Video game movies get a bad rap for the most part but lately, there’s been a handful of outliers that broke the mold. Many were hesitant to buy into the Mortal Kombat hype for that very reason - the unavoidable chance of it being bad - but so far, it’s netted a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7/10 on IMDb.
One reviewer, writing for Sensacine, said, “I enjoyed its fatalities as much as I enjoyed its B-movie charm.” While another, writing for South China Morning Post, stated, “Fans of the long-running Mortal Kombat video game franchise finally have cause for celebration.”
Its scores don’t put it up there with the greatest in filmmaking, granted, but a 7/10 average with a 62% approval rating from critics so far is certainly promising, given that most adaptations tend to fall far lower. The 1995 movie, for example, had a 43% rating and a 5.8/10 on IMDb. Annihilation, on the other hand, fumbled even farther with a 3.7/10 score and a 2% rating.
Mortal Kombat is Simon McQuoid’s first directed film, but it’s being produced by Aquaman and The Conjuring’s James Wan, with writing credits from Greg Russo and Dave Callaham, the latter of which worked on Doom, The Expendables, Wonder Woman 1984, and the upcoming Shang-Chi.
The film sports an R-rating with fatalities ripped right from the games which is something that, so far, the critics have praised en masse. At the very least, it looks like the action is worth being excited for, while the story has been, for the most part, described as nothing special.
