{"id":14425,"date":"2026-05-08T16:23:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14425"},"modified":"2026-05-08T16:23:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:23:52","slug":"mortal-kombat-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/05\/08\/mortal-kombat-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortal Kombat II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Mortal Kombat II<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Fantasy-Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Simon McQuoid\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeremy Slater\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: May 8, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was surprised by how much I enjoyed 2021\u2019s 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<\/strong>. It\u2019s dumb but fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m going to tell you straight up that the plot (such as it is) of Mortal Kombat II<\/strong> is convoluted and utterly nonsensical. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I\u2019ll 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\u2019s also some business about a magic amulet that grants immortality to he or she who possesses it. That\u2019s really all you need to know about the plot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now let\u2019s 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\u2019s a new recruit among them, 90s action star Johnny \u201cF***ing\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s opening sequence. He rules with an iron, unforgiving fist. He\u2019s forcing the king\u2019s 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\u2019s loyal bodyguard Jade (Gabrielle, The Last of Us) and a resurrected Kung Lao (martial artist Huang), the guy with the sharp-edged hat that\u2019s 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\u2019s also a necromancer named Quan Chi (Herriman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). I think that about covers not quite all but enough.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Would it actually do any good to apply the usual rules of film criticism to Mortal Kombat II<\/strong>? 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\u2019t care about trivialities like acting, writing, directing, intelligence or coherence. They\u2019re 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<\/strong> has all of that in abundance. It unlikely they\u2019ll even notice it doesn\u2019t make a lick of sense. If I\u2019m being honest, I didn\u2019t notice it myself I was having so much fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I normally don\u2019t go for CGI and volume. Mortal Kombat II<\/strong> is filled with both. It\u2019s both noisy and very CGI-heavy. For a change, this wasn\u2019t an instant turn-off for me. Is the CGI groundbreaking? No, absolutely not. Is it especially great? Nope. It\u2019s 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<\/strong> is just as loud and ungainly as any other big effects-driven summer blockbuster. Did you expect otherwise? This property isn\u2019t exactly known for being meditative.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I love that Mortal Kombat II<\/strong> 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. \u00a0It looks just like any one of 500 direct-to-video action flicks from that time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not going to try to convince you Mortal Kombat II<\/strong> is a landmark of modern cinema. It\u2019s not Citizen Kane nor is it meant to be. It\u2019s beyond dumb. The narrative is a confused mess to all but the gamers and fans in attendance. It\u2019s wildly overedited and overstylized. It\u2019s a full-on assault of the sense yet it still somehow works. It\u2019s very entertaining. In the end, isn\u2019t that all that matters?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mortal Kombat II (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Fantasy-Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Simon McQuoid\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeremy Slater\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: May 8, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Mortal-Kombat-II-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14429,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions\/14429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}