Mortal Kombat: Annihilation / YMMV

See also the franchise-wide pages for:

Anti-Climax Boss: The mighty four-armed Shokan Sheeva gets a cage dropped on her.
Award Snub: Despite succumbing to Sequelitis like the below-mentioned Batman & Robin and Speed 2: Cruise Control, it wasn't nominated for a single Golden Raspberry Award in 1997.
Awesome Music: This movie, for all its faults, still had some great music. Case in point: the instrumental version of "Fire" by Scooter.
Fanon Discontinuity: When compared to Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, fans would prefer to think that the latter happened instead of this movie, since they both follow the canon of the first movie.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- The tagline is "Destroy All Expectations." That it did, but not really in a good way.
- Jax's dismissiveness towards Raiden escalates to outright hostility and mistrust when Raiden's plan to reunite Sindel and Kitana to stop Kahn's plot fails. Jax goes as far as saying that humans cannot trust Raiden, an attitude very similar to what Liu Kang comes to believe when Raiden unwittingly gets most of his friends killed in Mortal Kombat 9, except Raiden's actions also result in Liu Kang becoming an evil minion under Quan Chi's command in Mortal Kombat X.
- Everything about Sindel and Kitana's relationship in this movie when taking Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath into account.
  - Sindel tell Kitana that the latter will die in this movie. Not only does Kitana die in 9, but Sindel is the one who kills her.
  - The heroes' belief that reuniting Sindel and Kitana will free the latter's soul is proven false, leading to Sindel, still under Kahn's control, laughing in Kitana's face and telling her she never loved her. Fortunately, Kahn's ultimate defeat brings Sindel back to her senses and she and Kitana share a more heartwarming reunion. In 11, due to several Retcons to Sindel's character, she betrays Kitana for Shao Kahn of her own free will and reveals that she was the one who killed her husband Jerrod.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Johnny Cage dies right at the start of this movie, much to Sonya's grief. Johnny and Sonya ending up together in the new timeline created by the Continuity Reboot in 9 is a nice coda.
Just Here for Godzilla: The Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion fight is one of the main reasons anybody watches this movie, as they never got to fight each other in the first movie. The other reasons include the memes and the ham, both of which flow like the mighty river.
Memetic Mutation: "Too bad YOU... will die!"
Narm:
- This infamous exchange between Kitana and her recently resurrected mother is poorly acted to the point of hilarity for the melodrama and the bizarrely long pause in Sindel's line, which has been described as "The Worst Line in Scriptwriting History."
  Kitana: Mother! You're alive!
  Sindel: Too bad YOU... (long, dramatic Beat) ...will die!
Narm Charm: Sindel's infamous line towards Kitana (as already mentioned above) is this for those who find it So Bad, It's Good. Some were even disappointed that among the many references to the films made in Mortal Kombat 11, this line was not one of them, especially with Sindel's return in that game's DLC^note. It finally did make a glorious return in Mortal Kombat 1 in a pre-fight interaction (against Omni-Man, of all people), with Mara Junot successfully making the line sound appropriately badass.
Nightmare Retardant: The final clash between Liu Kang and Shao Kahn, the former heroically leaping into battle against the latter, theme music blaring. Kahn immediately beats the crap out of Kang, cutting off the music as if the soundtrack was taken aback. Then after a moment, it starts up again when Kang catches his second wind. The Letting the Air out of the Band-esque pause in the music makes what should be a dramatic final battle unintentionally comedic.
One-Scene Wonder: Scorpion and Sub-Zero's fight scene is considered a highlight even by those who don't like the movie.
Pandering to the Base: Annihilation reveals new character after new character at the audience in an attempt to fit in all the new arrivals from Trilogy and earn some cred from the faithful. Despite this, not all of them appear: Kung Lao, Kintaro, and Sektor never get so much as a mention, not counting the characters that are killed off in the first film. ^note General feedback on the movie should be an indication of how well this worked.
Questionable Casting: Zigzagged. Fans of the first film will say this about the recasting of Johnny Cage, Sonya, and Raiden, but this is somewhat averted with the casting of Jax ^note and Motaro, who seem like logical choices due to their athletic builds. Both of them being former American Gladiators helps too. And then it zags right back with the casting of supermodels for the roles of Sindel and Jade, who really can't act and don't look the parts for their characters.^note
Sequelitis: This was considered a "real step down in class" from the original as well as one of the dumbest films of 1997, right alongside Speed 2: Cruise Control and Batman & Robin.
So Bad, It's Good: The more charitable viewpoint some people have of this film, particularly some of the moments under Narm above.
Special Effect Failure: The first film might have had some hokey-looking effects (and Goro), but Annihilation ups the ante despite the higher budget:
- All the post-production enhanced moves that obviously look the part.
- Sonya and Jax diving away from a stock explosion on a green screen.
- The battle at the end between Liu Kang and Shao Kahn. The dragons they turn into made the Stained-Glass Knight from Young Sherlock Holmes look like Jurassic Park, and neither the flying creature that emerges from Shao Kahn's body after he's beaten nor the body husk it leaves behind is any believable. To make matters worse, the dragon animation is actually used earlier in the film for the fake crests when Shao Khan's minions die.
- The gargoyle that appears twice is either the film's best effect ^notewhich is saying a lot or is worse than either of the creatures in the aforementioned fight scene. When it grabs Sonya at one point, she too becomes a rather obvious CGI double.
- Ermac's mask falls off during the fight between him and Sonya. This bit occurs when the latter grabs the former's head with her legs. A similar event happens during the fight between Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Only this time, it occurs when the former catches the latter.
- When Liu Kang does his flip kick, there's a visual flash of when he kicks the camera.
- There are cables visible all over the place, but none more noticeable than during Scorpion and Sub-Zero's fight.
- Speaking of that fight, at one point the bridge they fight on (which is meant to be made of solid ice) actually wobbles.
- Motaro's front legs are obvious human legs with human feet instead of horse legs with hooves, while the rear legs are rendered in the same awful CGI used for the Animality scene.
- During the first fight between Raiden and Shao Kahn, the actors and their suroundings have been rather noticeably cut out and pasted over the green screen. The storm used as the sky also has very visible clipping happening with the clouds.
- The film makes no attempts to hide that Ray Park serves as James Remar's Stunt Double during the fight between Raiden and the army of Reptiles.
- When Raiden punches one of the Reptiles and sends him flying, you can clearly see the actor is flipping himself as opposed to his body reacting to the punch.
Stock Footage Failure: Rain gets knocked into a flaming pit by Shao Kahn. When Baraka gets knocked towards the same pit, Rain is seen falling in again.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- In the games, Sheeva was introduced as Sindel's personal bodyguard and had a subplot where she realized that Shao Kahn had turned on her race and was now backing the Shokan's long-time enemies, the Centaur, after he had selected Motaro as the new general of his Outworld Army. While the individual beginnings of these plots are all established early on in the movie, none are immediately followed up on. Sheeva never even gets a fight scene in the final version. She at least gets a fight scene with Raiden in the book, defending Sindel as befits her appointed role as Sindel's protector, but for whatever reason this scene was cut.
- Smoke was the younger Sub-Zero's best friend and in the games themselves there were multiple attempts to free him from the control of the villains. Here, he's just a throwaway villain that has Sektor's moveset and is killed by Sub-Zero without even a single nod to their past friendship. They might as well have just used Sektor directly for that scene for all the difference it made, especially considering Sektor's own ties to the Lin Kuei.
- Mileena is wasted on a single fight scene that's only used for pointless fanservice despite the movie's plot having an obvious opportunity for her in having to impersonate Kitana and sabotage the heroes from the inside out while also expanding on her past relationship with both Kitana and Shao Kahn. Instead, Jade got a similar plot and Mileena's death goes unremarked by both sides. Hell, it's not even clear that she's Kitana's sister! The book at least throws in a token line of explanation by Kitana right when she attacks, but otherwise she's just as wasted there.
- Stryker and Kabal are killed offscreen even though the movie would have been the perfect opportunity to show off their personalities and win over the fans. This one is particularly tragic, as they had an entire subplot to themselves in early drafts of the script where they were going to be imprisoned along with Kitana and ultimately ended up leading an uprising. This subplot was cut, though Rain bizarrely still claims to have taken them prisoner, leaving viewers wondering What Happened to the Mouse?.
- Nightwolf and Sub-Zero both disappear after only a single scene with each character, despite the both of them agreeing to work with the heroes. Their powers would have made them valuable allies, but neither is seen or heard from again despite Earthrealm being on the brink of both defeat and destruction.
- Like Mileena, Rain had an obvious plot path laid out for him by the script as the disgraced ex-general out of favor who in keeping with his treacherous personality from the games tries to become The Starscream to him, either legitimately or out of desire to become The Atoner, depending on what characterization they wanted to go with for him. Instead he's just knocked into a pit to show viewers what a Bad Boss Kahn is, leaving viewers to wonder why this sniveling ninja who didn't even put up any fight at all ever got to be Kahn's head general at all.
- Johnny Cage, despite his prominent role in the first movie, is unceremoniously killed within the first five minutes. His death would have had more of an impact if he at least lasted into the halfway point. He also seems to be the only human on Earth who isn't revived once Shao Kahn is defeated. Making things worse is that the decision to kill him off when they did led Linden Ashby to pass on the offer to return, depriving audiences of the chance to see him re-team with Robin Shou. (Though it's impossible to blame Ashby for his decision.)
Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- Rain is a ruthless servant of Shao Kahn who boasts his death squads have killed thousands of innocent souls, and that his forces killed two of Earthrealm's best warriors, Kabal and Stryker. Expecting to be praised for this, Kahn instead demands to know if he made them beg first, to Rain's utter confusion as he was understandably leery of letting them live for too long. This gets Rain executed on the spot, making him a bizarrely sympathetic baddie who got on the bad side of his petty and incompetent boss simply by being good at his job.
- Shinnok, despite being the movie's Greater-Scope Villain, is also strangely sympathetic solely by dint of his relationship to Shao Kahn, in which he comes across as a Jerkass Woobie stuck with the unenviable job of trying to wrangle his terminally Stupid Evil son. Most of his scenes consist of him expressing varying states of exasperation with Kahn's constant bungling, and his interactions with Raiden make it clear that if he could just persuade the son with more than two brain cells to come back to his side, he'd drop Kahn into Outworld Adult Daycare in a nanosecond.
Video Game Movies Suck: Even compared to other video game movies, this one has an especially awful reputation, with more than a few regarding it as the worst game adaptation of all time... or at least the worst one that Uwe Boll didn't have a hand in.
WTH, Costuming Department?: The costumes in this movie sometimes attempt to be game-accurate, but end up looking absolutely terrible.
- Shao Khan's armor in particular looks like it's made out of cheap rubber and just generally looks unimpressive for an interdimensional conqueror. The skull part of his helmet looks like a poorly-made Halloween mask.
- Cyrax's armor is incredibly blocky and plastic-looking, very unfitting for a supposed Cyber Ninja.
- Baraka is obviously a guy in a goofy-looking rubber mask, and the makeup on his arms to hide the blade attachments... doesn't end up doing that at all. In fact, it looks like it's about to flake off most of the time he's onscreen.
- Sindel's signature over-the-top hairstyle from the games is represented by... a single white streak on the actress's perfectly normal-looking hair. Her outfit itself resembles a cheap purple one-piece bathing suit. Admittedly, it looked like that in the games at the time, but it just looks so much worse here.
- Jax's arms don't look metallic in the slightest, being obvious rubber casts over the actor's real arms (which show up completely uncovered in a few shots).
- All of the female cast seem to be wearing something akin to bullet bras, making their chests unusually and unnecessarily pointy.

YMMV / Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

Edit Locked