The last of the Mortal Kombat films (for now).

Cage Match feels like it’s screwing with me. Directed by Ethan Spaulding, the guy who did those other two Mortal Kombat Legends films, Cage Match is the last film by Gilbert Gottfried before he died. I can’t take his part seriously because Gottfried’s voice and his character’s looks are so badly paired that it has to be intentional and for comedic effect. And knowing Gottfried’s sense of humor, I’m sure he thought the voice pairing was hilarious.

The fourth and currently final Mortal Kombat Legends movie, Cage Match is a prequel to the series starring none other than Johnny Cage (Joel McHale). Johnny is a c-list movie star working on his big film when his co-star is kidnapped. His co-star of course is Jennifer Grey played by Jennifer Grey. When Cage shows up at her house to check in, he finds two ninja women fighting it out over a scroll. Cage, accompanied by his intern Chuck Golden (Dusan Brown), go out on an adventure to save her and his movie.

You can tell Joel McHale had fun reading the lines for this film. Also that they just told Gilbert Gottfried to punctuate his lines with as many fucks as he felt necessary.

Cage Match falls into the same dumb trap that a lot of prequels do. Over the course of the film Johnny encounters demons, learns about demons, about Shinnok, about the Netherrealm, about all kinds of crap. And then sometime between this movie and the first film, Johnny just kinda forgets the existence of demons and Earthrealm so he could be the bumbling outsider for the first Mortal Kombat. Cage gets mystical powers that allow him to fight Shinnok because he has the blood of a God or something and then completely forgets that mysticism exists or about his abilities.

The film itself is fun but it taught me a good lesson about Mortal Kombat; it’s hard to do origin stories for most of the characters without doing something stupid to the timeline. Incidentally Fall of Edenia may be an interesting film for just that reason. Edenia has been brought up a few times over the course of Mortal Kombat’s history but a film dedicated to its fall to Shao Kahn and subjugation of its people (specifically Kitana and Sindel) could make for a truly new Mortal Kombat story.

Watch it if you want, it won’t exactly leave a mark on anyone’s best of list unless that list is for a very very small category.

Rating: C