As of April 8, 2021, the time-honored video game franchise Mortal Kombat gained yet another movie adaptation.

This movie fared much better than its predecessors earning $66.8 million in box office receipts according to The Numbers,and even scored a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.2/10 on IMDB. Personally, I would have graded it slightly higher, but not too much higher, maybe a 7.5/10. Allow me to give a brief synopsis of the movie, before I go into detail about why I would grade the movie how I did.

“Hunted by the fearsome warrior Sub-Zero, MMA fighter Cole Young finds sanctuary at the temple of Lord Raiden. Training with experienced fighters Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and the rogue mercenary Kano, Cole prepares to stand with Earth’s greatest champions to take on the enemies from Outworld in a high-stakes battle for the universe.”

I feel like the writers did a moderate amount of research into the games before they wrote the movie, which allowed for creative liberty to be taken by the directors while staying true to the story. The characters were also portrayed well, but I had issues with some of them. To get my biggest problem out of the way first, I want to say that I extremely disliked the design they used for the character Reptile. I feel like they tried to take too much of a realistic approach and make him match his looks to his name, when in most games he looks more human but with scales. Also, I had no real problem with Cole Young besides the fact that I felt his character was average and slightly boring when you compare it to everything going on around him. Lastly, I didn’t like Mileena, but she wasn’t terrible.

In my opinion, the saving grace for this movie was the combat scenes, because they were very fluid and natural. The only thing that could’ve enhanced the combat was better visual effects. The effects weren’t necessarily bad, but while watching the movie they just constantly bothered me. As far as the plot goes, I think that it’s OK, but some feel like it was lackluster. I can understand why some people may believe that due to some of the scenes jumping around, and it not flowing smoothly.