I am dying for the day when Video Game movies take that turn and actually earn the right to real writers, great actors and solid storylines. But so far that doesn’t really happen… or when it does, its poorly executed.
That being said, console fighting franchise Mortal Kombat is aiming for a reboot to the big screen, and already has hired a writer.
Warner Bros. are in early development of a new Mortal Kombat movie. They’ve already selected a writer in Oren Uziel, author of the Black List 2009 entry Shimmer Lake. That script was a twisty, suspenseful thriller that combined murder mystery with a bank heist plotline, so it would seem Uziel has a smarter way with narrative than is strictly necessary for a beat ‘em up tournament film.
I find it interesting that they would hand this sort of franchise over to a heady writer like Oren Uziel, who is more at home with intrigue and well.. plot. But that tiny shimmer of hope that a Mortal Kombat film might actually be interesting instead of a wasting all their time on what they pretended was story just to show a sequence of fight scenes.
Mortal Kombat Annihilation was the ONLY film I almost walked out on. I have always been of the opinion that if you walk out of a film, you no longer hold the rights to an opinion on it. But that was just so terrible that I nearly did forfeit my right to save myself from seeing it. The only thing that stopped me is that we went with a group and I didn’t learn until later that they too wanted to walk.
But among the terrible stinking pile that is video game adaptations, the first Mortal Kombat wasn’t terrible. Not great, but not terrible.
I would entertain the thought knowing they are trying to honestly make a great film out of it that also has action.
