Mortal kombat - L'anéantissement

I must admit that I quite enjoyed the first film. Not the best martial arts flick in the world, but by no means the worst. However, compared to this, its a damn masterpiece!

1) There are WAAAAAY too many characters. In the first, you had the four heroes (Cage, Sonya, Kang, and Raiden), and about five villains (Kahn, Kano, Sub-zero, Scorpion, and Goro). This meant that at least some amount of time could be spent building on characters. Thus, before we see Sub zero,Goro and scorpion fight, we know who they are , and their reputations. This doesnt happen with a single character in MK:A because it is too busy trying to throw as many characters from the games at you as possible that it often doesnt even have time to mention who they are (e.g. Smoke, Cyrax, Rain, Baraka, Mileena).

2) It's had a $30 million budget, yet seems to have spent on completely the wrong things. I would have much rather they had halved their SFX budget and hired a decent fight choreographer. Put it this way: Iron Monkey cost less than $4 (if I remember correctly) for the entire film, and there isnt a single fight in MK:A that comes close to the worst in that film, which leads on to the next point.

3) The direction is TERRIBLE!! Especially during the fights!!! Watch any decent fight sequence, and generally the cuts are kept to a minimum. It both makes the fight easier to follow, and shows off the skill of the participants more. Its rare in this film that any flow between moves occurs without cuts. During one move, there are actually about five cuts!! No cuts would have looked much better!!

4) Its hard to decide which is worse, the script, or the acting.

5) The SFX heavy final battle is perhaps the lamest thing I have ever seen.

There are people who will defend this film saying that "its just fun!", or "Its not meant to be deep and meaningful or anything". Which works for some films. And those films can be fun. Or not deep and meaningful, but still enjoyable. This isnt. Its bad. It hasnt got one redeeming feature that I can think of. Possibly the worst film. Ever.

By all that's Holy! A film that made me cringe the whole way through! Dear Lord how the studio bosses must have laughed as they counted the money that they made off this turkey. Now, I thought the first MK was an OK film, great soundtrack, OK acting and plenty of fighting. A good no-brainer actioner. But this....this....defies belief.

How on Earth can you get such a bunch of wooden actors together and still manage to hide all the strings? It comes to something when you look at a film and can honestly say the best actor in it is Brian Thompson! The actors playing the bad guys overacted so awfully it was painful to watch, expecially the centaur guy. He exuded ham to a level I've not seen before.

The special effects were truly special, but only in a "special needs" kind of way. Looks like they were lifted straight from the video game itself. Laugh as you watch something resembling a dragon perform martial arts very badly. Laugh as Brian Thompson turns into a......thing. Laugh at the terrible lack of detail in it all. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh and laugh again, right up until they slap the straightjacket on you and cart you off to the loony bin. Because only someone truly demented would want to sit through this terrible, terrible film.

Eh? What's that Doc? Yes, I know I sat through it. But it was all in the name of science, you see. I was doing research. By the way, you couldn't loosen this jacket a bit, could you?

Anyway, as I say, the best actor was Brian Thompson. Only he saved it from getting a 1, but even then, the rest prevented it from getting any more than a 2.

Avoid it if you value your sanity!

I'll only say one word to this movie! Inferior, compared to the first movie! The worst thing about the movie is the dialogue which sickens me! Whole things are garbage that can never be disposed of!!!

I had seen bits n pieces of it in the early 2k on a cable tv channel.

Saw the entire movie recently on a fast forward mode.

This is the second installment in the Mortal Kombat film series based on the video game and the story picks up immediately after the last film ended.

While the first part was at least entertaining, this one is sheer lousy.

We have James Remar's body double doing all the wire fu stunts and unlike Christopher Lambert, James Remar got bored with his long hair n white monk gown. He does a crop cut n wears a designer waist coat n military boots.

I found Sandra Hess as Sonya Blade more attractive than the previous part's gal.

Talisa Soto who played Kitana is only 4 years younger to Musetta Vander who played Kitana's mother. I found Musetta more attractive than Talisa.

Brian Thompson as the main villain is no match to Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

I have been a huge fan of the MK videogames practically since the beginning, and I really enjoyed the first Mortal Kombat movie. It wasn't a work of art, but it was fun, funny, colorful and had some great fight scenes. Anihilation, though, suffers from an extreme case of sequelitis, with about half of the characters re-cast, all of which were a step down, a dumb story line, wooden acting, effects that were less advanced than the ones in the first movie, and a feeling of blah pervading the whole thing. Perhaps the worst thing is the fight at the end with the two really bad CG "animalities", a cheesy idea from the game that should have stayed in the game. Liu Kang's dragon looked like a pear with wings and a tail. Definitely avoid this one if you wish to keep your glowing memories of the arcade game intact.