If you're a Mortal Kombat fan, odds are you're excited about the upcoming movie. For good re🗹ason - it seems like a more faithful adaptation that Paul W.S. Anderson's 1996 fun but sanitized take on the franchise. But if the wait's killing you, Warner Bros. Animation just put🐷 out a stellar new part of the series - and you can watch it right now.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge turns the clock back to before the original game. It opens with a blood-soaked slaughter of Scorpion's village, as the iconic 𓂃ninja watches everyone he knows and loves get cut to ribbons by the rival Lin Kuei clan. After dying and being sent straight to hell (naturally,) Scorpion fights his way out of the underworld to seek revenge on his clan's murderers.
From there, the movie goes into very familiar territory - which is to say, it basically retells the plot of the first game and its 2011 reboot. Shao Khan puts together a tournament, Earthrealm fights for its place at the table, Johnny Cage gets horny for Sonya Blade... you've seen it all before, folks. But in terms of adaptations, Scorpion's Revenge really sticks the landing in some major ways.
What impressed me the most was the staccato pacing the movie kept up with as much exposition it frontloaded. By the end of the tight runtime, you're briefed on the tension between every realm, you have a good grasp on what the cast is all about, and you're prepared for an inevitable sequel by some late-game twists. Scorpion's Revenge is the perfect encapsulation of what makes Mortal Kombat work: it's dense enough to sink your teeth into, but fas🎃t-paced enough for even the shoꦆrtest of attention spans to latch onto.
Speaking of latching onto things, get ready to see people being pulled apart limb by limb - and much more. Without the constraints of live action budgets, the animated movie really goes all out with the gore. It's a blood-soaked romp that recreates iconic fatalities with gut-wrenching accuracy, and even works in the modern games' signatu💛re X-Ray shots. Fans of the games will feel right at home here - especially with all the little easter eggs sprinkled in.
The fights even have the same kinetic energy as the movies, thanks to its pedigree. Director Ethan Spaulding has a storied career in animation, with his most notable work being the classic Avatar: The Last Airbender and its decidedly mixed follow-up, The Legend of Korra. His experiences choreographing animated fight sequences really shines here, and the look of this whole thing bears more t൩han a passing resemblance to his previous works.
Tied together with a great cast that, most importantly, yeets Ronda Rousey's Sonya Blade to the curb in favor of beloved character actress Jennifer Carpenter, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge is a stellar piece of animation for fanཧs and newcomers alike. It manages to not only capture what makes the games so 🔜great, but also to craft a compelling and taut piece of 2D animation.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge is available right now from Warner Bros. Entওertainment.