Mortal Kombat II reached HBO Max on 24 July, eleven weeks after it opened in cinemas on 8 May. It is the best-reviewed film the franchise has produced, which is a lower bar than it sounds, and it has left Warner Bros. with a familiar question: how much is a Mortal Kombat film actually worth?
What is Mortal Kombat II about?
Simon McQuoid returns to direct, and the film does what the first one conspicuously did not: it holds the tournament. Karl Urban's Johnny Cage, a fading action star with a healthy opinion of himself, is recruited to Earthrealm's side alongside Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Jax and the rest of the returning cast, to fight Outworld's champions and stop Martyn Ford's Shao Kahn from claiming the realm. Adeline Rudolph plays Kitana. Hiroyuki Sanada, Joe Taslim, Tadanobu Asano and Chin Han all return, and Damon Herriman joins as Quan Chi. Lewis Tan's Cole Young, the invented lead of the 2021 film, is still there and considerably less central.
Is it any good?
By the standards of the series, yes. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 64%, the highest of any Mortal Kombat film, with an audience score of 86%, and the critical consensus calls it a self-aware slugfest and the most enjoyable entry yet. Metacritic is less kind at 46. The praise is for the fights, which are staged with real choreography rather than edited into confetti, and for a fidelity to the games that extends to the fatalities. The criticism is the usual one: the story is thin and the structure repetitive, a tournament being, in the end, a list. Audiences graded it a B on CinemaScore, a step down from the first film's B+, which suggests the novelty has worn off even for people who enjoyed it.
How did it do?
Adequately. Around $38 to $40 million on its opening weekend in North America and, by late August, $129.5 million worldwide on a budget of about $80 million. That is profitable but not the number New Line wanted, and the decision to put it on HBO Max after 78 days rather than the studio's usual longer window was read by the trade press as a verdict on its theatrical legs. Urban is the best thing in it and the film knows it.
Will there be a third?
Probably, but the reporting is contradictory. Several outlets reported that Warner Bros. greenlit Mortal Kombat III at New York Comic Con last October, with Jeremy Slater returning to write. Slater himself has since said the film is not greenlit and that he is on a second draft of a script the studio commissioned. Both can be true: a script is in progress, the studio has not committed money to production, and the box office of the second film is what the decision will turn on. McQuoid is expected to return if it happens.
Worth watching?
If you liked the first one, this is the film it should have been. If you did not, the tournament will not convert you.
Halidom's video game editions include Iron Studios' Mortal Kombat line.