Mortal Kombat (1995)

One of the most prominent subgenres in action cinema is the "tournament movie": this is a film where the protagonist enters a fighting contest where they battle a series of incrementally more powerful opponents before facing off against the main villain at the climax. While effective in popular movies like Enter the Dragon (1973) and Bloodsport (1988), this structure might be even more suitable to the medium of video games. Mega-popular game franchises like Street Fighter (1987) and Mortal Kombat (1992) make strong use of the tournament movie template. This episode of Reel Deep Dive explores the 1995 attempt to take Mortal Kombat, a video game spawned from an attempt to tie into a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, and reverse engineer it into its own tournament movie. Joining Ryan is Peter Cronan, host of the Fearless Films podcast. Together, they'll discuss Mortal Kombat's threadbare plot, cheeseball special effects, clunky acting, appropriation of Eastern philosophy, use of techno music, and (admittedly pretty cool) fight choreography. The themes of this dialogue include the history of video game censorship (and how it parallels movie censorship), the issue of adapting a gory, exploitative, and trashy game franchise into a PG-13 movie that parents could take a 10-year-old to, and Mortal Kombat's curious legacy as a 90's camp "classic".