This week one of the big stories on the internet, has been the release of a teaser. This teaser has been identified as a possible pitch for the next Mortal Kombat movie, a reimagining if you will. However after seeing this trailer/ preview i am not as excited as much of the internet is about this idea. you can view the trailer below.

watch?v=9_MqZn7E-mk

On the positive half i am glad to see that they finally hired Michael Jai White to play Jax. This should have happened a long time ago, but it's better late than never, i guess. I also like the choreography of the fight between Baraka and Johnny Cage. Both fighters were professionals rather than regular actors who learned a little bit of martial arts for the film.

However this is the extent of the positive i felt for this movie. On the negative side, they completely messed up the origin stories of both Baraka and Reptile. Baraka goes from being a Tarkatan warrior to a homicidal, self Mutilating, Plastic Surgeon, who implanted ten inch blades in his own arms. WTF!? And Reptile goes from being a Humanoid reptilian creature, to a Cannabalistic Maniac, with a rare facial deformity. WTF?! It appears that they are trying to take a Dark Knight approach to this movie, and soon hollywood will realize, you can't. You can't take the Dark Knight approach to everything. Mortal Kombat in my opinion would work best as a Martial arts Fantasy/ Martial arts Epic. This doesn't mean we have to have characters flying ten feet across the screen. But see this is the problem with Hollywood, you give them a simple yet flawed story, and they try to make it complex. You give them a complex story and they want to make it simple.

If all this wasn't bad enough they introduce Johnny Cage, only to be killed by Baraka.WTF?!. In my opinion that is a bigger insult than when Johnny Cage was killed by Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat Annihilation. At least with Shao Kahn you can use the excuse that theoretically he is suppose to be a powerful martial artist who is out of Johnny Cage's league (Though anybody who has seen Mortal Kombat Annihilation would say that is far from the truth). But i don't remember them ever mentioning once in this trailer that Baraka had Martial arts experience. When does a plastic surgeon have time to extensively study Martial arts, not to say it can't happen but it seemed a little to convenient. So first off, how was he able to stand on his own against Johnny Cage? Secondly, how did he defeat Johnny Cage? Third, not only did he defeat him but he decapitated him with his claws. How was he able to retract and extract his claws? Maybe it is just me but, i pretty sure Johnny Cage should have won that fight.

Eventhough they didn't specify, i can assume from the photographs that Shangstung is some kind of Business man or Crime Boss. Either way, that would reek of failure. Apparently hollywood still has not learned their lesson from the Legend of Chun Li. M Bison did not work as a businessman and neither does Shangstung.

Then we get to the end of the teaser, when it is revealed that the person Michael Jai White has been interrogating this entire time, is Scorpion who is dressed normally, in prison attire. To top it all of the purpose of this interrogation/ briefing is to earn Scorpion cooperation in an attempt to bring down Reptile, Baraka, Shangstung and everyone else associated with them. What's their bargaining chip you ask? Sub- Zero appearing in the tournament. Wow Really?! So instead of wanting to arrest Baraka, Reptile, or Shangstung we want Scorpion to go to the tournament, kill everybody and win. That sounds a bit ridiculous to me. Even if he wanted to kill Sub- Zero he would not listen to authority. He'll do whatever else he feels like doing. Which they did touch on in the trailer but i thought it was weak regardless.

Now the thing that gets me perhaps more than anything is that people are in full support of this movie. Maybe all they have seen is the gore and fighting and made their judgement on that alone. Sorry, but just because it's gorey does not make it good. If that were the case then AVP:Requiem and Punisher:Warzone should be on the same level as Alien, Aliens, and Man on Fire, but we all know that is not the case. Furthermore with all the gripes fanboys usually have about how Hollywood changes so many things with movie adaptations of video game movies and comics, why is everyone turning a blind eye to the problems i listed above. I guarantee these are the same people who criticize the hell out of the Live- Action Resident Evil movies. At least with those they deviated slightly from the source material while maintaining alot of the games themes. Did they change Jill Valentine into a crackhead? No. She is still a STARS member. The same with Carlos Olivera. And besides the fact that they made him a tragic hero of sorts, with his identity issues, Nemesis was very much like the game counterpart. Sure these movies added the character of Alice and made her the focal point, but they still have made the movies (besides Extinction) faitful enough to the games. Here, they are not adding characters instead they are changing them into things that they are not. Because of this i find it very difficult to support this movie pitch. That's just me.

What about you Spill Community, what's your take on this?