Mortal Kombat 1995 Archive Review

It is better than the first Street Fighter . It is lightyears better than Super Mario Bros . And in the archive of 90s blockbusters, it remains the one video game movie you can still watch with a group of friends, a bowl of popcorn, and not feel embarrassed.

If you are watching the 2021 reboot, remember this: the 1995 film had a soul. The reboot had better fatalities, but it never had Tagawa’s whisper. Respect the source.

7/10 – Flawless Victory (in spirit, if not in CGI)

Does it hold up? Like a digitized photo of a 90s arcade cabinet: fuzzy around the edges, brutally charming, and surprisingly ambitious. Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat is not a good movie in the classical sense. It is, however, the definitive video game movie of its era—a film that understood that the game’s paper-thin plot (“Ten fighters. One tournament. Save the world.”) was actually its greatest strength.

Mortal Kombat (1995) – The Arcade Perfect Flawed Gem Archive Date: October 2023 (Retrospective) Format: Theatrical Cut (DVD/Blu-ray Archive)