You might be wondering why The Technovore, a site that deals in things gaming and geeky hasn’t reviewed the Mortal Kombat movie. The reason’s simple. We don’t feel that it’s a Mortal Kombat movie at all!

Wait wut?!

Think about it. What is Mortal Kombat? It’s the name of the series first and foremost, that’s true. Now think a bit further…why is the series called that way?

The reason is simple; it’s based on the Mortal Kombat tournament.

Now think back to the movie.

At which point does the tournament take place?

Uh-huh…that’s right. It doesn’t.

The cast hype it up, saying that Earth is fighting for its survival at this latest tournament (which is also incidentally the plot of the original movie). One more loss at the tourney and Shao Kahn invades. Ooooooh dire! So the heroes gather and train to presumably fight in the tournament.

Only thing is…it never comes!

For the movie to not have its namesake tournament in the movie is like calling a Rambo title and not have Rambo turn up in it at all. It’s false advertising at best and an outright farce at worst. Why bother calling something it isn’t.

True, it has the series’ characters but that doesn’t mean it’s a Mortal Kombat movie. After all, Iron Man appeared in Spider-man Homecoming, but it’s not an Iron Man flick at all! Same thing here. Just because elements of the series are present doesn’t mean the movie is legit!

Crap on the original 90s movie all you want, but at the very least that movie understood the source material and had the damn tourney in it!

In this new one? There are no sanctioned fights, the tournament hasn’t even started yet…so why is the movie titled Mortal Kombat?

Now some people will get angry at this. That’s bullshit they’ll claim. The characters are there, the gore is there. Both are series hallmarks. I counter with this; what’s the point of calling it Mortal Kombat if there’s no tournament? If it’s a spin-off, name it as such like Solo: A Star Wars Story. In fact, calling the movie a prequel wouldn’t be so far off as the movie ends with Raiden’s warriors still gathering fighters to compete in the tourney.

At this rate we’ll have 10 different movies before we’ll get to the damn tournament itself.

So until the movies (you can bet there’s another coming with the ending of the movie) takes place in an actual Mortal Kombat tourney, I’ll still be ignoring them as MK movies.

Ibrahim's a hardcore gamer and Star Wars fan. He's obsessed with Obi-Wan Kenobi, even claiming that he's a descendant of the fictional Jedi Master. Other than that delusion, Ibrahim's pretty down to earth, collecting figures and buying games he'll never finish.