{"id":2405170,"date":"2026-05-06T21:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2405170"},"modified":"2026-05-06T21:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:13:13","slug":"mortal-kombat-ii-review-sorry-sequel-is-a-migraine-of-non-stop-fights-and-idiot-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/mortal-kombat-ii-review-sorry-sequel-is-a-migraine-of-non-stop-fights-and-idiot-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Mortal Kombat II&#8217; review: Sorry sequel is a migraine of non-stop fights and idiot characters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2026%2F05%2Fnewspress-collage-ng4hx5lng-1778099211466.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261778084902\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--review alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n\t\t<span class=\"inline-module--review__eyebrow subsection-heading-semi__label\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tmovie review\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"inline-module--review__title subsection-heading-semi\">\n\t\t\tMORTAL KOMBAT II\t\t<\/h2>\n<div class=\"rating\">\n<div class=\"rating__stars\">\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore, and language). In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>No phrase terrifies me more than \u201cfor the fans,\u201d because in the movies that tends to mean \u201cawful and incomprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And so it does for \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d an onscreen bucket of slop that people will give a pass to because losers cheer whenever a character, such as they are, is impaled or sliced in half.<\/p>\n<p>The first film that karate-kicked off director Simon McQuoid\u2019s reboot series back in 2021 got flack from those basement-dwelling diehards for having scenes with actual talking and a somewhat grounded protagonist who wasn\u2019t from the original video game. God forbid.<\/p>\n<p>But I found that one much more watchable and engaging than terrible \u201cII\u201d because there was at least some attempt at a plot and a fun, adventurous spirit. Training up Cole Young (Lewis Tan) and Kano (Josh Lawson) had an underdog \u201cRocky\u201d vibe, and there was a shimmery magic to Raiden\u2019s temple.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now it\u2019s just repetitive kills from bottom-drawer cartoons.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--more inline-module--columnist inline-module--more--thirds\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<h2 class=\"inline-module__heading subsection-heading subsection-heading--single-line \">\n\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"subsection-heading__sub\">Johnny Oleksinski<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Obviously gnarly deaths are the main event here. It\u2019s called \u201cMortal Kombat\u201d not \u201cMundane Chitchat.\u201d But \u201cII\u201d is, pardon the expression, overkill; an endless, mindnumbing, ultimately boring string of ugly fights against lava-and-gravel green-screen backdrops between cardboard \u201cchampions\u201d whose names are frankly inconsequential.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>\u201cMortal Kombat II\u201d brings back the Earthrealm and Outerworld. <span class=\"credit\">Warner Bros. Pictures<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Yet for journalism\u2019s sake I shall list some anyway. The underwhelming new main man is Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), a fact that I\u2019m sure will delight those who know who Johnny Cage is. Apparently he is a washed-up action movie star with Liberace hair and a Wolverine voice. He\u2019s summoned to partake in the Mortal Kombat tournament \u2014 \u201cGalaxy Quest\u201d style \u2014 during the reign of the evil Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford), which is a peculiar name for a baddie with a working-class British accent.<\/p>\n<p>Some other notable Earthrealmers: Jessica McNamee is a vacant shell as Sonya Blade, who keeps getting knocked out during confrontations and waking up in a damsel funk. Australian Josh Lawson returns as Crocodile Dundee Kano, who tiresomely fills silences with witless, filthy jokes. Ludi Lin has always felt most at home as the powerful Liu Kang, but the role is aimless this time. And Mehcad Brooks\u2019 Jax has robot arms.<\/p>\n<p>They all have powers \u2014 or arcanas, to use some of the movie\u2019s phonebook of jargon \u2014 but five years on, it\u2019s hard for we normals to remember what those were. In short: fire, lightning, bracelets.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) is trying to avenge the death of her father. <span class=\"credit\">Warner Bros. Pictures<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Helping the team is Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), a princess who became the property of Shao Kahn after he violently killed her father.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKitana, you\u2019re my daughter now,\u201d says Shao like a kid just pulled a string attached to his back.<\/p>\n<p>Rudolph\u2019s warrior who wields spiky handheld fans is the only partially human thread here. Fans, brace yourself, Kitana has these things called \u201cemotions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About thirty minutes in, things become fuzzy. There is definitely an neon-green amulet that Shao, who is part of the Outworld, desires that possibly grants immortality. We can\u2019t have that.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The movie is constant fight scenes with unmemorable opponents. <span class=\"credit\">Warner Bros. Pictures<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Earthrealmers keep winding up in battles with nondescript opponents, the stakes of which range from negligible to unknown.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And finally there\u2019s a tournament. Oh goody, more fights.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even the gravitas of Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, who appears late in an unattractive \u201cVan Helsing\u201d-like world called the Netherrealm, doesn\u2019t elevate \u201cII\u201d from being a trudge.<\/p>\n<p>All of this banality is put to music by Benjamin Wallfisch, who has composed an earsplitting score that\u2019s the aural equivalent of an iron rod hitting your head over and over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The film\u2019s score is earsplitting. <span class=\"credit\">Warner Bros. Pictures<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Look, there is nothing wrong with some ass kicking. And some of these clashes are exciting, particularly those involving Kitana and her accessories. But couldn\u2019t blood and gore come with a hot side of story? Early on Johnny Cage actually blames the downward slide of his film\u00a0 career on the awesome, artful, occasionally deep Keanu Reeves hitman series \u201cJohn Wick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His reference is an apt one. Because for two hours I couldn\u2019t stop thinking, \u201cIf only I was at \u2018John Wick\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>movie review MORTAL KOMBAT II Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore, and language). In theaters. No phrase terrifies me more than \u201cfor the fans,\u201d because in the movies that tends to mean \u201cawful and incomprehensible.\u201d And so it does for \u201cMortal Kombat II,\u201d an onscreen bucket of slop that people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2405171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[21741,304995,21912],"class_list":["post-2405170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-entertainment","tag-movie-reviews","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Mortal-Kombat-II-review-Sorry-sequel-is-a-migraine-of.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2405172,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405170\/revisions\/2405172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}