The Good: Stylish designs that evoke 90s comic book and animation artwork, decent level of detail, good fight choreography, excellent voice acting
The Bad: shallow characters, choppy animation, stiff character movements
***********Review***********
Mortal Kombat as a franchise has been synonymous with gruesome violence, over the top gore, with characters and storyline that are both overly complex and simplistically juvenile at the same time. The 2020 animated movie SCORPION’S REVENGE is no exception.
From director Ethan Spaulding (JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS, SON OF BATMAN) and Studio Mir (VOLTRON LEGENDARY DEFENDER), this adaptation of the famous video game franchise looks sounds and feels like a grand tribute to the 1990s; the heyday of Mortal Kombat’s popularity. If this was intentional, I do applaud the creative team for it.
At first glance, the artwork and designs are visually striking. Characters look like a mix of the angular designs popularized by the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini fronted DC Animated Universe series, experimental works like AEON FLUX, and fighting genre Japanese anime of that era.
Sharp features, solid blacks for shadows, scratchy airbrushed backgrounds, and the way shots are framed all evoke the art style of comic books.
The animation is, unfortunately, less impressive. The whole movie seems to be animated at a lower frame rate than other direct to video animated movies. This is a problem for simple actions like characters walking or gesturing makes them move in a rigid jerky fashion.
Thankfully the fights look great and the often larger than life anime styled action gets around the low frame rate by combining dynamic angles, creative framing, exaggerated movements and even the games’ “x-ray camera” to show internal injuries. Just that a few of the slow motion scenes do feel like they were animated in old Adobe Flash.
As expected this is one of the most violent animated movies I have seen, standing toe to toe with the likes of NINJA SCROLL and AFRO SAMURAI. The gore and bloodletting is true to the source material.
It is nice to see the attention to detail that the animators paid to innards, guts and torn flesh. Now if only that same level of attention was paid to the story.
With its title one would expect a tale focused squarely on the character of Scorpion aka Hanzo Hasashi. An exploration of his early years, how he rose to become leader of his ninja clan, the fateful betrayal at the hands of a rival ninja clan led by the ice powered Sub-Zero, returning from death as an undead warrior, and his final act of vengeance at the Mortal Kombat Tournament.
Well....not quite. The story we have breezes through only Hanzo’s betrayal, death and return. Material that barely covers slightly over half of the already short 80 minute run time.
The other half is a rehash of the same story we have seen multiple times in the games, comics and even the live action movie by Paul WS Anderson: dutiful Shaolin monk Liu Kang, actor Johnny Cage and special forces member Sonya Blade get recruited by thunder god Raiden to fight for earthrealm in the Mortal Kombat tournament hosted by the sorcerer Shang Tsung.
At very least, Scorpion’s quest has been woven in nicely with the earthrealm fighters’ tournament plot; a welcome change from just being a powerful henchman or a walking plot device.
With two plots running parallel and such a short run time, one would think the movie to be a mess right? Well here is where the movie benefits from the simplistic nature of the source material; the characters in the games (especially the first game where this movie takes its material from) have straightforward motivations and personalities, and the movie retains all that.
This allows the plot to movie quickly while still giving ample setup for each character and fleshing out their personalities. Everyone gets some form of development though I was a little disappointed that Scorpion himself did not. He started with vengeance and ended still obsessed with vengeance but then again that’s his character from the game.
On the scale of video game animated movies, MORTAL KOMBAT LEGENDS: SCORPION’S REVENGE is right there with STREET FIGHTER THE ANIMATED MOVIE. Much better than the likes of, say, TEKKEN or VOLTAGE FIGHTER GOWCAZER.
It is enjoyable, action packed, stays very true to the game and I loved the 90s homage visuals despite the animation shortcomings. Although the movie does not reach the heights of DANTE’S INFERNO or POKÉMON 3 thanks to its simplistic straight forward story, one thing it does better than Street Fighter was its focus on its core cast instead of jumping around to showcase as many different fighters as possible.
A decent win for fans, though no where near a flawless victory.
***********Review***********
Mortal Kombat as a franchise has been synonymous with gruesome violence, over the top gore, with characters and storyline that are both overly complex and simplistically juvenile at the same time. The 2020 animated movie SCORPION’S REVENGE is no exception.
From director Ethan Spaulding (JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS, SON OF BATMAN) and Studio Mir (VOLTRON LEGENDARY DEFENDER), this adaptation of the famous video game franchise looks sounds and feels like a grand tribute to the 1990s; the heyday of Mortal Kombat’s popularity. If this was intentional, I do applaud the creative team for it.
At first glance, the artwork and designs are visually striking. Characters look like a mix of the angular designs popularized by the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini fronted DC Animated Universe series, experimental works like AEON FLUX, and fighting genre Japanese anime of that era.
Sharp features, solid blacks for shadows, scratchy airbrushed backgrounds, and the way shots are framed all evoke the art style of comic books.
The animation is, unfortunately, less impressive. The whole movie seems to be animated at a lower frame rate than other direct to video animated movies. This is a problem for simple actions like characters walking or gesturing makes them move in a rigid jerky fashion.
Thankfully the fights look great and the often larger than life anime styled action gets around the low frame rate by combining dynamic angles, creative framing, exaggerated movements and even the games’ “x-ray camera” to show internal injuries. Just that a few of the slow motion scenes do feel like they were animated in old Adobe Flash.
As expected this is one of the most violent animated movies I have seen, standing toe to toe with the likes of NINJA SCROLL and AFRO SAMURAI. The gore and bloodletting is true to the source material.
It is nice to see the attention to detail that the animators paid to innards, guts and torn flesh. Now if only that same level of attention was paid to the story.
With its title one would expect a tale focused squarely on the character of Scorpion aka Hanzo Hasashi. An exploration of his early years, how he rose to become leader of his ninja clan, the fateful betrayal at the hands of a rival ninja clan led by the ice powered Sub-Zero, returning from death as an undead warrior, and his final act of vengeance at the Mortal Kombat Tournament.
Well....not quite. The story we have breezes through only Hanzo’s betrayal, death and return. Material that barely covers slightly over half of the already short 80 minute run time.
The other half is a rehash of the same story we have seen multiple times in the games, comics and even the live action movie by Paul WS Anderson: dutiful Shaolin monk Liu Kang, actor Johnny Cage and special forces member Sonya Blade get recruited by thunder god Raiden to fight for earthrealm in the Mortal Kombat tournament hosted by the sorcerer Shang Tsung.
At very least, Scorpion’s quest has been woven in nicely with the earthrealm fighters’ tournament plot; a welcome change from just being a powerful henchman or a walking plot device.
With two plots running parallel and such a short run time, one would think the movie to be a mess right? Well here is where the movie benefits from the simplistic nature of the source material; the characters in the games (especially the first game where this movie takes its material from) have straightforward motivations and personalities, and the movie retains all that. 
This allows the plot to movie quickly while still giving ample setup for each character and fleshing out their personalities. Everyone gets some form of development though I was a little disappointed that Scorpion himself did not. He started with vengeance and ended still obsessed with vengeance but then again that’s his character from the game.
On the scale of video game animated movies, MORTAL KOMBAT LEGENDS: SCORPION’S REVENGE is right there with STREET FIGHTER THE ANIMATED MOVIE. Much better than the likes of, say, TEKKEN or VOLTAGE FIGHTER GOWCAZER.
It is enjoyable, action packed, stays very true to the game and I loved the 90s homage visuals despite the animation shortcomings. Although the movie does not reach the heights of DANTE’S INFERNO or POKÉMON 3 thanks to its simplistic straight forward story, one thing it does better than Street Fighter was its focus on its core cast instead of jumping around to showcase as many different fighters as possible.
A decent win for fans, though no where near a flawless victory.
***********Review***********
Entertainment: A
Art: A-
Animation: C+
Art: A-
Animation: C+
Story: B
Voice Acting (English): A
Voice Acting (English): A
Characters: B-
Music: C+
Replay value: A
"Brains": C-
"Brains": C-
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