Stephen Thompson

But then you get to these incredibly bloody battles, and there's literally a scoreboard in the sky that tells you how the movie is progressing.

All it really needed was an actual line with a score and the little health meter.

Sure.

And at the same time, I mean, we talked about this a little bit.

We kind of reconvened our fan service panel from Super Mario Galaxy for this conversation.

There is an element of this film that feels a little bit like a playthrough, you know, where it feels a little bit like you're watching a video game.

And if that is not necessarily your bag, but if it wasn't your bag, you're probably not going to see Mortal Kombat 2.

And so I did appreciate in this film kind of

as opposed to, I think, some of the other films in this series, not just the 2021 film, but the films from the 90s, there is this sense, I think, a little bit more of like, they're going for a certain amount of meta self-awareness here and kind of creating a little bit of a permission structure for some of the sillier and more portentous stuff, some of the

really, really clunky dialogue.

And one of the ways that they kind of get you to that point is with that Johnny Cage character, played by Carl Urban, who is very silly.

He is a washed-up action star, which gives you a chance to kind of set the film's vibe in that, like, silly direct-to-video early 90s cop...

Steven Seagal.

Steven Seagal.

Yeah.

Like, so it's, it's kind of like having its cake and eating it too, where it's like commenting on these silly movies while being a silly movie.

For me, it was constantly straddling the line of like, is this corny on purpose?

When I say the gore is like Final Destination, there are some grisly kills in this movie.

Right.

Spare me the emotional beats.