The fact that the elder gods and Raiden being useless is the one consistent thing that ties all the MK universes and adaptations together amuses me greatly. FoR KUNG LAO!

"So we have Sonya discover the tournament, find all the info, fight without the magic power stuff." "Great - let's make this lame OC the main character instead"

It's a beautiful day when Sonya finally gets her Cutie Mark.

Shao Khan: “Quan Chi, did your undead ninja just kill my champion?” Quan Chi: “Uhhhhhhhhhh”

Yet another failed timeline from Kronika. Despite being the "keeper of time", she _really_ sucked at it...

Raiden: "I've assembled team of fighters to defend Earth Realm from the forces of evil. They are Wabuu, Old Man, Bonesteel, Dr. Queef, Bat Hero, and SIRO!

“I don’t know why Cole is here” Executive mandate. That’s literally the only reason.

I’m so happy to see you still using those original Mortal Kombat clips even in 2021. They STILL crack me up

Teasing Johnny Cage for the sequel instead of having him in this movie doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes Hollywood has an attitude of “save the good stuff for the inevitable sequel!” instead of focusing on improving the movie currently being worked on.

Gotta love how Cole's power is literally to have Plot Armor lol

I feel like Sub Zero would be in high demand around Christmas. He’d probably have to stay outside the whole time.

(in Phelous voice): You know what's great? Kids of the beloved characters that have the personality of cardboard! Obviously the superior type of character.

"heh, they spelled it wrong" I know it's easy but I laughed. One point for you movie.. also "god of useless..." I was waiting for that the whole time XD

Shao Khan is gonna be devastated about Reiko’s death, I just know it

Once again, my favorite character, Reptile, is reduced to a jobber. It's sad the Mortal Kombat: Conquest of all things is the one adaptation that gives him some respect.

It’s hilarious how they gave the OC Cole, literal plot armor.

Maybe SubZero lives long because he's kept fresh via refrigeration

I feel like if we combined elements of this, MK 95 and Scorpion's Revenge we would get one really good adapatation of MK1. 95's camp, focus, core cast, & use of Liu Kang, a balance between this movie and Revenge's Scorpion presence and rivalry with Bi-Han, SR's use of later elements and use of Johnny Cage as the POV character, and this film's fights, fatalities and effect work.

Sad that Kano was a better protagonist than the OC stand in they have.

I personally hate the whole Arcana thing. It's completely unneeded, and in general I tend to dislike when a material that has a rich wide variety of lore, backstories and sources for superpowers tries to streamline it all by having a single common source for everyone. Always makes it feel like they're removing the variety that makes me love stories like this.

The fact that Siro wasn't in this movie made me upset. Hopefully he's in the sequel

I seriously don't get why they didn't make Cole Young Scorpion. He's supposed to be a descendant of Scorpion, that's what gets him into the tournament. It would make much more sense if he became the new Scorpion by the end and give him a reason for existing. Instead he just gets some fancy new arms like Jax and the original Scorpion just shows up at the end as a glorified cameo. This should have been Cole's journey to become Scorpion's successor. What a waste.

Raiden should stop getting drunk off his own nectar.

After all these years raiden is still the god of useless

"Nitara did absoutely nothing to him" Yeah its almost as if the people behind mortal kombat hate the 3d era because thats all they use them for, to kill a character off when they need to, it pisses me off as someone who grew up with the 3d era and loves it to see the characters i grew attacched to get turned into jobbers because netherrealm would rather keep the 2d era characters instead of doing more with the 3d era characters!

@1:05 Thank you for calling this out. I absolutely despise the flood of useless "stuff" that has infected the otherwise awesome -Trivia- sections on IMDB pages. That used to be one of my favorite parts of that site until it was overtaken by the onslaught of submissions that mean absolutely nothing. I've literally seen people post things like "the lead actor started their career in the same decade as..." and then list about two-hundred names. That piece of "trivia" has ONE "found this interesting" and nearly 1500 "did not find this interesting," yet IMDB leaves it up. The true fan-run and fun era of IMDB ended with the collapse of their message boards, as far as I'm concerned. EDIT- I almost forgot, this movie was horrible. If Shang Tsung only has to win ONE more tournament, then WHY is he repeatedly trying to derail a kontest against a bunch of inadequate rookies that he's GUARANTEED to absolutely steam-roll, giving him everything he wants in the process with almost zero effort?! It made no sense and was not fun in the least. Cool kills does not a cool movie make. And a movie about the Mortal Kombat tournament should HAVE the damn Mortal Kombat tournament. And Johnny Cage. MK95 forever...

why did sub zero even bother keeping cole/gary stu's wife and daughter alive? he had no problem killing scorpion's own wife and kid earlier

Mortal Kombat without a tournament...so, it's a prequel?!? 🙄

New character with the literal plot armor killed it for me.

Cole's house reminded me of a bit in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, when the landlord Markula was trying to sell the foods' house. Markula: Did you remember to mention the wooden paneling? Carl: Oh, is that supposed to be a feature? Markula: It is the BEST feature

29:20 - When Raiden did this I couldn't help but laugh. If he had the power to banish Shang Tsung this whole time why the heck did he let Kung Lao die?!

“I am Sub-Zero” - “Not for long you stupid Noob” I see what you did there 😂

I smell a new Phelous catchphrase with the "FOR KUNG LAO" bit. 😉 Now I want a matchup between Cole and Hideyoshi (Deadliest of All Shao Khan's Assassins). The rando who is (supposedly) a naturally gifted fighter vs. the overhyped muscular oaf who's actually completely ineffective. The winner gets Nightwolf's computer.

Something they should done was exchanging the roles of Kano and Kabal, in MK9 Kabal was a good guy, a cop that was a former member of the black dragon, if they kept him that way in the movie then his betrayal after Kano convinces him to switch sides back to him would have been an actual twist, his fight with Liu Kang would have actual meaning behind it since if he sabotaged the shield he is technically responsable for Kung Lao dying, and if Liu doesn't kill him but just burns him then he could have the respirator mask for the sequel.

It feels wonderfully nostalgic to hear Phelan talk about something MK related. :)

I love how Scorpion speaks only Japanese throughout the whole thing except when he has to say the line.

As soon as I saw that Reiko was in this movie, I just knew that you'd bring back Conquest Reiko one more time for your review xD. It's like seeing an old friend.

Phelous are you really surprised that Earth's guardians were all killed off by people like Jax and Kano? I mean Kung Lao just spent all his time working at the Trading post and breaking people's arms that tried to train with them.

It's funny how easily they could have replaced Kano in this with Cage. Just drop the obvious villainy but keep the quips and antagonistic relationship with Sonya.

Even after all these years, I still consider the original Mortal Kombat movie the best vid game adaptation yet. Detective pikachu surprisingly got real close. Still really love it and the novel.

If they wanted an Asian lead then why make a new one? Why not use Liu Kang or Kung Lao? They're right there!

I feel like Cole is an Anti-Alice. While Alice was so OP to the point of sucking the canon characters' competency, Cole needed to be rescued by the canon characters, joins the team because he lost an MMA match and didn't even defeat Sub-Zero and let his ancestor do the job for him.

Maybe it was the delivery in combination with the absurd situation he’s mocking, but when Phelan-Subzero said “Stupid Bi Han”, it got me laughing for a minute.

I'm still waiting for the explanation of Scorpion yelling "Get over here!" in English when he clearly doesn't speak the language. Sure, you could argue that he took the subject while he was in Hell School all these years, but then why doesn't he speak English to Cole?

well Phelous guess what now they're making a sequel to Scorpion's Revenge called Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms.

I find the lack of a Soul Man dance by Tsung to be highly disappointing

I kinda dig that Kabal sounds like Joe Montegna now

When I think of a safe place, Gary, IN isnt the first thing that comes to mind. Whats next? Going to Flint for clean water?

Finally. KOMBAT TIME!!! Also, Kenshi should've been the protagonist.

25:17 this movie made an unintentional Malcolm in the Middle reference. Reese: "Nobody believes I beat the last level of Mortal Kombat." Hal: "Because that's just ridiculous. No one beats Sub-Zero."

Did you guys know that a birthmark means “you were born with it”. Who says movies aren’t educational anymore.

"COLE YOUNG, THE MEH-EST MORTAL KOMBAT CHARACTER!"

Siro's Arcana is crushing paper! "That's it! For Kung Lao!"

They need to just make a film focusing ONLY on the characters and story of the 1st game. Make it look like it was made in the 70s and use stop motion for Goro.

Things that could've made things better from a story preceptive: 1) Have Shang Tsung still enact his plan through dealings with Kano and Sub-Zero (w/ their respective clan/gang) to take out the chosen Earthrealm warriors since while the rules prevent him from directly doing anything, there's nothing stopping Earthrealmers from killing each other 2) I'd rather remove Cole altogether, but if we had to have him, why not write it to have him be Satoshi, who survived the Shirai Ryu massacre. You could rewrite it to where Cole is the baby found instead and have the event take place much, much earlier. (I know Satoshi originally dies too, but this could be the start of something new, I guess) 3) When we're introduced to Cole, we could start by already having him in Special Forces working with Jax and Sonya or adopted into the Shaolin Monks, where he;d already be familiar w/ Liu Kang and Kung Lao (I'd prefer Special Forces since there's more you could do with that). This way the legacy characters still have their agency w/o taking a major backseat to Cole (mostly) and we also don't have to waste time with his useless family who are more of a distraction more than anything else 4) Have the Dragon marking just a way for Realms to choose their champions for the MK tournament, that's it. We don't need some silly nonsense to explain why characters have the powers they do. It's a story about warriors from various dimensions fighting each other and where technology is highly advanced on Earth, we don't need an explanation on why characters have the wacky powers they have. Probably more that could have been done, but these were just a few ideas I had to improve the movie while working in the realm of what it was attempting to go for

3 things about MK 2021 I dont like: -The stupid explanation for their powers. -The lame ass main character and his lame ass power. -The MK franchise keeps killing my favorite character Kung Lao.

Considering the very low bar of Mortal Kombat movies on the big screen...I thought it was fine for what it was...thought the guy who played Kano knocked it out of the park.

For Kung Lao!

It's like they tried to overcompensate for "slaves under my power" and now Sub-Zero is the sub-boss of the movie and Goro is reduced to a jobber like Baraka. Then Scorpion (and Sub-Zero) opens and bookends the movie despite not really doing anything in middle of it. And did we really need some explanation for anyone in MK having magic powers? No one ever asked how they can shoot fireballs, we just agreed they're just good a kung fu fighting.

Oh yes, phelous reviews mortal kombat, now we’re talkin’

Thanks to your purple background, I’m half waiting for Pat Morita to slide in asking if I believe in Kombat 😄

Isn’t Scorpion being played by that Yakuza leader in Avengers Endgame?

The only time Kano teamed up with Sonya and the others was in MK vs DC. Even then he and Shang Tsung fought with the others against the DC characters first then they all had to stop Dark Kahn. Also he’s supposed to be more evil than Kabal. Other than those flaws, he’s still the most entertaining character in the film because he has a personality and is played by that guy that used to be on Superstore

Justice For Kung Lao!

To be honest, Cole Young's armor "arcana" looks more like a part of Aquaman's costume to me. I don't know why. It's probably the lighting in the film.

I know this will probably never happen, but if they wanted a ''blank slate" character for Lewis Tan to play, why not Shujinko or Taven from Armageddon? He even looks like Taven. AND he was originally gonna play Kung Jin in a tie-in series for MKX that was cancelled. Dude waited 5 years to actually appear in a MK project and they gave him an OC.

I don't get that "Bi-Han sucks" thing, really. He was and still is my favorite MK character ever since Mythologies. So that movie made me happy that the elder Sub-Zero got the respect that he was long denied in the NR era.

The only Mortal Kombat review that matters to me.

the original is one of my favorite movies and the techno song they made of the song was my favorite techno song.

Isn't Shang Tsung supposed to defeat someone before he sucks their soul? So how was he able to tractor beam Kung Lau and immediately go from suck to blow? He's breaking all sorts of rules. Even the ones that govern his powers.

I honestly prefer the idea that Scorpion is fighting to protect his family rather than trying to avenge them. We've seen revenge stories a million times, and now we get to see Grandpa Magic Ninja awkwardly bonding with his failure of a descendant and the rest of his family. Just imagine the dinner conversations.

"That's it! They kill one, we kill all of them!"

Kano was the most enjoyable character for sure in this film.

I love how people have pointed out a centuries old undead JAPANESE ninja spoke perfect English (“Get over here!”). I guess one can get Rosetta Stone in the land of the dead.

Compared to this, the 95 film is a MASTERPIECE. Watching your review, just brought back so many flaws I had with this and Im with you, I dont think Ill watch it, again.

How did Kano even kill Reptile??? How can he just put his hand through a giant heavily armored lizard's chest and rip out his heart with his bare hands? He has no super strength...

This movie is clearly missing the most important character... Chun-Siro!! In all seriousness though, it's great to see you doing another Mortal Kombat review. Your reviews are what got me into the Mortal Kombat franchise.

They seriously said that they didn't have space for Johnny Cage in the movie, meanwhile the protagonist is some Gary Stu OC...

Ive been dying for you to cover this. I'm so ready

To me, Raiden looks like some guy who works at Walmart in his pajamas and Shang Tsung looks like someone's stern grandmother. Also, I'm pretty sure Cole was originally supposed to become Scorpion at the end in the original script and that would have been his special power, but they changed it last minute to avoid fan backlash, much like how they made the turtles NOT aliens and Erich Sachs NOT Shredder in TMNT 2014.

May I just say. Your commentary on Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm is my go to watch when I want to laugh my ass off. I’ve probably watched it 30 times and it always makes me laugh. So happy you brought some of those old jokes into this review. You’re a rockstar.

While unmentioned in the review, there is the scene where Liu Kang mentioned he got his marking from killing a child trafficker. No wonder Raiden is such an sour asshole, if the elder gods kept picking the scum of mankind to represent them I'd be pretty upset too. Like wtf elder gods, trying to one up Siro in hero choice?

The great irony to me, is that having the marks to explain the characters powers, is like the premise for Data East's Mortal Kombat knockoff, Tattoo Assassins.

The references were hilarious "computer nerds" 😆

I thought it was pretty good, could be improved in some areas which the sequel will hopefully accomplish. The only part I genuinely didn't like was that the 2021 Shang Tsung was BORING, just bring back Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa that guy is Shang Tsung.

Always love listening to Phelous talk about anything Mortal Kombat related!

In reference to bi hans supposed "immortality" i hypothesize that in this continuity sub zero was the champion/winner of the past mortal kombat tournaments granting him immortality. This sets up kuai liang as a descendent of bi han instead of his brother.

Sub-Zero should have remembered that nobody in a movie ever goes into shock after losing limbs for some reason.

So we get this Cole guy, but no appearance by Hideyoshi!! 0/10!

Making Sub-Zero a flat villain, making Scorpion Jesus, and just random changes to the lore, eh. I get that filmmakers and storytellers don't like to just parrot the source, but I have to wonder, if some elements are laid out, why deviate from that? But maybe it's just my own bias, liking the Bi Han/Hanzo/Quan Chi conflict. And Cole was just...there.

They should've just brought back Cary Tagawa as Shang Tsung!

“Fatality! For Kung Lao!” Is such an awkward line, it sounds more like something he’d say after killing Kung Lao, not after ‘avenging’ him.

I didn't watch the Mortal Kombat movie and seeing this proves to me that I didn't just dodge a bullet, I outright smacked it away.

It was okay, the opening battle was the best one in the movie. I was already out of high school and in the US Army when Mortal Kombat became so popular so I never got into it like my younger brothers did.

The movie where all Earthrealmers get their cutie marks for fighting.

Wouldn't it be a better idea for Cole to be Scorpion? Maybe with some amnesia.

I have no interest in seeing this movie. The fact that the main character is some idiot who was never in the games is strike 1. Also, I heard the director promised to deliver the best fight scenes in movie history... And they look exactly like the generic fight scenes from every movie nowadays, just with a little more gore. Bravo....

Cole’s power is that he gets his ass kicked

Coming back to this video after the Welcome to Racoon City review, I'm noticing some similarities. They get minor details right in a lot of small ways, but "fix" what wasn't broken to begin with. It even has pointless fanservice background references like Resident Evil did.

While I don’t hate Cole, I’m not particularly interested in him as a character. After watching the movie, I came up with a bunch of ideas on how to make Cole a more interesting character in the sequel. 1. He’s a descendent of Scorpion. The sequel should open up with what happened to Scorpion’s Daughter after she was taken away by Raiden. It should show her growing up, having a child, dying/getting killed, the child growing up, having their own children before being killed/dying, etc. Finally, it shows what happens to Cole’s parents and Cole growing up as an orphan, meeting his wife, and having his Daughter. It could also go into why he wanted to be a professional fighter. 2. His relationship with his family and the other Kombatants. Him having a Wife and Daughter who support him being a professional fighter makes them more likable than they could have been. In the sequel, they should be important to the plot and Cole’s character, but they shouldn’t be kidnapped or put in danger where someone needs to constantly save them because they would become annoying and useless. Cole and the Kombatants should be friends and shouldn’t argue all the time. They need to feel like a functioning team. Cole should also develop a relationship with Raiden, since the Thunder God of Useless is the only reason he even exists. Perhaps Cole could be a foil to Johnny Cage as well, with Cole being more of the comically serious to Cage’s snarky and arrogant personality. Cole can even inherit the respectful rivalry with Kuai Liang from Scorpion. Most importantly, Cole’s relationship with Scorpion should also be expanded on. They could be in contact with each other and Scorpion could be Cole’s mentor that he can call on every once in a while to help him out. 3. Cole’s powers and purpose. Cole’s powers are literal “Plot Armor” and batons. The sequel should expand on his armor by having it not only absorb energy, but expand. Like if Cole picked up a gun, his armor could expand to it and make it more powerful, like Spawn or Venom. His fighting prowess should also improve, with him winning fights just as often as he loses them so he isn’t overpowered or underpowered. By the end of the sequel, Cole could decide to bring back the Shirai Ryu and train them to be guardians of Earthrelm, with his own Daughter being his first student. The downside of all these ideas is that including all of this in a 2-Hour long movie could sideline the other, more popular characters, which brings me to my last point: DON’T LET COLE OUTSHINE EVERYONE ELSE!!!