So many of you have probably seen this short that Midway leaked onto the interwebs earlier this week. It would seem that Ed Boon and company have grown tired of the cartoon nature of their franchise, and are looking to reboot "Mortal Kombat" as if it was some weird hybrid of David Fincher’s early career and "Dexter." Jax, now played by Michael Jai White, is a hard-drinking cop in a "Blade Runner" type near future, and he’s looking to get an informant into an underground fighting tournament which the trailer never dares to describe as "Mortal" or "Kombat." This tournament is apparently populated by serial killers and assassins, so the writers of this little gem strain horrendously to bend Reptile and Baraka until they’re little more than colorful variations on Ed Gein.
There’s something inherently fascinating about the transformation that’s happening here. When these characters were invented, which was not a hell of a long time ago, they were warriors. Some were soldiers of fortune, some adhered to a code; some were good, some were bad; but all of them were combatants, each with their own personal flair and M.O. Back then, it would seem that was what interested us as a society. Now, when we look at violence, our minds seem to gravitate towards serial killers. Since when did psychopaths become our new rock stars? Are they really the best we can aspire to? It may well be that our society is so insulated from real violence, so closed off from the kind of physical force that used to be necessary to survive, that the only way we can compute this very basic human interaction is in a randomized, schizophrenic way. Serial killers make more sense to us than warriors.
Of course, we still have Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, and their ilk, so perhaps not all is lost. Video games may be the last fictional bastion of the lifelong soldier, which is why a reboot like the one "Mortal Kombat" is doing displeases me. The game was always grisly, it’s true, but I could make sense of that in the context of trained professionals fighting for something larger than themselves. A bunch of nut-jobs shivving each other in an alleyway for the hell of it does not interest me. Furthermore, the basic idea of most successful reboots is to be able to claim some kingly lineage to the source material, to insist that you are returning to the core of the idea. That is not what’s happening here, the roots are being dug up and stripped. I actually sympathize with their desire to re-launch the "Mortal Kombat" franchise, I think it was long overdue, but this is not the way they should have done it.
"Mortal Kombat" has always been a strange beast. Compared with "Soul Calibur" or "Street Fighter," it’s actually a pretty weak fighting game. The mechanics are extremely shallow, and it’s far too easy to win cheap victories with game-breaking combos. And yet the franchise endures, because the creators struck a chord with their character design. The characters are simple yet distinct and immediately memorable, and there are many fighting games which languish in obscurity for want of achieving this basic goal (cough Tekken cough). The result is that MK games are never as good as they should be, because characters like Scorpion carry the franchise on their shoulders. With this new reboot, Midway may finally step too far off the beaten path. They struck gold with Sub-Zero and Johnny Cage, and altering a successful formula is tricky business. I certainly hope they’re sure of what they’re doing, because they could have a disaster on their hands.
And is anyone buying those stupid blades that come out of Baraka’s arms? That was just ridiculous.
