Since the new MK movie was just about the worst adaptation of the series ever,
I feel the need to talk about how I'd approach the series for an adaptation.
Of course, I kind of already have been adapting it via MK Khronicles,
but this is more for a live action or animated version, as opposed to prose.
First off, I would not make it a movie series.
Fighting game movies basically always have the issue that you either:
1. Overstuff it with characters that don't have time to be characterised or
contextualised and exist only to fight and lose; because they are mere power
sets to be thrown against the actual characters to challenge them. I mean,
I've already talked about how Annihilation and 2021 both have that problem.
Or 2. Give them cameoes at best and narrow the scope to focus on just the most important
characters, leaving most of the best characters out in the cold. We've had four Tekken movies,
but the likes of King and Paul only get to cameo in the OVA,
and Yoshimitsu gets to be a soulless enforcer in one film.
MK1 can work as a film, but each version thus far has been flawed. The 1995 original fumbled
on characterising the villains; Scorpion's Revenge tried to tell both the MK1 plot and
Scorpion's plot even though it had less time to do it, leaving both stories feeling undercooked;
and 2021 doesn't even get to the fucking tournament. No, I'm still not over that.
The right way to do this is as a series. You approach it like Heroes: numerous characters
with their own ongoing stories that eventually bring them together for the season's central plot.
You can give most of the cast some actual focus and characterisation, and still have time to
tell the main story. I've already compared 2021 to a poorly-made TV show in the past.
So, here is a rough outline for my ideal Mortal Kombat show, where each season adapts one of the
games. The aim is to adapt the entire series. Kinda. Storywise, if you've read MK Khronicles,
you know how the plot and characters would be depicted. If not, go read
it. And while live action might have issues with budget and cast members not coming back,
there are enough characters that you could bring in someone else to take their place
for a season or two. Like, if Jax or Sonya was unavailable, you could probably bring in Stryker.
Season 1 opens with four origin episodes,
along the lines of MK Legacy. Each one follows a certain group of characters
through their histories up to the present, where they board the boat to the island.
Episode 1 introduces Liu Kang and Kung Lao, their education and training being
used to explain the premise and stakes of the tournament to the audience. Liu Kang is chosen
as the competitor over Kung Lao, ending the episode with him boarding the ship.
Episode 2 follows Johnny Cage's career, showing his rise and his fall, possibly in
a documentary style for half of it, culminating in him boarding the boat and meeting Liu Kang.
Episode 3 follows Sonya, Jax and Kano, detailing years of history until Kano boards the boat as
it leaves, with Sonya getting a speedboat to pursue. You could probably find a way
to tie Johnny's story into this if you wanted to quicken the pace. Maybe Johnny meets Sonya while
researching for a role and gets caught up in a pursuit of Kano some time before the tournament.
Episode 4 centres on the history of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, as well as their clans.
The episode ends with Sub-Zero observing an altercation between Kano and Johnny on the boat,
right before Scorpion appears and promises to avenge himself. You might notice that this is
following the plot of the MK1 prequel comic, and that's not just because I hold Midway MK as
the peak of MK storytelling. That comic's story works perfectly as a structure for this part of
the show, as it allows us to do the origin stories for the cast while incrementally introducing them
in the present, and moving that story forward bit-by-bit, to give it some forward momentum.
Episode 5 is the arrival on the island, the proper introduction of Shang Tsung,
hints of Goro and Reptile, Sonya's arrival and capture,
and a few showcases of what the characters can do, before the tournament begins proper in Episode 6.
The tournament would take around five episodes, ending with the finale where
Liu Lang defeats Goro, causing all hell to break loose as he heads off to face
Shang Tsung. With Shang bested, the finale ends on a tease of Shao Kahn as Shang Tsung
manages to weasel his way out of punishment by suggesting a plan to change the rules.
Ten episodes is just the right amount, I feel, to give the cast room to be
fleshed out adequately, without things dragging on too much. But rest assured,
every season after this is longer because of the constantly ballooning cast.
Seasons 2 and 3 are about what you'd expect, in terms of plot and structure.
We don't do dedicated episodes for character backstories anymore. They do still get told,
but in flashbacks, because setting up your main cast is integral enough for the first
instalment that it can work that way, but new characters in follow-ups can't
hold the plot advancement back too much once the story's already gotten going.
There might be an exception made for Kabal, Styker and maybe Nightwolf. Because something
I've come to appreciate about 2011 is that the MK3 portion opens with just two normal guys,
Stryker and Kabal. 'Cause it really highlights how sudden and out-of-nowhere this is for everyone who
doesn't know about Outworld. It kinda helps to give an impression of what the rest of Earthrealm
thinks about this Outworld stuff when it just suddenly lands on their doorstep. So, the first
episode of Season 3 wouldn't feature any of the core heroes except for one, who comes to recruit
those characters into Raiden's group. So yeah, 2011 actually... did that part quite well. ...Huh.
Season 4 adapts MK4, and features a dedicated episode or multiparter based on Mythologies to
open the show and set up the plot. Maybe you could release it ahead of the main season to
hype it up. This season is where we start to really set up the singular timeline premise,
with Johnny and Sonya getting together at the end,
and Cassie having been born by the time the next season rolls around.
The premier of Season 5 tells the story of Quan Chi forming his alliance with Shang Tsung,
while also detailing what's been going on with Liu Kang since last season. The
premier ends with Liu Kang's death to get people talking about the show. "Holy fuck,
you see the new episode!?" The rest of the first half of the season is Raiden gathering the heroes,
catching the viewers up on what they've been up to, and then heading to Outworld.
We also follow the side plots with Nitara, the Black and Red Dragons, Li Mei, etc. Then,
the season finale happens. The heroes finally make it to Shang Tsung's Palace. The second half
of this episode is the heroes getting massacred, culminating in Raiden's fight with the sorcerers,
his defeat, Onaga's return, and the deaths of the final three who oppose Onaga. The destruction of
the palace is observed by a mysterious old man who claims to be responsible for this.
Season 6 adapts Deception. We have regular flashbacks to Shujinko's quest. It's not
as extensive as, say, the flashback or flashfoward storylines in Arrow,
but there's at least a scene or two of it per episode that you try to tie in
to what's happening in the present. Maybe you start and end each episode with them.
Armageddon may seem like it doesn't have much material to fill Season 7 by itself without it
becoming the Taven show, but everyone in the cast has their own motivations that,
while mostly not explored in the game itself, can be explored here. That's the beauty of adaptation,
after all: you can make up for the shortcomings of the source material. We follow Taven throughout,
of course, but it's more like Heroes, with various plots being advanced per episode,
Taven's being the only one to advance in every episode.
The season ends with multiple episodes depicting the battle,
which here has armies instead of just the playable fighters. This gives us a lot of jobbers so the
real fighters can actually get some wins and kills. Numerous ongoing plots are resolved with
some stand-offs like an Edenian victory over Shao Kahn. Taven defeats Blaze in the finale,
the realms are saved, and we end with the reveal that Shinnok was never at
the battle and has been secretly using the battle to fuel his revenant army.
Season 8 is MKX. Given what Armageddon set up with Johnny and Shinnok as the central figures,
combined with the massive death toll that game was meant to have,
MKX's story with Johnny leading Earthrealm against Shinnok and his revenants is a very
natural continuation of the narrative. We open with probably a two-parter based on
MKX's opening chapter, ending with Shinnok's defeat and the jump forward to Johnny and
the Kombat Kids. The timeskip is a lot shorter here, since Cassie would already be born prior
to the fight with Shinnok, so we're looking at around 10-15 years instead of 20-25.
From here, the show continues with a take on MKX's plot, while having regular flashback
plots to fill in the timeskip. Perhaps, every episode picks one story to focus on for that.
Maybe we have an episode that has the kids on their Lin Kuei mission while flashing back to
show Cassie and Jacqui's upbringing, while the next one moves us to Outworld and introduces us
to Kotal through his rise to power. So yeah, it's basically MKX's existing structure,
but without the character chapters, allowing the flashbacks to feel a bit less random.
Season 9, rather than moving on to MK11, is actually a season that wraps up the Dark
Raiden and Revenant plots. I'll be doing a Wasted Plotential on this at some point,
so wait for that to see the specifics, but all you need to know now is that this specific plot ends
with at least one of the two dying and at least most of the revenants being restored or killed.
Another thing to note is that any character who's already been killed and resurrected under mind
control - like Sindel and the Deception five - or characters who've spent most of their story
under mind control like Smoke, do not become revenants here. They're just off the table
because that would be too repetitive , and I can't imagine the actors would particularly enjoy that.
Y'know, last thing you wanna do is piss off some of the major actors this close to the finish line.
Season 10, then, is MK11, kind of. As with MK Khronicles, this is not a time travel story.
In live action, that would be harder to do, since you'd likely need de-ageing CGI
and that shit can't be cheap when you're using it this much, and I don't think a TV budget, even
when boosted for the series' final season, could afford that. Instead, it's a multiverse story,
bringing in actors from one or multiple prior adaptations to thwart a new threat. In Khronicles,
it's set up as Fire God Revenant Liu Kang, but it can be basically anyone, other than The One Being.
Shut up about fighting The One Being. Just imagine TV Johnny teaming up with Linden Ashby, TV Jax
meeting Michael Jai White, TV Kano fighting Josh Lawson, or even just cool meetings that we never
got, like Robin Shou's Liu Kang meeting the spirit of his ancestor, Paolo Montalbán's Great Kung Lao.
And, of course, the big one: TV Quan Chi getting his shit rocked by Richard Divizio to confirm that
the Midway timeline carried on and 2011's intro was another universe so that the best version of
the MK universe wasn't ruined by time travel or bad writing. Truly, a series finale for the ages.
And obviously, ten seasons is a tall order, so the show would aim for certain earlier points
as endings if it can't go that long. Those would be capping off the Shao Kahn story in Season 3
and ending there like Annihilation did, or going up to Armageddon and having that be the climax.
And that is the end. We'd get as faithful an adaptation as is humanly possible with the budget
and availability of actors in mind (assuming the network keeps its fucking hands off), MK's story
gets to be told properly for fucking once, and we get a generally good martial arts action TV
show that doesn't feel the need to cut every two goddamn seconds during an action sequence.
All-in-all, exactly what MK needs after nearly three decades of mediocre-at-best adaptations.
If you liked this video, why not subscribe and support me on Patreon like these fine people here?
If not, then make sure to share it with your enemies so they can suffer along with you.
Today's recommended videos are, once again, my and a few other videos explaining what's
wrong with MK's latest adaptation and why something like this is so worth considering.