Reviews WesternAnimation / MortalKombatLegendsScorpionsRevenge

WesternAnimation As cheesy-yellow as Scorpion's costume

Scorpion's Revenge feels like an anomaly. A mid-budget, direct-to-video animated film adapting a nearly 30 year old arcade game story, albeit with a lot more of Ed Boon's favourite yellow ninja. Aside from the R-rated language and violence, this feels like a DVD or TV special film that would have been released in the mid-2000s. Everything about the art style, character designs and cheesy, phoned-in voice acting feels ripped from action-adventure cartoons of that era which my generation grew up with, so there's a definite nostalgia value in the production. Everyone said that Coarse's Gold Scorpion costume design from Mortal Kombat X would be great for a Bruce Timm-style animated series, and now it's finally real, so that's something.

While the story diverges quite significantly from both the games and the adaptations that have come before, there's something very old hat about it all. Framing the tournament entirely through Scorpion's role in it would have been fine, even though some take issue with him being "overexposed" for a relatively minor character. However, the film stumbles in its aimlessness as all of the other Mortal Kombat 1 veterans get their requisite screentime and tournament fights but don't develop or accomplish much of anything on their own and just distract from the core story of, well, Scorpion's revenge. When you look at it, Scorpion has always been an outsider to the franchise's real main conflicts, solely fixated on his personal side-missions against Sub-Zero and later Quan Chi, making him quite unique among fighting game mascots. If they wanted to still make the other characters feel important, I feel that there was a missed opportunity in showing a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead type of alternate perspective to the games' main storyline that depicts how Scorpion subtly influences and works around the tournament to achieve his own goals. Liu Kang, Sonya and Johnny Cage can still be there doing their thing to save Earthrealm, just slightly in the distance.

With the exception of Johnny Cage, who has consistently proven to be a joy to watch and listen to in everything he appears in, most of the new voice actors don't feel suited to their roles, giving the driest performances possible. That said, I appreciate that the cartoon doesn't try to force unnecessary, self-referential humour too much. The angular art style gives way to animation that is fluid, dynamic and fully reflects the good old fashioned ultraviolence the games are known for. Those unfamiliar with the games may find the constant skull-splitting, rib cage-shattering blows (the X-Ray/Krushing Blow effect is a really nice touch) that the characters happily endure hard to take seriously, but it all carries such a smooth "ouch factor". Overall, a decent flick that feels a bit too vanilla and proof-of-concept, but enjoyable enough.

WesternAnimation An awesome MK movie

Brutal awesome fight scenes and they balanced the dual stories of Scorpion’s plot and the plot of the tournament fo the first game pretty well. After Sonic, this is the next great video game movie this year.