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Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) More at IMDbPro »

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235 comments in total

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64 out of 88 people found the following comment useful :-
You got to be kidding me!, 28 December 2004

Author: Unbreakable27 from United States

I have been a big fan of MK since the beginning, although I must admit I lost interest in the game series after part III.

Buying MK Deception this past Christmas renewed my interest in the series.

This movie was crap and I can't believe I bought this mess.

Good thing I found it for 9.99 at the used bin, so I wasn't out of much.

I was expecting to see a REAL sequel to the first movie, which I found fairly entertaining.

I thought the first film was very good and does the game upon which it is based some justice.

Not the case with MKA.

The first problem is that they tried to fuse too much of MK2 with MK3.

Then, if you're going to replace a character with another actor (Christopher Lambert), then at least make sure the new actor does a batter job than the first. The first Raiden was a hard-ass, and you knew not to mess with him. The second Raiden was a wuss and every time we saw him he was going through a wall.

Weak portrayals of major MK characters was another flaw.

The actress who portrayed Sonya Blade was nowhere near as good as Bridgette Wilson (the first Sonya).

Same could be said with Cage (Linden Ashby).

What was the point of even having Ermac and Rain in the movie if they weren't going to be referred to? A very weak portrayal of Sindel, Kitana's mother and the actress who played her isn't fit to act in soap operas.

Line example: Kitana: "My mother is dead." Sindel: "As will be her daughter!" Gimmie a break! Stick with the first.

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48 out of 59 people found the following comment useful :-
Mortal Kumquat, 14 July 2003

Author: Rob Taylor (Rob_Taylor) from London

By all that's Holy! A film that made me cringe the whole way through! Dear Lord how the studio bosses must have laughed as they counted the money that they made off this turkey. Now, I thought the first MK was an OK film, great soundtrack, OK acting and plenty of fighting. A good no-brainer actioner. But this....this....defies belief.

How on Earth can you get such a bunch of wooden actors together and still manage to hide all the strings? It comes to something when you look at a film and can honestly say the best actor in it is Brian Thompson! The actors playing the bad guys overacted so awfully it was painful to watch, expecially the centaur guy. He exuded ham to a level I've not seen before.

The special effects were truly special, but only in a "special needs" kind of way. Looks like they were lifted straight from the video game itself. Laugh as you watch something resembling a dragon perform martial arts very badly. Laugh as Brian Thompson turns into a......thing. Laugh at the terrible lack of detail in it all. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh and laugh again, right up until they slap the straightjacket on you and cart you off to the loony bin. Because only someone truly demented would want to sit through this terrible, terrible film.

Eh? What's that Doc? Yes, I know I sat through it. But it was all in the name of science, you see. I was doing research. By the way, you couldn't loosen this jacket a bit, could you?

Anyway, as I say, the best actor was Brian Thompson. Only he saved it from getting a 1, but even then, the rest prevented it from getting any more than a 2.

Avoid it if you value your sanity!

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35 out of 43 people found the following comment useful :-
What a letdown, 11 November 2004
Author: amaionuma (amaionuma@yahoo.com) from Marina, California

I have been a huge fan of the MK videogames practically since the beginning, and I really enjoyed the first Mortal Kombat movie. It wasn't a work of art, but it was fun, funny, colorful and had some great fight scenes. Anihilation, though, suffers from an extreme case of sequelitis, with about half of the characters re-cast, all of which were a step down, a dumb story line, wooden acting, effects that were less advanced than the ones in the first movie, and a feeling of blah pervading the whole thing. Perhaps the worst thing is the fight at the end with the two really bad CG "animalities", a cheesy idea from the game that should have stayed in the game. Liu Kang's dragon looked like a pear with wings and a tail. Definitely avoid this one if you wish to keep your glowing memories of the arcade game intact.

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24 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Oh, I'll tell you how bad this movie is, allright, 3 February 2004

Author: manalone923 from California, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

You know, I really liked the original Mortal Kombat. Sure they ripped off the premise from another movie, but at least it was good (Enter the Dragon). I loved the games until the 4th one and was widely known as being one of its best and most devoted followers. So maybe all this is why my then-girlfriend's idiot stoner brother told me that he heard this movie was incredible, and I excitedly went to see it.

I'm a patient guy, and I have almost never felt the urge to walk out of a movie due to boredom (Tank Girl is the only other one I recall). But MKA here is a joke. If you really feel the need to see this movie and be surprised, then be forewarned because there are spoilers ahead.

Here's one right off the bat. MKA isn't a sequel proper to the original Mortal Kombat. The original MK was, reasonably, based on the first game. A couple future characters made cameos, but that's it. So it stands to also reason that MKA would be about the second game, the one most fans widely regard to be the best. But whereas the MK film was made at the time that part 2 was yielding to part 3, a lot changed in the extra couple years it took for this film sequel. As MK the movie was leaving theaters, MK3 the game was getting kind of a lukewarm reception, and people got sicker and sicker of it by the time MK4 came out. By now the games were in 3d and the storyline had gone from basic Enter the Dragon tournaments to all out apocalyptic robot wars and sorcerors controlling the fates of a bunch of new, generic characters. Until its decent reinventing in 2002, the MK games had hit a rough and oversaturated spot and would take 5 years to bounce back.

So here in this worst time comes MKA, which skips the best chapter of the games entirely and jumps in at sort of a story junction between the 3rd and 4th games, the worst. So we have characters from all 4 games running around and interacting, which is goofy as it is, and things get worse when sense is tried to be made of it. For example, (spoiler), in maybe the first 2 minutes Johnny Cage, a main character and semi-hero of the first movie, is summarily and unceremoniously killed off. My guess for this is because he wasn't in the 3rd game.

Soon after (more spoilers. In fact, there will be several so if you continue, do at the risk of ruining the wonderful cinematic experience that is MKA), robots from game 3 come in, negating the fact that their sole purpose in the games was to hunt Sub Zero, a character killed in the first movie. Leading the attacks by these fiends and others is Shao Kahn, who in the first movie appeared as a giant demonic face in the sky and here appears as....a masculine human being.

Making things moe complicated is that elder God Raiden, played by Christopher Lambert in the original, is here played by someone else and seems to not want to fight at all, as the character has gone from wizardly power god to short haired, weasely Power Rangers nerd, giving up his immortality in the process and teaching our heroes a thing or two about friendship and courage. Huh?

Sticking things out, unfortunately for them, are Robin Shou and Talisia Soto, who play central characters Liu Kang and Kitana and who've returned from the original film. This time, neither of them are allowed to do anything much more than look shocked at the stupid story developments, and Liu Kang engages in a few fights that capture none of the magic or uniqueness of the original film. And in fact this goes for any fight in this film that I care to remember. In the original, the fights were well choreographed and showcased a good selection of acrobatic and martial arts skill. Action was conveyed through close combat, good angles, and lengthy tradeoffs. And at the very least, there was a genuine moment or two where one might say "wow, that was a cool move!". This time, a lot of the action is illusional, with the camera making quick cuts and sudden moves to sort of convey that stuff is going on. There's nary an actual hand-to hand combat scene that lasts more than 30 seconds, and when you see what else was thrown in instead, you'll want to kill someone yourself.

For example, remember the character Baraka, with his beast face and bladed arms? He's here, and in fact is joined by several identical others, who assault Liu Kang with their reflective cardboard blades in a high-flying trapeze act straight out of the circus. And what about Sheeva, 4-armed character that should have been the answer to decently done Goro, 4-armed creature of the original film? Well, whereas he was conveyed through puppeteering and animatronics, here Sheeva is played by a tall woman in generic spandex who tries to look menacing and does a couple unthreatening hops with her cheesy extra special effect arms.

Things (don't) pick up later on, when Liu Kang randomly encounters Native American character Nightwolf, who explains that Liu must harness his "animality" to succeed. Anyone familiar with the MK universe knows that the "animality" was a ridiculous player rumor which supposed that the MK games contained a method of killing one's opponent by turning into an animal and committing not a fatality but an "animality". This dumb rumor was added to the 3rd game as fan service, and apparently delighted the producers of this film enough that it was actually explained as a real, feasible occurence. "Feel your animality", N.Wolf says to Liu, urging him to harness the beast within. Mr. Wolf then briefly shows Liu how to do it, and then asks,

"pretty cool, huh?"

We who haven't left the room yet are saying "no", but oh boy do we still get a fun surprise. At the end of the film, Liu Kang fights with big masculine guy (er, Shao Kahn), and instead of actual wanted fisticuffs, we get to see the two of them feel their animality and turn into giant, god awful stupid computer-generated beasts who do combat with each other. No, I mean it. They turn into giant computer animated beasts. And we're not talking about Gollum of the Lord of the Rings here- I mean big, shiny, plasticy-looking "we know we want to make big magical creatures but don't yet have the technology to do anything but make them eye-strainingly obvious" effects. Liu Kang could reasonably have turned into a cool chinese dragon or something, but instead winds up being this big-nosed, cross eyed, dopey dragon thing. Shao Kahn turns into something equally ridiculous and less memorable and the two have it out. Then at the last minute Shao Kahn's sorceror dad decides he's gone too far, disgraced the family name by becoming a crappy visual effect, and makes him disappear or something. Then everyone hugs, and more or less runs far, far away.

I hope that this has been an accurate rendering of what my feelings are for this film, because I actually haven't seen it in several years. I don't hate myself enough to watch it more than that. But if you want an actual review without the sarcasm, just look at it this way: It is an insult to the MK franchise and its fans, it fails as a follow-up to the fun original MK film, it fails TERRIBLY as a martial arts film, and in general it just is a dumb waste of time, an arbitrary, thrown-together cash-in sequel. Do yourself a favor and just watch the original, and if you still crave more, go play the games. And if you do insist on seeing this movie, then at the very least inject some fun into it like trying to figure out where those Baraka masks were purchased.

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22 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Nothing to add. Watch it to laugh at it., 18 June 2006

Author: bestofcell

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

MK-1 made by no-talent director Paul Worth..beep..Anderson was really not that crap but this....this.....this......is just unimaginable! Some memorable moments are

Motaro, supposed to be one of the toughest enemies has a visibly fake plastic horn set glued to his head. Even a 2 year old would find that out.

Another opponent, with 4 arms, supposed to be the third toughest, has a 2 second role and dies by a falling object! Johnny cage moves perfectly straight for 100 meters during a kick, touches the bad guy! Dies! What a way to start a movie!

A wise old Red Indian guy says "Pretty cool huh? Its my animality". This guy is supposed to spiritual? He looks like a punk.

Final end for Shaoh Khan? He becomes a box! Originality! The CGI looks like cut and paste from a 1985 modelling kit. And this guy is a caucasian bald guy instead of a mongol.

There's no fighting, the opponents merely scratch each other.

What are the makers trying to prove with this? Was this an intentional parody of the Mortal Kombat universe?

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25 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Raiden gets a haircut!, 10 June 2002

Author: evilasahobby

I saw this film at the cinema the same day as I saw Lost in Space (the new one, with Gary Oldman). By comparison, Lost in Space was high art full of deep metaphysical dilemmas. MK:A is terrible.

I loved the Mortal Kombat games, and was pleased to see that MK The Movie was better than Street Fighter II The Movie. Sure, it was a light-on film, but it had some moments and I spent most of my time laughing at the unintentionally bad bits. MK:A makes MK The Movie look sophisticated.

The first five minutes basically drops a piano on the head of the first movie - new bad guy, Johnny Cage dies, new heroes appear, minimal explanation. From then on you have a sub-standard martial arts film packed full of cheap costumes on cheap actors following a cliched script. I know there's not a lot of narrative you can squeeze out of a fighting computer game, but surely the writers could have tried a little harder to make something work. Having gone to the movie with a guy who didn't play the games, I had to explain what the hell was going on for the first half (like why is that guy fighting him?) and gave up after that.

That said, this movie contains the most unintentionally hilarious moment I have ever seen on film. Towards the end of the movie, Raiden moves from having flowing straight white hair to a peroxided flat-top. There's a brief mention of Raiden getting a haircut, and that's it. It makes absolutely no sense, and thinking about it still makes me laugh.

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25 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
"It Sucks!" dosen't do it justice, 21 January 2002
Author: jimjam20-2

This is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Painfully bad acting, the replacing of actors from the first (wise move on those actors parts) Too many charcters for to short of time. They would need like 3 hours at least for all the MK charcters, and god help us all if they ever get that much time for one of these movies. Just Horrible.

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53 out of 91 people found the following comment useful :-
Jesus Christ . . ., 6 August 2002
Author: (darthkrash@hotmail.com)

Well, this was the worst movie I have ever seen. The balls of this director must be huge to follow up a pretty cool (if not pretty silly) movie with this steaming pile of dung. I swear to God, the only movie that even begins to approach this level of crap was Wing Commander. I'm actually glad that this movie came out because until I saw it a few days ago on DVD, I actually thought that a movie this bad could not exist. I guess I should have known it was bad when I went to Wal-Mart and they were simply giving the movie away for free. I would throw it away but I enjoy telling people I own the worst movie ever concieved. I believe I'll put it on display.

What a God awful movie.

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17 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Highly watchable crap., 15 July 2006

Author: falkbay

Yeah its flawed. Its idiotic. It doesn't follow the video game well enough. The acting is the worst you'll ever see anywhere. The fight scenes are pathetic and the choreography is even worse than its predecessor. The special effects are terrible and worse than you can possibly imagine. The storyline is nonexistent. There are a lot of scenes and parts which make no sense whatsoever. But at no point is it ever boring. So it is highly watchable despite being a piece of crap. If you be a fan of the MK franchise or are expecting a good movie, watch it to see how bad a movie can get, just for education. It does however take a special kind of talent to ruin a franchise and movie which already has a good plot in place (refer to the MK video games). This movie's entire cast and crew have that talent and so does a retard called Paul Anderson.

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15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
An unexpected Sequel, 1 March 2006

Author: janks007 from United Arab Emirates

This sequel has diminished the image of the first movie, Mortal Kombat. First of all, the death of Johnny Cage in the beginning scene of the movie destroyed a lot of expectations as there were many who became fans of Johnny Cage in particular. In addition to that, the action scenes from Liu Kang were rather fake, in contrary to his action moves in Mortal Kombat. The introduction of Jax was not explained, how did he get into the hospital. Subzero's entry was understandable, but was it the same of Scorpion? Baraka, Mileena, Sheeva, Ermac, Nightwolf, Jade etc. are high profile fighters in the game, but in this movie, they were represented horribly. Sheeva died without a fight, Nightwolf came in just to hit an axe on Liu Kang, Jade was JUST A TRAITOR.

Shao Kahn's acting was the worst. His fighting style lacked the depth and originality like Shang Tsung had in the previous film.

All in all, I would recommend the fans of Mortal Kombat to avoid watching this movie if they want to maintain their good impression of the first movie.

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