Editorials
‘Mortal Kombat’ 1995: The PG-13 Brutality and Nostalgic Charm of the Original Movie
Mortal Kombat holds a very special place in my heart. The original game in the franchise was one of the first video games I ever played. Like many kids being introduced to Mortal Kombat, I fell in love with its action and violence. I was immediately drawn to Sub-Zero and Scorpion; their visual presentation caught me right away, as well as the former’s ice elemental attacks and the latter’s signature “Get over here!” move. I was blown away by the game and would seek it out in whatever arcade I was in.
When I finally got the chance to see the first movie adaptation, Mortal Kombat 1995, I was in awe. The action and characters I loved were all there and they all kicked ass. The movie has become one of my personal favorite works of nostalgia; every couple years I’ll revisit it, and I still find that initial wonder. With another new Mortal Kombat movie on the way, I wanted to revisit and speak to what makes the 1995 film so awesome. For while it may be a shlocky action flick, it is a film that pays excellent homage to its source material.
I have a deep love for film adaptations of video games (as I’ve shared in the past, like when I wrote about 2005’s Doom). Games were one of my first major loves in life, so having the opportunity to see them come to the big screen has always excited me. I’ve always been aware of the issues that plague these adaptations; to be fair, I see a lot of those points. On a production level, there’s more focus to presenting easter eggs rather than actual storytelling. It’s more important that character X is shown, rather than presenting them with depth.
Though they admittedly aren’t the most dimensional, Paul W.S. Anderson‘s Mortal Kombat provides enough detail to latch onto the iconic characters from the games, or at least portray them in a bad ass light. The audience is given a convincing motivation for Liu Kang to join the Mortal Kombat tournament, providing a personal element to an overall off-the-wall action movie. Sonya is also given a purposeful drive that leads her to the tournament, though her revenge storyline is wrapped up relatively quick. Johnny Cage is the comedic relief which makes for some great comedic beats. And of course, Sub-Zero and Scorpion are epic as all hell.
The Mortal Kombat movie elicits a great adrenaline rush equal to its video game counterpart. From its characters to the fight scenes themselves, the movie is a brilliant blend of ‘90s action cheese. Some may take cheese as a negative thing – as if a work is too goofy – but there is such a thing as purposeful, well-done cheese. Mortal Kombat 1995 is a type of action movie we just don’t get much of anymore; a form of ‘90s action cinema with nonstop ridiculous fun. Anderson’s movie contains a plethora of eccentric battles where people are throwing punches and drop kicking one another. The fighting choreography isn’t the strongest – compared to when I was 10, I notice now, for example, how many times the camera will cut away before a punch lands. But thanks to the kinetic speed in which the actors are moving, the high-octane music, and ironically, the movement of the camera, each fight is given ample feeling and aggression.
The best examples of this, in my opinion, are the Johnny Cage vs. Scorpion fight, as well as Liu Kang vs. Reptile. Both fights display brutality and technique in each character’s martial arts move set. Reptile and Scorpion push Liu Kang and Johnny in their battles respectively, acting as a challenging force to overcome. Each fight not only makes for a spectacle to witness, but also an intriguing representation of beloved video game characters coming to life to throw down.
The film not only delivers on action-packed fun, but it also has its fair share of nods directed towards the source material. Goro is a beast to deal with in the game, and you know what, he’s a beast in the movie as well. On an interesting note, Shang Tsung feels more like a threat in the movie than he did in the initial Mortal Kombat (given that his appearance in the first game is brief). We get the likes of Kitana and Raiden, each who contribute to the film; though they may not have much going for them as characters, they at least bring an additional element of fun to the plot. The movie includes multiple characters from the game, and rarely does anyone feel shoehorned in. For the most part, everyone has some sort of genuine role within the story (whether small or large).
While directors and writers should care to craft a story of quality, it’s also important to capture the spirit of a game being adapted. It is important to understand the experience of the game. Mortal Kombat is an intense, dopamine-fueling action experience, and director Paul W.S. Anderson got that and properly translated it to the screen. He may not have created a stellar high-class action film in the process, but he did make a movie that understood what the game was about and what it offered to its players. And for that, I applaud the guy.
Mortal Kombat 1995 is so much friggin’ fun. It is equal parts goofy and awesome. The characters are a blast, never meant to take too seriously, but enough to enjoy and want to follow. The film hits the right notes when it comes to fan service, providing several iconic characters and letting them beat each other up in classic MK fashion. If you are like me and adore Mortal Kombat, if you’re excited for the new movies, I heavily encourage you to check out Anderson’s take on the material. Even if you’ve seen it already, give it another whirl – you may find it’s a wonderful little blast from the past.
The original movie from 1995 was of course followed up by a sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, but maybe I’ll save my thoughts on that one for another time.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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