(upbeat music)
- Hey, yo, what up Wisecrack? Kris here to talk
about something that's been dishing out fatalities since 1992.
- Woooo. Woooo. Woooo. Woooo.
- That's right.
(Mortal Kombat theme)
Now we're long time fans of the game
and even have a soft spot for the often ridiculed 1995 film.
So we were pretty jazzed for a 2021 reboot
and the opportunity to hear
- Get over here!
- [Kris] on the big screen.
But as the end credits rolled something just wasn't sitting
right. Don't misunderstand us.
It brings a certain level of fun and
spectacular blood sporting.
And that might be all you want
from a Mortal Kombat movie, which is fine.
But we'd argue that the movie misunderstands a basic appeal
of Mortal Kombat that the 1995 version mostly got right.
We'll explain in this Wisecrack edition on
Mortal Kombat What Went Wrong?
And spoilers ahead for the Mortal Kombat extended universe.
And before we jump into it
I wanted to give a shout out to this week's
sponsor: Raid, Shadow Legends.
If you don't know, Raid is an awesome hero collector RPG
where you can collect champions
and battle up against friends or players online.
We've been playing Raid for a while now here at Wisecrack.
So we've been able to collect a lot of champions.
Some of my faves include the epic Battlesage
and the legendary Astralon.
They are essential to my clan. Battlesage places
an increased attack buff on all allies
and removes all debuffs on allies. And places
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Collecting heroes and building up my team is one
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You can really plan a strategy
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for iOS, Android, or PC today.
And now back to the show.
To understand what makes for good
Mortal Kombat film adaptation we first need to look
at what made the game so beloved in the first place.
Beyond the basic game mechanics
there's a joy in discovering all the fatalities,
the seemingly inexplicably pop-up of a guy saying
- Toastee
- [Kris] and the je ne sais quoi of impaling
your opponent on a floor of spikes.
Mortal Kombat differs from other fighting games
largely because of its blend of humor, self-awareness,
and joyful over the top-ness.
In everything from the costume design
to the character concepts, compare that to a competitor
like Street Fighter, a relatively straightforward fighting
game, that while featuring a green dude who electrocutes you
generally takes itself pretty seriously.
By contrast whether you're turning your opponent
into a literal baby or just turning them into your
new best friend Mortal Kombat fully embraces the ridiculous.
Even, and maybe especially, in its most violent moments.
And the 1995 film followed the same ethos and not just when
you're watching a six limb puppet get owned
by a single punch to the groin.
(crunch)
- Ooooh.
- [Kris] From its set design to its performances
the film is nothing, if not over the top.
And this way both the game and the original film
are excellent examples of the camp aesthetic.
And I'm not talking about bent tent poles
and damp sleeping bags.
Now, camp is a word that gets tossed around a lot
in film buff circles.
But it's worth really examining what it means.
As Helene A Shugart and Catherine Egley Waggone
explained, camp is an over the top playful and parodic
aesthetic and it's use of the exaggerated, ostentatious,
outrageous renders it effectively a spectacle.
Though camp has become virtually mainstream in
recent decades, appearing in everything
from Desperate Housewives to Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
it originated in queer subcultures as far back
as the 18th Century.
The aesthetic became a way to use camp's
irony, theatricality, parody, and humor, to cope with
and combat social stigma. In Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp"
she identifies the camp aesthetic
in various cultural products, ranging
from Tiffany's lamps to actress Greta Garbo.
The unifying theme here is that they all broadcast
their own theatricality and artifice.
The films of John Waters are also a prime example
of campiness, delivering wretched, often filthy excess
with a Lucille-Bluth style wink.
All in all camp is, simply put
- Too much man!
- [Kris] Camp culture in some ways
is an attack on high culture, according to Sontag,
in that it asserts that good taste
is not simply good taste, that there exists indeed
a good taste of bad taste.
Now campiness permeates just about every frame
of the 1995 Mortal Kombat film.
That's why, even though the film was not particularly
well received when it first came out,
it's retained a serious cult following.
The reasons become clear in the opening moments.
When we see an over dramatically rendered fight, framed in
over the top canted or dramatically tilted angles.
It's punctuated by sound effects that are much too loud
(crunch)
and rounded out with absurd performances like
- Your brother's soul is mine!
- [Kris] Oh, and then his face turns into a skeleton.
And if that's not too much I don't know what it is.
When this guy's eye full on twitches, that's camp.
When a giant skull appears in the sky through
less than convincing CGI effects, that's also camp.
This...
- What more do you want?
(slow clap)
- [Kris] Total camp. And when the camera literally tilts
under this guy's crotch just as he's asserting
his masculinity you better believe that's camp.
But then the filmmakers do all of this on purpose?
That question raises an important tension
within the camp aesthetic: intentionality.
According to Sontag, sometimes camp is completely naive,
happening by mistake and resulting in failed seriousness.
The room of course is an absolute masterclass in this.
- Just the chicken chip chip chip chip chip.
- [Kris] Other times as with any performance
by the actress Divine in a John Waters film,
the campiness is the intention.
The creators are in on the joke.
What's interesting about Mortal Kombat is
that it feels like we're seeing instances of both kinds
of camp within one film, which is pretty unusual.
The campy performance by Christopher Lambert
as Lord Raiden feels pretty purposeful.
There's just no way he wanted you to
take his character completely seriously,
if seriously, at all.
In moments like these the film feels like
it's self-consciously trying to be camp.
- It's, how do you say, a deal's a deal.
- What have you done?
- I made a choice.
- [Kris] as a means of leaning into
the video games absurdities. But there are other moments
where you can sense a failed attempt at seriously carrying
out a cinematic gesture, like this divine moment
when a Ninja comes up to fight, but trips over himself
just a little bit.
- Toastee.
- [Kris] Moments like that of failed seriousness
somehow make the film more lovable.
The absurdity of Mortal Kombat camp aesthetic is a big part
of why it's remained such a cult classic.
- Fatality.
- Oh, and also heads blowing off.
This is why we were puzzled to see how the screenwriter
behind the remake approached retelling the story.
He told Polygon that "With something like Mortal Kombat
where we're talking about soul sucking sorcerers,
it can very easily slip into camp."
So right away, he's rejecting some of Mortal Kombat's DNA.
He continued, "I love the '95 film
but it drips in nacho cheese. But we were in 2021,
and we wanted to deliver a movie that felt more authentic,
a little more realistic."
I mean, realistic isn't the first word that comes
to mind when I see this,
(shatters)
but okay. The decision to lean out from the camp factor
is not subtle. The overall aesthetics
of the newest installment are less colorful, less zany,
and less punctuated with over the top set designs.
Instead, and despite clearly having a bigger budget,
the new film exercises far more visual restraint, settling
for darker, barer shots and simpler production design.
Also quite a bit of it takes place in the real world
which is depicted quite unremarkably.
The camera angles, err on the side of conventional
as compared to its predecessor's aforementioned
widely canted angles and occasional crotch shot.
The total differences between the two films are obvious
from the first moments of the new film,
which don't include the glorious theme song,
but rather set up a true family tragedy.
In the 1995 version, when Liu Kang sees his brother
get murdered the fighting is over the top,
rendered a near total caricature by the performances.
It's not trying to tug at your heartstrings.
In the new version, a woman and her child are murdered
off screen by killer ice guy in a moment conveyed
through this guttural cry for help.
Her husband upon finding them dead seeks a tearful revenge
against the attackers only to tragically be defeated.
Here, they've built up a genuine drama, which sets the tone
for a film that is definitely not going to
embrace the goof factor.
Except Mortal Kombat isn't supposed to be about
killing people's families.
It's about melting a person's face with acid.
And it feels like a bit of a contradiction to
make a determinedly serious and gritty film
when you literally have a character whose magical
power is having a killer hat?
We can also see these kinds of problems
in more one-to-one comparisons.
Take the way Kano is murdered in each film.
In the first he's put into a deadly crotch hold. Says
- [Kano] Oh, give me a break.
- [Kris] And promptly has his neck broken
by the sheer force of Sonia's thighs. It's ridiculous.
It's goofy. In the new version he's stabbed in the eye,
emitting a guttural moan as he collapses to his death.
Not exactly a LOL moment. Similar LOLs were lost
in the new film's depiction of Goro,
our favorite four-armed pal.
- Now I tear out your spine.
- [Kris] In the first, he's an absurd puppet
who likes wrestling and has a pension for going like
(roar)
- [Kris] Even when he kills, it just feels kind of funny.
As do the characters reactions to the death.
- Nooooooo!
- [Kris] In the new version Goro's a scary CGI concoction
who literally hunts down the main characters wife and child.
Gone is any trace of the original's himbo charm.
(roar)
- [Kris] When summing up our criticism of the new film
it's worth considering another quote from Sontag's
seminal essay, "When something is just bad, rather
than camp, it's often because it is too mediocre
in ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do
anything really outlandish."
This seems to sum up the problems of the Mortal Kombat
remake to a T. It's a gore-filled film full of insanely
over the top action, but infused with zero sense of humor.
Other than the occasional lame crack of Kano.
- Arms dealer, drug runner, murder for hire,
scum of the earth.
- I also give really good foot massages.
- [Kris] And one great shout out to the game's
most annoying strategy
- Is that the only move you know, mate?
- [Kris] In this way, the film fails to hit the mark
of outlandish in the way that its predecessor
did so beautifully.
But what do you guys think?
Are we being too harsh on the remake? Is the 1995 version
outdated or as lovable as ever? Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Peace.
(upbeat music)