best scene in the movie (it is the best fight) doesn't belong to side-characters-now Liu Kang and (evil revenant) Kung Lao—it is the first time feelings have attached to either of these characters. The movie is arguably still letting down the ninjas, perhaps forgivably if you recall they're dead—giving Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) a makeover that I'm not sure I approve of, but works well enough lore-wise, and hinging part of the third act on a surprisingly soulful Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada)—so it's still the best treatment that Mortal Kombat's most iconic characters have gotten in four movies. Christ, they even figured out Kano in this one. Kitana's plot I've already mentioned, though I like it quite a bit—in a movie that has the gore but maybe not the sadism of Mortal Kombat, Sindel gets the best moment of "horror" in a film that should be horror—and even Goddamn Shao Kahn gets real characterization, apparently genuinely regretting his "daughter's" betrayal and the response this compels. (Kitana is unfortunately sandbagged with some ugly Screenwriting 101 in the finale that conceives of a ribbon as a Chekhovian device—brother, that's no spoiler, you will see it coming—stretching out a battle that kind of already feels like it had its climax. But that's not a terrible thing to be "the worst thing in the entire movie.")
For his part, McQuoid has improved or his pre-viz artists have: this is a very fine action movie, a claim which only the 1995 film could otherwise make and then principally because it is an actual "martial arts film." Mortal Kombat II is not that, or at least it's a martial arts film secondarily (possibly its best gag I perceive to be an homage to the much-derided "dance fight" of Annihilation, worked into kombat much more smoothly), and I frankly think that's correct: the Mortal Kombats, at least the OT, are barely actual "fighting games," in that fighting games are supposed to reward skill. But they are wondrous showcases for imaginative violence, and Mortal Kombat II delivers on precisely that quality. The battles are, by and large, very creative things, erring on the side of superpowered fantasy—and they're agreeably prop-based, Shao Kahn's hammer being a big deal, likewise Kitana's fans; Kung Lao's hat is fucking amazing, imagine Thor but he uses a sawblade—without surrendering either the flurried speed that still identifies this as something akin to "martial arts cinema" or the ultraviolence that we do, after all, crave. Plus, though this circles back around to "how am I in the position of raving over Mortal Kombat II's screenplay?", it plays pretty fair with being "a fighting tournament," one where both sides are cheating and sidequesting (hey, Shao Kahn started it; and the way Raiden is taken out of the equation involves some of the film's strongest imagery in its notion of how a god "bleeds out"), but still seems to have something like "a set of actual rules."
It's not perfect, and there are things I hate about it, though I have to put provisos on them. First, this is an $80 million movie, which in 2026 is a pittance for what this is, and McQuoid is managing that budget better than his earlier $55 million movie; it looks more expensive than it is (on a Mortal Kombat curve, you absolutely can and should relax your standards for what qualifies as "great, realistic CGI," but for $80 million, I think the digital effects here look terrific), and nonetheless its cheapness creeps back in pretty often. The 2021 film's nearly-absent production design is replaced by Yohei Taneda's merely constrained production design, but sometimes genuinely bad production design. (Cappi Ireland's costume design is blameless—notwithstanding a "superhero movie disappearing mask" moment for Kitana, which thankfully only happens once, but I think you could've saved the five grand, guys.) So Kung and Liu's battle is the best partly because it takes place in a wackadoodle cosmic space, but anything more detailed than that and it's likely to feel underrealized, depopulated and rather greenscreened. Sometimes it's realized fine, but from a perfectly lousy idea, and while this is true in e.g. the case of the recreation of the famed "pit," I especially mean Edenia's town square, so that the epic climax of Shao Kahn and Kitana's drama takes place amidst, almost literally, Belle's fucking village from Beauty and the Beast. (And it's the third fight to happen there.) The other big problem is that, as a motion picture, this thing clunks, and I am very sympathetic to editor Stuart Levy—this movie presents an impossible cross-cutting challenge—even if I can't quite take his side, with so many transitions just thudding into the previous scene and even a few in-scene transitions (again, the pit, which now has spikes shooting up out of the ground intermittently) that depend entirely upon their cadence but flail arrhythmically. Though it's also disorienting that it can have such conspicuously bad editing in the same package as the third act's conspicuously good editing, where Levy apparently reinvented cross-cutting from first principles and decided that the only way out was to roar his way down the Match-cut Highway.
It's still a success overall, at least to me; apparently, many others went ahead with my original plan and did ignore its existence, which is a shame. But I'm stunned how thoughtful a Mortal Kombat can be: thinking about what story it should tell, and choosing, basically, just the video game, Mortal Kombat II; how to tell it, and selecting as its fighter Johnny Cage; and how much wild, bloody nonsense it can shove into a two hour film. As it turns out: a lot.
Score: 8/10
*There's a cartoon about Scorpion.
**Johnny's game backstory involves "needing to prove he's a real fighter." In the game, dude could throw fireballs. (He can't in this.)
***I suspect somebody saw Cobra Kai.
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