Hacker Cinema
Mortal Kombat
2021 · Film · 110 min
Directed by Simon McQuoid
Washed-up MMA fighter Cole Young, unaware of his heritage, and hunted by Emperor Shang Tsung's best warrior, Sub-Zero, seeks out and trains with Earth's greatest champions as he prepares to stand against the enemies of Outworld in a high stakes battle for the universe.
4 positive4 negative9 neutralfrom 17 commenters
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17 comments on Hacker News
Video games remain underserved. Video gamers do want movies, even if it's just slop.
In a few years probably not. Pokemon Pikachu and the Sonic movies were way better than Mario. And I think Zelda needs to be WAY better than Mario to get a real audience.
But Hollywood is so bad with video games that "Mario with proper sound effects" is currently the bar. Like it's either Mario or Mortal Kombat for recent video game movies and somehow the Mario and Minecraft movies are objectively better.
Graphic novels and manga qualify as media mail ("books"), but smaller comic books do not.
RPG books (Dungeons & Dragons) qualify as media mail ("books"), but boxed RPGs (Dungeons & Dragons) do not (except for book sets.)
Movies (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc.) qualify as media mail ("film") while games (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc.) do not.
Optical discs of educational software are permitted, but "video games" are not. It isn't clear to me which side educational games fall on.
Maybe the most interesting paragraph: “The cost of [the special effects without AI] just wouldn’t have been feasible for a show in that budget,” Sarandos said.
But given the abysmal quality of CGI/FX these days (look at the new Mortal Kombat trailer ffs), I can’t imagine film deteriorating any further. But industry must seriously step up its game because soon, everyone can make movies like that.
What counts is not the monopoly on talent and technology, but distribution and how much artistic merit you can leverage.
Hollywood is rightfully afraid.
> When I was growing up, those were what was harming children at an industrial scale.
Have you ever considered that maybe people were right about all that stuff? The problem so many people have is they either aren't forward thinking enough or only look back a few years at most when arguing against "moral crusaders."
Take for example violence in movies and videogames. Back in the 80s, the MPAA came down hard on the Friday the 13th movies, and the violence level in those movies absolutely pales in comparison to what you see now in Saw X, a mainstream R-rated horror movie. In the early 90s, there were federal hearings about violence in video games, Mortal Kombat being the prime example. Compare what gave people heart attacks back then to what the latest Mortal Kombat game features. Maybe those people were right all along, and we should have done something other than just laugh at their concerns?
With the benefit of decades of hindsight, there's a lot of issues in society where the "slippery slope"-ists turned out to be right.
Yeah but at the same time, PTSD from for example Mortal Kombat or Carmageddon can develop later in life / over a long period in time. One example, there's a pretty harrowing scene in Shaun of the Dead where one of the characters gets disemboweled. We have a 15 year old that watched that at a much younger age, didn't hit him, but when he saw it again it affected him a lot more.
I think being able to correlate and understand what's happening is a big factor in how things affect you. Films like Grave of the Fireflies apparently (I haven't watched it) hit much harder if you have kids for example.
Maybe it's a glass half full scenario? I'm pretty happy the nanny state allows blood/gore at least.
Imagine if they were consistent and movies/tv/video games were also whitewashed of blood too. What a miserable media world we'd be in.
I can remember how disappointed I was when I bought home Mortal Kombat for SNES and there was no blood. Truly horrifying.
Elden ring is absolutely not story or narrative driven.
There is plenty of lore in the game but the actual narrative is basically nonexistent.
> how come every time Hollywood tries to take a video game IP and make a movie it comes out terrible? Resident evil, hitman, assassins creed
There are good and bad examples here. The recent Mortal Kombat movie was well received. Arcane is fantastic.
The real answer is that people have actual standards for movie/tv show stories. The resident evil games and movies are a great example.
The movies arguably have a better and more fleshed out story than the video games but because they are being judged against other movies, they seem terrible.
As a teen in the early 90s, I distinctly remember significant campaigns against violence represented in TV, movies, video games, and music. There were several congressional hearings demonizing Mortal Kombat, rap music, Doom, etc.
Now as a parent with a tween and younger kids, my understanding of the current state of the science is that there still is no overwhelming consensus on increased violence related to media, however it seems to be agreed that aggression is linked. 30 years later Mortal Kombat is the number one fighting game franchise of all time, and murder rates are lower and violent crime are relatively unchanged.
I watched Captain Lou Albano play Mario in the 80s.
Resident Evil? Pokemon? Mortal Kombat? It's already here. I actually don't care, as long as they are good. Not all MCU is bad (and I might even say little/none of it is bad).
Maybe a different comparison: a lot of movies now feel like processed food. Consistent and made-to-please, but limits to how great it can be. It is not ideal to live only on processed food.
The results remind me of high quality rotoscoped characters. Like if the original Mortal Kombat got an HD remaster or something. They look good but not real.
If they do start replacing actors with these, everything's gonna look like a Ralph Bakshi movie.
>>The studio's 2021 slate includes projects such as The Suicide Squad, The Matrix 4, Dune, Godzilla vs. Kong and Space Jam: A New Legacy. Other films include Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, Tom & Jerry, Mortal Kombat, Those Who Wish Me Dead, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, In The Heights, Reminiscence, Malignant, The Many Saints of Newark, King Richard and Cry Macho.
well this is an impressive line up! i usually take a pass of $20 or go on Tuesdays for movies that are worth $6-$7 , but with $15 for new movies and HBO shows this is a no brainer (YMMV)
But i do miss the big screen experience , may be cheap home theater ideas will rise up and grant a % of that experience
Pay to play gets backlash from gamers with enough sophistication and experience to notice and care, which if sales figures are to be believed, until recently represented a small minority. Something like Manhunt or a serial killer sim outrages all sorts of people, fed by the media and congressional hearings, and game publishers would like to avoid that. It’s a different type and magnitude of backlash, and for what? You’re never going to make CoD or GTA money from a serial killer sim, so why take the heat? A serial killer sim also runs into the issue of just what a serial killer is, and why they do what they do. Serial killings unlike spree killings and mass killings are typically sexually motivated, and that’s pretty dark territory for a mainstream company to wade into. “Click X to masturbate on the corpse” is something that is probably a moral line for a lot of people, as would, “Rotate right stick to remove nipple, try to max scream meter!”
Games like GTA and Mortal Kombat have done edgy stuff, but they’re also really great games and technical achievements. Manhunt for example, was just boring and technically mediocre, which made it harder to defend and easier to hate. It’s the difference between a masterpiece of the horror genre or something like Nabokov’s Lolita, and a movie like Hostel or cp fanfics. How many developers and publishers will have great ideas that require shocking subjects, and then execute it so well that it’s defensible? Most publishers aren’t even taking risks with things aren’t divisive, they just want money and sequels and DLC. Serial killer or gore sims?... nah.
> Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for.
I wouldn't agree with that. Sure, AAA-level blockbuster video games have simplistic, unoriginal and derivative stories and that's what most gamers play unfortunately, but there well-written games are definitely out there.
Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 were both better written than any Star Wars movie by a long stretch.
Planescape: Torment is probably the best written game I've ever played, and playing it almost feels like you're reading a novel at times because the world-building and especially the dialogue is so fleshed-out and thoughtful. This game takes a huge dump over the writing in most movies I've seen.
I mean, that's just two examples. I'm a huge sucker for games with a great story regardless of the genre, but genre is a limiting factor in well-written stories.
You generally don't get much of a story in an RTS for example. You are most certainly never going to get a good story from a beat-em up like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.
Mortal Kombat was not a bad movie if you ask me.
Mortal Kombat is very, very fun. I'm not sure I'd call it a good film, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Another good example is the Phoenix Wright movie (in Japan). Both are excellent love letters to their fans.
So many video game movie projects are missing the simple question, "why?" So many of these games are inspired by movies in the first place, and their stories are mostly just cliches based on their source material. It's fine in the context of the game, because the player is doing something, but when you put that into a non-interactive medium, the flaws become obvious.
If you take Indiana Jones, turn it into a game with a sexy woman as the main character[1], and then try to make a movie out of it, then of course the critical reaction is going to be "Indiana Jones but not as good." Mortal Kombat is basically Enter the Dragon with a simpler storyline, so why would you decide to turn it into a movie?
It's an issue that comes up in most adaptation, whether it be a book, or a comic, or even a song. There needs to be some reason to do it. Some idea that the source material does that hasn't already been done to death in film. "This game/movie/book is popular" isn't a good enough reason. It might get a movie greenlit, and it might even make money. Heck, it might even make a TON of money, but it won't make the movie good.
[1] Later iterations of Tomb Raider have been much more feminist, but the original concept was entirely based on sex appeal
It's interesting that the adaptations of both Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil were directed by the same person.