While I agree the original movie did have its faults and got tons of things inaccurate. Granted the film did influence the games in some way. Kano’s accent was the best example of this.
2 Likes
Well, arguably Reptile had already been that prior to 2, just because of his bio and fatality where he unmasks himself and you see that he’s clearly not human.
I don’t know about this being “wrong”. I mean, yeah, in the games they weren’t, but at the same time, the movie did allude to their being enemies and had attempted to kill Shang Tsung (it was explicitly said by Goro that he enslaves souls). Even though I’m not crazy about their working for Shang Tsung, I think it made sense in that context, plus it did make Liu Kang and the others the underdogs up against more powerful and deadly forces.
I guess that’s true, especially since in the game and the animated movie before the 1995 film it was Goro who had killed Liu Kang’s ancestor. That said, I still loved this moment, just because you wouldn’t have expected Johnny freaking Cage to defeat him. That moment really made me laugh and love JC even more!
“Those were $500 sunglasses, a$$hole!”
He was still an orphan in the movie. His brother mentioned their parents dying.
Well, the tournament finished in Outworld when Shang Tsung took Sonya and fought Liu Kang. I didn’t mind that it didn’t get a lot of screen time. I am slightly annoyed that Sonya had been relegated to damsel in distress, but that’s just me.
1 Like
Kano’s whole character was made to look like Trevor Goddard in later games, especially in “Deadly Alliance”, MK vs DC, 9 etc. Originally Kano was a Japanese American rather than Australian (or rather cockney).
2 Likes
yeah and it works well for him.
Reptile was a humanoid reptilian creature though, not the little reptilian creature we saw in the film. It “possessed” a random corpse and made it into a living host body. That’s very different than the Reptile we’d seen in the games up to that point.
Sub-Zero and Scorpion are absolutely wrong. In the games, Bi-Han was sent to assassinate Shang Tsung, and he was being hunted by Scorpion who ultimately kills him. In the film, Bi-Han and Scorpion are enslaved to Shang Tsung and doing his bidding. That’s very different. Scorpion also has his weird living bird beak spear…
The Goro vs Cage fight was a cool moment, but still quite different than the games. It’s Liu who’s supposed to defeat him, as you know.
In the games, Liu doesn’t have a sibling though.
That’s not how the tournament ends though, and this the film is once again very different from the games. Shang was supposed to be defeated “violently” by Liu, and he then goes back to Outworld to grovel at Shao’s feet.
It isn’t absolutely wrong, though. Granted, Bi-Han wasn’t a slave in the game, nor was Scorpion, but it does allude to both their rivalry along with the fact that one or the other, perhaps even both, had tried killing Shang Tsung but ultimately failing and becoming enslaved themselves.
“Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Deadliest of enemies, but slaves under my power.”
“That was his intention. Shang Tsung is a great sorcerer. The wise cultivate his favor. Those who challenge his power…become his slaves.”
How they ended up losing, that’s kind of left to the audience. Hell, one could even suppose that it was Shang Tsung himself who made Scorpion into this spectral being in the first place. At least, in the context of the first movie (this was before Quan Chi had even appeared in the MK games).
I kind of like the idea of the spear being this living creature, just because it emphasizes Scorpion’s inhuman nature.
Not everything has to be exactly like the games. In theory, it would have been possible for a sequel to have resurrected him again and to have the events of MK2 play out. Whenever a given property is being made into a movie, be it a book, game, or comic, something is always going to be changed. The question isn’t whether something will be changed, but rather if the core of the thing being adapted is preserved and if the changes are such that they can work in conjunction with the property in question, if not improves on the original source material. Take Christoper Reeves’ Superman, for example - in comparison to the original comic, it changed a LOT of aspects of the character’s mythos while also bringing in a lot of elements that we now associate with the character such as the S on his chest being a family crest, Lex Luthor as a billionaire, the Fortress of Solitude being this crystal palace, the hologram of Jor-El, etc. In the original comics, Lex had been a mad criminal scientist while the Fortress of Solitude was basically made up of Greek architecture. If it hadn’t been for Richard Donner’s movie, we’d never have gotten a lot of those features.
1 Like
Nah, they’re represented very poorly in the film, it’s one of the bigger criticisms of it, and I remember it was a major downer for me when I saw it in theatres. The two most popular characters in the franchise, and they were relegated to shadows of themselves.
Never said it did. Which is why it’s okay for both to do things a little differently.
As far as I’m aware, that wasn’t really one of the big criticisms of the film. At least, generally speaking.
I wouldn’t say that they were shadows of themselves. Granted, ideally I would have wanted more screen time for the two of them, with Bi-Han and/or Scorpion on the side of the good guys, with more character interaction and backstory, but as it is, the two of them are largely true to their game counterparts and concepts. They’re ninjas - they’re both mysterious and dangerously lethal, with unique and distinctive traits retained from the games (even going so far as to include Ed Boon as Scorpion’s voice), with some of the best fight scenes in the whole movie (although the Zero Signal makes Scorpion’s fight the best scored imo). It’s fine for something to not be exactly like the source material, just so long as the core of the thing is preserved and that the change itself makes sense and can work well in the context of the narrative. In the 1995 movie’s case, it served that purpose well. Compared to the “Street Fighter” movie with Raul Julia, which roughly came out the same year and pretty much drop-kicked, curb-stomped, urinated and defecated on those series’ characters and story in its portrayal, the changes in the MK movie were not that insulting.
1 Like