Just walked out of Mortal Kombat II...opinions from a fan since the Midway days
So I'll start this post off cutting to the chase for the TL;DR readers... gonna try to be as spoiler free as possible, though I will be comparing MK II to the NRS games a lot in this post so if you have played those games in full, you might not to want read this post past the summary, because spoilers are inevitable.
MK II was genuinely good. I would say 90% of what you would want from a live action MK film, is in this movie. Overall rating is 8.5/10 and would definitely watch again.
To get a little deeper for the diehards like myself who have been playing since legit the original MK1 from the Midway days.
This movie is far from perfect, but it is either tied for the best MK adaptation or a close second. It lacks the charm of the 1995 movie (tho Urban gives Ashby a run for his money), but holy shit does this movie deliver on literally everything else.
I'll start with the most important part. This film is incredibly faithful to the game (NRS games, rather) that its basically 1 for 1 with MK 9 though it does sacrifice a lot of the "filler" stuff from the game. The key plot points are there, with some liberties taken that I didn't really mind much. Without spoiling anything, you can clearly see where the MK X story line is being set up and it's not subtle...and you can even spot MK 11 era easter eggs if you pay attention. Ed Boon had a lot of influence on this film and it's very apparent.
The fighting is genuinely some of the best hand to hand combat ive ever seen in a movie, and one fight in particular might be the best ive ever seen. The fatalities here actually feel earned and are very satisfying, because they aren't sporadic and random like the first film...they mean something in this one. With that said while 99% of the fights are incredible, there was one I found really lame and forced, you've probably heard about it by now lmao.
The cinematography and CGI is genuinely MCU levels in some parts of the film. The sets are gorgeous and the costume design is 1 for 1 with the NRS games. There really isn't a single character I thought looked poorly designed (Baraka looks better in the film than he does in the trailers, but I did think his mouth was a little odd in some angles lol) but id say Shao Khan, Scorpion, and Bi Han took the cake by miles.
Karl Urban is perfect as Johnny Cage and I hope he's in every MK movie moving forward.
Shao Khan is one of the baddest mother fuckers cinema has ever seen, they genuinely could not have done a better job with him. The same goes with Kitana.
The film heavily focuses on Johnny Cage, Kitana, and Shao Khan while the rest of the characters feel like supporting players. This is mostly fine, and in some cases fully warranted, but some key characters to the lore kinda fall flat (one especially in the final act of the movie) but given how said characters are significant to how the lore moves forward im hopeful their screen time will be much greater in MK 3.
Overall MK 2 not only fixes all of the mistakes from the first film, it actually makes the first film more cohesive and makes a lot more sense with the added context that MK II provides. I plan on going back and watching it while this film is still fresh in my head.
Very excited for MK 3 in the future, and hoping this does well at the box office so it gets an even bigger budget than this one.
If you're on the fence because of the last one, I highly recommend giving this one a chance, it fixes EVERYTHING you hated about MK 1 lol.
PS - See it in IMAX. Trust.