The Big Picture - 17 Questions About ‘Mortal Kombat’ and the Worst Video Game Movies Ever

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Today, we discuss Fatalities and Flawless Victories. Which one was the new adaptation of the beloved video game franchise ‘Mortal Kombat’? Joining Sean to answer that question and many more about all things video game movies are Ringer staff writers and avowed gamers Justin Charity and Ben Lindbergh. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Justin Charity and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, The Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out The Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about fatalities and flawless victories. Which one was the new adaptation of the beloved video game franchise Mortal Kombat? Joining me to answer that question and many more are two Ringer staff writers and avowed gamers, Justin Charity and Ben Lindberg. Gentlemen, how are you today?

Doing well. I don't know if I like how you said gamers. I know, right? It sounded somewhat derogatory. Loaded. Right, exactly. Loaded with derogatory intent. Well, I myself am not a gamer, but I don't mean that really with any bias. I just have not been playing video games for about 20 plus years. I have seen the original Mortal Kombat film from 1995. And there's been a lot of

warm feelings towards that movie I think in recent weeks because we have a new Mortal Kombat. Let me tell you guys, I revisited that film. Did not think it was very good. Did not think it was funny. Did not think it was

campy in the good way. I'm happy to celebrate a good bad movie here on the show. But for some reason that didn't work for me. I'm curious about you guys before we get into the new movie. I'm happy to celebrate a good bad movie here on the show, but for some reason that didn't work for me. I'm curious about you guys before we get into the new movie.

You know, Justin, do you like the original Mortal Kombat movie and do you like the video game series? I like my own memories of the original

Mortal Kombat movie. I will say, I actually, I play fighting games, right? I mostly play Street Fighter even now. I like Mortal Kombat as a series probably the least right i'd break it below tekken and street fighter and even like dead or alive um you know as for the original movie uh i wonder if you would agree with me

that one of the biggest problems with the original movie is Johnny Cage because I think he's sort of the albatross of this whole of Mortal Kombat in general when it comes to trying to do story mode aka movie adaptations but I don't know curious where Ben comes down on that it's sort of symbolic right the problem with the movie is the movie actor that kind of goes along with the theme of this podcast which uh thank you by the way for drastically lowering the standards of the discourse here, because you're going from talking about Oscar winners to talking about video game adaptations. This is quite- I don't know. The way the ceremony went last night, I think we can make the case that this is the more vital of the two movie conversations this week.

Yeah. I mean, it's quite a comedown, culturally speaking. It's like the opposite pole of critical acclaim. But yeah, like Justin and like you, I guess I went back and revisited the original this week. And I wouldn't say it stood the test of time particularly well. I don't know if it stood the test of 1995 all that well either, frankly. But nostalgia definitely colored my memories a bit. So did you guys, were you yearning for a new Mortal Kombat film? And were you yearning even for the idea of any video game being adapted? Because there's a real ignominious history of this. And Mortal Kombat in particular, the 95 version, does have this camp nostalgia, the memories that you're talking about, Justin. And it kind of felt like, you know, we put a cap on that one. We got it.

We got the Mortal Kombat movie. We got Mortal Kombat Annihilation. And yet we've gone back to the well. Were you eager to see a new adaptation of that story? I would say eager. I'd say I had a sense of rubbernecking, right? Because if you... You don't, Sean. But for people who, if you follow Mortal Kombat as an active video game series, I will say that the most recent releases of those games have story modes, right? And it's very cutscene story mode. They try to do the characterization and what is the core

conflict, you know, Earthworld, etc., etc. And it's so, over time, it just has not aged well. They've had to reboot it over and over again. There's lots of time travel and plot holes. And there's just something about the fact that in the past decade or so mortal kombat in the video game space has just gone so off the rails that yeah when i saw the trailer for this movie i thought man i don't even know where they're gonna start is this just

gonna be a hard reboot? Somebody's got to do something. Somebody's got to do a Hail Mary here to figure out what Mortal Kombat even is at this point because even the games themselves don't really know. So I haven't had a relationship to the series probably since 1994 at Melville Bowl when we would all roll strikes

and then gather around the arcade and kill each other, frankly. We murdered each other in a video game over and over again for hours and pumped quarters in all day. But that did not really seem like a video game that needed a story. It did not need arcana. It did not need a mythology. And it's interesting that you point that out, that basically over time, it sort of was born out of necessity because in order to engage the interest over time you had to build out this mythos ben i were you were you excited to see that there was mythos here that this was essentially an origin story movie yeah i mean i was not actively pining for another mortal combat movie just because you know the original is still out there. And they're making Mortal Kombat 12 now.

So if I want to see these characters kill each other, there are places I can do that. And no, I don't think the mythos, the lore of Mortal Kombat is particularly appealing to me. And I think that's one of the core reasons why video game adaptations have not done well historically. Really, I think there are three reasons really for it. I have a lot of theories about this, and I think it's actually less of a mystery than people make it out to be. But I think, A, there's just the difference between

the two mediums, and then there's the IP that producers pick when they make movies out of video games. And then there's the talent or the lack of talent that is often attached to those films. And so I think, you know, as a gamer, I don't feel like I need video game movies to be good now. I'm definitely not like got to catch them all when it comes to video game movies. If anything, I think I'm more likely to avoid them than someone who doesn't play video games because if they're bad, I know that they're bad because I've played the better versions. And if they're good, then really the best case scenario is sort of replicating the experience that I've already had.

But I think there's still this sort of little brother inferiority complex, like this cultural gatekeeping, kind of the desire for video game movies to be good. You know, like we're all still trying to earn Ebert's respect posthumously. But as you were saying, I think when you look at the size of these industries and the success and the cultural impact of the two, I kind of think movies need video games more than video games need movies at this stage. I think you make a really interesting point, Ben, which is there is a corollary to that, though, because I do think, and Justin, you've talked about this a bit on Sound Only in the past, comic book fans and comic book readers, especially those of my generation and older, I think which is to say the most popular show on television is about the Winter Soldier.

I don't know how that happened, but it did happen. We are in this place now. And I don't know that I necessarily need to lord that over everybody, but it does feel like there's a sense of recognition that my adolescence has been calcified in the modern mainstream culture. But for some reason, video games don't necessarily hold the same sway. Justin, why do you think that is? Well, and I think that there are clues to that in the fact of something like the Sonic movie, right? And the Detective Pikachu movie, right?

Those are two movies that I think people generally liked, right? Those are video game adaptations that people liked. And yet, I get the sense that people also don't think that those movies count when we're trying to account for the video game curse that the fact that those movies are more or less good doesn't count and i think that suggests that what people are really looking for is not good video game movies but they're looking for is not good video game movies, but they're looking for video game movie adaptations that fit within the idea of prestige. And I think that's the actual thing that video game adaptations have. That's the problem that they have. Certainly, Mortal Kombat's not going to get you to prestige.

But what you're saying about comic book movies yeah the comic book fans won and even if you can't get video game movies to like some sort of david fencher cinematic excellence level like the you kind of at least want to have these things pull an iron man at some point and yeah i think that's that combination of wanting prestige and wanting that cultural supremacy, that Disney supremacy, that's the thing that eludes video games at the box office, not the more broad idea of being good or not. And yet, this weekend, the biggest movie at the box office was Mortal Kombat. I would suspect that the most streamed movie this weekend on HBO Max was Mortal Kombat. And here we are talking about Mortal Kombat on this podcast and whether or not it worked

and what its value was. I think for me, at the jump, it has a little bit of a problem because it seems like this movie wants to be both things. It wants to pay homage to the 1995 film and the idea of fan service and the kind of playful grotesquery of the Mortal Kombat franchise. But it also wants to be this kind of noble warrior tale that is setting up a huge series of films in the Mortal Kombat universe to kind of achieve whatever it is that the MCU or the DCEU or all these other franchises have achieved. Ben, what did you think about the kind of conflict between those two ideas? Or without Johnny Cage, without Katana, which we can discuss. I think that that kind of plays into what you're talking about, that this is clearly a setup for a franchise, hopefully and probably, right? Given the amount of attention that's been paid to it thus far, given the early box office

success, it seems like that's probably plausible. And so they're holding something back. And they're also trying to channel the original in some ways while still establishing its own identity. I talked to the screenwriter, Greg Russo, and that's something that he really seemed to stress that, yes, it's stuffed with Easter eggs. It's for the fans. There are a lot of callbacks to the original, but they didn't want to essentially reshoot it shot for shot, you know, beat for beat. So I think that they're in the same universe, you know, despite the differences. It's not like one of these Mortal Kombat movies is from Outworld and the other is from Earthrealm.

Like they are sort of in the same realm as far as structure and tone and intended audience. So I think it scratches the same itch as the original, but it also has these greater ambitions because we're in the age of the multiverse and Mortal Kombat is sort of set up to be a multiverse franchise. And this also boasts better production values, which is maybe a mixed blessing because it's not really a legitimately good movie, but it's also not campy enough to be a cult classic. I can't think of too many examples of a franchise movie exactly like that. Justin, what did you think of the movie? Did you like it? I liked it. I think one of the boldest decisions the movie made that I really admire

is that they axed Johnny Cage from this movie. I honestly think that he works as a character in the games, but he's just too goofy of a, just down to his fundamentals. He's too goofy. I think Kano is a much better

comic relief character than Johnny Cage. I think the Kano performance is inspired. I think it alone was worth the price of admission. Yeah, and I think a lot of the just, the character dynamics, I think it alone was worth the price of admission. Yeah, and I think a lot of the just the character dynamics, I think the more funny and camaraderie driven parts of the movie

worked a lot better than the more lore oriented stuff. I continue to think that the fundamental problem of Mortal Kombat, if we're talking about multiverses, I agree with Ben, right? The Earth world, outworld, like all that stuff seems very explicitly telegraphing the idea of being structured like modern movie franchises are. However, I think that in Mortal Kombat,

that stuff is so esoteric that I just never imagine getting to a movie three in Mortal Kombat without people just sort of zoning out and being like, I don't know that I necessarily care about all these different realms. I just don't see it. It's interesting that Joe Taslim, who portrays Sub-Zero in this movie, is participating because he has appeared in a lot of movies and films over the years that do what I was hoping that Mortal Kombat movie would do, which is basically just one giant Lego set of fights.

I kind of just wanted this movie, and maybe this speaks to where I'm at at this stage in my life, or at this stage in the pandemic, or something else. But I kind of just wanted Kung Lao and Baraka to just cut each other's heads off for two hours. I just wanted to go back to that place, that very visceral, emotional, adolescent place. And the movie doesn't do that it does build out this entire mythos that we're talking about here um ben do you think that like there was there's a missed opportunity here by not just doing a tournament and a bunch of fights and satisfying consumers at the most base level well have you seen you seen Mortal Kombat Annihilation? Because that's basically what that was.

It was just, let's find an excuse to string together fight scenes. And that didn't work so well. I think the idea of rejecting the tournament, this is something that Russo said, that once you set up a tournament, you know that you're in a tournament movie. It's now the original Mortal Kombat. It's now Enter the Dragon. You know what the rules are. And so he was sort of trying to subvert

expectations here to the extent that a Mortal Kombat movie is going to subvert anyone's extensions. Like if you're going to make a Mortal Kombat movie, I want heads to be bursts and hearts to be ripped out and bodies to be bisected by spinning hats. So I'm mostly satisfied by what this was. But I agree with you that really you're there for the violence. And there's an urge to set up everything and provide a reason for everything and tie it back to the lore. Like the idea of Arcana, which is a new innovation for this movie.

This is not something that really comes directly from the franchise as far as I'm aware. But when you port a video game over into live action, it's like, okay, why do these people have powers? Why are they shooting fireballs? Whereas you're not necessarily asking that when you're in the arcade, right? You're just mashing buttons and trying to beat your friends. But when there are real actors here and you're in sort of a realistic setting, it's like, okay, we need some sort of lore-based explanation for how this world works. And I don't necessarily need that in my Mortal Kombat movie. I don't mind it, but it's also not really what I'm there for.

It's interesting. You mentioned the Sonic the Hedgehog movie earlier, Justin. There was literally never a time in my life, my many years of playing Sonic the Hedgehog, where I thought to myself, one, why is that hedgehog wearing shoes? And where did this hedgehog get its extraordinary speed from? I was never curious about these things. But in a setting like this, you're totally right, Ben. You have this urge to understand why. Now, in some cases, I thought the Arcana stuff worked well, and in other cases, I felt very forced. I thought in the case of Kano, who I agree is totally the MVP, it was just genuinely amusing to watch him figure out what Arcana he had essentially stolen and channeled, and that's how he got his laser red eye. But in other cases, it felt extremely overdetermined. And one of those cases was

the introduction of a new character who does not appear in the games, but is essentially the lead figure in this movie, Cole Young, who's played by Louis Tan. Justin, why do you think they introduced essentially like a new core POV character to this franchise that already has, I don't know, north of 12 beloved characters? Yeah, right.

It's sort of, do you need a fish out of water for a premise that is as straightforward as Mortal Kombat? And I think maybe earlier in my life, I would have second-guessed it. But, you know, I think the Resident Evil movies actually have gotten a lot of mileage out of introducing the Alice character, despite Resident Evil being a video game franchise

that otherwise has a lot of beloved characters um so i don't know i mean and maybe it's just there there's a an element too of wanting to have something of the movies that belongs to the movies right and that there are kind of things about that too right but it's you know if what you're worried about is devotion to the original series and people nitpicking to death you know the fidelity of the mortal kombat movie to the mortal kombat franchise i don't know i i do think it's a bold move to say no we're gonna we're gonna do unfamiliar stuff like we have to do something that distinguishes us. We can't just be sort of chasing. We can't just be wagged by the dog of this franchise. Yeah, I'd agree.

I think that there's something to be said for trying to differentiate yourself on some level, because if you're just really remaking the original or remaking the games, I mean, if it's just Liu Kang and Sonya and Johnny Cage go to the tournament again, we've seen that movie. So there might be some merit to the idea of let's create a new audience proxy character who will suck us in and he'll be the POV character and we'll build the franchise around him. So it'll actually set the series apart from the games. But I think you need to give that character a compelling personality like isn't that the other thing though is that in mortal kombat right if you compare mortal kombat to street fighter street fighter has some relatively accessible personalities in the form of ryu and

ken and guile mortal kombat is so visceral and gory that none of those characters are all that relatable like luke kang even i I think Mortal Kombat actually has, if you just take its beloved cast, it has a combination of characters who are strictly unrelatable and characters who are kind of wet blankets. Like I kind of think Liu Kang is a wet blanket and that trying to have him lead movies is not a great idea

because he's so canonically boring. I agree. I thought that was a good choice to not make lu kang the central figure of the story and it's kind of where the first film falters a little bit but what's happening alongside the the new character is this origin origin story between scorpion and sub-zero that this is essentially a 16th century japanese pair of warriors who died at each other's hands and their spirits are revived in demonic form. And that leads to the origins of their powers.

And one, that's just a lot of lore for Scorpion and Sub-Zero. That's just a lot of explanation for the guy who's like, come here. I think i honestly just didn't want scorpion to be a noble warrior whose family was killed by sub-zero like i all of that stuff again felt very over determined in my mind for many years scorpion was honestly the biggest asshole in video games he was the rudest character in video games there was something charming and to your point justin about how there's really no depth to the mortal combat rogues gallery this is just a bunch of jerks that are just trying to kill each other with the exception of maybe lu kang everybody else just kind of see you know johnny cage is a prick he may be the hero but he's a jerk and so as i'm watching the film while i thought a lot of

the fight sequences were quite good i thought there was a lot of very interesting Sub-Zero innovation. I think the frozen blood icicle is that's some top shelf action movie video game stuff. In general, I didn't totally love the way that they organized essentially half of the movie around this central conflict. Maybe I am overthinking that as we are 20 minutes deep into a Mortal Kombat pod. Ben, what do you think? That opening sequence almost made me want to watch a different movie. Can we just stay in feudal Japan here? Maybe I just want to watch Shogun instead of Mortal Kombat. But it's interesting that they provided a backstory, but only up to a certain extent. It's like, okay, we're establishing that these guys hate each other, that there's this feud dating back centuries, but we're not actually going to say why they hate each other or how this feud started. They just do. It's fire and ice. They've been trying to kill each other for generations. So they were trying to balance having some motivation for these characters without bombarding people in the lore, I think. And from what I understand, and I am not an expert in

latter-day mythology of Mortal Kombat, but the series itself has rebooted its own timeline and rewritten its characters. And my understanding is that Scorpion is now more of an antihero who doesn't really play for either side. He kind of is an antagonist at times and allies himself with different sides. So that's somewhat true to the source material, I think, if you care about that. But I think it's better than the original Mortal Kombat movies where Scorpion and Sub-Zero would show up and they were just another henchman, basically. They were just guys in silly looking costumes you knew nothing about and they'd throw a punches, and then they would die and then be reincarnated. And you'd really never know who they were or what they wanted. So if that's the alternative, I think

maybe this is sort of superior to that. But there is a limit, I think, to the extent that I care, when really this is just an excuse for fight scenes. Justin, after I watched the film, I did what I have to do after I see every franchise movie, which is I have to Google and find some sort of IGN.com or Vox article that explains all of the things that I missed and where all of these stories are going. And one thing that I learned because I am not necessarily a Mortal Kombat scholar is that this movie appears to have been a setup for a noob cybot movie, which is who Sub-Zero is going this movie appears to have been a setup for a Noob Saibot movie, which is who Sub-Zero

is going to turn into, which is a character that I remember really from my waning days of Mortal Kombat-dom. I feel like he was maybe second generation Noob Saibot.

Was that a good idea to essentially like lead us down that path to invest in this Sub-Zero story halfway, as Ben points out and then kind of eliminate

one of the most memorable characters and transform him into another character? Absolutely not a good idea. Especially because Mortal Kombat also has the problem of if you take the Scorpion Sub-Zero characters and then you take the Cyborg characters and characters like Cyrax,

the problem is that those are all palette swap characters. They all look the same. So you're really going to have the problem of a bunch. You're going to have at least, you know, movies two and three are going to have eight guys wearing identical outfits fighting each other. And it's going to be really frustrating. Can I just say, I understand that there are some people who are upset about the fact that there's no Mortal Kombat in the Mortal Kombat movie. I'm not surprised by that. I think when people care about a certain source material, they want it to be faithful and they're going to be ruffled by it if it departs from that. But I think we're talking about Mortal

Kombat here. This is not a franchise that particularly cares about its own lore and mythology. It's not as if they go to a great length to preserve the continuity here. I mean, there's often retconning going on. So this is not a franchise where I think we need to stick to certain rules. And the original movie made no sense. The tournament's rules are constantly being broken. There's WWE-level officiating in Mortal Kombat. The Elder Gods couldn't care less about enforcing the rules, and I'm sort of happy that they were stripped out of this movie, where Raiden's just like, yeah, they don't care, or whoever said that. That's always what this has been. So I understand if you love something, you want to see it reflected on the screen. But I think this was made by people who care about the property and wanted to do a good job and do it justice, whether we think they succeeded or not. So the fact that it doesn't have the hallmarks of every Mortal Kombat movie or game is really not something that bothers me

at all. We can save the tournament for Mortal Kombat 2. I do want to just to push back on one thing Ben said. I actually think one of the things Mortal Kombat has going for it and that is kind of unfortunate about them not doing the Mortal Kombat is how fraudulent the officiating is in Mortal Kombat. That is one of the big dramatic potentials of the series. So I do want to stand up for the bad officiating in Mortal Kombat. And the promoters are doing a terrible job here.

They're leaving so much money on the table. This is a tournament that is supposed to decide the fate of humanity, and nobody knows it exists. Imagine what the pay-per-view would be. You're saying that Mortal Kombat needs a Dana White or a Don King style figure.

Yes, Dana White. Right, right. I think that that would make sense. I mean, I'm a little torn. Obviously the plot of this film is Shang Tsung is essentially trying to destroy

Earthrealm's best potential warriors before they even get a chance to get to this tournament. And the movie ends with most of them surviving and the opportunity to get to the future. But let's stop overthinking this. Let's talk about some very core feelings about this movie.

Mortal Kombat is about fatalities. What do you think was the best kill in this movie? Justin, I'll let you go first. Kano in the beginning, when Kano gets in the last shot on the... What is the creature in the beginning? I've already forgot. Reptile, right? Yeah, it's not a reptile. Is it reptile? Yeah. I presume that was a nod to the reptile character. I don't know where that creature came from or what it was doing, but Ben,

you can check me on that one. Yeah, I'm not the Mortal Kombat Wikipedia page over here, really. But yeah, I mean, I think the fatality is like, obviously, if you're going to make a Mortal Kombat movie, that's sort of the one essential thing that you can't really screw up. So I think that probably the fatality which which comes directly from the games and that is very faithful to the animation there if you're going to see that but that's incredibly brutal and i think kind of creative more so than just the head exploding or ripping out the heart which you know these are all staples like you have to have them but i think the spinning hat like john walker would be jealous of how yeah captain america could never yes is that specific hat has table saw kill that happens when the hat is rolling through the sand is that from the game or yeah that's that's kung lao baby that's the thing it's like my characters are kung lao and cabal and this movie did right by my my characters from back in the day in mortal combat okay so that's from the game the razor's edge

oh wow okay wow it's stolen from razor ramon you hate to see it um tell me about cabal because cabal is a character who i never had the chance to engage with and he certainly had a lot of attitude and they made him deadpool it's it sounded like he was from like Staten Island. Where was where's Cabal from originally? Who is that character? Why do I why do we care about that character? Yeah, Cabal is one of those characters because I think Cabal is either MK2 or MK3

in terms of the games and I played Cabal a lot and I know nothing about Cabal. He just has like the rods attached to his wrist and i don't know he's he's to me he's one of those characters where he's so covered in vests and masks and leggings right that there's so much personality that's buried beneath all that and it's not like cabal's backstory doesn't matter you know what i mean he's like this he's such a mortal combat character in that way where it's just like this guy is a costume and a bit and does he have

the personality of a podcast host in the games though i mean i'm no i'm not that i remember but he has like no speaking i don't even remember what if anything cabal sounds like from back in the day mortal combat so that's the thing when you're doing a movie you have to figure like what are you gonna do what is this guy's personality because in the games you're not really working with much i'm cribbing from the wikipedia page here but according to the alternate telling of the timeline in the 2011 mortal combat reboot cabalal is a member of the NYPD's Riot Control Division. Aha. Which counts for the accent.

He is from Staten Island. But isn't that Stryker? See, now I'm confusing Cabal with Stryker, who's also... Yes, I think they are both from there. Colleagues, yes. Is Mortal Kombat copaganda then? If he's a former Riot cop?

I don't know. Seems challenging. He is a bad guy. Okay. So obviously the movie ends on a very big cliffhanger about the potential arrival of Justin's least favorite, Johnny Cage. That's the big tease at the end of the film. When you guys got to the end of the movie, did you think, I need Mortal Kombat 2 right

now? Absolutely not. That's absolutely not what i thought uh i i could i could not blame them though for teasing a johnny johnny cage you know sequel i don't know that we need to go 24 years between mortal combat movies but i'm good with not going you know every other. I could wait a while. Let's pull back a little bit. We talked a little bit about the history of the video game movie at the top of this conversation, but you guys are much more expert in this. I went back and I looked at a couple of video game movies. I do think that the arc is evening out a little bit with Detective Pikachu and Sonic, which are kind of just credible, mainstream,

likable kids movies that parents can take their family to. But in general, this is probably the least successful subgenre, sub-brand of movie in the last 25 years, in my opinion, maybe the last 30 years. And I think the idea of why we've kind of addressed, but Ben, as far as your memory goes, where does this really start and why did it get off to such a bad start? Mario, which is the answer to both questions, I think that just sort of set the precedent for, okay, we're going to make something that bears very little resemblance to the video game property, which is one way that these things can go wrong. But I touched on this earlier. We call it a curse, but I think there are rational explanations for why the track record is so terrible. These are entertainments that we experience on the same screens, on the same couches,

but they are not the same. It's misleading because the visual nature of video games makes them seem more closely related to movies than books are, for instance. But I don't think that's true because a written text typically depends on strong storytelling, and that can be ported over to moviemaking pretty naturally. And that's not necessarily true of video games where the interactive element is really the non-negotiable part. It's like asking why there aren't more good movies based on concept albums, which, you know, like apologies to Pete Townsend, but like the big draw there tends to be the music, right? So if you focus on the story,

it doesn't work so well. And by the way, I think video games based on movies have historically been about as bad as movies based on video games for some of the same reasons. Because if you're just trying to cash in on the license and you're not really taking care with it, or if what makes the movie work isn't accompanied by good gameplay, then it's just going in the bargain bin or in a landfill in New Mexico with Atari's ET game, right? So sometimes it's understanding the source material where the people who are making video game movies have never played the video games, don't understand what makes the video games

work. But often it's also a matter of selecting the source material. We're talking about Mortal Kombat. This is not necessarily a franchise that is really well suited to great storytelling, but it's the type of franchise that tends to be made into a movie because it's recognizable. And so when you look at the franchises that have made this leap, it's franchises that are famous, that are household names because they date back to the beginning of video games. And in the beginning of video games, people weren't paying a lot of attention to story. So when you're choosing fighting games, when you're choosing platformers, when you're choosing these series that are mostly about the gameplay, and then you're saying, let's take out the gameplay and make a movie out of it, then I think you're going to get yourself in trouble. And the final component of this, I'll say, is that really you have a precedent, right,

for video game movies being notoriously terrible. So they're radioactive now. No one wants to be associated with them. And with Mortal Kombat, you have a screenwriter. It's his first movie, first script that's been produced. You have a first-time feature film director, right? The director of this movie, Simon McCoy, has previously directed

commercials, including commercials for video games. He was maybe best known for doing a Duracell ad. And even he told his agent that he didn't think his first feature should be a video game movie. So that sort of tells you what the reputation is here. You don't have Christopher Nolan and Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler lining up to make video game movies, and it's going to take some time to change that. Justin, just as a thought exercise, can you please explain the plot of the Super Mario Brothers video game? Well, listen, this gruff looking man, if we can even call him that, Mr. Bowser,

ran off with your girl. And you were trying to get her back. And there are all these, you know, all the gruff man's kids are standing in your way and you keep going to the wrong castle and you're just lost in the world as kanye west once put it until you show up at the right castle and you fall through and you give bowser the hands and you know happy ending so you just used the second person to describe this story despite the stars the heroes

of the super mario brothers franchise being two italian plumber brothers um which is to say that super mario brothers is incredibly weird as a video game it is incredibly weird that it emerged as the totemic video game of the 1980s and in many ways launched nes and you're right ben obviously they use that film to kind of springboard into Hollywood. And then there's actually a terrific piece by Karina Longworth that was published on Grantland many years ago

about sort of the origins of that movie and how that movie changed so much about the game's lore and what a bizarre and frankly horrifying product they created despite the best intentions of the great Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper among many other talented people who appear in that movie but it did seem to set

the subgenre off on a on a bad foot and then throughout the 90s I think you know it did do what you're suggesting then which is that they basically identified these platformers the side scrolling games and fighting games as the only two kinds of stories that you could tell. So you get a Street Fighter movie, you get a Double Dragon movie, you get Tomb Raider movies, and then, of course, the Resident Evil movies.

And we get sort of more into sort of first-person shooter POV games over time. But for some reason, we have not gotten our Citizen Kane yet of this. And part of it, I think, is what you're suggesting, Ben, which is that great filmmakers are not necessarily drawn to this category,

but there's got to be some great filmmakers who love video games. Justin, do you feel like potentially because of the fact that Mortal Kombat is at least a little bit more credible,

a little bit more professional seeming, do you think we're on the arc towards progress towards finally getting a truly great video game movie? I still think we're on the arc towards progress towards finally getting a truly great video game movie i still think it depends on all the stuff that ben outlined which is who's who's gonna direct it you know i mean it's it's not that's the thing it really i think is at the hiring level of the actors and the director and until you get a studio that really

wants to knuckle up and say we need to make the Batman Begins of this kind of movie, it's just not going to happen. Or at least, again, it's not going to happen on those terms of prestige and on those terms of cultural supremacy that exist for something like comic book movies. I think that those are the prohibitive things. Who gets hired to do these projects? Ben, is there anything else that could happen to change course?

Yeah, I mean, I think you're seeing a couple of trends. One is that the video game companies themselves are getting more involved in the adaptations, which in theory should be a benefit. You're not just selling the license and then handing it off to someone who knows nothing about it. So that kind of input could help. And I think there's also a generational change going on, which is that directors and producers, people who are green lighting movies

and making movies now are of an age where they grew up with video games and they don't turn up their noses at it and they understand why it's appealing and they take it seriously. So I think that really it's only a matter of time and we are starting to see it. But I think the other thing is that it's sort of a double-edged sword in that what would be a video game movie that broke the curse? I don't think that Mortal Kombat really had the capacity to do it because even if it's the

best that a Mortal Kombat movie could be, it's not going to be Citizen Kane, as you said. And Greg Russo said explicitly, they didn't set out to make that. It just doesn't have those bones. And you look at something like Assassin's Creed, which was a notable flop from a few years ago, with some talented people associated with that project. But Assassin's Creed is just hot nonsense. Like if you want to just blow your mind, just waste 10 minutes, like look up a YouTube explainer of the plot of Assassin's Creed. It's absolute nonsense. So I've had some fun with Assassin's Creed games, but none of it came from understanding

the story. I think what we could start to see, though, is that there will be more and more adaptations being made, which is certainly the case. I think just because there's such a hunger for content, you know, if we're rebooting every movie from 20 years ago or longer, then of course you're going to try to adapt this goldmine that's just sitting there. Decades of video game source material that has not really been utilized. So we're going to see more and more of this, but are we going to see games that are self-consciously cinematic made into movies? And then what would that look like? If we're making

The Last of Us as an HBO series, if we're making Uncharted, if we're making Metal Gear Solid, these are games that sort of set out to be self-cinematic. And so if we're making Uncharted, if we're making Metal Gear Solid, these are games that sort of set out to be self-cinematic. And so if we're then porting them back to the theater, does that mean that we could just get the same experience if we watched an edited compilation of cut scenes on YouTube? Like, will I feel watching the Last of Us series that I've already seen this because I've played the game or will it differentiate itself in some way? So if the way that we break the curse is just that we imitate movies, then I don't know if that's actually interesting, even if it leads to higher Rotten Tomatoes scores.

I want to come back to that because I think that's a good place to kind of cap our conversation, which is what is the future of this and how could it work. But you mentioned Assassin's Creed, which I think coupled with the Prince of Persia film are really kind of the nadir of the last decade of this kind of filmmaking because those are studio movies. And one was directed by Justin Kerzel, who was coming off of an acclaimed Macbeth adaptation with Michael Fassbender,

who was his star in Assassin's Creed. And the Prince of Persia movie is notorious in Jake Gyllenhaal's career to essentially reset the trajectory of every kind movie is notorious in Jake Gyllenhaal's career to essentially reset the trajectory of every kind of part that he took for 10 years because that movie

was such an epic failure. And it was directed by Mike Newell, who is a pretty successful filmmaker who made Donnie Brasco, who made Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I mean, this is a fairly acclaimed filmmaker. So even to your point, Justin, some people have given it a go who have solid resumes, who have impressive filmmaking skills and really failed but before we go to the future i want to i just want to hear from you guys about one other

movie that is not necessarily a video game movie it's based on a novel but it is very much a part of this world which is ready player one which is probably the most ambitious and loudly marketed kind of story like this and comes from Steven Spielberg. And I think for most moviegoers, it's as if that movie never happened. There's no active conversation about Ready Player One. It's a three-year-old movie now, and it did perfectly fine at the box office, but it feels like it has vanished, at least in my mind. Justin, what did you make of Ready Player One as both a video game kind of experience in a film and as also just a standalone movie? I remember liking a lot of individual components

of Ready Player One in theaters. Most either Ben Mendelsohn related or Gundam related. But it also did strike me as the book's reputation right it just felt very fan servicey and even the stuff that i liked mostly felt like oh i recognize that or oh it's cool to see somebody throw five million dollars at putting this on a screen for three seconds before moving on to something else um ben what about you? Yeah, I wasn't particularly impressed by it either, but I would say that movies about video games or movies inspired by video games or movies that kind of copy something from video games, the panthe time loop video game movie with Frank Grillo and Mel Gibson and perplexingly Naomi Watts. And that movie isn't good, but if it were an adaptation, it would The Wizard in the 80s, or more recently, movies like Scott Pilgrim or Wreck-It Ralph or The Edge of Tomorrow. A lot of action movies borrow the look or the conceit of video games or movies that

just bring in kind of the cultural aspects of gaming but aren't really based explicitly on a video game. The track record there seems to be much more impressive. And I think that sort of speaks to what I was saying about, you know, having to pick the right source material and the fact that the source material that has so often been selected for movie adaptations really doesn't lend itself to that. But I think the bones are there. I think a lot of films are influenced by the mechanics or the visuals of video games. So there's that legacy, at least, which is a little more positive. Justin, as I was putting together my kind of long list of video game movie adaptations,

I was reluctant to put the animated and anime films on a list. But there's a long history of animated movies that I think maybe a little more closely get to the experience of the video game or maybe more closely approximate it do you care about those movies do they mean anything to you is there anyone that you'd recommend yeah like street fighter 2 it would be interesting for somebody watching mortal combat you know like the new mortal combat movie to go back and watch not only the original Mortal Kombat, but to watch something like Street Fighter to the animated movie, because that's not a movie where I'm going to go.

This is one of the graded greatest animated movies of all time. I watch a lot of anime. That movie is good though. Right. And that movie, something about Street Fighter to the animated movie feels like it has a more direct connection to what it means to take the fighting game experience in general and translate it to something that you sit and watch in a cinematic format. And, you know, I don't know if there's something inherent to animation

as opposed to live action that maybe makes this kind of thing go down easier. But yeah, I do think that if you expand this canon to include animated adaptations of video games, it starts looking a lot better than it does if we're only talking about live action. Okay. I asked you guys to choose one video game movie adaptation that you would recommend. Ben, is there one movie in the history of these movies that you would recommend? Ben, is there one movie in the history

of these movies that you would recommend? I had to dig deep here. I have a hard time recommending one unreservedly. You'd think as a gamer, I might go easier on these things, but even so, even if I'm grading on a curve, it's tough. But I think I'm going to go with a movie that we've mentioned. So let me tell you a little bit about Pokemon Detective Pikachu. Here we go. Yeah. So 2019 classic by the standards of video game movies. And I think this along with Sonic and maybe along with the latest Tomb Raider sort of form a canon of competence, which I think is a great improvement over the history

of video game adaptations. And we're still talking with Detective Pikachu. You know, it's essentially a kid's movie, but it really works for any audience. I think there are legitimately funny lines in this movie, you know, not just video game adaptation funny, but like actual laugh out loud lines. I think it uses the source material well, but isn't beholden to it. You know, it sort of uses it loosely as the basis for the setting and the plot, but deviates from it in some ways, which is nice. I think it's nice not to be so faithful to the video game that you're not actually seeing something new. And of course, you've got Ryan Reynolds speaking in Pikachu's body, which is, if not endlessly entertaining, definitely entertaining

for like an hour and 45 minutes, which is as long as it has to work. And really, I think there is a thrill to seeing this world brought to life. Because if you're someone who's been playing Pokemon games since the mid-90s Game Boy incarnations, then to actually see this brought to life with, you know, blockbuster budget and to see these characters interacting with each other, there is something kind of cool about that. And really, all you have to do is superimpose a basic movie plot over that. And to see Pokemon fighting each other and, you know, have it be movie quality visuals, I think that's pretty impressive. And Sonic is sort of in the same boat in that I think it took some things that people like about that franchise.

But really, that franchise has fallen on some harder times in recent years or decades. And it was nice to kind of go back to the roots and say, what is appealing about this character? How can we actually have some human themes in here and say something about relationships, but also have Jim Carrey acting wacky? And so I think this is a hopeful sign, right? That these movies are at least decent. They did well at the box office. They were made with some care for the source material. And I was joking at the beginning about the difference between Oscar winners and video game movies, but there actually was a video game movie that won an Oscar this weekend, right? The first one, the short film

from Medal of Honor Above and Beyond won the best documentary short. So maybe that in tandem with these other movies I've mentioned is a harbinger of better days. You know, we have a new pastime on this show, which is that Bobby types the name of a Pokemon character into the chat. And I have to say it out loud, having absolutely no familiarity whatsoever

with that entire universe. I will say that movie revealed a couple of those names. Bob, you're welcome to type in a single name here that I can pronounce before we get to Justin's recommendation. Just any old time

you find a name that you like. I believe Bulbasaur came up once. Charizard. Oh, here's one. Gengar. Well, you just spoiled it, Justin. Oh, wait. Was I not supposed to say it?

Oh, okay. Well, you know how it's pronounced. I don't know how it's pronounced. Oh, Justin. Oh, wait. Was I not supposed to say it? Oh, okay. Well, you know how it's pronounced. Do another one, Bobby. Sorry. I don't know how it's pronounced. Oh, right. Okay. Sorry.

I just... Okay. I thought I was doing impersonation. Okay. This could go a number of different directions. Raichu? Is that a Pokemon character? Is it Raichu?

Help me out here, guys. Nothing? No, you had it. You had it right. Raichu? Yeah. Justin, give me a video game movie that you think works the year is 2010 the writer and director is paul ws anderson of course movie

is resident evil afterlife um you know ben talked for a bit about the kind of little brother syndrome that exists between video games and movies. And Resident Evil is this really fascinating case study where you have the original Resident Evil games, then you have movies adapted from those games. And the movies are different, right? The original Resident Evil games, they're horror, they're claustrophobic, you're alone, you're doing a lot of running around environments solving puzzles but also shooting zombies and things like that the movies come along there's a lot more shooting they're a lot more actiony in general they introduce the new character alice as the protagonist despite otherwise having characters from the games

and those movies are they feel really big and they feel really stupid and they feel kind of different from the games, but they're successful in a way that then starts to feed back into the game series itself. And so over time, you have the Resident Evil games influencing the movies, but the movies influencing the games and they form this Ouroboros and that Ouroboros between the two is fascinating to me. And I think that in Resident Evil Afterlife, you basically have Alice and then Chris, Clara Redfield tracking down Albert Wesker, our villain, who is like Neo or Agent Smith from The Matrix, basically, to a boat and a lot of fight sequences, a lot of zombies getting shot in the mouth.

And, you know, there's not a lot of horror to that movie. I think there's a single jump scare in Resident Evil Afterlife. But the thing I always remind people with Resident Evil, right, is that the first game is this horror game set in a haunted mansion. But you have to remember the opening credits from the first Resident Evil to remember the opening credits from the first resident evil

game because the opening credits are the most vhs tape action schlock like cop action schlock from the early 90s and to me even though the paul ws anderson movies of resident evil don't feel like the original games i do think that he's very much in touch with the i think the more the more cinematic stretches of those games in terms of the kind of schlock that those games wanted to be um and he understands that you can make those games they not be necessarily faithful to the gameplay experience of resident evil, but they're nonetheless sort of, they're serving something else about the spirit spirit of resident evil,

right? They're saying, okay, we can't do the gameplay stuff, but what's left over from the gameplay elements. Let's take that and let's run away and do our own thing with the blockbuster movie elements of Resident Evil. So we started this conversation by talking about the original Mortal Kombat movie,

which of course was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. He is really the Cecil B. DeMille of the video game adaptation. He did have a video game adaptation released last year called Monster Hunter. I did watch this movie. Have you guys seen this movie yet? I haven't seen Monster Hunter. I have not. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I'll be very curious to know maybe next time did watch this movie. Have you guys seen this movie yet? I haven't seen Monster Hunter. I have not. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'll be very curious to know maybe next time we do this conversation. Hopefully it's not 20 years

after the release of a film. We can talk about Monster Hunter. If I'm recommending one video game adaptation, and frankly, I would not recommend very many at all. I would probably recommend close to less than two. It'd be Silent Hill, which I don't, I've never played the game game silent hill i don't know what it is i don't know how it works i assume it is a horror style game um in the vein of resident evil but the film adaptation is quite scary and quite effective

and is the rare sort of stands on its own kind of film and features rata mitchell and sean bean and deborah carol unger and a very good cast and it's it feels like a little bit lost to time or not necessarily included in these conversations ben you know you've written about this a lot i don't know if you have written about silent hill at all throughout all this but it's probably one of the more solid entries in this category yeah i haven't that's more of a justin genre i am someone who is scared of scared scary games yeah i've seen this i i remember liking the silent hill movie and i've never played silent hill interesting see like how does that happen how does a game that does not necessarily have as massive a reputation

become a movie at Hollywood is very mysterious. Well, Silent Hill is a pretty, you know, it's one of those like very, alongside Resident Evil is very influential within gaming in terms of horror games. But it is, I think, a stranger choice than Resident Evil to adapt. I feel you there.

I'd be remiss if I did not ask why we did not have two things in the mortal combat movie that i thought were essential one where was the toasty guy why why was that guy not there to pop up at a certain point i feel like that would have been true fan service for me apparently they shot a toasty scene what yeah they shot a scene where luke hang says toasty after someone gets eviscerated and somehow this did not survive the post-production process release the toasty cut come on no but it could have even been a back right because one of my favorite moments in the mortal kombat movie is when sonia blade is explaining why she doesn't have the mark that all the other characters have.

And right off screen, Kano just goes, You kind of needed that energy to do the toasty line. Yeah. Yeah. Kano has all the best lines in this movie. And I know we were thinking of talking about why he is so much less bland than every other character or how they made Kano so much better than every other character. And I don't know that they did make him better. I think he made himself better.

I think Josh Lawson, the character, the actor who plays him, A, he's Australian, which automatically makes everything funnier. But also he's an improv guy. And apparently he ad-libbed a lot of those lines. So between that and between how bland everyone else is, I think it only elevates that performance. So I would be upset that he dies in this movie. Spoiler. Is that a spoiler? If you've seen the original, he dies. He always dies. Kano always dies. He comes back. So don't worry. We may see Kano in some other form in the future. Kano is undoubtedly my MVP.

It's probably not a mistake that the guy who to this point is probably best known for playing James Murdoch in the movie Bombshell was cast as Kano. There may be some correlation there between those two things. The only other thing missing from the Mortal Kombat movie is someone screaming Mortal Kombat at the top of their lungs. Why? How can you make a Mortal Kombat movie and not have this? This was the greatest unforced error of this movie. I was waiting for the classic techno track for two hours, and they don't give it to us until the credits. It's unbelievable.

There's a remix version, which I like, but this is a song that makes me want to rip people's heads out. This song makes my head explode, and you're not using it. This is the classic soundtrack to every fight scene. They should have used this song several times with that energy coursing through my veins we'll end the show there bobby let's hear the mortal combat theme on the way out oh actually bobby wants me to say magic carp before we go i guess that's also a pokemon character that is correct okay bobby why don't you hit it justin charity thank you so much for appearing on the show you can listen to justin on sound only and read them on theRinger.com.

Ben Lindberg, you can hear him on TheRinger, MLB Show, and read him on TheRinger.com. Thank you guys so much for doing this today. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

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