Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was a terrible sequel with many bad ideas, but the 2021 movie reboot looks to try and redeem one involving tattoos. 1995’s first Mortal Kombat movie didn’t exactly impress critics, but it was a box office smash, and helped greatly raise the profile of an already popular video game franchise. Now, more than 25 years after its release, Mortal Kombat remains a cherished piece of nostalgic fun for many fans of the mystical fighting tournament, even if its PG-13 rating prevented a full realization of the source material.
Unfortunately, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation took all that good will and momentum and utterly wasted it, crafting a sequel inferior to the original in every way. When the original was only pretty good to begin with, that’s certainly not a positive development. Annihilation crammed in way too many characters, told a rushed, confusing story, and featured some of the worst CGI effects to emerge from that era. Add into that several atrocious performances and most of the cast not reprising their roles, and what resulted was a total disaster.
The best move Mortal Kombat 2021 could’ve possibly made was to study Annihilation, and make a point to avoid the pitfalls it suffered from. What no one really expected is that a lame plot point from Annihilation might resurface in the reboot, but that actually looks to be the case, albeit not done in exactly the same way.
Mortal Kombat 2021 Attempts To Redeem Annihilation’s Terrible Tattoo Idea
One of the many lame subplots found within Mortal Kombat: Annihilation included a dragon-shaped tattoo that appeared on both Outworld emperor Shao Kahn and the fighters working to serve his ends. When the fighters would meet their demise, the tattoo would come to life, remove itself from their body, and fly away. As with the rest of the sequel’s CGI effects, this event looked terrible. Raiden later reveals that the tattoo is actually Kahn’s family crest, which he knows about since the two are actually brothers, an eyebrow-raising revelation that never happened in the video games.
When Kahn is defeated by Liu Kang at the end of Annihilation, his own dragon tattoo rips itself from his body, then Kahn crumbles to nothingness. In Mortal Kombat‘s 2021 reboot, those chosen to compete in the Mortal Kombat tournament are bestowed at birth with a tattoo in the shape of the franchise’s dragon logo. Whether this means Lewis Tan’s Cole Young is actually related to someone like Raiden or Shao Kahn remains to be seen, but unlike the laughable use of tattoos in Annihilation, it appears the reboot movie is employing them in a much more sensible way. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was the rare sequel so bad it killed a budding franchise, and hopefully Mortal Kombat 2021 can successfully wash the taste of it out of fans’ mouths for good.
