Movie Defense Force: Mortal Kombat

JudgeGame

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I dunno. I liked Mortal Kombat 2 more. The end fight was excruciatingly boring and mispaced for me which is all I remember from the whole thing. That said, it's infinitely better than that atrocious concept trailer of gritty Mortal Kombat which I hope died in production hell.

I nominate Prince of Persia as the best videogame based movie. I know a lot of people have problems with it but I can't figure out what those problems are.
 

Azex

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Jan 17, 2011
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The street fighter movie was better than the legend of chun lee at least, but i dont think its as faithful as MK movie. Its really WTF in alot of places. I hear the DOA movie is actually not that bad of a fighting movie, dont know anything about the games story tho.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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I agree completely. Mortal Kombat was the best video game based movie ever. After all, what other video game based movie was more faithful to it's source material? I can't think of one. Although I will disagree with you Jim on Raiden, I thought Christopher Lambert's Raiden was pretty awesome, I only wish he had a larger part to play.
 

Urh

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Toasty Virus said:
I really want you to do Street Fighter now.

Will you please do Street Fighter?
Seriously? I confess it's been a while, but the only thing I remember being remotely entertaining about Street Fighter was Raul Julia's performance as Bison. While Mortal Kombat had one truly bad casting choice (Christopher Lambert), Street Fighter had only one good one. I don't know how anybody could defend casting Jean-Claude van Damme as Guile.

FirebirdXR said:
Sterling forgot one of the greatest things about the MK movie!
Damn it, you beat me to the punch. Flawless victory.
 

karamazovnew

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Apr 4, 2011
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Best game movie ever made? Neah...
Having never finished a Silent Hill game, I actually enjoyed the Silent Hill movie. Sure it was a bit forgettable but decent. That alone was better than Mortal Kombat. As for the best? Well, look no further than Prince of Persia. That was a really good movie, with a touchy subject, easy to mess up, but done properly.
 

SonOfMethuselah

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Well, aside from the fact that I *cough*actuallykindofliketheResidentEvilmovies*cough* Jim seems to be pretty much on point, here. I've never seen the Mortal Kombat movie, (although now I really want too; I know what my Thursday night is going to entail), but his logic is sound, at least.

I would also put forth that it would be easier to turn a fighting game like Mortal Kombat into a movie than it would be to turn (even without Mr. Boll's influence) Dungeon Siege or (even sans Chrisophe Gans)Silent Hill into movies, because if you're going to be faithful to those game's stories, you have to take huge amounts of game time, extract the interactive parts, figure out the critical story moments, and then turn those into a narrative that is coherent without player input. It's a hard task.

But, anyway, nice MDF, Jim. I'm really enjoying these, so far. And you've convinced me to watch Mortal Kombat, so good on you.
 

Ukomba

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Oct 14, 2010
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Huh, didn't think this movie needed defending. Sure it was cheesy and hoaky, but it was a fun movie. Not sure it's the best vg movie ever, but it is up there.
 

Therumancer

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Azex said:
The street fighter movie was better than the legend of chun lee at least, but i dont think its as faithful as MK movie. Its really WTF in alot of places. I hear the DOA movie is actually not that bad of a fighting movie, dont know anything about the games story tho.
The Dead Or Alive movie is okay, at least as good as a lot of other 'C' grade kung-fu movies. Just go into it with that expectation.

Otherwise I have to agree with Jim here, Mortal Kombat was a decent movie, truthfully I've heard a fair number of people also defend this one over the years. It's the second MK movie that most people seem to really knock, but in rating the first one you also have to consider that it did well enough to get a sequel to begin with.

That said, I think Jim's biggest point, that a lot of people (especially in Hollywood) should pay attention to is that being loyal to the source material pays off. When it comes to comics, video games, popular TV series, or whatever else, I think 90% of the problem has been that the people doing them do not want to simply accept being guests in someone else's universe, they want to try and make everything their own, and change things around, and that is where things go wrong. In working with a franchise the focus should be on accuracy, the fans, and then accesibility to new audiences and personal tweaks as a distant last.

When it comes to Mortal Kombat, the original set up (which got borked later on) was basically "Enter The Dragon" with the tournament deciding the fate of the world, as opposed to simply recruiting soldiers for a heroin empire. Once they threw in the supernatural stuff it just got more insane from there, but at the end of the day it was still all about all of these guys get together on this island and beat the crap out of each other in one on one fights.
 

Keith K

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Oct 29, 2009
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I was a fan of Mortal Kombat from my very first viewing at the Drive-In way back when (so perfect). I've been a fan ever since and totally agree no game movie has ever come close to doing its inspiration the same justice. Not even the subsequent MK movies.
 

hermes

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That movie doesn't need defending... it was a fairly good martial arts movie and the closest adaptation anyone could have hoped for Mortal Kombat . Some of the fights were truly great (Liu Kang vs Reptile and Cage vs Scorpion come to mind). On a down note, some of the fights were disappointingly short and unfulfilling (like Sonya vs Kano, Liu Kang vs Sub Zero and Cage vs Goro), but I guess you can't have everything...

Also, Christopher Lambert is seriously underused in that movie. I know its before the time when they realized they could have real actors make martial arts stunts, but I would really have liked to see him fight.

MK 2, though... That was just crap.
 

Canadamus Prime

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DVS BSTrD said:
canadamus_prime said:
I agree completely. Mortal Kombat was the best video game based movie ever. After all, what other video game based movie was more faithful to it's source material? I can't think of one. Although I will disagree with you Jim on Raiden, I thought Christopher Lambert's Raiden was pretty awesome, I only wish he had a larger part to play.
He certainly would have made Annihilation more bearable, but I think Jim had more of a problem with Raiden not being the Raiden from the game.
To which I would argue that although Christopher Lambert couldn't pull off a Japanese accent to save his life, he was still the Japanese Thunder God which was pretty much the Raiden from the game esp. back in 1993/94.
 

Calibanbutcher

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Nov 29, 2009
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Now just because the movie is true to the source material doesn't mean it's the best video game movie ever.

That honour still belongs to "Postal".