So, I was scrolling YouTube for way too long for no clear reason, as one often does, and my recommendations delivered to me a video called The Insane Lore of Mortal Kombat by a channel called 'ClementJ64,'. The video is three hours long.
I'm pretty fond of and familiar with that particular franchise, so I figure I'll throw it on for some comforting background noise while I try and write something. Long story short, guy goes deep into this veritable mountain of backstory for a series of fighting games on a level I didn't know about. Three hours later I haven't written a word because I've been watching too intently, which I can almost never manage to do for something that long anymore.
Thanks to that, I currently have Mortal Kombat on the brain and I've replayed the tenth one (not touched since pretty much release) and thrown on the 1995 movie (R.IP Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) while I'm writing this to try and unpack what it is I find so compelling about this, when examined objectively, extremely silly franchise.
If you're not familiar, Mortal Kombat is a series of fighting videogames that began in 1992 (almost as old as me) It has since spawned twelve mainline entries, a bunch of side-games and spinoffs, three movies, one a reboot with a sequel this year, and two TV series' one animated, one a live-action serial in the vein of something like Xena back in the day. There was also a short web series in the early 2010s.
If you're a fossil like me, you might remember the series being a figure of some controversy in the early days because of the cartoonish levels of blood and gore in the games, which, I believe was what caused the Videogame industry to form the Entertainment Software Rating Board and give games age ratings like other visual media (that books are still not subject to age-ratings to this day is wild to me, by the way.)
That controversy didn't stop Mortal Kombat from becoming a popular multimedia franchise, in fact it probably helped. I believe that's called 'The Streisand Effect.' The controversy only piqued people's curiosity, and the developers, I assume probably felt they had a reputation to uphold, because they did not change a thing in respose.
The games have done a bit of growing up in their presentation for recent entries. In some ways at least, the gore remains comically excessive, but character designs are more realistic, and outfits less...obviously geared towards teenage boys. (Quick aside, this has become a pattern observable across the entire medium, and, I have to say, whatever else one might say about videogames today, I would no longer be embarrassed to show them to somebody, at the very least.)
More realistic outfits aside, which I think is a good change anyway, Mortal Kombat has, to a tee, maintained everything about the series that brought it to the dance, so to speak. The over-the-top violence is visceral and intentionally disgusting, yes, but it can also be comical and downright goofy in places. Whatever the series may do, the one thing it has never once even entertained doing, is apologizing for any of it.
Thinking about it, I think that might be what keeps me coming back to the series, and what has kept it interesting through the years. Maybe not of a consistent quality all the time but each entry oozes with palpable enthusiasm. Co-creators Ed Boon and John Tobias started something in 1992, and Ed Boon serves as creative director and team leader to this day.
That consistency in direction, coupled with obvious earnestness, and commitment to the premise does a lot to carry the more ridiculous aspects of the series. I'm reminded of my early days studying Performing Arts at BTEC level, I had a small voice and confidence issues, my director at the time would always tell me the same thing. He'd say "Don't apologise for your performance." Better advice, I have never heard, and I think it bears out here.
Confidence is important sure, but I'd argue that sincerity is just as important. People can absolutely tell when someone isn't behind something they make, and sincerity can save the life of a bad piece of art. Conversely, a lack of such can hamper even technically better things. I'll happily sit through Mortal Kombat: Anihilation a thousand times before I ever watch Batman v. Superman again.
I guess I do gravitate to the unabashed as a rule. I've touched on how much I like sincerity in my media a whole bunch of times, so I won't retread here, but basically, if you don't care, why should I? This, I think is the essence of what I'm talking about here. Silly, gory, and goofy as Mortal Kombat often is, everything it does, it does with its whole damn chest, and I can't help but be drawn in by that.
The games have technically rebooted twice now, but even the reboots are not only soft, they're straight-up diegetic. The continuity has reset twice in the last four games, but those resets are part of the same ongoing story. I don't like every decision the last reboot (which incidentally is the latest game) made, but the same focus on fun and love for the characters is still very much there.
Not everything out of that franchise has been good, in fact some parts of it have been pretty damn terrible, but you can never accuse them of going through the motions, and enthusiasm is contageous. I can never be too mad about any story decision this series makes, because I'm never in-doubt that the creators are loving what they do.
Mortal Kombat endures, not because of a consistent quality, but unfaltering commitment to the bit. If there is a lesson to be learned there, it's that no one will ever care about your own art more than you, so show them why, and lean into it hard Irony is a crutch that punishes your audience for caring, don't fear the cringe, detachment is for the weak!
Which is to say, if you care, and you show it, others will too.
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