VGMRP: MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNHILIATION

Some of the dialogue near the beginning of ANNHILATION:

Kitana: Mother? You're alive?!

Kitana's Mother: Too bad YOU.... will DIE!

You have to see this movie to believe it. On the other hand, that is too high a price. I realize that part of my praise for the first movie was "lots of kung fu, set to techno." I now must eat my words. This movie doesn't even pretend to make sense.

Characters appear without introduction, are quickly killed and never mentioned again. Performances are all over the map, but are uniformly bad. Major parts from the first movie are recast with the cheaper, non-union versions. Johnny Cage is killed off in the first 5 minutes, X3 Cyclops style. Villains who were killed in the last movie (Sub Zero, Reptile, Scorpion) appear again without explanation. Actually, full disclosure: They did explain one re-appearence.

Liu Kang: I killed you in the tournament.

Sub Zero: You killed my elder brother.

So forget coherency. Put it out of your heads. They weren't bothering, so why should I? But even once you've abandoned plot, character development, logic, emotional investment, coherent production design and all other meager pleasures of competent filmmaking, you're still left with one of the worst films ever made. Just look at this:

Nothing in the world can prepare you for the ineptness of the special effects. They are epically bad. They don't even meet the Wing Commander "Good Enough For a Video Game" standard. This is all the more astounding because the effects in Mortal Kombat were, overall, quite good. You were more or less convinced that what was happening on screen was actually happening. With Annhilation, all you're convinced of is that someone should have been fired.

Random bad guys fall from the sky like poorly-animated fireballs from a disaster movie. (Jaxx observes, "They don't even wear parachutes!") Lu Kang morphs into a dragon that even the makers of GODZILLA would be ashamed to put on screen. There is much talk of two worlds "merging", yet all we see are shoddily rendered landmarks with cartoony skeletons laying about. A killer robot shows up, and we can clearly see the stunt double's face behind the mask. And then there's this guy:

Just because you CAN use computers to make things appear onscreen, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Special effects should either be hidden in plain sight, or transport you to a world of fantasy where you want to believe in the impossible. Or they should kick your ass and blow your mind. Or make you laugh at the sheer audacity of them. I'm not picky. But for all of the effort in ANNHILATION, they come up with less than even the makers of SUPER MARIO BROTHERS. Every effect takes you out of the movie, because you're not focusing on what just happened, you're wondering how they did it. And not in a good way. More in the, "how did they think this would work? Or that it was ready? Or that it was good?"

But even with good effects, the movie is wimpy fight scene after crappy fight scene, partnered with some of the crappiest after school special dialogue about teamwork ever written.
("We have to support each other... like a family!" says Raiden. "faith in yourself is all you need!") There is an idea where a movie can become much of muchness- like Transformers, and probably Transformers 2- but that requires a much to have much of. ANNHILATION can't even get that right. Liu Kang just beat up a robot named Smoke? If I haven't played the game, who the hell cares? Sure, the first movie didn't bother with backstory on Scorpion, but at least there was some build-up and tension before the fight. Here, we just get an announcement of who was just killed, sometimes not at all.

I saw this movie 2 years after the first one, I hated it then, and I hate it more now. They messed it up, big time. Sure, you can laugh at it. But at some point the movie crosses the line of camp and transforms into 96 minutes of LARP-Gone-Wild. (If you don't know what LARP is, you're probably happier for it.) After awhile the mockery becomes cruelty, and then self-inflicted pain.

Probably the best way to end is with this:

Rain: Two of earth's best warriors have already been taken. Kabal and Stryker.

Shao Kahn: Tell me, did you make them beg for the lives before you destroyed them?

Rain: But, Master, I thought if I let them live...

Shao Kahn: (slams down a giant hammer) I have no use for excuses! Rain, this will never happen again.

Rain: It will never happen agaARRGGHHHHH

(Rain gets thrown into pit of fire by Kahn)

We never found out who Rain was. And now, we never will. Just as well.

STAR RATING: Zero Stars (out of 5)


P.S.: Just watch this title screen for 90 minutes. It's better than watching the movie.