Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat has endured as a cult classic for over a quarter of a century, but you can completely understand why the creative team behind the reboot decided to take things in an entirely different tonal direction.
The 1995 version is a gloriously overflowing bucket of cheese, while the 2021 vintage contains just as much if not more fan service, but treats the source material with reverence and respect, despite the fact that it takes itself a little too seriously at times. Director Simon McQuoid has even admitted that one of the reasons why his Mortal Kombat omitted the tournament was because he didn’t want to invite too many comparisons to what came before, although it did feature a remix of the classic techno theme tune.
The recent reboot is inevitably going to get a second installment, one which doesn’t have to accomplish too much to be considered superior to 1997’s Annihilation, and insider Daniel Richtman now reports that the next effort might bring back stars from the original pair of films. The most pressing question would obviously be why, though, when WB’s marital arts actioner sought to deliberately distance itself from the first two live-action efforts, and with the exception of the theme song, the references contained in the movie were almost entirely nodding towards the games.
Then again, nostalgia is still all the rage these days, and blockbuster franchises have proven multiple times in the past that they’re not above bringing back legacy players and casting them in completely different roles as a nod to the past, while longtime fans would probably be fully on board with the idea of seeing Christopher Lambert, Linden Ashby, Robin Shou or Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa in the Mortal Kombat universe again.