Is this the greatest fight scene ever? No. Not even close. But man. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, then you definitely played in arcades. And if you played in arcades, you played Mortal Kombat.
And if you played Mortal Kombat, well, then you were probably fucking psyched when the original movie came out on August 18, 1995. Seeing all of these characters from MK1 and MK2 come to life on the big screen? Spectacular.
The one thing that shines the most is the casting. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya, and Kano are all absolutely perfect casts. And of course, Cary Tagawa as fuckin’ Shang Tsung? Incredible. Even the costumes for characters like Kitana, SubZero and Scorpion are excellent. Everyone looks exactly like they should have.
This fight has everything that you’d want to nerd out over. We have Scorpion using the spear, with Ed Boon delivering the trademark GET OVER HERE! We get to see him use the teleport, albeit to change arenas, rather than to punch from the other side of the screen.
Once we get to the hell arena, we get treated to Zero Signal by Fear Factory, one of the best songs off of Demanufacture, back when Fear Factory were fucking awesome. The MK soundtrack is actually what got me into metal as a kid, but that’s a story for another time.
Lastly, we get to see two awesome references at once. Scorpion attempts to end the fight with his skull-fire fatality, and then we get the Johnny Cage friendship at the end of the fight.
As a kid in the theatre, this entire fight was just one big FUCK YEAH! Props to the writers and directors for giving the MK fans what they wanted.