Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for the 2021 Mortal Kombat film.
The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie changed up Sonya Blade's fatal kiss fatalities during her final fight with her arch-rival Kano. While fans of the games may balk at how the movie paid tribute to Sonya's famous finisher, it did make sense within the context of the film's reality and helped to avoid some unpleasant connotations.
Sonya Blade was one of the original Mortal Kombat contenders and the sole female fighter in the first game. Originally Sonya's background was nondescript beyond her being a lieutenant in the U.S. Special Forces and her having a long-standing grudge against a mercenary named Kano. Later games fleshed this out, with Sonya having lost most of her squad in their efforts to bring down Kano and his Black Dragon crime syndicate. In the most recent games, Sonya is a general and the leader of the Outer World Investigation Agency charged with defending Earth from extradimensional threats.
While the modern Mortal Kombat games emphasize Sonya's stubbornness and service as a soldier, she was frequently cast in a damsel-in-distress role in the early games and adaptations, needing to be rescued by her male counterparts. Her sexuality and beauty were emphasized over her skill as a warrior and this was reflected in her unique fatalities, which were based around a series of deadly kisses. The Fire Kiss found Sonja blowing a kiss at her enemy, engulfing them in flames that burned them to death. The Poison Kiss was even more overtly feminine, with Sonya blowing a pink powder at her enemy, which shaped itself into a heart before filling the enemy's lungs and causing them to immediately begin vomiting and coughing up blood.
The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie did pay tribute to Sonya's fatality in a clever way during the final fight between Kano and Sonya. Battling within the cramped confines of Sonya's trailer home, Sonya was able to blind Kano and short out his laser eye using a bottle of acetone, which is highly flammable and poisonous. Sonya dealt the finishing blow using a lawn gnome statue as an improvised club; a fitting and humiliating touch given Kano's statement earlier in the film regarding how garden gnomes gave him the creeps.
Presumably, the screenwriters of Mortal Kombat decided not to include Sonya's trademark fatalities because of the way that the special powers of the various fighters manifest in the reality of the 2021 film. In the mythology of the movie, warriors chosen to defend Earth as part of the Mortal Kombat tournament could train to awaken their Arcana (or inner power) and develop abilities in tune with their inner nature. The monk Liu Kang, for instance, could summon and command the element of fire; the symbol of passion and knowledge. Given that, it would have had some disturbing undertones for Sonya's inner power to be manifested in the form of deadly kisses, to say nothing of how unnatural it would be to work that into the story.
Beyond the sexist implications of the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie's main heroine having kiss-based superpowers, the film's storyline had also Sonya fighting the forces of Outworld without the benefit of being one of Earth's chosen champions for most of the film's runtime. It was not until Sonya defeated Kano and his dragon birthmark transferred to her that she would have been capable of drawing upon her inner power according to the rules of the film. Fans of the games can be content, however, as Sonya manifests her trademark pink energy ring blasts later in the movie when she comes to the rescue of Cole Young.
