The First Look from the Mortal Kombat Movie Set

Mortal Kombat is coming back to the big-screen and if the details are to be believed, then it will feature all of the gore and fatalities that the series is known for. This morning, Entertainment Weekly provided us our first look at the movie in-development.

Martial Artist Lewis Tan plays Cole Young, a new character who will be introduced in the film. He offered the following quote to EW:

“I’ve been playing the game since I was a kid,” he says. “For lack of a better way to describe it, you don’t want to mess it up because it’s so iconic. You want to bring something new to the table that people haven’t seen before, but at the same time, really respect and pay homage to these legendary worlds that were already created.”

Meanwhile, Director Simon McQuoid had a lot to say about how they are approaching the movie, and how they are paying homage to the franchise:

“I wanted to make sure that everyone respected the material, the lore of Mortal Kombat, the fans and the love they have for this. Everyone was clear on it,” McQuoid says of developing the reboot. Respect for the material also meant leaning into what makes Mortal Kombat so popular after all these years. Blood has a lot to do with that.

 

As a joke, McQuoid told stunt coordinator Kyle Gardiner to craft “the best fight sequences ever done in a movie ever.” In reality, these action pieces are some of the highest-rated elements of the movie to come out of early test screenings, according to McQuoid and Tan. “We need to be smart about how we go about [the fights],” the director notes, “and there are times, you’ll see when you see the movie, when it’s just, ‘F— it! Let’s have some fun.'”

 

McQuoid is still editing the film, but he already knows “it’s definitely not gonna get a PG-13 rating.”

 

“Out of context this quote might seem incendiary, it’s not: The rules around ratings aren’t what a lot of people think they are,” he says. “It’s amount of blood, it’s amount of red, it’s interpretation of how you go about it. We had a lot of discussions about getting the balance right so there was gore and there was blood and there were fatalities.” He pauses to repeat what he just said. “And there is gore, blood, and fatalities.”

Our Take

While the classic Mortal Kombat movie is a favorite among gamers, we’re excited by the prospect of a modern interpretation that takes full advantage of current film-making methods and the no-holds barred approach to making it R-rated. We can’t wait to see more!