- Title: Mortal Kombat II (2026)
- IMDb: link
At least this one has a tournament in it. A continuation of 2021’s Mortal Kombat, the characters introduced in that film finally get around to fighting for the fate of Earth. However, all are relegated to supporting status as new characters dominate the story both inside the tournament and beyond. Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a reluctant washed-up action star needing to put his atrophied martial arts skills to work, and Outworld‘s Princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) of the conquered realm of Edenia carry most of the film.
Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and Cole Young (Lewis Tan) all return to do battle in a Mortal Kombat film where more characters die outside of tournament matches than in them, The second film also finally introduces Martyn Ford as our villain, the warmongering Shao Kahn, who the script can never quite decide on how dominant his fighting prowess should be.
While more fun than the first one, finally getting around to what the audience paid to see, Mortal Kombat II isn’t without its issues. The sequel expects you have seen the first film and makes minimal effort to fill in moments or character backstory explored in the first Mortal Kombat. It also mostly wastes that work using those characters largely as fodder for the sequel. Still investing time and energy into pathos of its various characters, the choice to then kill them off in the most gory yet comedic way possible by using game-inspired fatalities creates an odd tonal disconnect that director Simon McQuoid never quite solves.
Still mostly a mixed bag, the second entry to the franchise is a modest improvement over the original with Urban’s comedic moments and Rudolph’s dramatic scenes helping to flesh out the pretty thin script. The focus on the tournament is still secondary to various other plot points including recovering an amulet and saving Lord Raiden‘s (Tadanobu Asano) life, and many of the characters of the first film are denied their moment before their eventual demise. After completing the main story, the film ends foreshadowing yet another sequel, again without a tournament, suggesting the creative team may not have learned all that much from the their mistakes in the first film.
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There are bad movies, there are awfully bad movies, and then there are movies so ridiculously bad they force you to bellow with laughter and titter with glee as they instantly earn guilty pleasure status.