Mortal Kombat 2

Hitting arcades like a flying kick, Mortal Kombat forever changed the way that fighting games were made and perceived. Its excessive gore and, at the time, realistic graphics set a standard that the industry continues to chase to this day. Since that fateful autumn in 1992, including enhanced versions and spin-offs, nearly 30 games and four feature films have been released under the Mortal Kombat brand, and many have been good. This is not one of them.

Sold as an aging phony fighting his way to honor and redemption story, Mortal Kombat II chokes itself on a steady diet of fan service and horrifically bad writing, leaving little time to explore any of the numerous themes that it shoots like buckshot onto the screen.

Karl Urban nails the middle-aged, narcissistic Johnny Cage, whose fond memories are behind him as he stares into a double barrel of isolation and obscurity. The Boys actor offers the right mix of humor and serious introspection; unfortunately, his Johnny Cage quickly takes a back seat only moments after his introduction, and his arc is sped through with all the grace of a palsied octogenarian with a double case of gout.

Instead of what promised to be a fun romp through admittedly familiar territory, MKII's writers and director bounce the audience from clunky character introductions to the main lobby to obligatory tournament fights, and back to the main lobby at whiplash speed, as Raiden's mush-mouth actor growls heavy-handed exposition written in fingerpaint. Then it's off to a perfunctory and criminally underdeveloped bit of fan service in the guise of narrative progression before the cycle begins anew.

Were any of these sequences handled with even a modicum of finesse, perhaps the film would still be worth the price of admission, but Mortal Kombat is one of the worst-edited movies since Captain America: Brave New World. It whiplashes from subplot to subplot and tone to tone, constantly attempting to find a narrative foothold, but director Simon McQuoid, whose filmography consists of this and its progenitor, lacks the skill, talent, and experience to hold on to any of them long enough to give the audience a chance to care. Rather, he attempts to make up for organic storytelling with endless exposition dumps that quickly relay everything from what has happened to what is about to happen to what characters are feeling to why they feel what they do before moving into some incredibly uninspired fantasy fights. Even the gruesome deaths are shockingly mundane and lifeless, most especially for a franchise built on genre-defining brutality.

Bundle up the inept filmmaking in a soggy wrap of direct-to-video performances, cringeworthy dialogue, and special effects that come closer to evoking 1995's Reptile than something made in 2026, and you've got a movie with very little going for it. Even Urban, who provides some of the only mildly enjoyable moments, is weighed down by the rest of the film's ineptitude. However, what's most frustrating is that the story that should have been told was all right there. For a few moments at the end of the third act, Kano and Cage come together, and the two Australian actors show hints of comedic magic and chemistry that could have carried a trilogy.

In the end, Mortal Kombat II feels less like a movie and more like someone frantically skipping through cutscenes on their way to the next fight. What should have been a gritty, character-driven martial arts fantasy epic instead collapses into a chaotic barrage of desperate nostalgia bait, exposition, and weightless spectacle. For a franchise built on impact, Mortal Kombat II might just be the franchise's fatality.