WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: Mortal Kombat II: The junk food equivalent of a movie blockbuster

It may be silly and superficial, but Mortal Kombat II is the best kind of blockbuster junk food. Playing more to franchise fans over casual viewers, or people unfamiliar with 2021 predecessor Mortal Kombat, the film is all in in paying tribute to its over-the-top source material.

One of the biggest gripes about 2021’s Mortal Kombat – a reboot of the movie series based on the fighting game franchise – is that it didn’t actually get to its titular tournament.

Cheekily, the film stopped short of the competition that pits the human champions of Earthrealm against the typically villainous fighters of Outworld to decide control of the realms through gory, to-the-death bouts of hand-to-hand combat.

It’s taken five years to get back to the story of this fantasy actioner, not helped by pandemic uncertainty around movie production and the SAG-AFTRA strike, which halted production barely one month in.

But here we are. With returning director Simon McQuoid, and a new writer, The Umbrella Academy’s Jeremy Slater, Mortal Kombat II wastes no time in getting back to bloody business.

Mortal Kombat II jettisons the story of original character Cole Young (Lewis Tan), which drove the first film, pushing him to the back of a packed supporting cast for the sequel. Filling Cole’s newcomer status in the universe is Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage, a martial arts prodigy turned washed-up action movie star, who is also, importantly, a foundational character from the games.

Though the film has less depth than a puddle of spilled entrails, Johnny provides most of the relatability, as his cynical smart mouth finds a genuine purpose in life after he is recruited by Earthrealm’s protector Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), and joins fellow defenders Cole, Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mehcad Brooks) and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin).

Over in Edenia, one of Outworld’s captured territories, princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) offers a stronger emotional hook for audiences, as she finds herself growing up under, and then fighting for, cruel emperor Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), the being who killed her father and enslaved both her mother Sindel (Ana Thu Nguyen) and her kingdom. Kitana is watched over and trained by Jade (Tati Gabrielle), a fighting pit veteran loyal to Kahn.

Now, don’t for one second think that Mortal Kombat II is a quality piece of cinema. Narratively, it’s paper thin, with almost zero character development, or reintroductions; a presumption with which viewers are intimately familiar from the first film (it’s advisable to read a plot summary before watching this sequel); and a disjoin