'Mortal Kombat' Had To Tone Down The Gore So People Could Watch It

When you think Mortal Kombat, you probably think uppercutting somebody right in their stupid faces, while they tumble into a pit of spikes for a gloriously gory Fatality, right? Of course you do, because you're an absolute unit.

Well, for the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, director Simon McQuoid actually had to tone down those bone-rattling moments we all envisage.

Speaking in an interview with GAMINGbible, McQuoid explained how they were aware of making the movie too gory for people to stomach. "A lot of [the blood was] VFX because we came across the visual effects company, Method, in Melbourne, an incredible visual effects company who were responsible for Goro," he said. "They're also responsible for another part of the film that no one's seen [which is] a pretty gutsy moment. Those guys, by virtue of the success we had on Goro, allowed us to actually lean on VFX a little more with blood and so forth.

"What that allowed us to do, was sort of dial it up and down, much more surgically, pardon the pun, but so that we could really, really control that. That was important, because we didn't want to get to a point where we had moved it into an NC-17 rating (basically an extreme 18 on the UK's BBFC scale). It's pretty easy to cross that line. I wanted to get up to the line, but we obviously couldn't cross it, because then we become a different film, and people wouldn't screen it."

This is probably a good call to be honest. The thought of watching two people beat each other into red puddles sounds fun on paper to some people (you know who you are), but in practice would probably get very boring very quickly.

But that's not to say that there won't be some gruesome moments - this is still Mortal Kombat after all. Todd Garner, who's producing Mortal Kombat, makes mention of a particular fight scene that is "probably one of the most brutal fights [he's] seen. Just bone crunching, real violent, messy, you know."

Goodness. If you can't wait for Mortal Kombat to release in theatres and on HBO Max on April 16th please do flick through the rest of our interview with McQuoid and Garner, that touches on the inspirations for the film, staging fight scenes and just where the hell Johnny Cage is at.

Topics: News, Mortal Kombat