MORTAL KOMBAT and the Potential Pitfalls of Prequel-itis (Patreon)

We all have our druthers, even when it comes to “so bad it’s good” movies. I mean, I don’t even like the term itself. Because if you like it? Then it’s good. It doesn’t have to be qualified or couched in anything. There is no guilty pleasure. Only pleasure. So perhaps the point of the phrase is to honor that we all react certain ways to perceived flaws within a film. Sometimes we greet those flaws with open arms and a chuckle, sometimes we meet them with boredom, and sometimes elicit a disappointed huff from us.

Put simply: “mileage may vary.”

For instance, I went back and recently watched the original 1995 Mortal Kombat (complete with a fun twitter thread) and I was caught off guard by how much fun I had. Aside from some seriously weird blips and straight-up racist casting, it’s a shockingly functional narrative. It moves with real economy, meaning characters are introduced with clear motivations and none of it gets bogged down in background lore (you just know what you need to know). There’s a valid reason the movie was a big hit and that’s because it works, dammit. Unfortunately, the follow-up of 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is a classic example of not good bad, but “bad bad.” Forget the unfinished effects, it’s the kind of movie that barely attempts to create narrative or motive. It barely even tries to get you from point A to point B with an ounce of care. Characters straight up show up out of nowhere and announce their lore. You can practically feel the re-casting and lack of enthusiasm in every dang frame (honestly, the most fun I had was going through the director’s cinematography career cause holy moly that’s a fascinating life with a lot of stories). Despite the difference between the two films, the problem with both these efforts is that they fail to offer the one element that the fan community very much wanted…

The idea that a Mortal Kombat film should be, you know, gory.

Which is a perfectly valid instinct! Especially given that it was the defining feature and selling point of the games from the very onset. Honestly, I was at the perfect age when the original came out. There was this overwhelming glee of titillation that came from seeing a dude rip off another dude’s head! With their spinal cord in tow! And another dude breaths fire and you turn into a crisp! And another dude… kicks you twice and punches you real hard! (yeah, Liu Kang’s OG fatality always left something to be desired). But the simple idea people had was that this gory, goofy affection should be something that translated to the films. It simply reflects “what it is” and I’m actually pretty down with that idea.

But for over two decades now, the notion of a bloody Mortal Kombat movie has languished in the minds of fans, ever seeming like an impossibility. But with the recent resurgence of the game series, it finally made sense to entertain a reboot. Or perhaps it’s just due to the “25 years later” cycle of Hollywood, which represents the amount of time it takes for people who were kids / teens when X happened in their youth to get old enough to become Hollywood players / gatekeepers and therefore want to make X re-happen / happen in the way they always believe it should have been done in the first place. In essence, the “real fans'' are now in charge. To the degree that a big selling point of Mortal Kombat 2021 was the idea that this was a movie finally made by the real fans. Which was reflected not just in the way that they sold the film’s murder-filled fights, but conveyed the utmost care of characters (especially with Scorpion / Sub-Zero, who were considered to be the most shafted of the prior entries). All that considered, it’s not that I was expecting soulful mastery from the film, but even I was kinda excited by the idea and ready to slurp up some fun pulp!

And then I saw it.

And the movie made every kind of story choice that I can’t help but dislike.

What’s interesting is that this notion of “caring about the characters” is a good place to begin, because what does that even mean, really? For a long time, caring just meant you don’t have active disdain for the material (which was a big problem in other video game movies like, say, Super Mario Brothers). But even with care, storytelling has its own rigorous demands. And the truth is that caring too much about the depth of lore can sometimes lead to non-helpful instincts (or at least non-economical ones). For instance, there was a semi-infamous tweet a few weeks ago about how MK2021’s near two-hour runtime was not enough to dig in deep with all the characters (I’m not linking because good granola do we have to stop the daily dog-pile). I’m simply mentioning because it speaks to a popular instinct of false equivalence, which is the belief that “time spent” in a narrative automatically equals “caring about characters.” It doesn’t. There’s simply good storytelling and bad storytelling. You can make the audience LOVE someone in 30 seconds if you do a good job. And you can also spend 8 hours with other characters just end up treading water or outright languishing. It’s never the time length. It’s simply executing on what you do with that time.

And with its 2 hours of runtime, Mortal Kombat chooses prequel-itis.

Meaning it wants to use it’s time to show you how all the characters got to where they were at the start of the game. These response tweets about the decision summed it up my feelings perfectly: “The trend of making grounded prequels to the film you actually want to fucking see has to STOP.” Then “MK2021 is like the lame prequel tie in comic book that comes out to “set up” the film.’” I realize this may sound harsh, but important to highlight the “why” behind the concern. Especially because we’re trying to split a really important hair here. For there are good instincts that come from the desire to set things up! Understanding character motivation? Good! Setting up dynamics between characters? Good! But it’s all about where you go from there. Because storytelling is about creating expansive arcs and growth, essentially taking a character’s motivations and moving them in new directions, mining their psychology for conflict and changing en route to catharsis (even in a dumb fun action movie). Even with established properties it is essentially the goal to forge the feeling of the new by making a whole story feel fully realized. But the problem with so much of the prequel instinct is that it takes the goals of first act set-up and confuses it with “the entire damn story,” often stretching it out far beyond need. I mean, you don’t want to spend two hours setting up your core motivations. Worse, you are only stretching that story to the obligatory “pre-destined destination” in mind. And so I can’t help but ask…

Why?

Where does this instinct come from? It’s not fan fiction in and of itself, because there’s so much bright, vibrant fan fiction that I get a kick of. The kind of fun storytelling that’s trying to take something they love, marry it to personal experience, broaden the horizons of the property and forge the new. But there is this other instinct in fan film culture, which is the desire to retreat into the established and prequel-ize. And I don’t want to say the problems come from a lack of understanding of what a story “is” because that’s reductive (though it often does ignore a lot of essentials). It’s more a storytelling instinct that comes from the worship of the property AS IS. Meaning it sees catharsis in the existence of the material in and of itself. Thus, you see the instinct not to forge the new, but instead, to simply solidify that which exists. Which means the only direction they really want to go is backwards.

In pure story terms, there are a few inherent problems with this. The first is that you remove 1/3 of your storytelling toolbox because you are essentially working with a story that does not have the capacity to really surprise anyone (for all the talk of “it’s not the destination, but the journey” or “let me guess, the good guys win,” this is a huge misunderstanding that a journey capitalizes on all sorts of unknowns and plays the tension a along the way). And with prequel-itis, you are PURPOSEFULLY feeding off the fact that the audience knows the end destinations. Every moment is just feeding the next’s expectation. There’s no subversion of these expectations here, either. Sonya and Kano appear on the same team and you’re like “oh, we know these two are going to end up as enemies.” A fight begins and you realize, “oh, Jax is gonna get his arms destroyed.” For some, the anticipation and satisfaction simply comes with seeing the predestined moment of origin. But for many others? It just becomes a game of waiting. And for others still, specifically those unfamiliar, it becomes a confusing way to move through events. And it is all the result of the storyteller’s misunderstanding of their approach.

The chief idea behind prequel table setting is that it creates an inherent journey. A character is in a place, they end up in another. Boom. Development! But the problem is that the character growth in MK2021 is centered around so much fatalistic positioning. Heck, the big “arcana” moments aren’t about personality change or even the psychology of the character. They usually just occur when someone else is in danger and the character tries real hard. It’s all surface level changes (which is honestly why I found Jax’s lil baby metal arms in the second act to be one of the unintentionally funniest things I’ve ever seen). But I don’t think you realize how unmotivated this can seem if you are someone who already knows the destination. We were watching with a friend who didn’t know anything about the games and they kept asking, “wait why did X happen?” And every answer “Because in the game, X exists.” Literally every answer. Which helps you realized the problem with the dual instincts of prequel-itis: 1) the false belief that *everything* needs to be set-up and 2) with given endpoints that only exist because they already exist. Essentially, it’s a cheat that only creates the illusion of growth. But if you worship the document as is, well, I guess you get what you want? But for those wanting to see a new Mortal Kombat come alive, the effect is endless stasis and boredom.

Take the fact that there is no tournament. Yes, you read that correctly. While MK95 gets right to it with fun with a sense economy, this one seems to purposely askew the entire notion, along with all the established narrative lessons from Enter the Dragon (which defines the genre because it’s just a fantastic bit of storytelling). When I complained about this story choice online, I was met with a good question: “does there HAVE to be a tournament?” Technically, no. There doesn’t have to be anything. But I think a tournament is as central to the original games as, say, the gore. But the obvious problem isn’t mere identity issues, it’s that the movie itself promises a tournament. They talk about it many, many times. And it FINALLY starts in on the tournament at minute 52 (!!!). I mean, that’s where we’re finally getting to training?!?!? Forget a match! Just the training! And it doesn’t matter because the tournament never happens because stuff goes to hell or whatever and honestly I was just bewildered. Honestly, all this notion of “set-up” in prequel-tis is worthless if it doesn't understand what meaningful catharsis is. Even the film’s big teaser intro fails because Scorpion only shows up again because it’s the end of the movie and it’s time for him to do so.

I know it may seem purposeless to talk about minute counts. After all, movies have different narrative needs and attempted structures. There’s plenty of things that The Godfather doesn’t do by minute X. But what we’re talking about here isn’t about putting some abstract story overlay. This about meeting the goals and needs of its own narrative. And for this film, it all comes back to the push / pull of how we spend “time” we spend with these characters. For instance, the opening coda of Sub-Zero killing He-Who-Will-Become-Scorpion is well-meaning, but it’s 14 minutes (by comparison, Raising Arizona did its enormous introduction in just 11 minutes). And it relies on so much texture and somber shots as characters look to the distance, easily mistaking contemplative literal narrative space for the way to grow closer to the characters (we’ll come back to this intro). But this invites another question: why do some people like that the newest Mortal Kombat tells the story THIS way? Why is the 2 hours not enough for some? Well, I’d like to suggest a subtle difference. It’s not that they want time to spend time watching characters grow on their journey, it’s that they want to spend as much time in a world as possible. And those are two radically different wants. But luckily for us, there is a choice that highlight’s the film’s real want oh so completely.

That would be the entirely new main character of Cole Young.

A name so generic I literally had to look it up after watching! Now, to be clear: this character is not in the game whatsoever. And while it would be okay if his characterization was simple and clear (again, I’m the one who likes MK95), instead it’s vague, convoluted, milquetoast, and for all the circumstances around him, he has NOTHING actually going on internally. Sure, he’s given a family so you “like him” and technically he has “something to lose,” but there is NOTHING specific in their relationships between them? Even his “losing an MMA fight” moment at the beginning isn’t really about anything in his psychology? The more he talks with his family about fighting / being somebody, the more vague it all feels. I’d say there is a good 25 minutes spent focusing on this character and destiny after all that I genuinely have no idea what his motivation is in this film. So it basically falls into that dastardly trap of having a character that’s just waiting to be special and important. Naturally, some people mentioned being downright baffled by the choice, but I’d wager it comes from two instincts.

The first of which is all the worst bullshit that comes with obligatory “destiny” tropes and people who think this is the way to approach stories because they read The Hero With A Thousand Faces once. I’ve written about it a lot, but that book is an anthropological and semiotic interpretation of cultural overlap- not a paint-by-numbers guide to screenwriting. And if you make that mistake, it teaches you to hit all these beats that imply gross stuff like “I’m the hero for being born,” along with all the vaguely eugenic bloodline crap that I’ve railed on time and time again. Sadly, this movie falls victim to all of it (I mean, potential spoiler for something drawn pretty early on I guess, but Cole is The-Man-Who-Will-Become-Scorpion’s progeny). Heck, people just outright tell Cole he’s “the chosen one” halfway through even though there is literally no set up to what that even means or will mean. It’s just that he’s the main character and so he has to be IMPORTANT and THE BEST for NO REASON but wait it's really cause of his BLOODLINE. It’s just the laziest thing. But sadly, there is another simple function behind that laziness.

Because Cole’s character is a textbook example of creating a placeholder character for the fandom’s desire to place themselves within the narrative. He has no other reason to be here. Because this tactic goes beyond even the audience surrogate, his blankness exists for the audience’s desire to project their own wants and let them live vicariously in the world. Sure, it works in a silent protagonist video game, but not in a cinematic narrative, where the audience has no control and thus has to experience their story by having the character dramatically expose you to their psyche. To highlight a funny example of this projection instinct, I can’t tell you how many Sopranos spec scripts I read back in the day that “introduced this new young character who was totally the coolest and best gangster that Tony looked at them like a son!” which is hilarious to me, not only because it was such blatant wish fulfillment, but because it so radically misunderstood the tone and theme of the show itself. So I have trouble whenever a film that takes THIS kind of character THIS seriously… But the push / pull of how this film engages both fun and serious doesn’t sit right with me in a lot of ways.

For instance, when we go back to the opening 14 minute teaser, we have Hiroyuki Sanada emoting gracefully and he’s literally one of my favorite actors around, but he gets trapped in the long, gaping pauses of the mise en scene around him. These sort of moments need to be sharp, haunting, and devastating - the kind where you only hold the pauses for the exact right length of time before continuing to hit the audience in the gut. But you can just see the way the direction doesn’t trust itself. It needs you to take this seriously. You see the way they have to hold and hold and HOLD to be sure we know this is SAD, dammit! And when you look at the shots of his frozen family, it’s no accident that the people I was watching with started snickering. Because you feel the storytellers posturing and stretching for the maudlin instead of hitting us hard and then using this time to move us where we need to be. Worse, nothing in this opening 14 even minutes even serves as revenge motivation for the young baby Cole. It’s just a backstory that doesn’t mean anything personal. It’s not even about loss of family, because he so firmly has one now. It’s all just ancestral lore to be slid in place later; a mere thing he inherits.

This is one of the biggest pitfalls of lore inclinations, it often takes your narrative focus away from motivation. Take MK95’s three main characters. It gets right to the point: Sonya: they killed my partner! Johnnie Cage: I want to prove I’m not a fake! Liu Kang: The sorcerer Shang Tsung killed my brother and I will have my! These are relatively simple things, even cartoony ones! But that’s okay because the actors play them sincerely and they are the engine of the movie’s rooting interest and therefore, its sense of pulpy fun. But MK2021 seems to try to section off it’s emotions into sad time tragic and Kano-brand comic relief. On one hand, I embrace the fact that he seems like the only actor having fun. But on the other hand, every joke out of Kano’s mouth is that specific kind of broad, referential humor that hits me so, so wrong. I hate when people say something was “written by reddit” or that it feels Deadpool-esque because it feels like a reductive dunk in line with the exact thing you’re criticizing. But the difference between that and this film is that Ryan Reynolds actually gets a few good jokes to deliver (which he can do pretty well!) and this just… oof. I know humor is personal, but there’s also certain trends of popular vernacular - and as we all sat and watched Kano I asked people to place the specific year of Kano’s dated humor every single person said either 2003 or 2004 without missing a beat. Say what you will, that’s not an accident.

But it also doesn’t feel all great to keep talking like this.

The thing about writing about movies that really rub us the wrong way is that it becomes easy for it to just become “a list of things we didn’t like.” And even when I’m not into something, I’m always looking for the moments that compel me. Like in this one, I think Joe Taslim is an amazing actor and he played Sub Zero with this really compelling malevolence. It’s one of the few things in the movie that I absolutely wish we had more of. Likewise, there’s a moment where Kung Lao gets a really gnarly kill (even though the character’s introduction, after the movie took so many needless minutes with other characters, is something I would call Mortal Kombat Annhilation-esque). And consider me caught off guard that Kabal is the one super fun surprise when it comes to the movie willing to get a lot weird and fun? But all these little blips of goodness are too short lived. Every time the narrative deflates and we crash back to the ground.

For instance, even though the action choreography is decent and there’s some shots I really like, I feel like the edit constantly lets it down (here’s a great thread on action cutting in this movie). Likewise, I know everyone makes fun of the dated CGI of MK95, had it still has some surprisingly good location work and bonkers sets. But here, I kept feeling the burden of the nondescript locations, often in that way that “grounded” can mean “cheap looking” in the modern parlance. But grounding isn’t always about the look, but embracing the emotion of the look. Unfortunately, it’s like they don’t even try to make the Outworld stuff click on an emotional level. It’s all just cold and alien. Worse, the characters react to NOTHING they see, let alone feel a sense of transportation. It’s a shame that for all the film’s love for the franchise, it actually seems to make me care less about the main characters than the original film did (save only for Sub-Zero and Scorpion). Heck, I couldn’t even find a single rogue to really hang onto in Shang Tsung’s gallery, nor the sorcerer himself (who has a HUGE downgrade in fun from the 95 version). It’s that last counterpoint that really makes me wonder if the film was really just trying to do “the opposite” of everything in the 90’s films, which would unfortunately throw out some of the good things with it.

I mean how, do you NOT also start your movie like this?

*cue dancing in living room*

It’s just one of the biggest examples of cutting your nose to spite your face, no?

So in the end, I’m only here to ask that big question “why?”

I’m certainly not trying to spread some grand notion of negativity. Nor am I the arbiter of whether or not Mortal Kombat 2021 is any good or not. I’m just trying to sort through my internal feelings, and do so with you. And when looking at this film, I cannot deny that this movie makes me feel a certain kind of cynical when it comes to the process of storytelling. I’ve just spend so, so, so, so, so much of my life working on projects and trying to get every little detail to engage the dramatic, character-centric, plot-focused, and the thematic centers that are at the heart of any good work - you can end up with things you’re proud of but it’s so hard and often thankless - and so I look at this and think, is this all takes? Because this film reminds me of so many scripts that have floated around Hollywood the last decade, so much that we could have said yes to… So would it have been smart to make that cynical choice? I realize that may seem grandiose concern, and certainly disconnected from your own concern as consumers, but it’s inspired some real dark night of the soul shit over here.

But like all things, it’s an opportunity to be introspective about what you want.

Because I want to make one thing clear above all else: you can love this, and there’s nothing wrong with loving something. Mileage may vary. It may hit your exact kind of so bad it’s good. And so much good comes from that love in and of itself. George Lucas wanted to make Flash Gordon, but he couldn’t get the rights, so he made his own space opera. Likewise, Indiana Jones was a riff on the adventure serials they loved as kids. I’m not saying the lesson is always “take the inspiration and go make your own thing,” (though that is really cool), especially because we live in the age of fan fiction. I’m saying that it’s always advantageous to honor the principles of story over the principles of lore. Even twenty five years ago, MK95 captured the spirit and the fun of the property, even if it didn’t follow the letter of the law. And now with MK2021? We get a film that follows so many letters, but like MK: Annhilation, somehow fails to honor the spirit in its quest to make it all feel real. But that’s because falling into the pitfalls of prequel-itis sends you crashing downward, or perhaps imploding inward, or maybe even sticks you into the closed loop system. Pick your metaphor, it just sends you further inside yourself, to the space of the obligatory and known. And meanwhile, we could use the same space of inspiration to broaden those stories, which would make our world feel more organic, current, and expansive…

I don’t like it when it somehow ends up feeling smaller.

<3HULK