Watched Mortal Kombat (2021: Simon McQuid): so happy to be back again at the theater. A bit busier this time than Godzilla vs. Kong, but since I bought several seats near me I was good -- well relatively speaking. I did enjoy the trailers.

In many ways this was similar to Godzilla vs. Kong. The CGI dominated; this is possibly going to be part of a franchise like GvK. The film is not particularly good. The human elements were lacking and was a bit of a disappointment, even if I'm giddy just for being there.

The annoyance is that the film starts off interesting. It starts off with Hiroyuki Sanada (The Twilight Samurai) which is a good thing. I like the whole starting off segment and the creation of at least one curse. It starts off with a chambara style bloodletting (mix CGI)

unfortunately, would have preferred blood spurts ala every chambara film after Sanjuro's ending. But I was intrigued. Then the story began. It was certainly lacking and I supposed I could have forgiven the lack of a tournament if the story had been better.

Cole Young was created for this film, which means he will be in the video game series at a later date. He is in the "chosen one" role. Along with Sonya, somewhat Kano (uh can we say we easily know what he will do), a broken Jax (we also know what will happen to him), Liu Kang

and Kung Lau (with a little help from your God friend Raiden) they will help protect Earthrealm from Outworld. So you know what is going to happen, even if they AVOID THE TOURNAMENT dang it).

The fatalities are fine enough. I know it could have been more, but probably needed to keep them somewhat subdued to keep it an R rating. The plot was just bad. The acting was bad-to-so-so. So much I was starting to root for Kano.

Sometimes cheesy (expected) with lines thrown in from the video game, obvious fatalities, character plots from the previous games, nods to the first Mortal Kombat film (we will ignore Annihilation) and unfortunately overall weak fighting scenes.

The fighting scenes would make this or break this with many fans. You can tell a vast improvement in the action when everyone is masked so the stunt people can do the fighting. Kind of a strange decision to have Simon McQuoid direct this.

Already heard several mention that Gareth Evans (which I agree) would have been a better pick.

Personally I would have wanted better fighting, a tournament, more training and well a better plot.

Kano is an evil ass, but at least he was an interesting one. A bit too obvious, would have loved a twist that would have surprised (instead of the one we got) and well never kill off the comedy relief.

Death by lawn gnome.

@titMcGrit2 Just in case you have not read this thread on Mortal Kombat.