So Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation are coming out on Blu-Ray on April 19th, 2011. Two shitty movies made by some fucking dude that has no idea how a martial arts tournament works and a complete fucking asshat that no one should really pay attention to. Although I was a bit fond of the original attempt at turning Mortal Kombat into a movie, I have since grown up and pushed the action button, and realized that, just like his godawful attempts at making Resident Evil into movies, that guy ripped everything that was Mortal Kombat out of the movie and threw it in the trash, then made things up as he went along. Seriously, not one real fatality in the game? Hokey, pokey martial arts sequences that were better rendered in their native China than in any American flick EVAR?! It was nothing more than a case of some snooty filmmaker snob saying, "HEY, WE CAN DO STORIES BETTER THAN THOSE GUYS CAN, SO LETS JUST FUCK SHIT UP!"
This happens all the time in American cinema. Just look at every superhero movie made in the last two decades (minus the first two Blade movies, 'cause those were better than any comic Blade had ever been in) or any movie based on a video game. Especially Resident Evil and that Tomb Raider garbage.
And don't get me started on Street Fighter.
But that's all besides the point. Despite my ranting and raving and SHEER NERDRAGEHATE for the Mortal Kombat movies, I can still enjoy them.
I can enjoy them even more when they have nerdshit stuffed away in them that makes Ed Boon and his crew at Netherrealm Studios the kings of SECRET FIGHTING GAME SHIT. They actually started all that, by the way. With Reptile in the original Mortal Kombat arcade... oh, and those "fatality" things.
The Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation Blu-Rays (both films probably make for really good films for me to watch really drunk, or to be watched with me while I'm really drunk) have a nice little easter egg stuffed away in them for the gamers. Yeah, folks like me. Embedded in the secret coding of the Blu-Ray lies an extra costume for Mortal Kombat -- the video game that's being released on the same day that's a reboot for the franchise -- for Jade. Jade's digital life began as a hidden character in Mortal Kombat II, before debuting in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as a fully playable character. In order to fight her in MKII you had to use nothing but the low-kick button during one of the rounds that you win, and she'd take you back to Goro's Lair -- a stage from the original Mortal Kombat -- and beat the crap out of you.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the second time a Blu-Ray disc has featured a video game aspect to it that is only functional on the PlayStation 3 console. The first was the fully playable demo of God of War III on the District 9 Blu-Ray.
And just to connect the two, Kratos, the lead character from the God of War series -- and the most badass badass to ever grace the world with his GODRAGEHATE presence -- is a fully playable character on the PlayStation 3 version of the new Mortal Kombat game.
I do. I really, really do. But to keep this rant to the bare minimum of wordage, I'm hating them now for what they do to video games. It's no secret that video games make more money than Hollywood does nowadays. They just do. You want a good example? Look at the sales and money generated from Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops. It smashed all records in the entertainment fields like the Hulk when he got back to Earth after Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, and the others shot him into space. If you didn't get that, or didn't understand it, then obviously you're not spending enough time reading comics. And that just makes you UnAmerican.
But it doesn't stop there, oh, no. Video games also offer better production (nothing can look fake in an all digital world), better acting for a great deal of the time, and... DUN DUN DUN, better stories. Take Black Ops again. It's a standard, big budget action flick, but it out action flicked most of the big budget action flicks I saw last year, and it was better written. And that's saying a lot since the Call of Duty series is hugely popular for it's online multiplayer, and isn't known for it's epic, cerebral storytelling masterpieces.
But... God of War III blew the remake of The Clash of the Titans to absolute fuckall IN THE TITLE SEQUENCE ALONE.
Yet, Hollywood still has this 'holier-than-thou' aspect to it where the collective they, whomever these faceless twats are, think they can take some concept that was thought up in a video game -- or in a comic or some other medium that wasn't in the HOLY GRAIL CINEMA -- and do a better job. And they fail. Miserably. Instead of making a straight on horror film that involves zombies, but spirals out into an elaborate biochemical fuckjob like the Resident Evil games WERE, they put in made up characters that aren't even in the game, and make them wannabe kung-fu action stars (sorry, Milla, you're no Donnie Yen), and take the story into weirdville.
And it continues. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves are video games that make a flawless merger between the lazy, voyeuristic, inactive aspects of the cinema, and the involved, interactive, busy-bee aspect of the video game. It's a mix between Raiders of the Lost Ark style adventure and... I've got nothing else. Yet, when the rights were optioned to make a film based on the franchise, this guy starts yammering on about making a movie about a family of folks to be reckoned with in the antiquities world. Which has absolutely nothing to do with Nathan Drake, the world he operates in, his motivations, let alone either of the two (soon to be three) game's the character has appeared in. What his intentions are... they're like optioning the rights to make a Batman movie, then dealing solely on Bruce's family issues, keeping Martha and Thomas Wayne alive... and never having him actually be Batman.
Okay, that was probably a bit much, but still... stop licensing stuff out and make Hollywood, it's shite writing staff, it's shite directors; make them find original material inside their own fucking brains for once.
It's a retard's medium, cinema. Good for wide-eyed, doped up entertainment, but little else.
And don't get me started on horror cinema from America. For the past twenty years or so, horror from Hollywood has been a giant turd that's been forcefully smashed into the surface of my eyeballs. Even video games get horror right.
Just look at Dead Space 2. Heh, heh.
My apologies for those of you that subscribe to the HOLY GRAIL OF ENTERTAINMENT that movies seem to hold over people. I just don't share that opinion at all. It's a passive and lazy form of entertainment that's the equivalent of a cellophane packaged yellow-sponged snack cake with cream filling.
Yes. A goddamned Twinkie.
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