Ben Lindbergh

It's all fair game.

Anything goes.

You can just do whatever you want and we'll look the other way.

And meanwhile, everyone is constantly cheating and trying to kill everyone before Mortal Kombat starts, because that's just the way it is.

There's no oversight.

And everyone, you know, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, I guess.

So we get to the actual fight here.

What do you think of Johnny Cage?

His portrayal in this movie, of course, by Carl Urban.

Does this work for you?

It was it was kind of controversial casting.

Yeah, I'm with you on that level because the complaints about his casting were like he's too old.

He doesn't have the history to fight convincingly on screen.

None of that matters because, yeah, it's just it's old, washed up Johnny Cage.

And of course, he has to rehabilitate and redeem himself and, you know, find his inner young fighter and all the rest.

And that's all fine.

That's fine.

There's no one better than Karl Urban if you need someone just to be nursing a drink, sadly, at a bar.

The thing is, though, parts of this still didn't really work for me.

Where I felt like when he was doing the more wisecracking catchphrases, pop culture references, like...