Mortal Kombat: Legacy Episode 2 Review

So a week has passed and the second episode of the Kevin Tancharoen directed Mortal Kombat web series has hit YouTube. The whole episode is only 9:08. But with a hugely unnecessary 1:25 of recap from the first episode and then 1:40 of credits at the end you’ve got only just six minutes of actual episode.

The sad thing is that it is really three minutes of slow-motion video and the whole thing should have been the end of episode one instead of a stand alone episode.

**SPOILER ALERT**

In Episode one Sonya foolishly falls into a Kano trap and Jax and Stryker stumble into the trap as well. Which results in a fight between Jax and Kano.

The fight takes so long that it spills over into episode two and required three minutes of slow motion video to make it look good. Even then, it’s disappointing.

The fight ends with Kano out cold and Jax running from a grenade to save Sonya, played by the aging Jeri Ryan, whom I still believe to be way too old for the role.

The last three minutes of the episode shows Kano getting his mechanical eye and faceplate and a conversation between Stryker and Sonya that hint at Jax getting his cybernetic arms from the Department of Defense.

And that’s it. Here’s the video:

Why this wasn’t the end of the first episode instead of a short, uneventful second episode is beyond me. Warner is said to have purchased ten episodes (the new press release says nine) and from the first look it seems like they are going to be fairly poor on story and length.

“Mortal Kombat: Legacy” is an anthology of nine live action episodes and brings to life the motivation behind each character’s participation in the Mortal Kombat tournament.  Each episode will provide never-before-revealed insights into characters featured in the upcoming videogame as well as the game’s universe.  Kevin Tancharoen, Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing serve as writers.

If every story is going to be mostly about two or three characters and take two episodes it looks like there will only be four stories (eight episodes) and then the final piece which is supposed to "culminate in an event featuring Cyrax and Sector to cap off the series." However, if they manage to fit a couple characters into longer episodes then they could get more of the characters in, but I have a feeling that won’t be the case.

Scorpion and Sub Zero are set to make appearances but no word on others aside from the two mentioned above.

Alternate MK History

Now this is supposed to tell the tales of why they are all involved in the tournament. However, I’m rather unclear on it all. Sonya wants revenge for Jax, Jax wants revenge for Jax and Kano wants revenge for his eye?

In the original story Sonya was chasing Kano and they ended up on the island where Shang Tsung was holding the Mortal Kombat tournament. So does that mean we’ll have yet another episode or have they completely rewritten the history?

Kano’s original motivation was gold. He heard there were gold and riches to be had and was planning to steal them.

Jax didn’t show up until Mortal Kombat II after receiving a message from Sonya who had been trapped and taken to Outworld.

It’s still possible that they could follow the storyline loosely and that would be fine. Many stories that have been rebooted lately and swerved and veered through the originals with changes here and there.

In an interview Ed Boon offered this on the story:

...Raiden is about to be killed by Shao Kahn, and just before he delivers the last blow, he [Raiden] sends a mental message to his earlier self, and the camera rewinds back to Mortal Kombat 1. The Raiden from Mortal Kombat 1 then gets the message and experiences a premonition. The game then spans Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3, retelling the story with an enlightened Raiden, who has changed the course of events. Eventually, everything you’ve seen happen before – Liu Kang winning, the guys turning into cybernetic ninjas, has been altered. You might see a cybernetic character who wasn’t before, and a different version [of events].

Hector Sanchez confirmed the chronology in an interview:

The story begins with Raiden, just when he is about to be killed by Shao Kahn in the events that happen after Armageddon. In a last effort, he sends a message to himself in the past, in the era of "Mortal Kombat", the first game. The rest of the story follows that Raiden’s past and shows him trying to understand the visions and messages he gets from himself in the future and trying to prevent the events that lead to destruction of all realities.

So a time traveling SOS rewrites all of Mortal Kombat history and makes it moot? That’s pretty lame as a storyteller’s tool if you ask me. That’s almost as bad as the "it was all a dream," or it never really happened ending for a story.

For the future of Mortal Kombat: Legacy, at least we should now move on to some more interesting visuals since the likes of Scorpion and Sub Zero are to be the subject of some episodes. There are a full 32 playable characters for the game (some being platform specific), two set for download add-ons and of course Goro, Shao Kahn and Kintaro who are all non-playable. They certainly aren’t going to get them all in at the rate they’re going.