The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie came close to receiving an NC-17 rating due to violence. The upcoming adaptation is the third film based on the popular video game franchise. It is directed by Simon McQuoid.
The new Mortal Kombat will be in IMAX when it releases in theaters on April 23. It will also be available on HBO Max the same day. The film will once again immerse audiences in this fictional universe where formidable warriors battle to the death in a tournament that transpires over a variety of dangerous realms. The actors playing the iconic characters for the new go-round include Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, Tadanobu Asano as Raiden, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Josh Lawson as Kano, and Max Huang as Kung Lao.
The buzz is high for this new Mortal Kombat to do right by the game series. Per Yahoo!, McQuoid spoke at a recent press event about remaining as true to the games as possible. He explained the goal of bringing the bloody bone-crunching brutality to the big screen took the movie "quite close to the line" of being marked with an NC-17 rating:
What we had to be a bit careful of was … you can get to NC-17 territory pretty quick. It's different in a video game when it's not real human beings. When you move this across to reality, a different set of things start to happen in your mind, and you get rated slightly differently. So there were certain things that are in the game that would mean the film would be unreleasable. And none of us wanted that. … So we were balancing that stuff all the time. And there's some stuff that you will see that really gets quite close to the line because we didn't want people to go, ‘Meh. Seemed kind of lame.’
The last thing anyone wants from a Mortal Kombat movie is to feel like the fight sequences come off subpar. Taking a look back at the 1995 Mortal Kombat film, the CGI technology was far from great, which made characters like the villainous Goro come off a bit laughable. Still, the movie, which was helmed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the director who helmed the majority of the entries in the Resident Evil movie franchise, did well enough to spawn a big-screen sequel. It's also worth remembering it was the '90s. One could easily speculate the Motion Picture Association of America and audiences alike weren't yet prepared for the carnage that awaits with the new flick.
With progress in both cinematic technology and genre storytelling, audiences should definitely expect this Mortal Kombat to be action-packed. It's probably safe to assume moviegoers won't be seeing iconic slasher Jason Voorhees or any of the horror movie characters that make cameos in the latest console release. But that's not to say the movie won't deliver the terrifying goods. With James Wan on board as producer, it's completely likely the man behind the Conjuring and Saw franchises put his keen genre eye to work in order to make this Mortal Kombat a visceral roller coaster ride to remember.
Mortal Kombat will premiere on April 23 in theaters and on HBO Max.
Source: Yahoo!
