Recently, IGN.com pointed me in the direction of a strange video on YouTube concerning a Mortal Kombat movie. This struck me as odd, since I figured the MK series all but finished after their latest videogame - Mortal Kombat: Armageddon - did everything it could to put an end to the increasingly insane storyline that is the Mortal Kombat universe. The two movies that were made in 1995 and 1997 varied from mediocre adaptation (the first one) to holy-crap-why-are-my-eyes-disintegrating bad (the second one). Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was so bad, in fact, that I had been sure that no one would ever attempt another.
Apparently I was wrong.
The video (watch it here) isn't so much a trailer as it is an opening sequence, where we see Jax - and who doesn't love Jax? - as a struggling cop in a nasty, beat-down city chatting with a mysterious hand-cuffed prisoner about some different serial killers running amuck. Each killer - I'll let you find out who they are yourself - is a different character from the MK series reinvisioned in what most people are describing as a sort of Batman Begins take on the series. You're treated to a brutal, if not terribly well-coordinated, fight scene, then a revelation of the identity of the prisoner with Jax before the video ends and you're left wondering "when can I see this in theaters?"
Come to find out, the video was made by director Kevin Tancharoen as a sort of bid for the opportunity to make the thing into a full-length film. Judging from the seven minutes that I saw, I'm actually all for it. Look no further than my 2010 movie preview to see that the theaters are being flooded with remakes and reboots right now, but for me at least, there's something different about the Mortal Kombat series. I personally didn't grow up watching The Karate Kid or the A-Team TV series. My generation played Mortal Kombat and watched Power Rangers (which I hear is coming back) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, also rumored to be rebooted in the next few years.
Reboots and remakes are complicated subjects for me. On the one hand, they seem utterly unoriginal, since you're really just taking the same plot and putting a fresh coat of paint on it to make a few bucks (like what Avatar did with Disney's Pocahontas). They feel as though inspired purely by greed and ease of accesibility. "Hey, Remember [insert random 70s or 80s TV show, like Charlie's Angels and A-Team]? People liked that. I bet if we tweak it so that it's young and fresh and relatable to today's audience, they'll totally go for it!" Sequels are just more of the same. "Hey, Shrek did pretty good at the box office. Let's make another one!" You don't have to make up new characters, settings, or plots, and instantly you have thousands of fans familiar with the universe of your movie before it's even made, thereby making them more likely to go out and see it. The skeptic in me really, really hates reboots, remakes, and sequels that aren't necessary to further the plot (good example of necessary sequels: the latter two Lord of the Rings films).
Weirdly, it's the writer in me who actually welcomes reboots and remakes. I enjoy seeing what contemporary writers do with existing material: what audience do they target, how does that affect the feel of the film, how do the characters or settings change - and, if so, why? How does modern technology change the special effects (see Clash of the Titans for your answer there)? How abstract does the director get in his adaptation? The list goes on. I can't help it. Reboots and remakes, though I find them morally unappealing, are simply irrisistable. Guess I'm addicted.
We'll see what becomes of this Mortal Kombat video. Warner Brothers apparently has the rights to another movie, and the director of this YouTube video is buddies with the screenwriter attached to WB's film, so maybe he'll get his wish. I read some of Tancharoen's commentary on the YouTube short, and he sounds like he really has his act together on making a Mortal Kombat film that far surpasses the crap from the 1990s while maintaining the spirit of the games. Were I Ed Boon, I'd pay this director much consideration. Taking something as wildly violent and over-the-top as the Mortal Kombat universe and uppercutting it into the world of realism may actually boost the series into respectability, much as Christopher Nolan did with Batman.
Of course, the debate as to whether or not Mortal Kombat NEEDS a dose of realism is an entirely different beast, and right now, I just don't have the stomach for it. I'm gonna go watch this video instead.
NOTE: Within minutes of writing this, I went on IGN and saw a trailer for a new Mortal Kombat game that looks like it's done in the 2D playing style of Marvel vs. Capcom with the 3D graphics of the past few MK games. How's that for weird timing? Oh wait, E3's going on.
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