Dommy Cage.

It’s been about two and a half years since I reviewed the first Mortal Kombat Legends movie and in that time quite a bit has happened. Insert political comment here. Anyway, I thought Scorpion’s Revenge kinda sucked given while the animation was enjoyable the whole plot was convoluted nonsense even by Mortal Kombat terms. The protagonists never really faced adversity and the movie seemed over its own head on showing how badass everyone was to detriment of having few real competent and effective villains.

Well evidently they figured out the same thing during production because Battle of the Realms takes pretty much everything I hated about Scorpion’s Revenge and turns it on its head. I watched this version on Max. Battle of the Realms was directed by Ethan Spaulding who you may recognize from a number of episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Specifically the episode that will make fans cry when I say the following words; “Leaves from the vine. Falling so slow.” He also directed Scorpion’s Revenge. Screenplay also by Jeremy Adams.

Battle of the Realms is a retelling of multiple Mortal Kombat games and kicks off after the ending of Scorpion’s Revenge. Angry about his loss to Earthrealm, Shao Kahn just decides to invade because he can and the world this series takes place in sucks. As both sides rack up massive body counts, Shao Kahn makes a proposition to Raiden. He says they should watch a marathon of Big Bang Theory and whoever laughs first loses. Realizing neither of them would ever laugh after an eternity, they decide to do another Mortal Kombat. I guess creative ideas don’t flow with the gods of any realm in this universe.

Meanwhile Scorpion is tasked by the dark lord Shinnok with using a key embedded inside him to open up a door and find a magical tchotchke that will awaken the dark lord and undo reality. Scorpion likes reality so he splits, causing Shinnok to do what any evil hellspawn god would do. He hires contractors to take the work on, and who else to fit that task but the Lin Kuei clan who, as luck would have it, are at that point in the storyline where they’ve started turning their members into robots because robots are cool and more importantly they won’t eat Paul Nakauchi’s leftover pizza.

Let’s talk voice actors. Most of the actors are back including Liu Kang (Jordan Rodrigues), Raiden (David B. Mitchell), Johnny Cage (Joel McHale), Sonya (Jennifer Carpenter), Jax (Ike Amadi), Shang Tsung (Artt Butler), Shinnok (Robin Downes), Kitana (the lovely Grey DeLisle), Shao Kahn (Fred Tatasciore), and Scorpion (Patrick Seitz). Debra Wilson joins in as D’Vorah, and I genuinely forgot that Scorpion’s Revenge didn’t have Jade (Emily O’Brien) or at least not as a speaking role. Paul Nakauchi plays the Lin Kuei Grandmaster.

Joel McHale is one of the very few voice actors to appear again after this film.

But how is the movie? It’s fine. I thought it was a lot better than the first, what with the fact that it isn’t afraid to beat the crap out of and kill a number of protagonists. This is Mortal Kombat after all although surprisingly one where the villains are a lot more hesitant to kill the protagonists than the other way around when they win a fight. It is nice to see the sequel introduce actual stakes, not to mention protagonists that are clearly out of their element and outmatched by their opponents. It makes you feel better when the good guys actually win a fight for once and it leaves you wondering who could die next.

I like when movies leave me guessing.

There are a lot of characters in this movie, leading to many not getting speaking parts or being addressed by name for that matter. It’s basically fodder for the nerds. Overall it feels like three separate movies that all got squished into one film. You have the ongoing feud between Scorpion and Sub Zero, the ongoing war between Outworld and Earthrealm, the ongoing feud between the elder gods and this world-ending demon, the ongoing feud between the Lin Kuei and the Lin Kuei, the ongoing feud between Earthrealm and Netherrealm, and the ongoing feud between Raiden and Shao Kahn on a personal level as the two refuse to have hate sex.

It all culminates in one of the worst film endings in recent history (for when it came out) that feels like they had no idea what to do and just said screw it. If this was a TV series instead of an 80 minute movie maybe we’d have a chance to fully develop characters. But as each movie wants to be its own very short feature length film yet still cram in all sorts of stories, this is what we get.

But it is better than the first movie, and I’ll stick to that.

Rating: B-