Actually a vast improvement on every front in my estimation, I actually had a pretty good time with this movie! Damn near everyone is back but what kinda took me by surprise is how much time we spend with newcomers Kitana played by Adeline Rudolph and Johnny fucking Cage played by Karl fucking Urban which isn't necessarily a bad thing, Kitana has major ties to our new big bad on the scene Shao Khan and I really loved what they did with Johnny making him a washed up martial arts film star thrown into the deep end of the pool. Of course it's great to see Jessica, Ludi, and Tadanobu again and they still do very fine work, hell I'll even give a bit of credit and say they juggled the roster list pretty solidly! Everyone gets their own fights and moments to shine equally which has always kinda been the cardinal sin with the fighting games turned into movies. This really does seem like a movie for the fans, so much was thrown in from characters, to arenas, to moves, to little easter eggs here and there. Now can I freely admit to you all the last Mortal Kombat game I played was coincidentally 2 on the Super Nintendo and technically 3 on the arcade cabinet? Just did. So there's probably a good bit that I missed but the fact alone we got my favorite character Baraka in this, and he was great, and they didn't throw his ass out like they did in Annihilation gets you at least a solid 1.5 points added to your score movie! The only thing I could kinda bitch about and this is the most pathetic thing to bitch about so tune me out creators of this film who read the reviews, but the selection of arenas for the fights left just a bit to be desired. We have one courtyard for I swear 3 or 4 fights, we have the spike room (not the pit sadly), the acid room which was beautifully accurate, and the portal sans the creepy floating monks. God awful? Of course not. But even my novice ass knows you have a practical buffet of arenas to throw a fucking dart at, but other than that terribly nitpicky ass aside, pretty good movie! Fights are varied, they got no problem bodying people which could piss some people off admittedly, the kills make the first movie look pathetic in comparison in terms of gore and inventive gore at that. It moves at a good pace, the characters aren't super deep but have good motivation, the effects are really nice, they even got some neat-o cinematography in there at times which I very much appreciated, and it was actually pretty damn funny! I was surprised how many laughs I got, so well done on that front writers! It appears my hope and faith was not mislaid, and while it does kinda sequel bait the shit out of the end which I have several questions about because heeeey Mortal Kombat noob over here, I'm happy with it. So I guess I have my best of both worlds with the 1995 first movie and the 2026 second movie, and I am rather curious what the die hard fans think about it. All in all I give it 3 stars, 7.5/10, and I will see y'all next week for another new release.
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