This picks up where the first one ended. Except for the odd character (like Liu Kang and Kitana, seemingly the only two main ones), everyone is played by a different actor. The biggest and most noticeable change was Christopher Lambert. Rayden is played by...some other guy, who has been in a lot of stuff, but as a living kung fu god, he sucks.
In general, everything accomplished in the first movie was useless. Shao Kahn opens a portal between his world and the Earth, releasing lots of ninja who proceed to destroy our world. When you see the evil fighters you begin to wonder how exactly they defeated any modern military force. Well, except for the two robot warriors that can shoot missiles or flying mines. Maybe those could have done some damage before a SMAW took them out.
To stop Shao Kahn, Rayden tasks the fighters (Johnny Cage dies immediately - possibly the only thing the movie did right) with learning more and improving their skills. Then they split up. Liu Kang travels to the American Southwest to learn a fighting style from a fighter called "Nightwolf." This involves two barely developed tests and a random Asian Woman showing up. Kitana is MIA, because she was captured by the evil forces. Oh, and Kitana's mother shows up, played by the woman who was Lash in "Oblivion." She still looks good and I kept wishing they had given her a whip.
The fight scenes are terrible. Awful. Not even close to the original film. Also, the dialog and some of the script must have been written by a thirteen-year-old. Honestly the stupid, "You must become a family and rely on your own skills" bits remind me of stuff that we wrote way back in high school when we played at making movies.
Still, one of my biggest complaints was Rayden. I am guessing that Christopher Lambert chose not the reprise the role after reading the script. That is impressive. He appeared in "Beowulf" with no problems. I cannot think of a single fight that was entertaining.
Looking back, I am going to say that this is a skull.
I saw the first one. I really liked it with the exeption of the writing and all of the ninjas being bad guys. Ive never seen the second one, but I heard it sux. Id really like to see it anyway, As long as its not boring. Has anyone ever seen the live action tv show?
Quoteremind me of stuff that we wrote way back in high school when we played at making movies
That's , , , , kinda scarey. . . .
I remember being so excited to see this when it was released in theaters years ago.
My buddy Chris & I went and it was all we could do to stop ourselves from walking out.
This is one movie that never should have been made. Big thumbs down. :thumbdown:
Quote from: KYGOTC on July 03, 2007, 07:12:15 PM
. Has anyone ever seen the live action tv show?
Yes. Stay away from it. Really. :bluesad:
This film made me want to rip my hair out when I saw it in the theaters...
Where the film fails miserably is in the "too many friggin' characters" department. At one point, one of the baddies mention they took "Kabal" and "Stryker" under capture. These are both characters in MK3 the video game. They are never seen nor heard from in the movie which I'm sure will make non-game players scratch their head.
Plot wise, it seems they took the plot line of third video game, put it in a blender with some tripe and served it on the big screen. The new Rayden is played by the same guy who played Ajax in The Warriors. However in The Warriors, he fit the role. In this one...um yeah...nice job casting dept.
Is it me or did the script deliberately try to make Jax sound urban with his dialog. Not "urban" in a DMX or 50-Cent way but more of a Randy Jackson from American Idol way. Hes constantly spouting off rhetoric like "yeah, thats what im-talkin-a-bout". Urban slang that went out 5 years before hand. It seems like they try to fit a Will Smith stereotype.
The Nightwolf thing is utter garbage. Another idiotic reference to the game, animality which non-gamers would not get. Thats the big thing with this film, at least the first one you didn't really need to know a lot about the game to enjoy it. MKA kept bringing up obscure game references and basically put out a movie that bored fans of the game and non-fans as well.
In Mortal Kombat 3, Shao Khan picks his bride, someone from the Earth relm. He was allowed to open a portal for that reason to get, thus he found a loophole to start invading Earth.
Of course they didn't say ANYTHING about that in the movie but I think that's what they were going for.
Well, with the "animality" you suddenly have Kahn turning into a hydra and Liu Kang turning into a small dragon and fighting. The CGI for that was just a little better than the Hell scenes from "Spawn."
They should have cut down on the number of different scenes and devoted more time to a few of them. It seemed like all the characters did was spend the whole movie (I actually typed "game" vice "movie" at first) running from location to location. And, yeah, Jax's lines were terrible. Again - was this written by a thirteen year-old?
I've tried to watch this twice but could never stay awake...
Watch some fight scenes from MK2:
I'm pretty sure a kick from a cyborg or Shao Khan would break Liu Kang's ribs
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HacSKnnvJIY
One thing I always hated was that stupid MK techno theme song.
Don't get me wrong, I like techno and dance music, but that song sounds like it was made by and for 12 year olds.
That "Uh uh...Uh uh uh uh..Uh Uh" sound in it always drove me nuts. :thumbdown:
OMG! That really looked / sounded moronic. I need to watch this movie someday. As for the song, it's so bad I love it somehow.
C'on, lets chant:
Mortal Kombaaaaaaaaaat!!!!!
Ash, I never realised that ninjas have to do saltos whenever possible.
I do have Mortal Kombat: Conquest, which has the same set up as the TV series. It is one of the few movies where I gave up after 20 minutes. The only bright point is that the evil henchwomen wear skimpy tightfiting costumes, but all the rest is just unrelieved boredom. I'd rather watch Final Fantasy, the spirits within any day.
As utterly horrible as this movie was with its dreadful script, direction, choreography, and effects, seeing Sandra Hess in a tank-top still puts a smile on my face.
Quote from: Andrew on July 03, 2007, 07:00:46 PM
The biggest and most noticeable change was Christopher Lambert. Rayden is played by...some other guy, who has been in a lot of stuff, but as a living kung fu god, he sucks.
Andrew, I'm surprised you don't know James Remar's name. He has been in a lot of stuff inclcuding The Warriors and 48 hours (he's the guy Eddie Murphy was after). You're right though, he was woefully cast as Rayden.
Quote from: trekgeezer on July 06, 2007, 08:26:39 PM
Andrew, I'm surprised you don't know James Remar's name. He has been in a lot of stuff inclcuding The Warriors and 48 hours (he's the guy Eddie Murphy was after). You're right though, he was woefully cast as Rayden.
I knew him, but I've never been a fan of his work. He just comes across as sort of "blah" to me. In this case, he was an exceptionally awful choice for Rayden.
He plays a lot of heavies. But to tell the truth I thought Lambert was a bad choice also.
:hatred: :hatred: :hatred:
Oh my fncking God!!! I remember watching that piece of sh!t with my brother. Not only was I p**sed after watching it, I remember a lot of people at my college (at the time) were p**sed the next day. I remember Liu Kang getting his ass kicked royally. I also remember the potentialfight with Sheeva. The reason why I said "potential" is because the fight was gonna happen but a cage fell on her head and that was it, robbing us of at least something bearable. The actor for Raiden sucked (and so did his stunt double). The actor for Shao Khan was a screaming, overacting waste. As for Jax, y'all don't remember that dude from American Gladiator who was Sabre. That's no excuse for the script, but he did talk like that. The first one was strictly for the fanboys but if I wasn't a gamer, I'd still watch that than Annihilation, oh, I mean Abomination. :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown: :thumbdown:
Quote from: KYGOTC on July 03, 2007, 07:12:15 PM
I saw the first one. I really liked it with the exeption of the writing and all of the ninjas being bad guys. Ive never seen the second one, but I heard it sux. Id really like to see it anyway, As long as its not boring. Has anyone ever seen the live action tv show?
The tv show was a major guilty pleasure of mine. Actually wasn't that bad, Kritana Lokken was in it. :thumbup: Stil the cheese factor was all over the show. The show ended on a down note because it was never renewed. Basically Shao Khan took over and that was it. No follow up, nothing.
Darn you Andrew, see what you started...now I'm going to have to dig this film up and watch it...
That is always my problem with reading message board posts. Somebody talks about a film I have not seen (or have not seen in a while), I go and find a copy, then *pow* I'm in the middle of pain. One of the "What was that film?" threads actually got me to sit down and write a review for "Monster High." Actually, that was not as bad as my memory had told me.
In the case of "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation," I had finally purchased the DVD after one of the brief mentions about it on here. The disc sat on my shelf for a long time before I finally sat down to give it a viewing.
The first Mortal Kombat was a fun piece of cheese but the 2nd one gives a new meaning to the phrase DEEP HURTING!
Hey trekgeezer, is that a real book? The bad movies for dummies?
Quote from: Andrew on July 04, 2007, 08:39:07 PM
Well, with the "animality" you suddenly have Kahn turning into a hydra and Liu Kang turning into a small dragon and fighting. The CGI for that was just a little better than the Hell scenes from "Spawn."
They should have cut down on the number of different scenes and devoted more time to a few of them. It seemed like all the characters did was spend the whole movie (I actually typed "game" vice "movie" at first) running from location to location. And, yeah, Jax's lines were terrible. Again - was this written by a thirteen year-old?
Good call, Andrew- the CGI in this movie makes Spawn & Deanzilla look good... hell, even the newer Yongary was better than this.
The guy playing Baraka made me burst into a fit of laughter- he's just wearing a glorified halloween mask!
All the supposed heroes came of completely inept- the one playing Sub-zero (no jokes, please) looked particularly gay for some reason... watching Scorpion kick him around was at least a mild diversion from the endless slow-mo fight scenes that looked more like bad music videos....
One more thing, this movie- was it 4 hours long? Or did it just seem that way?
Quote from: Just Plain Horse on July 18, 2007, 05:35:42 AM
One more thing, this movie- was it 4 hours long? Or did it just seem that way?
The DVD case claims it is only 98 mins. I wonder if they need to convert that into dog years...
Quote from: KYGOTC on July 03, 2007, 07:12:15 PM
I saw the first one. I really liked it with the exeption of the writing and all of the ninjas being bad guys. Ive never seen the second one, but I heard it sux. Id really like to see it anyway, As long as its not boring. Has anyone ever seen the live action tv show?
Consider yourself very lucky that you did not see the second movie. It was done badly. It failed on several reasons:
1: Too new many characters
2: Too many character actor/actress changes
3. Way to much stuff packed into the short film.
With reason 1 there were many characters that were added and their sole purpose was get killed. For example (Note spoiler warning) when Rain gets killed by Shao Kahn, he really had no purpose only to get hammered into the Lava. Many characters were added for the sake of getting everyone in there and them not doing anything of real value.
2. Lots of Miscasting this time around. Many of the original actors and actresses from the first movie did not come back to replay their roles in the second movie. Or the same actros from the first movie played a different role the second time around. The actor for Reptile now plays Sub Zero.
3. The idea was good but you can't pack that much in 90 some minute movie. For it to have worked even on decent level (decent being the operative word) The movie would have to have a) need to be made longer, b) cut out a lot of the character that were not needed. The cyborgs, Jax and is cyborg arms, Jade, Any other ninja except for Scorpion, and Subzero, remove the anamilty part, and get rid of Nightwolf too while your at it.
That might ahve saved the film, but even then I'm not even positive that it would have helped. I only watch it if I'm REALLY bored or if I need to laugh at something.
Oh, that was Rain... thanks, with all the reds & blacks, I lost track of who that was... they gave him the clown hammer treatment- like Mike in MST3K.
Quote from: trekgeezer on July 06, 2007, 08:56:27 PM
He plays a lot of heavies. But to tell the truth I thought Lambert was a bad choice also.
I have to agree, Remar's deliveries always seem flat or forced (remember his big scene in Hot Shots Part Duex?), and Lambert just struts around waving his finger as if to say, "You don't wanna know where this has been."
It's a shame the couldn't have grafted on one of the Three Storms from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA- now THAT'S Rayden, right there!