The Ringer-Verse - 'Mortal Kombat' (2021) | Instant Reactions

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

Van Lathan is joined by Shea Serrano to give their thoughts and reactions to the film 'Mortal Kombat'. They discuss the legacy of the classic video game franchise, its cultural impact, and how much they love the original 1995 film (01:40). They then break down the reboot of the famous franchise and find what they loved the most in this blood-soaked action fest (14:36). Host: Van Lathan & Shea Serrano Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout history, different cultures all over the world. Reference a great tournament of champions. To fight for something known is Mortal Kombat. Welcome into the Ringerverse. This is The Ringers podcast Feed for All Things fandom. We talk it all here, comics, video games, horror movies. Whatever it is, that's nerdy. That is what we do.

Now, we've been locked into the Falcon and the Winter Soldier for the last six weeks. We do an instant reaction show. me and Charles Holmes of the ringer music show, The Midnight Boys. We have that on Friday, and every Tuesday, Mao does the deeper dive analysis of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Make sure that you check in with her on this Tuesday

because it's the finale. So she's going to go deep, deep, deep into her intellectual bag of tricks with a very, very special guest. But today, it's not about Marvel. It's about mortal. Okay? That's slick. That was slick.

bad. You like that shit. That was slick. That voice you hear right there. That was slick. Of course, I'm Van Latelyt. What happened to the Midnight Boys. We are joined by the ringer Shea Serrano to give you this special Sunday review show focused on Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat! Now, look, I'm of a certain age, and so before we even get into the movie itself, For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start.

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Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer. I'm of a certain age to where I remember what a big cultural deal this film was when it first came out. Shay, do you remember how big a deal Mortal Kombat was when the video game first dropped? I do. This was, I was like, I was headed toward being a teenager, so this was all I was interested in was video games. Yeah, I had played Street Fighter.

I'd played whatever. Mortal Kombat showed up. And for me, it just shut all of that shit down. It was the only thing I wanted to talk about. It was the only thing I wanted to do. All I wanted to do was go to H.E.B. steal a copy of electronic gaming monthly so that I could look at the pictures of the fatality.

You know what I'm talking about? This is like a franchise that a lot of people love. And you forget sort of how big it is or how much stuff they ended up covering. We're talking about through the 90s, $4 billion in sales, through the early 2000. over $5 billion in sales. One of the greatest selling of video game franchises of all time. Total, total, over 54 million copies of this thing have been sold. And just for context, what is the Thriller as an album did like 66 million or something

crazy like that? Like, we're in this ballpark. We're in the same field as what Thriller did. That's the Mortal Kombat franchise. But they had video games, they had the movie, they had commercials, they had a song that was played on the radio. TV show. Like all of the things that you could want

if you loved a video game were right here for you. It was so much fun to watch it. Especially if you got there in the beginning and you were like, you saw the machine in the arcade for the first time everybody's gathered around it. What's this? You walk up there. They got all the little corridors on there waiting for your chance to be sub-zero

or Scorpion or whoever. And then you watch it go from that to like the home console to part two to the movie. Fucking unreal. Unreal. Crazy. We had a Circle K where I'm from. We had a Circle K where I'm from, as if there's only one circle. We had the Circle K.

We had the Circle K. Strangely enough, in Baton Rouge, we didn't have 7-Eleven. We only had Circle K. That's interesting. I remember we would go to the Circle K to play Street Fighter. And we went to the Circle K and played Street Fighter. One time I come back, one of my cousins says, hey, have you ever played Mortal Kombat? I'm like, no.

Well, what is Mortal Kombat? man, we got to go to Cortana. So we went to Cortana Mall spaceport there in Cortana Mall. Shout out to all my spaceport crew. And there were people crowded around the game, just like you said, looking at this. And I remember seeing blood on the screen. Yeah, that's what it was. Impaled, getting there.

They got lost and they did Johnny Cage's fatality and all of that stuff. And I was like, man, what the fuck is this crazy shit? Then like you said, it hit consoles. It came out later on like the year after or something like that for Genesis. And I remember they had the A, B, A, C, A, A, B was the code that you could put into your game. And that would cut the blood on. You had to call a number to get the code like after the time. There's no internet.

You call the number. They tell you, you do it on your little controller. And then the screen shakes and you're like, here we fucking go. Now we got the blood. And of course, then after the game being the biggest thing in gaming for a while, 1995, the movie rolls around and it comes out in the original Mortal Kombat movie, Luke King, Johnny Cage,

Sonia Blade, Shang Sung, and it's just like a huge, huge hit. Did you run to go see the movie when it was in theaters? Absolutely. I was like begging somebody, please, somebody taking me. My uncle Jesse ended up taking me because he had two sons at the time. Now he has a daughter as well.

But he had two boys. They're about five, six years younger than me. So we all went together. Me and my uncle and my cousins sitting in there were in the theater as soon as the movie starts the Mortal Kombat

the guy screaming is how it gets introduced and then they have the logo with the fire coming up it was like the Pledge of Allegiance for me just on in I just wanted to stand up and fucking salute

as a 13 or 14 year old kid and just watching that movie watching the characters who I had played watching the characters who I loved so much doing things that were without anybody controlling them

it was so excited I can't remember another time where something like that happened, it was like a crossover, like a big time crossover event. Like it happened on smaller scales with other things that I liked, like whatever in an episode of Fresh Prince

when Boys to Men showed up. And we're like, oh, this is crazy. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. Or in Ninja Turtles, too. Like when the Ninja Turtle's movie came out, like a similar sort of feeling.

But watching Scorpion and Sub Zero up on the stream, my two favorite, two favorite video game characters of all time, watching them, I was like, almost in tears. I'm almost in, you know, yeah, it was like, I don't even know.

By the way, I thought for a second, you were about to bring up the greatest moment in movie history. I thought for one second, you were going to bring up. I wasn't ready to talk about it yet. I didn't know. I thought you were going to bring up the ninja rap

from Teenage Muti Ninja to see for the other hoos. Oh, my God. Go Ninja. Listen, anytime I ever try to act cool and my dad is around, my dad goes, oh, y'all like Van, huh? He's a cool character.

Let me tell you a story about how this boy cut loose when he saw vanilla ice on the screen. I was dancing in the aisles. I was going insane. I didn't know he was going to be in it. It was a total surprise. And then the screen machine, we're going to rock the town without being seen.

I'm like, what? And my father was like, look at this boy. I was going nuts. By the time, by time Mortal Kombat, came out, I remember going to see the movie and thinking, what's the story going to be? Like, what's the story going to be? There's all kinds of backstory that was going on with the Mortal Kombat characters that sets the stage for the game. But it was harder to be immersed in that type of stuff because you weren't able to do as much research with the internet. So I actually

didn't know that much about the realms and outworld and all of that stuff. I knew basically enough to know why everybody was fighting. And so the movie actually, to me, was a big, big deal in sort of setting up just how big of a world that they were going to have. And they've got their own universe now, like almost like no other video game. They've got, like you said, all the TV shows, all the movies, and the whole big deal. When I saw the movie, I actually went, saw it, and I loved it. I was blown away. That's one of the, like, sneaky tricks that they did early on was if you played the game,

even if you didn't, like, if you didn't have quarters and you just stood by the game and watched the screen, everyone there would be like some fight sequences um then they would cut and they would show like like a character profile and you would get to read about that character a little bit and he'd be like oh shit okay cool that's like oh these people this guy doesn't like that one or they you know what i'm saying and then when you beat the game if you beat it with someone they would give you a little bit more of the story and that was like that was the only place you could get that information at the time either that or maybe you could read it in and game pro or electronic gaming monthly or whatever. It wasn't like today when the Falcon comes out and you're like, I want to go on the internet and learn every single thing about this. We didn't have that yet. But they were already putting all of those pieces in place. Depending on how nerdy you wanted to be about this game, you could get all the way into it and be like there are different realms and there are different versions of each of the characters. They're not to say, the Mortal Kombat that you see in like Mortal Kombat 3 isn't the sub-zero from Mortal Kombat 1? Like these are different sub-zeros. They're

others, you know, they had like this whole back catalog of story built into it that if you wanted to, if that was like a thing you were interested in, you could do that and you could talk about that with other people. Or you could just turn it on and rip someone's head off. And just be dumb with it. Yeah. And just play. And when the movie, when the movie came, the original movie, it was like, so easy to guess at who the good guys were going to be and who the bad guys were going to be just by the mechanics of the game. Like when you played with Luke Kang, if you did his fatality, it wasn't like an actual fatality. He did a spinning kick, punched you, but you kept all your body parts. He just knocked you out. You know what I'm saying? Versus Cano rips your heart out,

and you're like, oh, when the movie comes, that's going to be a bad guy and this is going to be a good guy. All of the stuff just was so intuitive watching it. Even as a kid, you're like, this is a good person. This is a bad person. Great, great, great. Now for this film right here, What were your expectations going in? For me, I really did not know what to think about them remake. The one thing that I do remember being disappointed about when I saw the original movie was that it wasn't like the video games in terms of the violence. And I remember my older brother going, what do you think they're going to do?

Show people ripping people's hearts out and stuff that they're not doing that. So what do you do? But this movie, in a way, I felt like this was the one that hard. hardcore Mortal Kombat fans were promised because it was going to be true to the brutal nature of the video game and because things can be done on such a bigger scale now that it would be closer to actually bringing the video game itself to life. So were your expectations going into this one? And did you rewatch the old one before you watched this?

I did. I rewatch the old one like once a week. So it was like not a thing for me. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, the original Mortal Kombat. You know what this one did for me. This is more than anything else, this is what the new one did for me. We watched it as a family.

Same as how I went with my uncles and my cousins. I sat my sons down. Laramie was with us and we're like, this is our movie night that we're doing this week. We're watching Mortal Kombat. They have been playing it forever. We have a Mortal Kombat arcade machine in our house. Oh, wow.

This game is a part of our life. So we're all going to sit down and watch it. So we sat down and we're watching it. And I have my youngest, the baby's sitting next to me. And every time, thing happens on the screen that he recognizes or he thinks is cool, he like grabs at me and he looks at me and he makes like a very excited face. And I could remember like doing a version of that

with my uncle or with my cousins when I would see for the first time subzero do his ice ball or scorpion throw the spear. Like it just made me sort of love everything all over again. And it was like it was a cool experience to watch it as an adult. Because when you watch this one, you're like, this is kind of dorky. It's like a little bit dorky. I get it. I get it. But he loved it. The kids loved, like, they loved it from a very pure place. And it was cool to watch that little seed get sort of put in their chest, same as what I had with the original one. Because I'm sure some people will watch the original one to be like, this kind of isn't that great of a movie.

And I feel like it's one of the best movies that's ever been made. Like, that's not a joke. That's not me, like, exaggerating things. I think it's like one of the top 10, top 20 easily, best movies that have ever been made. just because of the experience I had in the theater watching it. So I rewatch the original one, and there are things about the original one that I remember. So these are the bad points about the original movie.

Go, go. The bad thing about the original movie is that Brigitte Wilson, God bless her soul, just had absolutely zero martial arts. It looked terrible. It looked so bad. I remember even seeing that then. I remember being in the theater with some of my people. Like, man, she's horrible.

Like, she couldn't, she didn't really bring it at Sonia Blade. She didn't really blink in a Sonya. And then, other than that, it was just the blood. I loved it all. I loved Christopher Lambert as, as Raven. Oh, God, so funny. So great. So funny.

I don't think so. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. The whole knot, I loved your man from Wyatt Earp. As he played Wyatt Earp, we play Morgan and Wire. and he played Johnny Cage and I loved him. I actually...

Lyndon Ashby is his name. Lyndon Ashby, my favorite fight scene in the original Mortal Kombat movie is Johnny Cage versus Scorpion. Oh, Scorpion. Oh, yeah, yeah. Scorpion. It was Johnny Cage versus... No, that's the best one in the whole movie.

That one is... Get over here. Get over here. Oh, shit. He said it. He said it. He said it. And then he hit him with the... Get down here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When he kicked the thing, I'm like, oh, my God.

That was the best one. I didn't know in real life that Lyndon Ashby is actually a martial artist. You can tell. Yeah. You can tell. It was all very fluid for him. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows Winter is the MVP and making a mess.

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So if you do not want it to be spoiled, if you are still waiting for your cousin to email you or text you his HBO Max password, and he hadn't done it yet because he got to watch the movie, turn off right now. Because beyond this point, we are going to spoil Mortal Kombat 2021 for you if you haven't seen it yet. With this film right here, I'll be honest with you. I enjoyed the movie. All right.

I enjoyed the movie. The movie start off taking itself very seriously. And then there were some things about the movie that I kind of didn't understand. But I would say that overall, I was satisfied with it. I don't understand the new character's place in the film, Cole Young. I don't get why we needed that. I guess they wanted to move it away from being centered around Lou Kang. And so there was a couple of things I didn't get.

I'd say that I was satisfied overall, but I just want to know from you. What did you think about Moral Combat 2021? I liked it. I think we're landing in the same sort of spot overall. I liked it. I thought it was fun to watch. I thought if we're going like piece by piece, Joe Taslam, who plays Sub-Zero, I just love this guy in movies.

He fights in such a violent way. Like he was in, if you don't, if you're not familiar with the stuff he's been in, he was in the raid. Oh, wow. An excellent martial arts movie. Unbelievable. A great fight scene with Mad Dog and that. He's in that new show on TV Warrior. Love that one too.

He was in Fast and Furious Six. He has a great fight with Han and Tyrese. The Night Comes for Us. He's an excellent. there. Like he's just, he's such a violent fighter. Some, some movie fighters, like, Donnie Yen, for example, he's like dipping and dodging. I'm not going to trade blows with you. I'm just faster than you and better than you.

Joe Taslim is like, well, I'll trade a blow to give a blow because I'm just going to beat the shit out of you a little bit harder than you will me. And I really enjoy that kind of fighting. So I was really excited to see him. He has great eyebrows. Sub Zero has to have great eyebrows because you're getting these close-up shots of his face. So I really, I really enjoyed him. I really liked the guy who plays Cano. He was amazing in this movie. He was always my least favorite character in the game, the one I just didn't care about

at all. I didn't think he was anything great in the original Mortal Kombat. This new Cano was just fucking hilarious. He was like, let me get my jokes off. Let me say a bunch of inappropriate shit. Again, I'm watching this with an eight-year-old and Cano's up here like, you fucking wanker. Just like a hundred times in the in a row.

I really like those two. With the Cole Young, I think the reason that they have to put him in there is they were trying to make like Scorpion a central character. So he's like, you know, the extension of the family lifeblood in this character and whatever, whatever. I did, I could have done without him, I suppose. But I'm curious to see what happens from here. I was waiting for the rest of his like special power suit to show up. I thought it was weird that he was like in some dockers and then from the chest up. they ran out of money.

I tell you, I said, they must have ran out of money because it doesn't make any sense to where, that was a workaround. Somebody was like, you know what we could do? We could just show them

from the waist up. That's what we'll do. Like, they just must have ran out of money, the whole deal. But so, you know, interesting. So looking at the film, first of all,

I like the scale of it, how it's not just outward. world is this realm or whatever. Nah, you get the full scale of what's trying to invade Earth. You know what I mean? You get a really menacing evil Shang-sung. Not just a power hungry shang-sangangang, a really evil sorcerer. You know, this raiden is different than Christopher Lambair's raiding.

I mean, they would never do that again, where they would have a white dude who come in and be raiding, they would never do that again. You'd get fucking ghost in the sheld if you did that now. But this Raiden is a little bit different. I enjoyed it. I'm not going to lie. Christopher Lambert was funnier as Raiden. But this was a much more serious part.

This movie was interesting because it was both slightly corny and then very serious and earnest at the same time. Like everything that was going on, they were fucking manning this shit in the movie. The stakes, they really made the stakes very, very high. What do you feel like worked about it and what like didn't work? I think what worked about it is how good everything looked. Like if you go back and you rewatch the other one, Scorpion Spear and the original Mortal Kombat stands out when it comes out of his hand and it's kind of alive.

Just because of the advancement in CGI, special effects or whatever, it just looked great, sub-zero especially. The way that he would like, the ice would just sort of form all around him at all times. Every time he would step, it would be on the ground. His body just looked cold. I thought that was really, really neat. But the stuff they were able to do because of that, like the one part that he has during that great fight at the end with him and Scorpion,

when he like steps into the ground, creates a wall of ice, throws Scorpion fucking through it. Like that sort of stuff that you couldn't have done before. It just looked incredible. It was great to watch that. So I really enjoyed that. I did also enjoy how gory it was. It was cool.

It was real cool to watch Kunglau do his fatality where he throws his hat into the ground and turns it into like a saw blade and surfs a person into it. Like that's a fatality from the game. My fiance walked in just as that part was happening. And she was like, what the fuck is this?

I'm like, this is a murder combat. She was like, this is a kid's movie? I'm like, no, it's not. It's for grown folks. And my nephews. Because they watched it with me. But I like to see that. People were able to get their fatalities off in the movie as well.

So, ah, that was a dumb. They were throwing them in a minute. Kano got his heart yank from Mortal Kombat 1. That was awesome. I thought a really cool, like, unexpected moment when Sonia finally gets her, like, character mark, her mortal combat symbol, and she gets her superpower. And she shoots the rings through Molina. And they have this great shot of Malina, like, on her side.

And you're looking through her belly and just her spine is there. and you're like, oh, fuck. That's cool. That's cool. My thing is, I wonder whose decision it was to leave that little part of the spine there because that's really the piece there is distance right there. Because it was, it was like they blow through it. It's like, but let's leave the spine. Because normally when you see that in the movie, it's like a complete hole that.

And it makes it so much more gruesome that the spine is there. It's like you're reminded that you're looking at a human body. And this is a piece in there. So I did enjoy that. I enjoyed Kung Lao himself. I enjoyed Kung Lao. It was good to see him in the movie. I enjoyed seeing him.

It gave Lou Kang something to be sort of connected to because Luke Kang does a lot less in this film than he did in the original where it was all about him. He has, I think, the coolest entrance in the movie because you don't know he's going to be in it. And then he just pops up when they need him to pop up. And that's one of the twins. That's his favorite character.

So when he popped up, we were all like, Konglao! And then when he died, it was like, oh, fuck, that sucks. Sorry about that. Because my guy is Scorpion. Scorpion made it through the end. I'm like, all right, I'm feeling good. But sorry about, sorry about Kunglau. What did you think of Jacks? How did you feel about Jacks? Oh, I'm glad we're talking about this. Jacks got played in the original movie. Yeah, big time. Jacks got played. I'm glad that Jacks got his doing this. Shout out to McCod, a guy who I know. You know Jacks?

Yeah, I know Jacks, man. I remember when McCod was like eating all the cod in the world trying to get big enough to play this role. He was keeping up with it on, he was keeping up with it on social media, showing everybody. He was like, yo,

I'm going to be Jackson, the Moral Combat movie. That's cool as shit. That's perfect fucking casting. Ripped the man's arm off, but gave him new arms. I was glad to see that he actually got to be one of the central characters in it,

because something else that happens in these films is that, Like even in the street fighter movie, in the street fighter movie, what's the black guy? They have them as Balrog, right? But it's really not him. Balrog didn't get any real run in the movie. But I want to see the black video game characters get there just do. His arms looked cool.

They really looked cool. And he felt powerful. And when he got his arms ripped off, y'all, you know what's going to happen. But it actually was a really tough. seen to watch with Sub Zero froze his arms, ripped him off, and then kicked him down there. You really felt bad for Jacks. When he kicks him off of the thing or when he falls off of the ledge, and as he's falling to the ground, he hits another piece of like the building and then flips again.

You're like, oh, shit. Like, Jack's fucked. I thought he was great. I thought he was funny. I thought he, like, gave his one-liners in like a cool sort of action star kind of way. Like, oftentimes you watch the movie. I'd never seen him before in anything. and I was like, I would like to see this guy and some more.

I would like to, you know what? I would like to see him in a movie where you have like nine soldiers and you just drop him into some shit and they got to fight their way out. Like, I want to see that version of him. Because I thought he was, I thought he was great in here. He was a lot of fun. What did you think about the new Sonia? You didn't like the old Sonia.

New Sonia better than the old Sonia. Yeah, that's how I feel too. I'm still not convinced they totally got Sonia Bled's character, right? like new sonya is definitely better than the old sonya but nobody's going to remember this person but there was a lady named cynthia rothrock and she was a martial artist that was in a bunch of these kind of low budget martial arts movies from earlier in the in the 90s and she could really fight you know what i mean and she like could super fight and in this in the movie it does feel like both times what they've done is cast a blonde bombshell and they put them through three weeks of

martial arts stunt training, which is cool, which is fine. She didn't do anything to take away from the movie, and it was definitely better than they got it in the first, but in Moral Combat Annihilation, they actually changed Sonia's, and then she was a little bit better. So I didn't love her, but I liked her, and I felt like even watching her going through her own little hero's journey to finally come to terms and get her marketing and get her powers, it was a cool little subplod in the movie. She had much better fight confidence. This is what I call it when. you're watching a movie and you're like,

can this person deliver this fight? Does it seem like they know what they're doing? She had much better fight confidence than the original Sonia. Can I pitch you on when they do the new Mortal Kombat, the new Sonia? Sure. Ronda Rousey.

I don't understand why that's not like a fucking, like a layup though. Because Ronda Rousey actually was involved with one of the games. So I don't understand why, I don't know what Ronda's up to right now, but I don't understand why that's not a layup. I loved her when she showed up in Furious 7.

Yeah. I think she has the right sort of like campiness about her that she would fit perfect in a thing like this because she's going to take it totally seriously. She's going to be cool. She's going to beat the shit out of some people. Like, I would like to see it. I would like to see it.

It would be dope. Now, we're being very generous with the film right now. I think we both liked the film more than we didn't like it. What didn't work for you, though? What were the things in the movie that you felt like they did now? I think if I changed one major part of this, I'm going to give you a couple. Because I wanted more Lou Kang. I think he's just such an interesting character.

I think the guy that they cast as him as like a young Lou Kang, he's not old Lou Kang. He's young Lou Kang like at the beginning of his journey. He looked great. His arms were incredible when they show him like, they show him all flexively like, Jesus Christ, this kid. He has a perfect Lou Kang silhouette. and they show him like walking in the desert and you're like, that's Luke Kang. I don't got him to see anything.

I know that's Luke Kang. He shows up. He has a great face. I would have liked to see a little more of him. Maybe in the sequel, we get more Luke King. So I would have liked that. I would have like, I could have done without Kabbal. Cabal sucked.

I'm going to be honest with you. We have Cano doing a better version of what you're doing right now. Yeah, Kabbal looked crazy. It did. Cabal did not work for me. I'm going to be honest. I would have liked to have seen Molina. a little more in Molina.

She's such a good, evil character. She was my favorite character in Mortal Kombat 2. That's when she showed up. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of her. Like, let her get some kills in. That would have been neat. And then also, the biggest one, I'm watching the movie. I'm like having a great time.

We get to the end of the movie and I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There was fucking no tournament. Where's the tournament? We don't get a tournament and the tournament fight movie? What's happening? No tournament. This was a... I actually realized that

about three quarters of the way through because about three quarters of the way through, I was like, well, we're not going to get to it now. I thought they were going to have one scene where they're all running from everybody or whatever it was they were doing. And then another scene where we were going to get to the tournament. And they switched around a narrative

to where Shang-sung was trying to kill off all the fighters before they got to the tournament. Trying to cheat. Which is interesting. But at the same time, it makes sense because there was a tournament in the first movie but not in any way that actually really matter

because in the first movie Lou Cane, Sonia and Johnny Cage they went all of their fights but at the end Lu Kang still fights Shang Sung right he's still the one to fight so there was no real he gets to like pick who he wants to fight right

there was no real tournament in like even in the first film Although there were different fights, people were matched up. And, you know, you had that one, two of my other favorite scenes in the first movie. Go for it. Go for it. Give me one. Just real quick.

If you guys got to go back and watch the first movie. The first movie has one of the most aggressive pre-fight demonstrations in any film that's ever. I already know what you're talking about. I already know what you're talking about. So Scorpion, so they come out and everybody's trying to eat big prawns everywhere. And then Shanks Sun goes, I'm going to show you what you get a taste of. And they just come and waste all the food. First of all, I remember as a chubby little kid being like, who's going to clean that up?

And I want to eat that. It just comes in. They waste all the food. Then they put Scorpion with one of Shanksong's like people. There's a random guy. Oh, it's sub-zero. It's sub-zero. Oh, excuse me, it's sub-zero.

My bad, it is sub-zero. It's sub-zero. He starts going at Sub-Zero versus this random fighter. And this dude just starts going insane. Hard core. This, for the D, punch it super hard. Almost he's going to rip reality

with some of these kicks and punches. And then he tries to give one kick, scrup zero hits him with the ice. And then he, his body explodes. And it's like, flawless victory. And I'm like,

yo, I'm in the theater watching Moral Combat. I can't fucking do this. But kind of in this one, I think for me, some things that didn't work were, they tried to pack so much story in here. The one thing that didn't work for me was Jacks and Sonia Blade as conspiracy theorists working out of some kind of weird underground bunker in Cleveland, Ohio, some weird trailer tracking all of this stuff for years and years and years.

Like they try to tie things back to the way things kind of work today, and it just bothered me. Cano is just there. She just has Cano. Cano is just another guy that she ran into while she's trying to do this thing. There were parts of it that story-wise I didn't align with. But you know what I did? This is what I do. When I start thinking with my, I call it my Schindler's List brain.

When I put on my Schindler's List movie hat, right? Because a lot of people, they go and they watch these films and they go, I thought Mortal Kombat had third act problems and the characters were fully developed. And I'm like, yo, do you know what you fucking watching? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take off your Godfather glasses. Take off your Schindler's List hat. Take off your motherfucking moonlight, whatever it is.

You know, take it off. and watch the fucking characters from the weird realm fight, eat your popcorn and go the fuck home. We're not trying to hear it. So I'm looking at the movie and I'm like, you know what? Then I'm thinking, hey, this is a Mortal Kombat movie. It's supposed to be a little campy.

It's supposed to be a little goofy. Dude, did you think it was campy or goofy or dumb? I didn't think it was dumb. I didn't think it was campy or goofy. I thought they took everything really serious. I liked that Sonia had been tracking them. I thought they were going in a different direction. I liked that Sony was tracking them.

I liked that she had Cano. It made sense because she was tracking some other person with the symbol. And then Cano happened to be there and killed that guy. And then he got the symbol. That's how she learned that. That's how it passes. I like them, like, whatever. I like them throwing a bunch of information in there.

What I thought was going to happen at that moment is I thought she was going to put a bunch of pieces together. And then Raiden was going to show up. And he was like, you're right. And I've been watching you do all of this. I'm going to take you all and we're going to go fight in this tournament now. That's what I thought was going to happen. I thought that, you know, they could have done with it. We could have trimmed out 15 minutes of the storyline.

Same as when I watched Kong versus Godzilla. I'm like, I only turn this on to watch Godzilla Fight King Kong. I don't need the rest of it. So if you want to get that with this movie, sure. But I had a good time. I had a good time watching it. We haven't talked about, I would like to talk about for at least two minutes. a minute and a half in the original Mortal Kombat.

Okay. This is my favorite movie entrance of all time. It just sits so strong in my heart. It's when Sonia is like running around on the ship, on Shang-sung ship, as they're going to the island to fight in the tournament. And she's like down in the belly of it. And that's where she meets Shang-sung. And I thought, I want to say, for the record, the original Shang-sung, fucking awesome.

Just so good. Just so perfect Shang-sung face, perfect voice. Very intimidating. Great. Anyway, she goes down there. She's like talking to him. He's doing his whole Shanksong thing. Lou Kang and Johnny Cage show up and she's like, if I call for, if I need to back up, I'll call it or whatever. And then right there, we get the music that comes in. And we see the hand reach up onto the door and pushes open. And Scorpion and Sub Zero walk out and watching them walk out. And then hearing Shang-sung, this is a difference between the old movie and the new movie. This is all the explanation that you got.

That's all he said. This is all he says to explain this necromancer ice god and this fire demon. This is all he says, scorpion and sub-zero, deadliest of enemies, but slaves under my power. And that's all we needed. That's all we needed. And I was like, yes, that's perfect. Amen. But watching them get into their scorpion and sub-zero stance, I was so fucking fired up.

And I mentioned that because some of the stuff. that they do in the first movie, they like hat tip in the new one. And I thought it was really great. We were just talking about Jacks. One of the best scenes is when he's fighting Sub-Zero. And right before they start to fight, he has a gun pointed to Sub-Zero, and he shoots, and Sub-Zero grabs it and freezes it as the bullets are coming out. You see them do it. And they do the exact same thing in the original one, but the gun never gets fired in that one. He just freezes it and breaks it off. You know, little things like that are super cool. Again, one of the best moments in this one, and the new one, is when Sub-Zero's having his big fight, and he, like,

knocks a little bit of blood out of the guy, and then he freezes it and grabs them and stabs them with it. Crazy! Incredible thing to do in a fight. It's also a hat-tip to the original, because that's how Sub-Zero dies in the original one. He's fighting Lukang. Luke-Kang, like, knock over a bucket of water. He realizes he throws the water at him.

It freezes as it gets to him and kill it. Like it was that those like little sort of sort of nerdy things for me erased any other like problems I might have had with the movie. I was like, yes, this is a great time. We're watching and we're having some fun. That brings me to what I thought was the best fight of the film. The best fight and also the best aspect of the film. For them to position this film and started with the ancient hundreds of years old rivalry between scorpion and sub-sum, and to start the movie there

and we watch the origin of Scorpion and see him how he throws his little thing. I don't even think I know what exactly that is called. The rope spear. The rope spear. So when he's throwing the rope spear and those two guys are fighting,

it sets the movie up to have these centuries-old rivalries and stakes that grounded in something that's a little bit more than just your typical comic book fair. You watch this guy get his family killed. It clearly sets up Scorpion as a hero, as Sub-Zero, as a villain, which is interesting,

which is very, very interesting. Watching it, and I thought that fight at the beginning between them, to me, was my favorite fight scene of the entire movie. The movie had a lot of great fight scenes. The fight scene at the end between Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Great. That was my favorite one. That was my favorite one.

That one is right there as well, but I really enjoyed it. There's a part in sometimes in movies where you're looking and you're like, am I actually on the edge of my seat? I'm actually on the physical edge of my seat. But I really enjoyed it. That was my favorite fight. And yours was you said Scorpion and Sub-Zero from the end of the movie? Yeah, because I had been waiting the whole time for Scorpion to come back.

He's my favorite all-time video game character. So would they get rid of him early on in the movie? And I kept waiting what I thought was going to happen when they introduced Cole. Because I don't know if you noticed when he's like doing this fight, when he comes walking out afterwards, he's got a black bag and it's got like a yellow sash on there. And it's like, oh, those are the scorpion colors. His daughter is making the friendship bracelet. She's using the black and yellow for that. So I thought what was going to happen is he's going to be the new scorpion.

You know, I didn't, I wasn't aware that this is a whole new character who's not. even like whatever. I knew he's part of the bloodline. I thought at some point he's going to get the mask and he's going to fight the old sub-zero to like avenge his great, great, great-great-granddad's death or whatever. So I kept waiting for that to happen and then I realized, okay, this is a different character totally. And then I was like, well, when the fuck is Scorpion coming back? And when he finally shows up with the rope spear, like that's how he gets back in the game, I was fucking fired up, baby. I was ready to go. I was like, I hope this fight lasts 45 minutes because I would watch every single second of it.

Yeah, and they do such a good job of putting him as a slight underdog to Sub Zero because let's be honest, Sub Zero is a crazy OP powerful character in this movie. He's with the scene where he's coming to get cold and Jack shows up in the truck and the little girl, what he is doing with the ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Bobby Drake would be jealous. You know what I mean? Like what he's doing with the ice, he's just boom and the whole knot.

I'm like, yo. And in the older movie, Sub Zero had ice powers, but not crazy like this. It took a long time for the generator. It took a long time for the generator because even in that scene where Lucaine kills him, it was good. But this guy was a mega level threat, man. He's killing it. I thought that if we're like putting all of the pieces together, I thought that was the best decision that they made with this movie is to take sub-zero and just turn him into the

fucking Ice Terminator. Yeah. Like if he shows up where you are, you're done. You're done. They even say it like nobody's beating sub-zero one-on-one. Not even Scorpion could do it. He had to, like they had to team up with Cole at the end. But watching him, again, Joe Taslam, outstanding sub-zero, outstanding performance here

with maybe like the most difficult character to play. Because you doesn't get to do a lot except beat people up and be scary. And that's hard to do. What about Shane Sung? How did you feel about his character in this movie? I didn't like him. I didn't either. It was a cool portrayal, but it didn't work.

It didn't work as Shane's son to me. It felt like was lacking either some charisma or gravitas or maybe he just didn't have as much to do. in the movie itself. So I didn't, I didn't dig it as much. So that's, that's what I ended up settling on afterward

because I watched a movie and then the original one, I'd love the original Shang song. He's great. He's, again, great face, really scary. He's cool.

He's like, this is a person to be afraid of. He says cool things in like a cool way. The new Shang song, I'm watching the movie and I'm like, waiting for him to do some stuff

and he never really does anything. And I'm like, well, that's not that much fun. And the original immortal combat game. He's the main boss. He's like the one.

Then you remember, oh, okay, and this new one, they're setting up like a long-term play, whatever, sub-zero is the main villain. He doesn't have,

like, the Shang Song never even gets a fight. He barely gets to talk. I'm like, all right, I'll watch the next one. I want to see what he does. But if we're putting them in order,

he's like near the bottom for me. Speaking of the next one, the movie has a tease at the end and the tease is that Cole is going out to LA and he's going to be looking for, for Johnny Cage. Yeah. Who, I'm not going to lie,

I miss Johnny Cage in this movie. He's great. I love Johnny Cage. I miss Johnny Cage in this movie. That's the big reveal is that he's going out to Hollywood because they're still recruit. I feel like we'll get the tournament, maybe like in Mortal Kombat 3,

but he's going out to Hollywood and to get Johnny Cage. So they obviously want a franchise. Do you feel like they did enough in this movie to get themselves a franchise? I do. I definitely think they do. It was fun to watch. I think a bunch of people will watch this.

Putting it on HBO Max was a great idea. I think they're going to be like, yeah, we had 40 million people stream this movie. Let's make another one. That's what I think is going to happen. That's what I hope is going to happen. Who would make a good Johnny Cage out there if you had to cast it with somebody

with a semi-name? I think you don't need like a big name star for this. Like most people aren't going to know anybody from this movie when you sit down to watch it. And I think it's totally okay if you just grab somebody who's like about to be a star. If you want to get a Johnny Cage in there, somebody that we already know, you know who I really like. Like he pops up every once in a while is that MMA fighter GSP. Oh, yeah.

George St. Pierre. He's great when he pops up. He looks amazing fighting, but he's got like a thick French accent. Yeah, real thick accent. I think this will be a case where it's like, hey, we need a smart. me white guy. And guess what? Hollywood has 400 million of them.

They're going to find one. They'll find one. I don't know who it would be. Channing Tatum would be like a funny version of it. Cheney Tatum would be like a hilarious version of Johnny Cage. Shout out to Channing. I haven't seen Channing very much lately. Yeah, I know he was going to be Gambit,

but I think he's keeping it cool for a little while, but he would be an amazing Johnny Cage. And he's got good fight confidence. I don't know if you remember he did that fighting movie, literally called Fighting. That movie's a shadow reboot. Yeah. There are movies out there that are shadow reboots.

That movie was a shadow reboot of Lionheart with John Claude Van Dam. It is the exact same movie. When I say it's the exact same movie, let me tell you guys something real quick, if you want a good cry. Go back and watch Lionheart. Go back and watch Lionheart. Lionheart is the forgotten Van Dam classic. It's great.

It's great. It's so fucking amazing. Watch Lionheart. Watch the end of Lionheart. Here it is. Here it is. Here it is. Go for it.

Go for it. Wrong bet. Boom. That's all you need. Let's go. Let's go. Wait a minute. Let's go.

I didn't bet on you. The whole back is on a killer. Wrong bet. Like, look at the kid's up and he goes, Lionheart. At the end with the guys from the fucking French Foreign Legion. Yeah. Man damn run after his kid,

like his family and stuff like that because his brother got, fucking so good his brother got set on fire by his underworld figures and he has to come back to America and take care of his niece and his brother's ex who he slightly has

chemistry with so it's just out of the line hard did they remade it with Channing Tatum basically they basically remade the movie with Channing Tatum anyway. Lionheart is awesome line hard is awesome and then they did that same thing

with obviously Fasten the Furious and Point Break it's the same movie although you know went to different places I think so too I think I'm excited for Moral Combat 2. I'm actually, I'm excited for Mortal Kombat 2.

I think things can get bigger. I'm excited to see the tournament. I'm excited to see Johnny Cage, rest in peace, Kung Lau. But I'm like, I'm excited to see it. I think they did enough to get me to pay attention at least one more time. And really, to be honest with you, Shea,

they can make six of them and I will watch them all. Yeah, I would watch every single one. I watched Mortal Kombat Annihilation like three times. It's awful. It's a god-awful movie. And I'm like, well, I get to see Jacks, for a little bit at least. Like, turn it on.

Let me see Lou K. The Mortal Kombat Annihilation, we'll talk about that. I desperately have a podcast that I want to do. They already have the rewatchables here at the Ringer. I want to do a podcast called The Unwatchables, where we just sit down and go through some of the worst movies that I've ever been made and just talk about them and maybe kind of figure out,

is there some hidden gems in there? And Mortal Kombat Annihilation, I remember sitting in the theater. Two times I was sitting in the theater, I remember, and I remember thinking this movie's not going to get any better. One was Moral Combat Annihilation. The other, to be honest with you, was the original X-Men. With Wolverine, when he starts in the cage fight? I hated it.

Oh, man. That's crazy. Hated it. I remember thinking like this is just, he nailed it. He nailed Wolverine. From the beginning, he nailed it. But I was just like, I did. I dig.

I still, I've tried to appreciate the movie so many times. I don't, I don't dig it. I don't dig the original X-Men movie. Brian Thompson, if he's listening to this podcast right now, that's the actor, who plays Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat Annihilation. If I'm not mistaken, I think he was also in Lionheart. You're lying. Yeah, he's in Lionheart.

He plays Russell. I knew it. He's like the set. He doesn't even fight is the thing. This big giant, you have the big giant man, and he's not even a fighter in the, in the movie. That's incredible. Before we get out of here, would you like to guess what Border Combat Annihilation has on Rod D'Amato's?

92. Am I close? Mortal Kombat Annihilation has a 2% on Rod Demandals. Which, by the way, for some reason, I feel like a 2% is more insulting than the zero. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Oh my God. Okay. How could you possibly have more fun

than talking about Mortal Kombat with fucking Shave Serrano? Moral Combat. I've been screaming that shit. That's how I woke my kids up the day after we watched the movie. That was their alarm clock to wake up for school. Just me.

And some basketball shorts and no t-shirt standing in their room screaming mortal combat. Did they attack? They did not. They did not attack. They did not attack. They did not attack.

Listen, guys are going to be a lot of people out there. They're going to watch the movie and then not dig the movie. I get it. You guys want to be all serious and hypercritical about everything. The movie's a lot of fucking fun. It works. I dig it. I enjoyed it.

The movie is a lot of fucking fun. I actually watched it twice. The second time I watched it was the time that I just fell into the film. I thought the special effects were pretty good. I enjoyed the movie. Do you want to give the last word on Mortal Kombat 2021? I just want to tell everybody who worked on it. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Please make some more. Please. All right. So you guys got to keep tuning in to all things, Ringaverse. Next Friday, Charles Holmes and I, the Midnight Boys, are going to do the Invincible Season Recap. invincible season one

will be over by that point it ends next Thursday we're going to do a season recap on Evensible Season 1 you're watching Invincible Shea? I have not. Is it good? It's fantastic. Is it kid appropriate? No. Because one of my kids was watching it, the youngest one. He's like... Well, I'm going to be honest with you. Did you let him watch

Mortal Kombat? I did. He's good. Oh, great. Yeah, he's like, he's good because it's all... He's already ruined, so it's fun. Right, no, no. I got it. I got it. I got it. I read the subtext. Right.

All right. And of course, make sure you check in with Mallory on Tuesday for all of your deep dive analysis on the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the show that just keeps on giving. We are not done with it.

We've got one more podcast on it. And that's going to be Tuesday with Mallory. Get all of your mailback questions in at Ringerverse on all the different socials, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So you can talk to Mallory. Shea, always a pleasure to chop it up with you, brother. Yeah, baby.