PHOTO: Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion in “Mortal Kombat II”.
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
“This movie is a love letter to MK fans. Fantastic sets, killer fights, and an upgrade in story telling all around. Will see multiple times! 🐉,” raves a fan about “Mortal Kombat II” on Rotten Tomatoes.
“MORTAL KOMBAT 2!!! was HUGE upgrade from the first! The action sequences are fun, it’s bloody as hell, Karl Urban is JOHNNY CAGE!” posted another. “FLAWLESS VICTORY!!”
The movie’s filmmakers learned from the fans and audiences of the first movie and strived to make a movie that audiences will enjoy and leave them satisfied. “My job as a director is to create, with all the elements, a tone, a very specific tone,” says director Simon McQuoid. “And that tone is to hold the audience in a state of wonder. And so all the choices – whether they be sets, lenses, costumes – it’s all to build that tone.”
For the film’s sets, which immediately transport audiences to the world of Mortal Kombat, McQuoid and his fellow producers credit production designer Yohei Taneda, whose film credits include “The Hateful Eight” and “Kill Bill Vol. 1.” Says producer Todd Garner, “The production designer, Yohei Taneda, and the art department did an incredible job on this film. During the first movie, we were very limited in the locations and sets we could shoot in. But we were given the opportunity in this movie to open the world up, go to different realms, and expand the world to include several Mortal Kombat levels and worlds that fans know and love.”
Taneda was drawn to the film because E. Bennett Walsh, who worked with him on “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” “mentioned that I’d be able to create four different fantasy worlds in this one movie. And I was really inspired by that. Four different worlds in one movie! That’s a lot of work. But it gives you an idea of the scale and dimension of this film.”
In “Mortal Kombat II,” the fan favorite champions – now joined by Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) – are pitted against one another in the ultimate, no-holds barred, gory battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders. Once again directed by Simon McQuoid, the film also stars Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, with Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion.
Watch the trailer:
Photo credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.
When Taneda works, he prefers to sketch and draw as an artist, rather than work on a computer. So he sketched his designs for each of the sets to show to director Simon McQuoid. “As a first step, in terms of Edenia, there wasn’t much information or reference in the game itself, so I was free to design a whole new world,” says Taneda. “I sketched the entire town of Edenia and the Castle. It has a European feel to it, but I wanted to add my own touch with a bit more of an Asian feel as well, and that made a nice balance. We also see a transition in the town from the reign of King Jerrod, where it’s green and beautiful, but then it turns into something quite dead and ugly under Shao Kahn. I enjoyed being able to design both. I found it interesting that I was able to tell so much of the story just in that one set. Netherrealm began as a futuristic city, with something of a sci-fi nature. But then I had the idea of taking some inspiration from Escher, the Dutch painter.”
With two iconic recurring arenas – The Pit and Deadpool – the game itself served as a primary resource. “I didn’t want to disappoint with my design for the Pit,” says the production designer. “With Deadpool, I focused more on the sort of materials that we would use, especially the rocks and the stones, to make it as physical and as authentic as possible. And then with the Sky Temple, I didn’t want to focus on just one culture. So I added a Japanese element to the Chinese style.”
“‘Mortal Kombat II’ is a marked improvement over the first film for all the right reasons,” wrote MovieWeb in their review. “It doubles down on what made the games popular and brings in a known commodity with Urban to shoulder the acting burden. McQuoid does not disappoint in his second stab at the franchise, providing red meat to loyal legions without any attempt to stray from the fantastic source material.”
Movie website Collider also commended the film, calling it a “bloody good time and a bone-crunching spectacle.”
Head on over to the cinemas and watch “Mortal Kombat II,” now showing only in cinemas and IMAX. #MortalKombatMovie
Photo & Video Credit: “Warner Bros. Pictures”.
