Customer Reviews

Mortal Kombat / Mortal Kombat Annihilation

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This review is for the 1st MK movie read part 1 1st. So Raiden tells Liu Kang, Sonya, & Cage the tornament ain't about revenge a vendetta or ego it's for the the fate of the World. My favorite fight scenes Liu Kang vs Reptile Cage vs Goro & Cage vs Scorpion Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, & Bridgett Wilson all meshed well together the casting of Lambert as Raiden was great Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa he may have not looked like MK1 Shang Tsung but he was excellent. Good soundtrack great fight scenes it was rather a good film adaptation of a game. It really shows that if Paul WS Anderson doesn't write the script he can produce decent movies.

If you love kung fu or action flicks pick up Mortal Kombat. This movie rocks! I was a little disappointed that the film was in PG-13 and not rate R, mainly because the MK franchise was all about the insense blood and gore. But, When I fist saw this movie in theaters it blew me away, the acting was good but the kung fu fightin' was better. The charaters in the film are all cool, I like Raiden (or is it Rayden?) the best along with Scorpion. The second film New Line produced wasnt as great as the original but still had its moments. If you haven't seen the oringial Kombat, give it a play. Hey everyone likes kung ku fightin..

Mortal Kombat Annihilation is a fun ride. Many critics out there say this movie blows, which isn't true. People who haven't played any of the games are confused at the story line and sorts. Sure the voice actin' could use a little work but who cares, the action is where its all about in kung fu flicks. I enjoyed both the 1st and 2nd film, there are tons of charaters from the games included in this movie, should please alot of the many gamers out there looking for there favorite charater appreances. Rumors, Rumors of a third instalment of the film! Will there be a round three??

Toasty....

Although I haven't bought this package, I've seen both films.

The first film was really great, it earned 5/5 stars right off the back.
The fight scenes were intense, with some great, upbeat music playing. In addition to the intensity, there was a lot of first-person views. There There was a cliffhanger ending, though.

The second film was OK, but not as good as the first one. It continues the first one, but they used totally different actors to play Raiden, Sonya, Jax, and Johnny Cage. I would give it a 4/5 stars because of the short fight scenes and over-use of slow motion. I would have given it a 3/5, but it earned a star for the awesome music. It was pretty good film, for those who appreciate the hard work of others.

This is a movie that I have enjoyed for a long time. Could not find it in the stores. Plus I always love a good karate fight.

I openly admit it: I have never played "Mortal Kombat" video games, so I had no preconceptions about what these movies would be like.

And the results are... mixed. "Mortal Kombat" is a cheesy, weird, predictable movie that is nevertheless strangely fun and entertaining... until "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" comes on, and stupefies you with its wretched acting, lack of plot and eye-melting special effects. In short: enjoy the first, ignore the second.

Brief backstory: Mortal Kombat (with a K!) is a once-a-generation tournament in which fighters battle for the sake of their respective worlds. If the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and his evil minions win this one, he gets the Earth.

And he's successfully manipulated three humans into going: Liu Kang (Robin Shou) who wants to avenge his brother, actor Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) who wants to revive his career, and agent Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) who wants to avenge her dead partner. They're guided by the mysterious thunder god Raiden (Christopher Lambert), who... doesn't fight.

But even before the three fighters arrive at the island where the tournament will take place, they're confronted by danger -- Shang Tsung has brought his deadliest three fighters to destroy all three of them, and they don't care much about rules.

And in "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation," the gang are immediately confronted by Shao Khan (Brian Thompson), who plans to merge Earth with the Outworld despite Liu Kang's triumph in Mortal Kombat. So the surviving fighters... go out to do... something. I'm not entirely clear on what their plan is, but they set out to find allies to help defeat Shao Khan.

I actually enjoyed the first "Mortal Kombat" movie a lot -- it was cheesy, predictable and wooden, but it was still strangely entertaining in an action-anime way. Lots of butt-kicking between our heroes and cobweb-draped stone castles filled with fire and crazy powers. It's goofy fun, no more or less.

And then... it all goes down the toilet in "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation." There is literally no plot in this ridiculous movie, just characters wandering around fighting random characters and... not accomplishing much. Also, the dialogue is simply atrocious ("Mother, you're alive!" "Too bad YOU... will DIE!") and the story is riddled with plot holes (how did Scorpion come back to life?). And some fights that make no sense -- at one point Sonya fights a Kitana double who is NEVER IDENTIFIED.

It's also a bit distracting that almost the entire cast changes between movies. Talisa Soto and Robin Shou do decent jobs in both movies, Ashby's one-liners are annoying, Lambert is underused, Remar is decent, and Hess's Sonya Blade is just annoying. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is kinda fun as a gravelly-voiced soul-sucking sorcerer, but Brian Thompson is epically hammy.

"Mortal Kombat I/Mortal Kombat II" is popcorn fun in the first movie, only to collapse into a black hole of cinematic awfulness in the second. Enjoy the first round of buttkicking, but leave "Annihilation" to annihilate itself.

I cannot begin to tell everyone how great of a franchise Mortal Kombat is!! While the second movie was a disappointment, the first one is AMAZING and this DVD set it's a great collection for any Mortal Kombat or martial arts movie fans!! The fights and action are amazing!! Mortal Kombat is certainly delivering when it comes to great fight scenes pack with WICKED stunts!!

Few people realize just how great the story of Mortal Kombat really is! The movie follows the video game story (somewhat, it actually kind of kombines Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 in the first movie), which obviously adds to these awesome movies!! Don't miss out on owning the DVD collection. Even if you're not a Mortal Kombat fan, it's a great addition for any lovers of martial arts movies or science fiction/fantasy movies!!

Mortal Kombat 3: KOMING SOON (I hope!!!)

I wish they weren't listed together on Amazon except for the region 2 DVD, but I guess I have to rate them together. The point being that MK was easily 5 stars. MK Annihilation, well, that was so bad, I'm not even going to average 1 and 5 and give it a 3. I'll give it a 2.

Mortal Kombat, the FIRST one, most notably starring Christopher Lambert as Rayden, was great. Watch it and party like it's 1995. It was a good story, it had good special effects, good, well acted characters, decent humor, it wasn't too gory for the little ones, and yes, a few little inside gags for the people who had played the games. Johnny Cage's 'friendship' move from the game MK2 when he defeats Scorpion, for instance, and it was totally great the way they fit in Liu Kang's bicycle kick in the fight with Reptile. Crafty. The people who haven't played the game will laugh at how inane it is without realizing it was actually taken right from the game, and the people who have played the game will snicker to themselves because they get the inside joke. And the ending is really very good. Few movies have decent endings. That was Mortal Kombat, the first movie. My rating: 5 stars out of 5.

Now, as for Mortal Kombat Annihilation, I will tell you, coming from a fan of the GAMES (so my bias would be toward being more LIBERAL in my review), that if you watch this movie, chances are you will feel the urge to go out and perform a few 'fatalities'. This movie is the pinnicle of sequels that do not live up to the originals. While Mortal Kombat is one of the greatest in my opinion, this stinker is tied for dead last among everything I've ever seen along with a few others (examples of which include but are not limited to Scary Movie and Toxic Avenger 4). It comes about from one thing more than everything else. They tried to amalgamate every tiniest element in the games MK2 and MK3 into the movie somehow. What's wrong with that? Well, as the creators of the games got more money to develop them and program sizes got larger akin with computers as they expanded by Moore's Law, more characters were put into the game, for instance. Other things were added as well, but I'll get to that. In MK1 there were 7 playable characters, plus 2 'boss' characters and one secret one. In MK2 there were many more. In MK3 there were more still, and ultimate MK3, well, that was practically just an excuse for them to throw in every crazy character that they could think of. As the games expanded, they also had a wider variety of 'finishing moves' as well as moves in general; not just the 'fatalities' of the first game, but some stuff that got, well, downright silly, but that the creators of the game just threw in for variety. Like the 'animalities' and especially 'babalities'. And all this was for one particular goal. To provide a greater variety of possible gameplay for the GAMES. Nobody REALLY knew what the heck the story that went with it was, and nobody really cared. Sure, the creators TRIED to fit some sort of weak story in to connect all the crazy characters, but it was just too many darned characters, and people didn't play the game for the story that didn't make any sense, so it didn't matter anyway. They played because it was a neat game of strategy and you get to kill your oppnent when you win, but only if you know and properly perform the finishing moves, which made performing them properly a sort of victory dance. A chance to show off and say 'ah ha ha ha ha haaaa!' And what little story there is in the game originated from nothing more than the different endings that would come up when you won the game with different characters, a side effect of this being that the different resultant versions of the stories weren't even consistent with each other, since if one character defeats Shang Tsung or Shao Khan, then another must not have, and in the next game, if the writers wanted to continue the 'story', they had to pick one (Liu Kang), but all that other conflicting junk they've already established is still there. The fact was, when it came down to it, there WAS no intelligible story. The trouble is, this blasted movie tried to incorporate every stupid character that was part of the games, and even more obnoxiously, for each one to perform many if not all of the moves they had in the games. Which made for a REALLY boring movie since there were a lot of characters with a LOT of moves to get through, which took a LONG time when you added it all up, and didn't help at all to cover the fact that it STILL had NO INTELLIGIBLE STORY!!! The result was a totally stupid non-stop special effects clip that nobody in his right mind would care about because it still didn't make any sense and was obnoxious on its own accord anyway, and was in fact so bad, even Christopher Lambert wasn't willing to star in it as the thunder god Rayden, as he was in the first movie! And man oh man, I have to say, he made a good choice to avoid this monstrosity. He's got a reputation bigger than Bruce Campbell's as a king of B movies, so you know how bad it is if he wouldn't TOUCH this one. It seems rather appropriate to me. Hat's off to him for making the right choice on that count. So watch the first one. Mortal Kombat incorporated some junk from the game but in a good way, a funny way, a not-too-heavy-handed way, and they generated an actual story that wasn't part of the game, and a good one. And just for kicks, take a look at "Beowulf", starring Christopher Lambert. They totally ripped off the opening credit animation of the Mortal Kombat movie. Maybe just an inside gag for the presence of Lambert. I don't know. But skip this one. Because if you watch it, you will wish you hadn't. Simple as that. Mortal Kombat Annihilation, I'll say, gets negative 1 star. Negative 1 averaged with 5 is 2. Thus, I give the combined set a 2.