Mortal Kombat 1995 was an incredible movie. It was kinda dumb and kinda brilliant in equal measures, just dripping with an unforgettable early '90s cheese shared by many films of the era. Wildly close close-ups, camera lenses seemingly smothered in vaseline, slow motion fight sequences and enough over-acting to put a local drama troupe to shame.
As great as that movie was, producer Todd Garner wasn't keen on replicating the action movie vibes in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, despite the fact he worked on genre classics like Con Air, xXx and Pearl Harbour. No, the influences this time are much more modern.
If Mortal Kombat is able to shift the curse of the game-to-film adaptation, it would do well to set its sights higher than cashing in on the franchise name to make a quick buck. And luckily, that's exactly what they're aiming for. A sentiment that was evident in a recent interview the pair did with GAMINGbible.
Advert
"Well, my goodness," Garner says of the film's influences. "You look at all the [Akira] Kurosawa early stuff, you look at Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, you look at The Raid. I mean, we even look at John Wick and Deadpool and The Matrix and Kill Bill. And you know, we looked at everything."
Garner continued: "I don't really look at this as a video game movie. I look at this as a martial arts movie, and there's a lot of good martial arts movies. So it's much easier to find good movies to use as references when you're looking at martial arts movies."
The overall tone of the movie sounds like it's aiming for a much more gritty representation of the Mortal Kombat universe than its schlocky predecessor, which could very much polarise fans. But, if they get it right, it could also be the start of something beautiful. Perhaps a new movie universe akin to what Disney have done with Star Wars and the MCU?
Advert
Indeed, a betting man might even say that's exactly what they're banking on. It's not gone unnoticed by fans that series favourite Johnny Cage hasn't been seen in any of the marketing material. When asked, Garner had this to say:
"Well, Johnny Cage is a great character, and he is an important character, and he's a really fun character and he deserves to be treated as such. And when you look at Johnny Cage with his ego and his flashiness, and you look at Kano, they have a similar thing, and we didn't want to muddy the waters in terms of those two competing. So we have great plans for Johnny Cage. He's not somebody that you can just throw into an ensemble movie and expect him to shine. So we have big plans for him coming up."
If that doesn't sound like a plan for more movies or a TV spinoff, I don't know what does. The rest of the interview hits a lot of other cool talking points about Mortal Kombat, including one scene that Garner described as "bone crunching, real violent" and "messy." Oof. Mortal Kombat will come to theatres and HBO Max in the US on April 16th, with a UK release date to be confirmed soon.
Featured Image Credit: New Line Cinema / Warner Bros. / LionsgateTopics: News, Mortal Kombat