Editorials
Remembering the Lost ‘Mortal Kombat’ Characters
Few game series have been going for as long and with the same success as Mortal Kombat, the legendary fighting game franchise that first saw the light of day in 1992. Twenty-seven years is a long time, and with it comes an equally long history. Sure, Mortal Kombat might be so well-known because of its fatalities and its commitment to being as ridiculously violent as technologically possible, but for some people, it is also the fighting game series with the most interesting and intricate lore. After all, you don’t get to be around for 27 years without crafting memorable characters and storylines.
Beginning with Mortal Kombat 9 in 2011, however, the story saw a reboot of sorts, in which thanks to some time travel magic a new timeline was created and most stories were reimagined. The upcoming Mortal Kombat 11 is poised to be a milestone entry in the franchise, especially in terms of story. Being presented as a game where “past meets present”, a lot of characters from the history of the series are making a return in order to deliver what seems to be a climax to the current arc.
Still, I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic. In this new wave of Mortal Kombat games, many old characters have returned but mostly those from the 2D era. Few of the characters introduced after Mortal Kombat 3 have gotten the attention that the veterans of the series did, especially the PlayStation 2 characters. Some have made their comebacks, like Kenshi or even Bo’ Rai Cho (who is perhaps one of the worst characters in the series?), but as the release of MK11 draws closer I have to make peace with the fact that a few of my favorite characters will not show up in this conclusion of the storyline, even if they had the potential to add something interesting to it.
For example, Reiko, introduced in Mortal Kombat 4, and Havik, who debuted in Mortal Kombat: Deception, are two characters I’ve been excited to see in this new timeline since the end of MK9. While they didn’t make much of a splash in the original timeline (especially Reiko), they had a ton of potential considering where the plot was going in the current timeline. When Shao Khan died, Reiko immediately became the first name in my head to replace him given his previous backstory as a general who secretly wanted the throne for himself.
My wish wasn’t exactly granted, although those characters weren’t ignored. In the Mortal Kombat X comics, both Reiko and Havik played big roles before being ultimately killed without making any appearance in the game at all. While the comics are not bad, they’re not the same as the game. I would’ve loved to see how the MK team would have adapted Havik’s moves in which he distorts his own body to the new generation of Mortal Kombat games. Reiko isn’t exactly interesting because of his moveset, but I would’ve preferred to see his story play out in the game’s superb story mode rather than the comic.
The Dragon King Onaga, former emperor of the Outworld poisoned by Shao Khan, was also a name that came to mind. However, it’s hard to think of Onaga without thinking of Shujinko, one of the most interesting characters of the PS2 era of MK games. These two are the heart and soul of Mortal Kombat: Deception and its Konquest mode, the series first big attempt at having a story mode.
Despite being the stars of Deception, Shujinko and Onaga haven’t received much love post-reboot. Onaga has barely been mentioned at all (bar a cameo or two), but Shujinko played a short role in Havik’s story in the comics. Since he’s still alive, it would be fun to see him playable in MK11. While Onaga would mostly only work as a boss-type of character, Shujinko’s abilities to learn moves from every other character would make him a very interesting fighter given MK11’s customization system that allows you to slot special moves to your characters and create your own variations of them. With this, he would go from being one of the most interesting characters in terms of story to one of the most mechanically fun combatants.
There’s more characters too that could make unique use of these new customization mechanics in MK11, and two of them are Chameleon and Khameleon. This pair of ninjas have never amounted to much in terms of the story since they are nothing but palette swaps, but they are arguably the ultimate palette swaps from the old games. Chameleon was a hidden character who essentially combined all of the male ninjas in one fighter, while Khameleon was the same for the female ninjas. Back in Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy (the only old games they showed up in), this concept was as novel as it was interesting.
However, these characters only ever showed up again in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, although Khameleon had a small cameo in the mobile version of MKX. While I would love to see if they can reimagine them in order make them relevant to the current story, they would also fit well with MK11’s mechanics just like Shujinko. Of course, they would be more limited since they only use moves from other ninjas, but Netherrealm studios has proven that they can get very creative when it comes to bringing old characters back so I doubt this limit would make them less fun.
Still, given where the current arc is going, the three names that came to my mind the most were the ones at the center of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: Taven, Daegon and Blaze. While this trio isn’t exactly the most compelling in terms of gameplay, they are a key component to the story of the MK games, since without them and their stories there would be no reboot that brings us to MK11 and the climax that is approaching.
These characters’ mission in the original timeline was to prevent the Armageddon that would come when the strength of the fighters threatened to destroy reality. Revisiting the ideas that their story brought to the table would be an interesting concept given that Kronika, the antagonist of MK11, is looking to unleash her own temporal armageddon to rewrite the current timeline that was created by their failure. These three characters have only made minuscule cameos in the newest games, but full playable appearances would allow their stories to really shine in a new context.
And just like all of these characters, there’s many more who have been missing from the playable roster since the reboot. Be it characters like the god of wind Fujin, Kai, the African-American Shaolin monk, or Sareena, a demon that used to work for Quan Chi, who could introduce interesting plot points to this new timeline, or characters like winged vampire Nitara, Drahmin, who has an iron club for a right hand, or Mavado, a character that uses the same weapon as Kabal, who could be reimagined to get a second chance in the series, there’s no shortage of fighters that could be brought back into these new games.
Sadly, when all is said and done, I highly doubt any of these characters will ever make their return unless they get released as DLC. The series has moved on and Mortal Kombat X made it clear that the focus is to introduce new faces and stories and put them under the spotlight. That’s never a bad thing, since all of these characters I’ve talked about were new faces in their days too. They just failed to make much of an impression, but that’s how things are.
NetherRealm Studios has since learned how to craft good new characters and while MK11 is being touted as past meeting present, it’s clear that they’re looking towards the future too. I just can’t help but feel a little sad for the characters that won’t get to see how bright that future might be for the series.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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