I Have Mixed Feelings about the “Mortal Kombat II 🐉” (2025) Trailer 🫤 + Some Words on the New “Tron: Ares” Trailer
Alright, two trailers to two movies I’m interested in checking out (both of them October releases) just came out recently, and I want to write about them both in one single post. Mostly because I have a lot less to say about one than the other. You’ll see which one in a moment. I’m going to do this splitting them into two different sections, which will be indicated by this symbol —. This will provide a model for when I eventually review multiple movies in the same post. So, let’s get started.
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Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2025)
You remember how a couple of months ago, I mentioned that the second live action Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie following the 2021 reboot was coming out this year, and I didn’t even know was even coming out this year until I looked into it for the update to that post I wrote about the first trailer to Lilo & Stitch (2025)? And remember how I said that there had been no advertising for it up that point, and that the only poster they had on the Wikipedia page for the movie was the one for that fake movie within a movie starring Johnny Cage called Uncaged Fury? Well, now they have more proper advertising for the movie. They have a trailer, and they have actual posters for the movie besides the fake one for that fake movie that doesn’t even exist. Though, unfortunately, before they released the real trailer to the movie proper, they released a fake trailer for Uncaged Fury, which frustrated me like, “Is this only trailer they’re putting out?” 🙄, but no, they actually did put out the real trailer for the movie instead of just this fake trailer for this fake movie that doesn’t even exist.
I mean, I get it, I get what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to do some viral marketing bullshit where they show us things from the Mortal Kombat 🐉 universe, or at least, these movies’ version of it, to try get us immersed in it, and to flesh it out and make it seem a real living breathing world. But, when that’s the only thing we get in years, and it’s the first thing we see before we actually see the real poster and real trailer to the real movie that we’ll actually pay to see 💵 (most of us anyway, critics will get to see it for free since it’s their job to review movies, and they get to see movies at screenings, pre-release or post-release, where they don’t actually have to pay for admission and can go in with a pass of some kind, and probably the only thing they have to pay for is concessions, popcorn 🍿 and drinks 🥤, if even that), it gets frustrating 😤.
I was fully convinced that the movie that was in development hell and that may never come out, that may in fact, get canceled. And maybe part of me was hoping that it was. But, I was wrong, the movie isn’t development hell, and it is coming out, this year, in a few months, and we have this trailer and the new posters as proof. To be fair, I wasn’t really keeping up this movie’s production, because I really don’t follow a movie’s development as close as I used to beyond just the initial announcement, and I usually just wait until there’s an official trailer and an official poster.
So, I missed a lot of the updates, and I didn’t know about any of the other casting besides Karl Urban as Johnny Cage, which was contentious at the time that it was announced. Not everyone was on board with Karl Urban being cast as Johnny Cage, and a few still aren’t even after this trailer was released and we got to see a little bit of him in the role. The movie looks promising based on what we see in this trailer, and it does look better than the first one. And when I say, “the first one,” but I’m really referring to the 2021 movie, which is technically the third live action Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie, but it is the first movie in this new reboot series, this new continuity, so just be aware that when I say “the first movie” or “the first one,” I’m referring to the 2021 movie and not the 1995 movie.
If I do at any point refer to the 95 movie, I’ll probably refer to it either as “the 1995 movie,” “95 movie,” “the original 1995 movie,” or “the original Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie from 1995,” or the original Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie,” or even just “the original movie.” BTW, 2025 is the 30th anniversary of the original Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie from 1995, so the sequel to the 2021 reboot is releasing 30 years after the original that started it all. The one that brought Mortal Kombat 🐉 to the silver screen for the first time ever. That had to have been intentional, they made sure that this movie would be done and ready to release on the 30th anniversary of the 1995 movie, which many people still consider to be the best Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie ever made, and one of the best video game movies ever made. Even now, with this trailer, I saw comments saying that the 1995 movie is the best and will always be the best, even if this movie ends up being as good as this trailer makes it look.
Of course, this is still a trailer, and we can’t take them as gospel or assume that they’re the most accurate representation of the movie at hand. I just said this in a reply to a comment that replied to my comment on the Red Sonja (2025) trailer that came out recently. Everyone was hating on it, and saying that it was bad, and I left a comment telling everyone to chill out and not to pass judge on the movie based on one single trailer, since the trailer could easily be inaccurate and the movie may actually be better than what the trailer made it seem. I didn’t even think the movie even looked that bad based on what I saw in that trailer. I just felt that people were hating on it just because it didn’t fit their preconceived notions about what Red Sonja movie should be and what it ought to be, and also because people are just looking for something to hate, and a female lead action movie based on a beloved comic book character, who already had a movie in the 80s, which people hated and said was bad, but now that this movie’s coming out, they’re pretending to like the 1985 movie and pretending that they always liked it. As if it’s just some knee jerk reaction to hating this new one (that hasn’t even come out yet mind you), and needing something better (in their minds) to compare it to. And this person replied to my comment, disagreeing with me and naïvely saying that trailers are always accurate to a movie and that it’s a trailer’s job to sell a movie.
And I had to explain to this person that trailers can be bad, and they sometimes don’t accurately represent movies and don’t do a good job at selling them. I didn’t name this specific example, in fact I didn’t name any example, but people seemingly loves Transformers One from last year, and insists that it’s a good movie (not just that it’s a good movie, but that it’s the best Transformers movie ever made, or at least Transformers movie since the original animated Transformers movie from 1986, Transformers: The Movie), and yet that movie had some poor marketing, and it had some pretty bad trailers. They were enough to make me not want to see the movie. And do I even need to mention the amount of bad movie that had good trailers. Everyone has a different one in mind.
But, to bring it back to Mortal Kombat 🐉 specifically, Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) had some pretty good trailers, and all of the people liking this trailer and saying that this movie looks good (like a certain toast themed reviewing channel 🍞 🤨) were saying that movie looked good too based solely on those trailers. And yet, when the movie actually came out, it ended up being underwhelming and pretty mediocre and hardly anyone liked. Even I, someone initially liked the movie for the most part when it came out, has slowly turned out it over time. Although, I haven’t actually written a review for Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021). I thought I did, I could’ve sworn that I had written one on DeviantART, but it seems that I didn’t, and I’ll have to write a completely brand new review for that movie on this blog. It’ll give me the chance to revisit that movie after 4 years, and see if my more negative opinions on it are due to my own thoughts and feelings or if my opinions were simply influenced by seeing and hearing outside opinions, which way more negative than what I thought of it at the time.
Like I said, I did like it at first after I saw it, but over time, my opinion on it became more negative, largely fueled by the fanbase’s overwhelming disapproval of the character, Cole Young, who was the main protagonist of that film. It started with Cole Young and then expanded out to other things to other things that people didn’t like about the movie, except the CGI. The CGI is the one thing that I still disagree with the majority opinion on, I think the CGI looks great, while everyone else thought it was bad, especially on Goro. People hated CGI Goro, but I thought he looked good. I actually think he looks better than the animatronic puppet Goro from the 95 movie. People are kidding themselves (or are just that blinded by nostalgia) if they think that animatronic still looks good, if it ever looked good, in the first place, and that Goro is just a character that works better in CGI than as a guy with an animatronic head and torso sitting on the top half of his body. I will get to Cole Young in a movie, when I actually start talking about the trailer proper.
All these people saying that movie, Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2025) looks good, or have already decided that it’s going to be good and are hyped for it based on this one trailer need to chill out and shouldn’t get their hopes up. Even it does look marginally better than the first one, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be good or that it’ll be everything you’re hoping for and everything that you want. It’s made by largely the same people as the first one. It has the same director, it has the same producers, it has same actors (the ones whose characters survived or are brought back to life), the only thing that’s different is the writer. The first movie had two writers, three if you count the story credit, Greg Russo, Dave Callaham, and Oren Uziel. While this movie was written by one person, Jeremy Slater, who wrote such movies as The Lazarus Effect, the 2015 Fantastic Four movie that everyone just calls Fant4stic (or FANT4STIC if you want to write in all caps), Pet (2016), and the 2017 Death Note movie on Netflix. He did write Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and I like that movie, and I have heard good things about Coyote vs. Acme, even if that movie hasn’t even come out yet, so at least couple of the movie he’s written are good, while the others…not so much 😬. To be fair, I haven’t even heard of most of them, let alone seen them. Not exactly a promising section of talent we got here behind the camera 😬.
I said this before, and I’ll say this again, why the hell doesn’t James Wan just direct a Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie himself? Why hire some no name director? Is James Wan just that against directing blockbusters? We’ve seen with Aquaman (2018) that he’s more than capable of directing a blockbuster if he wants to. And unlike Aquaman, the original source material for Mortal Kombat does have some horror elements, the best games in the franchise have a dark atmosphere, that it seems like it’d be right up his alley, like he’d be well suited for that. I mean, this movie’s being released in October, which is the Halloween season 🎃, and usually when horror movies are released for god’s sake. But no, instead he’d rather focus on stuff like The Conjuring: Last Rites, SOULM8TE, The Mummy (2026), Other Mommy (very similar titles, if this were Britain 🇬🇧, it would be the same title, Other Mummy, because they say “mummy” or “mum” instead of “mom” or “mommy” in the UK 🇬🇧, so it’d almost sound like he’s made two separate movies about mummies, or about moms or mums if you were in Britain 🇬🇧), and *disdainful sigh* The Backrooms 😒, and none of which he’s directed. He’s just produced them.
It seems he’d rather be a producer (and writer, in the case of The Conjuring: Last Rites and SOULM8TE) than a director these days. The last movie he “directed” was Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and even then that’s kind of dubious because that movie went through so many changes, rewrites and reshoots that it barely even resembles his original vision (whatever that was), and it was probably taken out of his hands at some point and ghost directed by someone else. Sort of like what happened with David Ayer on Suicide Squad (2016) and Zack Snyder on Justice League (2017), which many people refer to as Josstice League because it was directed by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder left. They just kept his name on the credits, so that he’d take the fall for all of them. So, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom can hardly be called his movie and it was really only partially directed by him.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be hyped for this movie or that they should be hating on this trailer, if you’re hyped, you’re hyped. All I’m saying is that they need to be temper their expectations, keep them in check, if they have any at all, so that they aren’t completely disappointed when they see this movie and it ends up not being very good. Which, I’m not even predicting that. I’m not necessarily saying that this movie will be bad, all I’m saying is that that there’s no guarantee that it will be good or that it’ll be as good as people are hoping it will be and are predicting that it will be, especially since a lot of the same people who worked on the first movie worked on this one as well. That being said, I do like this trailer, I do like most of what I saw in this trailer, but there are a couple of things that I didn’t like about it. But, before I get into the things that I didn’t like about the trailer (and possibly the movie as a whole), I’ll talk about the things I did like.
I liked Karl Urban’s performance as Johnny Cage, or at least, what we see of it in this trailer. They managed to make him seem like an actor, seem like a movie star who doesn’t really take anything seriously at first, or doubts that what he’s seeing is real until he sees more of it and sees how dire of a situation it is, and how imperative it is that they win this tournament, then he starts taking it seriously. He’s also funny, he does make movie references, but doesn’t go too far with it to where it undercuts the drama, or makes him look like a jackass. People were right on the money 💵 when they said that this version of Johnny Cage would be a washed up actor, a movie star past his prime, and this movie would largely be about him trying to regain his mojo as he fights in this tournament in this whole other world, because of Karl Urban’s age. Had they cast someone a lot younger than him in the role, that probably would’ve gone in a different direction, but because they did cast Karl Urban and he is a bit older now, this is the angle they went with Johnny Cage’s character. See? You can make a version of Johnny Cage that isn’t annoying.
That was my biggest complaint about Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match 🐉🥊 and why I didn’t like it. Johnny Cage got on my nerves in that movie, I thought he was such a pest. I wanted him to die so badly in that movie. He totally ruined my enjoyment of that, and most of everything else was fine, it was just dragging the whole thing down. But, the whole 80s thing did also bother me too. Why is a Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie set in the 80s? It’s a 90s franchise, not an 80s one? Why did they feel the need to shove that movie into the 80s and make it an 80s nostalgia fest? Just like Cody from PointlessHub said, I’m sick of the 80s 😤! Do a different decade already 😤! I wrote a review of that movie if you’re interested in reading it, as well as a review of the previous Mortal Kombat Legends 🐉 movie, Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind 🐉❄️.
This was also the problem I had with Johnny Cage’s depiction in Mortal Kombat 9 🐉 (released under the title, Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2011), but referred to by fans as Mortal Kombat 9 🐉) and some of his other more recent depictions, they always make him a pest, and not someone who you’d want to root for. They make him so annoying times, you’ll be rooting for the villains and actually emphasizing them because they find him just as annoying as you do. I liked him in Mortal Kombat X 🐉, but that was because they didn’t make him annoying, and actually had him mature since they literally show him as an older man ♂︎ in that, since he ends up marrying Sonya Blade and having a daughter with her, Cassandra “Cassie” Cage. So, it’s nice to have a good version of Johnny Cage that isn’t annoying and who you’d actually want to root for. That just goes to show Karl Urban’s talent as an actor. They made a right choice picking him to play Johnny Cage, and the writing on him at least isn’t half bad.
But, since I did bring up Cassie Cage, that reminds me, will Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade become a couple in this movie, or will they remain platonic for the entirety of the movie? In most Mortal Kombat 🐉 continuities, Sonya does end up with Johnny, but will they do that here? I really don’t know. It could go either way. But, it would be the “Hollywood” thing to do to have the male lead ♂︎ in the movie end up with the female lead ♀︎, who seems to be Sonya. If they had Johnny end up with Kitana, that’d be pretty crazy, especially since historically, Kitana has always been Liu Kang’s girl ♀︎, his love interest ❤️, not Johnny’s. Sure, Johnny always found her hot 😍, but they weren’t endgame. Him and Sonya usually were. The only time that Johnny ended up with Kitana was in Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 (which is actually Mortal Kombat 12 🐉 despite the ridiculous title 🙄), but I’m not sure because I’ve never played Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 (I had no interest because I didn’t like the storyline, I didn’t like any of the time travel or alternate timeline stuff, multiverse stuff, that stuff’s gotten old at this point), but if he does, it’s only because Liu Kang is a god now.
He’s taken Raiden’s place as the Protector of Earthrealm 🌎, like when he crafted his ideal timeline after the events of Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, he literally swapped places with Raiden, and made him the chosen one and the presumptive champion of Mortal Kombat 🐉 (like he’s being groomed to become the champion of Mortal Kombat 🐉), and made himself the Protector of Earthrealm 🌎, and I guess the God of Fire 🔥 since Liu Kang always had fire powers 🔥. Still kind of upset that his Animality in Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 was a phoenix 🐦🔥 and not a dragon 🐉 like it usually is. Liu Kang is the dragon 🐉 in this universe, his Animality should be a dragon 🐉, just like how Scorpion 🦂’s Animality should always be a scorpion 🦂.
So, Liu Kang’s off the table, he’s out of the date, and is now 100% celibate as all protector gods in the Mortal Kombat 🐉 universe are (they don’t have sex), and Sonya is no where to be seen (she’s not even mentioned I don’t think), so Kitana is available to get with Johnny in that specific timeline that Liu Kang created. So, if Liu Kang is upset that he can’t get with Kitana, and Johnny ends up with her, it’s really his own fault, he created this timeline, he decided how everyone ended up, and just straight up changed people’s entire backstories, personalities, and even their genders since he turned Bo’Rai Cho, Sektor, and Cyrax into women ♀︎. Bo’Rai Cho became Madam Bo, and Sektor and Cyrax are became women ♀︎ wearing robotic suits of armor (like Iron Man, or Ironheart I guess, since Ironheart is the female version ♀︎ of Iron Man). They aren’t cyborgs in this timeline, though their names didn’t change. Total missed opportunity too, they could’ve called this new female Sektor ♀︎, Sektora. Cyrax’s name could stay the same, because I don’t know how you make that name female ♀︎, except maybe Cyraxi or Cyraxa, or Cyraxis; sort of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of Healing, Fertility, and Protection (as in, Protector of the Dead), among other things. Besides, she’s going to outlive him anyway, since she’s immortal and he’s not, so Liu Kang could still have a chance, but only if he relinquishes his role as Protector of Earthrealm 🌎 and becomes human again. BTW, I am glad that Sonya is in this movie, and that she’s played by the same actress, Jessica McNamee. Sonya was one of the things I actually liked about Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021), so it’s nice to have her back here.
I haven’t seen the 1995 movie, so I don’t have much of an opinion on Linden Ashby’s performance as Johnny Cage, although from what I‘ve seen of him, he seems like he’s pretty good and isn’t the annoying Johnny Cage, but the actually cool Johnny Cage who can be funny but knows when it to take things seriously. Did you know that we almost got Jean-Claude Van Damme and Brandon Lee in the role as Johnny Cage before Linden Ashby was picked? Both of were unable to do it. Van Damme turned it down so that he could star in Street Fighter (1994) as Guile, and Brandon Lee almost got the role, he was cast, but he died while filming The Crow 🐦⬛ (1994), so they had to replace him and they chose Linden Ashby.
And it seems like they made the right choice because most Mortal Kombat 🐉 love Linden Ashby and his performance as Johnny Cage, and some even consider it the golden standard of live action Johnny Cage performances. Though, it’s certainly not to same degree as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung, they literally brought him back and made him the canonical Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, not just a DLC skin like they did Linden Ashby and everyone else in the Mortal Kombat 🐉 (1995) cast. Robin Shou didn’t even get to come back as DLC skin for Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, or perhaps he declined to offer his voice and likeness for the skin, and thus only Linden Ashby, Bridgette Wilson, and Christopher Lambert got DLC skins for that game.
BTW, if Jean-Claude Van Damme had agreed to play Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (1995) instead of Guile in Street Fighter (1994), then we would’ve had him and Christopher Lambert in the same movie together. I’m honestly surprised that Jean-Claude Van Damme and Christopher Lambert never did a movie together, you’d think it’d be an obvious choice. I guess they didn’t want two French guys 🇫🇷♂︎ with thick accents in the same movie. The clashing egos would’ve been too much to bear. Yes, I know Jean-Claude Van Damme is from Belgium 🇧🇪 and not France 🇫🇷, but Belgian people 🇧🇪 are still French, they speak the French language, they have similar accents, similar culture, the Belgians 🇧🇪 likely originated from France 🇫🇷. I don’t know Belgium 🇧🇪’s history (other than their colonial efforts in the Congo 🇨🇩), but I’m assuming that they originated from France 🇫🇷, hence why they speak the same language and have a similar accent and culture as the French 🇫🇷.
They honestly could’ve brought Linden Ashby back to play Johnny Cage in this movie, and it still would’ve worked. No fans would’ve batted an eye 👁️ or complained , in fact, they would’ve rejoiced at having him back, especially the older fan who grew up with the franchise in the 90s and have been following it since the 90s. Just like they do whenever Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is brought back to play Shang Tsung. They didn’t just bring him back in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, they also brought him back in that web series that almost became a movie, Mortal Kombat: Legacy 🐉. I would’ve killed to have Michael Jai White as Jax, I know he played him in the series, but I would’ve liked to have seen him in a movie. I wish that Mortal Kombat: Rebirth 🐉 did get made into a movie, and it had the same level of budget as these current live action Mortal Kombat 🐉 movies. But no, instead it became a web series, and was made on a much lower budget than what Kevin Tancharoen wanted when he pitched Mortal Kombat: Rebirth 🐉 to Warner Bros.. But, Karl Urban’s pretty good, and the actor who plays Jax both in this movie and in the previous movie, Mehcad Brooks is pretty good too.
What it seems like they’ve done with this movie is that they’ve taken all of the things that worked in the previous movie and then either removed or downplayed all the things that didn’t work. Cole Young is still in this movie, he’s played by the same actor (Lewis Tan), but he doesn’t have any lines, at least, in this trailer (I’m sure he’ll talk in the movie), and his role has been significantly reduced. They more than likely gave him limited screen time in this movie, and they might very well kill him off (he may not survive until the end), though we won’t know for sure until the movie comes out. So, he’s not the protagonist anymore, Johnny Cage is. Judging by this trailer, and again trailers are not always 100% accurate or reliable, some of them are false advertising, it seems like he’s being positioned as the main character as opposed to Cole Young in the last movie.
He’s getting the Shujinko and Taven treatment in this movie, although Shujinko has been getting more love lately and did appear in Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 as a kameo character (that awful Kameo system), but Taven has still gotten the shaft and hasn’t appeared in any of the recent games, except for in Takeda’s ending in Mortal Kombat X 🐉. Though I like Taven a lot more than Cole Young, unless he’s a Kreate-a-Fighter made character in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉 that is. As was demonstrated in a video by Brazilian TAS speedrunner 🇧🇷, Charada Brazil 🇧🇷 that they have since deleted. Either way, the fans are obviously happy that Cole Young isn’t the main focus in this movie that his role has been greatly reduced.
But, if they’re really doing this, if they’re really just doing all the things they should’ve done in the first one but chose not to do for some reason, it begs the question, why didn’t they just do that all before? Why didn’t they just start here with the tournament in Outworld, Johnny Cage as the main character, and Shao Kahn as the main villain? I thought that was what they were going to do in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) when it was first announced, that’s what I wanted (maybe not the Johnny Cage being the main character part, but definitely the Outworld tournament and Shao Kahn being the main bad guy part), but they didn’t do that. What was the whole point of doing that whole prequel storyline where it’s just a prelude to the tournament, and we’re just seeing the Earthrealm warriors 🌎 train and prepare to fight, learning how to use their powers, their arcana 🙄? It’s not like they were going to do the Earthrealm tournament 🌎 on Shang Tsung’s island, they obviously skipped that one just went to the one in Outworld, the one depicted in the actual Mortal Kombat II 🐉 game.
This isn’t even the first time that the live action movies have skipped events that happened in the games, since Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉 skipped the Outworld tournament in Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (1993), and just went straight to the invasion of Earthrealm 🌎 by Shao Kahn and his forces, which didn’t happen until Mortal Kombat 3 🐉. And to be fair, Mortal Kombat 🐉 (1995) was the one that set that up with that cliffhanger ending. The fact that they did this, the fact that they chose tell the story in this way, makes it harder to justify Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021)’s existence. It almost felt like an optional DLC expansion that they for some reason decided to make into the first movie. They better not bring up that stupid arcana bullshit from the previous movie, otherwise I’ll be pretty upset 😤.
Speaking of upset, I should probably talk about the things I didn’t about the trailer. It’s really just one thing, and other one is really proxy, and they both have to do with designs, but I do have one other complaint, a third complaint that doesn’t have to do with design or hairstyle (or like lack thereof) at all, but I’ll the design ones out of the way quickly. The first one is Baraka, I don’t like how he looks in this movie. In fact, that was my one comment I left on the trailer that I didn’t like Baraka’s design and I thought it looked awful. Everyone’s talking about Jade and how bad she looks in this movie, but I think Baraka looks worse, way worse, they did him dirty in this movie. Like, this blows the Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉 Baraka design out of the water 💦 in terms of awfulness, like the Baraka design from Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉 looks better than this. I’m kidding, I’m not trying to saying that for a bit, that’s honestly how I feel. It looks more like how he looks in the games, at least in Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (1993), this one barely even looks like the same character in the games.
The face looks awful, the teeth are goofy as hell, they don’t even look like teeth, they look more like spikes, and the blades are bony. They did the bone blades that were introduced in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, which I didn’t care for. I prefer those metal blades that Baraka and the other Tarkatans used to have before Mortal Kombat 11 🐉. It’s a preference, I recognize that, and I know that Baraka is just a fictional character at the end of the day, but it is a point of contention for me when it comes to this design. The lack of metal blades and the use of bony ones just makes this version of Baraka that much worse. The fact that they approved this design just tells you everything you need to know, it tells that they did not give a single shit about this movie, and didn’t care whether he looked good or looked cool or not, just as long as he was there because hey, he’s in the game. His voice doesn’t sound good either. No disrespect to the actor, but that voice he used for Baraka sounds way too human and not monstrous enough. He should sound like how he did Mortal Kombat X 🐉, that was the best voice that Baraka ever had, or at the very least, the voice he had in Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, in the Konquest mode. The personality isn’t really there either, he doesn’t have any of that ravenous hunger for human flesh that Baraka and other Tarkatans (including Mileena, who’s half Tarkatan) have in the games.
Even from a special effects standpoint, he looks terrible, like you can tell that his face is just a mask that the actor is wearing, as the mouth barely moves when he talks, and you can tell the actor has a piece of cloth or fabric covering his face where the inside of the mouth should be. It even sounds like he’s talking through a mask. I was hoping that they would get Baraka, that they would give him an awesome design, and he’d look as good as he did in Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉, and Mortal Kombat X 🐉, and he’d be front and center on the poster, because he’s my favorite character. He was my main in both Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉 and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉, and I’m at least bit curious whenever he’s included in any Mortal Kombat 🐉 project, both in movies and in video games. But, they screwed him up, they screwed him up big time. I would’ve preferred if they just did him in CGI instead of a man wearing a suit, makeup, and prosthetics, or a mask in this case.
The only characters that I can think that they’ve screwed up worse in these movies are Nitara, Mileena, Reiko, and Reptile 🦎, who was just a big lizard 🦎 who had no personality whatsoever, no lines of dialogue, and just roared and snarled the whole time. Nothing about his backstory of being the last Zaterran, or one of the last. Khameleon is the other last remaining Zaterran, Reptile 🦎 isn’t the only one, although Khameleon is the last remaining female Zaterran ♀︎ while Reptile 🦎 is the last remaining male one ♂︎. Chameleon (spelt correctly with a C) isn’t a Zaterran, as far as we know, and has no little backstory to really speak. He’s really a clean slate, you can do whatever you want with him. So, to this day, we still have not gotten the definitive live action version of Baraka on screen, or at a good live action version of Baraka. Seeing how bad Baraka (and Jade) looks is in this movie, or bad any of those other characters I mentioned looked in the previous movie, makes me wonder how bad Sheeva’s gonna look if they ever make a third movie. She might even be introduced in this movie, who knows? We didn’t know Nitara and Reiko were going to be in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) until we actually saw it, or at least I didn’t.
But, possibly the biggest complaint that people have about this trailer, and will have about the movie is Jade’s hair…or lack thereof. They decided to make bald in this, or at least give her a little bit of hair, and people were not happy about it one bit. Most of the comments on the trailer that you will see are all about Jade and her lack of hair. Some of them are just voicing their displeasure and frustration about Jade not having hair, or rather having as much hair as she does in the games, while others are just joking about 😂. And some of them are really mean jokes too, like one of them was saying that she looked like a character from a Naughty Dog game, another one was saying that she looked like Jada Pinkett Smith, another even made the same joke that Chris Rock made at the Oscars, that infamous G.I. Jane 2 joke that provoked Will Smith’s slap 👋, and then some joked about her having alopecia, the same condition Jada Pinkett Smith has. I’m surprised that no one joked about her looking like Symone Sanders-Townsend, though that’s probably because Symone isn’t exactly a household name like Jada Pinkett Smith. But, of those two, I’d she more resembles Symone than Jada. It’s relentless, Jade fans are vicious. They’re more vicious than Mileena fans arguably.
Jade is one of those characters that if you don’t get right, if she doesn’t fit people’s preconceived notions about what she should be and what she should look like, they just flat out reject it. This isn’t even the first time that something that has happened to an actress that portrayed Jade in a movie before. Like, some people rejected Irina Pantaeva, the model and actress who played Jade in Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉, saying that she wasn’t Jade, even though she really wasn’t that bad in the role and looked the part. Irina is stunningly beautiful woman ♀︎, and her voice is amazing 😍. That scene where she “tests” Liu Kang, and tries to seduce him and tempt him, and she’s wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a boob cloth, combined with that sultry, vaguely tribal, new age-y type music (that sounds like it was inspired by Enigma), made me feel a certain way when I was a kid.
In that case, I people got so attached to the idea that Jade was dark-skinned that whenever see a version of Jade that’s light-skinned (or lighter skinned), they reject it, even though Jade wasn’t always dark-skinned. Even she first appeared in Mortal Kombat II 🐉 as an unplayable hidden fighter and in Mortal Kombat 3 🐉 as a fully playable character on the main roster, she was light-skinned. Her being dark-skinned was something that was introduced later on, like I don’t even think they started doing that until Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, when she made her return as a playable character after so many years after being in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 🐉 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy 🐉.
BTW, Irina Pantaeva is a Buryat woman ♀︎ from Buryatia, a republic in the Russian Federation 🇷🇺 and previously an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ☭ in the Russian SFSR ☭ of the Soviet Union ☭ called the Buryat ASSR ☭. In fact, she was born when the Soviet Union ☭ still existed, and Buryatia was still an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ☭, in 1967, on October 31, 1967, so an October baby and a Halloween baby 🎃, or at least she would be if she were American 🇺🇸; I don’t know if they celebrate Halloween 🎃 in Russia 🇷🇺, or Buryatia specifically. I had no idea that she was from Buryatia until I saw that video that Spaghetti Kozak 🍝 (known on YouTube simply as SK Media) made about Mortal Kombat 🐉 (1995), where he briefly touched on Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉 and mentioned that Irina was Buryat.
Fans wanted a darker skinned version of Jade, and now that they’ve got one, they’re still complaining! It’s just like how the fans of Red Sonja actively campaigned for her to be played by a white woman ♀︎, and now that they got their wish, they’re complaining and saying that the upcoming movie looks like trash, based one single trailer ☝️! You give fans what they want and they’re still unsatisfied. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. At least be glad they cast an Asian woman ♀︎ in this role and that she’s darker skinned. They could’ve easily have cast a white woman ♀︎ in the role, and some of you complaining about this version of Jade would’ve been more upset. The fact that the actress playing Jade in this movie, Tati Gabrielle is half black (she’s half black and half Korean 🇰🇷, being born from a Korean mother 🇰🇷 and a black American father 🇺🇸, who was from the military) makes all the alopecia jokes all that more racist and offensive.
I used to be on the side that was against Jade being bald, or almost being bald when I initially saw the trailer, but after a few days thinking about it and seeing the overwhelming negative and dare I say toxic reaction it’s been getting, now I just don’t really care, and I think people are overreacting. They’re making such a deal about something that really doesn’t matter. Who cares if Jade is bald or nearly bald? This one comment I saw on a reaction video to the trailer put out by TheFightersDen (yes, that channel 🙄👎) put it best by saying that as long as the performance is good and as long as the actress gets the essence of the character, who cares if she has hair or not? It’s really not as big of a deal as people are making it. Like I said, what they did to Baraka is way worse than what they did to Jade, like Baraka’s design is way off and looks really stupid and the personality doesn’t seem to really there, but with Jade, they just made her bald. That’s it. Everything else about her seems to pretty spot on from how she is in the games. We don’t see her talk that much, but she seems to be accurate to who she is in the games. It’s just that she doesn’t have hair.
There is undoubtedly a racial component to this, anyone doubts it doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they’re lying to themselves and everyone else around them, Tati Gabrielle is half-black, meaning that she qualifies as a black woman ♀︎, and just like with Kamala Harris (who is half-Indian 🇮🇳 and half-Jamaican 🇯🇲), people are hyperfixating on her black half, their singling it out, and hating on her for it. They gave her a more traditionally black hairstyle (it’s mostly black women ♀︎ who go for that sort of bald look, and it’s not always by choice since some are diagnosed with alopecia), and when people see more authentically black hairstyles on screen, in movies, TV, or in video games, they either reject it or they co-opt it. In this case, they rejected it. They said it “wasn’t Jade.” I mean, you saw those comments, people associate that sort of hairstyle with SJWs, feminists ♀︎, leftists in general, and of course, Jada Pinkett Smith, a celebrity who isn’t exactly well liked anymore. And subconsciously, they associate black people with those things, and when they see something that is more “black,” they soundly reject it.
They say things like “they’re trying to destroy feminine women ♀︎” or “they’re trying to replace white people and Asian people with DEI hires” or whatever the fuck. This of course ignores the fact that Tati Gabrielle is also Asian, she’s just as much Asian as she is black; she’s biracial. So, even if the people complaining about this don’t want to admit and say that they aren’t racist, they’re being racist, they perpetuating racist narratives about mixed race people, mixed race women ♀︎, and specifically mixed raced women ♀︎ are either half black or partially black; who have black in them. They don’t mind the Asian part, but the black part is the part they have problem, and they complain about the black part while pretending that they’re problem with it is that it’s black, but for those other reasons I mentioned. That’s how it always is with racists, they always say their racist complaints are not racism at all, but rather these other things.
Though, you’ll notice how Jax is bald in this movie, and no one gives a fuck, no one cares, even though Jax usually has hair in the games, but when Jade is bald, all of a sudden, everyone’s outraged and loses their shit and says that this portrayal of Jade is bad based simply on her appearance. No one cares if a black man ♂︎ is bald, in fact, it’s probably expected, but they do care if a black woman ♀︎ is bald, and they’ll say that she’s ugly or she’s this or she’s that. That’s the truth. There is a disparity when it comes to how non-black people react to seeing a bald black man ♂︎ vs. seeing a bald black woman ♀︎. Which naturally brings me to the gender component of this outrage.
There is undeniably a sexist aspect to the backlash against Jade’s bald look in this movie, just like with the racism thing, people who deny that there’s a sexism undercurrent to the backlash against Jade’s look in this movie, doesn’t know what they’re talking about or are lying to themselves and to others. There is this idea that women ♀︎ can’t be bald, otherwise it’ll make them seem too masculine or it’ll make them less attractive. Like, in Rush Hour 3, when Geneviève is revealed to be Shy Shen and takes off her wig to reveal the list of Triad leaders tattooed on the back of her bald head, Carter instantly finds her unattractive 🤮, despite him crushing on her and trying to get with her before, and even calls her a man ♂︎. But, like Decker Shado said in his review of that movie, women ♀︎ with long hair can be sexy, women ♀︎ with short hair can be sexy, and even bald women ♀︎ can be sexy. Women ♀︎ in general are sexy. Their hair is only one part about this. And while this may not be the reason why the female fans ♀︎ of Jade are upset by her being bald, it is probably a huge reason why the male fans ♂︎ are upset by this. They’re upset because they think her being bald makes her unattractive, and they can’t jerk off to her.
Jade is one of those female Mortal Kombat 🐉 characters ♀︎ that the male side of the fanbase ♂︎ find to be hot 😍. The people behind the games certainly know this since they literally had Jade do a stripper dance on her staff for her victory pose in Mortal Kombat 9 🐉. And they only really find her hot 😍 when she has hair, especially long hair (with a ponytail as one of those comments I mentioned earlier said). So, when they make her bald 👩🦲, it’s an instant turn off for them. I don’t play these games or watch these movies just to get a boner. If I did, I’d just go watch porn 🔞. So, I value a lot more in female characters ♀︎ than just their appearance. What is their personality like? What is their place in their story? How well do they interact with other characters? What are their relationships to other characters? And in the case of movies and games, how good in the performance? Did the actress do a good job or a bad job? So, if you’re somebody who only hates this version of Jade simply because you don’t think she’s hot 😍, shut the fuck up.
As for why female fans ♀︎ of Jade don’t like this, I think it’s a combination of the racial bias thing I was talking about either and also because they see Jade as their ideal queen, they see Jade as a “queen” as the kids would say. Again, people have their preconceived notions about what a character should be or how they should look, and when a new take doesn’t fit into those preconceived notions, they reject it. I think that’s what happened to a lot of the female fans ♀︎ of the character, they had this ideal version of the character in their heads, and when this new version it didn’t match that, they rejected it. I mean, I myself didn’t much care for Jade’s depiction in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉. I didn’t like the British accent 🇬🇧 they gave her (it was more of an English accent 🏴), I didn’t care for her relationship with Kotal Kahn, and I didn’t like her personality. Something about it felt off. But again, that had nothing to do with her looks, it had more to do with personality, her voice, and her relationship with another character that I didn’t think fit.
Jade’s isn’t one of my favorite characters, in fact, I think she’s pretty overrated, so maybe that’s another reason why I’m not as upset about this as a lot of other people are. I just hope that this backlash against the look of the character doesn’t extend to the actress herself. Like, you’re going to bully and harass this woman ♀︎ simply for doing her job, which is to act and play a character in movie, and do what the director says and hit her marks? Come on, man, grow up 😠! Even if I don’t personally don’t think this is as big of a deal as people are making it out to be, either way, the actress should not get blamed for any of it. And like I said for Baraka earlier, these are fictional characters at the end of the day, you’re going to bully and harass an actress just for that!? Just leave her the fuck alone! She hasn’t even said anything yet that warrant her being targeted for harassment, even if online harassment isn’t warranted in any context. She’s mostly kept quiet about this backlash as far as I know, as has everyone else in the cast and crew. Though, if it really gets out of hand, then they’ll have to make a statement if they haven’t already, and that’ll just further fuel the backlash 🤬, especially depending on what they say and how they say it.
Though, they could put out the perfect statement, say all the right things, and people would still be assholes about it and say that it isn’t good enough and they’ll just continue harassing the actress online. Nothing short of the whole movie getting reshot with Jade having a full head of hair will satisfy these people. Though, that isn’t in feasible since that movie is pretty much near complete, and it’d be ridiculous to expect the filmmakers to go and reshoot the entire movie with Jade having a full head of hair just to appease some butthurt fans. That costs money 💵, it takes time, and it would hurt the overall quality of the movie.
This isn’t like with Sonic, where he’s a CGI character and they can replace him with a different model in post production, this is a real actress, who has to show up, get into costume, and film on a soundstage, or on location somewhere, and a whole crew needs to be equipped and fed to make it happen. Anyone expecting them to do that doesn’t know anything about how the filmmaking process works. If people really feel that strongly about it and continue to press this point harder, then maybe they might listen to that particular criticism and give Jade hair in the next movie if they decide to bring back her in the next one, assuming that this one is successful enough for them to make another one after this. Or maybe they might recast her, this franchise isn’t above recasting people, though these movies so far haven’t recasted anyone.
Shao Kahn’s mask looks pretty cool though. It covers his whole face rather than just the top half, and looks like it’s made out of metal, meaning it’s armored and actually protects his face. It also has glowing red eyes, it looks really badass. Shao Kahn certainly looks imposing and intimidating. We don’t see a lot of him in this trailer, and we don’t hear him talk that much, really just once when he yells, “Finish him!”, but he seems pretty spot on to how he is in the games. We also see Noob Saibot later on in this trailer. I was wondering if they were going to include him in this movie, and I sort of hoping that they would bring him in, since they effectively made Bi-Han the main villain in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) (he’s more of the main villain in that movie than Shang Tsung is in all honesty), and because I like Noob Saibot. He’s another character that I like, and I always like seeing whenever he appears in any new game, even if I don’t really like his appearances in the newer games.
Speaking of which, they heavily based his look in this movie off of his design in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, but because that game has so many different skins and has a gear system (where the characters get different gear that the player can equip them with it and that changes their appearance as well), which was carried over and refined from Netherrealm Studios’s previous game, Injustice 2, it’s hard to tell what his original design was in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉. But, apparently, the default design is the one with that mask looks like it’s made out of metal and has line pattern on it, and that’s the one they went with for this movie. Not my favorite design, I prefer the designs from Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉, and Mortal Kombat 9 🐉, and I would’ve liked it if they based the design off one of those, or if they just came up with their own design (like they did with Scorpion 🦂 and Sub-Zero ❄️), but at least they didn’t go with the design from Mortal Kombat 1 🐉, because that’s my least favorite, even if I like his voice in Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 than Mortal Kombat 11 🐉.
That reminds me, I wonder if Noob will have the same voice that he does in Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, or if they’ll give him a different sounding voice. Either way, they’re not going to use Joe Taslim’s real voice because he can’t speak English that well and that’s what they did with him in the previous movie when he played Sub-Zero ❄️. Also, since Noob’s involved, I’m guessing Quan Chi’s going to be in this movie. To what degree? I really don’t know. They didn’t show him at all in this trailer and that’s probably something that we’ll have to see the movie to find out, unless they decide to show him in the inevitable second trailer, or third trailer, or “final trailer,” since movies today get multiple trailers, especially if they’re big budget blockbusters, and the last trailer before the movie’s release is usually called the “final trailer,” and by then, they will have shown way too much of the movie. I do like how the Netherrealm looks in this movie though, from little we see it.
I also wonder if Smoke 💨 is going to be in the movie at any point, since he’s another character who’s often associated with Noob Saibot (starting with Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉 where they appeared as a tag team character and sub-boss called Noob-Smoke 💨), and did actually appear in the Mortal Kombat II 🐉 game as a hidden fighter. I didn’t see anything in the cast list that indicates that Smoke 💨 will be in the movie. But, just because they aren’t listed in the cast list now, doesn’t mean that they won’t be in the movie. Of course, since this is Mortal Kombat II 🐉, it’ll probably be the human Smoke 💨, since Smoke 💨 hadn’t become a cyborg yet until the third game, Mortal Kombat 3 🐉.
I do prefer cyborg Smoke 💨 over human Smoke 💨, as well as nanotech Smoke 💨 or Enenra as he’s referred to by fans sometimes because Mortal Kombat 9 🐉 introduced this concept that Smoke 💨 was possessed by a demon 😈 called Enenra, and this demon 😈 was the source of his powers, and in Mortal Kombat X 🐉, when he becomes a Revenant serving Quan Chi, he refers to himself as Enenra, saying “Smoke 💨 is dead, I am Enenra.” So, if we are take that as canon to the Original Timeline (and not as a retcon introduced in the Reboot Timeline), then what happens to Smoke 💨 in the Original Timeline is that after Noob reprogrammed Smoke 💨 to serve him, and took him down to Netherrealm with him to try to conquer it, the demon 😈 inside of him, Enenra merged with the nanotechnology in his body, took over his body entirely and became stronger. So, Smoke 💨 was no longer Smoke 💨, he was now fully Enenra. That’s why his body is fully made out of smoke 💨 and he doesn’t look human anymore in his alternate costume in Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉 and his default costume in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉.
Though, they hadn’t had a name for it yet since Enenra wasn’t introduced until Mortal Kombat 9 🐉, so the explanation in Smoke 💨’s unused ending for Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉 is that the evil atmosphere of the Netherrealm incapacitated Smoke 💨 due to the fact that he still had good left in him, and his sensors registered it as a pain, and his nanotechnology repaired his body and countered the evil forces from the Netherrealm. This lead to Smoke 💨 shedding a good chunk of his cybernetics and becoming more than just a mere cyborg ninja 🦾🥷, but a nanotech one. His nanotech fully took his body, and merged his smoke powers 💨 and enhanced his body, which is why he appears to be made entirely out of smoke 💨 (a human vapor 💨 if you will) in his alternate costume in Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉 and default costume in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉.
He’s made entirely entirely out of the nanotechnology that were once just a mere component of his cybernetics, that made his cybernetics function better, and because they merged with his smoke powers 💨 and enhanced them, the nanobots mimicked the appearance of smoke 💨 if that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t. All of this confusion could’ve been avoided if they hadn’t decided to make Mortal Kombat 9 🐉 a soft reboot that still in continuity with the previous games (taking a Star Trek approach where it’s set in an alternate timeline), and yet still made retcons and contradicted things, and just made it a hard reboot instead, and completely ignored the previous games and started completely fresh without any of this alternate timeline, time travel, or multiverse stuff. But, human Smoke 💨 can be cool too, especially in Mortal Kombat 9 🐉, he looked so cool in that game, and his fatalities were pretty good too. Especially that one where he uses his smoke powers 💨 to literally steam the losing opponent to death 💨. As John Matrix from Commando said, “Let off some steam, Bennett 💨.”
Speaking of which, it seems like they upped the gore a little bit. They made sure that this was a red band trailer so they could show off the blood 🩸 and gore, and also the swearing, they do say “fuck” a few times in this trailer, and most of them are said by Johnny; naturally. Though, the only really gory thing we see is Scorpion 🦂 slice Noob’s shadow clone in half down the middle, but even then it’s not even the actual Noob, it’s just his shadow clone. We’ll see if they upped the gore or not because that was admittedly one of the more disappointing aspects of Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021), the gore was lacking, despite it being R rated, especially compared to the more recent games. The most recent game, Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 is so gory in fact that when people do videos on YouTube showing off the fatalities and animalities, they have turn the blood 🩸 a different color (like pink, or blue, or green, or even yellow) or use a character like Reptile 🦎 who doesn’t have red blood 🩸 (but rather green blood) just to avoid their videos getting age restricted or flagged and removed entirely. But, Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) was pretty tame by comparison. We’ll see if this movie keeps up that tradition or if it ups the ante in terms of the gore.
But, going back to Noob for a moment, I wonder if they’ll actually refer to him as Noob in the movie, like they’ll actually call him Noob Saibot, or if they’ll just call him Bi-Han. Because on the character poster for him, he’s referred to as Bi-Han, and not Noob Saibot, so who knows? Ermac’s another character that I’m surprised isn’t in this movie (as far as we know). I mean, I know he didn’t appear as a playable character until Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 🐉, but still, they have played fast and loose with which characters are present in the events at this point in the time. I mean, they showed us Nitara, Reiko, Mileena, and Kabal in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021), which takes place before the Outworld tournament usually depicted in Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (1993), and those characters weren’t introduced until later on in the franchise.
They even brought in Sindel for this movie, and she wasn’t introduced until Mortal Kombat 3 🐉, the actual Mortal Kombat 3 🐉, not the updated expanded version of the game, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 🐉, which is actually more popular, beloved, and fondly remembered than the original Mortal Kombat 3 🐉. So, they aren’t above bringing in characters who weren’t actually introduced in the corresponding game that this particular movie is loosely based. This movie is loosely based on Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (1993), it has almost the same exact plot as that game but with many, many differences, which why they gave it the exact same title. Plus, Ermac’s a popular character and people always like it even he appears. Even if his best appearance by far was Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, not only was his design in that game great, but he was genuinely a great character to play, one of the strongest, most capable fighters in the entire game. Not as they do when Noob Saibot appears in a game, but still pretty excited. Maybe if they make a third movie, he’ll appear in that, but I guess we’ll see.
Speaking of characters with reduced roles compared to the first one, one character whose role was greatly reduced from the first one, and no one is really taking about is Liu Kang. He’s barely even in this trailer, with the whole thing just focusing on Johnny Cage the whole time, and nobody will shut up about Jade. So, he kind of faded in the background of the conversation surrounding this movie. It makes me wonder how much of a Liu Kang will even play in this movie, or how much screen time he’ll have, or how many lines he’ll have. His role was already pretty reduced in the previous movie since he wasn’t the main character in that either, Cole Young was, and Liu Kang was just a side character. He didn’t appear until nearly the halfway point, and barely has any screen time or lines anyway, and hardly matters to the plot or conflict of that movie. But, here, his role has been reduced to the point of a non factor. He used to be the hero of this franchise, and yet he’s barely even a factor anymore. Ever since Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance 🐉, it’s been a downward spiral for ol’ Liu. They did put him front and center on the cover art for Mortal Kombat 1 🐉 and in much of the early marketing for the game, so there’s that I suppose.
Also, Kung Lao’s back in the movie, but likely as a Revenant this time since he died in the previous movie, but no body really cares. The majority of fans have made it pretty clear that they do not like Kung Lao, don’t care about him at all, unless it’s his ancestor, the Great Kung Lao. When people like your ancestor better than you, despite your ancestor not actually being a playable character in any of the games. He was the main character in that prequel TV series set in the same continuity as Mortal Kombat 🐉 (1995) and Mortal Kombat Annihilation 🐉, Mortal Kombat: Conquest 🐉 (with a C, and not be confused with the Konquest mode in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance 🐉, Mortal Kombat: Deception 🐉, and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon 🐉), which was originally going to be called Mortal Kombat: Crusade 🐉, but couldn’t because of legal reasons because there was another show called Crusade at the time (which was a spinoff show of Babylon 5). So, there is that.
One character I wish had a reduced role is Kano. Yeah, Kano is back, despite being dying in the last one, and apparently he isn’t even a Revenant, or at least doesn’t look like one. He also has his laser eye, which he got because he unlocked his arcana 🙄 as opposed to cybernetics like in the games. And yet, despite being a magical ability rather than a technological one, he’s only able to shoot a laser out of one eye 👁️. The whole reason Kano only fired a laser out of one eye is that he lost one of his eyes and had it replaced with a cybernetic one which made him sort of look like a Terminator (which is what he was initially inspired by in the original game). It being magical ability he gains, makes absolutely no sense 🙄. I feel like I’m only person on planet Earth 🌎 who didn’t like this version of Kano in the previous movie, I thought he was annoying.
He took Johnny Cage’s place as being the annoying character on screen, like all the annoyingness was sucked out of Johnny and put into Kano because I couldn’t stand him in that movie 😤. He was possibly the thing I hated the most about that movie. I was so happy when Sonya finally killed him at the end 😁. I was hoping they would just keep him dead and leave out of this one, or they did bring him back, they’d recast him with someone else. But no, they had to bring him back for this one (played by the same actor) because he was a such popular character in the last one and was only thing that was even remotely well received in it 😑. If I do end up watching this movie, I have no doubt that Kano will be one of my least favorite things about it 👎.
Also, King Jerrod’s in this movie, which TheFightersDen was definitely not happy just by his reaction video and long tirade he went on about King Jerrod and him being a “jobber” who always dies. But fuck that guy ♂︎, who cares what he thinks? And who really cares King Jerrod and him always dying. It’s part of the lore, he has to die, otherwise we don’t have Shao Kahn conquering Edenia, and we don’t have Queen Sindel being mind controlled by him. Sindel would literally not be who she is as a character without King Jerrod’s death. Neither would Kitana since King Jerrod is her father. It’s like people complaining or “joking” about Uncle Ben always dying, of course he has to die. If he didn’t then we wouldn’t have Spider-Man; or at least, the Peter Parker Spider-Man. Peter Parker literally has no reason to become Spider-Man without Uncle Ben’s death being a motivating factor. Same thing with Batman, you can’t have the Bruce Wayne Batman without the death of his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne. So, I don’t mind that King Jerrod is in this movie, and I don’t mind that he dies (likely in a prologue scene at the beginning or in a flashback), and people like TheFightersDen who are complaining about it and going on endless tirades about it need to shut up and get over themselves.
A few more things I want to say about this trailer before I start talking about the Tron: Ares trailer is that I really do like dragon logo 🐉 this time around. They redesigned it for the 2021 movie. I don’t particularly know why they redesigned it, maybe it was just to separate the movies from the games, or to differentiate them, like “this is the dragon logo 🐉 for these movies, and this is the dragon logo 🐉 for the games.” I don’t really know what their logic behind that was. Either, I didn’t care for the redesigned dragon logo 🐉 they used for the last movie. But, while they still kept the same design for this movie, I do think that it looks better here. I don’t know, maybe the silver color with the green eyes and the Roman numeral II in the middle makes it look cooler, I don’t know, I like it a lot more this time. I still prefer the classic dragon logo 🐉, or even the dragon logo 🐉 used in Mortal Kombat X 🐉 and Mortal Kombat 11 🐉, but this is a decent improvement.
They also brought back the original Mortal Kombat 🐉 theme song created by The Immortals, “Techno Syndrome,” though they didn’t use it exactly. They included the scream, the guy ♂︎ shouting “Mortal Kombat 🐉!” at the top of his lungs 🫁, they included that audio clip from the song, and did an orchestral sounding remix of the song to make it sound “epic.” Though, the way they did it makes sound less like the Mortal Kombat 🐉 theme and more like the Mission: Impossible theme. I was half expecting Ethan Hunt to show up at any moment, and jump off those pillars or cliffs inside the Netherrealm, or Tom Cruise to be revealed to be the one inside the Noob Saibot costume (or Scorpion 🦂 costume for that matter) 🤣.
Also, the movie’s being released under the New Line Cinema label, unlike the last one, which was released under the main Warner Bros. label, and it’s going to have classic logo that we all know and love. That’s pretty cool. Between this, Turtles All the Way Down 🐢, The Watchers, and Final Destination Bloodlines 🩸, New Line Cinema sure is making a comeback, with its own identity outside of Warner Bros., and being restored to its former glory as a force to be reckoned with.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I learned recently that there’s apparently a new Street Fighter movie in the works. I learned about TheFightersDen when he made a couple of videos on his channel talking about the cast announcements, which may or may not be real. I say “may or may not” be real because I looked on the Wikipedia page for the 1994 Street Fighter movie, and apparently this new one that they’re working on was originally set to come out on March 20, 2026, but now it’s been delayed indefinitely with no release date set in place. It was removed from Sony Pictures Releasing’s release schedule and delayed indefinitely sometime in March 2025. So, why would they announce castings for a movie that’s delayed indefinitely and has no official release date?
It seems TheFightersDen bought into the rumors surrounding this movie and is presenting them as fact to his audience. Which his channel is so bullshit, and not worth watching, TheFightersDen is trash, just straight up trash. But, if those castings were real and this Street Fighter movie does come out next year (as originally intended), then it will be the second in history that a Street Fighter movie and Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie were made and released back-to-back, just a year apart. Although this time, the Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie will come out first while the Street Fighter movie will come out second. But that’s only if this Street Fighter movie comes out next year, and not 2027, or 2028, or some other year later down the line.
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Tron: Ares
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