After nearly ten years of waiting, we finally have the first (officially sanctioned) gameplay footage of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. BioWare has released 20minutes of the game in motion, showing new protagonist Rook and their crew exploring the magical city of Minrathous, fighting demons, and working to stop Inquisitio…
The upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, the remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3, marks a major turning point for Konami’s stealth action series. Due to come out before the end of this year, Delta will end a nine-year drought since 2015’s Phantom Pain (we don’t count Survive). And while Delta isn’t…
The upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, the remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3, marks a major turning point for Konami’s stealth action series. Due to come out before the end of this year, Delta will end a nine-year drought since 2015’s Phantom Pain (we don’t count Survive). And while Delta isn’t…
With Tyler having the clarity, gumption, and downright insight to throw the first live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie at us as a gateway horror movie, it got me thinking about other movies that aren’t really horror movies but maybe got us thinking about dipping our toes into that now beloved genre. It got me thinking past things like A House with a Clock in its Walls, The Monster Squad, or other kids’ movies that are actually horror movies for kids. It got me thinking of late summer in 1995 and the old Charter Center theater off of Beach Blvd in Huntington Beach, California. It got me thinking of the first time I saw Mortal Kombat (watch it HERE) and what that meant to both me and the state of video games as movies. Turn on your Techno Syndrome from the soundtrack and let’s revisit one of the most important video game movies ever made.
Look, the history of video game movies, both at the beginning of its run and currently, is spotty at best. You had bad then and you have bad now and while you can get some more indie games being made into movies or at least studios taking more chances with what IPs they decide to use now, back in the early 90s it was only the best of the best and the most popular that would be turned into movies. We would start with Mario Brothers and get a fever dream of a movie starring John Leguizamo, Bob Hoskins, and Dennis Hopper. The next movie may not seem like an obvious one, but Double Dragon was a big deal for the arcade and NES on the at home market. The third one would be Street Fighter which revolutionized fighting games with its second entry. Finally, the 4th entry into the now long running attempt to take what worked in the gaming sphere into motion pictures would be Mortal Kombat and boy, is it hard not to scream that at the top of my lungs whenever I say it.
It is impossible to overstate just how important Mortal Kombat was. It took fighting games to a whole new and different level with its violence and blood as well as going from animated characters to digitized actors. Street Fighter II blew our minds in 1991 and Mortal Kombat angered our parents the next year in 1992. Mortal Monday on September 13th, 1993 was very much a big deal with the game coming to multiple home platforms at the same time. There were print ads and one hell of a commercial to promote it and sometimes I’ll just watch it on YouTube to go back in time and be a kid again. I look at my own son, my middle one who just turned 10, and I look forward to showing him this cinematic marvel at the same age I did.
Mortal Kombat was written by Kevin Droney who had only done TV before this and after was able to write another video game script with Wing Commander. The director chosen for this project would eventually become a deft hand at video game movies but Paul W.S. Anderson, that’s different from Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood’s Paul Thomas Anderson, had only done one underseen movie at this point with Shopping. The success of Mortal Kombat, and good lord was it successful, would give us a lengthy career for Mr. Anderson both for better and for worse. How successful was it? Mortal Kombat had a 20-million-dollar budget, which isn’t small, but its 122 million intake at the theaters was nearly larger than the first three game movies box office combined, while also having the third smallest budget of the group. Critics weren’t as happy to see the movie as the general public, with mostly unfavorable reviews except for the notable atmosphere and mostly good fight scenes. How does the movie fare almost 30 years later? Pretty darn fun.
Let’s look at what doesn’t really work and its really mostly a matter of when the movie was made. The effects are less than stellar, particularly the CGI. While the giant animatronic of Prince Goro is kind of silly looking, it also has a quaint charm to it. The stuff that suffers more is when Scorpion tries to shoot his spear out or Reptile appears on screen and makes me give a clear look of confusion and borderline disgust. Again, mid 90s were not exactly known for CGI and nearly every movie that includes it is problematic at best and atrocious at worst. Some of the performances are on the weaker side too, and the script doesn’t exactly lend itself to Oscar consideration even if it isn’t the worst thing we’ve ever heard.
The cast is a mixed bag of fun, too. Trevor Goddard as Kano, Talisa Soto as Kitana, and Bridgette Wilson as Sonya all fill their characters with a fun exuberance that keeps you watching but they are the weak points of it. Also, Kitana? Like Princess Kitana from the second game? Yeah, the second game had come out during production, and they mixed some of that game into the movie like Kitana and Shao Kahn who makes an appearance at the very end. Oh yeah, that make up isn’t anything special either. This was the first time I saw Robin Shou in anything, but he embodies nearly everything we saw from Liu Kang in both his brief text back story in the game and the moves his digital counterpart has. While the game one, noises included, is Bruce Lee caricature, Shou gives him an emotional punch that makes rooting for him fun and helped make him the hero of the games going forward.
As cool as Shou is, and he would get some more fun roles in things like Beverly Hills Ninja and Death Race, go back and watch some of his non US output as it is underrated. Cary Tagawa as Shang Tsung became so iconic that he would reprise the role in animated films and future games alike and he can be seen in major roles on both the big and small screen. The person I want to give the biggest shout out to is Linden Ashby who plays Johnny Cage. Ashby is probably a name that jumps to the front of your mind, but he has been around in multiple genres for what seems like forever. One of his earliest roles was in the TV series Werewolf which I am mentioning for that one commenter that always wants us to cover in our horror TV series retrospective, but he was also in Melrose Place, Teen Wolf, and The Young and the Restless on the TV side. The movie front is less prolific, but he is in Wyatt Earp with Costner and please go seek out Blast, its his version of Die Hard and is, well, a blast.
Ashby’s version of Cage is so iconic that it’s one of those roles that will always be hard to replace or replicate going forward. He is a primadona actor that is actually good at fighting but in need of proving it which is why he joins the Mortal Kombat tournament in the first place. His character also has an honest to goodness arc where he volunteers to fight Goro and save his friends. He proves himself to not only the other heroes but also to his own heart and mind. He has some of the best lines and line deliveries in the movie and a lot of his scenes are where the horror aspect of this gem lies. He fights Scorpion in Hell, and we see him do his iconic face and mask removal to reveal his skeleton head. He takes out Goro as well who is almost a classic monster in his design, something that Ray Harryhausen would have loved to throw against Sinbad in any of his adventures. The final piece to the casting puzzle is a strange bit of what would now be seen as whitewashing with the wonderful Christopher Lambert as God of Thunder Raiden. He straddles the line perfectly between silly bad and fun.
The elements we’ve discussed don’t always make for good filmmaking, but it doesn’t have to be to be both successful and fun. The fight scenes all mostly work and while it has to make up its own story as it goes because the game didn’t have more than a few blurbs here and there, it does a good job of filling in the gaps. I was so hyped to watch this movie that when the film reel burned up during the penultimate fight scene, I was in tears when they asked us to leave the theater. TEARS. They fixed it and called us back in just in time to see Liu Kang knock Shang Tsung into a makeshift pit, one of the more iconic locals from the game, and all was right in the world. While I was not personally scared by the movie, I could see it affecting younger viewers or parents calling it a light horror movie. It was released by New Line Cinema after all which was affectionately known as the house that Freddy built.
The scenes in outworld, the previously mentioned Hell segment, the spooky boat ride to the tournament grounds, the fatalities (well, most of them), and both the nightmare sequence that Liu has mixed with Shao Kahn appearing at the end all could have given anyone bad dreams. Who are we to say what is definitively scary on such a subjective subject. The series would have quite the legs to it as well with a sequel called Annihilation coming two years later that is widely known as one of the worst movies ever as well as shows both live action and cartoon and reboots and additional sequels. None of these have had the same impact as the game series, which is still going strong 30 years later, but that original movie comes close to standing shoulder to shoulder with it, even getting some cameo callbacks in recent entries of the game series.
Video games as movies is a big and lucrative business as the billion dollars that the newest Mario movie taught us and after MK1, we would get things like Resident Evil movies, Silent Hill, and even Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptations to follow but you never forget your first and for many of us, Mortal Kombat was that first. It showed us that a video game adaptation could both make money and be pretty decent. It taught us that we didn’t need a 100% faithful recreation of the video game to have a good time at the movies. Mortal Kombat fought round 1 so all that came after it could have a round 2.
Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!
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Elden Ring’s one and only expansion DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is out June 21. That’s less than two weeks away. But were you already aware that in order to be able to play it, you need to have beaten both Starscourge Radahn and previously optional boss, Mohg, Lord of Blood? Because it seems that of PC players at…
Elden Ring’s one and only expansion DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, is out June 21. That’s less than two weeks away. But were you already aware that in order to be able to play it, you need to have beaten both Starscourge Radahn and previously optional boss, Mohg, Lord of Blood? Because it seems that of PC players at…
Tolkien enthusiasts are sitting in abundance with multiple Lord of the Rings projects in the works. In addition to the Prime Video original series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power continuing with season two, the dream team of Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis are collaborating for an all-new Gollum-centric film, The Hunt for Gollum, from Warner Bros. However, there is yet another project brewing at Warner Bros. that takes place in Middle-Earth. The animated feature Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim is an animated film with Phillipa Boyens on-board as a producer. It’s set for a December 13th, 2024 release.
The Annecy Animation Festival is taking place this week, and Variety reports that 20 minutes from The War of Rohirrim has premiered at the event courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation and New Line Cinema. The director of the feature, Kenji Kamiyana, had professed that he was not only inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books but also by the films of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who were confirmed as exec producers of the movie during the session.
The War of Rohirrim session at Annecy included director Kamiyana, along with Gollum himself — Andy Serkis. Serkis had boasted, “The fans are going to go nuts for this.” Kamiyana’s credits include the TV series Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
The quick synopsis, according to Variety, reads, “The new story is set nearly 200 years before Blibo Baggins comes into contact with the ring of power and introduces key characters including Princess Héra of Rohan (Gaia Wise) and King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox).”
Jackson explained recently why he decided to return to the franchise and, in particular, focus on Gollum for the upcoming spin-off. “The Gollum/Sméagol character has always fascinated me because Gollum reflects the worst of human nature, whilst his Sméagol side is, arguably, quite sympathetic,” Jackson said. “I think he connects with readers and film audiences alike, because there’s a little bit of both of them in all of us. We really want to explore his backstory and delve into those parts of his journey we didn’t have time to cover in the earlier films. It’s too soon to know who will cross his path, but suffice to say we will take our lead from Professor Tolkien.“
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We’ve known all along that director Zack Snyder intended to release extended, R-rated director’s cuts of his movies Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire (read our review HERE) and Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (read our review of that one HERE), which were rated PG-13 in their shorter form. What we didn’t realize is that the director’s cuts would have different titles than the shorter versions – but Netflix has just confirmed that is the case, while also unveiling a batch of images from the director’s cuts and announcing that they will both be available to watch on their streaming service as of August 2nd. The new title for the director’s cut of the first movie is Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood. The second movie is Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness.
The images from the director’s cuts can be seen at the bottom of this article.
Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood has been given a R rating for brutal bloody violence and gore, sexual content, graphic nudity and language. Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness received an R rating for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, strong sexuality, nudity and some language.
Snyder has always been open about the fact that he’s hoping “a massive IP and a universe that can be built out” from the foundation of Rebel Moon. He crafted the story for Rebel Moon with 300 co-writer Kurt Johnstad, and the pair wrote the screenplay with Army of the Dead co-writer Shay Hatten. The events of the two films, which draw inspiration from Seven Samurai, are set in motion when a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius. Desperate, the colonists dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make a stand.
Here’s press release information on the director’s cuts: Delve further into the mythology and madness of Zack Snyder’s epic sci-fi saga in the viciously sexier, bloodier world of Rebel Moon — Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness. In Snyder’s director’s cut, a peaceful settlement on a moon in the furthest reaches of the universe finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius, and Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival. Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Motherworld, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants, and orphans of war who share a common need for redemption and revenge. As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a new army of heroes is formed.
The films star Sofia Boutella (The Mummy), Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Djimon Hounsou (A Quiet Place Part II), Ray Fisher (Justice League), Doona Bae (The Host), Jena Malone (Sucker Punch), Staz Nair (Supergirl), E. Duffy (whose previous credits are all short films), Charlotte Maggi (MaveriX), Sky Yang (Tomb Raider), Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), Alfonso Herrera (Ozark), Cary Elwes (Saw), Corey Stoll (Ant-Man), Ed Skrein (Deadpool), Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal), and Stuart Martin (Army of Thieves).
Snyder, his wife Deborah Snyder, and Wesley Coller are producing the Rebel Moon films through their company Stone Quarry. Eric Newman is producing via his banner, Grand Electric, while Grand Electric’s Sarah Bowen executive produces.
Are you looking forward to watching the Rebel Moon director’s cuts in August? What do you think of the new titles? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Kevin Smith has had his share of clashes throughout his career, with everybody from Bruce Willis to Southwest Airlines. While some have thankfully been squashed, none has been more consistent than his battles with the MPA (formerly the MPAA). Less than one month after it was announced that his next flick, The 4:30 Movie, would be receiving an R, Kevin Smith detailed why the MPA has gone forward with their choice.
Appearing on the Inside of You podcast, Kevin Smith said his latest issue with the MPA arose because he strictly meant to make a PG-13 movie instead of the Rs he is usually associated with. “There’s three things I know how to do in this world: I can play foosball really well, I know how to walk two German Shepherds on a tandem leash, and I know how to make an R-rated movie. I said, so I know not how to make an R rated movie as well that’s why I intended to make a PG-13 movie with this the fact that you guys made it R means that this sweet little paean to youth about 16 year olds in 1986 who hop from one theater to another who, yes, make a lot of sex jokes but no more than any other teen movie, is the equivalent to The Human Centipede… How on Earth are these two movies in the same category?”
While his argument may not be too strong there – there can be a plethora of reasons the MPA gives a movie an R, so The 4:30 Movie isn’t really in the same camp as a horror flick where people get their mouths stitched to buttholes – Kevin Smith does still take issue with the exact reasoning the MPA gave him: excessive amount of innuendo. “I was like, yeah of course, but there’s no more innuendo than in the average, like, 8 p.m. sitcom…They were kind of admitting too, they’re like ‘Well, yeah there’s soft Rs, there’s hard Rs, and you’re right we had a hard time coming up with the rating on this’, and they were also not 100% committed to it.”
Kevin Smith’s appeal to the MPA didn’t take but at least he is still fighting the good fight, something he has been doing for 30 years now. In 1994, Clerks was slapped with an NC-17, a rating that also landed on 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Both were successfully appealed but in doing so Smith sort of marked himself as a target with the board. Even later than those, the poster for Zack and Miri Make a Porno was banned from theaters due to its own innuendo. Tired of dealing with the MPA, Smith even considered not submitting Clerks II to avoid the hassle altogether.
The 4:30 Movie is a coming-of-age tale centering around teens, the cinema and love, all topics that should be made available to its target audience. While we of course haven’t seen the movie yet, I do trust that Kevin Smith knows exactly the content that he not only intended but presented.
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die is living up to the premise, “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” The “they” in this scenario are the U.S. Marshals, led by Judy Howard, who is played by Rhea Seehorn. The fourth film in the action-comedy series is currently enjoying a round of success as it becomes one of the bigger hits of the summer in a year where most large releases are failing to live up to expectations. While the Bad Boys series is usually a show for the duo of Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, this new installment splits the focus on some of the supporting characters — one being Captain Howard’s daughter.
Seehorn is not only riding high by being in one of the summer’s hits, but she also re-teams with Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan for a new untitled AppleTV+ show. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Seehorn as she talks about both projects and how it was Better Call Saul that got her the part in Bad Boys: Ride or Die. It was revealed that Bad Boys directors Adil and Bilall had worked through their Batgirl drama by binge-watching her AMC show. She stated, “There was a part of me that was like, ‘Do they know me from anything?’ (Laughs.) But I pretty much assume that of anybody; it wasn’t really specific to them. So I think it was Bilall who was like, ‘Kim Wexler!’ And I was like, ‘Hi!’ (Laughs.) But yeah, they are both huge fans. They’re filmmakers who love studying film and other filmmakers, and so they’re huge fans of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s work.”
She continued, “So I loved that they knew my work and that they weren’t meeting me cold, as a suggestion. They had really given some thought to what they thought I could bring to the Judy role, and I was extremely flattered.” Seehorn also revealed that the duo directors had her develop her role by watching Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Marshal character from The Fugitive as well as studying Joe Pantoliano‘s Captain Howard from the past films.
Seehorn explained, “Well, Adil and Bilall, because they’re film buffs, they brought up a lot of references, and they actually told me to take a look at The Fugitive. But, by no means did they say to do an impression of Tommy Lee, and thank God, because I would’ve failed miserably. (Laughs.) […] So I watched all the Bad Boys films again, and then they edited just Captain Conrad Howard’s [Pantoliano] scenes into a reel for me. I then watched that a lot, and then I was like, ‘Can we do a little bit of the comedy?’ So I don’t know if you can see it, but in the Fugitive-looking scene where Judy comes in [at the start of the manhunt], she is popping Pepto Bismol, which was a reference to him [and his reliance on it in Bad Boys for Life].”
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