Worst Idea Ever: Another Mortal Kombat Movie

They're apparently making a third Mortal Kombat movie, reports UK game biz news site MCV. Chris Casamassa, who played Scorpion in the 1995 original film, told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that "he's set to start filming the third Mortal Kombat film in September."

(Alright. Okay. Great big deep breath in, and...)

Please, someone, anyone who can, spare us the indignity of another Mortal Kombat movie. We don't need one. There's no one (sane) who wants one. Video game movies based on fighting games have been universally awful. Remember Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture? Street Fighter? Double Dragon? The films, that is, not the games. No? There's a reason for that, of course. Think about it and it'll come to you.

I know, I know, I'm not entirely obtuse. I can see how One More Video Game Knockoff's got cash-cow-home-rental-fer-suckers (or so-monumentally-indulgent-they-can't-possibly-be-earthborn fans) embossed and glowing like runic writing on the toe-tag attached to the pitch. Joyless automatons inhabiting custom-tailored suits in some intellectual property management company have doubtless approved a script that applies the cold, hard calculus of "mass appeal" (a euphemism, of course, two letters shy of mass-appall) in a cynical ploy to balance a fiscal ledger sheet. There's a precedent for this sort of thing, right? It goes hand-in-glove with stuff like Catwoman, Kazaam, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

But no...just no. Mortal Kombat was a fighting game about characters with silly names like Sonya Blade and Sub-Zero tearing each others' heads off (and spines out, and entrails into the open) like glam rock poseurs flashing spandex and Vincent Price's own BDSM-gear. The movie adaptations about a once-a-generation martial arts tournament designed to help bleed off pent up godly tension was the height of cinematic inanity, an FX-encumbered really-bad-excuse to throw money at a bunch of otherwise respectable martial artists in need of work. And the sequel...let's just say Entertainment Weekly's "abysmal...incoherent" assessment is extraordinarily kind.

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