Here’s the episode itself. Be warned it is rated TV-MA which means mature audiences. Well, it is Mortal Kombat! The MA rating is based on language and violence. There’s no nudity.
If you’re easily offended by language or fake blood and violence, you probably won’t want to watch it. If you’re a Mortal Kombat fan, you have to watch it.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Production
I have to say, I am impressed with the quality of the production overall. The effects look good and aren’t typical Hollywood over the top, thanks to a limited budget I suspect, but it helps to make it look more realistic.
The cinematography takes a lot from standard action films and I hope they move away from that and do some less cliche things. For example the slow motion shot of Sonja at the end of they episode really wasn’t necessary, was it? I was expecting her to start walking away while something exploded behind her (because cool people don’t look back at explosions).
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Acting
Several times throughout the 10-minute episode (plus 3 minutes of credits) I thought to myself, ’Did the Director tell them to cheese it up?!" because that is exactly how it looked and felt. The acting wasn’t so bad as to make me groan aloud, but it was pretty close.
There were numerous scenes which I thought could have been far better and the delivery of the lines could have been much tighter. Really, a lot of the dialog was forced and seemed like a stretch.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Plot and Continuity
Here’s a list of things I noticed on my first viewing of the episode:
The grenade goes off and every SWAT member has their goggles up on their head (why they went into a potential combat situation like that is beyond me). When they regain consciousness and start shooting, they all have their goggles on their faces... did the grenade do that? No, the continuity checker failed. Tsk, tsk...
Jax and Stryker don’t have helmets (a classic TV mistake because they are main characters and are, of course, nigh invincible).
All the bad guys have sunglasses on inside which could only make trying to shoot others much more difficult given the dark environment of the warehouse.
Sonja was allegedly there for 2 days, yet had the strength to pull herself up and free herself. Why didn’t she try that 2 days ago? You could say the explosions loosened the bolt, but it was just a tiny bolt in cement and Sonja (from the games) would have pulled that out just by flexing her muscles, right fans?
Plus Jerry Ryan is, unfortunately, too old for the role and won’t ever be able to do all the fight scenes necessary for Sonja Blade.
Overall
The episode wasn’t to intolerably bad that I had to stop watching, so that says something. I took the full 10 minutes to watch the show. The acting really needs improvement as does the writing. They need to step back and cut out a lot of the cliches that make this look and feel like one of those low budget sci-fi cop shows normally syndicated on Saturday afternoons when most people are out doing something else. The fight scenes also could use some more Mortal Kombat in them. The one scene between Jax and Kano was fairly uninteresting and just didn’t have that MK feel. Now I’m not saying we need some fatality or anything like that, but the fighting was plain, basic, and not anything we expect from the franchise.
I would give it I suppose a 7/10. It wasn’t so bad that I had to turn it off but it wasn’t so great that I think it will last past 10 episodes. It all depends on what they do with the rest of the episodes and if they can get over that bad sci-fi vibe I get from it.
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