Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) Reviews

• Quite Possibly the Worst Movie in the Realm of Known Existence

  chr1sberg2001-12-16

  I made the mistake of going to see this movie, first show, first day, in the theater, in 1997 when it was released. The first movie wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it was fun. I expected more with the 2nd. The only thing I knew about it going in was that James Remar was replacing Christopher Lambert as Rayden, which I was upset about, but I thought Remar would do a good job. Boy, was I wrong. The whole cast, even Robin Shou, who was decent in the 1st, and great in Beverly Hills Ninja, can't seem to act his way out of a paper bag in this one. *** Mega Spoilers, Cause You Shouldn't See This Movie Anyway *** The big mistake the writers made with this movie, was trying to incorporate all of the characters, even the hidden ones, from not just Mortal Kombat 2, but Mortal Kombat 3 as well. (The plot is taken from the MK3 video game). MK1 survived multiple heroes because there were only 3, a trio, a team, and their "teacher" Raiden. And only 2 bad guys (Goro, Shang Tsung). In MK2, we have a virtual plethora of heroes and baddies. Heroes (8): Liu Kang/Rayden/Kitana/Sonya/Jax/Johnny Cage/Nightwolf/Sub Zero Baddies (14): Shao Kahn, Shinnok, Sindel, Motaro, Jade, Sheeva, Cyrax, Scorpion, Noob Saibot, Ermac, Rain, Baraka, Smoke, and Mileena. Yeah, I thought that was a lot too. All of these characters have lines and/or fight scenes too. This doesn't even include the characters from the games that are mentioned, but not shown. A bunch of these baddies (and even some heroes) die or just leave, never to return, in about a minute after they appear. For instance, here's the plot of some of the sub characters: Rain: Says hi, gets thrown into a fiery pit. Sub Zero: Shows up, says hi, fights and kills botty Smoke, tells Liu Kang "you are not ready", then disappears, never to be heard from again. Smoke: Killed within a 2 minutes by aforementioned Sub Zero. Baraka: er.. I think you see him.. once. Mileena: Shows up, attacks Sonya, somehow dies from a bonk on the head. Scorpion: Shows up, fights Sub-Zero, kidnaps Kitana, disappears. Johnny Cage: Shows up, says hi, Shao Kahn breaks his neck a good minute into the movie. Sheeva: Has a few lines early, Liu Kang kills her in under 10 seconds in her first fight. Those are just some examples. On top of these character issues, the entire movie seems to have been filmed on the first take. There are literally *tons* of continuity and placement errors. A few quick examples, all from the same 10 minute stretch: Rayden leaves Sonya, and tells her to find her buddy Jaz, then to head to "The Temple of the Elder Gods". Of course, after she finds Jax, she immediately knows where it is. When we first meet His Jaxness himself, he punches into a wall trying to kill Cyrax. We pan away with his fist somehow stuck in a wall with a good inch of space around it. We pan back a few seconds later, and his entire arm is stuck in the wall. Sonya gets into a muddy fan-service fight with Mileena. After a muddy battle, and a split scene later, all her clothes have somehow been drycleaned. During aforementioned Muddy Fan-Service fight, Sonya gets thrown into a rock. This big rock, about 10 times the size of her, waggles and moves a bit with her weight falling on it. Again, those are just some examples, but they're *rampant* in the movie. As for the plot, well, the idea and premise is interesting, but they delve way too deep into it. It would have been better if they kept it superficial, the way they did in the first movie. But, no, they had to try to explain everything: life, existence, the tournament, and why the toast always lands butter side down. The result of all this atrocity is a corny, poorly directed, aterribly written, underbudgeted (looks like most of the stuff *I* could have pulled off with my home computer) nightmare that's worth buying solely to laugh at. 0/10

• Oh, I'll tell you how bad this movie is, allright

  manalone9232004-02-03

  You know, I really liked the original Mortal Kombat. Sure they ripped off the premise from another movie, but at least it was good (Enter the Dragon). I loved the games until the 4th one and was widely known as being one of its best and most devoted followers. So maybe all this is why my then-girlfriend's idiot stoner brother told me that he heard this movie was incredible, and I excitedly went to see it. I'm a patient guy, and I have almost never felt the urge to walk out of a movie due to boredom (Tank Girl is the only other one I recall). But MKA here is a joke. If you really feel the need to see this movie and be surprised, then be forewarned because there are spoilers ahead. Here's one right off the bat. MKA isn't a sequel proper to the original Mortal Kombat. The original MK was, reasonably, based on the first game. A couple future characters made cameos, but that's it. So it stands to also reason that MKA would be about the second game, the one most fans widely regard to be the best. But whereas the MK film was made at the time that part 2 was yielding to part 3, a lot changed in the extra couple years it took for this film sequel. As MK the movie was leaving theaters, MK3 the game was getting kind of a lukewarm reception, and people got sicker and sicker of it by the time MK4 came out. By now the games were in 3d and the storyline had gone from basic Enter the Dragon tournaments to all out apocalyptic robot wars and sorcerors controlling the fates of a bunch of new, generic characters. Until its decent reinventing in 2002, the MK games had hit a rough and oversaturated spot and would take 5 years to bounce back. So here in this worst time comes MKA, which skips the best chapter of the games entirely and jumps in at sort of a story junction between the 3rd and 4th games, the worst. So we have characters from all 4 games running around and interacting, which is goofy as it is, and things get worse when sense is tried to be made of it. For example, (spoiler), in maybe the first 2 minutes Johnny Cage, a main character and semi-hero of the first movie, is summarily and unceremoniously killed off. My guess for this is because he wasn't in the 3rd game. Soon after (more spoilers. In fact, there will be several so if you continue, do at the risk of ruining the wonderful cinematic experience that is MKA), robots from game 3 come in, negating the fact that their sole purpose in the games was to hunt Sub Zero, a character killed in the first movie. Leading the attacks by these fiends and others is Shao Kahn, who in the first movie appeared as a giant demonic face in the sky and here appears as....a masculine human being. Making things moe complicated is that elder God Raiden, played by Christopher Lambert in the original, is here played by someone else and seems to not want to fight at all, as the character has gone from wizardly power god to short haired, weasely Power Rangers nerd, giving up his immortality in the process and teaching our heroes a thing or two about friendship and courage. Huh? Sticking things out, unfortunately for them, are Robin Shou and Talisia Soto, who play central characters Liu Kang and Kitana and who've returned from the original film. This time, neither of them are allowed to do anything much more than look shocked at the stupid story developments, and Liu Kang engages in a few fights that capture none of the magic or uniqueness of the original film. And in fact this goes for any fight in this film that I care to remember. In the original, the fights were well choreographed and showcased a good selection of acrobatic and martial arts skill. Action was conveyed through close combat, good angles, and lengthy tradeoffs. And at the very least, there was a genuine moment or two where one might say "wow, that was a cool move!". This time, a lot of the action is illusional, with the camera making quick cuts and sudden moves to sort of convey that stuff is going on. There's nary an actual hand-to hand combat scene that lasts more than 30 seconds, and when you see what else was thrown in instead, you'll want to kill someone yourself. For example, remember the character Baraka, with his beast face and bladed arms? He's here, and in fact is joined by several identical others, who assault Liu Kang with their reflective cardboard blades in a high-flying trapeze act straight out of the circus. And what about Sheeva, 4-armed character that should have been the answer to decently done Goro, 4-armed creature of the original film? Well, whereas he was conveyed through puppeteering and animatronics, here Sheeva is played by a tall woman in generic spandex who tries to look menacing and does a couple unthreatening hops with her cheesy extra special effect arms. Things (don't) pick up later on, when Liu Kang randomly encounters Native American character Nightwolf, who explains that Liu must harness his "animality" to succeed. Anyone familiar with the MK universe knows that the "animality" was a ridiculous player rumor which supposed that the MK games contained a method of killing one's opponent by turning into an animal and committing not a fatality but an "animality". This dumb rumor was added to the 3rd game as fan service, and apparently delighted the producers of this film enough that it was actually explained as a real, feasible occurence. "Feel your animality", N.Wolf says to Liu, urging him to harness the beast within. Mr. Wolf then briefly shows Liu how to do it, and then asks, "pretty cool, huh?" We who haven't left the room yet are saying "no", but oh boy do we still get a fun surprise. At the end of the film, Liu Kang fights with big masculine guy (er, Shao Kahn), and instead of actual wanted fisticuffs, we get to see the two of them feel their animality and turn into giant, god awful stupid computer-generated beasts who do combat with each other. No, I mean it. They turn into giant computer animated beasts. And we're not talking about Gollum of the Lord of the Rings here- I mean big, shiny, plasticy-looking "we know we want to make big magical creatures but don't yet have the technology to do anything but make them eye-strainingly obvious" effects. Liu Kang could reasonably have turned into a cool chinese dragon or something, but instead winds up being this big-nosed, cross eyed, dopey dragon thing. Shao Kahn turns into something equally ridiculous and less memorable and the two have it out. Then at the last minute Shao Kahn's sorceror dad decides he's gone too far, disgraced the family name by becoming a crappy visual effect, and makes him disappear or something. Then everyone hugs, and more or less runs far, far away. I hope that this has been an accurate rendering of what my feelings are for this film, because I actually haven't seen it in several years. I don't hate myself enough to watch it more than that. But if you want an actual review without the sarcasm, just look at it this way: It is an insult to the MK franchise and its fans, it fails as a follow-up to the fun original MK film, it fails TERRIBLY as a martial arts film, and in general it just is a dumb waste of time, an arbitrary, thrown-together cash-in sequel. Do yourself a favor and just watch the original, and if you still crave more, go play the games. And if you do insist on seeing this movie, then at the very least inject some fun into it like trying to figure out where those Baraka masks were purchased.

• Nothing to add. Watch it to laugh at it.

  bestofcell2006-06-18

  MK-1 made by no-talent director Paul Worth..beep..Anderson was really not that crap but this....this.....this......is just unimaginable! Some memorable moments are Motaro, supposed to be one of the toughest enemies has a visibly fake plastic horn set glued to his head. Even a 2 year old would find that out. Another opponent, with 4 arms, supposed to be the third toughest, has a 2 second role and dies by a falling object! Johnny cage moves perfectly straight for 100 meters during a kick, touches the bad guy! Dies! What a way to start a movie! A wise old Red Indian guy says "Pretty cool huh? Its my animality". This guy is supposed to spiritual? He looks like a punk. Final end for Shaoh Khan? He becomes a box! Originality! The CGI looks like cut and paste from a 1985 modelling kit. And this guy is a caucasian bald guy instead of a mongol. There's no fighting, the opponents merely scratch each other. What are the makers trying to prove with this? Was this an intentional parody of the Mortal Kombat universe?

• What a letdown

  amaionuma2004-11-11

  I have been a huge fan of the MK videogames practically since the beginning, and I really enjoyed the first Mortal Kombat movie. It wasn't a work of art, but it was fun, funny, colorful and had some great fight scenes. Anihilation, though, suffers from an extreme case of sequelitis, with about half of the characters re-cast, all of which were a step down, a dumb story line, wooden acting, effects that were less advanced than the ones in the first movie, and a feeling of blah pervading the whole thing. Perhaps the worst thing is the fight at the end with the two really bad CG "animalities", a cheesy idea from the game that should have stayed in the game. Liu Kang's dragon looked like a pear with wings and a tail. Definitely avoid this one if you wish to keep your glowing memories of the arcade game intact.

• An unexpected Sequel

  janks0072006-03-01

  This sequel has diminished the image of the first movie, Mortal Kombat. First of all, the death of Johnny Cage in the beginning scene of the movie destroyed a lot of expectations as there were many who became fans of Johnny Cage in particular. In addition to that, the action scenes from Liu Kang were rather fake, in contrary to his action moves in Mortal Kombat. The introduction of Jax was not explained, how did he get into the hospital. Subzero's entry was understandable, but was it the same of Scorpion? Baraka, Mileena, Sheeva, Ermac, Nightwolf, Jade etc. are high profile fighters in the game, but in this movie, they were represented horribly. Sheeva died without a fight, Nightwolf came in just to hit an axe on Liu Kang, Jade was JUST A TRAITOR. Shao Kahn's acting was the worst. His fighting style lacked the depth and originality like Shang Tsung had in the previous film. All in all, I would recommend the fans of Mortal Kombat to avoid watching this movie if they want to maintain their good impression of the first movie.