Mortal Kombat II (2026) New Line/Fantasy-Sci-Fi-Action RT: 116 minutes Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore, language) Director: Simon McQuoid Screenplay: Jeremy Slater Music: Benjamin Wallfisch Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon Release date: May 8, 2026 (US) Cast: Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroyuki Sanada, Martyn Ford, Desmond Chiam, Ana Thu Nguyen, Max Huang, CJ Bloomfield, Joe Taslim.
Rating: ***
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed 2021’s Mortal Kombat. I never played the game. I generally dislike movies based on video games. I thought the 1995 version was horrible. The 1997 sequel is even worse. There was no earthly reason I should have had a positive reaction to a reboot yet I enjoyed every stupid minute of it. I feel the same about the sequel Mortal Kombat II. It’s dumb but fun.
I’m going to tell you straight up that the plot (such as it is) of Mortal Kombat II is convoluted and utterly nonsensical. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I’ll just give you a brief overview. It centers on the titular tournament in which good guys and girls from the realm Earthworld fight bad guys and girls from Outworld. There’s also some business about a magic amulet that grants immortality to he or she who possesses it. That’s really all you need to know about the plot.
Now let’s talk about the characters. The good guys include former Special Forces op Sonya Blade (McNamee, The Meg), fellow soldier Jax (Brooks, Law & Order), kung fu master Liu Kang (Lin, Power Rangers) and leader Lord Raiden (Asano, Ichi the Killer). There’s a new recruit among them, 90s action star Johnny “F***ing” Cage (Urban, The Boys). They all have special powers. Sonya can shoot pink energy projectiles at her opponents. Jax has big robotic arms. Liu can shoot fireballs from his palms. Johnny has yet to find his power.
The bad guys are led by Shao Khan (Ford, Red Sonja), a monstrous tyrant who takes over a place called Edenia after defeating the rightful king in MK in the movie’s opening sequence. He rules with an iron, unforgiving fist. He’s forcing the king’s daughter Kitana (Rudolph, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) to fight for Outworld in the current MK. She, of course, is secretly helping Earthworld. Other fighters for the dark side include Kitana’s loyal bodyguard Jade (Gabrielle, The Last of Us) and a resurrected Kung Lao (martial artist Huang), the guy with the sharp-edged hat that’s kind of like a big Chinese throwing star. Also back from the dead is the Aussie mercenary Kano (Lawson, House of Lies), the guy with the red laser eye. Oh and there’s also a necromancer named Quan Chi (Herriman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). I think that about covers not quite all but enough.
Would it actually do any good to apply the usual rules of film criticism to Mortal Kombat II? That, of course, is a rhetorical question. It would not. Fans of the IP will see it regardless of what I say. It has a built-in audience that doesn’t care about trivialities like acting, writing, directing, intelligence or coherence. They’re not there for any of that. They want action, a lot of it. They want to see their favorite characters engage in cool, brutal fights. They want bloody violence. Mortal Kombat II has all of that in abundance. It unlikely they’ll even notice it doesn’t make a lick of sense. If I’m being honest, I didn’t notice it myself I was having so much fun.
I normally don’t go for CGI and volume. Mortal Kombat II is filled with both. It’s both noisy and very CGI-heavy. For a change, this wasn’t an instant turn-off for me. Is the CGI groundbreaking? No, absolutely not. Is it especially great? Nope. It’s adequate. It more or less gets the job done. The sets, a combination of CGI and practical work, are pretty good. Edenia bears a striking resemblance to the town in Gymkata (1985). As for the other thing, Mortal Kombat II is just as loud and ungainly as any other big effects-driven summer blockbuster. Did you expect otherwise? This property isn’t exactly known for being meditative.
I love that Mortal Kombat II has sense of humor about itself. It wholeheartedly embraces its inherent silliness and displays it like a badge of honor. I laughed several times at the dopey dialogue and references to other movies (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and my personal favorite, Big Trouble in Little China). I got a big kick out of Johnny Cage, the stereotypical washed-up 90s action star reduced to making appearances at conventions. The clip from his biggest hit, a lamebrained actioner entitled Uncaged Fury (from New Line naturally), is a comic highlight. It looks just like any one of 500 direct-to-video action flicks from that time.
I’m not going to try to convince you Mortal Kombat II is a landmark of modern cinema. It’s not Citizen Kane nor is it meant to be. It’s beyond dumb. The narrative is a confused mess to all but the gamers and fans in attendance. It’s wildly overedited and overstylized. It’s a full-on assault of the sense yet it still somehow works. It’s very entertaining. In the end, isn’t that all that matters?
