Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we are talking about the
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five supernatural martial arts film Mortal Kombat, adapted
Speaker 3: from the incredibly popular nineties video game franchise. The movie
Speaker 3: directed by Paul W. S Anderson, starring a very interesting
Speaker 3: cast that we'll get into as we go, most notably
Speaker 3: show favorite Christophe Lambert as some kind of god of thunder.
Speaker 3: First thing I gotta say about Mortal Kombat is that
Speaker 3: this is nine year old Joe McCormick's idea of a
Speaker 3: really good movie. I had the original Mortal Kombat game
Speaker 3: on Super Nintendo before the movie came out, so of
Speaker 3: course I was extremely pumped for it, and I think
Speaker 3: I was like the target demo of this movie. I
Speaker 3: was male eight eight to twelve years old, obsessed with
Speaker 3: karate and ready to accept mid nineties CGI as a
Speaker 3: legitimate visual art form.
Speaker 2: Super Nintendo. So you had the version of the home
Speaker 2: Wortal Combat that didn't have blood.
Speaker 3: No, it's all sweat or sand coming off of people
Speaker 3: like you. You'd punch somebody and something flies off of
Speaker 3: their head, but it's like tan in color.
Speaker 2: So that you did have, as I recall, a superior
Speaker 2: in my opinion, sub zero fatality, because in the Arcade
Speaker 2: version and in the Sega Genesis version that I had,
Speaker 2: he did like the spine rip like a predator. They
Speaker 2: could be good. I mean, that's a great, great one,
Speaker 2: but it's not very ice themed, and I really liked
Speaker 2: the theme of the Ninja with all this ice magic,
Speaker 2: and so the super Andes version of the Fatality was
Speaker 2: freezing solid and then shatter them, which which I thought
Speaker 2: was really It's classier and it's more befitting of an
Speaker 2: ice ninja.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. This may be
Speaker 3: a case where some I don't know the real reasoning here,
Speaker 3: but it may be a case where a censorship impulse
Speaker 3: actually produced a better artistic choice overall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So I was excited for this movie. I saw
Speaker 3: it in the theater, I think probably with my dad.
Speaker 3: I owned a copy of it on VHS, and I
Speaker 3: don't know if you recall, rob, but in the nineties
Speaker 3: VHS tapes were expensive you like had to really want
Speaker 3: a movie on tape to justify saving up to get it.
Speaker 3: I was trying to do a little math, and I
Speaker 3: think it's you know, now you can go get a
Speaker 3: Blu Ray for like fifteen or twenty bucks, but they
Speaker 3: were essentially like twenty or twenty five bucks for a
Speaker 3: VHS tape in the nineties, which is like forty to
Speaker 3: fifty dollars today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you knew once you bought this film
Speaker 2: on VHS, you were good to go. You would never
Speaker 2: have to buy this movie again.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: VHS purists out there would agree with that without the
Speaker 2: tiniest shred of irony, I'm sure. But as it worked out,
Speaker 2: like yeah, these movies you bought on VA, you ended
Speaker 2: up buying them again on DVD, then buying them again
Speaker 2: on Blu Ray, and then because you can't find your
Speaker 2: Blu ray, you buy it again as a digital purchase.
Speaker 3: And then buy it again on VHS off eBay.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, come back around to the nostalgia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I watched this tape many many times, I
Speaker 3: like acted out the scenes. I not only had the VHS,
Speaker 3: I had the Mortal Kombat Original Motion Picture soundtrack on CD,
Speaker 3: which was This was something I did a number of
Speaker 3: times as a kid. Rob, Have we ever talked about
Speaker 3: whether you did this too? Like when I liked a movie,
Speaker 3: I wanted to own the soundtrack and not just to
Speaker 3: own it, but actually like listen to the CD over
Speaker 3: and over.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I absolutely did this. I definitely had the
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat Original Motion Picture soundtrack, had it up there
Speaker 2: on the shelf, probably beside my soundtrack to The Crow.
Speaker 2: Let's See Gonna Fit were another of big ones. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously pulp fiction was in the mix, but I would
Speaker 2: go for stuff like one of my earliest cassette purchases
Speaker 2: actually was a cassette that had all the James Bond
Speaker 2: theme songs on there, but not official versions. They were
Speaker 2: all like some sort of horrible cover like.
Speaker 3: Instrumental version of Goldfinger.
Speaker 2: Almost It wasn't aimed exclusively at children, but it was
Speaker 2: something like some off brand Bond compilation that I got
Speaker 2: at Walmart on cassette. So yeah, I was very much
Speaker 2: in this boat. Like if I love the film, I
Speaker 2: wanted to read it in novel form and I wanted
Speaker 2: to listen to it in audio format.
Speaker 3: Well, we had that in common. So yeah, I got
Speaker 3: into soundtracks in fact way before I actually appreciated the
Speaker 3: album by an artist music format. And I did this
Speaker 3: with other movies too that were less in the weird
Speaker 3: house zone now. Like I remember, I really loved the
Speaker 3: soundtrack CD to the original Brian de Palma Mission Impossible
Speaker 3: movie from ninety.
Speaker 2: Six, which had soundtrack at all.
Speaker 3: It had like the cranberries and stuff on it, but
Speaker 3: I think actually my favorite tracks on it were just
Speaker 3: the Mission Impossible theme itself. It's like the the you know,
Speaker 3: the soundtrack to Sneak In Around the House.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a great theme song.
Speaker 3: But anyway, like many elementary school kids in the nineties,
Speaker 3: I was a real Mortal Kombat head from the game
Speaker 3: to the movie to the soundtrack. It was a lifestyle,
Speaker 3: which is curious because after this I really did not
Speaker 3: keep up with Mortal Kombat at all. Like I played
Speaker 3: Mortal Kombat two and three on the arcade cabinets with
Speaker 3: my friends, which I think we're both out before this
Speaker 3: movie came out, so I think, right, yeah, But since
Speaker 3: then there have been I don't know how many, like
Speaker 3: thirty seven games, new movies, TV series, a bunch of
Speaker 3: expanded mythology and lore, and I'm not really familiar with
Speaker 3: any of it. I've sort of seen it at a distance.
Speaker 3: I know the new games have characters like Jason Vorhees
Speaker 3: and Superman in them. I'm not quite sure what's going
Speaker 3: on with that.
Speaker 4: Uh and uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I really did not keep up with Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 3: despite how into it I was for a brief period
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 2: I think I've kept up with it pretty well. I
Speaker 2: wasn't really playing video games when four came out. That
Speaker 2: was the three D one that I don't think his
Speaker 2: all owned probably has an aged all that well, whereas
Speaker 2: one and two and three those are still great today.
Speaker 2: You can still play those and they're still a blast.
Speaker 2: And then I got into I think all the major
Speaker 2: installments of the franchise since for with the exception of
Speaker 2: the most recent one, because I don't have the hard
Speaker 2: way to run it, otherwise i'd probably have played it
Speaker 2: by now. But it's I think it's going to be
Speaker 2: even harder to understand because they decided it's time to
Speaker 2: factor in the multiverse for this one. So I don't
Speaker 2: know if I have the time and mental energy these
Speaker 2: days to handle that level of Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 3: But do they do like a like a reality gem,
Speaker 3: like in game explanation for why characters from other franchises
Speaker 3: are in the game.
Speaker 2: In the games that I've played, generally the outside characters
Speaker 2: are not involved in the story at all, so they're
Speaker 2: kind of external to.
Speaker 3: Story mode bonus content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then if you beat the game with those characters,
Speaker 2: they'll generally find a clever way to explain to you
Speaker 2: why leather Face just won the Mortal Kombat tournament, you know,
Speaker 2: things like that, which they do a pretty good job,
Speaker 2: so I'll give them credit. But I would say that
Speaker 2: this is something I'll hammer home again later, is that
Speaker 2: these early Mortal Kombat games, they did not have a
Speaker 2: true story mode like a lot like video games today.
Speaker 2: They had an intro that would play on the arcade cabinet.
Speaker 2: There'd be a very short like epilogue for your character
Speaker 2: that you beat arcade mode with, and that was it.
Speaker 2: The rest was just you filling in the blanks based
Speaker 2: on like the cool sounds and sights and moves and
Speaker 2: the individual aspects of these different characters. It wasn't all
Speaker 2: spelled out to you. And I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the appeals of Mortal Kombat is that it was enthralling
Speaker 2: and it was captivating, but it didn't give you, like
Speaker 2: beat by beat, like who all these characters were really
Speaker 2: supposed to be and what all their motivations were, and
Speaker 2: you got to sort of dream up the red that.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. You might that might be
Speaker 3: surprising because on the surface these games are like the
Speaker 3: content that's there is mostly pretty dumb and quite violent,
Speaker 3: but they do stimulate a lot of imagination when you're
Speaker 3: a kid, like you get to kind of make up
Speaker 3: a story as you go along.
Speaker 2: Speaking of the violence, I do want to throw in
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna sound like an old person here, but
Speaker 2: the games are just way too violent now, Like the
Speaker 2: fatalities are now just unwatchable, Like they're traumatizing to behold.
Speaker 2: Like when I the most recent games I've played in
Speaker 2: the Moral Kombat series, I'll just intentionally not do fatalities
Speaker 2: because it's just too much.
Speaker 3: It's like Saw Territory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's just too much. So but I
Speaker 2: don't know, that's just me. Evidently they're still popular, but
Speaker 2: the games are The games are still fun.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, I forgot one more thing. I did engage with,
Speaker 3: which is I've seen the sequel to the movie we're
Speaker 3: talking about today, which is Mortal Kombat Annihilation from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, which has strong so bad it's good energy.
Speaker 3: It's a movie in which Christoph Limbert would not return
Speaker 3: to reprise his role and had to be replaced by
Speaker 3: Dexter's dad.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, yes, I did not see moratl Kombat Annihilation,
Speaker 2: but I am familiar with it due to its reputation.
Speaker 2: So my memory is a little hazy on exactly what
Speaker 2: my expectations were for this film when it came out.
Speaker 2: Like the brief timeline that we've alluded to is first
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat game hit arcades in ninety two, and then
Speaker 2: the excellent sequel, Mortal Kmbat two came out in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, which, just looking at that, that's just crazy
Speaker 2: turnaround time by today's.
Speaker 3: Standards, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so I was. I was all the way in
Speaker 2: on MK two by the time this film came out.
Speaker 2: I played it like at the local Walmart until one
Speaker 2: day they turned the blood off and everyone was upset
Speaker 2: by that, which was the day Kurt Cobain died, I believe.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, strange.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that was Is there like a physical switch
Speaker 3: on the cabinet. It's like blood on, blood off.
Speaker 2: No, No, we checked, we thought of that. We're like, well,
Speaker 2: we got to find the switch, we got to turn
Speaker 2: it back on. But I guess it's inside the cabinet,
Speaker 2: and if the local parents group, you know, pressures the
Speaker 2: store owner, they'll change it. But anyway, so, and then
Speaker 2: MK two had come out on Sega Genesis. I played
Speaker 2: it there, and then MK three came out April of
Speaker 2: ninety five, ahead of this film's August eighteenth, nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five theatrical release, And yeah, MK three was pretty awesome too.
Speaker 2: So by this point in the franchise, we were three
Speaker 2: games deep in an ever expanding lore. We had this
Speaker 2: story about an interdimensional martial arts tournament that was determining
Speaker 2: the fate of the world. And I would have been
Speaker 2: sixteen at the time, so I was old enough to
Speaker 2: be a little opinionated about movie adaptations of video games.
Speaker 2: But I think also optimistic enough to think that a
Speaker 2: video game adaptation of Mortal Kombat was a good idea.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, that impulse might not have been totally misguided,
Speaker 3: because you could see little Inklings and Rob you were
Speaker 3: sharing the before we started recording this. You shared a
Speaker 3: link to some of the TV spots advertising the games themselves,
Speaker 3: like advertising the Mortal Kombat two cabinet and stuff, and
Speaker 3: they're awesome commercials, like they got incredible atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a TV commercial for MK two for
Speaker 2: the console editions and it was amazing. You can still
Speaker 2: find it on YouTube and stuff, but it was I
Speaker 2: was doing some digging. They filmed it at Shepperton Studios
Speaker 2: and Bob Keane's Image Imagination Group did the makeup. This
Speaker 2: is a group that had worked on the Hell Raiser films,
Speaker 2: Lord of Illusions, Life Force, So it looks really sharp
Speaker 2: and there are aspects of it that look better than
Speaker 2: what we see in this picture. But I remember I
Speaker 2: remember like videotaping that commercial and like rewatching it and
Speaker 2: thinking like, yeah, yeah, this this could work.
Speaker 3: Wait how did you take Did you just like happen
Speaker 3: to get it while taping something else or did you
Speaker 3: intend to tape the commercial?
Speaker 2: It was probably both. I was something and either I
Speaker 2: wasn't taking out the commercials because you know, whatever I
Speaker 2: was watching and taping was probably in the same demographic
Speaker 2: as MK two console edition. Yeah, yeah, all right, so
Speaker 2: we've provided a fair amount of the basics here regarding
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat. Joe, what's your elevator pitch? For Mortal Kombat
Speaker 2: the movie from nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: Some random fighters from around the world are invited to
Speaker 3: participate in a martial arts tournament that, it turns out,
Speaker 3: will determine the fate of our cosmos and whether our
Speaker 3: souls are to be eaten by monsters from another dimension.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that we're talking about this during the Summer Olympics,
Speaker 2: you know, which is about international competitors coming together to compete,
Speaker 2: and to a very limited extent, that's the story of
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's kind of like if the Olympics were only
Speaker 3: combat sports, and several of the competitors were from another
Speaker 3: dimension and they had four arms and were giant, and
Speaker 3: in order to win the Olympics, you had to beat
Speaker 3: those things, the monsters from another dimension, and if you
Speaker 3: lost the Olympics against them ten times in a row,
Speaker 3: something will come and eat your soul.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's kind of the plot of what is it
Speaker 2: Monster Jama?
Speaker 3: Is it Space Jam?
Speaker 2: Space Jam? That's basically a pot of space jam.
Speaker 3: Right, it's close. Yeah, speaking of we've just been talking
Speaker 3: about it as if you know, it's common knowledge. Probably
Speaker 3: a lot of people know what's going on with Mortal
Speaker 3: Kombat the video game. But for people who aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: should we very briefly describe Mortal Kombat in terms of
Speaker 3: gameplay setting in story?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Okay, So the original Mortal Kombat is a
Speaker 3: side view, one on one fighting game in which players
Speaker 3: could select from a list of seven playable characters and
Speaker 3: face off against either each other. So you fight against
Speaker 3: your friends or you could fight against the computer playing
Speaker 3: some other character, And there was a sort of a
Speaker 3: story mode, as you alluded to earlier, but there wasn't
Speaker 3: really much of a story to it. Instead, that just
Speaker 3: means you sequench Lee face off against all of the
Speaker 3: other characters in the game, one after another, and then
Speaker 3: at the end of that there are a couple of
Speaker 3: different boss fights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. You just basically go up a ladder.
Speaker 2: So with solo fights against the computer, then you would
Speaker 2: do there's some test your mites in there where you
Speaker 2: karate break things in half. There'd be a mirror match,
Speaker 2: some endurance matches, especially in that first one, they had
Speaker 2: to make the most out of a limited roster, and
Speaker 2: then you would fight the two.
Speaker 3: Bosses, right, and so the seven playable characters are Lu Kang,
Speaker 3: who is kind of the canonical hero of the video
Speaker 3: game series. He is portrayed as a practitioner of sort
Speaker 3: of classic kung fu. He's a Shaolin warrior and he's
Speaker 3: he's the good.
Speaker 2: Guy, very Bruce Lee as clearly inspired by Bruce Lee.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are two ninjas that look identical except a
Speaker 3: swapped color palette on their outfits. One is the Ninja
Speaker 3: sub Zero, who has ice powers, and the other is
Speaker 3: the Ninja Scorpion, who can throw a spear on a
Speaker 3: that grabs you and pulls you over to him, and
Speaker 3: that's his special move and he says come here when
Speaker 3: he does that. And then also he can take his
Speaker 3: mask off and breathe fire on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like an infernal revenant. I guess you'd say.
Speaker 3: There is Sonia Blade, a Special Forces operative who is
Speaker 3: at the tournament chasing after a criminal who's another one
Speaker 3: of the players named Cano happens to be the Terminator.
Speaker 3: Like half of his face is the Terminator. It's metal
Speaker 3: with a red Eye, but I don't know if canonically
Speaker 3: he is robot beyond that metal part of his face.
Speaker 2: I think it's supposed to be just like a cybernetic
Speaker 2: replacement for his eye. But it also is a weapon
Speaker 2: that shoots a laser beam. At least in later games,
Speaker 2: that shoots a laser beam.
Speaker 3: That's right. So you got the sort of the cop
Speaker 3: and the criminal. I think in the later games there
Speaker 3: is more straightforwardly even than Sonya Blade, a character who's
Speaker 3: just like a cop, who just has like police equipment. Yes,
Speaker 3: Striker is the cop that shows up in him k III.
Speaker 3: That's the strange choice. I'm just in a tournament here,
Speaker 3: but I have my like police anyway. There's also two
Speaker 3: more characters in the first game. There is Johnny Cage
Speaker 3: you can play as. He's a movie star, like a
Speaker 3: martial arts movie star, based I think on Jean Claude
Speaker 3: van Dam And then he does the split punch right right,
Speaker 3: he does the splits and punch it. Yeah, it goes down,
Speaker 3: splits and punches in the groin area, which plays into
Speaker 3: the movie we're about to talk about. And then finally
Speaker 3: there is Raydon, who is a god. Seems kind of
Speaker 3: unfair that a god gets to face off against all
Speaker 3: of the other human fighters, but he is a god
Speaker 3: who has electricity powers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the name very loosely based on the Japanese thunder
Speaker 2: deity Ragion. And also the character is very clearly inspired
Speaker 2: by the lightning empowered member of the Three Storms in
Speaker 2: Big Trouble in Little China. John Governor's Big Trouble in
Speaker 2: Little China is an obvious strong influence on Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 3: Yes, on this character in the game, but also on
Speaker 3: the way Raydin is portrayed by Christopher Lambert in the movie. Now,
Speaker 3: just a couple of other things to mention from the
Speaker 3: game that'll play into the film. As we've alluded to, Like,
Speaker 3: all the characters have their own different special moves, Like
Speaker 3: they can all punch and kick and jump, but then
Speaker 3: they've got these special moves that you would enact by
Speaker 3: entering a different series of buttons in the game. So
Speaker 3: like Lukang can shoot a fireball and he can do
Speaker 3: a flying kick, and kane O can throw a knife
Speaker 3: and he can like turn into a ball and fly
Speaker 3: across the screen. Sub Zero can shoot ice and so forth.
Speaker 3: One thing that kind of separates Mortal Kombat, and I
Speaker 3: think perhaps justifiably drew the ire of some like parents
Speaker 3: who are watching their kids play this game, is that
Speaker 3: the game is not just about like physical fighting, but
Speaker 3: it is explicitly a fight to the death. And at
Speaker 3: the end of a fight you are there is like
Speaker 3: a voice that comes on when one side has been
Speaker 3: defeated and tells the victorious party to finish him I guess,
Speaker 3: meaning kill him, which then you can do one of
Speaker 3: your fatalities, which is a special move. For example, where
Speaker 3: the Scorpion, the Yellow Ninja, he pulls his mask off
Speaker 3: and breathes fire on the other person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, reduces you to a skeleton which then crumbles to
Speaker 2: the ground. These were a huge hit. You know. You're
Speaker 2: looking up these special moves and the special fatality inputs,
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps bringing them to the arcade with you
Speaker 2: on a little sheet of paper, folded up page from
Speaker 2: a magazine.
Speaker 3: That's learning how to do research. It's an important skill. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then of course you had your non playable villains
Speaker 3: in the game. One of them is Goro, who's this
Speaker 3: big scary guy who's huge and he has four arms
Speaker 3: instead of two. He will factor into the movie and
Speaker 3: then there is Shang Sung, the Big Bad of Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 3: who was an evil sorcerer who could shape shift into
Speaker 3: the form of any other fighter in the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this character was clearly inspired, at least to
Speaker 2: some degree, by the character of Lopin in Big Trouble,
Speaker 2: Little China.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, should we put this in the context of
Speaker 3: any other movies based on video games we have done
Speaker 3: on Weird House. The nineteen ninety three Super Mario Brothers movie,
Speaker 3: which I still maintained, is one of the weirdest movies
Speaker 3: we've done on the show, and one of the weirdest
Speaker 3: movies I have ever seen. Mortal Kombat in the movie
Speaker 3: is a pretty strange cultural artifact, but as an adaptation
Speaker 3: of its source material, I think it's a lot more
Speaker 3: straightforward than Super Mario Brothers. Like, so, the game is
Speaker 3: about a weird, supernatural martial arts tournament where people around
Speaker 3: the world come to fight to the death. The movie
Speaker 3: is about that too. Super Mario Brothers instead veers way
Speaker 3: way off into its own Dennis Hopper mud bath and
Speaker 3: just I don't know, it introduces a lot of its
Speaker 3: own stuff, and all that stuff is quite unexpected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Super Mario Brothers as a motion picture doesn't right
Speaker 2: itself to the same degree that Mortal Kombat does.
Speaker 3: And I think to some degree that's because the Mortal
Speaker 3: Kombat game premise, I would assume it seems quite clear
Speaker 3: it is based on movies of a certain type, movies
Speaker 3: like Enter the Dragon, but there are a lot of
Speaker 3: movies of this with this basic premise that it's like
Speaker 3: a destination martial arts tournament that is ruled over by
Speaker 3: some kind of evil king or sorcerer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so it's yeah, pretty simple structure to sort
Speaker 2: of aspire to there, and then at least in the game,
Speaker 2: your mind kind of fills in the blanks. And then
Speaker 2: not to say it's I think it is a challenge
Speaker 2: for the screenwriter, and I think you see that in
Speaker 2: this film, like there are certain story points that have
Speaker 2: to be created and nourished in order to make this
Speaker 2: work on any level as a picture about characters, and
Speaker 2: then they go for it, and I think it mostly works.
Speaker 2: But I can imagine some people, some like fans of
Speaker 2: the film and maybe even I thought this to some extent,
Speaker 2: like wondering like why do we care about this character?
Speaker 2: It's like, well, you've got to have these things it
Speaker 2: can't just be one fight after another. That's what the
Speaker 2: video game is. This is a movie. It needs to
Speaker 2: tell some sort of story.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm kind of two minds about that stuff, because
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the character development in the
Speaker 3: movie is on its face laughable, But at the same
Speaker 3: time it works pretty well as a plot glue that
Speaker 3: just helps chain one scene into the next and keeps
Speaker 3: the movie moving.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's mainly where it succeeds,
Speaker 2: because to be clear, there's not a lot of character
Speaker 2: development to go around in this picture. Some characters don't
Speaker 2: get it at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, maybe that leads into some of my
Speaker 3: summary thoughts upon revisiting Mortal Kombat this time. I think
Speaker 3: for the most part, you could say you could certainly
Speaker 3: make the case that the scripting is not great. It's
Speaker 3: strangely heavy on these two dy little banter exchanges between
Speaker 3: our heroes, a lot of hate flirting. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, there are quite a few memorable lines, and
Speaker 3: I think that is mostly due to qualities of delay livery,
Speaker 3: which brings us to the question of acting. I think
Speaker 3: the acting in the movie is quite a mixed bag.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of velvety, rich villain performances, one
Speaker 3: in particular that really stands out, which are accompanied by
Speaker 3: a fine Christoph Lambert pairing. But a lot of the
Speaker 3: other actors are just sort of treading water and they're like,
Speaker 3: what is going on in this movie? I don't know,
Speaker 3: We're just getting through this scene. But that's what you'd
Speaker 3: often expect from a martial arts movie. However, despite some
Speaker 3: of the limitations of the script and the acting, this
Speaker 3: movie is not boring. It has lots of zippy energy
Speaker 3: and it's just fun the whole way. It really maintains
Speaker 3: a strong sense of momentum, I think due to some
Speaker 3: choices about editing a pretty good discipline about not letting
Speaker 3: any of the fights or really any of the scenes
Speaker 3: that all go on too long. It just keeps moving,
Speaker 3: and it really uses music to great effect to keep
Speaker 3: the energy up and keep a feeling of forward motion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Also, I'll say that the martial arts scenes are on
Speaker 3: the whole a lot better than I expected them to be.
Speaker 3: When coming back to this, the fights mostly convey some
Speaker 3: amount of drama. Longtime listeners will be familiar with my
Speaker 3: gripe about action scenes, but for newcomers, if you want
Speaker 3: to hear it briefly. I think action scenes are often
Speaker 3: quite boring in movies because there's really no drama to them.
Speaker 3: There's no meaningful exchange of power, no genuine fear for
Speaker 3: the character's fate. Nothing is revealed about the characters, no
Speaker 3: questions are asked or answered, there's no effect on the
Speaker 3: broader story. They're often just an interlude where we take
Speaker 3: a break from the story to watch some violence happen.
Speaker 3: But great action scenes transcend to this by containing drama
Speaker 3: within them. And you know what, I think Mortal Kombat
Speaker 3: does a reasonably good job at making the fights dramatic.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think the fight most all of the fights
Speaker 2: hold up really well. That they tell a story. That
Speaker 2: is That's always been my key way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Like you can't just lot of films, especially Western films,
Speaker 2: if they engage in some fights, it'll just be like
Speaker 2: some moves. You'll see some moves, you'll see some you
Speaker 2: get a vibe of fighting, but you don't get the
Speaker 2: sense of there being a story. There a story where
Speaker 2: there are obstacles to overcome, there's conflict, there are stakes,
Speaker 2: there are little callbacks and so forth. Like a great
Speaker 2: cinematic fight is going to have all of these elements
Speaker 2: and you can become lost in its own inner drama.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. Another thing about this movie stylistically,
Speaker 3: it is extremely nineteen nineties. I think if you were
Speaker 3: to be teaching a film class about the conventions of
Speaker 3: popular filmmaking during the nineties and you're making a viewing
Speaker 3: list for that class, this movie should be on it.
Speaker 3: It strongly reflects that music video influenced style that was
Speaker 3: dominant in blockbuster films of the time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so it's really kind of a minor miracle
Speaker 2: that the fight scenes are so good, because when I
Speaker 2: think about that music video style, I can instantly turn
Speaker 2: my head to various examples I'm not going to call
Speaker 2: them out here, but various examples where you have that
Speaker 2: kind of music video vibe to the fight sequences, where
Speaker 2: it is all vibe and it is not about telling
Speaker 2: a story.
Speaker 3: It's just stuff happening. It's just loud noises, flashes of things.
Speaker 3: You can't tell where anybody is or what's going on
Speaker 3: or why it matters. But this movie, yeah, mostly not
Speaker 3: like that. The fight scenes are well choreographed and well
Speaker 3: filmed thumbs up to that. Special effects also a mixed bag,
Speaker 3: but leaning toward the negative, I would say the standout
Speaker 3: element is some truly egregious CGI. I think we've called
Speaker 3: out this movie before on the show is a nideer
Speaker 3: of CGI in big budget movies. The technology was not
Speaker 3: ready to be used the way it is used in
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 2: I don't think i'd seen this film since the nineties,
Speaker 2: so I was prepared for the CGI to be rough.
Speaker 2: But it was worse than I remembered it. Like, I
Speaker 2: remember being excited the CGI this film and thinking it
Speaker 2: was like pretty cool.
Speaker 3: It seemed great at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seemed amazing at the time. Now it looks
Speaker 2: very very liquid television in the worst ways. And I
Speaker 2: say that as someone who loved liquid television at the
Speaker 2: time on MTV. But then the other thing is I
Speaker 2: expected to be really excited about the film's practical effects,
Speaker 2: namely the Goro effects, and this didn't hit the right
Speaker 2: notes for me either. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, let's get into that in a bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll come back to Goro, but let's go ahead
Speaker 2: at this point. Let's go ahead and listen to a
Speaker 2: little bit of the trailer audio. For Mortal Kombat. I'm
Speaker 2: almost certain we're gonna hear just a little snippet of
Speaker 2: that Mortal Kombat theme song.
Speaker 4: In each of us, there burns the fury of a warrior.
Speaker 3: Generation.
Speaker 4: A few chosen to prove it. One of you three
Speaker 4: will this side. Yeahut, come of the tournament, three strangers,
Speaker 4: You'll travel to the mystical realm of outworld to defend
Speaker 4: our people against Shang Sung. You will live and it
Speaker 4: forces of darkness in an ancient tournament. One more victory.
Speaker 4: Your song, It's mine in our world? Is theirs?
Speaker 1: Has begun?
Speaker 3: Be saying I don't need to run.
Speaker 4: Combat begins?
Speaker 2: All right. If you're wondering at this point, where can
Speaker 2: I watch Mortal Kombat the nineteen ninety five cinematic treatment, Well,
Speaker 2: it is widely available in pretty much all formats, including
Speaker 2: various franchise bundles. I streamed it on Max, but I
Speaker 2: also realized I own a digital copy that I received
Speaker 2: as some sort of an Xbox bonus for one of
Speaker 2: the you know, the recent games with like I don't
Speaker 2: know ten or twelve or something, maybe eleven. I don't know,
Speaker 2: the tenth, eleventh or twelfth game, one of them They're like,
Speaker 2: here have the ninety five film version as well for.
Speaker 3: Free download code or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you just got it through like the Xbox
Speaker 2: film download things. So I watched it on Max. I
Speaker 2: don't think that there is a definitive special edition or
Speaker 2: anything here. So this is very much a case of
Speaker 2: watch it wherever is least painful for you.
Speaker 3: I guess I watched it by getting into a time
Speaker 3: machine made by the Tubular Corporation and going back to
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five to my local cineplex.
Speaker 2: There you go. Maybe the effects are better if you
Speaker 2: said it in the nineties, you know, like not only
Speaker 2: in terms of expectations, but in terms of like picture quality.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the people who made this film.
Speaker 2: We mentioned that the director is, of course Paul W. S.
Speaker 2: Anderson born nineteen sixty five, English director and writer and producer,
Speaker 2: who started out in TV writing for the British crime
Speaker 2: series LCID starring Alfred Molina at least in the first
Speaker 2: couple of seasons. I think someone else came in to
Speaker 2: lead it after that. But Anderson made a big splash
Speaker 2: as a director after this with the violent crime drama
Speaker 2: Shopping in ninety four, which He also wrote, I have
Speaker 2: not seen it, but it features an excellent cast, including
Speaker 2: the feature film debut of Jude Law, and it features
Speaker 2: an extremely stacked soundtrack featuring such acts as Stereo MC's
Speaker 2: Salt and Peppa Emf and Utah Saints.
Speaker 3: Oh, Utah Saints are on this soundtrack. Yeah, Yeah, they've
Speaker 3: got some really good hype music in there.
Speaker 2: So it is worth noting, yeah, that Paul W. S
Speaker 2: Anderson clearly put a lot of stock in the soundtrack
Speaker 2: to these pictures that he was involved in, and he
Speaker 2: brings a lot of I think enthusiasm, especially for electronic
Speaker 2: music of the time period. Yeah, So Mortal Kombat was
Speaker 2: his follow up to the success of Shopping, which was
Speaker 2: a big commercial hit. Even Roger Ebert admitted that it
Speaker 2: was better than expected, and he would follow this up
Speaker 2: with nineteen ninety seven's Even Horizon, a film that certainly
Speaker 2: wears its inspirations on its sleeves. But this was a
Speaker 2: huge favorite of mine upon its release, and it's still
Speaker 2: one that I'd come back to now and again, I'm
Speaker 2: probably overdue to revisit and see how I feel about
Speaker 2: it at my current age.
Speaker 3: You know, I just recently put on event Horizon sort
Speaker 3: of in the background while I was doing something else
Speaker 3: and tuned in for a few scenes here and here
Speaker 3: and there. And I'm gonna say I think I feel
Speaker 3: about it similar to how I feel about Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 3: which is that it's hard to say like it's a
Speaker 3: good movie, but it really does have its charms.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It has a great cast, has some great sets,
Speaker 2: great look in many ways, and the score was a
Speaker 2: collaboration between Michael Kaman and the English electronic duo The Orb.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people look fondly back
Speaker 2: on Event Horizon. And he followed that up with Soldier
Speaker 2: starring Kurt Russell, and that one was scripted by David Peeples,
Speaker 2: one of the screenwriters for Blade Runner. But I've never
Speaker 2: seen that one, and that one, I'm to understand kind
Speaker 2: of failed to find an audience. Really. His next big
Speaker 2: picture was a return to video game adaptations, because you know,
Speaker 2: he'd proven himself there, and so he came back with
Speaker 2: two thousand and two's Resident Evil, which proved another huge
Speaker 2: hit and kickstarted a French eyes of films starring his
Speaker 2: soon to be wife, Nila Djoviovic. Anderson directed films one, four, five,
Speaker 2: and six in that franchise, and also remained active as
Speaker 2: a writer and producer on other installments, including the one
Speaker 2: that Russell McKay directed in two thousand and seven, Resident
Speaker 2: Evil Extinction.
Speaker 3: I did not know they'd made it to six Resident
Speaker 3: Evil movies. Yeah, I think I saw the first two.
Speaker 2: I think I saw one, and then I saw part
Speaker 2: of Russell McKay's and I was I was impressed by
Speaker 2: what I saw, but for some reason I didn't finish it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Those Resident Evil movies are the kind that I know.
Speaker 3: I've seen them. I remember literally nothing at all about them.
Speaker 3: Couldn't tell you a single thing.
Speaker 2: Now, we also have to mention that Paul W. S
Speaker 2: Anderson directed two thousand and four's Alien Versus Predator. That's
Speaker 2: probably a film we could do a whole episode about.
Speaker 2: But to be fair, I have to stress that while
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a solid entry in the
Speaker 2: Alien franchise, you can make a case for being a
Speaker 2: solid entry in the Predator franchise. I think I'm mostly
Speaker 2: glad that it's considered non canon, but I still do
Speaker 2: remember seeing it and being entertained by it. I don't
Speaker 2: remember being bored in Alien Versus Predator, and I remember
Speaker 2: many of the effects being pretty terrific, So I probably
Speaker 2: need to revisit that one as well, even though I
Speaker 2: don't really want to.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you feel obligated.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I feel obligated. I'm sure I
Speaker 2: would enjoy myself if I rewatched it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I probably would too.
Speaker 2: Like if I'm faced with, Okay, do I rewatch Alien three?
Speaker 2: Or Alien Resurrection or Alien Versus Predator. It's a strong
Speaker 2: case to be made for each of these films for
Speaker 2: pretty different reasons.
Speaker 3: I think I'm on the record being a really not
Speaker 3: a fan of Alien Resurrection. I would do Three, then
Speaker 3: a VP, then Resurrection.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty solid, all right. Other Anderson films
Speaker 2: include a two thousand and eight update of Death Race,
Speaker 2: twenty eleven three Musketeers movie that has a pretty amazing cast,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen's POMPEII, twenty twenties Monster Hunter, and up next,
Speaker 2: this one actually has me a little bit interested. Lost Lands,
Speaker 2: a werewolf fantasy movie starring Mila Jovivic and Dave Bautista
Speaker 2: based on a story by George R. R. Martin. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that could fly drastically off the rails, but it
Speaker 2: could be really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got to see it all right now.
Speaker 2: On the writing front, Mortal Kombat ninety five credits the
Speaker 2: creators of the Mortal Kombat franchise, that being ed Boone
Speaker 2: born nineteen sixty four and John Tobias. Famously. Of course,
Speaker 2: these two last names spelled backwards create the Ninjas. The
Speaker 2: name of the shadow ninja Nube Sibot in the franchise,
Speaker 2: Nube Saibot is not in this film.
Speaker 3: Though, very cool sounding ninja.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of these two individuals. Ed Boone remains creative
Speaker 2: director and team leader on all Mortal Kombat and related
Speaker 2: games at nether Room Studios. He's pretty active on social
Speaker 2: media as well. He also did a lot of the voices,
Speaker 2: So Scorpion's voice is ed Boone, and we hear ed
Speaker 2: Boone's voice as Scorpion in this picture. John Tobias is
Speaker 2: widely considered to have been really instrumental in the first
Speaker 2: four Mortal Kombat games, you know, that really established much
Speaker 2: of the mythos and the lore. But after that, I
Speaker 2: believe he parted ways with the production and kind of
Speaker 2: went off on his own.
Speaker 3: One of the goofy er choices in this movie is
Speaker 3: that it does use sound effects from the video game
Speaker 3: in the movie. I don't remember all the examples, but
Speaker 3: you know, there's a voice over in the game, so
Speaker 3: like when you select a player, it'll say their name,
Speaker 3: it'll go Scorpion, and I think they use stuff like
Speaker 3: that in the movie.
Speaker 2: Actually, I mean maybe there are voices in the room
Speaker 2: that were like, this is what video game fans want
Speaker 2: and we should give it to them, which brings me
Speaker 2: to the screenwriter for this, which I can't help This
Speaker 2: is me projecting, but I can't help but notice that
Speaker 2: screenwriter Kevin Droney was born in nineteen forty eight. That
Speaker 2: was the same year my dad was born. I can't
Speaker 2: help but think back and to imagine me as a
Speaker 2: sixteen year old and my dad writing a Mortalbat film.
Speaker 2: Not a fair comparison, but at any rate. Droni writer
Speaker 2: and producer who previously scripted episodes of TVs, The Equalizer,
Speaker 2: Jake and the Fat Man, Hunter and Highlander, the TV series,
Speaker 2: among others, as well as the TV movie Down Came
Speaker 2: a Blackbird starring Roald Julia, Laura Dern and Vanessa Redgrave.
Speaker 2: After Mortal Kombat. He worked on the screenplay for the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine Wing Commander film Hilary.
Speaker 3: He's writing for Raal Julia and Vanessa Redgrave and Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm really only familiar with his work here,
Speaker 2: and again he gets the job done. You know, he
Speaker 2: takes he adapted the Mortal Kombat video games into a
Speaker 2: workable screenplay.
Speaker 3: So it is a dumb screenplay, but this machine cranks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Top Build. In this film we have
Speaker 2: Christopher Limbert playing Lord Raydon with a wha, I don't
Speaker 2: I didn't look that up. Why it has a y
Speaker 2: in it?
Speaker 3: For this he gets spelled in different ways in different games. Also,
Speaker 3: like there, I don't remember which was which, but like
Speaker 3: it was spelled differently in the Arcade Cabinet versus the
Speaker 3: console versions.
Speaker 2: All right, well, Lambert, We've talked about Lambert before. He's
Speaker 2: one of our favorites. Born nineteen fifty seven, French franchise mainstay.
Speaker 2: We discussed him at length in our pair of episodes
Speaker 2: on Highlander two. This is he's again Top Build here,
Speaker 2: but he's more of a supportive character. He's, like you said,
Speaker 2: he's kind of one of two actors who were kind
Speaker 2: of the glue holding the whole thing together. He did
Speaker 2: not reprise this role in the sequel, as Rayden would
Speaker 2: be played in that in Annihilation by James Ramar. Of course,
Speaker 2: Dramar was in The Warriors and looking at his filmography
Speaker 2: everything else as well. This is one of those guys
Speaker 2: is just continually acted in anything and everything.
Speaker 3: Now he plays his role as openly cheesy, which not
Speaker 3: everybody in the movie does, like some characters are playing
Speaker 3: their role fairly straight. For example, our heroes mainly play
Speaker 3: their role straight. But Lambert is act He's on a
Speaker 3: different level. Like he is embracing camp and cheesiness openly,
Speaker 3: and it brings a wonderful kind of seasoning to the proceedings.
Speaker 3: I think that contrast between some actors taking it seriously
Speaker 3: and a couple of actors primarily Lambert not doing that,
Speaker 3: it works out pretty well. But it also there are
Speaker 3: moments where he turns it on and and kind of
Speaker 3: does take it seriously. There are only a few of them,
Speaker 3: but those I don't know. It's charming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree, Like there's some points where he
Speaker 2: brings a serious tone that really powers up the exposition
Speaker 2: dumps and then other times he's a little lighter and
Speaker 2: a little silly, and it's it's interesting to think about
Speaker 2: this in terms of where they ended up going with
Speaker 2: the Raiden character in the later games, where Raidin is
Speaker 2: very serious and all the imust consult the older gods
Speaker 2: and all this, but in this film, Lambert plays him,
Speaker 2: and I feel like Rayden is written as a kind
Speaker 2: of trickster god who's helping humanity but on one level
Speaker 2: genuinely wants to help them, but also is amused by them,
Speaker 2: And so you're not exactly sure, like what which is
Speaker 2: his primary motivation seen to scene, and I think it's
Speaker 2: more befitting of a supportive role god character and something
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 3: But he's also partially playing it like a beloved sitcom character.
Speaker 3: He has what happened catch phrases, Oh yeah, he says,
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: He says it three times that I counted, I don't
Speaker 2: think so. So.
Speaker 3: I would not be surprised to learn that Christophe Lambert
Speaker 3: did this entire movie without knowing what it was about,
Speaker 3: and only read his lines for the first time on
Speaker 3: the day he was shooting his scenes. I can't prove
Speaker 3: that just feels possible, but he but still he provides
Speaker 3: this wonderful just signature twinkling eye and mischievous chuckle and
Speaker 3: all is right with the world. I'm so glad he's
Speaker 3: here now.
Speaker 2: While Lambert is the top build actor, Raydn again is
Speaker 2: not the main character. He's not our true protagonist. Our
Speaker 2: protagonist is Lou Kang, of course, played in this film
Speaker 2: by Robin Chu born nineteen sixty. Not only is he
Speaker 2: the true hero of this film, he is the canonical
Speaker 2: winner of the first three Mortal Kombat games. So you know, reminder,
Speaker 2: never bet on a Mortal Kombat game because Lu King
Speaker 2: is always the winner if.
Speaker 3: You can get good adds betting on him. I guess
Speaker 3: you should, I guess. But yeah, He's always going to win.
Speaker 3: It's just how it works.
Speaker 2: And he shit so. Robin Schu born in British Hong Kong,
Speaker 2: raised in la and while at California State University, he
Speaker 2: decided to travel to mainland China to study wushu martial arts.
Speaker 2: He finished his schooling in the US, but then traveled
Speaker 2: back to Hong Kong, where he got into stunt work
Speaker 2: in Hong Kong cinema and this basically spilled out into
Speaker 2: small parts some Hong Kong productions as well. So prior
Speaker 2: to Mortal Kombat, he'd appeared in such Hong Kong films
Speaker 2: as nineteen eighty eight's The Big Heat co directed by
Speaker 2: show favorite Sue Hawk and nineteen ninety threes Undefeatable. But
Speaker 2: then he's out of the blue cast in Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 2: So this is a huge break for him, you know,
Speaker 2: going from basically smaller roles in Hong Kong productions to essentially,
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe not top bill, but still the main
Speaker 2: character in the fairly big budget production that ends up
Speaker 2: being a summer blockbuster release. He would follow this up
Speaker 2: with ninety seven's Mortal Kombat Annihilation, reprising the role of
Speaker 2: course Beverly Hills Ninja. The same year, he was in
Speaker 2: an episode of The Outer Limits. From nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: he was in Death Race Street Fighter, The Legend of
Speaker 2: Chun Lee in two thousand and nine, Deathrays two Into
Speaker 2: twenty ten, Deathras three, Inferno in twenty thirteen. He's also
Speaker 2: written and directed I Believe that the film is two
Speaker 2: thousand and three is Red Trousers The Life of the
Speaker 2: Hong Kong Stuntmen, and he is also credited with fight
Speaker 2: choreographer additional fight sequences for this film. So I guess
Speaker 2: you got to throw in some of his own special
Speaker 2: sauce in some of his fight scenes here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I also really like him here. None of
Speaker 3: the characters in Mortal Kombat are written with great finesse,
Speaker 3: and our hero role here is no exception to that.
Speaker 3: But Robin Show is a great casting choice, and he
Speaker 3: shines through due to just strong baseline likability. He's handsome,
Speaker 3: He's charismatic, but not in a big overt way. He's
Speaker 3: got an understated charisma. He rips in his martial arts
Speaker 3: scenes and just gives off good guy energy even in
Speaker 3: the scenes where he's bringing a bad attitude. He also
Speaker 3: has astoundingly voluminous hair. It's at almost glam metal volume.
Speaker 3: I'm in awe.
Speaker 2: It is impressive hair. Yes, the wind is often catching
Speaker 2: it just right.
Speaker 3: Who did the hairstyling in this movie generally quite good?
Speaker 2: Catherine Reese, Michael Pockel, and Alicia M. Trippy. Those are
Speaker 2: the three three individuals credited. I don't know which one
Speaker 2: is responsible for this hairday, though, hats off two.
Speaker 3: You three quite literally because you wouldn't want to put
Speaker 3: a hat on that feathered de.
Speaker 2: It just wouldn't be the same if Luke King was
Speaker 2: fighting at a ball cap. Yeah, trucker hat, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know now I'm picturing it sounds pretty cool,
Speaker 2: all right. Then we have Johnny Cage, played by Lyndon
Speaker 2: Ashby born nineteen sixty American actor and martial arts practitioner.
Speaker 2: His credits go back to eighty six. They include the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven Werewolf TV show that we frequently referenced.
Speaker 2: He'd mostly done TV work prior to Mortal Kombat, but
Speaker 2: also some action films sprinkled in there as well. For instance,
Speaker 2: there's a role as one of the ERPs in the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four film Wyatt Erp. And his post Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat credits include thirty five episodes of Melrose Place, Wild
Speaker 2: Things Too in two thousand and four, Resident Evil Extinction,
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, prom Night, two thousand and Nine's
Speaker 2: Anaconda's Pearl, Trail of Blood, me Girls two in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen's Iron Man three, eighty eight episodes of TV's
Speaker 2: Teen Wolf. That one is a strong Russell McKay connection there,
Speaker 2: and various TV roles. On top of that, he would
Speaker 2: return to voice Johnny Cajo believe in downloadable content for
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat eleven in twenty nineteen, and I believe Christophe
Speaker 2: Limbert did the same. I don't know if he says
Speaker 2: I don't think so, but I hope he does so.
Speaker 3: I thought Johnny Cage was really cool and really funny
Speaker 3: when I was nine. Not sure I feel the same
Speaker 3: way now, or at least maybe to rephrase, I thought
Speaker 3: he at the beginning of the movie was cool and
Speaker 3: funny when I was nine. Not sure I feel the
Speaker 3: same way now. You know, early in the story his
Speaker 3: character is written smug, smarmy, and egotistical, but he's got
Speaker 3: a nice redemption arch. He redeems himself with courage and
Speaker 3: with a well executed punch to the groin when it
Speaker 3: matters most. So I think it all evens out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this role may have been important
Speaker 2: and setting the course for Johnny Cage in future combat
Speaker 2: games and media, so moving away from just sort of
Speaker 2: a cocky Van dam clone into this kind of privileged,
Speaker 2: semi hateable jerk who maybe comes through in the end
Speaker 2: for the good guys to spite his ego I should
Speaker 2: point out that Carl Urvin is going to play him
Speaker 2: in the next Mortal Kombat film, despite Urban clearly being
Speaker 2: the most Cano ready actor alive.
Speaker 3: Oh Man put him in a metal face plate right now.
Speaker 2: I think they already have a guy playing Kano, so
Speaker 2: they're like, what do you do with Carl Urban? But
Speaker 2: Carl Urban's great at comedic role, so he's going to
Speaker 2: deliver something special. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, but I feel we've waited too long. We've
Speaker 3: got to talk about Kerrie hiro Yuki Tagawa playing our villain.
Speaker 3: Shang Song in this. I love him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he is tremendous. This is the quintessential Shing
Speaker 2: Song born nineteen fifty Japanese American actor whose credits fittingly
Speaker 2: go back to an uncredited extra role as a Wingkong
Speaker 2: man in nineteen eighty six. Is Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever spotted him, but he's supposedly
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: That same year, he had a small role in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six Fred Olin Ray filmed arm Response starring
Speaker 2: David Carridine, Lee Van Cleef, Mako, Michael Berriman, and Dick Miller.
Speaker 2: I mean to the extent anything. I mean, some movies
Speaker 2: starred Dick Miller. We've talked, we've covered them on the
Speaker 2: show before, but Dick Miller is generally a supporting note.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he plays your door to door vacuum salesman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so to Goawa since this film, has acted and
Speaker 2: voice acted in tons of titles, often playing villains because
Speaker 2: he does that so very well. I can't do all
Speaker 2: of his credits justice, but just a few things to mention.
Speaker 2: He did an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
Speaker 2: He was in nineteen eighty seventh, The Last Emperor, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine's Licensed to Kill, Let's See the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one Not of This World remake and Showdown in Little
Speaker 2: Tokyo same year, nineteen ninety two's Nemesis, ninety three's Rising Sun,
Speaker 2: Thunder and Paradise one and three. In the mid nineties
Speaker 2: Babylon nine, John Carpenter's Vampires, in nineteen ninety eight the
Speaker 2: two thousand and one Planet of the Apes, and he
Speaker 2: came back to play Sheang Sung again in the twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen TV series Possibly This was a web series Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat Legacy, and a major role in the TV series
Speaker 2: the Man in the High Castle, and he would also
Speaker 2: come back to play Sheang Sung in Likeness and voice
Speaker 2: for twenty nineteens Mortal Kombat eleven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we were talking about how he seems to
Speaker 3: have been typecast as a bad guy, but you can
Speaker 3: understand why because he has a world class sneer. But
Speaker 3: he's also just a great actor. I'm sure if you
Speaker 3: gave him a lovable, friendly, good guy role, he'd do
Speaker 3: well with that as well. I think Tagawa is the
Speaker 3: best actor in this movie, or at least, let me say,
Speaker 3: make it not about the person, but gives the best
Speaker 3: performance in this movie, and it's not even close. Every
Speaker 3: scene he's in he dominates. He has this great rare
Speaker 3: skill of making even quite badly written dialogue just sing.
Speaker 3: As we said earlier, even though this is a dumb movie,
Speaker 3: it does not ever get boring, and we talked about
Speaker 3: some reasons for that, like the you know, the pacing
Speaker 3: that that keeps things moving along briskly, the use of
Speaker 3: hype music to keep the energy up. But I think
Speaker 3: a big reason it does not get boring is a
Speaker 3: couple of the major performances. One is Christoph Lambert, who
Speaker 3: just keeps things fun. But the other one is Kerrie
Speaker 3: Hiroyuki Tagawa because he's he's almost like a like a
Speaker 3: lubricant that keeps the movies motor from reaching the failure threshold.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like every scene he's in, he just
Speaker 3: makes it come alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's clearly physically and spiritually committed to every scene
Speaker 2: he's in it. It is a completely over the top
Speaker 2: mustache twirling villain roll. He doesn't have the mustache, but
Speaker 2: but you know, certainly embodies that over the top vibe.
Speaker 2: The character lacks the complexity of James Hong's lopen you know,
Speaker 2: one of the obvious inspirations for the video game character.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Tagawa makes it his own and in this
Speaker 2: film essentially becomes the quintessential shanksn moving forward. Oh and
Speaker 2: he has a great coat.
Speaker 3: Amazing coat, one of those martial arts movie costumes that
Speaker 3: makes so little sense. It's like a huge, heavy calf
Speaker 3: link leather coat. Yeah. I'm gonna do some roundhouse kicks,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to wrap my whole body in loose leather.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah. Costume design here by ha Win because
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifty five through twenty twelve, I hope it's
Speaker 2: in a planet Hollywood somewhere people can look at it
Speaker 2: while they eat their cheeseburgers. Yeah, all right, now let's
Speaker 2: move on to the character of Sonia, played played in
Speaker 2: this film by Bridget Wilson. Sampras credited. Of course, this
Speaker 2: is Bridget Wilson for this film.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of a not unkind way
Speaker 3: to say this, but this character is the source of
Speaker 3: a lot of the unintentionally funny parts of this movie.
Speaker 3: Like the scene where we meet her is probably the
Speaker 3: most unintentionally funny part of it, where she's decked out
Speaker 3: in swat gear with her partner Jacks, and they're running
Speaker 3: through the middle of a techno dance club. I don't know, Rob,
Speaker 3: if you can identify what kind of club this is
Speaker 3: supposed to be, But they're like running through this club
Speaker 3: with all these dancers with shotguns, and she's relentlessly barking
Speaker 3: out these these like tactical speed lines like secure the
Speaker 3: perimeter and stuff, and is just it's an awkward fit
Speaker 3: in their role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it's supposed to be a heavy metal
Speaker 2: rave club in mid nineties Hong Kong, which I guess
Speaker 2: maybe that's that's realistic. On Hong Kong certainly has both
Speaker 2: a metal scene and a rave scene, though nothing we
Speaker 2: see here feels actually connected to any potential reality of
Speaker 2: that now.
Speaker 3: Sonia was actually one of my favorite characters in the
Speaker 3: original Mortal Kombat game because I could do several of
Speaker 3: her special moves and I thought they were cool. She
Speaker 3: could shoot these energy rings out of her hands, and
Speaker 3: she could also do a thing where she would like
Speaker 3: stand on her hands, grab you with her ankle and
Speaker 3: flip you over. So so Sonia was cool in the game.
Speaker 3: In the movie, they really emphasized like the Special Forces
Speaker 3: revenge element. So she is hunting this guy Cano on
Speaker 3: the island, but a lot of her dialogue once we
Speaker 3: reach the island is what I would call hate flirting
Speaker 3: with Johnny Cage, where they're just like trading barbs and
Speaker 3: insults back and forth. But of course they're gonna end
Speaker 3: up falling in love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and having children. You get to play their children
Speaker 2: in the later games.
Speaker 3: What are you serious?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, no way, yeah, that's like a what a
Speaker 2: son and a son and a daughter I think, But anyway.
Speaker 3: And they let their kids enter the Mortal Kombat tournament.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, and they fight against each other too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so all that is in play. But it's often pointed
Speaker 2: out that Cameron Diaz was cast in this role and
Speaker 2: was training for the role and then suffered some sort
Speaker 2: of training injury and had to back.
Speaker 3: Out, and that could have been interesting.
Speaker 2: It could have been, And to be clear, Cameron Diaz
Speaker 2: is great, but I'm not sure if even she could
Speaker 2: have done much with this role because, like you said,
Speaker 2: she's this sort of cardboard revenge seeker action hero until
Speaker 2: suddenly she's not because then suddenly she's a damsel in distress,
Speaker 2: kidnapped by the villain. It needs to be rescued by
Speaker 2: the male heroes.
Speaker 3: Yes, this movie does. There's a tension there because they're
Speaker 3: all supposed to be fighters in this tournament, right, and
Speaker 3: they can hold their own and we do see she
Speaker 3: has a fight with Kano in the movie where she
Speaker 3: is victorious, but right for some reason, right at the
Speaker 3: break for act three, she transforms from a from a
Speaker 3: determined fighter into well, now she just needs to be
Speaker 3: rescued by the dudes. Yeah, predictable twist.
Speaker 2: Now, she would of course go on to marry tennis
Speaker 2: star Pete Samprass thus Bridget Wilson Sampress. She was a
Speaker 2: former Miss Teen USA. She started out acting on Saved
Speaker 2: by the Bell and Santa Barbara before appearing in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three He's Last Action Hero, followed by Billy Madison
Speaker 2: this film and Nixon in ninety five. Quite an interesting
Speaker 2: ninety five, I have to say, and then.
Speaker 3: Oliver Stone Movie and Mortal Yeah.
Speaker 2: Other films include I Know What You Did Last Summer
Speaker 2: in ninety seven, House on Haunted Hill in ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and she also came back to lend her voice to
Speaker 2: MK eleven in twenty nineteen. I think for some DLC
Speaker 2: all right. Another female character, a woman of mystery that
Speaker 2: shows up is the character Katana, played by Telissa Soto
Speaker 2: born nineteen sixty seven. She'd previously appeared in eighty nine's
Speaker 2: Licensed to Kill as the villain's girlfriend like the drug
Speaker 2: lord's girlfriend, and so she's not really a bad guy
Speaker 2: in that. I think she ends up she doesn't like
Speaker 2: the villain either, but then Bond chooses the other girl
Speaker 2: over her. If memory serves, if you remember any of
Speaker 2: the romantic themes and plotting of a License.
Speaker 3: To Kill, License to Kill is the one with Robert Dovey,
Speaker 3: isn't it yep yeap?
Speaker 2: So she plays Dobby's character's girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: She would reprise her role as Katana and the ninety
Speaker 2: seven sequel, and of note, she is the wife of
Speaker 2: Benjamin Brad.
Speaker 3: She has a character of power and mystery in this.
Speaker 3: She is not a human fighter in the tournament, but
Speaker 3: appears as one of the envoys of Outworld. I think
Speaker 3: they say she's the daughter of the Emperor of Outworld,
Speaker 3: and she's here at the tournament with mysterious and ambiguous motivations,
Speaker 3: and clearly the villains are sort of afraid of her.
Speaker 3: They don't know exactly what she intends to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's unfortunately in one of the least interesting fights.
Speaker 2: That's more about the passing secret information onto Luke King.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, but she saves lu Kang's life by
Speaker 3: letting him know that water freezes.
Speaker 2: That's right, all right. We mentioned Kano is played by
Speaker 2: Trevor Goddard in this, who lived nineteen sixty two through
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, English actor who often played Australian characters.
Speaker 2: I've read he might have actually been going for a
Speaker 2: cockney accident here with Kano, but what we get certainly
Speaker 2: feels Australian and it actually led to the franchise character
Speaker 2: becoming Usustralian. So I think ever since, Cano has always
Speaker 2: been Australian, and I believe he's currently played by an
Speaker 2: Australian in the new film series.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Goddard was a punk rocker turned actor who really
Speaker 2: gets to choose some scenery and some I think turkey
Speaker 2: legs in this one. Yes, he'd mostly done TV work
Speaker 2: prior to this, but went on to appear in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight s Deep Rising, which is a pretty fun
Speaker 2: creature feature, and two thousand and three is Pirates of
Speaker 2: the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl. This is
Speaker 2: the same year of his untimely passing. I would say
Speaker 2: Cano feels underutilized in the film, but Goddard literally makes
Speaker 2: a meal of many Cano scene he's in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a scene where he just eats this greasy,
Speaker 3: juice squirting turkey leg and he's very much eating it
Speaker 3: in character, if that makes sense. He's like acting through eating.
Speaker 3: I love him. In that scene. He also gets to
Speaker 3: throw the turkey leg on the floor after eating about
Speaker 3: one eighth of it or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's a food waster and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of spittles, a lot of spittle from this character. Yes,
Speaker 2: all right, I'll mention this in passing. But Peter Jason
Speaker 2: is in this in a very small role, playing Master Boyd,
Speaker 2: Cage's old trainer or whatnot. Born nineteen forty four. He's
Speaker 2: a familiar character actor who's been in everything from The
Speaker 2: Karate Kid and Congo to a slewage on Carpenter films,
Speaker 2: including the likes of Prince of Darkness, Escape from La
Speaker 2: and In the Mouth of Madness.
Speaker 3: I knew I recognized him from somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's one of those guys. He's in a lot of.
Speaker 3: Stuff, except when we see him, he's not really Master Boyd,
Speaker 3: is he.
Speaker 2: That's right, we'll get to that, all right. Voice actors
Speaker 2: Frank Welker is in this doing the voices of Shao
Speaker 2: Khan and Reptile. Born forty six. He's a voice acting mainstay,
Speaker 2: especially when you need some odd grunts. It's like weird
Speaker 2: creature noises.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So he does the squealing of Reptile,
Speaker 3: I guess, and then he at the end of the
Speaker 3: movie gets to say what, you weak, pathetic fools. I've
Speaker 3: come for your souls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the voice of Goro is Kevin Michael
Speaker 2: Richardson born nineteen sixty four, deep voiced actor who has
Speaker 2: worked extensively as a voice actor for film, TV and
Speaker 2: video games.
Speaker 3: Now, is this the point where we want to mention
Speaker 3: the Goro special effects? Because I'm a little bit on
Speaker 3: the fence. On one hand, I acknowledge that the Goro
Speaker 3: I don't even fully know how they accomplished it maybe
Speaker 3: has some combination of like a suit and animatronics or whatever.
Speaker 3: Whatever it is, it's an impressive achievement. Those four arms
Speaker 3: feel kind of real, they feel like they're moving independently.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, the design is just hideous.
Speaker 3: I want to wipe my eyes after looking at it.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that it's Goro is It's a
Speaker 2: lot to take in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But to come back on the other hand, again,
Speaker 3: I will give them that his presence, the presence they achieve,
Speaker 3: is genuinely menacing. And I remember being scared of Goro
Speaker 3: in this movie when I was a kid. It's scary,
Speaker 3: and some of the early teases of his presence are
Speaker 3: quite good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the teases are the best, really where you don't
Speaker 2: see much of them at all, but then you see
Speaker 2: all of them pretty much. And yeah, it's a weird
Speaker 2: mix because as a one hundred percent practical effect in
Speaker 2: a film that has some hideous CGI elements, you know,
Speaker 2: he's instantly admirable. You're like, yes, prove my point that
Speaker 2: that practical effects are are the best. But he also
Speaker 2: just looks a little stilted and awkward most of the time.
Speaker 2: He comes off looking like a Jack crypt Keeper, but
Speaker 2: without all the lifelike articulation of the crypt Keeper. Like
Speaker 2: the Cryptkeeper always felt real, and I wanted Goro to
Speaker 2: feel more real. I wanted to believe in him more.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, yeah, I realized, like a
Speaker 2: lot of admirable work and artistry went into creating this effect,
Speaker 2: but it just doesn't quite work. And I'm not sure
Speaker 2: exactly where the shortcoming is here, Like, is it just
Speaker 2: that he should have been a stop motion effect more
Speaker 2: or less like he is in the game. Does it
Speaker 2: come down to the way that they shot it and
Speaker 2: lit it. I Mean, I'm not sure exactly what could
Speaker 2: have improved the scenario here.
Speaker 3: Got He's got a kind of uncanny valley quality that
Speaker 3: makes him sort of gross to look at. I think
Speaker 3: it's that he looks almost like a human but has
Speaker 3: these but is held back in some way. Maybe if
Speaker 3: they had gone more fully monstrous in his design and
Speaker 3: made him a little bit less humanoid in the face,
Speaker 3: say that might have been better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes humanoid faces can be the
Speaker 2: most difficult to make work like. That's one of the
Speaker 2: you look at some of the behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 2: on The Dark Crystal and they talk about how the
Speaker 2: gelflings were the most challenging because they were the most
Speaker 2: They're supposed to be the most beautiful, the most lifelike,
Speaker 2: And I don't think they're trying to make Goro beautiful,
Speaker 2: but maybe there's a case to be made that close
Speaker 2: ups of Goro speaking should have been like a prosthetic
Speaker 2: on a human actor instead of what we have here.
Speaker 2: And I don't know. It's also probably just another testament
Speaker 2: to how great the effects are, like The Dark Crystal,
Speaker 2: where a fully artificial being is brought to believable life,
Speaker 2: like it's even if you have all the tools at
Speaker 2: your disposal, and you have a budget and you have expertise,
Speaker 2: like you're trying to create a masterpiece. So on the
Speaker 2: effects front, a lot of people were involved in this film.
Speaker 2: Tom Woodruff Junior is credited with Goro Special Effects and
Speaker 2: Goro Suit, so I think you know some of the
Speaker 2: times it is a person in a suit. Born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine tons of solid credits. He was a Stan
Speaker 2: Winston Studios guy, so he was on the team behind
Speaker 2: The Terminator and Aliens, though he'd splintered off at some
Speaker 2: point after those films prior to Mortal Kombat. All right,
Speaker 2: and then we mentioned the fight choreography. I'll mention that
Speaker 2: Patty Johnson, who lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: was a fight choreographer here, and he was an accomplished
Speaker 2: martial artist with his own action acting credits going back
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy three's Enter the Dragon. He appeared in
Speaker 2: multiple Chuck Norris movies, such as seventy nine as a
Speaker 2: Force of One. He served as fight choreographer on nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four as the Karate Kid, and also the three
Speaker 2: sequels to that, all three of the nineteen nineties Teenage
Speaker 2: Mutant Ninja Turtle movies, and he also came back for
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat Annihilation. He also plays the referee with the
Speaker 2: mustache in the Karate Kid movie The first all Right,
Speaker 2: and then finally the music. So we already mentioned the
Speaker 2: importance of music in Paul W. S Anderson films, but
Speaker 2: music is also a key part of the Mortal Kombat franchise.
Speaker 2: The video games, especially MK two, had some pretty great music.
Speaker 2: I've listened to the Mortal Kombat Too soundtrack, like the
Speaker 2: original video soundtrack a little in isolation. It has, you know,
Speaker 2: an Eastern influenced electronic vibe. I guess you maybe call
Speaker 2: it chiptune by today's standards, you know, partially inspired by
Speaker 2: Carpenter and Howart's tremendous score to Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen ninety four, Virgin Records released Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat the album by the Immortals. This is the release
Speaker 2: that gave a a number of infectious beats, some solid cheese,
Speaker 2: and also the Mortal Kombat theme song that we hear
Speaker 2: in this the nineteen ninety five film.
Speaker 3: That's what I was going to ask, if you knew
Speaker 3: is the so I think of the theme song from
Speaker 3: this film with the main Dun Dun Dun, dun du
Speaker 3: dah dun dud that thing I fully associate with Mortal
Speaker 3: Kombat going back to the games, But I actually don't
Speaker 3: know if anything like that is in the games. Is
Speaker 3: there something like that that's just straight from this album
Speaker 3: and then the movie?
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, I don't think we had anything quite like
Speaker 2: this in the video games. So I love the video
Speaker 2: game music.
Speaker 3: Like I said, yeah, man, it managed to cement a
Speaker 3: place in the early canon.
Speaker 2: They've continued to make music a big part of the franchise.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, that put up the album Mortal Kombat
Speaker 2: Songs Inspired by the Warriors. This was a part of
Speaker 2: the promotion for that year's new Mortal Kombat game, and
Speaker 2: it has some really solid EDM and dubstep tracks on it.
Speaker 2: For some of you, if you don't know what dubstep
Speaker 2: is or you just have a vague idea, I'm talking
Speaker 2: dubstep and like say, like the larger euro understanding of dubstep.
Speaker 2: So like, yes, Skrillis is on there, and Skrillick's track
Speaker 2: is really good, but there's a lot of dubstep that's
Speaker 2: more on the darker end of the spectrum, more atmospheric,
Speaker 2: especially a number of like British and euro artists that
Speaker 2: were responsible for that. So this particular release has some
Speaker 2: great tracks. It's got some stuff by Sound of Stereo,
Speaker 2: Run DMT, La, Riots, Bird Peterson, Harvard, Bass, JFK and
Speaker 2: Tokey Monsta. These are these are all really fun artists
Speaker 2: and I occasionally will we'll pick up at least a
Speaker 2: track or two off of this album and listen to it.
Speaker 2: That the run DMT track especially is really good. All right,
Speaker 2: But that's just side tension. How does this film do
Speaker 2: on the music front?
Speaker 3: Oh? As I said earlier, I think that the use
Speaker 3: of music is one of the things that really keeps
Speaker 3: the momentum up. Like we were talking, there's some great
Speaker 3: hype music throughout I'm thinking of I don't know. There
Speaker 3: are a bunch of moments, like there is a scene
Speaker 3: where Shang Sung has all of the warriors come in
Speaker 3: and like have dinner. There's this big feast and then
Speaker 3: he has his you know, oiled up muscle boys run
Speaker 3: in and they're gonna one of them is gonna fight
Speaker 3: sub Zero. And as they're getting ready for this fight,
Speaker 3: there's just a drum track that is it's great, like
Speaker 3: really gets your blood pumping. You are ready for an
Speaker 3: action scene. But there's also a lot of use of
Speaker 3: music to sort of power plot transitions. So like at
Speaker 3: the moment where lu Kang is leaving the temple after
Speaker 3: having said I'm going to the tournament with or without
Speaker 3: your consent, there's this hype track that comes on with
Speaker 3: these like ringing bells and heavy drum beats. It just
Speaker 3: sends a thrill through your body, like you you're ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the score is pretty pretty darn good
Speaker 2: and it is the work of George S. Clinton born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven. No relation to funk legend George Clinton.
Speaker 2: This is the Chattanooga born film composer.
Speaker 3: I think his names come up on the show before
Speaker 3: he did something we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't remember what it would be, because, like,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the films he worked on, and they're
Speaker 2: the likes of American Ninja two in eighty seven, Hell
Speaker 2: Bound Chuck Norris and brain Scan in ninety four, Delta
Speaker 2: of Venus in ninety five, Beverly Hill's Ninja and Moral
Speaker 2: Combat Annihilation. So I'd have to go back and look
Speaker 2: at his filmography to see what I'm forgetting that he
Speaker 2: might have scored that we've discussed before.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe I'm mistaken about that. I associated him with
Speaker 3: Austin Powers for some reason. I think he did that.
Speaker 2: I think you're right on that. I think I forgot
Speaker 2: to include that. But let's see, I think you're right
Speaker 2: on that. I think he was involved in the Austin
Speaker 2: Powers franchise.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think a lot of the original score
Speaker 3: used in the movie is very strong. But that brings
Speaker 3: us back to that CD I had, because there's also
Speaker 3: the original Motion Picture so on Track CD, which is
Speaker 3: not just the score, but it's got all the needle
Speaker 3: drop tracks.
Speaker 2: That's right. So of course we have that Immortals Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat theme song track, which is which is high energy,
Speaker 2: pretty great, infectious, cheesy, yes, all of the above. There's
Speaker 2: also a Utah Saints remix of that theme song that
Speaker 2: is maybe like a little deeper in the bass. M. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and let's see some of my favorites off of this.
Speaker 2: I would say I have to single out three three
Speaker 2: tracks that are my favorites. Okay, first of all, there's
Speaker 2: kmfdm's juke Joint Jezebel. This is the Georgio Moroder Metropolis mix.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know what the original mix sounded
Speaker 2: like because I only ever listened to this, and this
Speaker 2: is pretty basically the only KMFDM song that I know.
Speaker 2: But it's a solid track.
Speaker 3: I wonder if someday we should do the disco Metropolis
Speaker 3: on Weird House, the one with the Marauder score.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a classic. I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: classic film. And then it's it's highly regarded in terms
Speaker 2: of going back and adding a new, new, new score
Speaker 2: to a classic silent film. Yeah, all right. We also
Speaker 2: another one that I really like is Tracy Lord's Control.
Speaker 2: This is the Juno Reactor remix. It's an instrumental, so
Speaker 2: we don't hear Tracy Lord's vocals on this, But I
Speaker 2: went back and listened to the original track, and I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure I've heard this in mixes before. It's really solid. Lords,
Speaker 2: of course, also acted in a number of mainstream genre films,
Speaker 2: including nineteen ninety eighth Blade. M Oh yeah, is she
Speaker 2: a vampire? I guess yep, she was one of the
Speaker 2: vampire cronies. And then all we actually have a techno
Speaker 2: ambient classic that is a featured late in the picture,
Speaker 2: and that is Halcion plus on and on by Orbital.
Speaker 3: The sound of feeling Good. You might guess that this
Speaker 3: plays at the coda of the film, when Evil has
Speaker 3: been defeated and everybody's running around hugging it out. This
Speaker 3: when we get orbital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great track, absolutely great track.
Speaker 3: It feels like everything's gonna be okay.
Speaker 2: I also should mention and that So the soundtrack album
Speaker 2: featured some clips from the score by George S. Clinton,
Speaker 2: including the track Goro Versus Art. Art is the first
Speaker 2: name of some of the Goro fights. It's not as
Speaker 2: high concept as as it sounds.
Speaker 3: It's not that scene in Batman where the joker is
Speaker 3: like smearing on the paintings.
Speaker 2: So that would be great. I mean Goro missed his
Speaker 2: calling as a painter. But anyway, Yes, this track has
Speaker 2: bucket Head on it, so okay, okay, that's notable.
Speaker 3: There are also some tracks I like a lot less man.
Speaker 3: There's one on there that's a big Black Sabbath fan.
Speaker 3: But there's like a Geezer Butler track on there that
Speaker 3: is not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was not crazy about this one as well.
Speaker 2: I just the vocals did not speak to me.
Speaker 3: But there's some other metal on there as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the film uses several tracks by Stabbing Westward
Speaker 2: that are not on the soundtrack album. I think there
Speaker 2: Can't Happen Here, Lies and Lost, and these are all
Speaker 2: great tracks. I don't I was looking around, I know,
Speaker 2: I listened to some Stabbing Westwards some way, and I
Speaker 2: thought maybe they were on like the soundtrack to the
Speaker 2: Crow or something, but I couldn't find them. So maybe
Speaker 2: I actually had a Stabbing Westward album, but I don't
Speaker 2: specifically remember. But anyway, some of their tracks are pretty good.
Speaker 3: I don't really know them. They're like industrial metal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's somewhere in that. I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: somewhere in that alternative industrial landscape. But I'm not sure
Speaker 2: exactly where to classify them. Like, you know, you can
Speaker 2: sort of pick up on some vibes you might compare
Speaker 2: to nine inch Nails, you might compare to, you know,
Speaker 2: something like the Tea Party. But yeah, I don't know how.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'd like to hear from any of
Speaker 2: you big Stabbing Westward fans out there. You tell us
Speaker 2: where we're supposed to classify them.
Speaker 3: Now, uh oh, we're looking at the clock here. We
Speaker 3: did not at all intend for our Mortal Combat nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five episode to stretch to two parts, but I
Speaker 3: think we are at a point where we have no choice, uh,
Speaker 3: because it would be it would be ridiculous to release
Speaker 3: a three hour episode on more Combat. But I guess
Speaker 3: we've got a lot of personal history with this movie,
Speaker 3: in this franchise, so it kind of it couldn't be helped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is this is a franchise that's
Speaker 2: a part of both our childhoods and also apparently it's
Speaker 2: a Christoph Lambert film, and I guess we just can't
Speaker 2: cover Christoph Lambert films without breaking them into two parts.
Speaker 3: Oh you're right. We did that with Highlander two, didn't we. Yes, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Well once again, folks, we do not have the intention
Speaker 3: of making two part weird house episodes a common thing,
Speaker 3: but I guess it's going to happen every now and then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we will be back to really get into
Speaker 2: the plot of Mortal Kombat, and there's there's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun to be had here, so we will get
Speaker 2: to dig in and make a meal out of it.
Speaker 2: Let's see. In the meantime, you know, eating a turkey
Speaker 2: leg okay, no eating a turkey leg oh goro getting
Speaker 2: punched in the nards. There's so much fun, fun for everyone,
Speaker 2: fun for the whole family.
Speaker 3: I want to say it has begun, but it has
Speaker 3: not begun yet. It'll begin next time.
Speaker 2: That's right. So in the meantime, do feel free to
Speaker 2: go ahead and write in with your thoughts about ninety
Speaker 2: ninety five's Mortal Kombat or the Mortal Kombat franchise in general,
Speaker 2: anything we discussed in this episode or you anticipate that
Speaker 2: we'll discuss in the next episode. Right in. We would
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Let's see. First of all, Oh,
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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