Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Fan Request: Mortal Kombat (1995)
252 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to the very first episode of Season 4 and the first of our fan requested episodes this week suggested by our fantastic Patron Sonia! In this episode, Satsunami is joined by Craigy C to discuss the cult classic Mortal Kombat. But despite it's flaws, is this film a flawless victory? Or is it a fatality best forgotten about? Let's find out!
Check out all of our content here: https://linktr.ee/chatsunami
Website: chatsunami.com
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ChatsunamiPod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chatsunami/
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@chatsunami
Patrons:
Battle Toaster
Sonia
Use my special link zen.ai/chatsunami and use chatsunami to save 30% off your first three months of Zencastr professional. #madeonzencastr Stay safe, stay awesome and most importantly, stay hydrated!
Recommended
Transcript
Season 4 Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello everybody, and welcome to the very first episode of Season 4. My name's Satsunami, and joining me for Mortal Podcasting is none other than the flawless victory himself, Craigie C. Craigie C, welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, how are you doing tonight? Yeah, not bad, not bad. I told you I'd finished literally in the last five minutes watching Mortal Kombat, so I am ready to chat. Was that everything you hoped for and more?
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, for the fans.
Why Discuss Mortal Kombat?
00:00:50
Speaker
So speaking of fans, this particular topic that we're about to talk about was submitted by none other than our very own patron, Sonia, who actually asked us if we could do an episode of Mortal Kombat. So you and I went back and forth that I was saying, have you played a Mortal Kombat game? And you said, have you?
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, we came to the conclusion that the one piece of media in the Mortal Kombat universe that we both have consumed twice at this point is none other than the Mortal Kombat film of 1995. But before we go into that, before we start divulging our love,
00:01:28
Speaker
this problem. I tried choking that back. What is your experience with this franchise? So in terms of Mortal Kombat, I've played a few of the games, but I'm not one to an expert. What I am an expert in, however, is terrible video game movies. And this completes this movie is the third in the holy trilogy of 1993's Mario Brothers movie, 1994 Street Fighter movie and 1995 Mortal Kombat movie. So really it's such a jam-packed three years that they managed to get all those films out in three years.
1995 Film Nostalgia
00:02:04
Speaker
I was just going to say what you're saying is this is indeed to the father, son and holy shit of.
00:02:16
Speaker
Not in those exact words, but similar. But yeah, for me, Mortal Kombat is one of those franchises that I know about. I grew up knowing about Mortal Kombat. You always heard, well, it was victory and the memes that
00:02:33
Speaker
came out of it throughout the years, but other than playing maybe a couple of the games and very much similar games that either copied it or drew inspiration, let's be nice, I haven't really played much of them. I know the characters. What I will say is, out of all of, and I know you'll probably be more of an authority than I am,
00:02:54
Speaker
speak on this but Mortal Kombat seems to be one of those games that definitely is just so iconic in the fighting genre of video games. You've got your Scorpion, your Sub-Zero, you've got so many characters that you can think of off the top of your head when you discuss this franchise, can't you? Honestly I think this film's like a big part of that bit, the soundtrack being
00:03:19
Speaker
like the bangs, and that being related to the games helps as well. It is one of the most iconic. There's a lot of other obviously fighting games, but this one is one that never goes away. I think a lot of that is like you say the fatalities, colorful characters and stuff. It will probably live on way longer than us if I'm being totally honest at this point. Well how does it feel to be out loved by Johnny Cage?
00:03:40
Speaker
It's an absolute privilege. It's a friendship. It's definitely one of those series that it solidified its place I think it's safe to say in the video game landscape but as you said before there was the quote-unquote holy trinity of bad video game films and it
00:04:00
Speaker
all started as you said in 1993 with the very infamous or famous depending how you look at it Super Mario Brothers film and we all know how that went but then the year after we of course got the Street Fighter film and then in 1995 someone said yeah which
00:04:17
Speaker
Mortal Kombat and it's such a weird one to go for. See out of all the video game properties back then, you know, in the 90s that were popular, can you see any reason why they went for Mortal Kombat out of all
Cultural Impact of Mortal Kombat
00:04:33
Speaker
of them?
00:04:33
Speaker
To be fair, it was pretty popular and you've got to think back to the arcades and stuff. That was still quite big when that came out and I think it was still quite controversial. What I don't so much understand I guess is why they made it out of 15, why they didn't make it as glory and others didn't really want to take appeal to kids and stuff. But you had the Terminator movies, you had Tell Children's Toys or something out of it before the podcast. Everyone knows that films out of 18 get shown to kids anyway so they should've just
00:04:56
Speaker
So yeah, I think they wanted to do something like the game's quite popular. It's just so controversial that I think they just wanted to try tap into that. I think that's why it looks so different. It sounds so different as they were trying to get that kind of counter-culture part out of it. They didn't go far enough. Do you think it was rooted in that mentality back then of
00:05:15
Speaker
video games being for kids, because that was like a very prevalent thing. In the 90s, it seems very weird to, as you said, this was a very controversial game at the time. It wasn't a game that you would have been playing round at your granny's, or you would have. Well, unless your gran was into Mortal Kombat, but you know, you wouldn't be playing this in front of your parents back then.
00:05:40
Speaker
So why they chose it as a, not family friendly, that's the wrong word, but you know, as more of a teenager film. I mean there is that case as well, trust me not to bring Sonic into everything. But it was that idea, as you said, it was very much counter-cultural wasn't it? That you had characters like the very lukewarm end, you had Sonic against Mario, and then you had people who were pushing the boundaries more and more with these video games to see how much they could get away with.
00:06:10
Speaker
So to choose something like Mortal Kombat and then make it more accessible to teenagers, I mean, I can see why. It seems like a weird choice, but I can see why they probably would have wanted to do it. That, of course, would be money. But I actually wonder if there was Happy Meal toys for this. Oh, there definitely would. You know what? I'm going to Google this. Undoubtedly, there was at least children's toys there that had meal toys.
Nostalgic Appeal vs Film Quality
00:06:34
Speaker
Yep, there was toys. Oh, of course there were. Somebody's like great. Really?
00:06:41
Speaker
It's like, you just cluck an ad to Basque. Oh, we did another big night on eBay tonight. That one seller you buy from is just like, oh my God, I can't go get the big bags. It's that one seller I buy from whose kids have been put through private school because of me.
00:07:01
Speaker
Surprisingly, John the Cage is the college maker as it were. But yeah, going back to the film itself, this was a film that you and I first saw together a good couple of years ago. And as you said, it was during a time where you were hosting a night to watch bad films with myself and a couple other mutual friends. And I have to say, this wasn't the worst one out of all the films we watched.
00:07:27
Speaker
No, this one, though, it kind of fell on that unhappy medium, which is I couldn't remember any of it. Which I think is a pretty damning curse for most films when we do these terrible movie nights. Because you've completely forgotten, you're so bad that people bring you up years later about, Craig, why did you expose me to this at your Turkish Star Wars? You go on the other side, which is you become so terrible, you're memorable, like a samurai cop. So this film being somewhere in the middle isn't a great sign for it.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, because after that, there were some bits I remembered vividly, but then other bits I was just like, no. I was like, I have no idea how I didn't remember that, and there's a lot of, I mean, very meme-worthy content in this film, but very quote-unquote iconic in the scenes. You know, you've got one person literally looking down the camera yelling, your soul is mine! And I was like, how have I forgotten?
00:08:20
Speaker
you're completely right though but see you rewatching it though, did you think it was as forgettable watching that second time? Yes and no, I'm surprised I forgot so much on the same thing that you were saying because like in particular Goro looked so ridiculous that I'm surprised I forgot him but on the other hand we can go into some more detail later but the fight scenes were so
00:08:40
Speaker
generic and kind of all just plugged together. Even not long after watching the film they're all kind of like already starting to glue together in my mind that I'm struggling to pick out the different fight scenes. So I think that
Casting Choices and Trivia
00:08:49
Speaker
kind of thing probably hurt a lot more than the remembrance factor. Because I have to say some of the actors on this, and especially for reading, I completely forgot it was Christopher Lambert.
00:09:00
Speaker
that played him, the Highlander himself. I was sitting there thinking, why does he look familiar? And then all of a sudden, he did that stupid laugh that he does. I was like, oh my god, it's a Highlander. I mean, was that a trait of riding any Mortal Kombat fans please to the love of god? Put my mind to ease by saying, oh yeah, Raiden was like, because I don't know why. I feel as if it's just that, you know that way when actors, method actor, they say, this is what I think that that
00:09:29
Speaker
Please, for the love of God, stop adding your own fanfiction into this film. But I mean, speaking of fanfiction of all people, I did not realise that Steven Spielberg was meant to be in this film. Yeah, that was a very odd one. Because I remember watching that scene and I thought, wow, that guy looks oddly like Steven Spielberg. I wonder if it's a coincidence. And for anyone who doesn't know, it turns out that
00:09:52
Speaker
he was supposed to be in the film just as a brief cameo but because of schedule and conflicts he was forced to back out of it. So that is a bit of a shame because apparently he's a massive Mortal Kombat fan which I also didn't know. I think that's pretty cool but did not know that about him whatsoever. He doesn't strike me as the kind of person to be a Mortal Kombat fan if I'm honest.
00:10:14
Speaker
Well that was one of the things that kind of baffled me. I looked at an IMDB list of facts as you like to do, and one of the things that kind of struck me was there's multiple stories of people really, really wanting to be involved in this film. So like they had that one, partly Tom Cruise, turned up on set one day and he got kicked out. The woman that played Sonya Blade wanted to do the film and got cast as something else and then thankfully she got delayed and she was like right back into it and all this and she was like, why were people so excited to do this film that ended up being so bad?
00:10:40
Speaker
What was the...? Anyway, I think it's good to show you asking the question of why Mortal Kombat? Well, apparently everyone on the planet was hyped for it. Well, that's the thing though, because going back to what we were saying before, video game films were a relatively new frontier in terms of filmmaking. You know, Young had the Super Mario Bros. film, which I guess bombed, or not bombed, but technically didn't do well for obvious reasons.
00:11:06
Speaker
You had Street Fighter, which again, they thought, oh god, this is even worse. Then we got this. And people must have been really excited because obviously you and I were far, far too young to even remember this. We were alive.
00:11:21
Speaker
is that? It would have been in the back of our minds. But yeah, people must have been really hyped because I had a look at what other people were saying about this film and there seems to be a lot of nostalgia behind this film which I find really nice. People going to the cinema to see it or seeing it with
00:11:39
Speaker
friends, with family, and having that experience with them, which I thought was really, really cool. But what I found really weird, and I don't know if you read up on this as well, but two years later, the sequel for this film came out, and that was the one that everybody seemed to be ashamed of. I didn't know it was a sequel. Really? Until I just kind of came across it by just scrolling and stuff, because that's just how little it's spoken about though. In terms of the general discourse, I actually was kind of surprised when I saw there was a sequel.
00:12:09
Speaker
It's really surprising because I think even the actor who played Liu Kang, Robert Shaw, he openly says he hated the film, all of them. Everyone who worked on it do not have a good thing to say about the film. They're all like, this is a terrible film. I'm ashamed of doing that. He didn't even get Christopher Lambert back for reading, but I
00:12:30
Speaker
Hardly, they gave him a script for a potential third volume and they just immediately rejected it and said, no. Imagine that, the High Wonder saying, this is a step too far. And he's been in High Wonder too. I just wanted to point that out. I was going to say, yeah, he's been in his fair. He's got no justification for being above any script. Think about that tonight, lovely listeners. Think of it.
00:12:53
Speaker
that your wife could be bad, but it's not as bad as Christopher Lomp, or attempting your script.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, that was surprising to me because again, I haven't really watched the sequel. Just for the purposes of this review, I had a flick through it. It's really bad. I just kept flicking through and I was like, OK, this is absolutely terrible, even compared to this one, because for this one, this one's an oddity. I'm just going to say it is like a weird capsule of good ideas and faithful homages, which I'm really surprised at because that is the problem with
00:13:30
Speaker
video game films of this time and especially towards the early 2000s as well where they say okay how do we get this video game film to blend in with the real world or how do we get it to you know be more realistic and they try to bend the story so much that it becomes something completely different like the Mario Brothers film but in this one they don't care do they?
00:13:57
Speaker
just say yeah let's fight a four arm demon prince called Goro let's go see i have no problem with either side of the argument because i think i also feel like your video game is still going to be there at the end of the day so like i don't mind them changing stuff and i would say like they changed a lot of stuff in this film like scoping and subs
00:14:13
Speaker
you know we're just completely made to be known characters and allies as if it's like at the end of the day the game's still there. I always think it's a funny thing that people got hang up on. I'm not a big mind in those kiddings. I have to say though I am surprised that they stuck so close to the games for this film but at the same time you're completely right. It is good when they do try something else on the one hand but I guess when they stray too far and it's not successful they're not a
00:14:41
Speaker
appeasing either the fans or the new audience that they're trying to re-run. But with this film, it seems as if a lot of Mortal Kombat fans aren't as angry at this film. And I don't know if it's because of the sequel. That's what I'm genuinely wondering. I think the Star Witcher obviously just plays a lot into these as well, like Star Wars fans. Maybe it'd be the best example of that, like everyone hated the prequels when they came out and then over time people go to grow
Movie Night Memories
00:15:06
Speaker
to love them. And, you know, I think it's the same thing.
00:15:08
Speaker
kind of thing. Like, didn't the Super Mario movie actually eat industry fit and go free? As nostalgia's increased for them, fans are a lot more forgiven of these things, and I think we'll see that with every film franchise as they get older and people are a lot more forgiven on nostalgia things. Just as another example, we watched, for the Wolf Westies thing we did, the documentaries we watched, the Pokémon movie, and that was terrible. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had, but I thought it was a terrible film. Can I just point out that I was the only person there that night?
00:15:34
Speaker
You can. We watched a Pokemon film and it was terrible. It hurts to say that because like that nostalgia blinds you to it. Even if it is a terrible film, if you love that franchise you will love that film over time, you know what I mean? Oh no, absolutely. It's like a Mice and Men moment, isn't it? When you go to watch a film that you loved growing up and then you realise it's terrible and you have to admit it, so you have to take it out to the bank sheds and just... I don't think that's Mice and Men. It's old yellow.
00:16:04
Speaker
He means this in a German way, he didn't watch Mortal Kombat. No, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. Way too much time back here. Your metaphor was so wrong in so many directions. That actually brings me to a good scene. Oh my god, how? Tell me about the Mortal Kombat, Gricky C.
00:16:25
Speaker
So there's three motels that are all going to get into combat with people I assume are also motels, but they don't make that clear for Goros Path. And there's a lot of fighting. There's a lot of people fighting in very flat, boring environments, which I guess is kind of similar to fighting games, so pay play actually on that one. This is coming to someone that loves Tekken by the way, so before anyone gets up on that one, I love the Tekken games, and they're the most guilty of it. Like no matter where they're fighting in the universe, it always happens to be 20 foot by 20 foot.
00:16:55
Speaker
the space that they've got. Yeah, so Johnny Cage, Lou, and Sonya, they fight a whole bunch of people in a row in a tournament that makes no sense to me, and they win at the end of the day. And that's kind of the film. Oh, and then the Emperor shows up at the end of his voice by Frank Wilker, who is the voice of Megatron. Do you have anything to add to my synopsis of the plot?
00:17:17
Speaker
You're completely right, because it's something I never really thought about until you said, I wonder what the bracket of this tournament looks like? Because none of it makes sense. As you said, one person wins one fight, one person wins like
00:17:32
Speaker
you know it's all over the place and then all of a sudden they end up fighting the main bad guy anyway even though they're told oh you can't fight him he's too powerful even though he essentially just drop kicks him like he did for everyone else and they're like oh okay so do they have tournament makers in that world? If they do because Goro fought at least 20 people so he qualified for his own bracket I don't know what the
00:17:55
Speaker
format is. But then they just end the tournament early because there's three goodies left and no bad guys left. But then there's all the guys that walk about, or the MOOCs that don't know if they end the tournament or not. That's not really clear. Some of them get involved in fights. Yeah, there's a lot of plot. My favourite thing of the plot is Sonya Blade. She has her own little story about getting avenged in this game. Her plot gets wrapped up 45 minutes into the film.
00:18:17
Speaker
No, no, you're done. Back to being a damsel in distress. You're an action part of the film, you're done with it. That's her only fight until right then. Oh, you can definitely tell that this was a 90s film, though, with the way they treat her character. Because she goes from being in combat gear, as you do, and then her outfits get progressively
00:18:37
Speaker
skimpier. I mean, it's not overly bad when she's in the tournament. She's got the shorts and everything. But then, as she said, after she wins that fight and she wraps up her arc with, I don't know, the guy with the cyborg eye, I'm going to piss off a lot of Mortal Kombat. I think he's called Kano Okano.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, then as you said, she gets kidnapped by the main big bad and then, yeah, she gets chained
Character Evolution: Sonia Blade
00:19:04
Speaker
up. And that's just like really weird scene at the end where she's chained up and she's on her dress and she's like, oh my friends are gonna save me when they get here.
00:19:14
Speaker
they pulled down the hood like something out of naked gun. They're like we're already here. Right I need to talk about that scene because something else caught my eye and I couldn't stop watching it. There's an extra right in that scene who either messed up a tape before or was just couldn't. It was just really upset because at the very first bit of that but they're all sort of walking down these stairs
00:19:33
Speaker
and they've all got their hoods up and they're all kind of bowed head but there's one extra whose head is bowed at like 90 degrees. I don't know because they couldn't see or they were scared of tripping over the robe or something went wrong but that extra was like I couldn't keep my eyes off them because I was so sure they were gonna fall because they were like looking so nervous. It's hard to explain like without you have to look out for them because it's just this one extra is like no I'm not falling today I'm not falling today.
00:19:58
Speaker
I mean, maybe it was just looking out for the big spike floor that they had installed. Which Sonia then, at the end of the film, she gets a dress, she also loses her shoes, which I don't know why that was in it. But she then runs across the spiked floor in her bare feet and is like, that's just so dangerous.
Production Quirks and Filming Locations
00:20:14
Speaker
You've just seen someone die in that floor, don't be running across that in your bare feet, that's icky. Yeah, I mean, that's just health and safety 101 right there.
00:20:21
Speaker
Have you got an open wound on that? I mean, between that and Johnny Cage not washing his hands after they've punched a demon prince in the balls. I mean, the open wound washed their hands and they're all like, did you see a sink in that fell?
00:20:35
Speaker
So this is something that I brought up to you before we started recording that one of the things I was surprised that was this was filmed in Thailand, which obviously that's not the surprising thing. What the surprising thing is is the fact that they did it in such a remote area that they had to ferry people out on a boat.
00:20:54
Speaker
And I'm thinking, why did they do it in such a remote area? Like, obviously it must have been easier for them to film and things, but could you imagine being so ashamed of your film? Yeah, I think they were just trying to avoid health and safety because they hadn't got any sinks and stuff.
00:21:08
Speaker
Speaking of people messing up, I genuinely don't know whether this was intentional or not, but there's a scene where Johnny Cage has got all these bags and they just like waste blood. But then later on, he's climbing up the stairs and he just lets them drop. And I am convinced that the actor dropped them by accident. Either that or it's just very convincing the way he does it.
00:21:31
Speaker
they all just drop down into this weird voiceover that they've had to do to be like, oh no my bags, oh no, and they just forget about his bag. They CGI the bag rolling down the hill as well because he's in the camera. But that's the thing, seeing that world, does that mean that all his clothes and things are there? Is there a demon rocking up looking like Johnny Cage? I'm trying not to think too hard about any of this man because like,
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm going to be really weird because when you start getting bogged down into like why did these people not bring a suitcase, he's getting made fun of in the film for being prepared. But honestly man, see when I go on a holiday, see if I'm away for like 7 days, I bring like 14 pairs of pants because I crap myself twice a day man.
00:22:14
Speaker
blame him and everyone else is rocking up with nothing packed. lads, what happens if one of the rounds of water combats like a swimming contest do not get something to get changed into? He's getting made fun of, but he's absolutely correct if everyone else is wrong. I'm just thinking now of you the main villain, shanks, and just being like, your suitcase is mine.
00:22:34
Speaker
It's just like, no, that's for my 40 pairs of pants. It baffles me that he's getting made fun of for actually thinking about the tournament. Consider this situation, right? You don't pack, okay? You enter Mortal Kombat, you win, and then you save the entire world, right? And you get presented in front of, I don't know, at the end of this movie it's like Shelling Monks, but you know, you can put your own, whatever you want to get presented to the world.
00:22:56
Speaker
But the night before, during the banquet, you spoke some sauce on your shirt. Right, so you've just got this big saucy stain on your shirt. The entire tournament. And then when you get plenty of blood on, it's hard to save the world. But also, by the way, that shirt has disgusting. You'd want to change the clothes? See, speaking of food, can I just go for my time? No, no, I want you to answer this guy. I want you to.
00:23:16
Speaker
I totally agree. Imagine the smell. Imagine the honking smell. You're standing beside the guy who saved the world and you're like Jesus Christ. There are no shivers around it. I mean there's a rake. You just go there. You haven't packed any clothes. You haven't packed a till. Again, 20 cage. Probably packed a couple of tilts in the suitcases. Smartest man of all combat. One for everyone.
00:23:40
Speaker
But sorry, can I just go back to, speaking of both food and disgusting for a second here, see the scene where Sonya's nemesis, as it were, his eating scene. Why did that food look so disgusting? I kept looking at it and I kept thinking, is that fake meat or is it real meat? I was trying to figure out what meat it was supposed to be. I know it was supposed to be like chicken or turkey or something but I don't think
00:24:08
Speaker
He was under control! Because it looked so rubbery and greasy and he was biting into it and I thought alright okay he's not supposed to be eating that if that makes sense you know he's pretending to eat but then bits come off it and I'm like no he's clearly taking bites off of it. What is that? What me is that? It just looked disgusting.
00:24:30
Speaker
Do I meant to add on that? It was me, isn't it? This entire place seemed like a nightmare, honestly. So we've established no sinks or really any of it in water. Everyone's wearing the one pair of clothes. One pair of pants. Yep, one pair of pants. They happen to do the thing where we swap it round direction every day. And then the food's all disgusting as well. Like, this seemed like a nightmare. And also, you know, the whole mortal combat side. I'd be happy to die at that point.
00:24:54
Speaker
I mean, it's like, is a Russian roulette for shitting yourself? I know we joke about it when we go and all we do, but it's like, this is the true Mortal Kombat. Don't eat the pink meat and don't shit yourself. It's my room, it's the tournament, I just can't make it out because I'm too busy throwing up. You can have my soul. I mean, would he even take your soul at that point or would he just be like, nah, you're good.
00:25:20
Speaker
I don't want that shitty soul. It deters bears and soul takers. Speaking of shitty things, will we talk about the choreography?
Fight Scene Critique
00:25:30
Speaker
Yes, let's talk about the choreography. Yeah, you brought up something very interesting so over to you. This film
00:25:38
Speaker
has pretty shitty choreography I guess is the analysis here. There's so many fight scenes in this film that the choreography being fine is terrible. You know what I mean? It's okay choreography and that makes it bad. It is difficult to criticise it too much because it's the 90s and I feel like it's kind of a
00:25:53
Speaker
a couple of moments in history after the 90s like obviously the growth of USC and then I guess the raid films that are becoming more mainstream but you have maybe like Daredevil I guess as well. Those kind of like things where it's like these TV students' films having these ridiculous fight scenes and they bring up USC then that
00:26:09
Speaker
brought like a more realistic fighting to the public as well. So it's kind of hard to critique films in the 80s with a bad choreography. But just to sum it up, there was a point near the end of the film where Princess Katana is talking about what the King's going to fight in the Tower. And she goes, oh you have three fights? And I'm sitting like, oh my god, I can't watch another three fights. And then I realised it was a metaphor. I was like, oh my god, thank god.
00:26:29
Speaker
I can't deal with three more fight scenes in this movie because I don't think any of them were inherently bad but they were so forgettable and really the only one that sticks out in my head at all was the Johnny Cage scoping fight because at least that had environments that they used. The environments in this one were very boring, that gives mention to me.
00:26:47
Speaker
joking the fighting game earlier but the other thing I think made it quite boring is none of the fights had like objectives so I guess what I mean by that is you can either every fight scene in a good movie will have an objective whether that is when the fight would kill the person whether that's the person is injured so they're going to go after the injury whether it's the good guy's injuries they're going to protect themselves it could be something totally different like one character has to get to a certain location by time like I'm thinking of like Captain America Winter Soldier fight in that film where he's trying to turn off a button in a fight at the same time
00:27:15
Speaker
You know, those kind of things, every fight in this was two people standing across from each other. They punch a lot, they kick a lot, and then someone wins. And that was the entirety of this film. And again, that's fine for one or two fights. But see when it was like, there were so many fight scenes in this film that I just gave up on it. I was so tuned out by the end. What did you think of the choreography?
00:27:31
Speaker
I wouldn't even say it was serviceable. As she said, it was okay. You know that way where it's like, okay, we need a punch in this scene. They gave a punch. Oh, we need a kick in this scene. They gave a kick. But it wasn't anything that I would go running back to anyone and be like, oh my God, did you see that fight scene? Or, oh, did you see this kick or whatever?
00:27:52
Speaker
It's definitely very underwhelming, especially for a Mortal Kombat film, and I was saying this to you as well before we started recording, but I checked out, just out of curiosity, a little bit of the 2021 film of Mortal Kombat, and I was so shocked. It's like night and day, obviously the difference between the choreography and that film versus the 1995 one. It's
00:28:17
Speaker
absolutely surreal how different it is and I know it's because again it's a 90s video game film, it's a film that people probably thought okay let's get a quick buck out of this and everything but it's weird as well considering that there's so many references and kind of in-jokes and things like that
00:28:36
Speaker
for the film itself but then to drop the ball when it came to the action because you're completely right if you look at films like The Raid where let's face it the story's not great it's pretty average all things considered but it's one of the best action films of all time and the reason behind that is because of just the
00:28:55
Speaker
how amazing the action is. The choreography is fantastic, it never keeps you bored if that makes sense, it never leaves you bored, it always keeps you entertained, it keeps you engaged. Whereas as you said with this, it just ploddes along.
00:29:12
Speaker
And I mean, there's some very nonsensical moments, not even the ball punching of a demon prince, you know, that's just typical 90s comedy, quote unquote. But I mean, there was even a scene where Sonya, this is one we have in Broadway actually, she finishes her fight and she snaps a guy's neck with
00:29:30
Speaker
her calves? Yeah, yeah, I have to talk about this too. Oh no, Action Movie's tropes. It was when I actually brought this up because it's one of my favourite tropes is that you always have to kill someone with your thighs. And she is upside down choking this guy with her ankles. There is no leverage on this at all. And he could have just walked away. He willingly went down for that, man. And then yeah, he obviously would get the 90s one-liner. So he goes, oh, give me a break. She goes, okay. And snaps his neck.
00:30:00
Speaker
You know, it's weird how nowadays you would call that kind of character a psychopath, but in the 90s they were a hero. Was this getting to P.S. Bros and James Bond territory? No, pretty much. Yeah, yeah, he's doing it for the greater good. Don't mind the hundreds of bodies that are just dead behind him. Going back to the action though, it is okay. And this is the danger, and I don't know how you feel about this, but I feel as if this is a danger with ensemble films.
00:30:28
Speaker
Especially with a film like Mortal Kombat, where you've got such a wide range of different characters and you're trying to get quite a few of them in. Like, don't get me wrong, Sub-Zero and Scorpion, let's face it, and Reptile technically, all three of them are just like a palette swap and they don't really speak that much.
00:30:47
Speaker
at least in this film, but as you said you've got Princess Katana, you've got Shang Tsung, you've got Lucan, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, you've got quite a few others as well, you know, you've got a lot of people there. That is a lot to pack into a film that is
00:31:03
Speaker
I think I now are 40 and being generous here because it felt longer at times but yeah it's quite a dangerous thing to do especially for that time because as I said this was the relative early days of video game films and you know for the Mario Bros film you had Mario, Luigi, Bowser and Technically you had Toad as well and Peach and whatever but Yoshi yeah well a dinosaur called Yoshi come on now
00:31:30
Speaker
Come on. Canonically Yoshi. Canonically. Canonised Yoshi. Punished Yoshi, if you will.
00:31:41
Speaker
but yeah then you had Street Fighter which did exactly the same thing. It's like oh look at all these characters. It's you know that running joke where you go to a restaurant and then the waiter's like oh do you want salt and pepper or like cheese or whatever and they keep piling it on and you're like no no that's enough that's enough I said it's enough but they just keep going. That's what it feels like and I know obviously the film has a lot of problems but you feel as if that is one of the major problems that there's just too many kind
00:32:10
Speaker
characters in this. I don't really know if I'm honest because I'm trying to think if I'm watching it as not a fan. So like does it matter that's you know you've got Scorpion and Sub-Zero and Vectile and stuff. I guess the question is what would the film look like without them? So would they have just had as many fight scenes before
00:32:25
Speaker
with less characters, you know, because I feel like they didn't really explore any of the characters anyway. So on the one hand, I'd actually do think it's an interesting flaw with all these films. I think that was quite an interesting point about trying to get these ensemble of characters into like a linear narrative, which is quite a fun, interesting take. But I don't think having three main characters in three main villains is a crazy overload for a film.
00:32:45
Speaker
know, X-Men got away with it, so I don't know. I feel like there's definitely a way of doing it. It's just this film, wasn't it? It's definitely not the worst example I've seen of like an ensemble film, but yeah, completely right though. It doesn't deep dive into the characters, and obviously, especially in the 90s, I wasn't expecting like a deep dive into why Lou Kang's bedrooms are like green.
00:33:09
Speaker
And those were the things that he owned and that bedroom was like two shoes, a bike on the wall, or a single eight kilogram dumbbell. It really blew my mind. Oh, and a dartboard on the floor. What a weird, weird charm.
00:33:21
Speaker
Oh yeah, in these grandad's weird Western Union message, it was like, your brother's dead, come home. And that was it. You thought, wow, they rowed and beat around the bush there, didn't they? It was like, your brother's dead, come home.
Video Game Movie Debate
00:33:36
Speaker
See, in hindsight, because obviously we are living in the year 2023, as we record this, we have the
00:33:43
Speaker
beauty of hindsight would you say this is the worst if not one of the worst video game films you've seen or do you think it's not as bad as people make it out to be? It's a difficult one because I guess it's what's your definition of worst so it's probably one of the most boring ones I think we've watched but then like you said it sticks pretty well to the films and people quite enjoy that and
00:34:05
Speaker
it's difficult to say you know because on the other hand you could see people say things like oh this is mario brothers movie this is the worst video game adaption and i can see the argument because it's nothing like the games but i do think the film's okay in the sense of it would be if it wasn't called the mario brothers movie it would have been an average film
00:34:21
Speaker
So I don't really know. I don't have an answer. Because it's definitely one I'm probably not gonna watch again. You know, I'm not excited to look back to watch it, but then its objective was to make a film, sell a lot of film stuff, help the games by being like a video game and it probably achieved that. If you listen to all the nostalgia about it, so it probably did its job. So I don't know. Where does your art lie on that? I guess the same question goes back to you. Where do you think it kind of ranked?
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's one that I have to say because I've not got as much nostalgia for the Mortal Kombat franchise that I wouldn't go and rush back and watch this film. You know that way when you see a really good, bad film, you think, oh, I've got to watch this again. But for this one, yeah, it's bad. It's got some
00:35:00
Speaker
Funny moments, funny one liners, you've got that scene with Johnny Cage where he throws the autograph down the scorpion after he slices his head open. Very brutal. But it's Mortal Kombat. But I wouldn't say it's the worst. Is he going back and rewatching it? It's definitely not one of the best by any means of video game adaptations, but what I was surprised at was how much they took from the games, which I was really shocked by that because I kept thinking to myself,
00:35:29
Speaker
how did they get so much in yet somehow stay so faithful for the most part because obviously there's some liberties that have been taken and such but for the most part they did a good job for what they had at the time and so you know honestly i think they did a fantastic job with what they were given
00:35:47
Speaker
but at the same time yeah it's not one I would go back and watch. What I will say though is one thing I did notice and I don't know if you noticed this as well was how I suppose cavalier they were with the
The Iconic Theme Music
00:36:01
Speaker
theme song. This made me laugh because it's very much that James Bond thing of like when you know something's going right you just drop the theme but they did that in this film like four times because that theme is so good.
00:36:10
Speaker
They were all over the film of that theme song. Because it's something you don't really see especially nowadays as much with video game films. They don't have an interest in putting in the video game music. Maybe they do it as like a mix. They mix it in with
00:36:32
Speaker
they are soundtrack almost but that's really all they do. They don't put in the theme song right away but with this one, they threw it in at the beginning which i was really surprised that it's just getting yelled at in Mortal Kombat and they just kept using it whenever the good guys fought the bad guys and then
00:36:52
Speaker
they did that thing at the very end of course with the sequel baited, but the only difference between this sequel baiting and the Mario Bros one was that they actually did get a sequel, and it somehow was even worse apparently, because I don't even know if
00:37:07
Speaker
Mortal Kombat fans really like the sequel. I've heard they hate that but somehow don't mind this one. So what a reputation this film has but on that note before we finish up is there any final point you want to bring up for this? I think I'll say what I say a lot of times we talk about bad movies but this film is best enjoyed in a group and not on your own because I feel like we watched this. The reason I can't remember in film was because we probably spoke over all the boarding bits
00:37:35
Speaker
I just yelled Mortal Kombat. Yeah, I didn't say we were speaking sense, but... When do we ever speak sense? Not commentary. But yeah, no, not a fan for this one. If you're going to watch it, watch it, it would be good for me to have a laugh, I guess. On that note, Gregacy, thank you so much for welcoming in the fourth season of Chatsunami. It's a pleasure to have been here and congratulations on reaching season four. I can't wait to listen to the rest of it. Yeah, now you've only got 49 more episodes to go.
00:38:04
Speaker
So next week is Mortal Kombat Annihilation. I might say busy, forever. You're not even sugarcoating that. So if you want to listen to more of our episodes, you can catch us over on our website, pottery.com, forward slash Chatsunami, as well as Spotify, iTunes and all good podcast apps. Just look for the Ray Panda under the name Chatsunami.
00:38:29
Speaker
and we'll see you there. I also want to give a huge shout out to our Pandalorian patrons, Robotic Battle Toaster and Sonya. Sonya especially, thank you so much for recommending this topic and if you want to hear Craigie C and I's commentary tracks, not on
00:38:44
Speaker
That's a bit unfortunately but on other forums such as the Digimon forum and Japanese Spiderman it was a fun time you can catch us on patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami but until then stay safe stay awesome and most importantly
00:39:11
Speaker
Welcome to Chatanami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and journal interests. Previously on Chatanami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises.
00:39:30
Speaker
Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Beyblade series. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:39:54
Speaker
Join me, Slade, and my two co-hosts, Joey and Tim, over at the Video Game Club, where once every two weeks we review a video game, not too dissimilar to a book club. Podcast. You can find us at the Video Game Club on all good podcast providers and some sketchy ones as well.
00:40:18
Speaker
This episode is sponsored by Zencaster. If you're a podcaster that records remotely like me, then you'll know how challenging it can be to create the podcast you've always wanted. That's where Zencaster comes in. Before I met Zencaster, I was put a naive podcaster, recording on low-quality, one-track audio waves.
00:40:53
Speaker
I want you to have the same easy experience I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story.