FACEPALMITY!!!

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU...... I mean, OK, I never liked Mortal Kombat franchise. It's hard to argue with the fact that those games were, like, a cultural phenomenon back in the days and it's impossible to think of nineties without thinking about them. Like it's hard to imagine eighties without Ninja Turtles, for example. And yet... those were pretty bad games. Presentation was great, everybody enjoyed blood and gore and it was fun to just... you know, stick around those coin-op machines and watch people doing “fatalities”. Kids love violence. And, despite what some stupid people say, the violence in video games actually helps to let the steam off. Like you know... it's always better to have kids ripping each other heads off in video games than fighting in real life. And with all of its violence, Mortal Kombat was perfect for that.

Like I said, though those were pretty bad games. Fighting genre is all about balance and... let's just say that balance in Mortal Kombat was never a thing. Still isn't, up to this day. So, as a person who always preferred gameplay over the presentation, I was never a fan. To say the least. But even I enjoyed the original 1995 movie. Paul W.S. Anderson? The man got it all right. He got the idea of Mortal Kombat being pretty much a cheesy version of Enter the Dragon with ninjas (you know, everybody was a ninja back in the days, even Michael Dudikoff, and all kids wanted to be ninjas too, of course), he got the right cast, he got the right music (I actually remember having the soundtrack on tape and not only because of the main theme), he got the atmosphere and all in all, it was a pretty satisfying experience. As long as you didn't mind cheesy martial arts movies and spent some time in the arcades. Seriously, I actually don't mind re-watching Mr. Anderson's movie from time to time. And while watching it, I can almost hear my old friends laughing while playing Mortal Kombat II on SEGA Genesis and consuming tons of soda. It was a movie that captured the certain moment in popular culture and is still good for what it is. Then John R. Leonetti came and... yeah... We've all seen the Annihilation.

Instead of trying to make a solid movie, the man decided to re-create video games on big screen. So, he just filmed some random fights, added some cheesy lines and that was it. Watching the Annihilation felt like... I dunno. You know how it feels when you watch some cheesy cosplay or fan-made movies on YouTube nowadays? That's exactly how it felt. I wasn't nearly as furious as some of my friends, of course, since, like I said, I never cared about the franchise enough to feel bad about it being butchered so badly, but still, it didn't feel good and I don't think I've ever seen the movie ever since. One time was more than enough for me. But guess what? Here it is. The Annihilation. All over again... Good grief...

And no, I'm not kidding. And no, I'm not overreacting. I mean, I'm not a fan and clearly, I didn't expect anything from this movie. All I wanted is some decent entertainment. But even though Simon McQuoid had almost $100.000.000 to work with, he repeated every single mistake John R. Leonetti committed in the Annihilation. Every... bloody... mistake. So, even though the new movie looks quite fine (the effects are there, fight choreography is there and so on), it feels... absolutely... completely... TERRIBLE. The writing here is so bad that there's a huge risk of hurting yourself with all the facepalms (FACEPALMITY!!!!!!). Seriously, the writing here is so bad that at some points I almost decided to stop watching. It was literally unbearable. Remember that pussy joke from 2018 Predator? That's freakin' it (actually, this movie has its own pussy joke, so... enjoy?). The story is also way, WAY too random, nobody even try to properly explain characters, while the directing... Well, you've probably seen Kano shooting his laser in the trailer. Didn't feel good, right? Let's just say there'll be more of that. A lo-o-ot more... Hiroyuki Sanada did great, but the rest of the actors are clearly suffering without a proper directing.

The worst thing about this movie, though, is the idea of re-creating the video games within a movie. Yeah... that exact idea that ruined the Annihilation. I mean... who thought that making people acting like video game characters in the movie, while using all of those video game terms and cheesy one-liners is a good idea? It's a bloody disaster! I don't know if Mr. McQuoid have seen Mr. Leonetti's movie before starting to work on this, but it looks like he didn't. Otherwise... why in the world did he do all that?! He literally took everything that was bad about the Annihilation... and covered it with money. Like... what... the heck is going on here?!!

Watching the new movie is like watching a fan-made stuff from YouTube. That got AAA budget for whatever reason. Tons of fan service, people trying to show off their characters just because (the movie just pretends that you're supposed to already know and love those guys and go WOW!!! just by hearing their names)... and not a single well-written line on the horizon. Also, no proper atmosphere. Well, aside from the opening part maybe. Because Scorpion's origin story didn't feel nearly as bad as the rest of the movie. Painfully generic? Sure. But but nearly as bad as the rest. But honestly, even though I didn't expect anything good here... I'm still trying to unsee this. A bloody Monster Hunter felt better than this. Heck, some Resident Evil movies were better than this. Never thought I'll ever see Annihilation again. And yet... here it is. A bunch of random scenes, covered with crappy writing, shallow characters and cheesy one-liners. If you're die-hard MK fan, you may check this movie out for fan service, but if you want a good movie? Don't even think about this one. Well, at least now we know what good ol' Jar Jar Binks was doing all this time. He was busy writing the screenplay for this movie...