Remember when the first Mortal Kombat came out and shook the video game industry up a bit in the mid 90s? These were the good old days when arcades were still relevant and it is about the gameplay and graphics before it went 3D. Randomly, I watched the first Mortal Kombat movie again today and reliving some of my 90s childhood. I did watch this and the sequel, Annihilation, at the movie theatres when they came out and while the sequel is somewhat of an abomination, the first movie is actually still good to this day. Honestly, it is still the best movie based on a video game ever.
Mortal Kombat pretty much satisfied both the average movie crowd and fans of the franchise when it came out in the mid 90s by being perfectly accurate to the game with the characters, their personalities, the fight scenes, and the story. Pretty much all characters from the first game were in this movie from Liu Kang, the main character, Johnny Cage, Sonya, Raiden, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Kano, Goro, and Shang Tsung while some characters from MK2 were in as well like Kitana, Reptile, and Jax. If u have seen this movie, you can tell it is pretty accurate to the first game in terms of story from Liu Kang's quest for revenge against Shang Tsung, Sonya's goal to kill Kano, and so on. While some fight scenes could have been better, the fight between Liu Kang and Reptile (video of that above) was the best one of the movie.
I would also like to mention the awesome soundtrack for this movie too, which brought us the Mortal Kombat theme and other techno songs like the one played during the Liu Kang/Reptile fight. It was such an energetic soundtrack that makes u want to beat up somebody and also can be played at random raves.
While recent video game based movies suck (Max Payne, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li), the first Mortal Kombat movie is arguably still the best movie based on a game because it flat out didn't suck as bad as other movies. It actually felt like a video game done right from the action as it was accurate incoporating the characters' special moves from Liu Kang's Bicycle Kick, Scorpion's Spear, and Cage's Split Punch to the balls. If any upcoming game-based flick is coming soon, they should learn from Mortal Kombat of what to do right and please the fans.
