Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

FINISH ME!

Back in year 1995, moviegoers (especially gamers) were suffering through the video game movie rage. We barely survived the Double Dragonilis outbreak (I still have my rash from it), but we lost many gamers with the Street Fighter Movie plague, spawned by Jean Clog Van Dammit. It was an unmerciful virus that barely could be contained, and the havoc it wreaked can still be felt today. When a Mortal Kombat movie was announced, you can only imagine the mass hysteria expressed by the townsmen! Every gamer as far as the eye could see braced themselves for the biggest viral outbreak of crappititus since the Black Death.

A few years later, a sequel called Mortal Kombat Annihilation was announced, but all things were quite on the western front. New Line Cinema was tight lipped on the movie, meaning a big surprise was in store or the movie stunk. In retrospect, the big surprise was that the movie stunk. New Line Cinema was holding a fart, hoping it would dissolve, but it ended up getting more and more explosive. What caused all this gas to build up was the virtual nacho cheese and chili dip, Ed Boon (Co-creator of the franchise and the “Noob” in Noob Saibot). I don’t know how, who, when, or what bathroom, but Boon got the idea that he could write movie scripts. “Hey, chaknowwhat? I write intriguing back-stories for video game manuals, I’m definitely qualified to write for the big screen!” Thus, the movie was instantly “fatalitied”.

Knock Knock: hey guys, I came with a new character called “kconk dlog”. He’s a 3 armed ninja; one of his arms is a spike. He’s Kano’s dad and shoots fire machetes out of his mouth. Mascot for hire: I can be a Mortal Kombat character! I can play Sub-Zero’s brother, Frosty. I can throw ice cubes at people and my fatality will be locking my opponent in my cold, heater-less studio apartment. Gumbee Gold: Damz, I havn’t had me tehh wendee’s frostee in a minnut! But that wendee biatch iz a creeper!

Test your might..and your sanity!

The movie begins recapping what happened in the first one. I’ll give Ed Boon credit here, I was expecting “Press Start: Insert Coins” to blink at the bottom of the screen. The Mortal Kombaters are witnessing the start of Shao Kahn’s invasion of Earth. I know people from the outworld are different and stuff, but I wasn’t expecting the process to involve hundreds of Ninjas falling out of rain clouds. So we get slow pan of our MKer’s (Liu Kang, Kitana, Sonya Blade, Johhny Cage, and Rayden) with their “oh my god” looks…..wait a minute…these aren’t mortal kombaters from the first movie! Who the hell are these guys!? Besides the actors that play Liu Kang and Kitana, THE ENTIRE CAST HAS BEEN REPLACED by C-grade actors/actress! Nope, not B-movie bad grade, we are talking late-night infomercial-try-to-sell-you-solar-powered-flashlights-and-Reusable-toilet-paper bad. I mean, Sonya Blade got replaced by the bathtub Cave Nug FROM ENCINO MAN! …And Rayden is now played by..James Remar!? EVERYBODY saw the freaking iceberg and jumped ship, including Christopher “Highlander” Lambert! Ouch!!

Knock Knock: Why wasn’t there a massive pile of Ninja’s with broken legs? Those dudes fell out of clouds! Td: You assume Ninja’s have legs… Gumbee Gold: I saw that white haired doode on sum latenight show called Space Mutunay!

After it stops raining ninjas, we are now introduced to the Villians! BOOOOOOOO! Shao Kahn is the main villain here, leading the invasion of Earth. Remember in the first movie, at the end when his big, vicious, demon face crashed through a temple, inflicting fear in the entire surrounding populous and mankind!?….that was a hologram! I guess the trick is to scare the enemies away, so by the time the REAL Kahn arrives at the battlefield he won’t have to do squat. Plus, no one will have to see his “Salvation Army Party” outfit. He’s backed up by Kitana’s mother Queen Sindel (played by Musetta Vander who starred in the critically acclaimed masterpiece “Dickwad” and stars in the upcoming highly anticipated, “Raptor Island 2: Raptor Planet”(What?)), that boss from MK3 that looks like a two-man horse costumes(Ed Boon was probably the ass, har har har cheapshot), Sheeva that’s gotten a massive breast reduction (and looks like Peggy Bundy on the juice), and the unstoppable killer duo of Rain and Ermac. How random huh? Out of all the characters in the MK universe, they go with 2 filler characters that no one ever played. As you can see, in order to compensate the effort of actually penning a halfway coherent script, the people behind Annihilation drowned the movie with countless cameos. Trust me, it gets EVEN WORST.

Td: I can safely say that I’ve never played Rain or Ermac. Mainly because they look like villians from Alice in Wonderland. Gumbee Gold: That boie is Prince! Remember Perrple Rain!? He perrple! And hiz name is Rain! Knock Knock: What the hell? Where’s Sheeva huge boobs!? I was hoping she would do a nude-ality and flash us, destroying earth and ruling the outworld with those tig ol bitties!

Rayden and Shao face off. They don’t walk up to each other, no no no, they backflip to each other. Oooooooo! In the world of Mortal Kombat, no one walks. They must do a triple banana split summersault. They start to fight, reenacting all of their moves in the game. You know that thing Rayden does in the game, where he flies across the screen like Superman screaming “thinkofthesuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubbbbb!!!!” Well, they tried to emulate it in the movie. It was really, really, really, really, REALLY bad. “This is not good” says Johnny Cage (understatement of the decade.) The new and improved Johnny cage wants to show he means serious business with an attempt to flash kick Shao Kahn. He snaps Johnny’s neck, killing him. He is DONE for the entire movie. Johnny Cage gets ONE friggin’ line and gets MURDERED in first FIVE MINUTES of the DARN film! It wasn’t even a good murder, like his head exploding or his cadaver turning inside out. The best character killed in cheap neck snap scene! WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS!!!? Did the actor playing him STINK so bad that they had to kill him to prevent the movie from relapsing into a inevitable sand dune of mediocrity? OR did they have to make room for the bus loads of idiotic MK character cameos?

Knock Knock: Johnny Cage was too cool for this movie. Td: I love how’s there’s an unlimited supply of unfinished brick walls for Rayden to crash into.

GLADIATORS REEEEEEEEAAAAAAADDDDDDDYYYYYY!? *Whistle*

Johnny Cage is dead; Rayden just got beat down, AND THEIRS ABOUT A THOUSAND NINJAS SITTING IDLE IN THE BACKGROUND. They just NOW figure out that they’re not only skilled in the most lethal MMA known to man, but currently posses nunchucks, axes, and swords. The Kombater’s scurry into a deep cavern, escaping on the American Gladiator ATLASPHERE! I guess after the show got canceled, they just buried the silly equipment in a cave, hoping no soul would find it. They split up and take separate ATLASPHERES, Rayden helps Sonya rescue her partner, while Liu Kang and Kitana go after Kahn. The two lovebirds claimed that they were hunting for “Shao Kahn”, but we ALL know they just wanted to get it on. Well..this might actually be the only clever idea in the parade of badness. Get the two actors that at least are trying to earn the booze destined paycheck time alone. Just before they get intimate, they’re attacked by ninjas. Umm…yeah…Liu, next time you try to make-out with hot 1000 year-old princess, try not to chose dark creepy cave as the romantic setting. Leading the attack is robotic smoke, and he looks like those plump, Reggae aliens from Battlefield Earth. The funniest part is when Sub-Zero comes to the rescue by sliding down a long rod of ice. The evacuating movie audience asks the valid question “Didn’t he die in the first movie!” He takes off his mask and reveals that he’s not Sub-Zero, he’s his brother. BWAHAHAHAHA! Suddenly, Scorpion appears. The exit clogged audience members wonder again “Didn’t he die too?”. Don’t get ahead of yourselves guys. You only get 1 “obligatory logic answer to make the movie appear that it was clever and well thought out”. Scorpion and Sub-Zero fight on an Ice bridge. Then Scorpion yells “SUCKERS!”(Indeed I am) and kidnaps Kitana into big glob of teleporting jelly. Sub-Zero tells Liu Kang to go find his Animality. Since when did he lose it?

Mascot for Hire:Aww man, I wanted to be Sub-Zero’s brother! Wait, I can play his sister! I’ll call myself Glacier and my fatality will be dropping a bag of ice on my opponents head! Knock Knock: I never knew there was a mass transit system of Atlaspheres deep underground. Anyone know the schedule? Td:SSSuuuccckkkeeersss!

Let’s keep this ship on its mission to the sun, shall we? Sonya Blade breaks into a AT&T electrical station where she finds her partner Jax…….wait, that ain’t Jax! That’s SABER FROM AMERICAN GLADIATORS! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!? Gladiator Spheres in caves, old Gladiator employees locked up and drugged. I think we might have uncovered a broad, worldwide conspiracy to cover-up the American Gladiators program. We are never explained why Jax is there, why he’s locked up, and why he received arm enhancement padding in the first place. Weren’t his arms supposed to be pure metal in the first place? Damn, I’m actually thinking aren’t I? The reunion is short lived when some kid dressed up in a yellow motocross outfit crashes the movie set! I guess New Line didn’t think it was worth the cash to hire security. Really, this is probably the most entertaining part of the movie, because whoever this idiot is, he’s one slick mother shutyomouth, because no one can catch him! Plus, he’s getting a lot of screen time too. Logical question number 14605: Why didn’t they edit this part out? This idiot in the laughable motocross getup obviously doesn’t belong on the set and looks too ridiculous for boon’s standards to even be associated with this movie, I mean why…oh dear…..that’s actually supposed to be Cyrax! You’ve gotta be kidding. I almost choked to death on a glob of incredibly hot nacho cheese when the director did this dramatic pull up to his mask, as if he is some type of badass or something. Sorry, but can’t really act like Gangsta McThuggin when you resemble a 12 year old’s Halloween costume he made in grandpa’s garage.

Td: Suprise Suprise, Jax is a jive talkin’ black man. . Knock Knock: Hmm, I don’t think American Gladiators was canceled, they moved underground. That’s right, the crappy show buried itself deep into Mother Earth’s flesh to entertain the impoverished mole people of Atlantis. Td:Yeah, kinda like when hasselhoff went to Germany. Gumbee Gold:Sonya got a ghetto booty!

Mean old Axe throwing Asian love machine Indians of Animality!

When we last saw Liu, Sub Zero’s little brother sent him on a legendary journey to find his animality. So how does one find their inner animality? You mindlessly walk through a desert. Hey…guess what!? It’s been about minute that means ANOTHER POINTLESS CAMEO! Nightwolf confronts Liu and waffles an axe in his head, which launches Liu Kang to Antarctica where he must avoid the come-on’s of a lingerie wearing Jade. I didn’t make that last sentence up. He rejects Jade’s drunken prom date advances, and they morph back to the desert and FIGHT! Supermodel Irina Pantaeva plays the role of Jade. She is also one of the worst actresses in history of film. How do models get acting jobs? How does walking down a freaking ramp way wearing a blouse made out of a chimpanzee’s scalp qualify someone to get a movie role? I can play the Star Spangled Banner with my armpit? Can I be a heart surgeon now? And wasn’t JADE supposed to be black? Whatever. After they battle, Night Wolf returns and says he passed the test and can use his Animality or something.

Td: The world of Mortal Kombat has some of the strangest methods of transportation I’ve ever witnessed. If you’re rich, you can travel via a big glob of purple gew. Otherwise, take the metro ball or have an indian throw an axe at your head.

There you have it folks, the easy steps to finding one’s Animality. Walk through a desert until you encounter any random Indian/crazy drifter looking for Area 51. Politely tell him to throw an AXE directly toward you’re SKULL (I’m sure he or she would have no problem with this). You could provide an axe, but he or she most likely has one handy. You know, just in case they need to chuck axes at peoples head. Once the agreement is made, pray that the axe will transport you to a Snowy Villa in Japan rather then splitting your head wide open leaving you in a pool of blood. If you’re not dead, you should be unconscious in a pool of you’re own blood, slowly dying, or slowly dying while being robbed by the Indian dude/crazy drifter looking for Area 51. If none of those things are happening, you should be in a snowy villa in Japan (if you see a lot of fire and giant red guy with horns or Howie Mandel, you’re dead, man). Now a smoking hot supermodel in lingerie should be coming on to you right now. Of course, if you got this far you would be stupid not take the supermodel that’s trying to make love with you. I mean, who wants to change into stupid animals anyways? You’re in a lush Japanese hideaway making out with a gorgeous woman. She’ll probably kill you moments later, but again, what the heck are you going to do with an animality? “Hey guys, look at me! I can turn into a goat at will! WooHoo!”

Senor Spanish Fly:Any Amigo can live out there most loca fatansy by sticking eh sharp object in there cabeza!? Mucho Gracias! Knock Knock:But how do you determine the fantasy? If I want an Irish chick, do I need to stab myself in the head with a beer bottle? Mascot for Hire:Cool, I didn’t know we all had an animality. This will be a killer on my resume!

Mortal Kombat Girls Gone Wild!

In what appears to be a inadvertent metaphor for the film, Jax and Sonya are mindlessly walking through a desert. Watch out for those Axe welding Indians guys. Wait, hold on. It’s almost been a minute. Cameo Countdown!: 3…2…1… Out of nowhere, Mileena (BWAHAHA!) lunges Sai first toward Sonya to start not just any techno fight, but a MUD WRESTLING TECHNO FIGHT! Yes, MUD WRESTLING! Hollywood never fails, I would of love to have been a joint under the urine soiled couch when Ed Boon and company were coming up with this idea.

Boon:…so then the priest says “that’s not a banana, that’s a washing machine!

Stooge: HAHAHAH! Boon, you are such a riot. Even if I wasn’t forced to laugh at your cringe inducing humor in the fear that I would lose my job, I would still laugh my ass off.

Boon: SILENCE! A great mind is thinking here. So we are at this part were Sonya and Jack are in the middle of nowhere. I say let’s just shove another Cameo here! Spin the plot wheel!

*Boon spins the wheel, lands on Mileena*

Stooge: Perfect choice! Another one of your groundbreaking, revolutionary character creations that reflects the social societies and civil injustices facing the human race.

Boon: Yeah, another classic, well designed character. Just brilliant how we used Kitana’s sprite and just changed the color of it.

Stooge: Yes, you are a god among gods!

Boon: I say let’s have nightwolf ambush both of them, throw axes at there heads, then they have a fight with Mileena and Goro on Mars and Goro uses his nudality on Jax and his penis eats him.

Stooge: Another great idea sir, but we want to keep the movie Pg-13. We need to think of something else.

*5 minutes later*

Boon: I got it! Let’s have Sonya and Mileena fight in the mud!

Stooge: I’m getting a hot just thinking about it!

*Long disturbing Pause*

Boon:…crack fight! *Both start to pound each other with heavy stacks of cocaine.*

Gumbee Gold: Damn, Sonya bout to blow up! She bangin! You dont need to roll in da mud ta get sume black on ya honey! Td: This is the exact point were Ed Boon started to write the script in his pants. I can imagine sitting in the theater and hearing the disturbing sound of flesh rising in every pre-pubescent boy’s shorts.

Queer eye for the…God of lightning!?

Adding onto the heap of this film’s “illogicalities”, the entire cast somehow reunites at an ancient temple. (It’s not worth mentioning, but Sonya went home, took a quick shower, and stopped by the local Laundromat as she is sparkling clean after her mud wrestling romp with Mileena).

Oh dear, what the hell did they do to Rayden. He’s wearing navy blue vest and tight grey chaps. “How do I look!?” he says to the mall security career bound cast. You look like a Riverdancer. Are they just trying to find every possible angle to make this film suck? Why make the almighty god of lighting look like he went to the Outworld Supercuts drive thru and stole his clothing from the Waterworld clearance sale? The next scene doesn’t make any sense either. For what seems like an eternity, we are shown various clips of outworld ninja’s riding horses. It’s like the director just had way, way, WAAAAAY too much money in hand, and needed to burn it.

Director: “I could use that money an attempt to salvage whatever’s left of the film….or I could blow it on Ninja’s riding horses. This is tough, life altering decision….”

*thinks for 10 seconds*

Director: “Pam, order 300 Arabian horses, pronto!”

Knock Knock: Navy blue vest with pea brown slacks? That’s a fashion No No! Gumbee Gold: I would have faded that brotha up. He looks broke as hell… Td: These ninja’s fall out of clouds at will, yet they ride horses. I give up.

The amazing Baraka brothers!

Darn, even I’m losing track of what the hell is going on here. Okay..now I remember. Rayden tells everyone that they must take the battle to the Outworld. Liu heads off on his own to find his girlfriend while the rest of the crew fight ninjas. Liu arrives at the menacing structure known as the emperor’s fortress. Many souls have perished by just coming within feet of the temple doors! However, Liu easily walks in and kindly asks one of the Outworld ninjas directions to the dungeon (yeah, just take the elevator down to the “spike pit”, take right past the torture chamber, and just tell the guard Fred sent you), he finally reunites with his girl pal Kitana. Okay, I’m not judging Kang’s uncanny ability to throw fireballs and do bicycle kicks but I’m certain that if I tried to skip into the emperor’s secret dungeon, that most of my body parts would be scattered among a twelve mile radius. WAIT A MINUTE! SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO STOP HIM!? It’s…it’s…a combat pork grind!?

It’s really supposed to be Baraka. He looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger without oxygen in Total Recall. So begins one of the many PRONGS of bad scenes in this ladder-leading-into-a-Jet-turbine film as Liu Kang and the Baraka brothers battle each other on swinging on chains. WHY ARE YOU DINGBATS ROLLING UP IN THE CHAINS LIKE FRUIT ROLLUPS!!? SLICE THE DUDE WITH THOSE BLADES BULGING OUT OF YOUR HANDS!!! SIGH, forgive me, I’m trying to use sense again. Sheeva appears to fulfill the “60 second or less” cameo quota and is quickly crushed by the large cage. Okay guys, let me just use logic ONE MORE TIME…just ONCE…why didn’t they just have Liu fight SHEEVA? She doesn’t do a thing in the entire movie, and it would have been a lot better then having the cheap Freddy Krueger knockoffs acting like Tarzan. Sigh.

Liu fails his audition for Freddy vs. George of the Jungle, so he catches up with the rest of The US Darwin team. They somehow captured Queen Sindel. Before they can start the interrogation, Jade butts-in to say that SHE’S BETRAYED THEM ALL! SHOCKER! Duhh, who didn’t see this one coming? “You will die for this.” proclaims Mr. Kang. What the hell are so surprised about Liu!? Let’s see, Sub Zero’s little brother (related to the guy that tried to turn YOU into a freaking ice cube!) informs you that you must find some Indian dude in the middle of the Sahara to carve up you’re head so you can turn into a giant farm animal! How did you NOT see this coming poopyhead! Instead of someone giving her a bicycle kick or uppercutting her head off, they all just stare at her for few seconds. To divert them away from her, Queen Sindel starts spinning in circles while Jade makes the slowest getaway ever. Yes, they all were deer in headlights watching Queenie spin around. “Oh my god! She’s spinning around…in a circle. Look at the destructive carnage she is causing!”

Td: Always thought “Baraka” was a play on “Binaca”. I imagine a scene in Ed Boon’s bathroom where he’s trying to rid his mouth of the Bacon Bits, Doritos and Mountain Dew stench. He stumbles upon a bottle of “Binaca” and says “hey, this is a great name for that character I came up with a few seconds ago!” Knock Knock: Do You Have a Mint? Perhaps Some Binaca? Professor Sticky Bottom: Very incorrect analysis of the “fruit-rollup” tactic performed by Baraka. The warrior is performing this action to create a destructive sequence, or layman’s terms, a “Yo-Yo”. If Liu approached him while Baraka was performing this action, he would have been shredded into mincemeat. Gumbee Gold: Stab the biatch.

Small Intestines vs KFC thigh…Fight!

After beating the audience senseless with non-logic combos and leg-sweeps of stupidity, Ed Boon needed to finish us off with a brutal Fatality. What?… What did you just say!? Did you just say it’s virtually impossible for the movie to get any worse!? Well, wait till you get load of this! Remember the animality Liu was taught by having an axe thrown at his head?……Yeah…Kahn knows how to do one too. I wonder if he had the same snowy Asian fantasy too?…oh dear. Kang and Kahn turn into large godzilla animals and make raw, animality love. They don’t even turn into something cool either. Kahn, looks like he spilled out of a dead deer’s gut and Liu Kang morphs into some type of burnt, crispy, chicken bat! What happened to the chinese dragon? I would exchange that animality buddy. Really, he looks like something you’d find at the bottom of a KFC bucket!

Gumbee Gold: I’ve nevah seen KFC sell that! Knock Knock: Shao Kahn’s animality is what I saw in an unflushed Wendy’s bathroom. Td: I love the “I can’t believe I slept with my agent for this!” facial on Sonya throughout the film.

How does it finish!?

Don’t ask. I think we’ve had enough for tonight. For an unexplainable reason, the emperors of Earth, Fire, and Water make them fight in “Mortal Kombat”. All we need is Wind and Heart and we can summon Captain Planet! The emperors realize that the god of Earth or something was in cahoots with his son Shao Khan, so they punish him by (and I’m not making this up) turning him into a Rubix Cube.

Knock Knock: The next Mortal Kombat game should be The Planeteers vs Mortal Kombat. Wheeler would tear Scorpion’s ass up! Gumbee Gold: Damz, Earth, Wind ane Fire was mie joint back in the day!I got my Jerry Curl from fire, tru story Td: You mean one of the band members from the group? Gumbee Gold: Nah gee, i was makin a ham and cheese samwhich and my fro’ caught on fire, so I bought a curl to cover up my big ass bawld spot, ya dig? Td: How the hell did your afro catch on fire making a ham and cheese sandwhich, you don’t even got a stove? Gumbee Gold: Afrosheen, biatch. Knock Knock: If I had to go out, I would like to be gently folded into four pieces like the emperor guy, or set myself on fire with flammable afrosheen.

Toasty! It’s not over yet!

The ending is the funniest part of the movie! When they all return back to earth, we learn that a bunch of Monks were watching the movie with us! They all have mortifying looks on their faces as if they just witnessed a genocide of kittens. To finally uppercut this thing into a spike pit, we must relish in the genius wisdom of Ed boon. You REALLY hit the big-time with your first hotshot Hollywood script, huh!? And you didn’t even have to write anything! Just drown a Mead college rule notepad (wide rule is sooo b-movie, this is the big time baby) in a sink of absurd, useless cameos. If all else fails, DROWN IT SOME MORE. Who would notice, right? They’d be too busying saying “AWESOME! It’s Mileena! AND SHE’S WRESTLING IN THE MUD WITH SONYA! AND HERE COMES REPTILE TO WASH THEM OFF WITH ACID SPIT!”.

Unfortunate Cookie: Ed Boon will sell the Mortal Kombat franchise to EA games. He will write and direct a movie called “Kombat of the Mortals”, a 4 hour biopic on Salahadin Ayyubi and the Crusades of the 1100′s. It will sweep the Oscars and gross nearly a trillion dollars.

Mascot for Hire: What about me? Will I become a Mortal Kombat character? How bout an American Gladiator?

Unfortunate Cookie: You’ll get electrocuted while trying to plug in your Alf Lamp.

Mascot for Hire: Aww man!



Beyond the Stall