Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our discussion of the nineteen ninety five supernatural martial arts movie Mortal Kombat, adapted from the extremely popular, extremely violent video game franchise. Now, we did not intend for our discussion of this movie to end up spanning two separate episodes, but the breakup I think proved inevitable due to time constraints, especially because
this movie loomed so large when we were kids. Unless we had a lot to say about it from personal recollection, I think we spent a lot of the last episode just conveying our emotions about Mortal Kombat from the time of childhood.
That's right. I mean, it was almost it was almost kind of an identity you chose for yourself by being a Mortal Kombat fan. You know. It's not to say you couldn't also be a Street Fighter fan. That those games were great too, but yeah, there was something about the Mortal Kombat esthetic, the music, certainly that the fact that it's violence kind of got under the skin of many of the parental units. You know, it felt a little rebellious as well.
Yeah, you know, now that you compare it to the other big fighting franchise of the time, I have to say, in retrospect, I think Street Fighter two is a better game than like whatever the equivalent Mortal Kombat two is, But ignoring the underlying mechanics, Mortal Kombat just had such an interesting skin stretched over it. When you when you were a child in the nineties, it was it seemed more dangerous and more fascinating for that reason.
Yeah, and I think it was it was fed by a lot of the more violent films. I mean, not all of them were super violent, and Big Trouble Little China is not grotesquely violent, but you know, there are aspects of all these different franchise is kind of mixed in to Mortal Kombat to give it its overall flavor.
Yeah. Now, I thought we should do a brief refresher of the basics from part one before we get into the plot today. So Mortal Kombat began, for those who don't know, as a series of one on one side view fighting games for arcades and home consoles in the early nineteen nineties, and these games were extremely popular. They distinguished themselves, I think, with a mix of dark fantasy
martial arts setting, fast paced action, and hyper violence. And as you were just saying, Rob, the violence in particular was like a cultural touch point. There was a backlash, kind of moral panic among many adults who were distressed to watch their kids carefully memorizing the button combination that you would have to enter to rip somebody's backbone out at the end of a match. And that game franchise
has continued up until today. But the first movie was released in nineteen ninety five, directed by Paul W. S Anderson, who also made movies like Event, Horizon and the early
Resident Evil films. The Mortal Kombat movie mostly follows the originally pretty thin plot of the game, which concerns a magical martial arts tournament ruled over by an evil sorcerer named Shang Sung, in which human fighters with names like lu Kang, Sonia Blade, and Johnny Cage they must win in order to defend humankind and Earth from an interdimensional menace, a sort of evil emperor from a place called Outworld, which is like another dimension. The movie fleshes out this
plot with some clumsy yet enjoyable character development. And also I don't think I really mentioned this much last time, but I was thinking in between recording these two episodes about how the film significantly modifies and specifically lightens the tone established by the early video games. I think later games in the series had more irony, they wore the irony more, more outwardly, and they had more obvious tongue in cheek elements. But if you go back to this
first game, it is grim, doomy, and hardcore. Would you agree with that, Rob.
Yeah, I would agree with that, especially the first one, even the second one. The second one had the friendships in there, which were goofy, and I think, you know, kind of a fun jab at all of the haters based on the violence.
But still wait, hold on, you should explain what the friendships are, Oh, people who don't know?
All right, So, you know, you beat your opponent and then you get the directive finish him, and if you know the codes, you can do a fatality. But you can also, if the parameters are met, do a friendship, which instead of like brutally decapitating your opponent, does something like, you know, give them a cupcake. I don't know, that's not one to loon balloon Shensung would do one where he makes a rainbow with his hands. I think, say
it's something nice. So that's pretty tongue in cheek. But for the part, like the rest of the vibe, the music, the look of Mortal Kombat too is very very doomy.
Yes, so the movie has a decidedly more PG or PG thirteen quality. And while the movie is still very violent and has some scary fantasy elements. You know, it's got your four armed out world demon king, it's got vacuuming out people's souls and stuff. It definitely adds more of a spirit of humor and optimistic adventure in contrast to the game's spirit of fatalistic death sport. So it's more kind of haha, it's time to save the world, rather than you know, custom dictates that I now dismantle
your body. And this lightning of the tone relative to the early games is absolutely present in the script, but I think it shows up especially in the performance of Christoph Lambert as the thunder god Raidan, who is I think it's fair to say a serious and even austere figure in the games is that right, rob.
Yeah, yeah, especially in some of the more recent games, overly serious, like I think, maybe not intentionally laughably serious, but there are a lot of memes about the recent games and Raydon saying things like I must consult the elder gods. You know, he's very serious.
But in the movie it's completely different. Christoph Lambert as Rayden is like if a two D nineties sitcom character were played by Peter Loriie and yet still had catch phrases like I don't think so. He's about two seconds away from saying Earth rules Outworld drools for much of the film. But anyway, as I mentioned last time, this was my nine year old self's idea of a really good movie. I saw Mortal Kombat in the theaters, of course, I played the early games. I bought the VHS tape,
and I watched it a bazillion times at home. I had the original motion picture soundtrack on CD. I listened to it a lot. I read the liner notes and the jewel case and all that. We devoted a significant chunk of the last episode just to talking about the CD, the soundtrack CD and the songs on it, which were
a strange mix. Right. It had like Metal Industrial had these techno pump up tracks and with a lot of like audio samples from the video game and then ambient classics like Halcyon plus on and on by Orbital.
Yeah, it's a weird one to revisit because you know, you go back, you listen to and you're like, yeah, this is a great track. I like this. Oh, I love this one, and then it's like, I don't like this one at all. It's a fun experience.
So in the last episode, we talked about the cultural context from which this movie emerged. We talked about the connections, especially the cast, and some stuff about the music and the special effects, but we ran out of time before we could start getting into the plot, and today we're back to do the full plot breakdown. However, please bear with us because we now made these plot notes like
a week ago. They're not as fresh in our minds as they were back then, So we may confuse ourselves here and there.
We're going to do our best, but you know, in the spirit of the Olympics, having just finished, I want to I want to open up the spirit of competition here. We normally discourage gambling on this podcast, but for this one time, We're gonna allow you if you would like, please feel free to place your bets on who is going to win the Mortal Kombat tournament depicted in this movie. You may have forgotten how it turns out, or maybe you haven't seen it before, so you know, gamble responsibly.
Who's your money on Joe?
It would be wild if they don't let Kano win.
Kno. I think he has a lot of strengths coming into this tournament. You know, he's got a he's got a knife, he's got a weapon.
They let him. They let him bring weapons to matches where his opponent is unarmed. That seems unfair.
He has the laser eye. I'm not sure if it does lasers in this film or not. So he did, but it's metal too, so he's got to put potential defense there. That's you know, I feel like I'd be foolish not to put my money behind Goro. He's the raining champ, extra arms so and can also shoot fireballs.
It is is hard to describe the disappointment you're gonna feel. And the Goro's Got Gnard scene. Yeah, so oh, before the plot even begins, one thing we got to address this came up in part one is how relentlessly this movie uses like techno pump up music to get your blood going. Like it. It is very strong with the hype tracks on the soundtrack to to keep the momentum up and keep you feeling good and ready for the next scene.
Yeah. So that Mortal Kombat theme song by the Immortals one of the main things that you will remember from this movie if you haven't seen it in decades. They start playing it before the opening credits even roll, like you just all you see are the studio logos loading up and you're already hit with Mortal Kombat and you're you're the races.
But also this techno track, as we were saying, it samples sounds from the video game, so like one of the snare triggers, and the beat is the fight grunt from the game where somebody's going ugh. It's the sound they make in the game when they get punched in the face. But it's using that as the.
It's an infectious track.
Strong choice. So the movie opens with a dream sequence. We pull up on a shot of a temple in Thailand. I think this is the Watt Frost see Sanfette Temple. I hope I'm pronouncing that close to right. It is actually,
in reality, a beautiful location. Unfortunately, the opening shot that features this beautiful location looks terrible because they're like, I don't know exactly what the technique is here, but they're compositing in a dark, gloomy background that just does not match the foreground at all.
I've actually been to this location. This is in a Utia, and I distinctly remember visiting here many many years ago. The heat was otherworldly and I had just consumed a tie red bull, which at the time I don't know it was very hot as well, but I think it had a different chemical composition. It seemed way stronger than any red bull I've ever had anywhere else. But it made for a very memorable experience, and the grounds are absolutely beautiful in real life.
I bet that's a techno pump up track of its own. Yeah, but they get your bpms too. But so, yeah, we got this ominous dark sky in the background that just doesn't really match the temples in the foreground. It looks like color keyed in or something. Storm clouds are swirling and there are these deep droning chants playing, and the soundtrack and then we zoom in on a pair of men who face off against one another in the courtyard a courtyard of this temple. One is a young man
wearing simple clothing. He's stressed like he might be a monk, and he looks frightened and in over his head. And the other the other actor here is Kerrie Hiroyuki Tagawa as our villain Shang Sung, the Evil Sorcerer. In this shot, he looks about nine feet tall compared to the young man. He's just gigantic. I don't know if he's actually all that huge of an actor, but I don't know. They use angles to make him look very imposing. He is dressed in a ridiculous outfit for hand to hand combat.
We brought this up in the last episode. But he's wearing like a heavy calf length black leather coat. So he's, you know, gonna do some roundhouse kicks to defeat earth Realm. But he is just wrapped in twenty pounds of loose leather.
Yeah. Yeah, this is very much rockstar Shensung right here.
Yeah. So the fight begins between these two and it is not much of a contest. Shensung annihilates this poor guy he beats him up, breaks his bones. At one point, he hits him with a brutal backhand, so you know, it's a kind of move that suggests he's he's treating him with contempt, not even treating him as a worthy opponent. Just give him the backhand. And then finally he stomps
on this guy's back and breaks his spine. After this, Sheangsung holds the young man up and then looks straight into the camera and he says, your brother's soul is mine. You will be next. And then Shangsung's face turns into a putrid cgi skeleton and we speed zoom into his eyehole.
Yes, yeah, there's some ambitious eye action in this movie concerning like the taking of souls.
Yeah, but he's saying, your brother's soul is mine, you will be next. Who is you? Well, it is Lou Kang, So Lu Kang we meet him next. He sits straight up in bed. He's having another nightmare, and he is in the wildest bedroom. It is just green, green, green green, Like I don't know what to compare.
It to, Yeah, like listerine or really bad apps, and you know it's like that level, and it's just completely saturated in it. It's not like you have just some green highlights here and there and there. I'm just talking like absolutely green.
It's like somebody heard us gushing about how much we love Mario Bava lights and then they tried to do Bava without understanding Bava. So it's not it's not these like interesting sort of zones of color like Vava uses. It's just green floor to ceiling in a way that I don't know. It doesn't work the way Bava does.
I've read criticism, In fact, I think I've read mostly criticism of Glenn Danzig's Vertica movie as being Bava inspired but having like really poor use of gels. And I have to say, as boring and as cheap as that movie is, I don't think he gave us anything like this green room. It's just so like single note, it's just so overbearingly green. But I do also want to give Anderson credit because you also see some very green sequences, very green scenes, very green lighting and event horizon. But
it's a lot more balanced by that point. It's a lot more nuanced. It doesn't feel like this. It doesn't feel like you're in a green aquarium full of jello.
Yeah. So here this is lu Kang played by the actor and martial artist Robin Chu. Again, Lukang sits up in bed. He's having this nightmare. It's I don't know, did you get the impression he's having this nightmare a lot or is this the first time?
Oh, it has to be a lot. I mean it's a recurring dress well, one would think, But then on the other hand, there is the idea that he is being dreen delivered actual information, right, so this is something we're about to find out, this is something that has happened.
Yeah. So he's sweaty, you know, from having a bad dream. He gets up out of his bed. He goes to his dresser, which this is no significance to anyone else, but he has a dresser that looks almost exactly like a dresser that I have in my house. We've got the same piece of furniture Lukang and I and he picks up off the dresser a Western Union telegram which says lu Kang brother dead, return home grandfather very terse.
Yeah, I mean you pay pay by the word or the letter, right, so you could keep it short.
So we don't learn much about lu Kang in this first scene where we meet him, except that he is very handsome and jacked, and he has bad dreams.
Right, and he might be more jack for having those bad dreams, like they just keep you tight, you know, yeah, waking up in a sweat all the time, burning calories.
Yes. So next, what we cut to is a chiron telling us that we are in Hong Kong, and we open in some kind of dance club. The bass is thumping here. We're going to meet Sonia Blade and her partner Jacks, and they are wearing Special Forces outfits and kevlar. They're carrying huge shotguns that have flashlights fixed over the barrels, and they're running down this corridor full of television screens out onto the dance floor, spitting out lines in tactical speak.
So Sonya's saying stuff like, let's go sixty seconds to target acquisition. Jacks, is the perimeter secure? And I'm like, I'm just thinking, in what way could this location be secure? It's like a club full of hundreds of people dancing in the dark with strobe lights and they're still dancing. What does secure mean?
Yeah, some of them kind of attack them in kind of a mosh pity way, but most are not. Most seem to just be ravers or and or metal enthusiasts. Yeah. I have so many questions about this ridiculous sequence, Like what exactly is their jurisdiction in Hong Kong, Yeah, the mid nineties at this club, What safety measures are in place concerning these clubgoers, if any? Yeah, indeed, what does it mean for this place to be secure? None of this makes sense?
Yeah, that's right, And this is definitely one of the most unintentionally funny scenes in the movie, coming right near the beginning. Just the dialogue is hilar too. There's some There's an exchange where Jaxa is like the perimeter's locked and Sonya says it better be. I want cano and he says, trust me Sonya, and she says, I trust one person on this planet. Jack's You're talking to.
Her so tough. It's just so tough, tough.
So they moved through the crowd and Sonya is just whacking Randos with her gun. Again, these are not criminals or like fighters or anything. There's just people dancing and she's just like beating them with a gun.
Yeah.
Anyway, here's where we meet another villain.
Of the movie.
Kano, Oh boy, Caano. He's up in some kind of office looking down over the dance floor, and he's not alone. He is with Shang Sung, who we saw from the dream. But Shangsung is here wearing the same clothes I think, the same same overcode he wore in the dream and all that. And he's sitting behind a desk and Cano is, you know, looking out over the over the dancers, and they're plotting together. Cano says, she's here right on time.
You know, he's really playing up the accent. He says, I love punctuality in a woman, don't you, mister Shang Sung? And then Keno turns his head so we see his metal face plate with the red terminator eye. This is never explained in the movie that. I don't think they say anything about it, do they? They just show it.
Yeah, yeah, there's no explanation. I honestly can't even remember the exact explanation in the game, like maybe Sonya like took his eye out or something in a fight. I'm not sure. Is he a cyborg? Is it just a thing that clatches over his head? I don't know.
Yeah, So we learned from this scene that Shang Sung is using the criminal gang sort of gang lord Kano to lure Sonia Blade to his island for a tournament, and Shangsung is adamant she must be at the tournament. It is of utmost importance. But they don't explain why, why her? Why does she need to be there? Don't know, but we learned that Kano has recently murdered her partner. Her I think they're saying, like work partner, not romantic partner.
Okay, so some sort of pre Jack's partner.
Yes, her work partner, and now Kano is the bait that will bring her to the island.
Because I think basically in the games, it's like Sonia is there after Kno, Kano is there because this is just the kind of scene that guys like Kano pop up in and that's all there is to it.
He just wants to win the tournament and make the tournament even worse. Yeah, Okay, we got to meet our next good human fighter character, and that is Johnny Cage. So this scene begins with a kind of fake out. We see the actor Lindon Ashby walk into i don't know, like a big airplane hangar type building and you know, these big doors open up and let in the light from la outside, and we see him walk in. He's very cool. He's dressed in a suit, I think, and
he's got sunglasses on. Goes into the big empty hangar and there is what do you call this vibe of It's like eighties and nineties movies that have guys in double breasted suits that are hand to hand martial arts fighters and they have weapons and they're standing around a limo with a briefcase.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what you call this, but yeah, you sort of stereotypical suited bodyguards.
Yeah, hugo boss kottah. Yeah. So you've got these guys like they stand there in a row, and the one has got like an extendable baton, and another one's got a shock stick and so forth. And this guy walks up to the fight and he says his catchphrase. He says, let's dance. And the way he kind of whispers it makes me think, oh, they're going for a bit of a Steven Siegall thing, there, aren't they with the whisper voice.
Yeah.
Yeah, So he beats all these guys up, but then he's facing off against the last one still stand. He kicks him, and then the guy just stands there staring at him, and he says to the guy with exasperation, this is the part where you fall down. And so then the guy kind of launches himself onto the floor. Linda Ashby turns around and says, where do you get these guys? So it turns out it was all a fake out. They are shooting a movie scene. This was
not a real fight. And Johnny Cage is we learn, a martial arts movie star like Jean Claude van dam but the tabloids are saying he's a fake, he's a phony. He could not really kung fu his way out of a paper bag, and these rumors are apparently damaging his career. Now this raises a question. I didn't research this before we came in, but has there ever been a major martial arts movie star whose career was severely hurt to buy allegations that they couldn't really fight in the real world.
There are allegations like that about certain movie stars, but I feel like they tend to be already washed up by the time that is a major meme about them.
Yeah, I don't know, it's it's it's always a weird. I always find it kind of strange when we get into not we as in you and me, but we as as a as a culture or some cultures get into conversations about like if if a particular actor is tough enough or or a musician is tough enough. Uh, you know, sometimes based on them like losing legit fights or getting punched out or you know, signing up for a boxing or an mm a thing.
Why the actors their performers.
I mean, the really damaging things you sometimes hear about action stars are about them being of course unprofessional in one way or another, or unsafe when it comes to you know, fight choreography and so forth.
Yeah, being like aggressive with with stunt stunt workers and stuff like that.
Yeah. I mean we can all if you if you follow any kind of combat sports, you can name the individuals that are legit tough and can legit win fights. You don't necessarily want to see them starring in their own Sure, there are different skill sets involved. Everyone can do, you know, their own thing. Sometimes those skills line up and you have somebody who can do both. But generally I'm happy to you know, keep them in two different buckets.
I guess I just feel like if I watch a martial arts movie and the main character is great and I find out the actor who portrayed them is not actually a fighter in real life, that has no effect on my Like, I don't.
Know, yeah, but I don't know. They're kind of leaning into some sort of like a k fabe idea here, I guess. So, all right, we're to believe that Johnny Cage has some issues with how he's being perceived, and it would be great if he could improve how the public perceives him in regards to real fights. So why not join a super deadly, super secret death elimination tournament. Sounds like a great career move exactly.
So he meets up on the movie set with an old teacher of his, a guy named Master Boyd. Who is the actor playing this guy.
This is Peter Jason, who's a bunch of John Carpenter films and all tons of other films, very recognizable character actor.
He's got long hair and a beard. He's almost got kind of a Jeff Bridge's Duty vibe in the scene, except he's supposed to be a great martial arts teacher. And he informs Johnny that there is a way for him to restore his credibility, to put these rumors to rest rob It's exactly as you were saying. There is a once in a generation fight to the death martial arts tournament called Mortal Kombat being held in secret on
an island off Hong Kong. And so his teacher says, get on a boat at a specific time and place, go to the tournament, win it, and the press will stop saying you're a fraud. This has got to be one of the worst like PR plans I've ever heard of.
Yeah. Yeah, in fact, I'm kind of surprised nobody has. Maybe somebody has done this up as a complete comedy. This would, I think be a great theme for a flick. Have a more comedically problematic martial arts actor. And then they do this. They enter a super secret, single elimination death tournament in order to fix their PR problem.
Yeah, oh dude, actually no, here, it's coming to my mind now. So it's like written by Armando Ayanucci, but it's about the real Steven Segal going to a Mortal Kombat type tournament.
Because what's the best case scenario here He returns having murdered multiple people.
Yeah, oh, and then another funny thing is that after Johnny Cage leaves there's nobody around. We just see Master Boyd walking around in this airplane hangar, and then he just morphs into Shang Sung himself. So it wasn't even Master Boyd. He was never there, it was Shang Sung.
He's a trickster.
Okay. So the next scene we're back to lu Kang. Here, we have Lukang arriving by riverboat at a place that we're told is the Temple of Light China. Again, I think this is probably a Thai temple.
Yes, yes, I'm almost certain this is a Thai temple, but we're told it's a Chinese temple. And then we have Christophe Lambert stroll in as a video game god based on a Japanese thunder deity. So culturally we're all over the place here.
Yeah, But when Lukang, so we got to get there in a second, Lukang is greeted by an assembly of monks in red robes, including his grandfather, who is some kind of authority figure for this organization that the movie calls the Order of Light. So I think the backstory is that lu Kang and his brother Chan were trained in kung Fu by the Order of Light, and they were brought up to defend the realm of Earth in
the tournament of Mortal Kombat. So the lore of the tournament and the lore of the movie is already owned to lu Kang. He was brought up in it. He was always taught this. But lu Kang rejected and ran away from his destiny and went to America. So he became a skeptic, and now he believes the whole premise is nonsense. So in his absence, his brother Chan took his place as the designated heir to fight in the tournament,
and Chan fought in the last tournament. He was killed in the fighting, and the monks found his body on the grounds of the temple.
And so that is why lu Kang has received this call to adventure, or I guess telegram to adventure. Hey, you need to come back in come back into this underworld because only you can defeat this monstrous threat we're facing.
Yeah, we need you for one last mission. That was a long time ago. General. But so Lukang tells his grandfather about the dream he had, and this is interpreted as a sign. The dream means that he is now once again the chosen one to defend humankind at the Tournament of Mortal Kombat. Lukang is skeptical of this stuff about the dream and the magic. He says he does want to represent the Order of Light at the tournament, but only because the man who killed his brother will
be there and he wants revenge. So for him at the beginning, it's just a revenge story. Now Here is where Christoph Lambert comes in. We see an old man dressed in tattered robes and a large straw hat that hides his face, and as he wanders in through the temple grounds, the Monk's bow in his presence, and the grandfather says to Lukang that this is Lord Raydan. But Lukang's not buying it. He says, get up, grandfather, this
is a simple beggar. But then Rayden sort of proves his identity by flipping Lukang on his back and making electricity shoot out of his eyeballs. We get some cute dialogue here, like Lukang is mouthing off to Raydin and the grandfather says, spare him, Lord Raydon, American life has enfeebled his mind too much television, And then Raydon makes
some cutting comments about lu Kang Thing's personal failures. He says that you know you ran away from the temple not because you didn't believe it, but because you couldn't accept responsibility for protecting earth. And then Lukang says to him, if you are Lord Raydon, why did you let Chan die? Why didn't you protect him? Raidn's comeback? Why didn't you? It's like nonsensical because Lukang is not omnipotent and had no idea what was going on.
Yeah, there, though, I guess to Rayden's point, like he isn't either, right. I mean he may see more and know more and move around a lot easier than mortals, but I mean he's not like a Judeo Christian god or anything.
Okay, limited great power god. Yeah, anyway, this whole scene ends with Lukang. He tells off Raidin and he's like, I don't need you, and he tells his grandfather that he's going to the tournament to get revenge, whether he gets consent from them or not. And then once again some really good hype music here. As we watch lu Kang stride away from the temple, there are rhythmic bells and heavy drums, and this part I felt really hyped up.
Yes, yes, good hide machine on this one.
Now, the next scene is another one of my favorites in the movie is the scene of the boat arriving at the dock in Hong Kong and then departing for the tournament. So first we have Johnny Cage arriving in a limo and he asks Lukang to carry his luggage for him. Lukang takes one of his suitcases and throws it in the water, and then we get more of the kind of cutesy lines where Johnny Cage is like, wow, good thing, I didn't ask him to park the car.
But here Johnny Cage runs into an old acquaintance named Art Lean that remember in the last episode we were talking about I think there is a piece of music called like arts theme or something. Oh no over Art, yes, and so we were discussing, now that's not the word art. There's a character named Art and a character with a quite unfortunate fate later in the film. So you know, they they catch up, they've seen each other fight before. You know, there's mutual respect there. But then they are
interrupted when this hilarious boat rolls in. It's like the boat that It's like the boat that King Arthur and Betevere ride at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Yeah, my instant thought was that it looked like a hell Raiser parade float. Like it's just got that much, you know, fake smoke going on. It just it looks goofy. It's wonderful.
Yeah. Also, Sonya Blade and her partner Jack's are here. We learned that they were tipped off by one of Kano's associates at the Hong Kong Techno Metal Club and she chases she like sees Kano getting onto the boat, and she runs off through the fog to get on the boat herself and her partner like yells at her, Sonya, don't get on that thing. I would not advise anyone to get on that thing. But anyway, you know, here's here on the boat is where we finally assemble our
three main heroes. Johnny Cage for the first third of the movie is carrying like eight different pieces of luggage and he's so he's struggling with all that stuff and he has a head on collision with Sonya. Sonya reacts by putting a pistol against his chin, and she demands to know where Cano is. Obviously, Johnny Cage is not clued in. But this moment is the beginning of a very prominent dynamic in the character relations throughout the film,
which is hate flirting. This is where Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade will spend a lot of time just kind of like insulting and taking shots at each other and making two D comments at each other before their romantic subplot fully blossoms. So Sonya is how would you describe it? She is very on mission. She's like, she's like, doesn't have time to be nice to anybody. She's like, out of my way, I gotta find Cano. And so she ends up going below decks to look for Kno and
there runs into our our wonderful sorcerer Shang Sung. Johnny Cage and Lukang follow her down to help her out, but she's very indignant. She does not want their help, she does not need their help. She did not ask for their help, and this is one of the crucial features of her character that she learns she must overcome in the end.
It's very blue below decks too. I want to I want to add that the blue gels were out in force. It's not as over the top as that green bedroom of Lu Kang.
Though there's a lot of blue going on in multiple places here. I think it's blue once they get back up on deck later also, uh, but so they're they're down below decks. And then Shangsung invites in his two Ninja warriors. He says these Oscorpion and sub Zero the deadliest of enemies, but slaves under my power.
And this is this is an important point though, because in the game, and I think even by this point, certainly by two and three, this is well established. Scorpion and sub Zero have a very intense dynamic where Scorpion is a vengeful revenant and sub Zero or at least different. They're different, they're different people who get the name sub Zero.
But the original sub Zero is the person who killed Scorpion's family, and so it's actually well, it's pretty well established in the lore again by this point, but this movie just makes them be the miscellaneous demon demon bodyguards or demon soldiers of Shanks.
Yeah, it is weird that they're on the same team in this movie, and I think they're trying to do a quick. You know, one sentence retcon of that by just saying, yeah, they are enemies, but I've magically ensorceled them.
Yeah, and these are the two characters that are often, especially in Scorpions case, are generally on the box art for the game. Maybe that kind of more developed with later games, but yeah, these two are really the star of the franchise. And I think that I haven't seen the latest Mortal Kombat film, but it's my understanding that that is very much reflected in the picture, in the way that they cast these roles into the way they're present it.
Now, Rob, maybe you know more about the games than me and can answer this. I have long interpreted the popularity of characters like Scorpion, sub Zero, Reptile, and so forth in these games to be a sort of efficiency or cost cutting move, because they are the same animation with just different colors of the outer ninja, where like the animation could be exactly the same.
Yes, that's exactly right. Especially in these early games. You know they were doing motion capture. It's more than just motion capture though, because they were I don't remember the exact video game production terminology, but they're like filming actors. In actual costumes, but then they can change that. They can swap the colors out, and that way you only have to have one actor in there to do all
of the ninjas. You may get some alternate takes, different moves or different sort of stances, and certainly fatalities, but less work. You don't have to completely start from scratch on your next character.
Yeah, seems like kin the same character Sprite, except blue for sub Zero, yellow for Scorpion, and green for Reptile.
So it is kind of interesting that some of the most iconic, most developed and fan favorite characters in the game are the interchangeable ninjas. Yeah, be it these male ninjas or the female warriors we get in MK two and beyond, like Katana and of course Melina.
Yeah, okay, So sub Zero comes up to Sonia and he like grabs the end of her gun and freezes the barrel off, so now Sonia she doesn't have her weapons anymore. Scorpion he holds up his hand and some kind of weird CGI creature with a beak and a tongue pokes out of his palm. This does tie into
something in the games. In the games, one of the special moves of Scorpion character is that he would throw a spear that's attached to a rope that would hit you, and then he could pull you over to him in a stunned state and uppercut you or whatever, and he would say get over here or maybe just come here. In the game, would they say. I think they said get over here in the movie, But in the movie they changed that like spear on a rope into a living snakelike creature. That's a choice.
Yeah, this is definitely worth pointing out. Yeah, Scorpion in the Games is More is generally depicted as having a traditional ninja weapon, a kunai rope dart, and then often a ninja sword. And I remember really digging the way they embellished the weapon in this film back when it came out. Yeah, not a ninja weapon, but a weird snake creature that shoots out of Scorpion's palm and climbs out of it out of the slit in his palm.
I loved it, and I was often disappointed that they didn't incorporate that into the games and make it cannon. But man, upon revisiting this film, I have to say, these cgi effects do not hold up. No it's a fun concept and I still enjoy all these scenes with Scorpion in them. He has one of the best fights, if not the best fight in the picture coming up. But who does this CGI? Did not age one?
I agree, it is not good. I think it's not quite as bad as the Reptile CGI, but it's bad.
All The Reptile CGI is the worst.
Okay, But here we're in the We're in the belly of the boat, this weird, creaky boat, and the Ninjas are about to kill our heroes. So what's gonna happen? How are they done?
For?
No, they are saved by divine intervention. Lord Raydon appears Christoph Lambert like. He shoots down into the hold of the boat in some ball of energy form and then he zaps both of the Ninjas into submission.
And the CGI here is also horrible. Raiden's lightning powers in the game were clearly inspired by the lightning character in Big Trouble in Little China. And those are those effects which are in Big Trouble a Little China. Amazing great, Yeah, they absolutely hold up today. I used to watch him in slow motion when I was a kid, So in this film, Raidin uses cgi bursts of blue and orange fire, and it's just absolutely hideous.
He says something like, your sideshow freaks attack my fighters before the tournament. This is cheating, and Sheng Sung just he's very smooth and he just promises, oh, it won't happen again, Lord Raidin, but he reminds Raidin that once
they reach the island, Raidin will have no power. So I think the lore is that here Raydon is serving a kind of referee role, like he can't fight in the tournament himself, but he is allowed to intervene to keep things fair according to the rules of the tournament endorsed by the Emperor, which include the provision that you can't have random supernatural ninjas kill all the Earth Fighters before you even get to the tournament. I don't know why the Emperor endorses these rules or thinks he needs
to play fair. Do you understand that?
No, especially what we know about the Emperor and come to know about him later, It's like, I don't know why he's so lawful evil in all of this. There just must be some like you know, he's playing by rules set by other supernatural entities, like he has to play by the rules you know, exploit them been the rules where he can, but he still has to make use of them to conquer other realms.
Yeah. So anyway, this early sneak attack by Shingsong is averted, and our heroes sort of follow Raydon up onto the surface of the boat to get a scene with just a huge lore dump. We're going to get a bunch of exposition.
Yeah, Cage has a whole bit here ranting about the supernatural after the introduction of sub Zero and Scorpion that it reminds me a lot of that wonderful line that we had in the movie The Eliminators that we watched the whole We've got robots, we've got cavemen, we've got kung fu. Is this some kind of comic book? And in this Cage is saying, we got a guy with things coming out of his hands, we got another guy who freez this stuff, and so forth.
Yeah, it's actually to call back to a movie we've brought up several times in today's episode. It reminds me of Jack Burton's line in Big Trouble in Little China when he's like, we've got guys flying around on wires, cutting everybody to shreds there's a guy standing there with light coming out of his mouth.
Yeah, yep, solid connection.
But interestingly, by this point, even though he starts the movie very much in skeptical refusing the call mode, Lukang quickly transitions back into believing everything. He's just like, this is Lord Raydon, that he is the god of thunder and lightning. Sonia isn't quite there yet. She's saying I think. She literally says, come on, there must be a rational explanation for all this, And then we get Raydon doing one of the first of many kind of motivational PEP
talks that he gives our heroes throughout the movie. He is kind of a life coach in a way. Yeah, so he comes in and our heroes he says, listen, what you're about to face is more important than He turns to Cage and he says, your ego. He turns to Sonya and he says your enemy. And he turns to Lukang and says, or your quest for revenge. You are about to embark on a secret mission. You have been chosen to defend the realm of Earth in a tournament called Mortal Combat. Sonya asks, well, who are they
going to defend it from? And Lord Raydon explains. He says, your world is but one of many realms. One of them is a forsaken land called Outworld, ruled by an immortal who has crowned himself Emperor. Now he seeks a new world to conquer an enslave. Now, Johnny Cage, I think, asks a reasonable question. If he's so powerful, why doesn't he just come and take our world? Now, Lord Raidin says, there are rules. These are the rules we were just
talking about. To enter the realm of Earth. Rayden says, the Emperor's demon sorcerer Shansung has to win ten straight victories in mortal combat, and they have one nine in a row. This is the tenth tournament, so it's down to the wire now.
You know, I guess maybe the elder gods put this system in place because they realize, well, not every world, every realm is going to be able to muster up an army to combat shal Kan's army. But maybe you could get together, like five really good fighters, you know enough, compete in a tournament, and maybe that makes things a bit more fair.
Now, sometime later in this conversation, we get several exchanges that are extensively clipped in both the trailer and all of the techno tracks the feature of this movie, like that part where Sonya is like, a handful of people in a leaky boat are going to save the world, and Raydon says exactly. But he's very you know, Raidn's very positive on Mortal Kombat. He's like, think about it, guys. You know, Mortal Kombat is not about death but life. Yeah.
For some reason, when he says that, I believe it.
This is exactly what I'm sure a lot of eleven and twelve years to tell their parents. This game isn't about death, mom and dad. This is actually it's about life. This is it's mortal combat. It's about individual exceptionalism and about living your life to the max. Don't focus on the death. I think you're a little shortsighted.
Here, and it's about saving the world. Come on, don't you want to save the world? Raydon tells that at the end of this whole conversation, he says, I'll try to do my Christalf Lambert voice. He says, the fate of billions depends upon you.
Sorry, did he really do the laugh? At that point?
Yeah, he does.
I know he does it in the film. I just can't remember where he throws it in.
Oh he chuckles like that several times.
Oh.
But then two different characters tell us that it has begun. Remember, Rayn's like, it has begun. And then Shang Sung is standing there at the edge of the boat and he's like, I don't know. It's reaching up to a bunch of ghosts running around in the air, and he goes, it has begun.
And yet the crazy thing is that it has not begun yet. No, they have not even arrived. It's like, you wouldn't say this in the last third of your flight going to your vacation destination, right, you would say it has begun. Like it's a weird time to choose to say that.
They're in the middle of the ocean.
It has not begun international waters. Maybe.
So the next thing that happens in the movie is the arrival at the island. It is a beautiful location. They filmed this at one of those Thai islands with the steep rock walls rising straight out of the ocean, those very conical, high rising Thi Thai islands. So they're beautiful. There are a number of just yuck yucks about Johnny Cage fussing over his excessive amount of fancy luggage, more
hate flirting between him and Sonia. The fighters have to climb a mountain on this mysterious island to reach a temple above the clouds where the opening ceremonies of the tournament are going to take place. And inside inside this temple it's like a cave with torches, sta statues of
monster gladiators in a very orange glow everywhere. Oh and when they arrive at the temple, there is one of the few lines in the movie that actually made me laugh as intended on adult viewing, which is Johnny Cage like looking at the like the monster gladiators and the torches, and he's like, gee, I wonder what the bathrooms are like. It's a good line, makes you wonder, Yeah, what are they like? I guess I would think you just get a bucket.
Well, you do have that level in MK two that's like the sewer. I guess it's that you just go out onto that little walkway and Papa squad.
I guess.
So.
Also in the scene, lu Kang first runs into Princess Katana. She is the character who is kind of the mysterious person with ambiguous loyalties, who is a denizen of outworld, but she seems to possibly be interested in helping the residents of Earth. And she's sitting under an umbrella just giving very important looks. Oh but right after this we get one of the worst things. So Shang Sung walks up and he says, Princess Katana, she is our most
dangerous adversary. Watch over her, Reptile, keep her away from these humans. And you think, reptile, who's he talking to? But nearby him there is a monster statue, one of the mini monster statues, and this one turns from a statue into living cgi and it looks like the coloration on this reptilian monster looks like the old packaging of a tube of life Saver's candy, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah, And then it turns in. It
turns invisible like the predator, and then scurries away. Reptile looks so awful.
Yeah. I remember this being a little heartbreaking to watch when I watched this film for the first time, because Reptile was always one of my favorites. You know, he's a green ninja that underneath his mask a reptilian creature that spits acid and turns invisible. He's awesome, and then, oh my goodness, look what they have done to him here.
So everybody goes to a feast here. There's like a meal to inaugurate the tournament. They don't let you get a good look at the food, unfortunately, Shan, I'm really bummed out. We will get a look at some of the food in the subsequent scene.
Yeah, because we don't get much dining here. They almost immediately flip the tables to make rooms for combat. Like it seems like this would be a great place to have a little bit more exposition going on, you know, do it George R. Martin style? What would George R. Martin's Mortal Kombat consist of. It would be this big feast going on for about fifteen minutes exactly.
We'd get to hear what hear and see what the food is like, and they would explain more of what's going on. Instead, he serves them all this food, and then right after the food is served, these shirtless muscled warriors, many of them are. They're really greased up and shiny or sweaty, with these long loose red head coverings. I don't if that is a particular type of head covering in the real world. It looks I would kind of
assume not. It looks just kind of like a huge sock over their heads with holes for the eyes.
Yeah, there are some later scenes where I think some of these guys are not wearing the hood over their head, and they should have because some of these extras are a little bit too like jacked up, you know, a little bit too distracting in the background with wild facial expressions.
But Shangsung gives a speech here, so he's got the muscle guys standing around, and he gives a speech where he says, welcome. You are here to compete in mortal combat. Tomorrow morning the great combat begins. Some of you will even have the distinct honor and pleasure to face Prince Goro, our reigning champion. You were all witnesses to one of the greatest turning points in the history of your planet. Treasure these moments as if they were your last, and
now for a taste of things to come. That last line is sampled in some of the music on the soundtrack. And here are the muscle goons. This is the part where they run in and flip the feast tables over. They throw all the food on the floor, and it's time for an exhibition match, the first fight of Mini. So one of the muscle goons must fight sub Zero.
So the shirtless guy does a bunch of shadow boxing, and then he starts running at sub Zero, who's just standing at the other side of the room, sort of sucking in a ball of cold into the palm of his hand, and as he jumps into the air to kick at sub Zero, sub Zero throws the ball and freezes the guy solid, causing him to shatter all over the floor.
I remember loving this moment back when the original film came out, and it holds up pretty well. You know, some criticisms of the CGI aside, this is a good use of mid nineties CGI.
It's not a fight though sub Zero.
He Indiana Jones in right here is what.
Happens exactly, but with ice. And then I think Schnsung says lawless victory, which is a line from the video game when one player defeats another one without taking a single punch. Right after this, there's a sequence with our heroes doing a bunch of sneaking around. Our three main heroes are running in and out of tunnels looking for Shangsung. There's plenty of banter and hate flirting along the way, but unknown to them, they are being watched. And here
we do get some kind of scary scenes. There's like a scene where we see this huge three fingered hand sort of stroking across the inside of these stone cage bars as a creature with a deep rumbling voice is clearly watching our heroes as they're sneaking around.
Yeah, yeah, this is of course Goro's hand. This is the best he'll look the entire film, but it is legitimately creepy in a nice moment, I think. Not too long after this, we get a tease of Goro's shadow, which also looks great, and you're like, I can't wait to see what they've done here. I can't wait to see how Goro looks.
But they turn it into a comedy moment where Johnny Cage says to Sonya, He's like, you go ahead, Sonya, find out what that was. We'll wait here, so you know, haha. But then we get a scene between Goro and Cano, which is one of my favorite scenes in the film.
It really feels like something's missing here because we had like the teas, the teas and then full reveal. Here's just Goro having a conversation with Kano.
You would think they would unveil him gradually, like in a fight scene or something, but no, we just get a good old look at him in this scene, and he is hideous. But Cano and Goro are hanging out while Cano is just eating food. He's eating this big greasy turkey leg. He's got a bucket of wine. The turkey leg is just squirting juice everywhere. For people who aren't familiar, should we take a moment to physically described Goro? What? What does he look like? Here?
His what's his species? Is a shoken I believe if I'm remember incorrectly, four armed entity, like an ogre with four arms. The arm placement does not make a lot of sense. It's always a challenge to try and imagine what this skeleton looks like under here. And yeah, I mean, he's he's he's he's very cool looking in the video game where he has a stop motion entity. In this
he is, you know, admirably. He is a fully practical effect, a mix of suit performance and you know, puppetry animatronics, but it just as we discussed in the last episode, it doesn't quite cut it, especially in a scene like this where they're really trying to make him as life like as possible as he is having a conversation with a live actor. It's not a fight. He's not ripping someone in half. He is. They're doing the best, you know,
they could. You make him a living entity who is expressing his own like desires and motivations here, and I think they just they bit off more than they could chew because it doesn't quite work.
But Goro in the scene, the emotion they're trying to convey is that he is getting very annoyed at Kno disrespecting his royal his royal line. I guess so Keno's like, oh you some kind of royalty, and Goro's like, I am Goro. I'm the general of the armies of out world and the prince of the subterranean realm of Shokan. And then Keano is like subterranean underground, so he's not he's not showing proper respect. And you get the sense that Goro maybe wants to just like you know, eat
cano here or something. But it doesn't quite happen because Shensung walks in, and you know, Shensung comes in and explains, you know, he says, look, actually Cano is great. He can teach us a lot about Earth because look at him. You know, there's nothing special about him. He's not especially dignified, he has no manners, he's not really all that smart or you know, nothing good about him. Yet in the realm of Earth, men like him can amass great wealth,
almost god like power. And then Keno says, yeah, I'd like to get back to my amassing as soon as possible, if you don't mind. So when do I get paid? And here it is again revealed that Cano. Before he can take his money and go home, Keno has to fight Sonia Blade in the tournament, but he is not to harm her, only to humiliate her because Shangsung has very important plans for her later in the contest.
All right, we'll see what that consists of. Oh.
Also in the scene, I think we hear our heroes expressing. The heroes overhear the villains expressing worry about lu Kang. They're concerned about him, they have to be careful about him, and they're they're you know, the heroes are like, what's so special about Lukang? Why him? But they're also concerned about Princess Katan. They say she is the Emperor of out World's daughter, and they're afraid she might intervene to help the fighters from the realm of Earth, so they
have to be vigilant. Now there's a bunch more sneaking around. There is one encounter of our heroes with Reptile where reptile is invisible in a room, and it's like that scene in Predator. You know, we're only one of the guys sees it. Lu Kang apparently sees Reptile when nobody else does, or at least walks up to you know, he senses something and he like walks up to a void in the wall, and then Reptile suddenly comes out of invisibility, vomits a bunch of poison in Lukang's face,
and then runs away. After that, the heroes come into Shangsung's feast room, and here we get the first real big fight. Actually, this is the fight where our heroes have to confront these muscle guys with the head coverings, and they do quite well.
But then of course Rayden shows up and he does a slow clap it's so great, and we get another one of his I don't think so.
That's right, I don't think so. And then Raydon leads our heroes to safety. We get more lectures from Raydon. Here he says, you know, to fight Shang Sung, you've got to fight face not just one, but a legion of enemies, because his power comes from the souls of those he has defeated in the past. So you're sort of fighting everyone. Shang Sung is ever beaten.
Now.
The next morning, the main action of the movie begins, and from here the movie turns much more into just a sequence of fight scenes that that sounds like that could get a little monotonous, and I don't know, maybe you could say that it does. But the movie does better with it than you might expect, I think, because it doesn't let any of them go on too long. They're all there's a pretty rapid pace of developments, and most of the fights are pretty.
Quick, right right. And the one in particular that I'm thinking of that does go on a bit long has a lot of variety in it, and it is just it is exciting from beginning to end.
That's right. So the first fight we get to see the next morning is taking sort of on a I think it's on a beach outside back on the ground level of the island. Shang Sung kind of sits in a peacock throne overlooking all of the battles. He's like the referee or observer or something. And this is a fight where lu Kang has to face off against another human fighter. They've got a match with Bo Staves, so like nobody's fighting Goro yet. I think it starts with
like the Earth realm fighters just fighting each other. I don't think we ever learned that the name of the guy Lukang is fighting here. But Lukang fights honorably and he wins. But there's a twist because after Lukang's opponent is defeated, Shehang Sung walks up to the guy and he reaches out and he sucks his soul out of his flesh. He says, your soul is mine, sucks the soul out, and then says fatality. Now that's not really
how it worked in the game. Was it like the fatality was done by the fighter, not by Shehang Sung?
Correct? Yes, so, and it gets clear that Shangsung's not playing fair here at all, Like, what do you mean taking the souls of guys you didn't even beat. That contradicts what Raydin just said.
Next fight is Sonia Blade versus Kano. Okay, this has been coming a while. This is the Vendetta fight. We alluded to this earlier, but here in this at the beginning of this fight, Kano whips out a knife and brags about how he used it to kill her partner. Then he attacks her with it, and it's like, what he's allowed to do that? That's I don't know. Is this a tournament.
It's a tournament legal.
Okay, But Sonya just whoops him like she she does a move that her character in the game does where she stands on her hands and then grabs the dude by his neck with her ankles, slams him on the ground, and then does a kind of ground grapple with her calves around his neck. And now Kano's like, uh oh, I didn't expect it to go this way. He starts begging for mercy. Here, Shangsung does what he does in
the game. Shangsung calls out to Sonya and says finish him and Kano, can you imagine what pun is coming? Cano says, come on, Sonya, give me a break, and she says okay and cracks his neck.
All right, So, on one level, I was amused by and done with Kano at this point, so I wasn't sad that we weren't getting more Cano in the rest of the picture. But on the other hand, it is weird that we set Sonya up as a character whose only identity is her quest for revenge and she achieves
full revenge like less than half into the picture. Yeah, and then this is not one of those movies where the remainder of the picture is going to be like grappling with the guilt of vengeance or the ramifications of vengeance, the self destructive nature of vengeance. No, it's just kind of like, oh, that was her only reason to be around or do anything. Now we just have to just change her role in the narrative completely. Now she has to be damsel in distress.
Now she turns into don't you dare do this to protect me? Johnny Cage.
Yeah, so it's it's a little bit clunky.
So the next fight in the movie is Johnny Cage the movie star versus scorpion. I think this is as you alluded to. I think this is the longest fight in the movie probably, well maybe with the exception of the final fight between Lukeng and Shang Song, but this is the longest. But it's got a lot of variety, like changes locations midway through, and I think this one's pretty solid.
Yeah, I think this one absolutely holds up. Yeah, it's long, but the action choreography is tremendous. You believe all the hits. They even have some nice like supernatural wire moments in there that work really well. We get a change in location, it gets hellish, and both characters really feel like their video game personas here.
Yeah. I like the location where they begin. It's like an orchard with these rows and rows of perfectly lined up, evenly spaced trees. I don't know what kind of trees they are, but it's a it's a kind of eerie setting because of the the combination of naturalness and unnaturalness about it. So I like that. And Johnny Cage uses
one of the trees. He uses it to disable the the I don't know, the snake coming out of the hand weapon because he like dodges out of the way at the last second, and the snake slams into a tree and so so yeah, it's a pretty good fight.
And also it does involve Scorpion trying to use his finishing move from the game where he takes his mask off, reveals his head as a skull, and then breathes fire on his opponent, but Johnny Cage outwits him by holding up a shield to shield himself from the flames and then using the edge of the shield to slice the Yellow Ninja open. And I don't know, just like a bunch of guts and weird stuff comes out, and then Scorpion explodes.
Yeah, yeah, this takes place I guess in Hell, I don't or some sort of hell. We don't know how Cage gets back from hell to reality, but he does it. Maybe it's not a literal hell. It's just like a basement of the Mortal Kombat Temple facilities here.
Now, there was a part here that really confused me when I was a kid. So Scorpion, once he's defeated, he explodes, and then we see a photograph that is a photo of Johnny Cage like falling to the ground from the debris of the explosion and as ash is raining down all around and it's the photo of Johnny Cage is autographed and says to my greatest fan, Johnny Cage, xoxo,
And I was like, what does that mean? I think I interpreted this when I was a kid, as in life before becoming an undead, skeletal ninja, Scorpion was a fan of Johnny Cage's movies and got an autographed photo and then became an undead ninja and just happened to have this souvenir on him.
Well, I like the logic of that, but yeah, I think it's just Cage being cheeky. But the alternate interpret that you've shared here, it would lead to some interesting lore if this were the case.
Okay, next fight they show us is lu Kang versus Katana. Shang Sung says they have to fight. It's clear that Katana is very powerful, but she's holding back. She doesn't want to hurt lu Kang. Instead, in this match, every time she grapples Lukang to a halt, she sort of whispers advice in his ear in these little increments, and she eventually tells him to win your next fight, use the element, which brings life.
You know, this is not a good fight, This is not a fight you enjoy like watching so much, But it's about developing the plot and I think it also it's key when we talk about why this doesn't get boring having fight after fight after fight, is because they're pacing it out appropriately here where we have a big showcase battle between Scorpion and Johnny Cage and then a little battle that serves a different purpose entirely, and then we move on to maybe another flashier battle.
That's right. So the next fight on the agenda is another one of the big demon Ninja fights. This is Lukang versus sub Zero, who again has freezing powers, and we saw earlier sub Zero froze an opponent so that he just froze solid and shattered on the floor. This is also a pretty good fight.
Yeah, solid fight, great set. I think this one has a really nice set, excellent lighting, solid fatality as well.
There's one moment in this fight that really stuck with me when I was younger, which is the moment where sub Zero I think, kicks Lukang on the chin. I recall that really seeming like it would hurt, Like there's a scene like this in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford gets hit on the chin with a mirror that's flipping around. Yeah, I don't know, that's gross for me.
I mean that's the mark of great action of filmmaking and great stunt work when you can feel those hits like that.
Yeah. But so anyway, it's a good fight. In the beginning, they trade blows for a while. Sub Zero is clearly prepared to freeze Lukang solid he's gathered bring the sort of CGI snow into the palm of his hand. The magic is swirling around, and Lukang's like, how can I beat that? But then he remembers Katana's advice, and I think we even see her at the other end of the room, like making eyes at him, and he's like, wait a minute, what is the element that brings life?
It's water. So he gets a bucket of water and he heaves it into sub Zero's sphere of cold and it forms a spike spike of ice that pins the evil ninja to the wall. Now, at this point in the story, Shangsong has had enough. He's let the humans win enough. It's time to deploy Prince Goro, who nobody can defeat, and then there's like a montage of Goro
destroying most of the human fighters in the tournament. This leads up to the scene of Goro versus Art Lean, the guy we met earlier who you know, who had some previous experience with Johnny Cage, and so we see this whole fight. Goro gets a like a WWE style entrance where the door's open and everybody but he's cheering for him. And why are all these human fighters in the audience cheering for Goro?
They like strength, they love the champion.
He's here to destroy their Earth realm, but they're like, yeah, you fight him.
This scene is where Goro looks the best. I have to say. He still doesn't look tremendous, but he looks a lot better in action here against Art.
Yeah, that's right now. Art Lene does okay. Initially, he gets some punches in by being faster than Goro, but Goro's just too big and he eventually grabs Art's fists with his two lower arms and then just beats him with his upper arms, and finally Goro finishes him with a with a horrible strike. And I remember the scene being kind of like scary and sad when I was
a kid. And then Sheen Sung absorbs Art Lene's soul into his eyeball, and then for some reason, Sonya screams no, but it's not even suggested that she knows Art.
Yeah.
Yeah, why doesn't Johnny Cage scream know he's the one who knows him.
Yeah, that would make a lot more sense because ultimately, like that's the role Art has. Here is the kind of role we see in a lot of these martial arts tournament films where we have the kind of like sacrificial friend of the hero who gets beat up and or killed by the big bad in the tournament.
So after this we get you know, your dark Knight of the Soul scenes where the characters are grappling with their fears and limitations and Rayden is sort of coaching them through being the life coach. Yet again, you know, he talks to lu Kang about his fears and his destiny and the how despair is the most dangerous fear of all. Lu Kang ends up sitting on a beach,
flashing back to his dream about Chan. And then this is also the scene where we get Sonya and Johnny Cage arguing about whether John Cage should challenge Goro, and he's like, I'm gonna have to do it, and she says, don't you dare do this to protect me Johnny Cage and he says, trust me, I've got a plan. So okay, I'm curious what's his plan? How's he going to defeat this huge thing with four arms? So the next fight is Johnny Cage versus Goro, and Johnny Cage goes to Shangsung.
He's like, all right, I'm ready. I'm ready to fight Goro. Shang Sung says, foolish but brave. Raydon tries to intervene to stop this, but it's too late. A deal's a deal. He can't stop it. So the Cage versus Goro fight. What do you think? When I was a kid, I loved this fight because it I would say, largely because it features a prominent groin punch, which I found hilarious when I was younger, and then also because it's got It's got a cliff, and I love a fight at
the edge of a cliff. That's just classic action movie gold.
My feelings about it were a bit different. I thought that the the nard punch just made Gore looks stupid, and I was like, no, I mean said, the Goro is supposed to be tough. We've just built him up as tough, and now you've made him look foolish. And then there's I feel like there's very little action between these two characters. It's not much of a fight. And then Johnny Cage kind of like trips him off a cliff and he falls into a into an idealer or something.
Yeah. Yeah, so the fight begins with Oh. At the beginning of the fight, Goro's like gloating, and he takes Johnny Cage's sunglasses out of his pocket or maybe off of his face and smashes them and Johnny Cage doesn't like that, but he says his line again you remember from the beginning when he goes Let's dance, So he says that, but then he does the splits. He drops to the ground and punches Goro in the crotch, and then Raydon, who is standing there observing the fight, does
a nineteen nineties yes Goro. Of course, he howls in pain and rage. The movie really wallows in the Goro groin pain.
Yeah, yeah, I think a bit too much, but I guess you know, the kids probably loved it, and it to be clear, it is a move from the video game, so they had to include it.
Does Johnny Kitch do a shadow kick in the movie that was in the video game? Also, I think maybe he does want to get Scorpion.
Possibly. Yeah, I don't remember it happening, but that would have been the place for it.
Oh. We we just got a note from guest producer Chandler Mays that yes, he did do a shadow kick, and that is when Scorpion sucks Johnny Cage into hell.
All right, there we go.
Okay, But anyway, so at the end of the fight, yeah, Johnny Cage ends up kicking Goro off of the side of a mountain to his death, and Goro's like hanging there on the cliff and Johnny Cage we get a call back to his earlier line. This is the part where you fall down and Goro falls. So, I don't know. I thought this fight was great when I was younger, Rob, I can kind of see now what you're saying about the limitations of it maybe not being one of the better ones.
But on the other hand, I don't know. The art Goro fight was pretty good, but we've already established there are limitations to what you can do with this goal effect. So maybe that was just ultimately asking too much for there to be another big, drawn out fight with this creature in it.
That's right, And so here we get the transition to the final act where Shengsung he invokes one of his one of the rules of the tournament. He executes his right to challenge any of the Earth Warriors for the final fight of the tournament, and he grabs Sonia blade and drags her, screaming through the portal to outworld, where Raydon has no power and Raydon himself cannot go there. But Johnny Cage and Lukang they're like, hey, we've got to rescue Sonya, so they run through the portal. They
first asked Raydon. They're like, okay, well he's going to challenge her to the final fight. Can she beat him? And Raydon is like no, Rayden does not have confidence in Sonya.
So I mean, this would make it seem like, lookay, one of my theories that I may have established earlier is that it seemed to me that they're going for a whole Sheansung wants to marry Sonia Blade vibe here. But I guess the other way of looking at it is he wanted Sonya Blade to enter the tournament because she would be easy enough to beat an Outworld.
Yeah, that's what I thought it was.
But that's a weird choice too, because then it's like Sonia Blade's weakness is her reason for being in the tournament, and it seems like you're doing a disservice to your character there. I mean, she's like, we've spent a fair amount of time talking about how how fearsome she is, and now she's just a damsel in distress. So again, I find this transformation of her character an overall use of her character a little clunky.
Yeah, not a high point of the plotting here. So anyway, Lukaying and Johnny Cage they got to help her, So they go to Outworld. Outworld looks like a set from Escape from La Yeah, just you know, flaming garbage cans everywhere. It's very post apocalyptic. They're flaming garbage cans everywhere. You would expect it, so in I would have expected Outworld to look a little bit more fantasy and a little bit less like post apocalyptic Earth setting.
Well, there is one. I think they're mostly inspired by a particular fighting level in Mortal Kombat too. It's like the Outland setting and it does look like some sort of like a blue and purple ruin, so I guess they're going for that vibe. But yeah, they could have gone into more fantasy direction. I think they're supposed to be more fantasy, like more fantastic places within outworld and palaces and so forth.
Now, before they get to Schngsung's palace, there is one more fight, which is Lu Kang versus Reptile, which is pretty good but weird. It's a weird setup for a fight, but I like it.
Yeah, this one, it's completely bonkers, rather unexplained, but I love it. It's like a bonus match. You didn't think you were going to get to see Reptile fight. And at this point, again, you know love Reptile in the games. Then he was reduced to this awful CGI character. But luckily Lou Lukang throws or kicks him into a statue which like absorbs him, right and then and then Reptile becomes a humanoid ninja for this battle.
Yes, that's right, the CGI lizard is absorbed into the void in the stomach of a sort of monster statue, and that turns into the humanoid ninja form.
Right, and and he doesn't look great here. I'm not gonna not gonna lie. Reptile looks a lot cooler in that TV spot for MK two that I talked about in the first episode, but he looks way better than that cgi Grimlin creature. So I remember being rather pleased with it. And fortunately what we get here is a really solid.
Vite Yeah, and it ends with a special move from the video games, not for Mortal Kombat one, but from Mortal Kombat two, which is Lukang's bicycle kick, which is where he flies through the air repeatedly kicking you back and forth with both legs while advancing through the air.
Yes, yes, solid, solid move.
Oh and then final it ends with Reptile reverting back to like lizard form and Lukang just sort of does a bug stomp on him. So that's the end of that, And then they meet Princess Katana again. She's like, well done, you are finally learning Lukang, but so they of course after this Katana, Johnny Cage and Lukang, they go up to Shensung's palace and they're gonna have to challenge Shensung
to get Sonya back. Princess Katana prepares Lukang. She's like, you will face when you face Shangsung, there are gonna be three challenges. First, you must face your enemy, then you must face yourself. Then you must face your worst fear. So they go on up to the tower. To the tower, Shengsung has Sonya, He's like dressed her up in a Zena warrior princess outfit.
Yeah.
He is trying to get her to agree to his challenge of Mortal Kombat, but she won't. He's saying, you have to fight me in Mortal Kombat or Earth will forfeit. And he's not telling her the rules correctly. Those are not the rules. She doesn't have to accept. But he is lying to her about the rules, and she says, I'm not playing your game. My friends will come for me. So it seems Sonya has overcome her personal anxiety of
not wanting to accept help from anyone. Now She's like, my friends are gonna come help, and then they like suddenly she says that, and then a couple of the monks standing at the edge of the room. They like throw off their hoods and they go they're already here. Oh, and it is our heroes. They snuck in disguised as guys in hoods. And then we get the final fight. Shangsung,
I think, initially tries to challenge Johnny Cage. He's like, okay, okay, I'll fight you, but Lu Kang says, no, you'll fight me, and so Shangsung says, I accept and once again, pretty solid fight at the end of the movie here with multiple phases. Shangsung has a bunch of tricks up his sleeve that he brings out, and each trick sort of varies the texture of the fight, so it keeps throwing in these changes to keep it entry.
Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's well paced and has drama to it. It certainly builds on character development that we've had regarding Lou Kang, So yeah, it delivers with action and drama.
We you know, we were told earlier that that Changsung has absorbed the souls of thousands of warriors who fought before everyone he's ever defeated in the past, so to defeat him, you have to defeat all of them, and at one point he does like resurrect these dead warriors to fight lu Kang, and I like all these different warriors Lukang has to fight. I think one of them is like a samurai, and then.
One of them is definitely Gerald Okamura. We've talked. We've mentioned on the show before because he was often an extra or a background actor or sometimes more prominent in your like more of your action B movies, but he's in tons of martial arts movies from this time period. I think it's still popping up.
In things now. At another point in the fight, so I think that's the facier enemy part. At some point he has to face himself. I think, I don't know, just oh, I've forgotten this. Now Shangsung he turns into Lukang or he I don't know. He confronts him with something. But finally Shangsung turns into Lukang's brother, and he like turns around and he morphs and then he is Chan and he says to Lukang, Raiden sent me to help you. But why would Lukang fall for this? He just saw
him transformed. He didn't even like disappear and come back. He's just standing right there and then became his brother, so he's like trying to undermine Lukang's confidence as suddenly spikes start poking up out of the floor, and I like how when the close up of us seeing the spikes come out, you can see them like piercing through the glitter covered paper covering on the floor. That's the symbol from the Mortal Kombat games with the swirling dragon.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then finally lu Kang has a you know, he learns a lesson that there's a very like individualistic message at the end of the movie. Lu Kang's great triumph is that he learns every man is responsible for his own destiny. And then he finally defeats Shangsung by shooting a fireball out of his hands that is something that he does in the game, and Shangsung falls into the spikes below, and then lu Kang himself says, flawless victory. I don't think that's in character.
No, No, he took some damage in this battle as well, so I don't think it's accurate either.
Neither accurate nor in character for Lukang. I don't know why he says that. I think they just really had to get the game not in there. So with the big bad defeated lights shoot out of the out World tower and the souls of the Damned are freed from Shangsung's grip, including Chan.
And Gerald Olkamier. We see him floating the bud.
They all fly off into the sky, and then we get a wonderful coda where that track by Orbital starts playing as the heroes are all back on Earth. They're outside the temple we saw earlier, and they're all hugging it out and everybody's happy. They're like children running with these streamers and stuff, and we get the bump bump
bump bum bu bump bump. You know it's it's that field good Orbital track, and it seems like everything's gonna be okay, but somehow you almost know they're setting it up for a twist.
Yeah, because then like basically we get this again CGI that has not aged well. Suddenly, like the sky erupts and there is like this monstrous version of Shao Khan, the Emperor of out World, who does does not look very good here. They kind of like put a lot of demon makeup on his face, like they decided to spice up his look a bit, and it doesn't quite work. But I guess the silhouette is right, the helmet is right. So you fans of the of the video games know who this is.
But he's the size of a Kaiju. He's gigantic. Yeah, and he says he pops out of the temple and he says, you weak, pathetic fools, I've come for your souls. And what's the last line in the movie Rayden's catchphrase, He goes, I don't think so.
So they set up the sequel, which of course will be Mortal Kombat Annihilation, in which Brian Thompson is going to play Shallcan with a more traditional look. But I can't speak to it beyond that because I never actually watched Mortal Combat Annihilation. That's the story for a lot of people, because Mortal Combat Annihilation would not be a success at the box office and would kind of like kill off the Moral Kombat feature film venture for some time.
Though there would be additional like I think there was a TV show in the nineties that came after this that looked pretty bad. I would occasionally catch part of it, but maybe it has its fans. And then there would be additional like web installments of of later shows and some of those were pretty good eventually leading back up to the resurrection of Mortal Kombat Motion Pictures.
So we do an Annihilation next week.
No, not next week. Maybe we'll come back to it if people want it. I mean, it has an interesting cast and more, you know, iconic characters, you know, recreated two varying degrees of success on the screen.
I recall that the characters in that movie travel around the world through tunnels that go through the center of the earth by like rolling in these American gladiator balls. Oh really wow? Yeah, well that sounds interesting. That's good transportation infrastructure. All right. Does that do it for Mortal Kombat?
I think it does. I think after two episodes we have we have finished it. So we'll go ahead and shut the book on this tournament. But we'll remind everyone out there that stuff to blow your mind is primarily as signs and culture podcasts. But on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list of all the movies we've covered over the years, the best place to go for that
is to head on over to Letterbox dot com. That's l E T E R B O x D dot com. You will find us there. Our username is weird House and we have a list of all the films. Look at them, you know, sort them by genre or decade. It's pretty fun to play around with. Oh and if you were on Instagram follow Stuff to Blow your Mind follow our feed at stbym podcast. We also have updates about Weird House Cinema right there at stbym podcast on Instagram.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway, and a huge thanks to our guest producer today, Chandler Mays. Thanks for sitting in with us. Chandler. If you would like to get in touch with us on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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