Ludi Lin and Max Huang in
Mortal Kombat.
When the original
Mortal Kombat film came out in 1995, it was among the first wave of movies based on video games, coming just three years after the game itself debuted in arcades in 1992. Like virtually every other video game adaptation since, it was much derided for its laughable plot, dialogue, and, most importantly, action.
Twenty-six years later, not much has changed in the reboot of the franchise except one key thing that lines it up much better with the aesthetic of the video game series. In this
Mortal Kombat, the central figure is MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan), who is initially unaware that he shares a heritage with the great Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada), an 1800s-era Japanese warrior whose family is slaughtered in a brutal opening sequence.