Editorials
Why ‘Mortal Kombat Armageddon’ Was an Indulgent Last Hurrah For Klassic Kombat
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon felt like an end to everything the series had been building towards for many years, literally funneling every character – from elder gods to goofy guest stars – into a massive meat grinder, letting that bloody paste congeal before rebooting the franchise half a decade later.
2006 wasn’t what you’d call a hot year for fighting games. Although Mortal Kombat had continued to maintain its presence within the genre (thanks to games such as Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Shaolin Monks) Armageddon failed to stir up much fanfare, at least when compared to those arcade classics or NetherRealm’s recent revivals.
Ed Boon, Midway Games, and company was using the same engine and core fighting mechanics but still had some interesting ideas for its flagship franchise. Armageddon’s Konquest mode, while hardly groundbreaking, can still be seen as a template for the story mode structure used in later Mortal Kombats which, in turn, has been adopted by many other fighting game series.
Instead of sandwiching a string of matches between character-specific cutscenes, Konquest had you exploring the wider MK universe as newcomer, Taven. Between traditional fights, players took control of the fire-wielding demigod as he travels between realms, occasionally battling grunts using a 3D fighting system pinched from Shaolin Monks.
The reason why Konquest doesn’t get brought up as much as it should is due to Armageddon’s story itself. Even with Mortal Kombat X and NetherRealm’s Injustice 2, crafting a narrative that loops in every playable character can often mean taking liberties and the occasional awkward crowbarring of cameos. It was very much the same with Armageddon though its plot was far less compelling, relying on fans knowing the inner workings of MK’s bizarre patchwork of lore. Putting Taven front and center was also a misstep – he had no previous history with the franchise or any kind of likability.
Speaking of characters, Armageddon still boasts the biggest roster of any Mortal Kombat game with a total of 62 fighters (63, if you count the Wii-exclusive Khameleon). The game’s intro movie is a fabulous wedge of fan service as they all duke it out in one final royal rumble upon the steps of a great pyramid. The developers even threw in joke characters such as Mocap (literally a dude in a motion capture rig) and Meat (literally a dude made of meat). Armageddon also had a strange choice of villain, opting for the unimaginative Blaze who was, at one point, merely a background character standing in the crowd of one Mortal Kombat II stage.
If some of the whackier additions to MK’s cast weren’t to your taste, you could make your own. For the first time in series history, Mortal Kombat allowed players to “kreate” custom fighters, mashing together fighting styles and unlockable special moves with a decent spread of costumes and cosmetics to tinker with.
Armageddon went really hard on these collectibles and unlocks. The Krypt, first introduced in Deadly Alliance, made a return with loads of items from players to amass including character skins, artwork, and background music, as well as the aforementioned custom parts to build your own fighters.
Seemingly not content with Armageddon’s over-the-top madness, Midway went one step further. The cherry on top? Motor Kombat – a kart-racing side game complete with eight playable cartoon characters and a handful of stages. Looking back, this addition was completely mad, having nothing to do with the core fighting of Mortal Kombat. It almost felt like the early stages of a side project the Armageddon team bolted on at the last minute. While half-baked it still made for a fun distraction, hosting eight kombatants per race, weaving between hazards and using their specific powers to wreak havoc out on the track.
Looking back, Armageddon was a surprisingly robust package even when compared to the fighting games of today. However, it touched down at a time when the genre had briefly fallen out of fashion and the sixth console generation was starting to wind down. It’s possible that fatigue was also starting to set in, those narrative threads Midway had been laying for years starting to tangle and fray at the ends. Mortal Kombat needed a clean break and that’s exactly what happened, leading to one of the industry’s most successful reboots to date.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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