Mortal Kombat - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Mortal Kombat



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
Flawless victory!

As a life long fan of the Mortal Kombat video game series (I grew up playing the first two on Game boy, and have pretty much owned every iteration of the fighting series on every other console out there at one time or another) and a rabid fan of the campy 1995 film with Robin Chou, I was more than a bit interested in the new reboot. I mean, us Kombatants have been itching for a darker reboot for years, and that was even partially realized with the gory test footage a few years back that morphed into the webisode series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, even though it was never able to gain enough traction to get made into a full movie. Well, after lounging on WB’s back burner for the better part of a decade, the reigns were handed over to Simon McQuoid (who happens to be a MASSIVE Mortal Kombat nerd) and the reboot was officially underway.

The plot is about as paper thin as any Mortal Kombat movie can be. The film opens up with Bi Han (Sub Zero, played by Joe Taslim of The Raid 2) and his Lin Kuei ninjas slaughtering the Shirai Ryu clan, including grand master Hanzo Hasashi’s (Hiroyuki Sanada) wife and son. Killed by Sub Zero himself, Hanzo vows with his dying breath that he’s going to come back and kick the butt of his rival. As Bi Han leaves, we watch Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) come in and sneak off with Hanzo’s hidden newborn son that his wife and son had wisely concealed before Sub Zero found out about him. Dun dun dun duuuuuuun!! (yeah we all know where this is going).

Fast forward to modern times where we meet Cole Young (Lewis Tan) a down and out MMA fighter who is barely making ends meet with his matches (and of course thrown matches). However, his life gets turned upside down when he and his family are attacked by Sub Zero and his ice powers. Barely escaping with his life thanks to Jaxon Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), Cole is clued into the fact that the dragon “birthmark” he’s had all his life was actually an invitation to a great tournament where he and other chosen fighters will fight for mankind’s very survival. Handed off to Agent Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) who is holding a prisoner in her makeshift bunker (in comes Kano, who is by far the best part of this movie), only for the duo to get attacked by more outworld fighters. Heading off to Raiden’s temple to find answers, the fighters soon find out that their destiny is bigger than anything they could have imagined, and have to look deep to find the hidden dragon within all of their souls and fight in Mortal Kombat (or, at least get READY to fight, since the tournament seems to be off in the future).

Objectively looking at the whole thing, Mortal Kombat 2021 did a lot of things right, but also made some low budget and newbie mistakes as well. The film is aggressively more violent and dark like we wanted, with over the top fatalities, gory fights, and some of the characters that we REALLY wanted to see on screen get some screen time for once. There are even some amazing fights in there that really had me grinning from ear to ear. Flipping that coin around though, I have to admit that there were some artistic choices which had me raising an eyebrow. The first was the fact that Cole is a completely made up fighter and not part of any Mortal Kombat roster, and as such he sticks out like a sore thumb. The other is that McQuoid decided to not go into the magical lore TOO much to explain everyone’s super techniques. Instead he just made up the fact that the “chosen” fighters gain magical abilities called “Arcana” and that they were randomly assigned characters”. Last but not least, Mortal Kombat feels like the prequel to the actual movie, setting up the entire film for the tournament, but then saying “well, better stay tuned for the sequel to see that tournament!”.

Lets get this out of the way, the fight between Sub Zero and Scorpion are what we were all jonesing for from the second the trailer dropped, and it was worth the price of admission. Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada were amazing on screen. Both are incredible martial artists and great actors (especially Sanada) and infusing that end battle with a remix of the legendary 1995 theme song had chills running down my back (not going to lie, I may have rewound that particular scene a dozen times). The other fatalities in the film were amazingly fun and gory. Mileena’s fatality with Kung Lao was oh so painful to watch (that particular fatality is a fan favorite) and McQuoid VERY obviously winked and nodded to the audience over all the little quotes from the game, as well as the playful jabs at characters spamming certain moves (I busted up laughing when Liu Kang spammed Kano with that stupid spinning sweep that he does from the game and how off Kano was about it).

What really surprised me was that Kano was the fan favorite of the movie. Josh Lawson really hammed it up as the Aussie merc and he just had FUN with his lines. With Liu Kang and Kung Lao being sidelined for Cole, Sub Zero and Kano, the merc with a mouth just stole every scene he was in. But that flip side comes in once again, and that flip side is Cole. I’m sorry, but Cole was a completely worthless character with a worthless power and has the most LITERAL version of Plot Armor that is humanely possible. The entire film could have been much tighter and better if they just had left him out. His acting was pretty painful, and his fighting was weak compared to the other fighters. Honestly, he was a wasted character and they just should have stuck with Liu Kang as the chosen one instead of fan servicing the heck out of the fact that he was Hanzo’s descendant.




Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and some crude references




4K Video: Video:

The video track is killer as I guessed it would be after watching the HBO Max variant of it a few months back. The film switches between cool blues and sepia tones, depending on location, but it’s digital glossy goodness throughout. There are a few times (such as the warehouse fight with Sub Zero and Jax, or the final showdown with Subzero at the end) where digital noise cropped up, but overall it looks FANTASTIC. In fact, most of the time it’s 5/5 fantastic, with great balance on the contrast levels, and razor sharp clarity. The only times when I thought things looked iffy was when the CGI was really present on screen (such as the dust bowl fight pit overhead shots, or Goro etc.) as the low budget film started to show some seams and cracks. Otherwise black levels are great, colors will pop off the screen (bright red CGI and practical blood effects, as well as Shang Tsung’s green magical soul sucking powers). Nearly impeccable looking 4K UHD disc that stands as a nice improvement over the Blu-ray as well.






Audio:

Here’s the interesting part. The audio is given your choice of English 5.1 Dolby Digital or Dolby Atmos (it defaults to Atmos, don’t worry) and this should have been a KILLER track, and in many ways it really is. It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s got a massive bass line under it all, and did I saw this was a LOUD mix? There’s no distortion, no major quirks except for one. That is, that it’s kind of unbalanced. I noticed first off that the surrounds and sub were overbearing and drowning out the dialog. Naturally I listened to it and figured out pretty quick than the center channel is about 2-3 DB’s too low.. more like 3 db than 2 if I really am being critical. I listened to the mix as it came, then adjusted my center up to compensate for the obvious dip in dialog volume. Thing is, it STILL felt off. The surrounds and subs were still feeling like they were overpowering, even with the dialog boosted. Checking again it seems that the mains were also 3 DB too low (or we can say that the subs and surrounds are cooked 3 DB too hot. However you want to slice the pie) and that was causing the imbalance. After recalibrating both mains and the center up to +3 DB like the center and the mix smoothed out DRAMATICALLY. Killer base, great surround separation, and the fights are incredible. Punches hit like a ton of bricks, and that techno remix of the old MK theme song when Scorpion makes his big entrance sent shivers down my spine. It’s just that if you play the mix as it’s given on the disc things sound out of balance. People who like things brash and loud (ala the old Godzilla mix from a few years back that was cooked so hot it had clipping from the source material baked in) may really not notice it, but it was really obvious to someone who spends most of their time in front of the same speakers and same calibrated system day after day. It wasn’t enough to really make me want to whine and complain TOO much, but after adjusting 3 DB up for the mains and center (or 3 DB down for the subs and surrounds) it’s excellent all the way around. Just annoying that Warner cooked the track this way. At first I wondered if I had messed with my system settings during the last week as I had to replace my AVR a few weeks ago, but after switching between several discs that I knew by heart, and then measuring each channel individually and going back through my calibration settings it became pretty obvious where the anomaly was coming from. If I was grading the track after I ran my own calibration on the mains and center, it would be a 5/5 track. But as I have to give my rating based upon how the mix is presented on disc as default, I'm going to a 4/5





Extras:

• From Game to Screen: The Making of Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat: Fan Favorite Characters
• Fight Koreography
• Intro the Krypt: Easter Eggs of Mortal Kombat
• Anatomy of a Scene
• Deleted Scenes

Final Score: ​

Lets be honest, there’s no way that any iteration of Mortal Kombat is going to get an objective “great” rating as a movie. But lets be honest with ourselves, we just don’t care. Us Mortal Kombat aficionados want to see great fight scenes, gory fatalities, and a general semblance of a plot that makes us clap like seals and ask for another movie. In many ways this was better than the campy 1995 film, but in many ways it was worse as well. In reality I really enjoyed both films for different reasons, and we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that it didn’t come even CLOSE to the abortion that was Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Fun Watch for an MK fan at the very least.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Joe Taslim, Mehcad Brooks, Matilda Kimber, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroyuki Sanada, Chin Han
Directed by: Simon McQuoid
Written by: Greg Russo, Dave Callaham
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English, French, Spanish DD 5.1, English DVS
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: R
Runtime: 110 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: July 13th 2021

Recommendation: Fun Watch

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I'm thinking this might be a pretty cool movie to watch... thanks for the review.

 

[mechman]

I thought it was a very good movie and one I will add to my collection.

 

[Epoxy1]

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The bass response is excellent, but as you state Michael, the dialog gets overpowered at times. Then again, I doubt anyone is watching this film for the dialog

 

[Grayson Dere]

I watched this one last night! It WAS pretty fun! : )
Does anyone remember the film from 1995? I grew up with that one and it was interesting seeing the reinterpretation of the MK story.

 

[Michael Scott]

lol, I grew up on the 95 version. It still holds up today IMO. the sequel on the other hand....................

 

[Grayson Dere]

Hahaha...yah, that 2nd film was SOOO bad!

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I do remember seeing the 95 version.. not the sequel.. Will check this out.

 

[Shimei]

What killed the movie for me was the senseless use of vulgarity. Can't understand what demographic of audience the movie makers are appealing to. In war genres I don't mind an occasional F bomb now and then especially when a bullet whizzes past someone's head. Ya know, those real life moments when out of the quarter million or so words in the English dictionary not one decent verbal expression comes to mind. But Mortal Kombat seemingly wished to offend anyone's sensibilities w/ a decent vocabulary. Of course, this isn't a family movie whether or not the game is played by young teenagers. And if you do watch it and do mind senseless use of language ya can expect having to shower after being subject to the dialogue in Mortal Kombat.