Movie Review: MORTAL KOMBAT (2021)

Once upon a time, the fighting game Mortal Kombat set the gaming world on fire, sowing controversies about video game violence and spawning not just multiple sequels, but two live-action movie adaptations. After the failure of the second film Mortal Kombat Annihilation (listen to some friends and I absolutely destroy it on a podcast here), the planned third movie languished, but now in this plague year of 2021, it's back. And it's a lot of fun.

The Plot

The film begins with Chinese warrior Bi-Han (Joe Taslim) murdering Japanese ninja Hanzo Hashashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his family in 1617, but his baby daughter is rescued by none other than the thunder god Raiden (Tadanobu Asano). Fast forward to the present day and we meet Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a past-his-prime mixed martial artist reduced to short-notice fights for $200 a pop. However, he's approached by soldier Jackson Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), who wants to discuss a mysterious dragon birthmark they both have. However, Briggs, Cole, and Cole's wife and daughter are set upon by Bi-Han--now the sorcerous centuries-old killing machine Sub-Zero--and Cole finds himself meeting Briggs' military comrade Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and captive criminal Kano (Josh Lawson). Kano has the dragon icon himself and soon the three are pulled into the mysterious world of Mortal Kombat, a tournament fought to protect the Earth against invaders from the desolate realm of Outworld. Outworld has won nine of the last ten tournaments and its agents, led by Shang Tsung (Chin Han), are intent on winning the tenth tournament and invading Earth by hook or by crook.

The Good

*The movie is simply an absolute blast. It's fun and over-the-top and is never slow and boring. And the film integrates the characters' specific moves and supernatural powers into the storyline in clever and fun ways.

*The performances are pretty good. Lawson is clearly having the most fun as Kano--although I was skeptical of his being the comic-relief character instead of Johnny Cage, he is an absolute riot. McNamee manages to play Sonya as having a bit of a chip on her shoulder without being unsympathetic and obnoxious. Asano channels a bit of Christopher Lambert's 1997 Lord Raiden with his accent, although he's avoids being the clumsy exposition machine of the original.

*The characterization is generally an improvement over the original, especially the Sub-Zero/Scorpion rivalry. All the original did was have Shang Tsung brag that although they were "the deadliest of enemies," they were both slaves to his will. This movie straight-up makes Sub-Zero a heavy and much more than just a ninja who can freeze people--we're talking Elsa from Frozen levels of ice-sorcery with all the different types of havoc it can wreak. And they made Sonya a bit of a conspiracy theorist complete with a board covered in news articles, which is an interesting tweak on the character. She is much more useful than in the original, where she spent much of the first movie getting perved on by Shang Tsung and/or getting taken hostage. And Briggs is definitely an improvement over his appearance in Annihilation in which he mostly came off as Butt Monkey to salvage Sonya from the various indignities the original put her through.

*The film kind of pokes fun at itself and asks the obvious questions, like why "Kombat" is misspelled.

*There's a lot more Asian actors playing Asian characters, which is an improvement over the original film in which the Asian thunder god Raiden is played by the French-Swiss Lambert in such a way that my podcast crew straight-up starting laughing upon seeing him in the original film. And the almighty TVTropes claims that Scorpion and Sub-Zero were portrayed by white actors in the original, although given how they were masked I couldn't really tell. Here they're played by actors of the appropriate ethnicity.

*Just like the games, the film presents an elaborate mythology with plenty of room to play with in future films.

The Bad

*The setup for a tournament structure of fights is rather forced, albeit not as badly as in Annihilation.

*The original set up Johnny Cage, Liu Kang, and Sonya Blade as a power trio, but this one is more focused on Cole Young as the protagonist. And although there are some interesting things they hint at (his hardscrabble orphan upbringing, the demonic ninja he sees in his nightmares), they're not developed enough. He's not bad, but kind of meh.

*On that note, many of the other characters are underwhelming, especially the villains. Tsung is all right, but Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was a much better actor playing a much more developed character. They're not on-screen enough and don't have enough to do. And Asano's Lord Raiden is much less entertaining than Lambert's. Liu Kang also takes a major demotion in this film, even though there are some hints of a more interesting back-story than in the original.

*Where was the original song? That song is one of the most iconic musical parts of the whole franchise.

The Verdict

An improvement on the original and hopefully the start of a new franchise. Everybody go see it and make sure that happens. After all, Taslim has a multiple-film contract in the event this film performs well. :) 8.5 out of 10.

Chapter One Readings: BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS and LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG GUNS

Using a strategy inspired by my little sister, I have decided to put my YouTube channel to work. I'd posted a video of my reading part of the prologue of The Thing in the Woods up earlier because someone else shot it and sent me the video, but I upped my game by recording my reading the first chapters of my steampunk military fantasy novel Battle for the Wastelands and my bizarro comedy-horror novella Little People, Big Guns.

Owing to how Blogger is integrated into the Google platform, posting them there was the next logical step. Behold...

Battle For The Wastelands

Little People, Big Guns

Enjoy! The next video I'm going to post will be a reading from the first chapter of "Son of Grendel" and then maybe the first bits of the short stories from Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire. Not sure when that's going to be.

Two WWII Alternate Timelines: Sweden Attacks Germany In 1945, Smarter German Defense Post-1942

Even though I'm still self-banned from the Internet's premiere alternate history forum, I still check out cool stuff in the public forums. Here're my latest finds:

Footsteps In The Snow: The Swedish Intervention, April-May 1945-Historically Sweden was neutral during World War II and over the course of the conflict had built up a large military for a country its size to deter or fight off an attack by either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. However, this neutrality involved selling the Germans iron ore and even allowing the passage of German soldiers through Swedish territory, something that raised eyebrows among many in the Allied camp. The Swedes also trained Norwegian and Danish exiles as "police troops," provided intelligence to the Allies, hosted Jewish refugees, and allowed U.S. planes to use Swedish airbases, so it wasn't like the Swedes were semi-allies of Germany either. 

(This article describes Sweden's WWII policy in more detail and includes some rather critical commentary from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)

It's not early on why Sweden chooses this time around to break neutrality to attack the weakening German army in Norway, but it's hinted the goal is to strengthen Sweden's position in postwar Europe and in particular give them a say in what's done with Norway. The Swedes also assist with the ejection of the last German forces from the Nazis' former ally Finland--perhaps this time around, the Finns will avoid getting, well, Finlandized. And the timeline's author suggests that Soviets could have been the ones liberating Denmark from the Nazis and it took conniving between the Germans and Western Allies to keep them out. Keeping Denmark out of Soviet hands might be another reason.

Prolonging the Futility-Hitler dies in 1942 after a bite from his dog (with whom he was playing too roughly) becomes infected, much like how a king of Greece died twenty-odd years before after being bitten by a monkey. However, the Germans still lose at Stalingrad. The Allies are coming and they're angry. Without Hitler's micromanaging and bad military decisions, how long can the Axis drag things out? The author admits the Germans in some cases are rolling sixes and the Allies are rolling ones, which might explains how the Germans are doing better than expected even without a drug-addled lunatic in charge, but it's not completely without reason. If you've read An Army At Dawn, you'll see how incompetent the U.S. Army was early in the war and how skilled the Germans were, even with the Germans running their North African operation on a shoestring and with the Allies' massive materiel superiority and control the air. And it's Goering, more flexible and less fanatical than Hitler (IIRC he was the only top Nazi diagnosed as a sociopath, which would explain his being self-seeking rather than serving a Goal greater than himself), who succeeds Hitler and that would explain a lot of it. I think some of the events later in the timeline are starting to stretch disbelief, but that's my main quibble.

Summer and Fall 2021 Convention Schedule (So Far)

Given how lucrative conventions are for me--one convention's profits equate to several months' Amazon royalties--and COVID seems to be waning, I'm getting events lined up for this summer and fall. This is still in-progress, so I might come back and edit this post as necessary. Hopefully there won't be any COVID spikes or political nonsense that could interfere...

Confirmed Events

June 5, 2021: The Middle Georgia Comic Convention in Macon, GA. I want to expand outside of the Atlanta market without hotel expenses cutting into my profits, so a one-day event an hour and a half or so outside of Atlanta is just perfect. I made sure to contact some of the local media in advance--the newspaper did a preview story (and the editor came by to purchase two books), while the local TV station announced it was coming and then interviewed one of my Horror Writers Association Atlanta Chapter colleagues. I made a decent profit and got 17 new e-mails for my newsletter, which will be helpful in the long run.

July 10, 2021: Comics and Collectibles Show in Braselton, GA. I think a lot of the people involved in Toylanta 2021 were involved in this one and Braselton is convenient to both heavily-populated Gwinnett County and Athens, the home of the University of Georgia. And cheap table cost too. :)

August 6-8, 2021: Atlanta Comic-Con-This is the big kahuna--I made all the money I mentioned above when I split the table cost with C.S. Johnson and I've got a partner for this one as well, fellow Atlanta Horror Writers Association member Venessa Giunta. And last time I only had two books, The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, the latter of which I straight-up sold out on. This time around I'll have seven books available, including the Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion (great for two-for-one deals) and the completely new (to ACC) steampunk Wastelands series. I'm also going to set Thing and Battle for the Wastelands e-books to $0.99 and hand out a lot of cards with QR codes linking to them, a strategy that has ginned up e-book sales before.

Also, Cineprov, an Atlanta film comedy troupe whose membership overlaps significantly with Myopia Movies, may be performing there as well. Come for the humor, stay for the products. :)

August 14, 2021: FarleyCon-I found out about this event at Toylanta in mid-March. Although I'm leery of out-of-state events due to hotel costs eating my profits, this event takes place in a suburb outside of Chattanooga, pretty close to the Georgia line. Table costs were pretty low, although owing to the distance mileage is going to be an expense.

August 15, 2021: Atlanta Comic Convention-This is a relatively short event relatively close to Emory University. I've been there a couple times before, but this time I've got a lot more stuff than last time.

October 2, 2021: NextChapterCon-This event is dedicated to independent authors and books solely. I attended two previous events and served as a panelist on multiple panels, so it's good to carry on the tradition. Furthermore, this year's event will be in Dalton rather than Ringgold, meaning hopefully a larger audience given how it's a larger community to start with and Dalton State College is located there..

In-Process

October 8-10, 2021: Monsterama-This is another relatively new convention. It's a bit of a hike from my day job and so last time I dawdled so much that I ended up not being able to get a table when I finally decided to apply. However, Toylanta showed that going straight from work to a convention that officially starts Friday night in the northern suburbs is completely doable.

Two Different Versions of Alexander's Empire Surviving

One of the great hinges on which history turned is the death of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. Using the combined war machine of Macedonia and the classical Greek city-states, he conquered the gigantic Achaemenid Persian Empire and even some regions outside it in a very short time. He ruled from northern Greece to Egypt to outer India and Central Asia, but before he could consolidate his government and create a lasting dynasty ruling over most of the known (to Europeans) world...he died of a fever, excessive drinking, or a combination thereof. And his generals tore the empire apart, sidelining and killing his wife and son in the process. Had Alexander lived, it would have been a very, very different world, and people have been wondering about what might have happened for a very, very long time.

(One of the earliest works of alternate history is the Roman writer Livy, who wrote a short scenario in which a surviving Alexander fought Rome. He thinks the Romans would have still won, which is...dubious.)

And the alternate history forum which I still check in on even though I'm self-banned (which keeps me out of the cesspool that's Political Chat) has two different versions of one surviving-Alexander timeline, "Blood and Gold." Here's the first version and here's the second.

Some highlights...

*Apparently before his death, Alexander was planning a campaign to subjugate Arabia, which was the crossroads of a rich spice trade. Given how he lives longer this time around, we see that campaign.

*Alexander's Macedonian supporters were growing increasingly resentful of his adoption of Persian customs in order to govern his enlarged empire. This continues to be an issue for Alexander himself and his successors, who govern from the Middle East rather than Greece. And since the Argead (Alexander's family) often practices polygamy, this leads to all sorts of harem intrigue and problems.

*India continues to be a thorny issue for Alexander and his successors, as by the time Alexander heads back for round two (his army mutinied rather than try to advance further the first time), Chandragupta Maurya has founded his empire. Maurya is Alexander's equal and western India is going to be contested zone for generations.

*Alexander soon finds himself embroiled in the politics of Rome and Carthage, the two great powers of the Mediterranean. This is is also going to be an ongoing issue.

Both the original version of the timeline and the revised timeline are dead now and there's apparently a third that's also dead, but they're long and they're fun reads while they last. Enjoy!