Nearly six million people watched the first episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy, the web series reimagining of the popular series. It was pretty godawful. It’s always a good idea to start out an adaptation of a favorite fighting franchise with boring dialogue and a gunfight, after all, and it doesn’t help that the director’s a big fan of Snyder-esque speed ramping to make things look cooler than they really are.
The second episode is now out with the exciting and descriptive title of Jax, Sonya and Kano (Part 2). Creativity abounds. The fighting isn’t doing it for me here, either. It’s obvious that the actors have some chops but (with the exception of one digitally-enhanced punch) nothing feels like it’s connecting or has any weight behind it, not even with the camera tricks. Also, marvel at Jeri Ryan in the loosest handcuffs ever!
If there’s anything good to come out of this it’s that it’s shining a light on the new Mortal Kombat game that releases today, which might be the best of the entire franchise, or at least since Mortal Kombat 2 . Great 2D combat, lots of combos, plenty of disturbing finishing moves and stages, real-time damage modeling on the characters… it’s a helluva lot of fun. Try out that demo if you don’t believe me!