Mortal Kombat is back! Cinema has been around for 120 years now, and during that time filmmakers have explored a multitude of ways to kill people. But has anyone ever turned someone’s arm to ice and then pulled the frozen blood out of that destroyed arm and then stabbed them with their own frozen blood? I mean, maybe, but probably not.
Killing people in new and inventive ways is definitely where Mortal Kombat has put its creative juices. Appropriately, the hero of the movie is an MMA fighter. Who better to represent Earth in an intergalactic showdown to the death than a human dedicated to finding new and inventive ways to come away the victor in our planet’s version of the same thing?
Josh Lawson plays the MMA fighter, Kano. He’s a guy with a birthmark, or is that a supernatural call to arms? Oh man, it looks like it’s that second one!
Naturally, it’s time to get that tournament going and start killing people—with panache. The look of the film is quite slick, which makes sense given director Simon McQuoid’s commercial background. He has directed campaigns for PlayStation, Beats by Dre, Range Rover, and Halo. Mortal Kombat is his first feature.
Also in the mix is Lewis Tan, the stunt choreographer and actor who, apparently, is required by law to be in all martial arts movies and TV shows. His role has been kept under wraps, but the fact he is a part of Mortal Kombat is a good sign for its fight scenes.
Action movie mainstay Hiroyuki Sanada is also on board, as Scorpion, and Sub-Zero is portrayed by Joe Taslim. Taslim got his start in The Raid: Redemption (2011) and has a serious martial arts background. While he has a background in a variety of practices, he wound up specializing in judo, ultimately becoming a professional athlete and winning many gold medals from 1997-2009 at the Indonesian Nationals and Asian Championships.
This reboot certainly has plenty of talent on board to create awesome fight scenes, it will be interesting to see how it it utilized.
The Warner Bros. picture will hit theaters and stream exclusively on HBO Max on April 16.
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