#REVIEW: “MORTAL KOMBAT II”

Review by David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong

Most of the Earthrealm champions have been chosen and are prepared to fight the champions of Outworld in the tournament called Mortal Kombat. The only holdout is Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a washed up action star from the 90s who would rather be anything than a potential saviour of Earth. But they are going to need him if they want any chance of defeating the tyrannical Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), who will do anything to win.

If any of the words in that description mean anything to you, than chances are you have some experience or knowledge of Mortal Kombat. And if your idea of a good time at the movies is seeing your favourite characters perform their fatalities and signature moves, drop trademark quips and beat the living shit out of each other, than you are going to have a good time with MORTAL KOMBAT II. Learning from the mistakes of the previous film, returning Director Simon McQuoid throws us right into the tournament quickly (after a brutal prologue fight-to-the-death no less) and then spends the rest of the film upping the ante with increasingly gory fight scenes right through to the end. I had many complaints about what the last film was missing, and was pleasantly surprised that many of them were addressed and fixed here.

And yes, while I was not a fan of new character Cole Young’s (Lewis Tan) arc before, I am very pleased with how it gets further hammered out this time.

More than most films, MORTAL KOMBAT II seems tailor made for fans of the video game series, the original film series, and is going to make fans out of newcomers who are on the level of what McQuoid and Company have concocted here. While I would not say it is necessarily critic proof, I would be remiss to not at least suggest that having any expectations for it being anything other than the kind of film that leaves more time for the resurrected Kano (Josh Lawson) to wax on about another character resembling “Voldemort’s nutsack” than it does for anyone to have a fully dimensional and fully realized performance is probably not in anyone’s best interest. The actors are all putting in the work – with some afforded substantially more time than others – but the plot and dialogue are not of the utmost concern.

Though I would have preferred a more streamlined film versus one filled with side quests and nonsense setups for a potential sequel, I think my biggest concern is how artificial so much of MORTAL KOMBAT II looks. Some of the “arenas” are near replicas of those found in the games to the point that they practically look like static, pasted-on backgrounds. The amount of gore is great, but the amount of CGI enhancement in many instances is unnecessary. The makeup and practical work on Baraka (CJ Bloomfield) and his minions is solid, but other characters look like junk. For a film that was delayed half a year, it really feels like the interim time before release was wasted when it could have been used to better finesse these areas and more.

All of that said, MORTAL KOMBAT II is still the best live action Mortal Kombat film to date and one that fans will be pleased with. It could have used some fine-tuning and is not a flawless victory, but I had a good time watching it with a crowd of screaming fans and it more than made up for its less than stellar predecessor.

Warner Bros. Pictures Canada release MORTAL KOMBAT II on Friday, May 8, 2026.