Mortal Kombat The Journey Begins

Blackness. The music starts. From the listing opening chords you know that something quite extraordinary is on its way…you know that sooner or later the call will come. The call to arms, to defense, to “get over here.” And you know that someone is going to get kicked in the face. And you are glad. Or at least you should be.

A connoisseur of animated violence as I am, whether it is cartoonish or digitally created and controlled, I was very nearly thrilled to see the box. There in the $1.00 movie (!) bin at my local (name of discount retail chain deleted) was a package with the words Mortal Kombat blazon across the top. Aaaah, another foray into the great action realm. Another collection of hours spent with wildly manic music, and imaginary creatures demanding my demise. But this was no mortal game. This was a film, an animated film, a digitally animated film at that. Ooooh, the evil glee as I turned the box over in my hand, studying the screenshots, the “plot,” completely ignoring the subtitle. It seems all recent MK offerings have had a subtitle of some sort. The true fan ignores the title. The item that they hold in their hand could very well be Mortal Kombat: Bunny Brigade and the true fan would not know until a tiny flopsy wannabe hippity-hops on to the screen, and screams for the blood of his opponent. I am a true fan, but for those of you who will read this review and lust after the video, it is called Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins: The Animated Story: Digitally Animated: You Could Get a Very Nearly Free Mortal Kombat Watch!

To clarify, for those not consumed by the need to witness animated violence, I will offer a condensed history of the Mortal Kombat franchise. Mortal Kombat, or MK, was invented somewhere around the late 1980’s or the early 1990’s. One day a group of Video Game Developers decided that the anti-social behaviors of video-gamers could only be squelched through negative reinforcement. So Mortal Kombat was created, and it was good. The characters on the screen shouted and insulted the gamers, who spent all of their time refining their combo-creating skill, only to be bested by their six-year-old button mashing brother. And all of the gamers were saved from their lives of solitude and every last one of them became the president of the United States. And then the designers made a movie. And another. And a cartoon that was quickly released to video, and years later sold at (discount retail chain) for a dollar, where I bought it.

Animation has progressed a lot since the dawn of time, since the first cave-type men drew many pictures on many walls and swayed like fools making the little stick figures throw their little stick spears at the little stick wooly mammoths. Now we don’t have to draw on the walls, now we can draw on other things, like computers. Apparently, the Game Designers have recently discovered this, because they chose to make the MK animated adventure a computer animated adventure. Mind-boggling as that may seem, please stay with me. Computers in the late 1980’s were large bulky things that you couldn’t possibly toss out of a window without killing or seriously injuring someone below. Even if you are on the first floor. The game designers really outdid themselves creating this masterpiece, though. The characters look very nearly robotic, and the movements and fighting stances are about as close to accurate as they can be, considering that the premise of MK is that all of the people are, in fact, androids. The game designers also very wisely decided to employ the ancient methods of animating one scene, and then using it repeatedly throughout the film. This method was invented by Mickey Mouse himself, very shortly ripped off by some dancing skeletons that only knew five dance steps, and made super-famous by the creators of DragonBall and DragonBall Z and DragonBall GT and DragonBall Omega Old Folks Home where you may see the same explosion in an episode at least five times, back to back, and often at very unusual times, like that one time Vegeeta came out of then bathroom, and when he turned the fan on, it destroyed the earth, only making Vegeeta more angry so that his back hair turned yellow, and he proceeded to scowl for the rest of the episode. Not only did the Game Designers put an emphasis on the repetitive nature of fighting, they also highlighted the important spiritual aspects of MK. Because everybody knows that anyone who plays MK does so in order to gain insight into their own spirituality.

The one complaint that I would allow myself would have to be that it is very difficult to make out what the characters are saying. Since the Game Designers were limited to what their foolishly archaic computers could create, they had to choose three lines of dialogue to animate, and then make every other line fit the facial expressions of those three readings. If you watch closely, you may notice that every third time he speaks, Rayden is actually asking for a peanut butter and avocado sandwich. Obviously proper nutrition is very important for robotic world saving super-spiritual prize fighters. But I suppose that when all is said and done, all that matters is that people are spiritually in tune with all of the cosmic refuse floating around them, and that they have had a decent meal. These Game Designers are good men, after all.

RED SONJA AS SONJA BLADE