أرى بلدي الذي قلب الطفل ذبحوا حلقه…

(Credit to mahmud4everTV for being a punk bitch who denies permission to embed videos)

* 2011 Winner of the Cannes Sundance Roger and Ebert Film Festival for gifted children, Category: BEST FILM EVER!!!

I made this in filmmaker’s school, cause I’m a film making filmmaker.

QUICK! PAN TO THE MORTAL KOMBAT FLOOR!

I was going to write an article about the Subzero and Scorpion two parter quite some time ago. That is, until I seen an annotation in episode 8 telling me to tune into next week’s ninth and final episode. So I figured I’d wait for that last part and wrap this whole thing up.

It didn’t come out the next week, or the week after. A month goes by, and it’s still nowhere to be found. There was no announcement of what was going on and the Machinima channel still said it was coming out the week following episode 8. Until I read a news post somewhere saying that the director “tweeted” (in the most informal way possible) that he was not only not going to premiere the next episode of his weekly series on time, but that he was SAVING it for a premiere at comic-con 2 MONTHS later.

In the 2 months of absence he could’ve shot an entirely new episode, or maybe he could instead have presented all the parts edited together as a feature length film. But whatever, it’s all incidental now, it really doesn’t matter in the long scheme of things but god damn was that confusing to figure out.

Another baffling announcement was that the final episode was going to focus on Sektor and Cyrax. Sektor and Cyrax?! I mean those are cool characters and all, but, Sektor and Cyrax!? I thought for absolute certain that the final episode would focus on, oh I don’t know, Liu Kang the MAIN FUCKING CHARACTER OF MORTAL KOMBAT. But I’ll hold my thoughts on episode 9 for when I get to it.

Let’s instead focus on episodes 7 and 8, the Subzero and Scorpion two parter. We focus on Scorpion’s life before it was torn apart. We see his family and his home. The tone of this story is appropriate, and I feel like the Japanese language with the English subtitles helps it to feel a little more authentic.

Scorpion is then summoned into an ambush, but not before slipping into a really fucking terrible ninja costume…

WE CAN GET SPIDERMAN TOGETHER

I mean jesus, this is making Mortal Komedy look like Mortal Kombat Annihilation, hes even walking in the woods just like every Youtube tribute to MK you can shake a stick at. I can buy a better scorpion costume at Walmart for halloween. I’m also confused as to why the scorpion mask comes complete with a goblin mouth and nose? Or why his pony tail is sticking out the back of his mask.

So Subzero appears and it’s pretty clear that Scorpion was led into an ambush while Subzero’s men are killing everyone in his village. The Subzero costume looks significantly less cheap but still doesn’t look anything like the classic designs from any incarnation of Mortal Kombat.

The first part ends before right before they fight.

The second part, once again it’s shorter than the first and several minutes of it are padded with credits, for once it actually provides a conclusion better than it’s set up. Stuff actually fucking happens in it. It isn’t just a rehash of the first part up until the final minute. Like the shittier episodes of Dragon Ball Z.

Right away Subzero and Scorpion start fighting in the woods, complete with cheesy techno music, and THIS is what I fucking wanted. Just two people with super powers fighting, was that too much to ask for? I’m pretty pleased, and I have to say, even the fight choreography is good here.

So Scorpion beats Subzero but quickly retreats to check on his family, whom he finds have been frozen to death. While Scorpion is mourning Subzero stabs him in the back and freezes him solid. Subzero then reveals himself to actually be Quan Chi trying to deceive Scorpion. He kneels before Scorpion is asks him to be his servant in exchange for exacting revenge on Subzero. He of course gives in, my only problem with this is Quan Chi spoke to him through the ice as if he could see and hear despite being frozen. SO WHY DID HE CHANGE SHAPES RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM!? Whatever…

Remember... You... Are my number one...

Surprisingly I have a lot of good things to say about this. It’s not perfect, but it’s also fairly well paced, and it showcases an actual arc in Scorpion’s character. And there’s a real sense of tragedy there. Save for the strange costume choices these episodes are the first instances in which I can say that this genuinely feels like a Mortal Kombat show.

It does have a number of issues still. Like the fact that Quan Chi looks like shit and doesn’t really act like Quan Chi, the episodes are too short, and none of the two parters needed to be split into two. But if this is a sign of things to come then I would gladly like to see where this guy could take a Mortal Kombat movie. If it gets that far.

Before I spit too much praise I’ll move onto my thoughts of the ninth and final episode.

Human versions of Cyrax and Sector are being escorted to the Lin Kuei to be roboticized. Sektor is blindly following the initiative to turn all of the Lin Kuei warriors into cyber ninjas whereas Cyrax is against it. The camera pans down to the Mortal Kombat floor. As much sense as that makes.

They arrive at a warehouse, where they are forced to fight two highly trained agents as a test. They conclude the test by breaking the agent’s necks because of how absolutely necessary it was. It turns out however that the agents were robots, and this infuriates Cyrax. So he rips off one of their heads and tosses it at the security camera.

The tv look good here? YEAH IT LOOKS GOOD DAWG

Cut to the operating table. The doctor explains some technicals and since the Lin Kuei apparently don’t believe in anesthetic Cyrax wakes up mid operation and they just keep going anyway.

They showed me Conquest... The horror... the horror...

With the operation complete they start another test. This time the robotic Cyrax and Sektor fight a gray robot that could potentially be robot Smoke. But they call him “Project Hydro” so I guess it isn’t.

As you’d imagine the robots aren’t dudes in costume, but are CG models. They look pretty good, not convincing, but good. In fact I’m pretty sure they just borrowed the character models from MK9.

Now my real problem with this test is their testing our the improved design they apparently integrated into Cyrax and Sektor, but they’re making them fight the old design robot 2-on-1. The gray robot puts up a damn good fight too, which makes me question if the newer robots are improved at all. They had to work together to kill him is all I’m saying.

How many warriors will they convert before they settle on a cyber ninja that's colored hot pink?

So the episode concludes by saying that the rest of the Lin Kuei will undergo the robotic transformation. And that’s it. That’s Mortal Kombat Legacy.

What’d I think? Ehhh.

Let’s get one thing straight though. I was never out to hate this series. I want this guy to succeed and for him to learn from his mistakes. At this point it’s unclear if there will be a second season, and to be honest, I’m not so sure if I want one. It all depends on how well it would turn out. The last few episodes were a decent stepping stone that instilled new faith regarding this guy’s ability to do the mythology justice… but the rest of the series is still largely boring, and lacking in a consistent tone.

At last, now I can go back to my every day routine of ignoring Machinima.

That’s right. A Seinfeld screensaver. Most people would merely laugh at the concept and walk away, thinking it too ridiculous to bring to the cashier. I actually did leave, but was compelled to return. I simply could not believe of it’s existence.

As I made my way back home with it, I wondered to myself how much could this have been sold for. Ten… Twenty… Maybe even thirty dollars? Luckily my copy was about a dollar, but I still don’t feel like it was money well spent. Because it honestly wasn’t.

I popped the disc into my computer and much to my surprise, the software that was designed for windows 3.1 and windows 95 actually installed fine on a current system. It seems nothing could stop me from witnessing the horror. I was first touched by it’s evil on the May 24 weekend… The alleged end of the world. While the event proved to be a giant load a shit for many, my world came crashing down anyway.

I loaded up the day planner…

This was it. Just a calendar that plays a Seinfeld clip every time you select a day. The clips vary in length from about thirty seconds to two minutes and they all compile to about an hour and a half worth of footage. Some of the pieces directly connecting but most of them being completely random. Not to mention that the compression quality could’ve made it’s way home on the Sega Cd. It was around the time that George lifelessly stared into my eyes, wearing his prescription swimming goggles, that I realized I was wasting my life…

What amazed me more was the inclusion of a detailed episode guide. Now keep in mind this program was released roughly halfway through Seinfeld’s run, meaning that this program was designed to be outdated mere months after it shipped. Too bad it doesn’t have DLC.

As I cycled through the various screens and looked at all the help menus (none of which pick a consistent format or font) I realized that this program seemed very familiar to me. Then it hit me. I flashed back to my high school programming class where I was learning the basics of Visual Basic. Let me be blunt about the fact that I’m no programmer, I’m not terribly skilled in that area and I just don’t have a knack for it overall.

Having said that, it is with no exaggeration that with my almost non-existent skillset I could program this Seinfeld screensaver/planner with relative ease in an afternoon. Once I realized that I finally knew for a fact, that this “Byron Press Multimedia” did not give a fuck in the slightest.

But given what they were selling, and the presumption that rock stupid Seinfeld fans bought this, it makes me wonder why they bothered putting anything on the disc at all. It still beats shit like ‘Virtual VCR’ that served no purpose whatsoever. What kind of an achievement is that?

I couldn’t stop here, I had to see this screen saver in action. I had to fuck about with my computer to get the screen saver to show up at first. Initially it’s just the Seinfeld logo bouncing off the walls of your monitor while the theme song plays. However the instruction manual says that you can compile 5 of the random ass clips that were in the day planner to make your very own custom screen saver that you can show to all your family, and have no way of muting the theme song.

So after much deliberation I present to you the withered fruit of my efforts…

Beautiful… Isn’t it?

Jasmine takes a dark turn in the newest Aladdin installment.

I still prefer the rubber suit from Annihilation.

So a few weeks ago the fourth episode of Mortal Kombat Legacy had came out and I was so bored with it, that I got lethargic over the idea of having to recap each and every one of these episodes where barely anything would happen at all. Hell, episode 3 had almost nothing go on in it. So now I’ve decided to do the remaining episodes in chunks that way I should have more to say and not struggle with recapping the dud episodes.

So it’s been three weeks since the Johnny Cage episode and Mortal Kombat Legacy continues to lull and disappoint. The fourth episode is a loose origin story of both Kitana and Mileena, that also tells the story of Shao Kahn taking over Outworld and eventually killing Sindel. Afterwards Kitana grows up believing that Shao Kahn is her real father.

Baraka is shown among the troops who invade and he looks a hell of a lot better than he did in the Rebirth trailer. Even though he just looks like he’s wearing a generic costume that almost made it into a Lord of the Rings film. Plus he has hair for some reason. Even still he looks way better, and at least he isn’t some fucking guy who carves his teeth into fangs, I mean, what the hell was that shit about?

Overall the entire fourth episode is just a 8 ish minute detailing of the sister’s origin, half told in live action, and half in really cool looking animation. Honestly though, I could do without. Just look at these instead…

Onto Episode 5. So maskless Shao Kahn watches his two adopted daughters fight each other in training, and quite surprisingly it’s the most Mortal Kombat thing that I’ve ever seen come out of this series, but it isn’t much.

Later Kitana and Mileena are sent to kill anybody who could reveal the truth about King Jared and his impostors. What kind of a name is Jared for a king anyway? Well they find the real King Jared who says a mere two lines saying that everything that Kitana has been told is a lie, and she just buys it. He then promptly gets stabbed to death by Mileena. But through the power of forced flashback Kitana suddenly remembers everything and in the next scene Shao Kahn brings up taking over Earth Realm.

Episode 5 is much less boring than 4 but it falls into all the same problems that Legacy’s first two parter, episodes 1 and 2, had. The second part is shorter than the first, almost the first 2 minutes of the second part is filled up with a “previously” recap, and the two episodes had NO reason to be split up. As a whole… It’s less than stellar.

At least the animation was very stylish and appealing.

Now episode 6 is a major step up and is the best episode this series has had since the very first episode. However even episode 1 didn’t win me over so this episode isn’t exactly expanding my balls either. But it’s not bad.

It begins with this disclaimer…

Why the hell wasn’t this in any other episode up until now? Or hell there was a great place to stick it and that was the very first episode. This just seems like a retroactive reaction to MK fans tearing this series a new asshole. And speaking of assholes this episode focuses on Raiden who gets launched to Earth in a bolt of lightning — Terminator style. However he is bolted inside the courtyard of an insane asylum where as soon as he mentions that he’s the god of thunder he’s immediately taken in as a patient. So I guess somebody was watching Mortal Kombat and thought it needed to be more like K-pax.

So Rayden is quite hostile in the facility so their first logical step of action is to give him what I think is a lobotomy. Don’t ask me I’m no mental warden. What’s worse is when they realize that the first one didn’t work, because you know he’s a god, they just give him a SECOND one. After several failed escapes Rayden manages to coax a fellow patient into killing him by stabbing him in the heart. This causes him to explode into lightning particles and then reappear in an alley somewhere else… In the same body? If he could just transport from one place to ano… No, fuck it. The rules aren’t clear and I don’t really care. He’s off to stop Shao Kahn now.

Does he hold a candle to Christopher Lambert? I DON'T THINK SO!

So that’s my opinion on three more boring episodes of Mortal Kombat Legacy. Can’t wait for more…

Don’t you know I’ll fuckin’ Cage you?

I wonder if Ed Goodman had anything to do with Conquest.

Well it’s another week and another mediocre episode of Mortal Kombat Legacy. Yeah, I’m just going to be upfront. This episode was boring. But I’ll talk about the good parts before I discuss the episode as a whole.

I liked who they cast as Johnny Cage even though he kinda looks like James Franco. The first minute and a half of this episode was also really funny with a documentary about Johnny Cage on television featuring the personalities of Victor Lucas on the set of Electric Playground and Ed freakin’ Boon. It was a really nice touch that I didn’t expect.

According to the documentary Johnny Cage’s was most known for his role in Power Rangers. Wait, Power Rangers?! So how long before Cage settles into doing gay porn?

Now when I heard that this episode was focusing on Johnny Cage instead of focusing on Jax and Sonya again I got really excited. Johnny Cage is one of my favorite MK characters. He’s just so cocky and arrogant he’s impossible not to love. Especially in the movie and in Mortal Kombat 9 where his character really got to shine. Plus he punches people in the balls.

Before I delve in though I have a quick complaint. This show starts out censored and then an uncensored version is released obviously to increase views. I don’t really care about that. The complaint is why do they censor words like ‘bitch’ but ‘pussy’ and ‘ho’ are fine? Anyways, I couldn’t really fit this anywhere else.

Your soul is mine ...?

So this whole episode focuses on Cage pitching some pilots to some television execs with most of the screen time being dedicated to the fake Johnny Cage fight scenes. The fight scenes are purposely unengaging with really bad music. It was kinda funny but also not exciting. The execs thought so too. At least in the Mortal Kombat movie the set that Johnny Cage was on in the beginning inspired curiosity. I wanted to see that movie, man.

Surprisingly there’s even less to say about this episode than the previous two. Up until the end where Johnny has a nervous breakdown and starts fighting guys in the television studio there really isn’t much happening. It’s another story that didn’t need eleven minutes dedicated to it, it’s only because of the web format that it does. At least with the last two episodes there was something happening and some stakes to be had. I stated multiple times that it wasn’t boring. This one was boring.

It’s really telling that this episode essentially tells the same story that Johnny Cage’s first scene in Mortal Kombat the movie tells. Only that one is more interesting, more slick, more subtle about Johnny’s career, and is much much shorter. This version really dragged.

Also the dude who plays Shang Tsung is questionable.

Now already this early on in the series were already running into timeline issues (at least I think). In the Rebirth trailer Johnny Cage fights a Jamaican Baraka and is killed. This is told to us by a Jax without cybernetic arms detailing a police case. In the ‘behind the scenes’ look at Mortal Kombat Legacy these chapters are described as the events leading up to the first Mortal Kombat tournament that these characters have been in. So Jax lost his arms before the first tournament specifically in episode 2, but I’m choosing to ignore that. Cage is drafted into the tournament at the end of this episode. So Jax telling us about Johnny Cage’s fight with Baraka would’ve had to have taken place… before episode 2? Meaning that Cage never fought in Mortal Kombat? Unless he died and got resurrected before Mortal Kombat 1. I guess I’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Rebirth is not canonical. I wouldn’t even mind if it wasn’t canonical, because Baraka (my favorite character) looked like complete shit.

With the Mortal Kombat craze dying down and this series getting worse and worse I may have to stop commentating altogether. But we’ll see…

So I managed to snag myself a copy of the new Mortal Kombat after hearing from many different sources that it was awesome. So what do I think?

Well despite the fact that it’s been hyped more than belief and people at E3 (and similar events) have stated that this is the real deal AND the fact that it’s been very public about having a new developer for like the first time in like fifteen years… I still wasn’t excited. Let’s face it every Mortal Kombat game since Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (back in like 1995) has been a disappointment.

Mortal Kombat 4 was the last one in my opinion to make a proper impact, and the last one to be good. At the time I didn’t like it because it was an early point for 3d fighters and at that point I still wanted my fighters to be completely two dimensional. Later on games like Tekken and Battle Arena Toshinden would show me the error of my ways and I did in fact warm up to Mortal Kombat 4. There was even a Mortal Kombat 4 arcade machine that I lovingly abused in my college. Even still it had absolutely nothing on the first 3 core games in the franchise despite being a classic in it’s own right.

Then the Mortal Kombat titles starting coming out on the PS2 and the next gen consoles of the time and were all terribly underwhelming. Starting with Deadly Alliance the series was making more of a shift to 3rd dimensional gameplay. The reason why Mortal Kombat 4 works as well as it does is because the movement for that game was still mostly restricted to the 2d and still felt like a Mortal Kombat game. However with all the titles after 4 you could really start to see that they were really trying to mimic franchises like Soul Calibur and Tekken. For a game like Mortal Kombat, a trendsetter and innovator of the time, being a second rate clone was inexcusable.

I spent some serious time with Mortal Kombat Deception in particular. They started bringing in sword fighting and the ability to switch martial art styles on the fly… That all rocks on paper don’t get me wrong but it makes for a confusing and overly complicated fighting game that isn’t intuitive in any shape or form. There were so many extra modes it seemed too like an adventure sidequest and let’s not forget… Puzzle Kombat. Later on this mockery would be topped with Motor Kombat. To name some positives however the dynamic and multi-layered stages and stage fatalities were really well done and some of the character designs evolved really well.

Ugliest design ever.

Speaking of character designs, even back in the Mortal Kombat 4 days I started seeing previews in magazines of characters like Reptile with his face exposed and wearing a weird bikini thing… Added to this were a slew of new characters such as Reico and Jarek that didn’t really feel original and were just boring. Nothing about them brought on that mystery and anticipation of seeing Kabal or the robot ninjas for the first time. In fact it would seem with each newer game they put out the fewer classic characters there would be. Pretty soon over half the cast would be made up of people I’ve never even heard of. And not in a good way like Street Fighter 3.

In the PS2 age it seemed like a new Mortal Kombat game was always on the horizon each one distancing itself further from the classic formula and each time we all anticipated the newest title of the time being “the good one”. Even by the mid 2000′s Midway had completely burnt out Mortal Kombat to the point where I didn’t even care that Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was coming out. I never looked at it, never watched trailers, and I never played it. It was just another mediocre fighting game called Mortal Kombat and I was done.

That is until Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe came out a few years after. First of all, this concept of a game was thought up by millions of people after Marvel Vs Capcom had come out about ten years prior and was a pretty late attempt on Midway’s part. Secondly, Mortal Kombat had reached such a low that they actually had to resort on DC’s namesake to instill faith in it’s own fans that it’d be at least decent. At least that’s how I saw it. It was obvious that it was a desperate last move to keep this franchise alive. The nail in the coffin of course is the fact that DC didn’t allow for excessive gore and fatalities. So what we got is a Mortal Kombat game that’d finally took that last little shred of what had stayed in the franchise up till that point. The blood and guts was gone and now this series was completely neutered of anything that made it iconic.

The rest leads us up till this point. Midway tanked and now Mortal Kombat belongs to other developers. Though Ed Boon is still somewhat involved (as he should be). I know I went on for quite a long time about my personal history with Mortal Kombat but I felt I had to justify why I didn’t care about this game. I didn’t think this game was going to be any different and hopefully you can understand why. All of the press in the world couldn’t change the fact that Mortal Kombat, even to me, was not relevant anymore. But thankfully all of it’s good press convinced me to at least give it one last try.

I expected to completely hate this game, and boy do I love being proved wrong. I’m shocked that I’m even saying this. But after like FIFTEEN years of shitty titles there’s finally a good Mortal Kombat game? HOLY CRAP. It’s surreal to even be playing something that both pays homage to the ideal Mortal Kombat of my childhood and feels like something completely refreshing and new.

Could these guys look any more alike?

I think the final culprit that made me try this game was a video review I had watched at IGN. I didn’t really listen to what the guy said but was carefully watching all of the footage. Much to my shock I recognized every single character. So no longer did I have to scratch my head and wonder who the hell the guy made out of puzzle pieces was. For once Mortal Kombat wasn’t leaving me in the dust. In fact the only characters that aren’t from Mortal Kombat 1-3 that are in this game is Quan Chi and Kratos. Kratos of course being the gimmick console exclusive for the PS3, and Quan Chi being a main Mortal Kombat villain starting with Mortal Kombat 4. More newer characters will likely come with DLC. I’m hoping for Rain.

I feel like Quan Chi was a nice choice for this game as he’s a really interesting character and one of the only characters after 3 that proved to be memorable. AT ALL. However my only problem with him is his main outfit, he’s shirtless with a shoulder pad. He doesn’t really look like Quan Chi anymore, it’s not that he looks bad it’s just he looks really similar to Kratos. An unrelated character who happens to be in this game. And plays quite well.

I guess another complaint I have is the title of the game. ‘Mortal Kombat’. I know the series had reached a really low point and they wanted to reboot it but to just call it ‘Mortal Kombat’ feels a bit lazy. But then again what else do you call it so that people don’t associate it with all the shitty games from the previous generation leading up to this point?

Hot damn.

When those are my biggest complaints regarding the game you know that the developers did right. What I especially enjoy is the story. Not only is it extremely well produced but it goes back to all my favorite moments of the early Mortal Kombat games. Particularly that moment right before Mortal Kombat 3 starts and Stryker has to fight off creatures in the city and in the subway. That was incredible. You see what’s great about the story is how simple it is. Raiden pulls a 2009 Star Trek, goes back in time, and tries to prevent disasters of the future. It’s hard to get more poetic than that.

The entire story mode for this game is incredible forcing you to play nearly every character and is really good training as a whole. It may just be the best story mode for any fighting game that I’ve ever played. Though you can’t skip a single cutscene in the story. It’s minor but still annoying.

It’s amazing how right the gameplay is in this game. It feels like Mortal Kombat 2. It’s even made some long overdue improvements to the core games. Like I thought at first the absence of the “run” feature would annoy me but the “dash” actually works much better for fighting games as proved by many Neogeo classics. There’s an in-game move list which Mortal Kombat 4 technically introduced but it’s still nice to see it here in the classic setting. Also fatalities are MUCH easier to perform. Doing a fatality was never something I could consistently do, because there wasn’t a real way to practice and the margin of error was SO high. Plus I had noone to show those off to but myself. Finally and most importantly if you don’t like how characters do the moves you can tweak the controls to your liking.

Cage's character is especially hilarious in this game.

The only real misstep in the gameplay is the Xray mode. It’s easy to do and cool to look at. But it’s appeal quickly goes away after like the 6th time you see it. Characters will rip out hearts or break your legs mid battle and there will be zero consequence. Sure it’s comical and fun to look at, but it serves very little purpose and is just an animation that you have to watch and cant skip. If there was an option to disable it (other than a Kombat Kode) I’d be much happier with it. Or if there was a clinical way to actually break your opponents legs or instantly kill somebody ala Bushido Blade… Though that might’ve broken the game.

As far as fighting game reboots go I think this might be the best one. I know that Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and other titles in that vein didn’t hold my interest for nearly as long as I expected them too. I can’t speak for Street Fighter 4 however and how well this holds up to that as I haven’t played it. In the back of my mind I’m hoping that this will help elevate Mortal Kombat back into competition with Street Fighter just like the good old days. And maybe inspire even more fighting game comebacks. Like Killer Instinct… Or Clay Fighter?

The select screen is all the evidence you need. This is the MK game that gets it right. Cyber Subzero kicks ass btw.

The scary part about this game is that I’m completely in love with it, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. There’s online play, there’s kollectibles, unlockable outfits, classic outfits, unlockable moves, trophies/achievements, dlc, a challenge tower, arcade modes, test your might, test your sight, test your strike and on and on. I really can’t ramble on about this enough.

All I even have left to say is that this title may go over the heads of a lot of current and casual gamers on the scene, but this is FINALLY the game for that long time fan that was yearning all of these years for a title to take you back to the glory days of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 when the MK legacy was untouchable.

Flawless Victory Netherrealm.

9/10

Mortal Kombat mania continues and another episode of Mortal Kombat Legacy has premiered. Has my stance on the show changed or is it still a Mortal disaster?

Now in my last look at Mortal Kombat Legacy I already established the basics of why I think this new take on Mortal Kombat feels kind of flat. I’m just not crazy on it but I remain open to the idea of these actors pulling through and giving me one hell of a show.

That be all end all show however is not this week. My complaint from last week about the show being short is magnified here because this time around it’s only 9 minutes as opposed to 12. Actually it’s not even 9 minutes as there’s a minute dedicated to credits and a full minute and a half dedicated to a “Previously on Mortal Kombat Legacy” segment. Why is this needed? The show premiered a week ago, and both shows are hosted for free by Machinima and the links are side by side. Why would they do this? The simple answer is padding.

Padding is this entire second episode. The last episode left off with an explosion while Jax and Kano are fighting and Sonya escapes. This episode begins with Jax and Kano fighting for a few more minutes and it’s honestly hard to tell it apart from the scene in the last episode. It all looks the same. The fight is inter-cut with shots of Sonya actually doing stuff, which I appreciate.

The fight comes to an end however when Jax punches Kano in the face so hard that his eyeball hits the camera lense. More of that please.

Sonya rushes in to meet Jax and a bomb is dropped. Sonya awakes in intensive care where she’s greeted by the Police Chief. Up till now it completely slipped by me that this character was Stryker. They did subtly drop his name once or twice before but here they make it way more obvious. Stryker of course was that guy in Mortal Kombat 3 who only used guns and grenades and was one of my favorite characters to play.

I guess I didn’t think to assume it was Stryker because he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap and didn’t have blonde hair. Now while I could complain about that sort of thing, to complain about that would mean I’d also have to complain about the fact that he isn’t wearing a skin tight blue and white jogging shirt either.

Stryker drops the word that Jax has had his arms badly burned and his spine is messed up, and that Kano got away. In the next shot Kano is seen being operated on where they give him his metallic eye and he looks like a Terminator.

In regards to Jax, Stryker says that “they have a plan”, so I guess in Mortal Kombat land when you sustain a serious injury like that the first logical medical action to take is to graft cybernetic parts into your human body. I mean two of these operations are going on with two different characters simultaneously. How long do you have to go to school to become a Doctor and a Roboticist anyway?

Now all of what I just said sounds awesome. Except for the fact that three quarters of this episode is just more padding with Jax and Kano fighting. Shit got boring real quick. Only in the last 2 minutes does anything new even happen. My point with this is that they could’ve concluded that scene in the factory completely in the first part and then STARTED the second part at the hospital where Sonya wakes up and actually move the story quicker than a snail’s pace and not rely on dumb padding.

And that’s the central theme I have with this article. Padding. From what I understand they have been cleared for 10 episodes of this show. So that’s ten tries altogether to tell a compelling Mortal Kombat story. The first part did the usual set up and first episodes are incredibly hard to pull off. For that they did an alright job. However this time around they were just jerking the audience around.

As it stands there is no reason that this second episode needed to exist since there’s so little here that we didn’t see in the first part.

Things got a little exciting right at the end, but god, this show needs to move along a little bit faster. At least make the episodes longer than 10 minutes because a week is a long ass time to wait for nothing.

Well it seems to be Mortal Kombat month as we’re getting a new game (that may actually be noteworthy) and a new web series. The game comes out April 19th and the series actually just premiered today. I watched it twice now and I thought I’d lay down my thoughts while they were still fresh.

So how did I like the new Mortal Kombat pilot? I didn’t.

First off, I’m not crazy on the name. Mortal Kombat Legacy? Who’s legacy? Probably isn’t anybody’s as it’s likely just a cliche as hell tag name. Might as well have called it Mortal Kombat Resurrection. Something that caught me off guard is that the episodes seem to only be 12 minutes long. However it is a web series and they are premiering weekly so that might not actually be an issue. It just felt short.

Now I can just hear a lot of you now. Hatin’ on the new Mortal Kombat because it isn’t the old Mortal Kombat. Blah blah blah. But it isn’t that at all. In fact I have a number of positives towards the show. The casting (so far) is really well done. The fight scenes are carried out well, it’s all shot beautifully, and even the sets (though not as cool as the movies) are nice too. It’s definitely not boring either. I just don’t think it’s very Mortal Kombat.

I know that’s an extremely early assumption to make (with only one episode out) but that’s just how I feel. It has room to move me of course. What I saw was a hell of a lot better than what I initially expected. But my problem with it now is the same problem I’ve had with it since DAY ONE. It doesn’t feel like Mortal Kombat.

What do I mean by that? Well imagine you turned on the TV and this came on and you just missed the title card with the dragon on it. At this point you haven’t been told that it’s Mortal Kombat, but would you be able to just guess that it was based on what you’re seeing? I’m gonna have to say that you wouldn’t. Unless you’re really paying attention to the names.

Take the scene at the beginning in the police station where they spend like 3 minutes talking. Does that not just feel like Law and Order? Except instead of Ice-T you have the dude who played Spawn. Though I do appreciate that they made Jax more of a detective instead of the token black stereotype he was portrayed as in the films.

It’s the overlying issue I’ve had with this entire “Legacy” campaign in which they are trying to claim that it’s more grounded in reality. Remember the guy’s who made Smallville were saying the same type of things too before they decided to rape Superman fans for a decade straight with a broken bottle. I start to wonder if they even understand the point of adapting a franchise. Yeah, make a more realistic Mortal Kombat that could actually happen. Take all the iconic and fantastical things away from the series that made it identifiable in the first place. Take Mortal Kombat Conquest for example, that show sucks sure but at least it’s recognizable.

That being said there are nice touches here and there. The Smoke mask at the beginning is undeniable. The fact that they threw Kano in there right at the start too was something I really appreciated. But he’s missing his metallic eye. Obviously they’re building up to it, but I was only able to tell it was him by hearing the Australian accent. He also headbutted Sonya which was a nice touchback on the original film. Speaking of Sonya casting ‘Seven of Nine’ was a pretty cool choice. Sonya and Jax actually have a “team” too instead of just being eluded to offscreen.

Also, how weird is it that this takes place in a time-line where Robot Smoke has apparently been destroyed but Kano hasn't got his red eye yet? Then again, maybe Smoke is being built.

But back to being negative, I found that the music was underwhelming. Now I’m not asking for the overly silly techno music that Annihilation went crazy with but the music presented is nothing you wouldn’t hear in any other dramatic show. It sounds like a minor thing to bitch about but it really does go a long way to create the show’s atmosphere and the atmosphere created here just sounds like a run of the mill drama show where people happen to be fighting. Nothing bad, nothing great. And that more or less sums up my feelings on this whole series so far. It’s alright.

Overall I still have to admit that I’m intrigued. Ever since the initial video and the trailers that have popped up for this I was ready to hate this to the point where I wasn’t even curious anymore. It did manage to redeem itself just enough with the amount of things that are good outweighing the bad. But the biggest crime of all is that it’s just doesn’t have the tone of Mortal Kombat. At least not yet. I’m hoping to be proven wrong at this point.

I’ll most likely have something to say about the next episode too…

The Cobra review I just posted would’ve had a link like…

http://www.magnitudeten.com/archives/4543 (I’m just guessing)

But now it is located at

http://www.magnitudeten.com/cobra

Which is far easier to locate, remember, and organize. It’s also much shorter and clean looking. HOWEVER instead of automatically saving my old permalink structures and redirecting the old links to the new ones like it has every other time I’ve done this it instead chose to just delete the old links. Basically meaning if you bookmarked an old page or if somebody linked me or something that all they’d get is my big fat 404 error with the baby moses on it.

Where it screws me up more is Google will keep referring people to the old links until they decide to update their directory. So I’m not gonna be getting much new traffic for the next little bit. Wonderful.

Anyway, just a heads up that the site isn’t broken or anything. Thanks for the support.