One of the more contentious aspects of the Mortal Kombat reboot is that it doesn’t actually feature the titular tournament. While that’s hardly a dealbreaker, and clearly hasn’t been considering how much fans of the video game series enjoyed the movie, it does give Simon McQuoid’s feature debut the feel of a project that’s all setup and no payoff, one that’s content to hedge its bets that sequels will come.
The entire crux of the storyline revolves around the tournament, Shang Tsung mentions it explicitly on several occasions and outlines his desire to use it as a means to conquer every realm, and there are even several training montages based entirely on the various combatants getting into fighting shape for the round robin competition with the fate of the universe at stake.
The villains want to stop the tournament from happening, but the heroes aren’t down with that, and it all appears to be building towards Mortal Kombat. Instead, though, it’s kind of a damp squib when the third act is a handful of brief scraps with no real stakes as we know that the majority of the characters will be returning in the inevitable follow-up. And it’s a bit of a washout after the entire script focuses on the rules, mythology and importance of the tournament before failing to show its hand and saving it for the sequel instead.
It was a bold strategy, but the box office returns prove that it’s one to have paid off. And as expected, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us Zack Snyder’s Justice League was coming to HBO Max long before it was confirmed – that Mortal Kombat 2 will indeed feature the tournament and place it front and center. We don’t have any details beyond that, but with the worldbuilding done, hopefully we’ll see a first act that shows the various defenders of Earthrealm being recruited before the rest of the running time gets blown on violent martial arts action.
