Ben Lindbergh

Except, yeah, like Josh Lawson's just outshining Carl.

I'm sorry.

Maybe it's the material.

Maybe it's direction.

I don't know what it is, but Kano's just stealing every scene.

And the new sort of emotional center to this movie, to the extent that there is one, in that first flashback origin story that we get at the beginning of the movie, we see...

a new character whom I'd imagine that you were excited to be introduced to.

So we see Shao Kahn, you know, he's conquering and pillaging and plundering.

And of course, we have Adeline Rudolph, who is new in this cast, playing Kitana.

And Kitana is just a little kid, you know, daughter of the ruler who gets killed in kind of a very Game of Thrones, the mountain style, single combat way.

And Shao Kahn's just like, as soon as he kills her dad, he's like, you're my daughter now.

It's like, I don't know if that's how it works.

I'm not sure it works that way.

I mean, you could adopt, I guess, but I'm not sure, you know, killing someone's father makes you their father by default.

Yes.

Kitana is really, you know, all these storylines kind of knit together at times and they're all in parallel and you kind of know her motivations and her resentment of Shao Kahn and you're wondering or you're supposed to be wondering, though it's pretty obvious which side she's on.

But I quite enjoyed Kitana as an addition, you know, just for the fighting, for the character design, for like actually lending a motivation to this other than just, well, we have to not lose so that Earth can't be conquered.

That was good.

That kind of served as a spine of this movie, a spine that maybe gets ripped out after a fatality.

Yeah, Katana's good.