Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid says that the film will work because it respects its source material. The highly anticipated film has a lot to live up to when it premieres in theaters and on HBO Max in April. Mortal Kombat was notoriously adapted in two films in the 1990s. The first was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who would go on to make several more video game adaptations, including Resident Evil and the more recent Monster Hunter. The second, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, directed by John R. Leonetti, completely derailed any plans for a future franchise, and a sequel was nixed. Both 90s-era Mortal Kombat films were widely seen as campy misfires.
2021’s Mortal Kombat hopes to take a new approach. It will be rated R after the earlier films stuck to a PG-13 rating. An R-rating will allow the film to be more in line with the game’s graphic violence and famous Fatalities. Mortal Kombat will also introduce an audience proxy in Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, someone new to the infamous world of the legendary tournament. On top of that, Mortal Kombat will bring on board some of the franchise’s most iconic fighters, including Sonya Blade, Kano, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Raiden.
All of this, McQuoid hopes, will make for a faithful adaptation, one that respects its source material. The director says that this is the key to making a video game adaptation and a point where others frequently fail. McQuoid also explained his process of approaching Mortal Kombat as an adaptation, looking at it more from the perspective of curation and amplification, rather than taking elements and molding them to fit his own ideas.
“I think a lot of video game movies fail – this is just a theory, I could be wrong, but this is just my gut feel – because they don’t respect the material enough. I think they think, ‘We can take this, and we can do what we like with it.’ Well, you kind of can’t.
“There’s fundamentals that you cannot change. Because if you start changing those fundamentals, then you are messing with the recipe, and it won’t taste like it should. Historically, there’s examples where they’ve taken it and then changed too much. It’s like, ‘Do something new. Don’t take that, and then change it. Why are you doing that?’ We all never wanted to do that. That was why I talk about respecting the material, respecting the fan base, and also elevating what’s there.
“The exercise is not taking it and then just making a movie about it. The exercise is taking the source material, respecting it, curating what goes in it, and then amplifying it to a new level that no one’s seen before.”
McQuoid is right in that video games seem to be notoriously hard to adapt into films. They can be largely hit or miss, alienating longtime fans of the source material by hoping to bring in new fans. Look at the Resident Evil film series as an example. Anderson, director of the original Mortal Kombat film, took on that series and created something entirely new. Fans of the games widely criticized it for its lack of adherence to the source material and now a Resident Evil reboot is in the works that is said to be much more faithful to the games themselves.
Luckily, fans seem to be waiting eagerly for Mortal Kombat. The trailer for the film proved to some that their worries may be unfounded. While it will take seeing the entire film to assuage fears that McQuoid could have messed with the beloved game, early indicators show that he’s on the right track. His comments also certainly seem to hint at a respectful adaptation process that took care with the source material. In an era when fans make themselves loud and clear, Mortal Kombat enthusiasts have high expectations and it sounds like McQuoid was listening closely to what they wanted.
Key Release Dates
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Release Date:2021-04-23
