MORTAL KOMBAT (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I've never played video games, so I only know of their success through their iterations in other media. I won't echo the tedious critical observation that the games' emphasis on action and spectacle might retard their potential for meaningful discourse; it's obvious to me that this concentration on spectacle has dominated much of the adventure-genre in many eras. Most serial films from 1940 onward are stripped-down narratives whose only purpose was to provide thrills and spills, and that tendency certainly can't be blamed on video games.

There were only three major live-action video game adaptations before 1995's MORTAL KOMBAT and it's my memory that none of them did as good a job as the team of director Paul W.S. Anderson and writer Kevin Droney (to say nothing of the fight choreographers and musician George S. Clinton). I would tend to assume that the "universe" of the KOMBAT game was pretty simple, and that Droney probably didn't expand on the basic rules of the game. But his contribution may not be so much "world-building" as "world-justification," in that he made the responses of the main characters to their extraordinary situation credible, at least within the context of an action movie.

Of the three "mortal" heroes who get roped into the Mortal Kombat tournament, Liu Kang (Robin Shou) is given the greatest reason to succeed, while the motives of Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) are more contingent and less indicative of even their simple characterizations. Liu Kang turns his back on his supposed destiny to fight for Earth in the tournament because he's become "Americanized," so that he brushes the martial tradition off as ancient Chinese superstition. Because he ducks out on his responsibility, his younger brother tries to take his place but is slain by the sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Shang, who is an Earth-ally to the warlike dimension of Outworld, hosts the tournament, which will make it possible for Outworld to invade Earth if Earth's champions lose this contest. Liu's only initial reason to enter the tournament is to get the chance to avenge his brother, but he also has a fair psychological arc as far as subsuming his personal desires for the greater good.

There's a rumor that at some point Johnny Cage was planned to be the main hero who defeats Shang Tsung, but there's no trace of any such orientation in the finished film. Unlike the humorless Liu and Sonya, Cage is almost the film's only vessel for humor, but the character remains admirable and likable, in contrast to many current films in which "the Ugly American" is made into the designated goat. Sonya Blade really has no psychological arc; she also seeks vengeance for a slain ally, and once she gains that revenge, she really has nothing much to accomplish. However, to keep Cage from being the sole source of humor, the role of the storm-god Rayden (Christopher Lambert) provides some much needed levity as he shepherds the reluctant trio to their destiny.

Also overshadowed by Liu and Cage is the extradimensional humanoid Princess Kitana (Talisa Soto). Her minimal backstory involves her father having been slain by the reigning emperor of Outworld, and for some reason she's been allowed to live even though she's clearly planning to undermine the Emperor's invasion plans. She only has a couple of fight-scenes and her main purpose duplicates that of Rayden, offering sage advice when possible.

As stated, the action scenes are the main attraction. Are they among the best of all time? No, but they're consistently good, and I even enjoyed Cage's conflict with the four-armed monster Goro, for all that the animatronic device wasn't state of the art. Only at the end does the script violate the story's internal rules, for that ending depicts the Emperor making ready to invade Earth despite his side having lost Mortal Kombat. Still, I recognize that the only reason this scene was tossed in was to rev up the viewers' desire for a sequel, and that it wasn't really germane to the main story. Unfortunately, the original film's one sequel did take that scenario seriously, which did not work out very well.