Mortal Kombat II

Undoubtedly competent.

Nothing to say, which is actually praise these days.

The movie is surprisingly well shot, with scene appropriate colour grading, ie: not the pervasive teal/orange Hollywood barf I expected, and decent pacing despite the length.

Most actors put the work in: Urban, despite not being able to fight, McNamee provides a very decent Sonya, and Lawson's Kano is pure Jovial Evil, Chaotic Evil's funny cousin.
Asano and Sanada are wasted in that kind of movies, but they're probably not wealthy enough to easily turn down a Hollywood paycheck.

The fights are frequent, well executed, and in the vein of the games (for what little I know).

No social commentary, and no race-swapping. Except maybe Jade, I sort of figured she was Brazilian or something. The motion-capture model, not the character. At least she should have some hair.
Well, it was all a pixelated mess.

Then again, there never was a redhead in MK; that would have been the real test.

All in all, not a fantastic movie, but it does Mortal Kombat, and it does it well.

Bloody fun video game action!

Nothing woke (THANK GOODNESS) to write home about here. Just a bloody fun action fighter with some great comedic moments. The fight scenes definitely were a level up above the first movie. Karl Urban was a great addition to the cast and stole the movie for me. Looking forward to the 3rd one with this same cast if all goes well!

When I sat down to watch this movie, I was fully braced for it to come loaded with all the injected diversity crap, just like the last two Mortal Kombat games where Ed Boon (and his "diverse" dev team) turned the whole thing into what I call Mortal WOKEmbat. Even though I’d read and heard some good things about the movie, I was still super skeptical, so I watched it with really low expectations.

What I got was that weird mix I’ve seen in reviews of other films: there are moments where you’re like “Damn, this is actually really good,” and then others where you start wondering if staring at a blank wall would be a better use of your time. Basically, I’ve learned to watch movies with this calm, apathetic vibe where I just go “Okay, this part’s solid… but that part? Nah.” I won’t get into details because I don’t want to drop spoilers.

The movie has some really impressive special effects. The story is better than the last one, but it’s still not enough to make it a genuinely good movie overall. I was thinking about catching it in theaters and I’m really glad I didn’t, because it’s not completely free from "the message". It’s not shoved down your throat, but it’s still not totally out of the claws of that unnecessary change philosophy either.

Minor spoiler → It feels like a 21st-century movie with 90s-style editing that just didn’t know how to properly wrap things up at the end.

It’s decent if you just want to look at cool effects and colorful lights. Not much more than that.