Mortal Kombat (1995)
The greatest video game movie ever made
Directed By: Paul W. S. Anderson
Other Notable Films From Anderson: Event Horizon, the Resident Evil series
Starring: Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Robin Shou, Christopher Lambert, Bridgette Wilson, Linden Ashby
Screenplay By: Kevin Droney
Movie Synopsis: A collection of eccentric fighters compete in a martial arts tournament to determine the fate of the world.
Signature Line: “Those are $500 sunglasses, asshole.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
Prior to the start of my sixth grade year, my parents sent me to live with my grandmother. And not so long after that, one of my uncles—the youngest of six siblings, and barely a decade older than me—moved in with the two of us. And it was awesome.
I’d always wanted an older brother, and it felt like finally I had one. He showed me cool movies (my earliest theater memory was him taking me to see Kickboxer), cool music (hearing “Black” by Pearl Jam for the first time felt like a religious experience), and cool magazines (learning what Playboy was immediately rendered Eddie Vedder’s voice considerably less important to me). But the most enduring thing he ever showed was Mortal Kombat, a blood-soaked fighting game in which a handful of combatants faced off in a martial arts tournament with the fate of the world at stake.
It instantly became a pop culture pillar for me. I played it every day, and drew its logo and various characters on my folders and binders, and shoplifted copies of Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro from the nearest grocery store anytime an issue had anything at all about the game inside it. It consumed me. It was all I wanted to talk about, and all I wanted to think about. And when it eventually got turned into a movie after a massive run of success in arcades,1 it was all I wanted to watch.
I love Mortal Kombat a lot—I currently have a Mortal Kombat II arcade machine in my office, a Goro statue on my desk, and several vintage Mortal Kombat strategy guides on my bookshelf. I believe the 1995 dramatization to be the best video game movie adaptation of all time (a belief shared by many, including Rolling Stone, who listed it as the best video game movie ever just last year), and I suspect the franchise will be a part of my life in one capacity or another forever.
And that’s all owed to my Uncle Brian.
Sometimes the people who mean the most to us change our lives in ways they probably never realize.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Mortal Kombat
0:16: The opening to this movie is so fucking hype. It’s just the song “Techno Syndrome” by The Immortals being played at an obscenely high volume while a sea of fire slowly reveals the Mortal Kombat logo and title text. A few months after Larami and I moved into our first joint apartment together in college, my parents bought me one of those all-in-one-box surround sound systems you used to be able to get from Best Buy for a couple hundred bucks. I remember hooking everything up, putting this movie in, and then playing the beginning over and over and over again as I tried to figure out the exact right speaker placement and subwoofer level. I must’ve played that thing about 25 times. It was awesome. And it was also, I suspect, the first time Larami thought, “You know, maybe moving in with this guy wasn’t that great of an idea after all.”
0:59: Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is here. He plays Shang Tsung, a shapeshifting sorcerer who is super into stealing souls from people. I thought the 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat was fine, but one of the parts of it that felt a bit flimsy to me was the soft-facedness of the guy who played Shang Tsung. Shang Tsung should be terrifying. He should feel intimidating, and evil, and powerful, and like he’d drive through to a stop sign to smash into your car if he knew your child wasn’t properly secured in her baby seat. He should feel, in short, exactly like Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa does here.
2:02: Robin Shou is here. He plays Liu Kang, a noble warrior who’s spent his entire adult life running from his destiny. (We’re never actually told what exactly his destiny is, by the way, but that’s okay. Because Mortal Kombat is strictly a NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS movie.) (A NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS movie is a movie where the plot starts to fall apart immediately if you get to asking any follow-up questions about anything at all.)
2:34: This message Liu Kang receives from his grandpa is so funny to me. All news should be delivered like this. It should just say who the information is for, followed by two two-word sentences, then a sign-off. That’s it.
Neil Armstrong secured America’s place ahead of the Soviet Union as the first nation ever to visit the moon?
AMERICAN CITIZENS
MOON CONQUERED. USA WINS.
NASA
The Titanic sank?
GLOBAL CITIZENS
TITANIC SANK. STUPID ICEBERG.
NAVY
I’m gonna be a few hours late turning in a GOOD MOVIE essay?
EDITOR HANNAH
LATE AGAIN. BLAME RICHIE.
SHEA
3:43: Trevor Goddard is here. He plays Kano, an underworld crime boss in possession of two of the coolest things anyone can possess: (1) an Australian accent, and (2) a metal eyeball that shoots lasers out of it. Kano was the least popular character in the Mortal Kombat game (so much so that they ditched him entirely when Mortal Kombat II came out), but he’s the second most fun character in this movie and the first most fun character in the 2021 version. And that makes me happy. Good for him.
3:44: P.S. It wasn’t until researching for this essay that I learned Goddard’s accent is actually Cockney English, not Australian. It’s a mistake that so many people made, though, that Kano officially got retconned with an actual Australian accent later.
4:51: Bridgette Wilson is here. She plays Sonya Blade, a Special Forces officer obsessed with catching Kano because he slit her partner’s throat. 1995 was a crazy year for Wilson. Over just an eight-month stretch, she was in John Singleton’s Higher Learning (I have hated Michael Rapaport for three-decades straight because of how brilliantly he played a neo Nazi in this), Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison (the movie that opened the door for Wilson to become a cult hero), and Mortal Kombat (the movie the made good on the promise of her potential cult-hero status). She’s awesome in this. She treats even the most ridiculous lines and situations with a Daniel-Day Lewis level of commitment. It’s so much fun.
5:45: Linden Ashby is here. He plays Johnny Cage, a martial-arts movie star who’s mad that the media doesn’t believe he’s any good at actual martial arts. (I don’t know if they did it on purpose, but it’s very clever to me that they give Johnny Cage this backstory then cast a guy who fights like he’s never thrown a punch in his life.)
7:43: Okay, so the premise of Mortal Kombat is that an evil emperor (Shao Kahn) and his army (led by Shang Tsung) want to take over Earth. But before they’re allowed to begin colonizing the planet, they must beat Earth’s best warriors in 10 consecutive fighting tournaments. They’ve won nine so far. So it’s up to a ragtag crew to stop them: Johnny Cage (who wants to participate so he can prove he’s a bonafide martial artist), Liu Kang (who wants to participate so he can avenge his brother’s death, who was killed by Shang Tsung), and Sonya Blade (who gets lured into fighting by the prospect of being able to take down Kano, who is also participating). And all of this is being overseen by…
10:28: Lord Rayden, god of lightning and defender of the earthrealm. Three things to mention here:
Rayden is played by Christopher Lambert. And I fucking LOVE Christopher Lambert. He’s such an intense weirdo. Every single movie he’s ever been in, you turn it on and ten minutes later you’re like, “I can’t believe this is a real movie.” He’s an absolute delight here.
I have no idea why they spell Raiden’s name as “Rayden” in this. It’s “Raiden” in the video game, and also in the 1997 sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and also in the 2021 reboot. It makes no sense that it’s different here, and it makes me mad every time I see it pop up in the closed captions. I’m using the “Raiden” spelling for the rest of this essay in protest.
My favorite Christopher Lambert movie ever is called Mean Guns. It came out in 1997. It’s about a crime syndicate who gathers 100 killers who’ve wronged the syndicate in some way, locks them in an empty prison the day before it opens, and forces them to all kill each other. (Ice-T plays a character named Vincent Moon, if you’re wondering about the movie’s prestige level.)
13:50: The guy to the left of Sonya is her new partner. His name is Jax. He’s only in the movie for a minute or so, but it’s exciting for video game fans to see him because he’s actually a playable character in the Mortal Kombat II video game. (He’s basically that game’s version of Kano, in that he has a cool accessory—Kano has the laser eye, Jax has metal arms—but he’s not very much fun to play with.)
15:42: Oh, baby. Here we fucking go. The most exciting part of the movie. Sonya trailed Kano onto a ship headed to the secret location of the Mortal Kombat tournament. While looking for him, she runs into Shang Tsung in the belly of the ship. After he tries flirting with her for a bit, Johnny Cage and Liu Kang step in to help Sonya out. When they do, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, the two coolest characters in the video game and also the two coolest characters in the movie, wander into the scene as well. It’s a fucking all-caps PERFECT character entrance. Let’s watch it:
