In the almost 30 years since the launch of the original game, Mortal Kombat has grown into a sprawling franchise across media - comics, TV series, and both live-action and animated films. Interestingly, Van Damme would go on to star in the film version of Streetfighter a couple of years later, in 1994. If you were into one-on-one fighting games in the '90s and 2000s, you were either Team Streetfighter (intense, precise, all about the craftsmanship) or you were a Mortal Kombat loyalist (cartoonishly violent, gory, all about macabre humour and showmanship). The game that Midway launched eventually, Mortal Kombat (1992), would go on to become one of the most immediately identifiable video game franchises of all time. The character, Johnny Cage, was a brash, cocky Hollywood martial arts star whose ego often came in the way of his skills - he also shared Van Damme’s initials. But Tobias and Boon used the experience to create a new character for the game they ended up developing. Unfortunately for Midway, the Van Damme deal never materialised. Van Damme, a skilled martial arts practitioner nicknamed “the muscles from Brussels," was known for introducing a more realistic, brutal form of hand-to-hand combat to Hollywood, courtesy films like Bloodsport (1988).
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In Cyberpunk 2077, the digitised likeness of Reeves is a playable character and, of course, the actor has done extensive voice work to lend star quality to the gameplay.īack in 1991, however, the idea of playing a video game as a digitised Hollywood star held considerable novelty value, which is why the erstwhile Chicago-based video game company Midway was approached to create a gaming version of the then-upcoming Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Universal Soldier (1992).Ĭomic book artist John Tobias and programmer Ed Boon thought that featuring Van Damme as a playable character would be a big hit among fans. This film has equal parts “Karate Kid,” “X-Men,” “Indiana Jones” and more than a whiff of “Star Wars.By contemporary standards, a major Hollywood star like Keanu Reeves headlining a video game (in his case, Cyberpunk 2077 from last year ) is not particularly remarkable. If they don’t win over enemies from out there (in the, uh, Outworld,) the whole human race will be enslaved.
“The fate of Earthrealm is in our hands,” says Liu Kang. Many of his lines seem gleefully ad-libbed and he stands out in a forest of stilted dialogue.Īnyway, Cole, Sonya Blade and Kano must train for a big showdown and find their inner fighting mojo. “Hey, David Copperfield,” he says to Liu Kang after an impressive control of a fireball. Screenwriters Dave Callaham and Greg Russo have a strong tendency to lean into ancient Asian mysticism (“There is much to learn”) and stilted medieval ones, too: “The prophecy is upon us!”Īustralian actor Josh Lawson as the psycho Kano steals the movie with enough twisted humor to deserve his own franchise. Simon McQuoid does a decent job on his feature directorial debut, giving us a constantly staggered hits of dopamine in the form of controlled violence. He’s a struggling mixed martial arts fighter - really a “human punching bag” - who gets beat up for $200 a bout but has a super nice, well-adjusted family.īut Cole (Lewis Tan) has a mysterious dragon mark on his chest - “It’s not a birthmark!” he’s told - and soon learns what it means: “An ancient prophecy foretells” that a new group of fighting champions will mass and threaten order on Earthrealm, also known as, you know, Earth. Don’t waste your time.Ĭherished fighters from the game are all here - Sonya Blade, Kano, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Kung Lao and Jax - interwoven into the story of a new character - Cole Young.
“I’ve spent years trying to figure out what it all means,” one character complains. But the acting is laughable, the dialogue may make you wish for your own quick dispatch and the plot - gobbledygook about strange dragon markings, chosen ones and other realms - only makes sense if you’re high.
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