Live Action Mulan Remake

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

No, MK was bullsh**. If you're making a video game adaptation that can't even keep the same tone as what it's adapting... what are you doing?

I'll grant that the movie was moderately entertaining on its own... but jesus. And the sequel, Annihilation? Probably on my top 10 worst movies of all time list.

Cashing in. "Making hay while the sun shines". The same reason they forced out a cartoon show and toy line aimed at Very Young Children right after the movie came out, despite adamantly insisting "This thing we're making is in no way for Very Young Children. WINK. Ahem." They knew they very likely weren't going to be around forever with this "Mortal Kombat" thing and needed to pull in as much money from as many projects as possible before the bubble burst. They didn't have the luxury in 1994 of being able to look back 25 years later and say "We should've done This or That instead."

No WAY did they expect MK to still be a franchise in 20 years; hell, they probably half-expected the government to get their way and shut them down because at one point that was a VERY real concern. And if it wasn't that then it was gonna be another "fad" that people dropped out of quickly, which they had every right to expect as well. In any case, they very clearly and obviously figured, "This is our One Chance to make a movie so we might as well just get it done as best we can." They had no reasonable expectation that they'd ever get another chance. From their perspective all they had to concern themselves with was, "If it's even a little bit better than the Street Fighter or Double Dragon movies, then We Win." And they succeeded in that. That's the only bar they were concerned with clearing at that time.

And frankly the movie did have the exact same tone as the games did. It just didn't have the gore. The games were violent but even from the beginning were VERY tongue-in-cheek; by that, the movie was far more serious than it maybe still could have gotten away with. In any case, "Tone" and "Aesthetic" are not the same thing. And it wasn't going to have the gore in 1994, that was never going to happen. BUT, they had a very real impetus to still get a movie on the market and collect as much money as they could possibly get before either the MK fad died, the "video game movie" fad died, or BOTH died. They didn't have the luxury of waiting for the audience to grow a bit older or for cultural standards to relax themselves. "We have Five Minutes to cash in. Let's do the best we can." Compared to everything else in its genre - and I've said this about lots of things that were similarly Of A Certain Time - it's a miracle its as good as it is.

Their foresight was proven semi-correct as well. A few short years later the "Tomb Raider" movies made decent money based off of Jolie's chest prosthetics and nothing else, BUT the Video Game Movie fad DID die - MK pretty much being considered "The Only Good One Ever Made" until Sonic came out - and while MK did not "die" it DID go into a huge lull for several years very shortly after the movie's success when MK4 under-performed and "Mythologies" was terrible. SO, their "Let's just get it done within whatever limitations we have before people stop paying any attention to us" approach was not only proven to be wise, it was very successful because the movie was a decent hit and is still fondly remembered. Almost 25 years as "The ONLY good or even decent Video Game Movie" is nothing to sneeze at. If they'd waited for the kids playing the games to grow up and be able to buy tickets to see R-rated movies, they'd have missed their entire window. By 2004 when MK was back on the rise, video game movies were rightly seen as a bad joke, with the MK movie from the 90s being the sole exception to that "Rule." Remove the 1990s MK movie from existence, you don't get any of what came later. You maybe don't even still have an MK franchise at all after the bottom drops out of the franchise in 1997.

I keep noticing how a lot of people can't seem to properly put things like this into the proper historical context because they're too busy looking back through a modern lens with the "Would'a-Could'a-Should'a." You can't do that, as fun as it may be, because it simply doesn't work. Context is everything. Historical perspective is everything. Putting one's self "in the moment" while trying to make sense of these decisions is everything, if we're sincerely trying to understand the "Why". Despite their outward pretenses, in 1994/5 MK was a "kids property" (See: the fact of how they made kids' clothing and comic books and stuff like that already BEFORE the movie or cartoon ever came out), and in turn they made a movie reflecting that, which still stayed as close as anyone possibly could to the spirit of the games if not the ultra-violent aesthetic.

Anyway, that's the Very Long Answer to your question. "What Were They Doing?" The very best they could while having a gun pressed to their head and a ticking clock counting down the seconds remaining for them to remain culturally relevant, in a time and place where video game franchises didn't stay popular for 30 years. "You can do EVERYTHING from the games... except show blood" in all honesty wasn't even THAT bad of a compromise, all things considered. They could have gone the, "Just change everything, people are stupid and won't care" approach. Thankfully, they didn't.
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"Annihilation" on the other hand truly IS godawful. Easily one of the worst movies ever made with no redeeming factors outside of maybe a couple hot chicks. Even "DOA: Dead Or Alive" was better because at least they knew they were making junk and leaned into it unapologetically. MK:A is just worthless.

Biggest difference I felt between the two MK films, was that with the first one, they at least TRIED to make a "good movie" and not JUST a cash-in. MK:A, they saw those last few sands in the hourglass about to fall and said "F*ck it. Let's cram in as many characters from MK2 and MK3 as we can, this thing's about to hit a wall anyway" and cranked it out in desperation. Same problems X-Men 3 had, "Let's just cram a million characters in for two-second cameos and not have them DO anything of importance. People will be too busy going 'Hey, it's ______!' to notice or care that they may as well be cardboard cut-outs." Except, people DID notice.

First movie is goddamn "Citizen Kane" compared to the SECOND one. Good Lord. I really don't actually get legitimately angry at movies very often because I have better things to do. BUT, MK:A is admittedly very bad for my blood pressure. No soul whatsoever. At least with the first one, they TRIED.
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I'm actually not looking forward to the new MK movie very much, because it wasn't that long ago they were trying to sell a script with the main characters being teenaged kids and they wanted everybody to be all excited about it. I know that's not the project currently in development, but it tells me that, like TMNT, the people running the movie arm of the franchise don't know what they have and will just fling sh*t at the wall until they get something workable.

Wish I could be excited, but I'll believe it's worth being excited over when I see that for myself. They've made like two dozen announcements for MK movies "in development" over the last 20 years, all terrible, all never made. But NOW they suddenly figured it out? I don't buy it. But hey, I'd love to be wrong. The web series was great. BUT, they had a lot more freedom than a movie will have, though. Different stakes, different standards.

We shall see.