By George & Josh Bate
With Mortal Kombat II currently in theaters and delivering gruesome fatalities to fans worldwide, we’re taking a look back at the 30+ year history of Mortal Kombat movies and ranking them all from worst to best. Of note, this list only ranks live-action Mortal Kombat movies.
4. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
You’ll be hard pressed to find a ranking of Mortal Kombat movies that doesn’t include Annihilation dead last. The sequel to the 1995 film certainly has a ‘so bad, it’s good’ quality to it, but that hardly salvages an otherwise dismal video game adaptation. The visual effects are distractingly poor, the shallow characters deliver laughably bad dialogue, and virtually the entire cast from the previous film (other than Robin Shou as Liu Kang and Talisa Soto as Kitana) are recast, creating an odd discontinuity from the previous film. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is not just a low point for the Mortal Kombat film franchise – it’s a low point for the Mortal Kombat franchise overall.
3. Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat II is the cinematic equivalent of playing a Mortal Kombat game until your mind goes numb and eyes start shutting. While the sequel delivers on the tournament the 2021 film sorely missed, director Simon McQuoid’s movie miraculously ends up inferior to its predecessor in every regard. With no reprieve from two hours of bland action choreography and a paper thin story populated by even thinner characters, the film alienates even casual fans of the franchise by pandering too heavily to die-hards and featuring far too convoluted and underdeveloped worldbuilding. While miscast as Johnny Cage, Karl Urban adds much-needed personality to the mix and there are a few delightfully gruesome fatalities to feast on, but little else redeems this poor sequel. It says something when the end credits of a video game adaptation evoke the feeling of playing the games more palpably than the preceding two hour movie.
2. Mortal Kombat (2021)
Perhaps a controversial inclusion this high up the list, Mortal Kombat (2021) gets a bad wrap. Much has been made of the film’s lack of the Mortal Kombat tournament and the positioning of Cole Young as the protagonist, but we think neither is as sizable of an issue as most people claim. Despite not featuring the tournament, Simon McQuoid’s movie is packed with exhilarating action sequences that nicely harken back to the signature moves and iconic fatalities of the games. The decision to not feature the tournament allows the film to breathe a bit more and establish exposition that the second film benefits from skimping over. Lewis Tan’s Cole Young serves as the audience’s perspective, as an everyman entering into a fantastical world, and makes for a far more developed protagonist than any we get in the sequel. And the Scorpion and Sub-Zero rivalry that grounds the film is excellent, bookending the story with a well-executed revenge throughline and deftly capturing the badassery of the two legendary characters.
1. Mortal Kombat (1995)
Dated? Yes. Poorly acted? Absolutely. A PG-13 rating for a Mortal Kombat movie? Almost unforgivable. And yet Mortal Kombat (1995) still emerges victorious amongst the other Mortal Kombat movies. Few films so deftly capture the 1990s as saliently and potently as Mortal Kombat (1995). Sure, the story is about as thin as it gets, but the film unabashedly delivers the same kind of fun playing a Mortal Kombat game produced. The fight sequences are well-crafted, the set designs are colorful, and, surprisingly, most characters are given somewhat of a character arc, something that can’t be said for the franchise’s most recent film. You add on top of that George S. Clinton’s electric score and The Immortals’ iconic “Mortal Kombat (Techno-Syndrome)” theme and Mortal Kombat (1995), for all its flaws, still ranks among the best video game adaptations to date.