Mortal Kombat: Legacy (2011)

Finish Him!

My interest in today’s review was born from a short film called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth that hit the internet on my birthday in 2010. As with most things that came out on June 8^th, it was pretty awesome. It took the world of Mortal Kombat that had previously been rendered goofy and unwatchable into something intriguing and vaguely realistic. I was entirely intrigued. But apparently Warner Bros. was not, and they passed on turning it into a movie. What they did instead is allow the director to turn his idea into a web series. But I found out that this had happened well after the first season had been released, so I felt like I had to do it all at the same time, which doesn’t really matter because the episodes are only like 10 minutes apiece. And so I watched, and prepare to review, Mortal Kombat: Legacy Season One, created, written, and directed by Kevin Tancharoen, based on characters created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, co-written by Todd Helbing and Aaron Helbing, and starring Michael Jai White, Jeri Ryan, Darren Shahlavi, Matt Mullins, Sam Tjhia, Jolene Tran, Ryan Robbins, Ian Anthony Dale, Devan Ohtsji, Shane Warren Jones, and Peter Shinkoda. Find it here on Machinima’s YouTube channel.

The story of the show is basically a prequel to the original game and we get introduced to the characters a few characters at a time. Sonya Blade (Jeri Ryan) gets captured by Kano (Darren Shahlavi) and Jax (Michael Jai White) has to rescue her. Johnny Cage (Matt Mullins) is failing to get his acting career back on track. Shao Kahn (Aleks Paunovic) overthrows the kingdom of Edenia, taking Queen Sindel (Beatrice Ilg) and her daughter Kitana (Samantha Tjhia) as his own, and creating an evil twin of the daughter that might actually love him who he names Mileena (Jolene Tran). Raiden (Ryan Robbins) comes to Earth and is put in an asylum. Sub-Zero (Kevan Ohtsji) kills the family of General Hanzo Hasashi (Ian Anthony Dale), and the anger and vengeance turns him into Scorpion. And Kano’s early endeavors lead to the creation of two robots from Lin Kuei warriors, Cyrax (Shane Warren Jones) and Sektor (Peter Shinkoda).

It’s hard to complain about something that is readily available for free on the internet … but I will do my utmost. Actually, I kind of liked this series. I’ve been really hit and miss with the Mortal Kombat franchise over the years. I liked about 50% of the games, and probably a much lower percentage of the live action endeavors. In the defense of the games, I never was that big into fighting games. There’s really no defense for most of the movies though. As for this show: it works. The episodes are a little short for what I’m used to, and the story is not surprising to people with a basic understanding of Mortal Kombat, but it was interesting to watch a half real world, half supernatural interpretation of Mortal Kombat. It wasn’t quite as based in the real world as the original trailer that drew me into the show, but it was good enough. But when I say it was unsurprising, I refer to events like what happens when an explosion is about to go off and Jax is nearby. Spoilers: there was damage to his arms. The devil, you say! Then, even though I really liked the way they set up Raiden’s story, it was almost what I expected. I thought it was cool (and made sense) that some dude falling out of the sky claiming he was the God of Thunder (without looking like Chris Hemsworth) would be put in an asylum. I expected him to be able to escape because they tried to give him electroshock therapy. A Taser is almost as good. It takes them until about Episode 4 to start getting into the supernatural, but they never really went that overboard with it. You kind of need to go supernatural when you start putting Outworld into it. The whole part of the story when Shao Kahn overthrows the king works well enough, but Shao Kahn also proved himself fairly stupid. Why would you send Kitana to kill her father if you’re trying to keep it a secret? There’s a huge chance one of them will recognize the other and unveil the whole thing.

The look of the show was solid, especially when you take into account the fact that it was made for YouTube and probably did not cost them a lot of money. Most of it was probably fairly practical until they started getting into the supernatural stuff, but the look kept up. And when it seemed they couldn’t afford the look they wanted, they supplanted it with a Kill Bill style animation that was still pretty awesome.

The action was fine, but it took a little too long to get there for my tastes. I mean, this show IS based on a fighting game, right? But it did eventually start into it, and I found it very satisfying.

I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the cast for this show. They actually got some fairly decent sized names for something with such a low budget, and from what I’ve seen on Wikipedia, they got a few more. This season had Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan, and next season adds Casper Van Dien and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Perhaps some names that some people wouldn’t recognize, but most are faces that they definitely would. But Van Dien replaces the guy that played Johnny Cage in this season, a guy named Matt Mullins. I thought he did an excellent job, so I’m not sure why you’d bother to replace him just because you can get a slightly bigger name, especially when that bigger name can’t possibly do the martial arts as well as Mullins did. And Johnny’s episode was actually fairly interesting for a character I have no interest in. I especially liked that Johnny Cage used to be a Power Ranger. The weirdest thing about the characters of this show was how long it took for them to introduce two of the biggest Mortal Kombat characters: Sub- Zero and Scorpion.

I would say that I definitely recommend Mortal Kombat: Legacy for a number of reasons. First, it’s an interesting, vaguely real world prequel to the Mortal Kombat series with some decent – albeit simple – writing to the story. Second, it looks pretty damned good and has some decent enough action in it. Third, they actually got some decent actors, and a few well-known ones. And finally, watching the entire series is shorter than most movies, coming in at about an hour and a half. So what could it hurt? Mortal Kombat: Legacy gets “Solid” out of “Toasty!”

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The Dark Knight (2008)

And … Here … We … Go!

Having already seen Batman Begins, I figured the sequel would at least be good.  Christopher Nolan’s new vision for the Batman universe struck me as mostly realistic, but totally awesome.  When the sequel was on its way, you could assume that the quality might diminish as with the greater majority of sequels.  But my hopes were fairly high regardless.  What my hopes were low about was the villain.  I was definitely amongst the group of people that thought it would be completely impossible for anyone to surpass Jack Nicholson in the role.  I was sure the actor they picked would do a fine job and, from what I had seen, he looked fantastic in the role, but come on!  It’s Jack Nicholson!  Well, what happened?  Let’s all be not surprised by the results of me reviewing The Dark Knight, story by David S. Goyer, written by Jonathan Nolan, co-written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Chin Han, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Michael Jai White, Ron Dean, Monique Curnen, Nestor Carbonell, Colin McFarlane, Nydia Rodriguez Terracina, and William Fichtner.

A make up wearing criminal known only as The Joker (Heath Ledger) is robbing mob-owned banks in Gotham City and, though he loves to show his face on camera, continuously evades Batman (Christian Bale) and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman).  In reaction, a Chinese accountant named Lau (Chin Han) hides the money for the mob bosses – Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts), The Chechen (Ritchie Coster), and Gambol (Michael Jai White) – until the Joker shows up and tells them they are avoiding the problem.  What they really need to do is kill the Batman, which the Joker claims he can do, but he demands half of their money to do it.  If you’re good at something, never do it for free.  Out of the desperation of the mob bosses, the Joker is unleashed on Gotham.

I always remember that I like the Dark Knight before I decide to rewatch it, but it still blows my mind with how good it is.  I’ve said it before with two other movies, but this movie stands a very good chance of being my favorite comic book movie.  Avengers was easily the most fun, Watchmen is a fantastic movie as well, but the Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  So exciting, so dark, so smart, and so so good.  It’s an extremely well-written story with action, chaos, and loss.  And the darkness and realism that I liked so much about the previous movie returns for this movie.  That would, of course, mean that the Joker wouldn’t be using the toys you’d typically find him using – things like guns that pop flags with “Bang” written on them or Jack in the Box’s that explode – that Joker purists may miss, but it wouldn’t fit the atmosphere.  What you get instead is a super dark and demented insane genius that actually has his shit together while still being completely off his rocker.  We all knew the Joker was coming, though.  They hinted at it at the end of the last movie.  But when I was going into this movie, I started wondering why they didn’t hint at the villains from the next movie.  But I think I found one.  It seems like there was a very good chance that, when Bruce asks Lucius how his new suit will do against dogs and Lucius said, “It should be fine against cats,” it may have been a hint that I never caught before.  As much as I loved the movie, I took issue with a few smaller things in the story.  The first was that I never understood what happened with the rescues of Rachael and Harvey.  Batman tells the cops that he’s going after Rachael as he’s leaving the police station, but then he shows up to rescue Harvey.  Did the Joker lie to Batman and he actually intended to rescue Rachael, or did he change his mind off camera and tell the cops to go after Rachael?  It’s always kind of bugged me.  The second was the cell phone echolocation machine that Bruce had built.  He spends all this money and all this time researching and perfecting this technology to find one man one time, and then he blows it all up.  I grant that it worked, but it just seems so wasteful.  The third part I had a problem with was towards the end of the movie, when someone was going to punish someone else by having him choose between his wife, daughter, and son which one he loved most.  How shitty do the wife and daughter feel?

The action in this movie was spectacular, made even better by the fact that the greater majority of it was done practically and involved minimal computer graphics.  As good as computer graphics have gotten over the years, you can usually tell when it’s fake.  Most of the Dark Knight is not fake, as best as I could tell.  There were plenty of highlights amongst the visuals, but I’ll focus on three.  Two of them were in the same fantastic action scene: when the Joker was trying to destroy the SWAT vehicle with Harvey in it.  It was freakin’ amazing when the Tumbler drove into the garbage truck that was following the SWAT vehicle, smashing the top of the garbage truck into the ceiling of the underground road.  Thinking that couldn’t be topped, slightly later they make a semi do a front flip.  Later on, they even actually blow up a building to simulate Gotham Hospital.  Suck it, Avatar!  You can take your blue people with hair dicks back to Pandora and sit on Home Tree.

Credits be damned.  Even amongst the stellar performances in this movie, I think we all know who the real star of this movie is: Maggie Gyllenhaal.  I don’t know how they didn’t incorporate it into the story that, much like Harvey Dent, Rachael must’ve endured some serious trauma and third-degree burns in between the first and second movie, and all in the face region.  In fact, the moment I realized that the Joker was truly insane was when he referred to this new Rachel as “beautiful”.  Okay, in truth I don’t think Maggie Gyllenhaal is as ugly as all of the things I say about her indicate, but she’s certainly not great looking.  And the real star of the movie is actually Heath Ledger.  This mother fucker disappears into the role of the Joker, and easily (and surprisingly) blows Jack Nicholson’s take on the character right out of the water.  I believe that, had I gone into this movie unaware of the Joker’s true identity, I may not even have recognized Ledger in this movie.  He’s that fucking good.  I said it after I first saw the movie and it’s as true today as it was then, but everything else in this movie could’ve been complete horse shit and his performance alone would’ve made it worth seeing.  It truly was the performance of a lifetime, and a gundamned shame that it was the last performance in his lifetime.  The only non-Gyllenhaal performance I took issue with in this movie was Melinda McGraw as Commissioner Gordon’s wife.  All of her reactions to bad news in this movie were a little over the top and never convincing.

The Dark Knight is an amazing movie.  The story is great, the action is fantastic, and the performances are all terrific.  There’s not a lot of bad things to be found in this movie, but even if there were, the movie would be worth the watch for Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker alone.  The fact that the rest of the movie is also amazing is just icing on the cake.  I don’t know that I’d be comfortable calling the Dark Knight my favorite comic book movie of all time, but it would certainly be considered.  This movie should not only be owned; it should be watched at least once per month.  Put it on your calendars.  The Dark Knight gets “A little fight in you.  I like that” out of “Harvey Dent.  Can he be trusted?”

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Black Dynamite (2009)

Because Donuts Don’t Wear Alligator Shoes.

The inspiration for seeing today’s movie came a good while back, and mostly from the Nerdist podcast.  They did an interview with some of the people involved with this movie, and had previously talked about how funny the movie was.  I put it on my Netflix queue pretty quickly, even though all I knew about the movie gave me no reason I could think of to enjoy it.  I don’t know that I’ve seen a Blaxploitation film before, and it’s also a very fine line to walk to make a movie really bad to call it a comedy.  Sometimes it can be done very well, and sometimes I just think it’s using comedy as an excuse because the movie they made was not actually good (Like Leprechaun: In the Hood).  We’ll find out as I review Black Dynamite, written by Michael Jai White and Byron Keith Minns, directed by Scott Sanders, and starring Michael Jai White, Salli Richardson, Tommy Davidson, Kevin Chapman, Byron Minns, Cedric Yarbrough, Mykelti Williamson, Brian McKnight, Arsenio Hall, Obba Babatundé, Bokeem Woodbine, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Mike Starr, John Salley, and Nicole Sullivan.

The brother of Vietnam veteran and former CIA agent Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) is killed in the streets by a shady organization.  Black Dynamite decides to set out on a crusade of revenge, and to clean up the streets as he does it.  On his journey, he meets up with a black power activist that he gives a certain degree of his affections to named Gloria (Salli Richardson).  Speaking of affections, it turns out that his brother was killed to cover up a plan by “the Man” that would fill the popular Anaconda Malt Liquor with a formula that would shrink the size of all the black men’s penises.  Black Dynamite is the only thing standing between them and the destruction of the entire “Blacks on Blondes” porn series!

This was a really good movie.  Well, technically speaking it was a really bad movie, but they intended to make it as bad as they did for comedic effect, and it definitely worked.  The story is pretty typical Blaxploitation stuff that tends to be pretty ridiculous on its own, but it’s sold by all of the other ridiculous stuff.  The performances are usually over the top, the scenes drag on longer than they should, the characters are ridiculous, and it’s just really funny because of it.  The badness of the movie is an asset, using things like the main character trying and failing to hang up a phone for an extra couple of seconds, a character looks like he really got punched in an action scene and breaks character before an obvious cut gets the action back on, and they take the most ridiculous series of tangents to reach a conclusion, starting with M&Ms and how they melt in your mouth, going through Greek mythology, and somehow ending up at the fact that Anaconda Malt Liquor is going to make the black man’s penis small to defeat them.  One of my favorite parts was when a group was going into a battle situation and one of the characters starts randomly talking about his aspirations for when the revolution is over, talking about how he wants to settle down and be a father, showing a picture of his kid, and he gets expectedly hit with a spear.  Black Dynamite then shouts, “Who saw that coming?  I mean, ‘Who saw where that came from?’”  I also liked when Black Dynamite was fighting with nunchucks and “accidentally” threw them off camera, punched a dude in the head, and then someone off camera threw his nunchucks back to him.  The animated Kama Sutra part that was sold like it was supposed to be a really sweet love making scene was also pretty hilarious.

The performances in this movie deserve about as much credit as the writing and filming process.  Much like the movie Airplane!, the performances in this movie acted like they were not trying to be funny, which just makes everything that much funnier.  Unlike Airplane!, they weren’t acting as if they were in a soap opera, they were just acting like over the top characters from a Blaxploitation movie.  It was all excellent.  Michael Jai White was great, able to do the acting just as well as the action.  I was really happy with all of the cameos in the movie as well.  Tommy Davidson was in this movie, Cedric Yarbrough, Brian McKnight, Arsenio Hall, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Mike Starr, and Nicole Sullivan.  Each one of them had some solid funny parts and made me happy that they even showed their faces in the movie.

Black Dynamite was a lot of fun.  Ridiculous Blaxploitation story that takes full advantage of the generally shoddy filming that was common in those movies, while having the good sense to not have any of the performances act like they were in a comedy.  Let the movie be ridiculous around characters that only seem to be desperately trying to remember their lines and the comedy will be largely amped up.  This is like the Blaxploitation version of the movie Airplane!, and that’s alright by me.  This is definitely a movie that you should check out.  You can’t help but laugh.  I’ll be purchasing this movie as soon as I can find it, but you can find it on Netflix right now.  Black Dynamite gets “I am smiling” out of “Black Dynamite, that was the best loving I ever had.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.