Mortal Kombat review – schlock video game adaptation packs a small punch

A silly and dated new attempt to transport the classic fighting game to the big screen is a late-night drunk watch at best

Configuring one's expectations before settling down to watch the latest big (and small) screen adaptation of Mortal Kombat is something of a process. The largely wretched game-to-movie subgenre carries with it little-to-no hope at this stage, even the so-called best" examples are seen as just about tolerable, and the last two attempts to translate Midway's long-running fighting game failed to justify why watching these characters battle it out would be preferable to playing as them instead. As popular as the game still is (the most recent iteration has sold over 8m copies worldwide), transporting it to film is still a rather dated prospect, almost 25 years after the last version, the result of a torturous period in development hell.

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