Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021)
The battle to end all battles.
Super long titles for super long franchises1 We love video games in this building, and although I’d make the argument I’m not innately a real violent guy, I do enjoy me some pretty brutal games. That being said, I also admit that I haven’t legit sat down and played an entry in this particular franchise since that N64 side-story staring a certain blue ninja, so I’m obviously way out of touch with the games and more in touch with the movies. Funny thing about that statement though - I found out I missed two animated movies! Well we’ll just have to fix that won’t we? Tonight, it’s back to the tournament with Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms.
Outworld has launched a full scale offensive after the events of the last movie. There’s some heroes holding out and fighting for Earthrealm’s side, but safety is far from certain. The leader of Outworld shows up to offer an idea: a petition to the elder gods to bring forth one last Mortal Kombat tournament to end them all - if Earthrealm wins, the good guys are good and Outworld’s times taking over and merging things are all over. If the opposite happens, none shall stop Outworld from having any amount of cake and eating it too. Head of Earthrealm thinks, obviously, that this is the best idea ever, as it puts a stop to things, and thus the final tournament is set to begin. Meanwhile, in a side plot that dumps into the main plot eventually, one yellow ninja ends up being the final key to a dark treasure - one the leader of Netherrealm really wants so that he can summon the one spirit who will umake all of existence. Our yellow ninja friend has some qualms with this and being anyone’s toy, but when some mercenary ninjas aren’t smart enough to figure out what’s happening, there might end up being a whole lot more to worry about than one tournament.
Actors do pretty good. I mean, sure, it’s just voices, but they do a good job. They manage to carry some inflections and the likes to various lines being delivered, and don’t really feel phoned in. Some of it can carry a little level of cheese to it, but I don’t feel like it’s any more or less than you’d expect from any franchise with characters like a random cop or movie star taking place in a death tournament with everything at stake against four arm monsters and dudes with sword that come out of their arms. It’s just kind of fair game that there will be some cheese - and a lot of grunts, oofs, shouts, and totally straight laced lines that should be so much dumber than they actually end up feeling.
Characters won’t have a huge depth of advancement in this one. One character, goes from revenge-focused to the point of being an idiot to revenge focused but with their priorities straight. One learns something about relationships. One learns the power of rage. That said there is quite a breadth of characters, even if most the enemy ones are really just there to get beat up or beat someone up. It’s part two of a story - it doesn’t really need to spend a lot of time on character building and instead largely chooses to forgo a lot of that for action and a small focus on a few characters getting to do something different - but again, it’s also a movie about a martial arts tournament where a guy with metal arms can fight some bug lady that spits bees out her where-ever that was.
Two leaders with a plan.
You could say that some of those other bits were shortcomings of the movie - but honestly, It’s more a side effect of having a lot of characters wrapped into two plots that only stick around for about an hour and a half - which is an absolute sweet spot for movies to sit in my opinion. The movie also delivers on the action scenes - we’ve got big ones, we’ve got small ones, we’ve got ones that go all crazy super powers and fireballs. Characters that fans recognize will be pulling out moves that fans want with the desired effects accompanying them. The character designs are usually an absolute giveaway as to who a character is the moment they walk on screen, and admittedly there’s only one or two characters a person might look at and wonder who they are - and that’s more on account of them only appearing in like one game than anything else - the same thing happened with a few characters in that newer live action one too.
Now, the quality of those fights will be far more hit or miss than the visuals. Yes, it’s animated and all that, and the average person might be a bit more forgiving of it than someone like me, whose been watching various degrees of animated things from practically photo-effects comic books with voice over all the way to some of the ridiculously smooth martial arts scenes of something like Cowboy Bebop. It does the trick of delivering the frantic action here, but at times it doesn’t look nearly as smooth - or perhaps it’s just an issue with the perspective even. That said, it does also spruce said scenes up with all sorts of things - including the bone-breaking cut ins from the more recent games I haven’t played. It’s some good stuff, with some fatalities and plenty of nods here and there as it throws out that authentic Mortal Kombat feel. Of course, I’d like to point out if you are watching a movie based on a game franchise that’s most defining feature is it’s violence level it’s kind of a moot point to mention if you don’t like violence you were in the wrong place.
Audio is good. I honestly don’t even recall hearing the normal theme during it - which is weird because it’s so engraved in my head that I would have thought I’d notice it popping up. That said, the one moment that does stick out in my head as far as music goes is a random happy-lovey song playing in the background at one point, as it really adds to the comedic value but also intended emotion of the scene, and I found that quite amusing. Beyond that, line deliveries, explosions, hits, dodges, stabs, guns - all that sort of stuff all works right as intended, down to the bicycle kick.
Some ninjas clank.
You like Mortal Kombat you’ll enjoy this, much like the last one. It’s definitely one of those things where the animated ones feel like they follow the games a bit more with some wiggle room than the live action ones do - but you can also get away with a lot more in animation and not have it pull you out of the experience so it’s a fair trade I think. It might not really go super unexpected with it’s story beats or anything, but having watched it with a franchise fan, it’s pretty safe to say that they’ll find it enjoyable. For the casual viewer, it’s not bad as long as you like some violent martial arts action and watched the first so you have the back-story of what the heck is going on. I had fun.