A grounded character study about ice ninjas.

The Producer of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
wouldn't make a bad film, would he?

I'm not saying that I'm a fan of movie and video game violence, in fact, as I get older and the world is gets shittier, I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable with it. And yet for some reason I'm having confusing, complicated feelings about Mortal Kombat movie producer Todd Garner's recent comments about-huh? Oh, haven't you heard? There's a reboot of the Mortal Kombat movie coming. I have feelings about that too, but they're for another time. Anyway, in an interview with The Verge, Garner explained the that violence in the film is not as graphic as that in the games:

Above: Bambi, famously the
Mortal Kombat of 1942.

"Compared to the game, we're like Bambi. We're like a G-rated movie compared to the game."

-Todd Garner, Producer on-

wait, does he want people to see it?

I mean, for real. I don't want to tell him how to PR his Mortal Kombat movie, but is telling fans how violent it's not the way to go? Like, as much as I'm uncomfortable with the preposterous violence, it's kind of all the series has going for it, so why is he even making this movie in the first place? 

Remember when this, and not say,
armed right-wing extremists, was all
 we, as a nation had to worry about?

I used to be a fan of Mortal Kombat but fell off of it ages ago and part of the reason was the stomach churning violence, which, paradoxically, was the appeal in the first place. In the early 90's, we were hot off the moral panic of Dungeons and Dragons and drunk on Crystal Pepsi, so the comparatively tame blood and gore of the first game made us kids feel incredibly badass; like we were getting away with something and Senators loosing their minds over it only sweetened the pot. But once the subversiveness wore off, I think we all realized that the games were, you know, not good. 

Pictured: Mediocrity
not stopping anyone.

Anyway, mediocrity never stopped anyone, and the Mortal Kombat games are still pretty popular. Like, there're always tweens, right? And with each iteration the violence gets more and more ludicrous to keep pulling in new players. And that's fine, I mean, we turned out ok and no matter what the Mikes Huckabee of the world want to bloviate about on Fox News, there isn't a single reputable study linking real-world violence to violent video games. Kids aren't out slicing off heads with razor-brimmed hats or crushing each other's skulls with cyborg arms because of Mortal Kombat. It's dumb, not developmentally dangerous. My point is, making a movie version and blunting that element seems like an odd choice, and it's even odder that Garner is telling us about it.

Specifically up to this moment.

Garner went on to say:

"We're trying to make a movie where you care about the people, it's grounded, it has a realistic tone to it...you're not just trying to make torture porn. You're trying to do something that...is motivated by real characters that feel like they've lived real lives up until this moment"

-Todd Garner, talking about 

some other movie? I guess?

Is he though? Trying to do any of that stuff I mean? Like, if the film bears any resemblance to the games, it's about an inter-dimensional martial arts tournament in which hemophiliac earthlings try and karate a bunch of pallet-swap ninjas and wizards. Heads are punched off, spines torn out. By no stretch of the imagination is this grounded or motivated by real characters. I'm not saying that's a problem, I'm just asking why bother?

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get into Goro's motivations.