"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" picks up moments after the last film where the new baddie Shao Khan and his minions have now invaded Earthrealm. Our heroes suffer significant losses and are forced to retreat and they begin to travel in hopes of finding any allies and saving the merging of Earth with Outworld.
I'll be honest and say that before this little marathon I prepared, I had never seen this one aside from some choice clips commonly used as internet memes. That being said, I didn't dread going into it at first because it seemed to be yet another 'so bad it's good' movie that could be fun to make fun of.
I was wrong.
Unlike the first film where the cheesy elements worked in its favor due to higher production value and a good cast, "Annihilation" keeps the bad and makes it even worse to the point of cringe. Robin Shou & Talisa Soto are the only returning cast members as Lui Kang and Kitana so we're left with a new group who seem to have little knowledge of their characters and in a lot of cases seem to not understand what acting is.
Now I know that villains are supposed to be over the top, especially in video games back in the day but the difference between Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's Shang Tsung and Brian Thompson's Shao Khan is restraint. Yes, Tagawa made those iconic silly faces throughout but his performance overall was quiet & reserved, feeling very similar to Jafar from "Aladdin". Someone who's always scheming and thinking one step ahead. Shao Khan in this movie acts like a high school bully with zero intimidation or fear the character in the games give off. You do not believe for one second this guy is the most powerful man in the universe.
Then you have the minions which are somehow even worse representations of their game counterparts. I understand that back in 1997 the game series didn't have much lore to develop into a full blown screenplay but there was enough to give these characters some kind of personality. I neglected to mention this in my review of the first film, but if I though Scorpion & Sub-Zero were barely utilized properly, I only need look at the characters of "Annihilation". About the majority of them are little more than a brief cameo as this story will have its characters enter a new area, meet a new fighter, then almost immediately get rid of them either in the same sequence or the next and some just show up in one part of a scene like the picture above.
The movie is just simply trying way too hard to be ambitious with an attempt at this grand epic movie when special effects, budget, story, and the cast & crew were just not up to par. The original film had a lower budget than this and it pulled it off, taking us to some beautiful exotic locations and keeping the fantasy elements to a minimum (though the special effects in that were also a big issue). "Annihilation" is double the budget but looks a million times cheaper, something I cannot fathom how you do that.
Is there anything good about "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation"? Robin Shou's Lui Kang is still good, the fights are still good and...it did prevent the third film? It's actually hard to find much here folks this is just as bad as you've heard but for me personally it was even worse. I thought I could at least get a good chuckle or two out of it but this is a dull movie overall and the best of the worst is stuff you've already seen in YouTube clips. Avoid "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation".
F
You can check out my other reviews on "Mortal Kombat" HERE & HERE.
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