we could talk about how hanzo’s rage is a metaphor for his grief and trauma and his title of scorpion represents his difficulty to let go of his anger how he can never stop mourning his past because he refuses to stop mourning and how kuai liang’s taking of the mantle is representative of the ability to move forward rather than be stuck in constant mourning of the brother he lost. we could also talk about how hanzo’s protection over kuai liang was out of guilt of how hanzo could not stop himself from allowing emotion to control him and killing bi-han, and his ability to allow kuai liang to live instead of exacting more blindness vengeance allowed kuai liang to prosper and grow and end the years of rivalry between their clans.

Not gonna lie I was pleasantly surprised with the Mortal Kombat movie.

Spoiler warning, btw, gonna ramble for a bit about who knows what.

There's some things I didn't personally care for, like the mark & arcana stuff, but I understand the reasoning behind them. I think those were added to accommodate people unfamiliar with the series. Typically with Mortal Kombat you can just say "it's a video game lol" and that will explain why you've got a Special Forces guy fighting a ninja, and why that soldier gets metal arms while the ninja has ice powers, but once you switch the series to a different medium, that starts to become an insufficient justification, so they had to make up some sort of exposition that's relatively simple to explain to an audience that might not know how much craziness they signed up for.

Some performances were done perfectly, like Kano, Hanzo/Scorpion, and Kung Lao. Kano made me laugh every time he opened his mouth, Kung Lao had the perfect amount of cocky arrogance, and I remember Hiroyuki Sanada from his role as Musashi in Westworld and he just kills it in that kind of role. Scorpion was a good fit for him.

The action in general felt very true to the series, especially the few times we saw variations of certain characters fatalities, but also in terms of choreography, like when Sub Zero creates a wall of ice and throws someone through it.

Speaking of Sub Zero, a little bit of a prediction: I read that the actor signed on for something like 4 or 5 films. I doubt they can get that much mileage from Noob Saibot so I think they may use the same actor for Kuai Liang. Instead of being Sub-Zero's brother, they'll probably ret-con him as a descendant and a present day Lin Kuei. This opens up a few doors. Not only could they even potentially do a solo film regarding the Lin Kuei Cyber Initiative with him as the protagonist, but the character can form a rivalry (or alliance) with Cole, which will allow for the typical Sub-Zero/Scorpion rivalry to be paralleled (or subverted). It could be really good if done right.

Kabal is one of my personal favorites, so I was happy he was in the movie, but he felt kind of underutilized. Mileena did too, considering we didn't see Shao Kahn, Kitana, or any Tarkatans in the movie. They probably should have picked a different Outworlder and saved her for a later film.

Raiden was kind of an asshole, and Cole's arcana is just MCU Black Panther's kinetic energy-storing suit but also with tonfas I guess? Felt kinda lame to me idk.

Overall I think the movie did more right than wrong though. I've learned not to get too nit-picky with video game adaptations. There's been so many bad ones over the years that I'm just willing to take what I can get lol