Video Game Film Puberty - Mortal Kombat II
I wasn't planning to go to Mortal Kombat II on opening night, much less in IMAX at the go-to theater of my general area.
Yet there I was, big bucket of popcorn on my lap, tucked in the middle of the third row, sitting next to a guy wearing shorts and a patchwork hoodie. We weren't friends by the end of it, but the dude (like his friends on the other side of him) was clearly a massive Mortal Kombat fan. They buzzed about the Street Fighter trailer and he lost his mind during one of the big deaths, even muttering "yes! Kill him!" during a climactic moment of an early fight. As the credits rolled, the trio were over the fucking moon, like it was one of the great film experiences of their life.
It might have been.
There's not much to say about Mortal Kombat II that you probably wouldn't guess even without a watch. There's a bunch of huge fights between fan favorite characters. Every encounter takes place in iconic (or iconic-esque) Mortal Kombat settings like over a pool of bubbling green acid or a platform with pagodas in front of a giant blue swirling portal in the background. Unlike the previous film, this isn't a precursor to the actual tournament. This has matchups, stages, and eliminations...
And of course there's violence, lots and lots of bloody, gory violence.
All of these are steps in the right direction towards what making a full, proper Mortal Kombat its audience wants. But taking this Mortal Kombat sequel in the context of the larger cinematic landscape feels like the herald of a larger trend in blockbusters. In the CinemaCon episode of The Big Picture, Sean Fennessey talked about studios previewing their slates and how those lineups featured lots and lots of video games both this year and on the horizon. It's his theory that inspired the line of thinking throughout Mortal Kombat II. Maybe video games are becoming the dominant "genre" now that superheroes are waning.
The two Super Mario Bros. films have collectively grossed more than $2 billion. Adaptations of both Street Fighter & Resident Evil come out on the other side of summer (with the latter from high profile horror director Zach Cregger). Next year has at least four more video game movies: Helldivers (from Fast & the Furious director Justin Lin), A Minecraft Sequel, Legend of Zelda, and a fourth Sonic the Hedgehog film. If that's not enough to solidify the theory, Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War) has teamed with A24 to make a film based on Elden Ring, while Peter Berg (Battleship, Deepwater Horizon) is working on Call of Duty for Paramount. Both have set release dates for 2028. There are dozens more in loose development including everything from loose announcements like Chad Stahelski (the John Wick films) doing Ghost of Tsushima or the recently announcedBattlefield movie from Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie and star Michael B. Jordan. While some are stuck in development hell, if there really is a huge boom on the horizon, a number of these will probably start to take off in a big way. Garland, Cregger, and McQuarrie both give a sense of this being where the industry's puck is going and bring an air of legitimacy to the genre. Quality filmmakers working on what should be silly movies is a shift away from where this niche market has been.
We've seen this before, though. And though we might be in a twilight of superhero films, the genre's ascension to cultural ubiquity took decades. It didn't happen overnight. Looking at those signposts to get there might give hints as to video games' path over the next few decades.
Twilight of the Gods
With Marvel in decline, DC late to the party, and shared IP universes proving anemic, the movie industry is desperate for the next thing that might become sure fire hits. Disney set the trend in the 2010s, churning out nostalgia grabs and sure fire bets as they strip mined everything in their vaults/rights domain. Marvel released sequel after sequel, and even "original" films like Doctor Strange followed enough of a formula that they felt like sequelesque installments, known quantities in an ongoing saga. Big team up Avengers movies felt like culminations of a bunch of sequels smashing together.
Star Wars roared back in 2015 with five movies in five years, following their initial "one-movie-per-year" plan. By 2019 those films crashed and burned so hard that it's taken LucasFilm seven years to get another one in front of the audience and The Mandalorian & Grogu's success (while inevitable on some level) feels like far from some mega-hit guarantee it might have at the start of the decade.
As a larger entity, Disney turned to their animation of the 90s and started adapting all of those animated films into life-action adaptations. Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid all did quite well at the box office but had a tepid wider response. The most successful of these (The Lion King) still came with a question of why. It seemed like live action, but it was still animated lions, only this time they were digitally photorealistic rather than cartoonish and stylized.
(But, hey, that movie is the twelfth highest grossing film of all time, so good for them I guess.)
More than anything, these live action remakes existed to earn quick cash and send audiences back home to stream the old stuff on their Disney+ accounts.
Even Pixar, which had spent the first decade of the century building a reputation for wildly original stories/worlds released a half a dozen sequels in the decade after Up.
This is all understandable from a business standpoint. The biggest challenge of the film industry is its function as producer of populist art for mass consumption but with no guarantees of what will or will not hit. Bad movies do massive business, great movies can bomb or disappear despite the incredible talent involved. Happens all the time. Back in the day, Hollywood would mitigate big swings with more conservative base hits, where making any profit (no matter how small) was a win. Studios could recoup costs, make a small profit, and put money right back into production.
(Home video helped all of this, but that's a different discussion...)
Unfortunately, the Disney method (as I've come to think with it) meant doing big swings on just about every film with the knowledge that as long as they kept it in certain lanes it was the closest thing to a sure bet they could make. These massive mega hits siphoned away financial resources for of smaller movies. The method also turned theater-going from a casual leisure experience into must-witness events, where the first weekend box office mattered more than the longer tails of movies that would stay in theaters for months on end, slowly but surely making money. Nowadays, the most high profile movies that seem to do that are James Cameron's Avatar series.
This zeitgeist juiced greed from investors and shareholders who looked at movie studios as profitable cash cows from which to print money, seeing massive (rather than moderate) returns on investment.
It has also gutted the industry.
Since the turn of the decade, the superhero film has functionally collapsed (the apotheosis of Avengers: Endgame plays some role in this but can't explain everything), and Marvel Studios' films have seen a downward trend in box office relative to their releases pre-pandemic. It's not like the movies aren't pulling a profit or good money, but it's serious whiplash after a decade and a half of treating sure bets like they have the payouts of long shot odds. Hard to rationalize success in solid returns when these used to be wildly profitable. For a company built off the strip mining of nostalgia, it shouldn't be surprising that they're still looking backwards even though the future is not exactly bright.
But the appetite for the big budget, sure bet, long-shot payout persists. And in the absence of superheroes, studios are looking for the next vein of nostalgia to tap. They need something with a built in audience, that has narratives they can build from worlds (or even better: existing narratives), and that can justify big budget spectacle to get everyone into a theater.
With the video game audience an untapped market, they might just be the answer.
Mapping Johnny Cage onto Tony Stark
Films based on video games are not new. The 90s saw the release of a wild and off-brand Super Mario Bros. movie as well as Street Fighter, and two Mortal Kombat movies. There have been dozens of others over the past quarter century, but the thing I keep coming back to is how this maps onto superhero films.
The road to where we are now came with signposts and moments. While it might not have been the first, the inflection point of the superhero genre on film is the summer of 2008.
Iron Man's release in May kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's important that it was a faithful adaptation of the original comic. It's more important that star Robert Downey Jr., director Jon Favreau, and producer Kevin Feige took the concept seriously. There was no wry laughing or embarrassed "yeah we know this is stupid" or even an ironic detachment that this was a money grab. The red and gold of the titular character's suit was perfect, and Favreau's tone both took the source material seriously while also having tremendous fun. There was lite winking at the audience, but the joy was so genuine it sucked in a larger audience. That lack of cynicism set a standard for how Hollywood treated these films moving forward.
Looking backwards, Sam Raimi's Spider-man trilogy succeeded by digging into the emotional truth of Peter Parker. The director's signature goofiness helped bridge the gap while also taking the source material seriously. But there were also movies that were close-but-no cigar like Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and The Fantastic Four. Before that, Bryan Singer's X-Men films were a major primordial step that captured a lot of the spirit of the comics, but studio notes kept those characters in black leather suits that ran counter to the bright, colorful costumes that lived in the comics.
But then in July, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel dropped.
The Dark Knight was a phenomenon. It lacked the silliness of Batman Begins's microwave emitter and instead tried to be a love letter to Michael Mann's Heat. It was gritty, yes, but it was also the brain child of a dude who would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Director (and yes Guillermo Del Toro directed Blade II, but C-list Marvel hero/vampire hunter that didn't have nearly the same profile). Iron Man might have been a summer blockbuster, but The Dark Knight was that while also being pure cinema. It came with a cache of prestige that went just beyond the singular performance from Heath Ledger. There's a world where The Dark Knight did make Oscars' Best Picture race that year (and it really should have). That's also a world where there's probably still only five nominees in that category.
But the road to there also took not just Nolan's first Batman movie and the four that came out from 1989-1997, but also a run of Superman movies that went back to 1978. Earning this level of legitimacy took three full decades, a visionary director at the start of his career (Tim Burton), and also dead ends like Steel and Catwoman getting it wrong.
People point to The Dark Knight as the breakthrough, but it's the one-two punch of it coming just months after Iron Man that rocketed the superhero genre into the stratosphere. Finally these were movies that didn't just appeal to nerds. The broad appeal came from the creatives who understood the power of this source material and believed in it. They did what all great artists do: communicated a deep, personal love/vision and poured it directly into the audience's brain.
This legitimacy didn't always translate, but it explains why movies like Man of Steel happened. For all my distaste for that movie, it is Zack Snyder directly communicating his vision of Superman and connecting it with a receptive audience. Other times we got movies like Black Panther from the mind of Ryan Coogler. That movie got a Best Picture nomination and his is almost certainly going to win a Directing Oscar within the next few decades.
Studios don't have to understand what it is they're producing, but not trusting their artists makes it very easy for them to interfere in ways that short circuit that crucial connection. That hobbles the final product.
Which brings us to video games
Unspoken in all of this is effects technology reaching a place where bringing superheroes to life became feasible (rather than prohibitively expensive). But that doesn't explain the whole story. Superman: The Movie (1978) and Batman (1989) were massive hits despite their lack of access CGI. Richard Donner grew up on superheroes and brought verisimilitude to Superman. Meanwhile, Burton proudly proclaimed that he never read a comic book in his life, but sprinkling his vision over the top of Batman made something unique that audiences wanted to see
Today, the generation that grew up on video games are reaching the point where they are (or should be) in charge. It explains the explosion of video game films over the past several decades. Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, Hitman, Five Nights at Freddy's, and a slew of Resident Evil... Some of these didn't require the technology that superhero films did, but they did lack the sort of vision or talent to break these films out of their niche market and into the larger culture. Understanding the appeal is critical to making these movies appeal to a general audience.
Mortal Kombat had two films in the 90s. The first came from Paul W.S. Anderson, who hired a fun, competent cast, did some location shooting in Thailand, and mainlined the fights, threading a minimal story about brothers and revenge to get the audiences through to the credits. It's not a bad attempt, and the film gets a major boost from The Immortals' "Techno Syndrome" aurally pumping adrenaline right into the viewer's bloodstream. It was faithful to the source material (they even did a giant ass puppet Prince Goro), but the sequel (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) descended fully into fan service. They brought in the characters from the games in more-visually-accurate costumes and colors to big fights with each other. But that film lacked that story Anderson knew the film needed, and just felt like glorified Mortal Kombat fan service.
Anderson went on to direct half a dozen Resident Evil films, and the series has grown a cult following. A competent filmmaker who can integrate new technologies and make them look good, he also understands the assignment. This is the guy who managed to get the Alien vs Predator movie to work. Are his films schlocky? Sure. But he'd be the first to tell you that he's not the sort of dude who will ever win an Oscar or even work on a Michael Bay scale. Understanding the lane he's operating in goes a long way to consistently making films that can succeed on their own terms.
To this point, these movies are doing just enough to satisfy existing fans and sometimes getting a high profile actor (like Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia) or actress (Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) to entice the wider movie-loving audience. And... that's totally fine. But superheroes did this too. Ben Affleck was Matt Murdock in Daredevil, Nic Cage was Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider. They even put Val Kilmer and George Clooney in the Batman suit and had Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Uma Thurman go absolutely ham in the Schumacher films.
This is not, though building narratives that got a wider audience to care about these characters despite having no background in them. It was a lot of cynicism from studios trying to make things happen and getting lucky when they did or by throwing money and talent at the problem for a meager output. No one is watching those Batman movies and feeling the deep emotional weight of those stories. Those movies are fun and a good time, but there was a sense that they were good enough and didn't need to do more.
Thinking that the wider audience of 2007 would ever care about Tony Stark felt like folly at the time. And that's to say nothing about the gonzo bizarreness of Guardians of the Galaxy. Still, all of those preceding decades primed audiences with the capacity to take these films seriously when the time came.
Based on anecdotes (and a lot of box office), these films are finally giving a core audience movies they're loving. There are some great fatalities in Mortal Kombat II. Kitana's is iconic as hell, and comes at the end of a film setting everything up for that moment to payoff. The end of the Liu Kang/Kung Lao fight had my entire audience screaming with delight, but even before that Kung Lao's hat flew around that giant arena, bouncing off of deflections and such, feeling like the video game finally brought to life. But the reason that fight works is because of the relationship between the two men, where the former has to reckon with the prospect of murdering the latter (and the latter doesn't care because resurrection has corrupted his mind). The fight's climax is a character moment through and through, and has far more resonance than the early fight between Kitana and Johnny Cage (which isn't about anything except the film's two central characters not killing each other).
Sure, the core Mortal Kombat audience may think that all of that character work is nonsense window dressing to please the suits enough to get the movie made, but that misses the potential of what this could be. After the movie, a dude behind me stayed in his seat, expounding wildly to his companions about how Mortal Kombat has this rich mythology with cool characters and how what II gets right is establishing stakes and backstory as to why these fights happen and why they matter. He's not wrong. Who gives a shit that Jax and Jade fought? The only reason that fight matters is to set up that Jax beat Jade without killing her, and that mercy pays off later to feed into Jade's conflicted arc.
Imagine what could happen if a bright, up-and-coming filmmaker turned their considerable passion and skill into making a narratively rich Mortal Kombat movie. No shade on Simon McQuoid, but the Mortal Kombat movies are great as movies for fans of Mortal Kombat. They're not the sort of film that would get most audiences into a theater and keep them there.
What if Nintendo cared that the Super Mario Bros. movie was more than just loud sights and sounds from the studio that brought everyone Minions? Nintendo has made it clear that these movies exist as global marketing opportunities to drive people to play more Mario (or other Nintendo) games. And that's fine. That's their prerogative. But as it currently goes, a Mario movie without a solid narrative, good character development, or rich thematics can crack a billion dollars. Something that did more could be absolutely explosive. Again, there is the excuse of "why bother"? But... if there's anything to take away from a film like Godzilla Minus One, it's that we don't have to choose between a rich, fabulous story and massive kaiju action. Not every movie will be that good, but there's no reason not to demand more.
But won't this just create another Marvel and sink us into another wasteland of IP-based mega movies? And won't that do more damage to the already fragile cinema ecosystem?
It's always a possibility that this continued mining of IP is bad, but it doesn't have to be. Looking at the Mortal Kombat and Super Mario movies, it's very likely that those films are getting audiences into the theater who don't normally make it a habit. It's not like those fresh audiences are going to go out and watch Hamnet, but any bodies passing through the ticket takers have a higher chance of returning than those who don't. Maybe the pre-film trailers do their work. I know my audience was more universally stoked for the new Street Fighter movie than they were for either The Odyssey or Dune Part 3. Maybe they have a great experience screaming at the carnage and reacting to the big moments. The fans in my screening applauded when the game's co-creator turned up as a bartender. Wanting to recapture that thrill is great for the larger theatrical ecosystem.
As to whether it's bad that we're still making IP, that makes it sound like there's some grand moment where original films were the name of the game and we've only recently had this lack of originality. That might have been true in the 70s and 80s, but The Wizard of Oz is a fabulous classic even though the film came decades after the original publication. Even Hitchcock made Rebecca.
(Yes, we have a sequel problem, but that's only because Hollywood has grown fat and lazy on primarily greenlighting sequels; there is a point at which audiences will lose faith that they'll be any good.)
Original films have always happened, but adaptations have been happening since the dawn of film. Translating something from one medium to another provides plenty of room for creativity and originality.
There's nothing wrong with adapting novels or comic books or video games. Where things go south is when studios decide to throw their entire weight behind these projects because they own the rights to a bottomless well of possibilities. It's when they only care about recursively going back over and over and over again. It's always bad when these films are studio-first rather than creator-first. Sometimes that can work out, but audiences can smell inauthenticity from a mile away. What they want is stories with characters and emotions and themes. What they want is great films from great artists, not penguins in suits
And... yeah. They want to see Shao Khan pulp a dude's head with his giant hammer. They want to see Kung Lao's hat zip around the arena like an aerial buzzsaw. They want Scorpion to shoot out his chains and scream "Get over here!" And they can want Hiroyuki Sanada to do it.
But they can also have more. There are tons of games with strong narratives from which to build. Red Dead Redemption II, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us... there are so many. And even without a narrative, there's enough material to develop something fresh from the ground up. If these games work while a controller is in hand, they can also work while sitting in a darkened theater. It might take work to translate, but that's just the art of adaptation.
One day some creative team is going to come along and bust out a sublime adaptation of some solid video game property and blow the doors off the place. It's happened before. And then we'll be in a new era of video game movies that people spent their lives saying "we'll never see that for real/on a big screen."
That's happened before. It just might take a decade or two to get there...