So many modern blockbusters, specifically superhero movies, merely flavor their interchangeable template with another more recognizable film genre. Some go for heists or coming-of-age comedies, others for political thrillers or supernatural horror. It’s often just a hint, a slight change in color palette or vocabulary, helping differentiate one CGI-drowned third act from another. Mortal Kombat II isn’t a superhero movie exactly—despite the roster of variously powered and endlessly quipping fighters, and all the standing around they do—but it does succumb to this formula. To its initial credit, it opts for the direct-to-video action movie as its seasoning of choice. But injecting a dash of schlocky B-movie energy into this lifeless video game sequel is like trying to defibrillate a fighter after a fatality has popped their head like a cherry tomato.
It’s because Mortal Kombat II is neither campy enough to revel in its violent bad taste, nor earnest enough to pull off its sprawling ambitions that it most resembles a late-stage Marvel entry. The film is filled with MacGuffins and plot bloat and a roster of awkward characters, dressed to perfectly match their inspirations because that surface similarity has been prioritized over anyone in the audience actually caring about them. Where this fighting game sequel differentiates itself is its R-rating, but that only takes superhero violence to its logical conclusion. Severed limbs and flying viscera would be everywhere in the MCU if not for the mandates of the PG-13 rating, so those films get all the violence with none of the consequences. Here, at least, there’s a kind of bloody honesty when fingers are severed, skulls shattered, and disposable characters dispatched with little fanfare.
That latter point allows returning director Simon McQuoid—and new screenwriter Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight)—to divest from Cole Young (Lewis Tan), the first film‘s flat new addition to the character selection screen, in favor of the powerless egotist Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). Ostensibly a flashier, sillier fish out of water with more personality than the stonefaced family man, Cage is a washed-up action star on the convention circuit by day and the bar circuit by night. An enjoyably hammy clip from one of his ’90s films initially evokes the kind of Jean-Claude Van Damme silliness that inspired the character in the first place. But then it becomes apparent that the stiff humorlessness with which Urban plays Cage isn’t part of the gag; if he’s simply playing a bad actor, he seems to have gone method. There’s already a personality vacuum in this film as it introduces one more audience surrogate to its magical cycle of one-on-one showdowns—the reluctant hero’s blandness turns it into a black hole.
Falling into the forgettable void opposite Cage, who represents Earthrealm in another hand-to-hand tournament for the fate of their dimension, is Mortal Kombat II‘s other main addition: Kitana (Adeline Rudolph). Wielding a pair of bladed fans, she’s the conflicted adoptee/hostage of Shao Kahn, the sadistic skull-themed emperor of Outworld who’s looking to add Earthrealm to his list of conquests. The early rounds of the tournament, which are just fight after fight set in explicitly unreal environments with little narrative fat to trim between them, are Mortal Kombat II at its best—it’s where that DTV action heritage shines through, directly translating the contained 2D gameplay to enjoyably over-the-top brawls. The best element to come from that enjoyably junky genre, though, is Martyn Ford, a veteran Scott Adkins heavy who gives Shao Kahn a goofy grandiosity befitting someone who looks like Hot Topic He-Man.
But little else about the film has the elegant, brainless brevity of the best DTV movies. Shao Kahn and his realm are mostly inspired by the other ’90s genre touchstone that Mortal Kombat II takes inspiration from: sword-and-sorcery TV. Kitana’s tragic backstory (her dad was murdered!) and tragic present (she’s working for the guy who murdered him!) are accompanied by weaselly necromancers, scheming wizards, and angry villagers, gallivanting around a grimdark castle and a bright Xena forest. It’s a lot to pack in—and that’s not even mentioning the desert village of Baraka (CJ Bloomfield), the latest bloodthirsty warrior to try to channel Drax’s lovable lunkhead. All of this at least has more personality than the beige holding areas where the other characters gather to discuss a mystical amulet.
It’s in these nondescript rooms where Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), and other characters only distinguishable by whether they shoot fire or ice listen to Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) tell them the movie’s plot like he’s putting his children to sleep with a bedtime story. Along the way, Cage and Kitana accept their place in these wacky realms, going on emotional journeys lasting as long as an arcade cabinet’s “Continue?” countdown. Dragging all this out into two hours means that the film’s mildly engaging fights—like those between a guy with a bladed hat and a guy who can summon dragons made from flames, or between a guy with a laser eye and a guy made of shadows—simply make you dread what’s sure to come after. Death doesn’t mean swiftly moving on to another match, but transitioning back to endless scenes of Urban sweatily snarking into dead air or Rudolph listlessly grimacing.
It’s all simply an excuse to pit the fighters against one another in different combinations and justify a third film where those who died in ridiculously gory ways can be snagged from hell (Netherrealm) to cash another paycheck. This, at least in spirit, is classic Mortal Kombat, a series founded on economical recycling. Perhaps, then, the hackneyed story and repetitive one-liners (not to mention repetitive characters, like the return of Kano, Scorpion, and more) should be taken as faithful rather than annoyingly uninspired. But joyless fidelity only really ever makes people wish they were experiencing the source material instead, whether that means reading a comic or playing a game.
Director: Simon McQuoid
Writer: Jeremy Slater
Starring: Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano, Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada
Release Date: May 8, 2026
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