Mortal Kombat 2—the film, not the game—released earlier this week and reviews were mixed: games outlets like GamesRadar and IGN were generally favorable, but it copped a flogging in most other quarters. AV Club called it “dreck”, The Hollywood Reporter called it “tacky”, and Vulture called it “depressingly rizzless”.
It’s a familiar story where game-to-film adaptations are concerned: we saw a similar split with the recent Mario movie. But Todd Garner, producer of Mortal Kombat 2 and its predecessor, doesn’t want to have a bar of it.
“Some of these reviews are cracking me up,” he wrote on X. “It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules / canon of Mortal Kombat.”
He goes on: “One reviewer was mad that a guy ‘had a laser eye!’ Why the fuck do we still allow people that don’t have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.”
To some extent his position rings true: if a critic best known for tackling deliberately difficult Central European arthouse films was randomly assigned Mortal Kombat 2, you might very well smell a hatchet job. But most of the critics who panned Mortal Kombat 2, at least in the mainstream outlets like AV Club and Hollywood Reporter, write about mainstream Hollywood blockbusters as a matter of course. And that’s exactly what Mortal Kombat 2 is, game-to-film adaptation or not.
Garner seems hellbent on positioning the film as “for the fans” which I guess is a decent enough motivation, albeit unnervingly humble in light of the film’s reported $80 million budget. In response to an X user claiming that “critics are losing influence and fans don’t care about their opinions”, Garner wrote, in apparent full sincerity: “Absolutely. The gamification of movie reviews has gotten absurd.”
Whatever that actually means—and I don’t know—it’s ludicrous for Garner to expect an $80 million Hollywood action film with ubiquitous marketing, tied to a household name IP of over 30 years vintage, should only be appraised by “fans”. You made a film. You sit in a theatre and watch it. You don’t get to perform any fatalities. And we’re basically forced to know about it.
Anyway, as someone on X points out, the lore isn’t even handled with perfect robustness. “Bro to be fair, you invented Cole Young, Arcana and couldn’t even get the simple lore of Mileena and Kitana correct. I’d say you shouldn’t be tossing any stones here,” some dedicated pedant wrote.
To which Garner replied: “Fair”.
