New Line Cinema and Atomic Bomb Productions dropped the first trailer for the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie and It. Is. EPIC. Even a casual gamer, or a lover of the classic fighting games like many of us, have a lot to look forward to in this reboot of a game adaptation. Of course we have been deceived before with dazzling trailers and brilliant CGI, but the tension that was brought about when Scorpion and Sub-Zero faced each other in the trailer as well as the introduction of other Mortal Kombat characters such as Raiden, Sonya Blade, Cole Young, Jax, Kano and Kung Lao, is slowly clearing our doubts about this movie bombing (at least not badly).
Tekken, Street Fighter and The King of Fighters are three big gaming franchises who have all tried their hands at a movie adaptation and failed very badly at the box office, alongside Mortal Kombat. Most of these movies were either badly written, had a low budget and/ or had a lot of wrong casting choices. So far, the 2021 trailer of the upcoming fighting game adaptation doesn’t seem to have any of these issues, which is a very good sign.
The trailer shows that the movie will be sticking to a tournament format, so it will be interesting to see how each character will be motivated to take part in the death tournament. So far, the cast looks brilliant, the visuals are stunning and the music is keeping us invested, but the final fight sequence at the end of the Mortal Kombat trailer is beyond words. It has to be seen and not read, so check out the trailer for the upcoming fighting game movie adaptation at the end of this article.
The body count is also staggering, but that’s what we expect to see from this gore-fest of a game’s adaptation. We also hear the classic “FINISH HIM” towards the end of the trailer, at which point a few of the characters perform ‘FATALITIES’ to finish their opponents. To the people who do not know what Mortal Kombat is, it is a fighting game just like Tekken and the King of Fighters, but it was not allowed for children under the age of 16. This is because Mortal Kombat is known for its very “graphic” fighting sequences, where, in some cases, they show splattering of blood and bones breaking. At the end of a fight, a player is given an option to perform a ‘FATALITY’ – a finishing move, which is as graphic as it gets (which involves the previously mentioned blood splattering and breaking of bones, but some of them also involve eye gouging, flesh tearing, skin burning, etc.), and each finishing move is a move designed to cause at (the very) least a wince among first time viewers.
Mortal Kombat is coming to theaters around the world on April 16th 2021, as well as on the OTT Platform, HBOMax.