30th Anniversary of Mortal Kombat

 

                  

            There was a point that I was going to hold off on this 30th Anniversary classic, Mortal Kombat till the most recent Mortal Kombat film arrives in October (false alarm coming out next year). But I've been recently reminded about the films 30-year release and I decided upon myself to sit down and watch the film that surprisingly still holds up. Directed by infamous B-Movie director Paul W.S. Anderson long before he impregnated Mila Jovovich and proceeded to make mediocre, sometimes lame movies in which his wife would star in. Strangely enough Mortal Kombat is hands down one of Paul W.S. Anderson's best movie and granted I haven't seen Event Horizon yet but out of all the movies he's done, this is single handedly one of his finest movies, moreover that pretty much say's a lot because if you take away his most recent movies from 2010 till now they are not acceptable to be call movies. 

            Lord Raiden (Christopher Lambert) handpicks three martial artists -- military soldier Sonya (Bridgette Wilson), Shaolin Monk Liu Kang (Robin Shou) and a washed-up movie star Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby). With the guidance of Raiden, these three Martial Artists must fight to survive on an Island hosted by Sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa). With Earth left in the balance only one will remain victorious.

             I've said before I always loved Mortal Kombat, there's no denying that for good reasons it has one of the simplest yet great storylines in all fighting games, and like Star Wars, Mortal Kombat its storyline is the basis of good vs evil, unlike Street Fighter and Tekken that has a story? Behind it? Some of it makes little sense but with Mortal Kombat you have a mad Tyrant wanting to invade the realm of Earth and the only way to invade the realm is to win ten straight victories at a tournament, I mean that's literally one of the most simplest of ideas that gets me drawn to the game other than yeah it's the most bloodiest video game of all time. One of my earliest memories of Mortal Kombat was at a friend’s house and he was playing the original game and all I remember is Scorpion removing his mask and a Skull appears to burn the opponent down and I already thought that was scary at first as well as Raiden being a scary looking guy with the lightning never though he was a force for good, and at the time I wasn't all that interested in playing games because I was going outside and playing until I got my first PlayStation 2 and thought "oh I can play Mortal Kombat now and so thus began my continuation of playing Mortal Kombat till the day I die.  Somewhere between 1997 to 2000 on Dish Network, Mortal Kombat was on Cable TV and loved watching the movie from start to finish and especially loving Sub-Zero and Scorpion intro and though that was the coolest thing especially Reptile's fight with Liu Kang, furthermore though his look was the best one out of all the Reptile versions especially when he's in a human form. Going back and rewatching the film again I do stand tall as one of the best representations of the very first Mortal Kombat game mainly because you just have the seven original characters in the movie together as well as a few characters from Mortal Kombat 2. Granted you don't get a whole lot of your favorite characters, I still think a lot of the fights are the real scene stealers of the entire movie especially when you see Goro in action, and though Goro looks very stop motion, he strangely looks great on screen and either way I love the way he turns out. If you take away the visual effects and some of the cheesy dialogue it still holds up, almost the same as Street Fighter the movie, but Mortal Kombat is great from start to finish especially when the killer soundtrack of the movie takes it to a whole new level. I still say that the original Mortal Kombat still stands the test of time despite its cheesy cliches it still holds up with the fights to the killer soundtrack as well as the iconic song from The Immortals with Mortal Kombat (Technio-Syndrome), for which is the greatest song ever. There's so many great things to talk about Mortal Kombat especially when you have Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa playing Shang Tsung whose hands down the best Shang Tsung especially when he returns to voice the character in Mortal Kombat 11 and the same goes to Bridgette Wilson who also returns as Sonya in MK 11 as well as Linden Ashby and Christopher Lambert, though Lambert makes a great Raiden in this movie but now when we finally understand he's Asian we have to make adjustments, hell we've been confused on what nationality Scorpion and Sub-Zero were because there were always portrayed as the same white guy until we get to the most recent games where they explain both characters are from Japan and China. Sadly, enough, this is Paul W. S. Anderson's best and only good movie he's ever made and there's no doubt because his movies after Mortal Kombat are just okay to complete utter garbage and I don't know what the best way would be to describe his filmography, other than this is really his only good movie out there. No question I would highly recommend watching Mortal Kombat, it has everything from great fights to killer soundtrack moreover once you see how great this movie is and then when you get to its sequel you slowly realize how bad the next one is, but I can imagine it's not all bad considering some funny moments though still is just blah. And sure, this movie isn't perfect but it's still fun and entertaining to watch especially when you don't have anything exciting to do, as well as want to take a trip down memory lane and realize how fun 90's films were.