When I think of Mortal Kombat I think of blood, guts, and gore. I think of badass fighting with impossible moves that defy gravity. If you told me the new Mortal Kombat film was taking inspiration from, say, John Wick I'd think that would make sense from the off - but hearing that the Mortal Kombat film is actually taking notes from The Lord of the Rings is totally unexpected.
In the run-up to the film's release, the producer on Mortal Kombat Todd Garner spoke at a roundtable about the movie and its inspirations. As reported by GamesRadar, Garner says that the approach to bringing in fantasy elements into the world you're watching went by a Lord of the Rings approach.
He expands: "When we really researched all of the lore and fantasy and rules and mythology to Mortal Kombat, we really looked at it like Lord of the Rings. John Tobias and Ed Boon have created this tone that's so thick and complex and amazing in terms of all the crazy, different characters - you have ninjas, and you have soldiers of fortune, and you've got clones and aliens and ex-police officers. There's so many different characters. The challenge, then, is: how do you bring them all together?"
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Oh, I know this one - get them to all meet up in an elven city with pretty scenery and sit in a circle to converse about how they should take a precious piece of jewellery to a volcano? No? Okay, maybe that's a little too close to The Lord of the Rings. Garner says that bringing the story together in Mortal Kombat is about keeping the spirit and respect of the franchise, not keeping the source material exactly as it was like Lord of the Rings did.
"In a novel, you know, when you have 1,000 pages, and you have to distil it down into two hours, you have to make choices, and you have to be smart about the essence of what is happening," says Garner. "It's being as respectful to the canon and to the rules and to the mythology as with a novel."
Mortal Kombat will be on HBO Max in the US from April 16.
Featured Image Credit: New Line Cinema / Warner BrosTopics: News, Mortal Kombat, The Lord Of The Rings