Mortal Kombat (1995)

By the mid-1990s, video game adaptations were a genuinely fraught business in Hollywood. Super Mario Bros. (1993) had already demonstrated what could go wrong when studios tried to impose gritty realism on pixel-bright source material, and the pressure to get the formula right was considerable. Mortal Kombat, released in August 1995 by New Line Cinema and Threshold Entertainment, arrived with a significant weight of expectation: the arcade game it was based on had already caused a minor moral panic over its notorious fatality finisher moves, earned congressional testimony about video game violence, and sold millions of units on the back of its notoriety. Adapting it for a PG-13 audience without the gore that had made it infamous was, on paper, a fairly audacious gamble. The premise, ten generations of a sacred martial arts tournament that will decide whether an evil sorcerer's Outworld can conquer Earth, is essentially a straightforward fighting tournament narrative dressed in fantasy and mythology, and the film leans into that structure without too much apology.

At the helm was Paul W. S. Anderson, a British director then relatively early in his career, for whom this was only his second feature. Anderson has since built an extensive filmography around high-concept action and genre material, and if you want a sense of where his aesthetic sensibilities went from here, his later work includes entries across the Resident Evil and Death Race franchises, reviewed elsewhere on this site. Even in 1995 the hallmarks are visible: polished but unremarkable compositions, a firm grip on pacing, and an unambiguous priority placed on spectacle over character depth. The screenplay, credited to Kevin Droney, takes its tournament structure seriously enough to give each fighter a motivation, which is more than most video game films of the era managed. Robin Shou leads as Liu Kang, with Linden Ashby as a wisecracking Johnny Cage and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as Special Forces agent Sonya Blade forming the core trio of Earthrealm defenders. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays the sorcerer Shang Tsung with a knowing relish that suits the material, and Christopher Lambert steps into the role of the thunder god Raiden, bringing the kind of detached European eccentricity that the part probably required and possibly no one anticipated.

The film arrived during peak martial arts mania in Western popular culture, off the back of the Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal boom, and with the fighting game genre at the height of its cultural influence. It was a considerable commercial success for New Line Cinema, performing strongly enough to produce a sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, two years later, again featuring Robin Shou. The soundtrack, composed by Graeme Revell and augmented by a compilation of electronic and industrial tracks, became genuinely iconic in its own right and is arguably more fondly remembered than the film itself by a large portion of its audience. Whether the finished product holds up as cinema, or merely as a period piece from a very specific moment in pop culture, is something worth sitting with.

Rewatching Mortal Kombat on its 30th anniversary with my girlfriend was equal parts nostalgic joy and full-on secondhand cringe. As a kid, this film was peak cinema, lightning gods, flaming skulls, “Finish him!” etc.. it felt like the coolest thing ever. Now? It’s a gloriously campy, wildly earnest B-movie with all the subtlety of a uppercut from Liu Kang. The story (Earthrealm warriors fighting in a tournament to stop Outworld from invading) is actually solid, ripped straight from the arcade logic, and the synth-heavy soundtrack by Graeme Revell is still 100% iconic. I can’t hear the main theme without mentally yelling “Mortal Kombat!” in a deep voice. But wow, the acting. Christopher Lambert as Raiden delivering lines like “To serve and protect is their duty” with the gravitas of a man reading a parking ticket. Robin Shou (Liu Kang) is the only one who doesn’t look embarrassed. And the effects... oh, the effects. The wire work is hilariously obvious, the CGI is PS1-level blocky, and Scorpion’s “GET OVER HERE!” teleport is just a man in yellow spandex yanked sideways by an invisible rope. It’s all so bad, but in a way that somehow works, there’s a sincerity to the cheese that keeps it from being unwatchable. It’s not a good film by any real metric. But it’s a fun one, a time capsule of mid-90s video game mania, martial arts obsession, and zero self-awareness. As a kid, I believed every second. Now, I laugh at all of it, then immediately want to play the game.

I think that tension between genuine affection and clear-eyed acknowledgement of the film's limitations is probably the most honest place to land with something like this. There is a version of the mid-90s video game adaptation that takes itself seriously and collapses under the weight of it, and then there is Mortal Kombat, which is too busy getting on with things to notice how daft it all looks. For me, that sincerity, however accidental, is what separates the watchable from the unwatchable in this particular corner of cinema. It is not a film you defend on its merits. It is a film you defend on its terms, which are entirely its own. Sometimes that is enough.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-08-18

View on Letterboxd →

Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Mortal Kombat (1995) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from Paul W. S. Anderson: Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) · Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) · Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) · Death Race (2008)
More with Robin Shou: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)