Movie Review: Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020)

Based on the super popular video game series of the same name, and directed by Ethan Spaulding, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge is a 2020 adult animated movie produced by Warner Brothers Animation. Taking the mantle of “Scorpion”, Hanzo Hasashi (Patrick Seitz), seeking to avenge the death of his wife and son to the villanous Sub-Zero (Steve Blum), enters the Mortal Kombat Tournament, a series of ultra-violent fights to the death for control of the Earthrealm. Other participants include: Shaolin monk, Liu Kang (Jordan Rodrigues); self-centred action movie star, Johnny Cage (Joel McHale); Special Forces Agent, Sonya Blade (Jennifer Carpenter), as well as numerous monstrous competitors. Watching over the tournament are gods – or something like gods – including Raiden, Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, while the ever present threat of warlord Shao Kahn looms large.

+ overall I had no issues with the voice work. A few familiar names (Seitz, McHale, Carpenter) make up the core cast, with voice actor mainstays Steve Blum, Fred Tatasciore and Kevin Michael Richardson filling in a few other roles each
+ the crisp, detailed animation leads to gory video game style fights. The now expected ‘x-ray attacks’ are on show here in all their gruesome detail. More so, there does appear to be actual martial arts in the movements (think of Dragon Ball‘s animation compared to Dragon Ball Z‘s ‘flurries’)

Quan Chi (left) and Scorpion: a deal with the devil.

X-ray attacks are some of the best things in the recent games

Liu Kang, Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage: Earthrealm’s… finest?

– I don’t know the back story of any Mortal Kombat characters, so it was jarring and not entirely great to know that the now infamous ‘Scorpion’ was just some ordinary dude. It ruined some of his mystique for me
– maybe I would prefer to just watch a choreographed fight in one of the games, but I would have liked some more, proper one-on-one fights. Group battles are fun, but that’s not what I think of when I think Mortal Kombat

> Johnny Cage is just WWE’s The Miz (or, The Miz is just Mortal Kombat’s Johnny Cage). I want to see The Miz play Cage in a movie

Should you see this film: This was fun, with lots of bloody fights, but overall I can’t say I was super impressed. Without seeing much of the titular Tournament itself, this was more of a spy movie than a martial arts film. I’ll wait for the inevitable sequel to see if this is worth recommending.