Jeremy Slater's Mortal Kombat 2 has the potential to learn from the franchise’s past mistakes and actually deliver on what Mortal Kombat: Annihilation tried and failed to do. A sequel to the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie, Annihilation opened to a disastrous critical reception and prevented the Mortal Kombat movie franchise from continuing for years. In 2021, however, a Mortal Kombat reboot was released by Warner Bros. and managed to do well enough both in theaters and streaming HBO Max to get a sequel green-lit.
Mortal Kombat (2021) was a very straightforward story meant to reignite the Mortal Kombat franchise after the bad taste left by Annihilation. The plot was simple and served to introduce original and core Mortal Kombat characters like Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), as well as establish the rules of Mortal Kombat. The movie also presented the motives behind the actions of key players in Mortal Kombat such as Raiden and Shang Tsung and hinted that are much bigger threats awaiting Earthrealm’s warriors in Mortal Kombat 2.
With the introductions out of the way, Mortal Kombat 2 can expand the parameters of its brutal world and bring a more robust mixture of lore and characters to the big screen. Given how extensive the roster of characters in Mortal Kombat is, options abound as to where the sequel's story can go. Names like Johnny Cage, Kitana, Cyrax, and Nightwolf can be introduced, and the story can go beyond an arguably tired tournament plotline by bringing Shao Kahn and the Elder Gods into play. However, this is precisely what Mortal Kombat: Annihilation tried and failed spectacularly to do. The dozens of new characters and concepts the movie presented were so poorly explained and integrated into what had already been established that, at some points, they almost looked like a parody of the games and the original Mortal Kombat movie itself. Now, decades later, Mortal Kombat 2 looks set to make this same leap in scale, but the sequel must do it in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the quality of its story - making it the Mortal Kombat sequel Annihilation could never be.
While video game adaptations still often struggle in translating the characters and events from the games to the big screen, Mortal Kombat 2 has all the tools in its arsenal to succeed. The cheesy, all-over-the-place tone of Annihilation didn’t work in 1997, and it wouldn’t work now. As a result, Mortal Kombat 2 can learn from this lesson and craft a movie that, while it expands the world of Mortal Kombat, also delivers a cohesive story. This new Mortal Kombat franchise already has its main storyline in Cole Young and his connection with Scorpion, and having that still be the focus of future movies could help the Mortal Kombat sequels not be overwhelmed by the extensive lore of the games.
The prospect of a Mortal Kombat sequel after what Annhillation did to the original franchise might be scary, but Mortal Kombat 2 has almost two decades of other video game adaptions to use as an example of both what to do and not to do. After the first film’s straightforward, almost underwhelming storyline, Mortal Kombat 2 will have to present bigger stakes and scale. If that can be achieved without affecting the quality of the story, then what happened with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation can be mercifully avoided.