Finis Ipsum

The weather outside is frightful…springtime in Wisconsin demands new folk wisdom. April sleetstorms bring May…brownish muck that gets in the soles of your shoe and turns to industrial-grade ceramic? Something like that, anyways.

Just as a demonstration of how bizarre the things I take seriously can be, I’m going to talk about the latest Mortal Kombat game. And just to show that I have a way of completely missing the point, I’m going to talk about the plot! Nobody plays Mortal Kombat for the plot, jeez.

Anyways, that means spoilers ahoy, so if for some reason you’d be turned away by that kind of thing…well, go away, and re-evaluate your priorities—it’s Mortal Kombat. A lot of people get punched really hard and then their arms fly off for no anatomically justified reason.

Now, I have to admit, as much as I acknowledge that Mortal Kombat is practically the definition of “sale by shock value”, it occupies a special place in my heart. As a young man, the imagery of the original game just leapt into my brain, and my parents banning me from playing it because of the ridiculously over-the-top violence saw to it that it stayed there.

Now that I’m older, the ridiculously atavistic experience and absurd justifications for fistfights with magic aliens are a refreshing throwback to the days of yelling “GET OVER HERE!” at my friends at recess in elementary school. Mindless fun, right?

The Mortal Kombat IP has declined over the years. As an fan from the old, old days, and a bit of a purist in everything, I would say that the decline started to show in MK3, when they introduced a couple of really dud characters where before the series was notable for each character having a pretty simple and attractive “story” that was immediately apparent. I mean, what the hell did Kabal end up being, anyways? And does <i>anybody</i> like Stryker?

That said, MK4 was undoubtedly where the “dud characters, go-nowhere plot” cancer became malignant, for all that it introduced Quan Chi as a major character. That pale little bastard has a special in my heart, as all predictably treacherous minions do; for all that the MK series devolved, it was fun watching him and Shang Sung try to play cosmic poker with the big boys…

As the series dragged its ragged corpse through the 90’s and 2000s., it just kept getting more and more out of touch with what made the original game so popular: interesting, flavorful characters and a lot of brutal fighting with decent mechanics. (The less said about MK vs DC Universe, Midway’s attempt to copy Marvel vs Capcom’s success, the better.)

The transition to 3D arenas was particularly painful, especially as a lot of the most klassic (God, is anyone else tired of that, yet?) moves (Scorpion’s spear, Sub-Zero’s freeze, etc) were single-axis, linear attacks which suffered in the translation.

And the story just kept getting weirder as they tried to out-do the threat of each previous game. The whole “Dragon King” nonsense of MK: Deadly Alliance and MK: Deception just fell on its face, not least of all because the “big bad” Onaga looked ridiculous and, insofar as there was such a thing, had a “plan” that felt lame and unthreatening—hurr, durr, he has a big magic army that totally isn’t inspired by Qin Shi Huang’s terracotta army, honest, and he’ll…attack, I guess! It’s not like Earthrealm had fought off two or three invasions like that at that point in the storyline…

So, like many people, I was thrilled to hear that the series was getting a reboot, and moreover, I was impressed that they didn’t just make a clusterfuck remake based on the premise of the first Mortal Kombat and try to shoehorn everybody from MK 1-3 into the original tournament. I really did enjoy how it retold the events of the first three games, going step by step, making the expansion of the cast seem very natural.

I also appreciated the storytelling convention that enabled the reboot. They could have just done a hard reset, but I think the route they went is significantly more interesting: the opening credits reveal that Shao Khan was the victor in the “winner takes universe” plot of MK: Armageddon, and as he gloats over the all-but-corpse of Raiden (who, for idiot plot reasons, is sorta-kinda evil at this point, although I like his “dark” costume), the thunder god sends an ambiguous message back to a past self: “He must win.”

This prophecy refers to Shao Khan, who (it transpires) must be allowed to conquer Earthrealm because apparently he’ll forget that the Elder Gods told him not to, so they show up and spank him around the events of MK3 rather than letting it get to the point where the Emperor of Outworld ends the universe via whatever dumbass plot excuse justified it in Armageddon. (A nice “fuck you” to the absolute garbage the MK universe became, I think.)

So the plot of the game revolves around Raiden trying to figure out what the hell “future-me” meant, which is kind of funny, but it also let them change story events and characters, and do new things. I found this narrative justification for that sort of thing very clever.

This also allowed them to update and reinvent some of the characters; even Stryker benefitted from the update, not least around the gut region. Kabal got an explanation, finally, and Nightwolf actually did something, to everyone’s shock (although he did so by becoming even more of a stereotype than he was before).

The death of the first Sub-Zero and his resurrection by Quan Chi as Noob Saibot, a major development that was at first only vaguely revealed in the post-game backstory of MK3: Ultimate, is shown on-screen and made clearer.

The cyber-ninjas show up before they’re turned into robots, which is nice, since the Lin Kuei’s cyberization nonsense just sort of “happened” between MK2 and MK3. Now Cyrax and Sektor’s personality clashes over the whole “becoming a robot” issue are overt rather than just hinted at.

In fact, that brings up something that I was terrified of when I saw it for the first time:

I’ll be perfectly clear: the second Sub-Zero has always been my favorite character, and key to this affection was the plotline where he went rogue from the Lin Kuei ninjas because he refused the be turned into a robot, where his friend Smoke was tragically captured and forced to become a cyber-ninja against his will.

However, in-game, this turns out to be one of the ways the new timeline diverges from the original. In the new game, Smoke and the younger Sub-Zero (Originally called “Tundra”, apparently) are both attacked while investigating the death of the original. In the new continuity, Smoke is saved, while Sub-Zero is captured.

This has the twofold benefit of allowing Smoke to become a character (instead of Noob Saibot’s gimp, like he was in the last few MK games before the reboot), and allowing Sub-Zero to get a cyber update, something speculated upon by fans forever.

Sub-Zero eventually gets de-mind-controlled (replacing Cyrax in the original timeline), which is a sop towards people like me who are big fans of his. I am very impressed with how well this was carried off—if Sub-Zero had just gotten cyberized for no reason, or was some kind of “hidden character” bullshit, I’d have flipped my lid; with the plot justification of timeline divergence, I am totally fine with it. (I am such a sucker for alternate realities.)

 Anyways, the game eventually ends in typical Mortal Kombat fashion—horrible bloodbath, incomprehensible screamed gibberish, etc—and in the end it is revealed that all that has transpired has all been according to the plans of Shinnok and carried out by Quan Chi (whose voice is so perfect for a manipulator-type character—it’s smooth and deep and calm…glorious).

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write about this crap at length, it’s hardly high art. I guess I am just impressed with the way the reboot was carried out—new and interesting things were done, while very neatly maintaining continuity with the original series before it went to shit. The changes keep the thing interesting without making it too weird—I always disliked MK3 adding too much sci-fi to Mortal Kombat, which had been by and large a fantasy/magic type story up to that point.

Well done, I think.

BONUS: All the fatalities. ALL of them.