Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Mortal Kombat (1995), Part 2

In this classic Weirdhouse Cinema two-parter, Rob and Joe enter the arena to discuss the 1995 video game adaptation “Mortal Kombat,” directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and featuring show favorite Christopher Lambert as Lord Rayden. (originally published 8/16/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,
and today we have, as promised, Mortal Kombat Part 2.
This is not concerning Mortal Kombat 2 Annihilation, though we
did recently do that one on Weird House. No, this
is the second part of our look at 1995's Mortal Kombat. So,
please enjoy. We just reran the first part of this

(00:26):
on Monday. This one originally published 8-16-2024. Enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
And this is Joe McCormick. And we're back with part
two of our discussion of the 1995 supernatural martial arts
movie Mortal Kombat, adapted from the extremely popular, extremely violent
video game franchise. Now, we did not intend for our
discussion of this movie to end up spanning two separate episodes,

(01:09):
but the breakup, I think, proved inevitable due to time constraints,
especially because this movie loomed so large when we were kids,
and thus we had a lot to say about it
from personal recollection. I think we spent a lot of
the last episode just conveying our emotions about Mortal Kombat
from the time of childhood.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
That's right. I mean, it was almost kind of... an
identity you chose for yourself by being a Mortal Kombat fan.
You know, it's not to say you couldn't also be
a Street Fighter fan. Those games were great too. But yeah,
there was something about the Mortal Kombat aesthetic, the music,
certainly the fact that its violence kind of got under

(01:50):
the skin of many of the parental units. You know,
it felt a little rebellious as well.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah. You know, now that you compare it to the
other big fighting franchise of the time, I have to say,
in retrospect, I think Street Fighter 2 is a better
game than whatever the equivalent Mortal Kombat 2 is. But
ignoring the underlying mechanics, Mortal Kombat just had such an
interesting skin stretched over it when you were a child
in the 90s. It seemed more dangerous and more fascinating

(02:18):
for that reason.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, and I think it was fed by a lot
of the more violent films. I mean, not all of
them were super violent. Big Trouble in Little China is
not grotesquely violent. But, you know, there are aspects of
all these different franchises kind of mixed in to Mortal
Kombat to give it its overall flavor.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah. Now, I thought we should do a brief refresher
of the basics from part one before we get into
the plot today. So Mortal Kombat began, for those who
don't know, as a series of one-on-one side view fighting
games for arcades and home consoles in the early 1990s.
And these games were extremely popular. They distinguish themselves, I think,

(02:59):
with a mix of dark fantasy martial arts setting, fast
paced action and hyper violence. And as you were just saying, Rob,
the violence in particular was was like a cultural touch point.
There was a backlash, a kind of moral panic among
many adults who were distressed to watch their kids carefully
memorizing the button combination that you would have to enter

(03:21):
to rip somebody's backbone out at the end of a match.
And that game franchise has continued up until today, but
the first movie was released in 1995, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson,
who also made movies like Event Horizon and the early
Resident Evil films. The Mortal Kombat movie mostly follows the

(03:42):
originally pretty thin plot of the game, which concerns a
magical martial arts tournament ruled over by an evil sorcerer
named Shang Tsung. in which human fighters with names like
Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage must win in
order to defend humankind and Earth from an interdimensional menace,

(04:02):
a sort of evil emperor from a place called Outworld,
which is like another dimension. The movie fleshes out this
plot with some clumsy yet enjoyable character development. And also,
I don't think I really mentioned this much last time,
but I was thinking in between recording these two episodes
that about how the film significantly modifies and specifically lightens

(04:25):
the tone established by the early video games. I think
later games in the series had more irony. They wore
the irony more outwardly, and they had more obvious tongue-in-cheek elements.
But if you go back to this first game, it
is grim, doomy, and hardcore. Would you agree with that, Rob?

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, I would agree with that, especially the first one.
But even the second one, the second one had the
friendships in there, which were goofy. And I think, you know,
kind of a fun jab at all of the haters
based on the violence. But still... Wait, hold on.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
You should explain what the friendships are for people who
don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
All right. So, you know, you beat your opponent and
then you get the directive, finish him. And if you
know the codes, you can do a fatality. But you
can also, if the parameters are met, do a friendship,
which instead of like brutally decapitating your opponent, does something like,
you know, give them a cupcake. I don't know. That's
not one of them. Balloon. Shang Tsung would do one

(05:24):
where he makes a rainbow with his hands, I think.
So it's something nice. So that's pretty tongue-in-cheek. But for
the most part, like the rest of the vibe, the music,
the look of Mortal Kombat 2 is very, very doomy.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yes. So the movie has a decidedly more PG or
PG-13 quality. And while the movie is still very violent
and has some scary fantasy elements, you know, it's got
your your four armed outworld demon king. It's got vacuuming
out people's souls and stuff. It definitely adds more of
a spirit of humor and optimistic adventure in contrast to

(06:01):
the game's spirit of fatalistic death sport. So it's more
kind of, ha ha, it's time to save the world
rather than, you know, custom dictates that I now dismantle
your body. And this lightening of the tone relative to
the early games is absolutely present in the script. But
I think it shows up especially in the performance of

(06:22):
Christophe Lambert as the thunder god Raiden, who is, I
think it's fair to say, a serious and even austere
figure in the games. Is that right, Robb?

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, yeah, especially in some of the more recent games,
overly serious. Like, I think, maybe not intentionally laughably serious,
but there are a lot of memes about the recent
games and Raiden saying things like, I must consult the
Elder Gods. You know, he's very serious.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
But in the movie, it's completely different. Christoph Lambert as
Raiden is like if a 2D 90s sitcom character were
played by Peter Lorre and yet still had catchphrases like,
I don't think so. He's about two seconds away from
saying Earth rules, outworld drools for much of the film.
But anyway, as I mentioned last time, this was my

(07:13):
nine-year-old self's idea of a really good movie. I saw
Mortal Kombat in the theaters. Of course, I played the
early games. I bought the VHS tape and I watched
it a bazillion times at home. I had the original
motion picture soundtrack on CD. I listened to it a lot.
I read the liner notes and the jewel case and

(07:33):
all that. We devoted a significant chunk of the last
episode just to talking about the CD, the soundtrack CD
and the songs on it, which were a strange mix, right?
It had metal, industrial, had these techno pump-up tracks with
a lot of audio samples from the video game, and
then ambient classics like Halcyon plus On and On by Orbital.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, it's a weird one to revisit because, you know,
you go back, you listen to it, and you're like, yeah,
this is a great track. I like this. Oh, I
love this one. And then it's like, I don't like
this one at all. But it's a fun experience.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
So in the last episode, we talked about the cultural
context from which this movie emerged. We talked about the connections,
especially the cast, and some stuff about the music and
the special effects. But we ran out of time before
we could start getting into the plot. And today we're
back to do the full plot breakdown. However, please bear

(08:27):
with us because we now made these plot notes like
a week ago. They're not as fresh in our minds
as they were back then. So we may confuse ourselves
here and there. We're going to do our best.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
But, you know, in the spirit of the Olympics having
just finished, I want to open up the spirit of
competition here. We normally discourage gambling on this podcast. But
for this one time, We're going to allow you, if
you would like, please feel free to place your bets
on who is going to win the Mortal Kombat tournament
depicted in this movie. You may have forgotten how it

(08:58):
turns out, or maybe you haven't seen it before. So,
you know, gamble responsibly. Who's your money on, Joe?

Speaker 3 (09:04):
It would be wild if they don't let Kano win.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Kano, I think he has a lot of strengths coming
into this tournament, you know. He's got a knife. He's
got a weapon.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
They let him bring weapons to matches where his opponent
is unarmed.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
That seems unfair. He has the laser eye. I'm not
sure if it does lasers in this film or not. No.
But it's metal, too, so he's got potential defense there.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
You know, I feel like I'd be foolish not to
put my money behind Goro. He's the reigning champ, and
he has extra arms. And can also shoot fireballs.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
It is hard to describe the disappointment you're going to
feel in the Goro's got nards scene. Yeah. So, oh,
before the plot even begins, one thing we got to address,
this came up in part one, is how relentlessly this
movie uses techno pump-up music to get your blood going.
It is very strong with the hype tracks on the

(10:04):
soundtrack to keep the momentum up and keep you feeling
good and ready for the next scene.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, so that Mortal Kombat theme song by the Immortals,
one of the main things that you will remember from
this movie, if you haven't seen it in decades, they
start playing it Before the opening credits even roll, like
you just all you see are the studio logos loading
up and you're already hit with Mortal Kombat. And you're

(10:31):
off to the races.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
But also this techno track, it as we were saying,
it samples sounds from the video game. So like one
of the snare triggers and the beat. is the, the
fight grunt from the game where somebody is going, it's
the sound they make in the game when they get
punched in the face.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
But it's using that as the, it's an infectious track,
strong choice. Uh, so the movie opens with a dream sequence.
We pull up on a shot of a temple in
Thailand and, I think this is the Wat Phras Si
Sanphet Temple. I hope I'm pronouncing that close to right.

(11:10):
It is actually, in reality, a beautiful location. Unfortunately, the
opening shot that features this beautiful location looks terrible because
they're like, I don't know exactly what the technique is here,
but they're compositing in a dark, gloomy background that just
does not match the foreground at all.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
I've actually been to this location. This is in Ayutthaya.
And I distinctly remember visiting here many, many years ago.
The heat was otherworldly. And I had just consumed a
Thai Red Bull, which at the time, I don't know,
it was very hot as well. But I think it
had a different chemical composition. It seemed way stronger than

(11:54):
any Red Bull I've ever had anywhere else. But it
made for a very memorable experience. And the grounds are
absolutely beautiful in real life.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
I bet that's a techno pump-up track of its own. Yeah.
But that gets your BPMs too. But so yeah, we
got this ominous dark sky in the background that just
doesn't really match the temples in the foreground. It looks
color keyed in or something. Storm clouds are swirling and
there are these deep droning chants playing in the soundtrack.

(12:21):
And then we zoom in on a pair of men
who face off against one another in the courtyard of
this temple. One is a young man wearing simple clothing.
He's dressed like he might be a monk dressed. And
he looks frightened and in over his head. And the
other actor here is Kirihiro Yuki Tagawa as our villain
Shang Tsung, the evil sorcerer. In this shot, he looks

(12:44):
about nine feet tall compared to the young man. He's
just gigantic. I don't know if he's actually all that
huge of an actor, but I don't know. They use
angles to make him look very imposing. He is dressed
in a ridiculous outfit for hand-to-hand combat. We brought this
up in the last episode, but he's wearing like a
heavy calf-length black leather coat. So he's, you know, going

(13:07):
to do some roundhouse kicks to defeat Earthrealm, but he
is just wrapped in 20 pounds of loose leather.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah, yeah. This is very much rock star Shang Tsung
right here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
So the fight begins between these two, and it is
not much of a contest. Shang Tsung annihilates this poor guy.
He beats him up, breaks his bones. At one point,
he hits him with a brutal backhand. So, you know,
it's a kind of move that suggests he's treating him
with contempt, not even treating him as a worthy opponent.
Just give him the backhand. And then finally, he stomps

(13:39):
on this guy's back and breaks his spine. After this,
Shang Tsung holds the young man up and then looks
straight into the camera and And he says, your brother's
soul is mine. You will be next. And then Shang
Tsung's face turns into a putrid CGI skeleton, and we
speed zoom into his eye hole.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yes. Yeah, there's some ambitious eye action in this movie
concerning the taking of souls.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah. But he's saying, your brother's soul is mine. You
will be next. Who is you? Well, it is Liu Kang.
So Liu Kang, we meet him next. He sits back.
straight up in bed. He's having another nightmare, and he
is in the wildest bedroom. It is just green, green, green, green,
like I don't know what to compare it to.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah, like Listerine or Really Bad Absinthe, you know? It's
like that level, and it's just completely saturated in it.
It's not like you have just some green highlights here
and there. I'm just talking like absolutely green.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
It's like somebody heard us gushing about how much we
love Mario Bava lights. And then they tried to do
Bava without understanding Bava. So it's not, it's not these
like interesting sort of zones of color like Bava uses.
It's just green floor to ceiling, uh, in a way
that I don't know. It, it doesn't work the way

(15:02):
Bava does.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
I've read criticism. In fact, I think I've read mostly
criticism of Glenn Danzig's, um, veronica movie as being baba
inspired but having like really poor use of gels um
and and i have to say as boring and as
cheap as that movie is uh i don't think he
gave us anything like this green room uh it is
it's just so like single note it's just so overbearingly

(15:26):
green um but i do also want to give anderson
credit because you also see some very green sequences very
green scenes uh very green lighting in event horizon But
it's a lot more balanced by that point. It's a
lot more nuanced. It doesn't feel like this. It doesn't
feel like you're in a green aquarium full of jello.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
So here, this is Liu Kang played by the actor
and martial artist Robin Xu. Again, Liu Kang sits up
in bed. He's having this nightmare. It's I don't know.
Did you get the impression he's having this nightmare a
lot or is this the first time?

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Oh, it has to be a lot.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
It's a recurring dream.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Well, one would think. But then on the other hand,
there there is the idea that he is being dream
delivered actual information. Right. So this is something we're about
to find out. This is something that has happened.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah. So he's he's sweaty, you know, from having a
bad dream. He gets up out of his bed. He
goes to his dresser. which this is of no significance
to anyone else, but he has a dresser that looks
almost exactly like a dresser that I have in my house.
We've got the same piece of furniture, Liu Kang and I.
And he picks up off the dresser a Western Union telegram,

(16:39):
which says, Liu Kang, brother dead, return home, grandfather, very terse.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, I mean, you pay by the word or the letter, right?
So you could keep it short.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
So we don't learn much about Liu Kang in this
first scene where we meet him, except that he is
very handsome and jacked and he has bad dreams. Right.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
And he might be more jacked for having those bad dreams. Like,
they just keep you tight, you know? Yeah. Waking up
in a sweat all the time, burning calories.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes. So next, what we cut to is a Chiron
telling us that we are in Hong Kong and we
open in some kind of dance club. The bass is
thumping hard. Here we're going to meet Sonya Blade and
her partner Jax. And they are wearing special forces outfits
and Kevlar. They're carrying huge shotguns that have flashlights fixed

(17:27):
over the barrels. And they're running down this corridor full
of television screens out onto the dance floor, spitting out
lines in tactical speak. So Sonya is saying stuff like,
let's go 60 seconds to target acquisition. Jax, is the
perimeter secure? And I'm like, I was just thinking, in
what way could this location be secure? It's like a

(17:48):
club full of hundreds of people dancing in the dark
with strobe lights, and they're still dancing. What does secure mean?

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, some of them kind of attack them in kind
of a mosh pity way, but most are not. Most
seem to just be ravers and or metal enthusiasts. Yeah,
I have so many questions about this ridiculous sequence. Like,
what exactly is their jurisdiction in Hong Kong in the
mid-90s at this club? What safety measures are in place

(18:15):
concerning these club goers, if any? Indeed, what does it
mean for this place to be secure? None of this
makes sense.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, that's right. And this is definitely one of the
most unintentionally funny scenes in the movie coming right near
the beginning. Just the dialogue is hilarious, too. There's an
exchange where Jax is like, the perimeter is locked. And
Sonya says, it better be. I want Kano locked. And
he says, trust me, Sonya. And she says, I trust

(18:45):
one person on this planet, Jax. You're talking to her.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
So tough. Just so tough.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Tough. So they move through the crowd and Sonya is
just whacking randos with her gun. Again, these are not
criminals or like fighters or anything. They're just people dancing.
She's just like beating them with a gun. Yeah. Anyway,
here's where we meet another villain of the movie, Kano.
Oh boy, Kano. He's up in some kind of office

(19:12):
looking down over the dance floor, and he's not alone.
He is with Shang Tsung, who we saw from The Dream.
But Shang Tsung is here wearing the same clothes, I think.
The same overcoat he wore in The Dream and all that.
And he's sitting behind a desk, and Kano's looking out
over the dancers, and they're plotting together. Kano says, she's here,

(19:34):
right on time. He's really playing up the accent. He says,
I love punctuality in a woman. Don't you, Mr. Shang Tsung?
And then Kano turns his head so we see his
metal faceplate with the red Terminator eye. This is never
explained in the movie. I don't think they say anything

(19:57):
about it, do they? They just show it.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's no explanation. I honestly can't even remember
the exact explanation in the game. Maybe Sonya took his
eye out or something in a fight. I'm not sure.
Is he a cyborg? Is it just a thing that
clashes over his head?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
I don't know. Yeah. So we learn from this scene
that Shang Tsung is using the criminal gang sort of
ganglord Kano to lure Sonya Blade to his island for
a tournament. And Shang Tsung is adamant she must be
at the tournament. It is of utmost importance. But they

(20:31):
don't explain why. Why her? Why does she need to
be there? Don't know. But we learn that Kano has
recently murdered her partner. I think they're saying like work partner,
not romantic partner.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Okay, so some sort of pre-Jax partner.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yes, her work partner. And now Kano is the bait
that will bring her to the island.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Because I think basically in the games, it's like Sonya
is there after Kano. Kano is there because this is
just the kind of scene that guys like Kano pop
up in. And that's all there is to it.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
He just wants to win the tournament and make the
tournament even worse.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Okay, we got to meet our next good human fighter character,
and that is Johnny Cage. So this scene begins with
a kind of fake out. We see the actor, Lyndon Ashby,
walk into, I don't know, like a big airplane hangar
type building. And these big doors open up and let
in the light from L.A. outside. And we see him

(21:32):
walk in. He's very cool. He's dressed in a suit,
I think. And he's got sunglasses on. Goes into the
big empty hangar. And there is, what do you call
this vibe? It's like 80s and 90s movies that have
guys in double-breasted suits that are hand-to-hand martial arts fighters.
And they have weapons. And they're standing around a limo

(21:52):
with a briefcase.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, I don't know what you call this. But yeah,
you're sort of stereotypical suited bodyguards, yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Hugo Bosskata. Yeah. So you've got these these guys like
they stand there in a row and the one that's
got like an extendable baton. Another one's got a shock
stick and so forth. And this guy walks up to
the fight and he says his catchphrase. He says, let's dance.
And the way he kind of whispers it makes me think, oh,
they're going for a bit of a Steven Seagal thing there,

(22:24):
aren't they? With the whisper voice.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
So he beats all these guys up, but then he's
facing off against the last one still standing. He kicks
him and then the guy just stands there staring at him.
And he says to the guy with exasperation, this is
the part where you fall down. And so then the
guy kind of launches himself onto the floor. Lyndon Ashby
turns around and says, where do you get these guys?

(22:47):
So it turns out it was all a fake out.
They are shooting a movie scene. This was not a
real fight. And Johnny Cage is, we learn, a martial
arts movie star like Jean-Claude Van Damme. But the tabloids
are saying he's a fake, he's a phony, he could
not really kung fu his way out of a paper bag.
And these rumors are apparently damaging his career. Now, this

(23:12):
raises a question. I didn't research this before we came in,
but has there ever been a major martial arts movie
star whose career was.
Severely hurt by allegations that they couldn't really fight in
the real world. There are allegations like that about certain
movie stars, but I feel like they tend to be

(23:33):
already washed up by the time that is a major
meme about them.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, I don't know. It's always a weird... I always
find it kind of strange when we get into, not
we as in you and me, but we as a
culture or subcultures get into conversations about like, If a
particular actor is tough enough or a musician is tough enough,
you know, sometimes based on them, like losing legit fights

(23:58):
or getting punched out or, you know, signing up for
a boxing or an MMA thing.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Why does that matter? They're actors, they're performers.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
I mean, the really damaging things you sometimes hear about
action stars are about them being, of course, unprofessional in
one way or another or unsafe when it comes to,
you know, fight choreography and so forth. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah. Being like aggressive with with stunt stunt workers and
stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah. I mean, we can all if you if you
follow any kind of combat sports, you can name the
individuals that are legit tough and can legit win fights.
You don't necessarily want to see them starring in their
own picture. There are different skill sets involved. Everyone can
do their own thing. Sometimes those skills line up and
you have somebody who can do both. But generally, I'm

(24:40):
happy to keep them in two different buckets.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
I guess I just feel like if I watch a
martial arts movie and the, the main character is great
and I find out the actor who portrayed them is
not actually a fighter in real life, that has no
effect on my, like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah. But I don't get it. They're kind of leaning
into some sort of like a kayfabe idea here, I guess. So,
all right, we're to believe that Johnny Cage has some,
some issues with how he's being perceived and it would
be great if he could, um, improve how the public
perceives him in regards to real fights. So why not
join a super deadly, super secret death elimination tournament? Sounds

(25:22):
like a great career move.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Exactly. So he meets up on the movie set with
an old teacher of his, a guy named Master Boyd.
Who is the actor playing this guy?

Speaker 1 (25:32):
This is Peter Jason, who was in a bunch of
John Carpenter films and tons of other films. Very recognizable
character actor.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
He's got long hair and a beard. He's almost got
kind of a Jeff Bridges duty vibe in the scene,
except he's supposed to be a great martial arts teacher.
And he informs Johnny that there is a way for
him to restore his credibility to put these rumors to rest. Rob,
it's exactly as you were saying. There is a once
in a generation fight to the death martial arts tournament

(25:59):
called Mortal Kombat being held in secret on an island
off Hong Kong. And so his teacher says, get on
a boat at a specific time and place. go to
the tournament, win it, and the press will stop saying
you're a fraud. This has got to be one of
the worst PR plans I've ever heard of.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, yeah. In fact, I'm kind of surprised nobody has,
maybe somebody has done this up as a complete comedy.
This would, I think, be a great theme for a flick.
Have a more comedically problematic martial arts actor, and then
they do this. They enter a a super secret single

(26:39):
elimination death tournament in order to fix their PR problem. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh, dude, actually, no, here it's coming to my mind now.
So it's like written by Armando Iannucci, but it's about
the real Steven Seagal going to a Mortal Kombat type tournament.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Because what's the best case scenario here? He returns having
murdered multiple people. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Oh, and then another funny thing is that after Johnny
Cage leaves, there's nobody around. We just see Master Boyd
walking around in this airplane hangar and then he just
morphs into Shang Tsung himself. So it wasn't even Master Boyd.
He was never there. It was Shang Tsung.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
He's a trickster.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
OK, so the next scene, we're back to Liu Kang.
Here we have Liu Kang walking Arriving by riverboat at
a place that we're told is the Temple of Light, China. Again,
I think this is probably a Thai temple.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yes, yes. I'm almost certain this is a Thai temple.
And we're told it's a Chinese temple. And then we
have Christophe Lambert stroll in as a video game god
based on a Japanese thunder deity. So culturally, we're all
over the place here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
But when Liu Kang, so we got to get there
in a second. Liu Kang is greeted by an assembly
of monks in red robes, including his grandfather, who is
some kind of authority figure for this organization that the
movie calls the Order of Light. So I think the
backstory is that Liu Kang and his brother Chan were

(28:19):
trained in Kung Fu by the Order of Light, and
they were brought up to defend the realm of Earth
in the tournament of Mortal Kombat. So The lore of
the tournament and the lore of the movie is already
known to Liu Kang. He was brought up in it.
He was always taught this. But Liu Kang rejected and
ran away from his destiny and went to America. So

(28:41):
he became a skeptic. And now he believes the whole
premise is nonsense. So in his absence, his brother Chan
took his place as the designated heir to fight in
the tournament. And Chan fought in the last tournament. He
was killed in the fighting, and the monks found his
body on the grounds of the temple.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
And so that is why Liu Kang has received this
call to adventure, or I guess telegram to adventure. Hey,
you need to come back in. Come back into this underworld,
because only you can defeat this monstrous threat we're facing.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Yeah, we need you for one last mission. That was
a long time ago, General. So Liu Kang tells his
grandfather about the dream he had, and this is interpreted
as a sign. The dream means... that he is now
once again the chosen one to defend humankind at the
Tournament of Mortal Kombat. Liu Kang is skeptical of this
stuff about the dream and the magic. He says he

(29:36):
does want to represent the Order of Light at the tournament, but...
only because the man who killed his brother will be
there and he wants revenge. So for him at the beginning,
it's just a revenge story. Now here is where Christophe
Lambert comes in. We see an old man dressed in
tattered robes and a large straw hat that hides his face.
And as he wanders in through the temple grounds, the

(29:58):
monks bow in his presence. And the grandfather says to
Liu Kang that this is Lord Raiden, but Liu Kang's
not buying it. He says, get up, grandfather. This is
a simple beggar. But then Raiden sort of proves his
identity by flipping Liu Kang on his back and making
electricity shoot out of his eyeballs. We get some cute
dialogue here, like Liu Kang is mouthing off to Raiden

(30:21):
and the grandfather says, spare him, Lord Raiden. American life
has enfeebled his mind. Too much television.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
And then Raiden makes some cutting comments about Liu Kang's
personal failures. He says that, you know, you ran away
from the temple, not because you didn't believe it, but
because you couldn't accept responsibility for protecting Earth. And then
Liu Kang says to him, if you are Lord Raiden,
why did you let Chan die? Why didn't you protect him?
Raiden's comeback? Why didn't you? It's like nonsensical because Liu

(30:53):
Kang is not omnipotent and had no idea what was
going on.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, though I guess to Raiden's point, like, he isn't either, right?
I mean, he may see more and know more and
move around a lot easier than mortals. But, I mean,
he's not like a Judeo-Christian god or anything.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Limited great power god.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
Anyway, this whole scene ends with Liu Kang. He tells
off Raiden. He's like, I don't need you. And he
tells his grandfather that he's going to the tournament to
get revenge, whether he gets consent from them or not.
And then, once again, some really good hype music here
as we watch Liu Kang stride away from the temple.
There are rhythmic bells and heavy drums. And this part,

(31:38):
I felt really hyped up.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yes, yes. Good hype machine on this one.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Now, the next scene is another one of my favorites
in the movie. It is the scene of the boat
arriving at the dock in Hong Kong and then departing
for the tournament. So first we have Johnny Cage arriving
in a limo and he asks Liu Kang to carry
his luggage for him. Liu Kang takes one of his
suitcases and throws it in the water. And then we
get more of the kind of cutesy lines where Johnny

(32:05):
Cage is like, wow, good thing I didn't ask him
to park the car. But here Johnny Cage runs into
an old acquaintance named Art Lean. Remember in the last
episode we were talking about, I think there was a
piece of music called like arts theme or something.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Oh no, it was Goro versus Art.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yes. And so we were discussing how that's not the
word art. There's a character named Art. A character with
a quite unfortunate fate later in the film. So, you know,
they catch up. They've seen each other fight before. You know,
there's mutual respect there. But then they're interrupted when this
hilarious boat rolls in. It's like the boat that King

(32:48):
Arthur and Bedivere ride at the end of Monty Python
and the Holy Grail.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah. Yeah, my instant thought was that it looked like
a Hellraiser parade float. It's just got that much fake
smoke going on. It looks goofy. It's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Also, Sonya Blade and her partner Jax are here. We
learned that they were tipped off by one of Kano's
associates at the Hong Kong Techno Metal Club. She sees
Kano getting onto the boat, and she runs off through
the fog to get on the boat herself. And her
partner like yells at her, Sonya, don't get on that thing.

(33:29):
I would not advise anyone to get on that thing.
But anyway, you know, here's here on the boat is
where we finally assemble our three main heroes. Johnny Cage
for the first third of the movie is carrying like
eight different pieces of luggage. And he's so he's struggling
with all that stuff. And he has a head on
collision with Sonya. Sonia reacts by putting a pistol against

(33:51):
his chin and she demands to know where Kano is. Obviously,
Johnny Cage is not clued in. But this moment is
the beginning of a very prominent dynamic in the character
relations throughout the film, which is hate flirting. This is
where Johnny Cage and Sonia Blade will spend a lot
of time just kind of like insulting and taking shots

(34:14):
at each other and making 2d comments at each other
before their romantic subplot fully blossoms. So Sonia is, how
would you describe her? She is very on mission. She's like, uh,
she's like, doesn't have time to be nice to anybody.
She's like out of my way. I got to find Kano.

(34:35):
And so she ends up going below decks to look
for Kano and, And there runs into our wonderful sorcerer,
Shang Tsung. Johnny Cage and Liu Kang follow her down
to help her out, but she's very indignant. She does
not want their help. She does not need their help.
She did not ask for their help. And this is
one of the crucial features of her character that she

(34:57):
learns she must overcome in the end.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
It's very blue below decks, too. I want to add
that the blue gels were out in force. It's not
as over-the-top as that green bedroom of Liu Kang, though.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
There's a lot of blue going on in multiple places here.
I think it's blue once they get back up on
deck later also. So they're down below decks, and then
Shang Tsung invites in his two ninja warriors. He says,
these are Scorpion and Sub-Zero, the deadliest of enemies, but
slaves under my power.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
And this is an important point, though, because in the games,
and I think even by this point, certainly by 2
and 3, this was well-established, Scorpion and Sub-Zero have a
very intense dynamic where Scorpion is a vengeful revenant and Sub-Zero,
or at least there are different people who get the
name Sub-Zero, but the original Sub-Zero is the person who

(35:51):
killed Scorpion's family. And so it's actually pretty well established
in the lore again by this point, but this movie
just makes them be the miscellaneous demon bodyguards or demon
soldiers of Shang Tsung.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, it is weird that they're on the same team
in this movie. And I think they're trying to do
a quick one-sentence retcon of that by just saying, yeah,
they are enemies, but I've magically ensorcelled them.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and these are the two characters that are often,
especially in Scorpion's case, are generally on the box art
for the game. Maybe that kind of more developed with
later games. But yeah, these two are really the stars
of the franchise. And I think that I haven't seen
the latest Mortal Kombat film, but it's my understanding that
that is very much reflected in the picture and the

(36:40):
way that they cast these roles and the way they
present it.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Now, Rob, maybe you know more about the games than
me and can answer this. I have long interpreted the
popularity of characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile, and so forth
in these games to be a sort of efficiency or
cost-cutting move. because they are the same animation with just
different colors of the outer ninja wear. Like, the animation

(37:07):
could be exactly the same.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yes, that's exactly right, especially in these early games. You know,
they were doing motion capture. It was more than just
motion capture, though, because they were, I don't remember the
exact video game production terminology, but they're like filming actors
in actual costumes. But then they can swap the colors out.
And that way, you only have to have one actor
in there to do All of the ninjas. You may

(37:31):
get some alternate takes for different moves or different sort
of stances and certainly fatalities, but less work. You don't
have to completely start from scratch on your next character.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah, it seems like the same character sprite except blue
for Sub-Zero, yellow for Scorpion and green for Reptile.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
So it is kind of interesting that some of the
most iconic, most developed and fan favorite characters in the
game are the interchangeable ninjas, be it these male ninjas
or the female warriors we get in MK2 and beyond,
like Katana and, of course, Mileena. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
Okay, so Sub-Zero comes up to Sonya and he grabs
the end of her gun and freezes the barrel off.
So now Sonya, she doesn't have her weapons anymore. Scorpion,
he holds up his hand. And some kind of weird
CGI creature with a beak and a tongue pokes out
of his palm. This does tie into something in the games.

(38:28):
In the games, one of the special moves of Scorpion,
the character, is that he would throw a spear that's
attached to a rope that would hit you. And then
he could pull you over to him in a stunned
state and uppercut you or whatever. And he would say,
get over here. or maybe just come here in the game.
I think they say get over here in the movie.

(38:49):
But in the movie, they change that spear on a
rope into a living snake-like creature. That's a choice.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, this is definitely worth pointing out. Scorpion in the
games is generally depicted as having a traditional ninja weapon,
a kunai rope dart, and then often a ninja sword.
and I remember really digging the way they embellished the
weapon in this film back when it came out yeah
not a ninja weapon but a weird snake creature that

(39:16):
shoots out of scorpion's palm and climbs out of its
out of the slit in his palm I loved it
and I was often disappointed that they didn't incorporate that
into the games and make it canon but man upon
revisiting this film I have to say these CGI effects
do not hold up. It's a fun concept. And I
still enjoy all these scenes with Scorpion in them. He

(39:38):
has one of the best fights, if not the best
fight in the picture coming up. But this CGI did
not age well.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
I agree. It is not good. I think it's not
quite as bad as the reptile CGI, but it's bad.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Oh, the reptile CGI is the worst.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Okay, but here we're in the belly of the boat,
this weird creaky boat, and the ninjas are about to
kill our heroes. So what's going to happen? How are
they done for? No, they are saved by divine intervention.
Lord Raiden appears. Christophe Lambert, like, he shoots down into
the hold of the boat in some ball of energy form.

(40:14):
and then he zaps both of the ninjas into submission.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
And the CGI here is also horrible. Raiden's lightning powers
in the game were clearly inspired by the lightning character
in Big Trouble in Little China, and those effects, which are,
in Big Trouble in Little China, amazing. They look great, yeah.
They absolutely hold up today. I used to watch them
in slow motion when I was a kid. So in

(40:38):
this film, Raiden uses CGI bursts of blue and orange fire,
and it's just absolutely hideous.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
He says something like, your sideshow freaks attack my fighters
before the tournament? This is cheating! And Shang Tsung, he's
very smooth, and he just promises, oh, it won't happen again,
Lord Raiden. But he reminds Raiden that once they reach
the island, Raiden will have no power. So I think
the lore is that here Raiden is serving a kind

(41:06):
of referee role. Like, he can't fight in the tournament himself,
but he is allowed to intervene to keep things fair here.
according to the rules of the tournament endorsed by the emperor,
which include the provision that you can't have random supernatural
ninjas kill all the earth fighters before you even get
to the tournament. I don't know why the emperor endorses

(41:27):
these rules or thinks he needs to play fair. Do
you understand that?

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Um, no, especially what we know about the emperor and
come to know about him later. It's like, I don't
know why he's so lawful evil and all of this.
There just must be some like, He's playing by rules
set by other supernatural entities. He has to play by
the rules, exploit them, bend the rules where he can,
but he still has to make use of them to

(41:52):
conquer other realms.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah. So anyway, this early sneak attack by Shang Tsung
is averted, and our heroes sort of follow Raiden up
onto the surface of the boat to get a scene
with just a huge lore dump. We're going to get
a bunch of exposition.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, Cage has a whole bit here ranting about the
supernatural after the introduction of Sub-Zero and Scorpion. That reminds
me a lot of that wonderful line that we had
in the movie, The Illuminators, that we watched. The whole,
we've got robots, we've got cavemen, we've got kung fu.
What is this, some kind of comic book? And in this,
Cage is saying, we got a guy with things coming
out of his hands, we got another guy who freezes stuff,

(42:30):
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Exactly the same vibe. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Call back to a movie we've brought up several times
in today's episode. It reminds me of Jack Burton's line
in Big Trouble in Little China, when he's like, we've
got guys flying around on wires, cutting everybody to shreds.
There's a guy standing there with light coming out of
his mouth.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yep. Yep. Solid connection.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
But interestingly, by this point, even though he starts the
movie very much in, in skeptical, refusing the call mode,
Liu Kang quickly transitions back into believing everything. He's just like,
this is Lord Raiden, that he is the god of
thunder and lightning. Sonya isn't quite there yet. She's saying,
I think she literally says, come on, there must be

(43:15):
a rational explanation for all this. And then we get
Raiden doing one of the first of many kind of
motivational pep talks that he gives our heroes throughout the movie.
He is kind of a life coach in a way,
isn't he? Yeah, so he comes in and He tells
our heroes, he says, listen, what you're about to face
is more important than, he turns to Cage and he says,

(43:37):
your ego. He turns to Sonya and he says, your enemy.
And he turns to Liu Kang and says, or your
quest for revenge. You are about to embark on a
secret mission. You have been chosen to defend the realm
of Earth in a tournament called Mortal Kombat. Sonya asks, well,
who are they going to defend it from? And Lord
Raiden explains. He says, your world is but one of

(43:59):
many realms. One of them is a forsaken land called Outworld,
ruled by an immortal who has crowned himself emperor. Now
he seeks a new world to conquer and enslave. Now
Johnny Cage, I think, asks a reasonable question. If he's
so powerful, why doesn't he just come and take our
world now? Lord Raiden says there are rules. These are

(44:20):
the rules we were just talking about. To enter the
realm of Earth, Raiden says, the emperor's demon sorcerer Shang Tsung...
has to win 10 straight victories in Mortal Kombat, and
they have won nine in a row. This is the
10th tournament. So it's down to the wire now.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
You know, I guess maybe the Elder Gods put this
system in place because they realized, well, not every world,
every realm is going to be able to muster up
an army to combat Shao Kahn's army. But maybe you
could get together like five really good fighters, you know,
enough to compete in a tournament. And maybe that makes
things a bit more fair.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Now, sometime later in this conversation, we get several exchanges
that are extensively clipped in both the trailer and all
of the techno tracks that feature this movie. Like that
part where Sonya's like, a handful of people in a
leaky boat are going to save the world. And Raiden says, exactly.

(45:16):
But he's very, you know, Raiden's very positive on Mortal Kombat.
He's like, think about it, guys. You know, Mortal Kombat
is not about death, but life.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
He, for some reason, when he says that, I believe it.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
This is exactly what I'm sure a lot of, uh,
11 and 12 year olds told their parents. This game
isn't about death, mom and dad. This is actually, it's
about life. This is, it's mortal combat. It's about individual
exceptionalism and about living your life to the max. Don't
focus on the death. I think you're a little short-sighted here.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Uh, and it's about saving the world. Come on. Don't
you want to save the world? Uh, Raiden tells the,
at the end of this whole conversation, he says, uh,
I'll try to do my Christoph Lambert voice. He says,
the fate of billions depends upon you. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Did he really do the laugh at that point? Yeah,
he does. I know he does it in the film.
I just can't remember where he throws it in.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Oh, he chuckles like that several times. Oh, but then
two different characters tell us that it has begun. Remember,
Raven's like, it has begun. And then Shang Tsung is
standing there at the edge of the boat. And he's like,
I don't know, standing. Reaching up to a bunch of
ghosts running around in the air and he goes, it
has begun.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
And yet the crazy thing is that it has not
begun yet. No. They have not even arrived. It's like
you wouldn't say this in the last third of your
flight going to your vacation destination, right? You wouldn't say
it has begun. Like it's a weird time to choose
to say that.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
They're in the middle of the ocean. It has not begun.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Maybe international waters, maybe.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Right. So the next thing that happens in the movie
is the arrival at the island. It is a beautiful location.
They filmed this at one of those Thai islands with
the steep rock walls rising straight out of the ocean.
Those very conical, high-rising Thai islands. They're beautiful. There are

(47:09):
a number of yuck-yucks about Johnny Cage fussing over his
excessive amount of fancy luggage. More hate flirting between him
and Sonya. the fighters have to climb a mountain on
this mysterious Island to reach a temple above the clouds
where the opening ceremonies of the tournament are going to
take place. And inside, uh, inside this temple, it's like

(47:30):
a cave with torches, statues of monster gladiators and a,
and a very orange glow everywhere.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
And when they arrive at the temple, there is one
of the few lines in the movie that actually made
me laugh as intended on adult viewing, uh, which is
Johnny Cage looking at the monster gladiators and the torches,
and he's like, gee, I wonder what the bathrooms are like.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
It's a good line.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Makes you wonder, yeah, what are they like? I would
think you'd just get a bucket.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Well, you do have that level in MK2 that's like
the sewer. I guess it's that. You just go out
onto that little walkway and pop a squat.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
I guess so. Also in the scene, Liu Kang first
runs into Princess Kitana, She is the character who is
the mysterious person with ambiguous loyalties, who is a denizen
of Outworld, but she seems to possibly be interested in
helping the residents of Earth. And she's sitting under an umbrella,

(48:29):
just giving very important looks. Oh, but right after this,
we get one of the worst things. So Shang Tsung
walks up and he says, Princess Katana, she is our
most dangerous adversary. Watch over her, reptile. Keep her away
from these humans. And you think, reptile? Who's he talking to?

(48:50):
But nearby him, there is a monster statue, one of
the many monster statues. And this one turns from a
statue into living CGI. And it looks like.
The coloration on this reptilian monster looks like the old
packaging of a tube of Lifesavers candy. You know what

(49:14):
I'm talking about? And then it turns invisible like the
predator and then scurries away. Reptile looks so awful.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, I remember this being a little heartbreaking to watch
when I watched this film for the first time because
Reptile was always one of my favorites. He's a green
ninja that underneath his mask is a reptilian creature that
spits acid and turns invisible. He's awesome. And and then, oh,
my goodness, look what they have done to him here.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
So everybody goes to a feast here. There's like a
meal to inaugurate the tournament. They don't let you get
a good look at the food, unfortunately. And I'm really
bummed out. We will get a look at some of
the food in the subsequent scene.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, because we don't get much dining here. They almost
immediately flip the tables to make room for combat. It
seems like this would be a great place to have
a little bit more exposition going on. Do it George R.R.
Martin style. What would George R.R. Martin's Mortal Kombat consist of?
It would be this big feast going on for about
15 minutes.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Exactly. We'd get to hear and see what the food
is like, and they would explain more of what's going on. Instead,
he serves them all this food, and then right after
the food is served, these shirtless, muscled warriors, many of
whom are really greased up and shiny or sweaty, With
these long, loose, red head coverings. I don't know if
that is a particular type of head covering in the

(50:35):
real world. I would kind of assume not. It looks
just kind of like a huge sock over their heads
with holes for the eyes.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Yeah, there are some later scenes where I think some
of these guys are not wearing the hood over their head.
And they should have because some of these extras are
a little bit too jacked up. A little bit too
distracting in the background with wild facial expressions.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
But Shang Tsung gives a speech here, so he's got
the muscle guys standing around, and he gives a speech
where he says, Welcome. You are here to compete in
mortal combat. Tomorrow morning, the great combat begins. Some of
you will even have the distinct honor and pleasure to
face Prince Goro, our reigning champion. You are all witnesses

(51:20):
to one of the greatest turning points in the history
of your planet. Treasure these moments as if they were
your last. And now for a taste of things to come,
that last line is sampled in some of the music
on the soundtrack. And here are the muscle goons. This
is the part where they run in to flip the
feast tables over. They throw all the food on the
floor and it's time for a, an exhibition match. The

(51:43):
first fight of many. So one of the muscle goons
must fight Sub-Zero. So the shirtless guy does a bunch
of shadow boxing and then he starts running at Sub-Zero.
He's just standing at the other side of the room,
sort of sucking in a ball of cold into the
palm of his hand. And as he jumps into the
air to kick at Sub-Zero, Sub-Zero throws the ball and

(52:05):
freezes the guy solid, causing him to shatter all over
the floor.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
I remember loving this moment back when the original film
came out, and it holds up pretty well. You know,
some criticisms of the CGI aside, this is a good
use of mid-' 90s CGI.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
It's not a fight, though.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Sub-Zero... He Indiana Jones him right here is what happens.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Exactly, but with ice. And then I think Shang Tsung says,
flawless victory, which is a line from the video game
when one player defeats another one without taking a single punch. Right.

(52:48):
After this, there's a sequence with our heroes doing a
bunch of sneaking around. Our three main heroes are running
in and out of tunnels looking for Shang Tsung there's
plenty of banter and hate flirting along the way but
unknown to them they are being watched and here we
do get some kind of scary scenes there's like a
scene where we see this huge three-fingered hand sort of

(53:10):
stroking across the inside of a of these stone cage
bars as a creature with a deep rumbling voice is
clearly watching our heroes as they're sneaking around.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Yeah, this is, of course, Goro's hand. This is the
best he'll look the entire film. But it is legitimately
creepy and a nice moment. I think not too long
after this, we get a tease of Goro's shadow, which
also looks great. And you're like, I can't wait to
see what they've done here. I can't wait to see
how Goro looks.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
But they turn it into a comedy moment where Johnny
Cage says to Sonya, he's like, you go ahead, Sonya.
Find out what that was. We'll wait here. Um, so,
you know, haha. Uh, but then we get a scene
between Goro and Kano, which is one of my favorite
scenes in the film.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
It really feels like something's missing here because we had
like the tease, the tease, and then full reveal. Here's
just Goro having a conversation with Kano.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
You would think they would unveil him gradually, like in
a fight scene or something, but no, we just get
a good old look at him in this scene and
he is hideous. Uh, but Kano and Goro are hanging
out while Kano is just eating food. He's eating this big,
greasy turkey leg. He's got a bucket of wine. The
turkey leg is just squirting juice everywhere. For people who

(54:30):
aren't familiar, should we take a moment to physically describe Goro? What,
what does he look like here?

Speaker 1 (54:34):
His, what's his species is a Shokan, I believe. Um,
if I'm remembering correctly, uh, four armed entity, like an
ogre with four arms. Um, The arm placement does not
make a lot of sense. It's always a challenge to
try and imagine what the skeleton looks like under here.
And yeah, I mean, he's very cool looking in the

(54:57):
video game where he is a stop motion entity. In this,
he is, you know, admirably, he is a fully practical effect.
A mix of suit performance and, you know, puppetry, animatronics.
But it just, as we discussed in the last episode,
it doesn't quite cut it. especially in a scene like
this where they're really trying to make him as lifelike

(55:20):
as possible as he is having a conversation with a
live actor. It's not a fight. He's not ripping someone
in half. They're doing the best they could to make
him a living entity who is expressing his own desires
and motivations here. And I think they bit off more

(55:40):
than they could chew because it doesn't quite work.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
But Goro in the scene, the emotion they're trying to
convey is that he is getting very annoyed at Kano
disrespecting his royal line, I guess. So Kano's like, oh,
you some kind of royalty. And Goro's like, I am Goro.
I'm the general of the armies of Outworld and the
prince of the subterranean realm of Shokan. And then Kano's like, subterranean?

(56:07):
What's that? Underground? So he's not He's not showing proper respect.
And you get the sense that Goro maybe wants to just, like,
you know, eat Kano here or something. But it doesn't
quite happen because Shang Tsung walks in. And, you know,
Shang Tsung comes in and explains, you know, he says, look, actually,

(56:30):
Kano is great. He can teach us a lot about
Earth because, look at him, you know, there's nothing special
about him. He's not especially... dignified. He has no manners.
He's not really all that smart or, you know, nothing
good about him. Yet in the realm of Earth, men
like him can amass great wealth, almost godlike power. And
then Kano says, yeah, I'd like to get back to

(56:51):
my amassing as soon as possible, if you don't mind.
So when do I get paid? And here it is
again revealed that Kano, before he can take his money
and go home, Kano has to fight Sonya Blade in
the tournament. But He is not to harm her, only
to humiliate her, because Shang Tsung has very important plans
for her later in the contest.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
All right. We'll see what that consists of.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Oh, also in the scene, I think we hear our
heroes expressing, the heroes overhear the villains expressing worry about
Liu Kang. They're concerned about him. They have to be
careful about him. And they're, you know, the heroes are like,
what's so special about Liu Kang? Why him? But they're
also concerned about Princess Kitana. They say she is the
emperor of Outworld's daughter. And they're afraid she might intervene

(57:36):
to help the fighters from the realm of Earth. So
they have to be vigilant. Now, there's a bunch more
sneaking around. There is one encounter of our heroes with
Reptile where Reptile is invisible in a room. And it's
like that scene in Predator, you know, where only one
of the guys sees it. Liu Kang apparently sees Reptile
when nobody else does or at least walks up to,

(57:57):
you know, he senses something and he like walks up
to a void in the wall. And then Reptile suddenly
comes out of invisibility and vomits a bunch of poison
in Liu Kang's face and then runs away. After that,
the heroes come into Shang Tsung's feast room. And here
we get the first real big fight, actually. This is
the fight where our heroes have to confront these muscle

(58:19):
guys with the head coverings. And they do quite well.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
But then, of course, Raiden shows up and he does
a slow clap. It's so great. And we get another
one of his, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
That's right. I don't think so. And then Raiden leads
our heroes to safety. We get more lectures from Raiden here.
He says, you know, to fight Shang Tsung, you've got
to face not just one, but a legion of enemies
because his power comes from the souls of those he
has defeated in the past. So you're sort of fighting
everyone Shang Tsung has ever beaten. Now, the next morning,

(58:53):
the main action of the movie begins. And from here,
the movie turns much more into just a sequence of
fight scenes that That sounds like that could get a
little monotonous, and I don't know, maybe you could say
that it does, but the movie does better with it than...
you might expect, I think, because it doesn't let any
of them go on too long. They're all there's a

(59:15):
pretty rapid pace of developments and most of the fights
are pretty quick.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Right, right. And the one the one in particular that
I'm thinking of, it does go on a bit long,
has a lot of variety in it. And it's just
it is exciting from beginning to end.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
That's right. So the first fight we get to see
the next morning is taking place sort of on the
I think it's on a beach outside back on the
ground level of the island. Shang Tsung kind of sits
in a peacock throne overlooking all of the battles. He's
like the referee or observer or something. And this is
a fight where Liu Kang has to face off against

(59:49):
another human fighter. They've got a match with with Bo Stave.
So like nobody's fighting Goro yet. I think it starts
with like the the Earthrealm fighters just fighting each other.
I don't think we ever learned that the name of
the guy Liu Kang is fighting here. But Liu Kang
fights honorably and he wins. But there's a twist because
after Liu Kang's opponent is defeated, Shang Tsung walks up

(01:00:12):
to the guy and he reaches out. And he sucks
his soul out of his flesh. He says, your soul
is mine. Sucks the soul out and then says, fatality. Now,
that's not really how it worked in the game, was it? Like,
the fatality was done by the fighter, not by Shang Tsung.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Correct. Yes. So it's clear that Shang Tsung's not playing
fair here at all. Like, what do you mean, taking
the souls of guys you didn't even beat? That contradicts
what Raiden just said.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Next fight is Sonya Blade versus Kano. Okay. This has
been coming a while. This is the Vendetta fight. We
alluded to this earlier, but here at the beginning of
this fight, Kano whips out a knife and brags about
how he used it to kill her partner. Then he
attacks her with it. And it's like, what? He's allowed
to do that? I don't know. Is this a tournament?

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
It's tournament legal. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
But Sonya just whoops him. She does a move that
her character in the game does where she stands on
her hands and then grabs the dude by his neck
with her ankles, slams him on the ground, and then
does a kind of ground grapple with her calves around
his neck. And now Kano's like, uh-oh, I didn't expect
it to go this way. He starts begging for mercy. Here,

(01:01:26):
Shang Tsung does what he does in the game. Shang
Tsung calls out to Sonya and says, finish him.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
And Kano.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Can you imagine what pun is coming? Kano says, come on, Sonya,
give me a break. And she says, okay, and cracks
his neck.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
All right. So on one level, I was amused by
and done with Kano at this point. So I wasn't
sad that we weren't getting more Kano in the rest
of the picture. But on the other hand, it is
weird that we set Sonya up as a character whose
only identity is her quest for revenge. And she achieves
full revenge, like less than half into the picture. Yeah.

(01:02:03):
And then this is not one of those movies where
the remainder of the picture is going to be like
grappling with the guilt of vengeance or the ramifications of vengeance,
the self-destructive nature of vengeance. No, it's just kind of like, oh,
that was her only reason to be around or do anything.
Now we just have to just change her role in
the narrative completely. Now she'll be a damsel in distress.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Now she turns into, don't you dare do this to
protect me, Johnny Cage.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Yeah, so it's, yeah, it's a little bit clunky.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
So the next fight in the movie is Johnny Cage,
the movie star, versus Scorpion. I think this is, as
you alluded to, I think this is the longest fight
in the movie, probably. Well, maybe with the exception of
the final fight between Liu Kang and Shang Tsung. But
this is the longest, but it's got a lot of variety.
It changes locations midway through. And I think this one's

(01:02:56):
pretty solid.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Yeah, I think this one absolutely holds up. Yeah, it's
long enough. But the action choreography is tremendous. You believe
all the hits. They even have some nice supernatural wire
moments in there that work really well. We get a
change in location. It gets hellish. And both characters really
feel like they're video game personas here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
Yeah. I like the location where they begin. It's like
an orchard with these rows and rows of perfectly lined up,
evenly spaced trees. I don't know what kind of trees
they are, but it's a it's a kind of eerie
setting because of the combination of naturalness and unnaturalness about it.
So I like that. And Johnny Cage uses one of

(01:03:38):
the trees. He like uses it to disable the, the,
I don't know, the snake coming out of the hand
weapon because he like dodges out of the way at
the last second and the snake slams into a tree.
And so, so yeah, it's a pretty good fight. And
also it does involve Scorpion trying to use his finishing
move from the game where he takes his mask off

(01:04:00):
reveals his head as a skull, and then breathes fire
on his opponent. But Johnny Cage outwits him by holding
up a shield to shield himself from the flames and
then using the edge of the shield to slice the
yellow ninja open. And I don't know, just like a
bunch of guts and weird stuff comes out and then
Scorpion explodes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Yeah, yeah. This takes place, I guess, in hell. I
don't know. Or some sort of hell. We don't know
how Cage gets back from hell to reality, but he
does it. Maybe it's not a literal hell. It's just
like a basement of the Mortal Kombat temple facilities here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Now, there was a part here that really confused me
when I was a kid. So Scorpion, once he's defeated,
he explodes. And then we see a photograph that is
a photo of Johnny Cage, like falling to the ground
from the debris of the explosion and And as ash
is raining down all around and it's the photo of

(01:04:58):
Johnny Cage is autographed and says to my greatest fan,
Johnny Cage XOXO. And I was like, what does that mean?
I think I interpreted this when I was a kid
as in life before becoming an undead skeletal ninja. Scorpion
was a fan of Johnny Cage's movies and got an
autographed photo and then became an undead ninja again. and

(01:05:22):
just happened to have this souvenir on him.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Well, I like the logic of that, but yeah, I
think it's just Cage being cheeky. But the alternate interpretation
that you've shared here, it would lead to some interesting
lore if this were the case.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Okay, next fight they show us is Liu Kang versus Kitana.
Shang Tsung says they have to fight. It's clear that
Kitana is very powerful, but she's holding back. She doesn't
want to hurt Liu Kang. Instead, in this match, Every
time she grapples Liu Kang to a halt, she sort
of whispers advice in his ear in these little increments.

(01:05:57):
And she eventually tells him, to win your next fight,
use the element which brings life.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
You know, this is not a good fight. This is
not a fight you enjoy watching so much. But it's
about developing the plot. And I think it also... It's
key when we talk about why this doesn't get boring,
having fight after fight after fight, is because... They're pacing
it out appropriately here, where we have a big showcase
battle between Scorpion and Johnny Cage, and then a little

(01:06:25):
battle that serves a different purpose entirely. And then we
move on to maybe another flashier battle.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
That's right. So the next fight on the agenda is
another one of the big Demon Ninja fights. This is
Liu Kang versus Sub-Zero, who again has freezing powers. And
we saw earlier Sub-Zero froze an opponent so that he
just froze solid and shattered on the floor. This is
also a pretty good fight.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Yeah, solid fight. Great set. I think this one has
a really nice set. Excellent lighting. Solid fatality as well.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
There's one moment in this fight that really stuck with
me when I was younger, which is the moment where Sub-Zero,
I think, kicks Liu Kang on the chin. I recall
that really seeming like it would hurt. Like, there's a
scene like this in Raiders of the Lost Ark when
Harrison Ford gets hit on the chin with a mirror
that's flipping around. Yeah, I don't know. That's gross for me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
I mean, it's the mark of great... Great action filmmaking
and great stunt work when you can feel those hits
like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
But so anyway, it's a good fight in the beginning.
They trade blows for a while. Sub-Zero is clearly prepared
to freeze Liu Kang solid. He's gathering the sort of
CGI snow into the palm of his hand. The magic
is swirling around. And Liu Kang is like, how can
I beat that? But then he remembers Katana's advice. And
I think we even see her at the other end
of the room, like making eyes at him. And he's like,

(01:07:46):
wait a minute. What is the element that brings life?
It's water. So he gets a bucket of water and
he heaves it into Sub-Zero's sphere of cold and it
forms a spike, a spike of ice that pins the
evil ninja to the wall. Now, at this point in
the story, Shang Tsung has had enough. He's let the
humans win enough. It's time to deploy Prince Goro, who

(01:08:09):
nobody can defeat. And then there's like a montage of
Goro destroying most of the human fighters in the tournament.
This leads up to the scene of Goro versus Art Lean,
the guy we met earlier who had some previous experience
with Johnny Cage. And so we see this whole fight.
Goro gets like a WWE-style entrance where the doors open

(01:08:31):
and everybody's cheering for him. And why are all these
human fighters in the audience cheering for Goro?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
They like strength. They love a champion.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
He's here to destroy their Earthrealm. But they're like, yeah,
fight him.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
This scene is where Goro looks the best, I have
to say. He still doesn't look tremendous, but he looks
a lot better in action here against Art.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Yeah, that's right. Now, Art leans does okay initially. He
gets some punches in by being faster than Goro, but
Goro's just too big. And he eventually grabs Art's fists
with his two lower arms and then just beats him
with his upper arms. And finally, Goro finishes him with
a horrible strike. And I remember the scene being kind
of scary and sad when I was a kid. And

(01:09:21):
then Shang Tsung absorbs Art Lean's soul into his eyeball.
And then for some reason, Sonya screams, no! But it's
not even suggested that she knows Art.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Why doesn't Johnny Cage scream no? He's the one who
knows him.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Yeah, that would make a lot more sense. Because ultimately, like,
that's the role Art has here, is the kind of
role we see in a lot of these martial arts
tournament films, where you have the kind of, like, sacrificial
friend of the hero here. who gets beat up and
or killed by the, the big bad in the tournament.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
So after this, we get, you know, your dark night
of the soul scenes where the characters are grappling with
their fears and limitations. And Raiden is sort of coaching
them through being the life coach yet again. You know,
he talks to Liu Kang about his fears and his
destiny and, The how despair is the most dangerous fear
of all. Liu Kang ends up sitting on a beach

(01:10:24):
flashing back to his dream about Chan. And then this
is also the scene where we get Sonya and Johnny
Cage arguing about whether Johnny Cage should challenge Goro. He's like,
I'm going to have to do it. And she she says,
don't you dare do this to protect me, Johnny Cage.
And he says, trust me, I've got a plan. So, OK,
I'm curious, what's his plan? How's he going to defeat

(01:10:45):
this huge thing with four arms? So the next fight
is Johnny Cage versus Goro. And Johnny Cage goes to
Shang Tsung. He's like, all right, I'm ready to fight Goro.
Shang Tsung says, foolish but brave. Raiden tries to intervene
to stop this, but it's too late. A deal's a deal.
He can't stop it. So the Cage versus Goro fight.

(01:11:07):
What do you think? When I was a kid, I
loved this fight because it, I'd say largely because it
features a prominent groin punch, which I found hilarious when
I was younger. And then also because it's got a cliff,
and I love a fight at the edge of a cliff.
That's just classic action movie gold.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
My feelings about it were a bit different. I thought
that the nard punch just made Goro look stupid. And
I was like, no, Goro's supposed to be tough. We've
just built him up as tough, and now you've made
him look foolish. And then I feel like there's very
little action between these two characters. It's not much of
a fight. And then Johnny Cage kind of like, trips
him off a cliff and he falls into a, into

(01:11:49):
a nebula or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Yeah. So the fight begins with, Oh, uh, at the
beginning of the fight, Goro's like gloating and he takes
Johnny Cage's sunglasses out of his pocket and, or maybe
off of his face and smashes them. And Johnny Cage
doesn't like that, but he says his line again. You
remember from the beginning when he goes, let's dance. So
he says that, but then he does the splits, he
drops to the ground and punches Goro in the crotch.

(01:12:13):
And then Raiden, who is standing there observing the fight,
Does a 1990s, yes! Goro, of course, he howls in
pain and rage. The movie really wallows in the Goro
groin pain.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Yeah, yeah, I think a bit too much. But I guess,
you know, the kids probably loved it. And to be clear,
it is a move from the video game. So they
had to include it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:38):
Does Johnny Cage do a shadow kick in the movie
that was in the video game also? I think maybe
he does one against Scorpion.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Possibly. Yeah, I don't remember it happening, but that would
have been the place for it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Oh, we just got a note from guest producer Chandler
Mays that, yes, he did do a shadow kick, and
that is when Scorpion sucks Johnny Cage into hell.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
All right, there we go.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
Okay. But anyway, so at the end of the fight, yeah,
Johnny Cage ends up kicking Goro off of the side
of a mountain to his death. And Goro's like hanging
there on the cliff. And Johnny Cage, we get a
call back to his earlier line, this is the part
where you fall down and Goro falls. So I don't know.
I thought this fight was great when I was younger. Rob,
I can kind of see now what you're saying about

(01:13:20):
the limitations of it maybe not being one of the
better ones.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
But on the other hand, I don't know. The art
Goro fight was pretty good, but we've already established there
are limitations to what you can do with this Goro effect.
So maybe that was just ultimately asking too much for
there to be another big drawn-out fight with this creature
in it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
That's right. And so here we get the transition to
the final act. where Shang Tsung, he invokes one of
the rules of the tournament. He executes his right to
challenge any of the Earth Warriors for the final fight
of the tournament. And he grabs Sonya Blade and drags
her screaming through the portal to Outworld, where Raiden has
no power. Raiden himself cannot go there, but Johnny Cage

(01:14:03):
and Liu Kang, they're like, hey, we've got to rescue Sonya.
So they run through the portal. They first ask Raiden,
they're like, okay, well, he's going to challenge her to
the final fight. Can she beat him? And Raiden is like, no.
Raiden does not have confidence in Sonya.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
So, I mean, this would make it seem like, okay,
one of my theories that I may have established earlier
is that it seemed to me that they're going for
a whole Shang Tsung wants to marry Sonya Blade vibe here.
But I guess the other way of looking at it
is he wanted Sonya Blade to enter the tournament because
she would be easy enough to beat in Outworld.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Yeah. That's what I thought it was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
But that's a weird choice too, because then it's like
Sonya blades weakness is her reason for being in the tournament.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
And it seems like you're doing a disservice to your
character there. I mean, she's like, we've spent a fair
amount of time talking about how, how fearsome she is.
And now she's just a damsel in distress. So again,
I find this transformation of her character and overall use
of her character, um, a little clunky.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
Yeah. Not a high point of the plotting here. Um,
So anyway, Liu Kang and Johnny Cage, they got a helper.
So they go to Outworld. Outworld looks like a set
from Escape from L.A.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Just, you know, flaming garbage cans everywhere. It's very post-apocalyptic.
They're flaming garbage cans everywhere. You would expect it. So
I would have expected Outworld to look a little bit
more fantasy and a little bit less like post-apocalyptic Earth settings.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Well, there is one. I think they're mostly inspired by
a particular fighting level in Mortal Kombat 2. It's like
the Outland setting, and it does look like some sort
of like a blue and purple ruin. So I guess
they're going for that vibe. But yeah, they could have
gone in a more fantasy direction. I think they're supposed
to be more fantasy-like, more fantastic places within Outworld and

(01:16:02):
palaces and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
Now, before they get to Shang Tsung's palace, there is
one more fight, which is Liu Kang versus Reptile, which
is pretty good. Weird. It's a weird setup for a fight,
but I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Yeah, this one, it's completely bonkers, rather unexplained, but I
love it. It's like a bonus match. You didn't think
you were going to get to see Reptile fight. And
at this point, again, you know, love Reptile in the games.
Then he was reduced to this awful CGI character. But luckily,
Liu Kang throws or kicks him into a statue, which like,

(01:16:36):
absorbs him, right? And then Reptile becomes a humanoid ninja
for this battle?

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
Yes, that's right. The CGI lizard is absorbed into the
void in the stomach of a sort of monster statue,
and that turns into the humanoid ninja form.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Right. And he doesn't look great here. I'm not going
to lie. Reptile looks a lot cooler in that TV
spot for MK2 that I talked about in the first episode.
But he looks way better than that CGI guy gremlin creature.
So I remember being rather pleased with it. And fortunately,
what we get here is a really solid vibe. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
And it ends with a special move from the video games,
not from Mortal Kombat 1, but from Mortal Kombat 2,
which is Liu Kang's bicycle kick, which is where he
flies through the air, repeatedly kicking you back and forth
with both legs while advancing through the air.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yes. Yeah. Solid, solid move.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
Oh, and then finally it ends with reptile reverting back
to like lizard form and Liu Kang just sort of
does a bug stomp on him. So that's the end
of that. And then they meet Princess Katana again. She's like,
well done. You are finally learning Liu Kang. But so they,
of course, after this Katana, Johnny Cage and Liu Kang,

(01:17:51):
they go up to Shang Tsung's palace and they're going
to have to challenge Shang Tsung to get Sonya back.
Princess Katana prepares Liu Kang. She's like, when you face
Shang Tsung, there are going to be three challenges. First,
you must face your enemy. Then you must face yourself.
Then you must face your worst fear. So they go

(01:18:12):
on up to the tower. Shang Tsung has Sonya. He's
like dressed her up in a Xena warrior princess outfit.
He is trying to get her to agree to his
challenge of mortal combat, but she won't. Uh, she, he's
saying you have to fight me in, in mortal combat
or earth will forfeit. Uh, and he's not telling her

(01:18:33):
the rules correctly. Those are not the rules. She doesn't
have to accept. Uh, but he is lying to her
about the rules. And, uh, and she says, I'm not
playing your game. My friends will come for me. So
it seems Sonia has overcome her personal, anxiety of not
wanting to accept help from anyone. Now she's like, my
friends are going to come help. And then they like
suddenly she says that. And then a couple of the

(01:18:54):
monks standing at the edge of the room, they like
throw off their hoods and they go, they're already here. Oh,
and it is our heroes. They snuck in disguised as
guys in hoods. And then we get the final fight. Uh,
Shang Tsung, I think initially tries to challenge Johnny Cage.
He's like, okay, okay, I'll fight you. But Liu Kang says, no,
you'll fight me. Uh, and so Shang Tsung says, I accept. And, uh,

(01:19:18):
once again, pretty solid fight at the end of the
movie here with multiple phases. Uh, Shang Tsung has a
bunch of tricks up his sleeve that he, uh, that
he brings out and each trick sort of varies the
texture of the fight. So it keeps throwing in these
changes to keep it interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Yeah, yeah. So it's well-paced. It has drama to it.
It certainly builds on character development that we've had regarding
Liu Kang. So yeah, it delivers with action and drama.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
We were told earlier that Changsung has absorbed the souls
of thousands of warriors who fought before, everyone he's ever
defeated in the past. So to defeat him, you have
to defeat all of them. And at one point, he does, like,
resurrect these dead warriors to fight Liu Kang. And I
like all these different warriors Liu Kang has to fight.
I think one of them is like a samurai.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
And then one of them is definitely Gerald Okamura. We've talked,
we've mentioned on the show before because he was often
an extra or a background actor or sometimes more prominent
in your, like more of your action B movies, but
he's in tons of martial arts movies from this time period.
And I, I think it's still popping up in things.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
Now, at another point in the fight, so I think
that's the face your enemy part. At some point, he
has to face himself, where I think, I don't know, oh,
I've forgotten this now. Shang Tsung, he turns into Liu Kang,
or he, I don't know, he confronts him with something.
But finally, Shang Tsung turns into Liu Kang's brother. And
he turns around, and he morphs, and then he is Chan.

(01:20:47):
And he says to Liu Kang, Raiden sent me to
help you. But why would Liu Kang fall for this?
He just saw him transform. He didn't even like disappear
and come back. He's just standing right there and then
became his brother. So he's like trying to undermine Liu
Kang's confidence as suddenly spikes start poking up out of
the floor. And I like how in the close up

(01:21:08):
of us seeing the spikes come out, you can see
them like piercing through the glitter covered paper covering on
the floor. That's the symbol from the Mortal Kombat games
with the swirling dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
And then finally, Liu Kang has a... He learns a
lesson that... There's a very individualistic message at the end
of the movie. Liu Kang's great triumph is that he
learns every man is responsible for his own destiny. And
then he finally defeats Shang Tsung by shooting a fireball
out of his hands. That is something that he does

(01:21:39):
in the game. And Shang Tsung falls into the spikes below.
And then Liu Kang himself says... flawless victory. I don't
think that's in character.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
No, no. He took some damage in this battle as well,
so I don't think it's accurate either.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
Neither accurate nor in character for Liu Kang. I don't
know why he says that. I think they just really
had to get the game nod in there. So with
the big bad defeated, lights shoot out of the Outworld
Tower and the souls of the damned are freed from
Shang Tsung's grip, including Chan.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
And Gerald Okamura. We see him floating in the background.

Speaker 3 (01:22:12):
They all fly off into the sky and And then
we get a wonderful coda where that track by Orbital
starts playing as the heroes are all back on Earth.
They're outside the temple we saw earlier. And they're all
hugging it out. And everybody's happy. They're like children running
with these streamers and stuff. And we get the bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
You know, it's that feel-good Orbital track. And it seems

(01:22:33):
like everything's going to be okay. But somehow you almost
know they're setting it up for a twist.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Yeah, because then, like, basically we get this, again, CGI
that has not aged well. Suddenly, like, the sky erupts,
and there is, like, this monstrous version of Shao Kahn,
the emperor of Outworld, who does not look very good here.
They kind of, like, put a lot of demon makeup
on his face. Like, they've decided to spice up his

(01:22:59):
look a bit, and it doesn't quite work. But I
guess the silhouette is right. The helmet is right. So
fans of the video games know who this is.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
But he's the size of a kaiju. He's gigantic. And
he says, he pops out of the temple and he says,
you weak, pathetic fools. I've come for your souls. And
what's the last line of the movie? Raiden's catchphrase. He goes,
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
So they set up the sequel, which, of course, will
be Mortal Kombat Annihilation, in which Brian Thompson is going
to play Shao Kahn with a more traditional look. But
I can't speak to it beyond that because I never
actually watched Mortal Kombat Annihilation. That's the story for a
lot of people because Mortal Kombat Annihilation would not be
a success at the box office and would kind of

(01:23:47):
like kill off the Mortal Kombat feature film venture for
some time. Though there would be additional, like I think
there was a TV show in the 90s that came
after this that looked pretty bad. I would occasionally catch
part of it, but maybe it has its fans. And
then there would be additional like like web installments of

(01:24:11):
later shows. And some of those were pretty good, eventually
leading back up to the resurrection of Mortal Kombat motion pictures.

Speaker 3 (01:24:18):
So we do an Annihilation next week?

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
No, not next week. Maybe we'll come back to it
if people want it. I mean, it has an interesting
cast and more iconic characters recreated to varying degrees of
success on the screen.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
I recall that the characters in that movie travel around
the world through tunnels that go through the center of
the Earth by rolling in these American gladiator balls.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Oh, really? Wow. Well, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
That's good transportation infrastructure.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:24:52):
Does that do it for Mortal Kombat?

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
I think it does. I think after two episodes, we
have finished it. So we'll go ahead and shut the
book on this tournament. But we'll remind everyone out there
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast. But on Fridays, we set aside most
serious concerns, and we just talk about a weird film
here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see

(01:25:15):
a list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
the best place to go for that is to head
on over to Letterboxd.com. That's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D dot com. You will
find us there. Our username is Weird House, and we
have a list of all the films. Look at them.
Sort them by genre or decade. It's pretty fun to
play around with. Oh, and if you were on Instagram,

(01:25:36):
follow Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Follow our feed at stbympodcast.
We also have updates about Weird House Cinema right there
at stbympodcast on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:25:46):
Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway,
and a huge thanks to our guest producer today, Chandler Mays.
Thanks for sitting in with us, Chandler. If you would
like to get in touch with us on this episode
or any other To suggest a topic for the future
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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