The secret to making a popular and commercially successful video game movie has been hidden into view for 25 years.
Today is Paul W.S.’s 25th birthday. Mortal Kombat through Anderson and Kevin Droney. To tell you the truth, the nostalgia I feel for the film is not rooted in the film itself (I haven’t even noticed it in theaters), but in the undeniable perception that a video game-based film can simply be A) be an excuseless B – film movie and B) it’s not necessarily intended to be a box office hit at the A-level box office. Mortal Kombat’s $23.2 million national deyet, a near-record August deyet (just below The Fugitive’s $23.7 million deyet in 1993) at the time, the first Mortal Kombat was a surprise, as was its eventual $70 million nationally and $121. Million. all over the world. In retrospect, his good singing is remarkable, either because he deciphered the video game code almost from the beginning and because he embodied New Line Cinema’s unparalleled ability to take advantage of pop culture song.
Mortal Kombat was not the first video game-based film, after Super Mario Bros. in 1993 and Double Dragon and Street Fighter in 1994. While Bob Hoskins/John Leguizamo’s $60 million fantasy didn’t need to be a Super Mario Bros movie. (plays as part of The Mario film and part of “Blade Runner for Kids”) and Street Fighter received the cast and the appearance still exceeded the plot (it’s more GI Joe than Street Fighter II), Kom Mortal Kombat simply excels in Array.. being a Mortal Kombat movie. Of course, it helped that the plot of the game, over a handful of warriors participating in a fantastic and supernatural martial arts tournament, lend itself to the cinema. But the credits will have to be paid to New Line and his friends for simply smashing Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon and letting this design be the backbone of a Mortal Kombat film without excuses.
I mean, partly in jest, that a smart way to make a movie for kids is to break a successful adult movie. Peter Rabbit is necessarily “Rushmore for kids”, Pete’s Dragon is “Mom…” but for children” and, unfortunately, Maleficent has flirted with being a qualified riff for under forty-five or I Spit on Your Grave. Especially when it comes to intellectual property, if you use the design and themes of an existing adult film, you can focus on the characters and scenarios. And, yes, Mortal Kombat is an unsanctified scam by Robert Clouse and Michael Allin’s Enter the Dragon, with an Asian martial arts teacher venturing into a secret tournament to avenge the murder of an arrogant American and white brother looking to get his mojo back. And that’s perfectly normal, because it’s also an ideal design for a Mortal Kombat movie.
It helps that the film, despite the suspense epilogue, don’t worry about the next episode. He intentionally kills much of his favorite cast of fans, not knowing who will have to be there in the future. He also doesn’t mind making the main character a star in his own right or a supporting character. Follow the Star Wars Formula to a T-shirt, with a noble hero (Liu Kang of Robin Shou), an arrogant thug/public substitute (Johnny Cage of Linden Ashby) and a female army agent “fighter” (Sonya of Bridgette Wilson, who still manages to be a damsel in the third act), aligning himself with an intelligent cast of Christopher Lambert that provides a ridiculous demonstration in his unconventional accent. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa devours the landscape and spits it out as the main villain Shang Tsung, while almost all (Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile, Kano, Goro, etc.) are cannon fodder.
Looking back on the film for the first time in decades, what stands out is its duration and scale despite a budget of only $18 million. Paul W.S. Anderson knows how to make a small budget look like a big budget, and I think young children young enough to worry in 1995 were surely impressed by the undeniable concept of watching a fantastic live Mortal Kombat movie that looked and felt like a mortal. . Kombat film. Of course, it was PG-13, but it made violence and blood (mainly dust and dirt rather than blood) outrageous and taboo in a way that later, the unsenthusid diversifications of the R-score did not. It’s not a wonderful cinema, however, the film opened up when fantasies aimed at young and video-based violent and hyperviolent video games were not intended to be Tier A blockbusters. They were allowed to be strangers and/or wonderful idiots.
Mortal Kombat “broke the curse of the video game” almost from the beginning, even though Hollywood went the next two decades without learning the lessons. At a time when the undeniable concept of a Mortal Kombat film was special, it was just a Mortal Kombat film. It wasn’t a G.I. Joe’s film with Street Fighter II characters was not a $200 million imitation of Pirates of the Caribbean (Prince of Persia) and was not a $165 million foreword to the script that everyone had come to see in the first position (Warcraft). It wasn’t a Lara Croft movie that upset Angelina Jolie’s protagonist’s father a little bit (better to gather her implicitly on screen with genuine father Jon Voight) and very little time with her kicks in the ass and her descents to the graves. Oh, and it wasn’t a Max Payne adaptation where Max Payne shot someone slightly.
Paul W.S. Anderson’s six-film resident Evil series ($1.23 billion from a combined $293 million budget) has been successful for similar reasons. Rampage and Angry Birds spent their first two acts setting up the respective video game plots, but they gave us a third act full of “What You Came to See”. The same goes for Sonic the Hedgehog (which had the most of his action “Sonic revolves around Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik” for the third act). These films, as well as Mortal Kombat, gave us what we were looking for involved in notable characters, friendly/popular actors and a well-built fantasy ensemble. 25 years later, Mortal Kombat (which earned $155 million in inflation-adjusted national revenue between Tomb Raider and The First Pokémon Movie) remains one of the top-successful films and one of the highest productivity video game movies. The secret trap code for the hit video game movie hidden from the beginning.
I studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an analysis in the workplace, for almost 30 years. I’ve written a lot about everything
I studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an analysis in the workplace, for almost 30 years. I have written extensively on all these topics over the more than 11 years. My media for film reviews, workplace reviews and film bias scholarships have included The Huffington Post, Salon and Film Threat. Follow me on @ScottMendelson and like The Ticket Booth on Facebook.