Mortal Kombat Annihilation - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to another spine reppin the shattering gear grinding episode of what happened the show where we dig deep into the torso of the pop culture world to pick up the juicy still beating hearts of unmitigated disaster tainment now way back in our second episode we covered one of the more infamous of those disasters with 2000's less than fondly remembered Mortal Kombat Special Forces but now it's time to move into the arena of celluloid with 1995's Mortal Kombat the motion picture oh of course were not because that still stands is one of the most entertaining video game films of all time no no no this episode is dedicated to 1997's abysmal II depressing follow up Mortal Kombat annihilation our story begins as all good stories do in the early 1990s where Lawrence casanov we'll just call him Larry was coming off a lucrative deal with James Cameron on the merchandising of a tiny indie film called terminator goddamn - at the time Larry was president of Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment and took care of the day-to-day business while Cameron you know made all the groundbreaking films Larry was the one however who had brokered a deal earlier that year with Midway to produce the incredible coin-op version of Judgment Day and had been invited to Midway Chicago offices to see what they were up to next Larry wound up getting to play an early build of mortal combat and something immediately sparked within him dollar signs when he looked upon the forms and the little digitized actors upper cutting each other to death he turned to Midway producer neon the cast ow and exclaimed this is like Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon if you give me the rights to this I promised I will not really make this into a movie but I'll produce this in ever medium in the world a movie a TV show an animated TV show a stage show a music album I promise I will do that baffled mr. Nicastro replied and I quote you're full of [ __ ] it's just a [ __ ] video game so that was the end of that a year and a half later which places us at the tail end of 1993 mortal kombat becomes such a phenomenon that Midway finally saw the merchandising and movie potential of the franchise casanov was quick to pounce he had left Lightstorm entertainment to form his own company threshold with the express goal of having Mortal Kombat be its crown jewel he wanted to make it so that whenever you saw this logo you'd then associate it with this logo man it's such a lame logo anyway Larry did indeed do exactly what he said not only did he fast-track a Mortal Kombat movie he started developing a bad TV show a bad animated TV show a terrible animated movie and whatever this was supposed to be my name is Shang Tsung now the quality of some of those projects aside this was an ambitious and forward-thinking plan something that wouldn't be attempted until the Matrix sequels almost a decade later spreading a franchise across various entertainment mediums in a short time to raise maximum awareness amongst the fans so God had give him credit for that however his business partners with in Hollywood cautioned him that video games for the most poisonous poison to ever poison that his career would be over when MK flopped and with Super Mario Brothers stinking up the multiplex is at the time they did have a point undaunted uncle Larry pressed on as he felt as long as they took the core of M case story martial arts tournament with the feet of the world hanging in the balance it would translate into a strong enough concept to pull in both fans and general audiences alike this thinkin worked as the movie built upon the narrative of MK with additional plot points and character motivations as well as bolstering the peel of some cool visual effects well at the time so when it launched in August of 1995 mortal kombat made over a hundred and twenty million dollars worldwide against the budget of eight this seemingly broke the video game curse that had perpetuated Hollywood which admittedly had been enforced by three flops in the previous two years fans of this show should know by now though that when there's a specific personality swirling in the center of a narrative things tend to get very what happenes Astley since the first movie was such a hit Larry felt he immediately needed to capitalize with a sequel so he fast-tracked it with as much of the original crew as he could maybe a bit too fast the first red flag in this creative process was at the original director Paul WS I married my own OC Anderson declined to return as he wanted to do something completely different for his follow-up film which would be event horizon therefore Larry felt in lieu of an exhaustive and time-consuming hunt for a new director they'd simply promote the DP of the first film 1 John our leonetti and while some people may know this a quick refresher the director of photography usually frames the film to find the most interesting and dynamic shots that best suit the script and while that's a useful skill leonetti had never actually directed before which as you can imagine has far more responsibilities in fact many people who are in lower positions on the production of the first Mortal Kombat we're all promoted to higher ones which Larry admits was a massive mistake this in hindsight was probably not the best thing I did the first movie was so successful against all odds so I did what I felt was right promote everyone we probably promoted everyone over and above and too quickly from what we should have unfortunately one of those nots receive a promotion was the writer of the first film Kevin droney who had a past on the project to work on Wing Commander instead which was like basically dodging a bullet but then stepping right into the path of a harpoon Larry then looked at two other writers who had previously worked with to quickly bang out a story and bang they did this then opened up a mysterious portal where a third writer was revealed oh no sac yow Larry promoted himself to a writing position but why Wow simply put because he could the movie would be dubbed Mortal Kombat annihilation as it roughly I really roughly was sort of kind of based on Mortal Kombat 3 which involved the merging of both out worlds and earth realm now that we covered the production side it's time to talk about the cast which is a whole different barrel spinal cords Robin Shu returned as Liu Kang bringing his martial arts mastery back to the role Talisa Soto portrayed katana bringing the charisma of a filing cabinet back to the role it's a trap Luke leave and that's but that's about it Christopher Lambert showed interest in returning his Raiden but he had committed to a Beowulf project and couldn't fit it in his schedule but at least that's what Larry says in a 2006 interview however Connor MacLeod himself plainly stated I didn't want to do it because I didn't think the script was very good I didn't like it so James remar took up the robes and the duke nukem haircut of the Thunder God instead damn I'm looking good and Anne Ashby who chewed all the scenery and more all the sunglasses as Johnny Cage was looking forward to reprising his role but Larry had some other ideas since mr. ashbey is one of the few working actors with some experience under his belt who would be entitled for a pay raise which ashbey surmises was the reason for her cages down brief screen time and annihilation Larry wouldn't honor my sequel deal I totally wanted to do a sequel and I was looking forward to it Larry in the way that he is called me and said here's the script and I read it and I went oh so Lyndon dropped out and the part all two and a half minutes of it went to one this guy out of the entire cache in the first film only two were returning to their original roles ashbey felt that all this recast in not just himself irreparably hurt annihilation you can't just go oh I can recast them which is what he did and it sucked the second movie sucked ass what [ __ ] morons how would you like to see Empire Strikes Back but Han Solo is played by someone it's the same characters but different people are suddenly playing them you go that's not them and that's how the fans responded that's not Johnny Cage that's not sir that's not rated this this is stupid speaking of which Bridget Wilson who played the original Sonya Blade also opted not to return as she was busy with other projects most notably yeah I remember that thing that you did that time so lieutenant Blade was instead brought to life by this woman yeah I don't know the rest of the cast was rounded out by stuntmen various nobodies and American Gladiators oh and Brian Thompson can't forget about him now with such an obviously messed-up character select screen how did Larry justify all these changes the thing that happens with sequels is now everyone wants twice the money ten times the money in some cases they deserve it and in other cases they don't Midway who is making a fourth game or saying hey you promised us a movie and you've got to deliver because we've got a game to promote and then the TV network says won't listen I can launch next September if you're gonna have a movie now and so you have all these things and there's a ripple effect if you take one away and hey Warner Brothers replace Batman constantly and that still works I'd say this but it all came down to business and money speaking of money annihilation had a much bigger budget than its predecessor clocking in between 30 to maybe 40 million dollars which they obviously only used a fraction of to pay the actors with the budget mostly went towards expensive on location shooting end of special effects more on that later the plan was for the shoot to last six months and would dot the globe between London Jordan Thailand and Israel which was pretty overwhelming for first time director John Leonetti various sources close to the production confirm this with Paul Anderson even chiming in my saying I know he didn't have a very happy time on the movie the second movie had a lot of problems I didn't want to go back and make the sequel and the problems they had this time around were the reasons why I didn't want to go back now this arduous shooting schedule came about due to lessons learned on the first film they'd finish principal photography but then had to do reshoot specifically adding in two memorable fight scenes early test screenings showed that while audiences liked the film they felt there needed to be more action with this in mind that Larry decide to then face the sequel all around the fights thus making sure there'll be no need for expensive reshoots it got to the point however where the movie's plot and characters took the furthest seat back in the MK annihilation clown car as the movie boiled down to a bunch of flippy whippy [ __ ] with a plot that could barely be considered comprehensible the first film worked so well because it focused on the journeys of our three main heroes with each one learning a lesson along the way annihilation however focus solely on Luke King I think and his journey to learn how to stand from sweet distance whilst holding block and pressing down down and up it's my animality Jax learns that he doesn't need arms to I guess the entire plot of annihilation which hinged on the cliffhanger appearance of Shao Kahn at the very end of the last movie resulted in some pacing proms had just never really recovered from it didn't have time to breathe and reintroduce the new world and characters mostly because [Music] and in an organic way new fighters suddenly popped up with no explanation or even a name so it was and this was due to the fact that castle no helping no longer needed to make a movie for a general audience but instead okay okay I get it I get it in total twenty characters from MK 3 ultimate MK 3 and even MK 4 are all Chef Boyardee overstuffed in ten-mile ations runtime casanov wanted to cater exclusively to rabid fans who only wanted to see their favourite characters do their favourite special moves context and plot be damned which is not that much different from nowadays so it'll be no surprise that annihilation shooting script was constantly in flux due to the shooting schedule and even with the increased budget and ability to make the written page a reality one of the writers of the film this guy clarified I would be told hey this epic battle that was four pages long now needs to be a two-person battle that's two pages long I remember there was a scene that I don't believe is even in the movie anymore and if it is it was much bigger than the script Jack's had to be rescued from this absolutely epic out world prison it was gonna be this really big Prison Break sequence that had to be changed or cut completely so when you cut out a big sequence like that the whole movie suffers because it was designed to be a big action set piece at a very specific point in the film so that gargantuan Outworld mega prison became a small lab in the middle of a desert and has a shot that looks like this in it so as the dailies came in both riders back in Hollywood were a little taken aback I saw a lot of the early cuts of the film and I saw a lot of dailies there were so many things that had been cut and so many things that had to been shot a different way than how they were written so there was just a lot of oh okay that that's how that scene turned out all right then so Annihilation had its fair share of proms but most egregious of all is the fact that the movie was never really finished one shooting wrapped up a rough edit was put together and then shown to test audiences who all might have been high because according to New Line Cinema they went bonkers for it crazy Larry explains there was supposed to be another entire second pass of visual effects and editing but newline said you know what it's testing so well it doesn't [ __ ] matter it was still going to be a hit and by the way it was Noah wasn't it would be a little naive to chalk up all the weird continuity errors and sloppiness do the lack of a second editing pass but it would explain at least a few things like the same character getting killed in completely different shots Nightwolf mentioning three tests beat chicag you've got a pass three tests even though there's only one and oodles of Dreamcast I mean PlayStation 1 levels of visual effects but no amount of editing could excuse things like you barbecue disease or and especially [Music] so when Annihilation finally jumped kicked into theaters on November 21st 1997 number of things are working against it aside from its general you know MK annihilation this firstly that Thanksgiving release date not the most synergistic from a marketing perspective secondly M K's popularity was indeed on a downtrend as MK for a low point in the franchise history had been farted out just a month prior so that might have had a negative effect and thirdly Edwin and Ashby stated trailers clearly showing that most of the characters had been recast didn't exactly inspire confidence in the product so the movie was annihilated in theaters a fatality had been performed on its chances of success and no mercy would be given to any other hilarious m'kay based puns it's worldwide performance though its entire theatrical halt brought in about 51 million dollars barely squeaking on a profit and making less than half of what the first film did critically however it was far more brutal because according to Ron Tomatoes annihilation is the second worst video game movie of all time narrowly being edged out by UA Bulls alone in the dark which you know is some type of honor so those reviews as you can surmise were not kind witless charmless and clueless as quoted by Empire while the San Francisco Chronicle had a far more detailed opinion it sought to adhere fairly closely to the source material bringing characters from mk2 and mk3 been attempting to do so much fanservice at lost the first film's focus and suffered from some truly appalling performances why whatever do you mean San Francisco Critic man dad do you mean this yeah you probably do and finally cap it all off the harshest critic ed beezy himself dubbed Mortal Kombat annihilation as the worst moment of the franchise and considering MK advance exists that's that's big undaunted from all this bad press and meager profits Leisure Suit Larry pushed forward with a third film Mortal Kombat devastation but understood that mistakes were made there were a million cooks in the kitchen at the end of the day the thing I learned that if it's not right wait because we were on such a media train at that point with the animated series live-action series etc in order to fulfill that media train I needed a movie at that time and the reality was is that I didn't quite have the right team but I had to stick to the schedule because there were so many things going on in the Mortal universe devastation would be stuck in developmental hell for a number of years until it was set to begin shooting in New Orleans in August of 2005 so it's yeah that that didn't happen then in 2009 Midway had a banner year well not really cuz they were closed down and all their assets were bought by Warner Brothers MORTAL KOMBAT included Larry cast-off and the threshold boys disputed this with one of the craziest pieces of litigation ever covered here at what hopper now forgive the wall of text but every word every syllable must be seen to be believed in 1993 Castle non visited Midway with an idea to launch the Mortal Kombat concept in a totally new direction specifically casanov proposed to develop a full feature-length motion picture a television series and other productions Midway was initially skeptical as casanov idea was revolutionary at the time you know fair enough the Mortal Kombat franchise as it stands today is far more of a creation of threshold and casanov than of Midway Midway's creative output was almost entirely limited to the video games on their own the video games provided only minimal backstory and mythology and only flat stock characters with virtually no character development threshold was responsible for transforming each of the patterns stock characters present in the underlying Mortal Kombat video game from an unprotectable idea into fully realized completely delineated rule busting out the five-dollar words now and independently copyrightable expression each sub character is therefore a derivative work for which the copyright is owned by threshold these characters include Liu Kang Johnny Cage sub-zero scorpion as well as 50 others this suits also alleged that the Mortal Kombat brand was worth approximately 40 billion dollars which I assume threshold was looking forward to collecting which they did not while details were never made known to the public it was apparently settled out of court and threshold entertainment [ __ ] off since then live-action adaptations of MK have bounced around between concept pitches webseries and the like before finally land laughs of one James Wan director slash producer of many horror films in the conjuring franchise as well as waterboy while his role is limited to producing and shooting the schedule to start later this year details are still being kept under wraps of no director currently attached now in the twistiest of fates a close collaborator to mr. Wan a man who was the DP on a number of his horror films as well as since humming a few of his own isn't another then John our leonetti so if there is a very real chance that this Mortal Kombat reboot could have Leonetti behind the lens once more seeking his Redemption it'll be very interesting to see how this all shakes out as for crazy ol Larry cast off well in 2013 he roared back until the Hollywood scene with whatever the [ __ ] this is he wrote directed and produced it I post editing update since the script was written it seems unknown commercial director Simon McQuaid is now attached at direct with two actors signing on to play sub-zero and Liu Kang and finally there's the cherry on top the Shao Kahn tower crazy Larry has finagled his way to an executive producer credit it all comes back again if you know of any other spine ripping intestine spewing gaming movie disasters you'd like to uppercut in to our acid pool of judgment sound off in the comments below or a shadow kick your way over to the flop house VIP patreon to officially vote on what we'll take down next see you next time and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 882,253

Rating: 4.916254 out of 5

Keywords: Wha Happun, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Video Game Documentaries, Movie Disasters, Bad Movies, Mortal Kombat Movies, Matt McMuscles, the story of Mortal Kombat

Id: 32eQ-88WOpI

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/gothamsteel]

The audacity of the lawsuit text. Jesus...

[u/The_Draigg]

Never forget one of the narmiest parts of the movie: when Shao Kahn does a random backflip off of his incredibly high throne to talk to people standing below it.

[u/dfdedsdcd]

New Mortal Kombat movie should be titled Mortal Kombat: Redemption.

[u/Endocrom]

Food Fight had a director? I thought it mysteriously appeared from the either after someone turned off all the lights and said "Charlie Sheen" three times into a mirror.