Rating: ★★

Directed by Simon McQuoid

Starring Adeline Rudolph, Karl Urban, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Martyn Ford, Lewis Tan

Rated R 

Release Date: May 8, 2026

“Mortal Kombat II” is the sequel to 2021’s “Mortal Kombat,” though it feels as if returning director Simon McQuoid doesn’t want you to know that. Although highly successful on HBO Max, “Mortal Kombat” was divisive among fans for centering an original protagonist — Cole Young — and overcomplicating a conceit both basic and beloved: a fighting tournament to determine the fate of the universe. “Mortal Kombat II” practically trips over itself in its attempts to rectify both of those errors, resulting in greater entertainment value but suffering from the same stylistic and formal mistakes as its predecessor. While a diverting watch, the result feels as if it’s not as large of an improvement as McQuoid and company were hoping for. 

In press and promotion, McQuoid, producers, and cast have touted the film as being fan oriented in direct response to the previous complaints. This claim presumably refers to the film’s cyclical structure — a spate of fights, deaths, and a few scenes to recalibrate character dynamics, repeated up the food chain — akin to the video games and Paul W.S. Anderson’s original 1995 “Mortal Kombat.” The problem with this approach comes not in theory but in execution.

While Lewis Tan’s Young — the descendant of franchise icon Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) — returns, the spotlight is now centered squarely on Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) and Kitana (Adeline Rudolph). Cage is a washed-up action star recruited to fight for Earth, and Kitana is a princess living under the thumb of the towering tyrant Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). The rest of the cast members are mainly holdovers from the first film, not without import to fans of the franchise. Josh Lawson’s foul-mouthed mercenary Kano is the notable exception; the highlight character of the first film, though underused, leaves no scene unstolen. The rest of the titanic ensemble is frankly too thinly written to spend time detailing — the film limps and lurches through the first 15 minutes to get the bloated roster in starting positions, and then calls, “FIGHT!”

In the first film, the stunt work and fight choreography was all but lost, practically devoid of spatial logic, kineticism, and visual impact. To McQuoid’s credit, he clearly attempted to address this; the camerawork is vastly more lively, and coupled with direction more in concert with the stunt team, wire gags and hits have time to land. 

But.

The human body is familiar to every viewer of every film. Taking this form and interacting with it in new ways that elicit winces or awe is how good action is created. “Mortal Kombat II’s” world is one of high fantasy and sci-fi, so most of these characters have some kind of Outworldish gimmick to them that enables their transcendence of the basic human form. “Mortal Kombat II” doesn’t lean into that liminality nearly as often as it should, but when it does, its fights come alive for the first time in this rebooted series. 

For instance, resurrected hero-turned-villain Kung Lao (Max Huang) removes his hat, throws it, and teleports to said hat to deliver a kick before disappearing again. After the hat has fallen further, he rematerializes a few feet lower to finish his own combination — all before the other fighter touches the ground. Noob Saibot — a sickening waste of Joe Taslim’s talents — has the ability to create a clone of himself who moves through shadows. The clone uses pools of darkness to traverse the battlefield, merging and separating with Saibot.

This kind of ingenious action could sustain a full movie, especially one ostensibly built to appease fans and prioritize fights; in “Mortal Kombat II” that action is plagued by dialogue more predictable than campy fun, shot on half-green-screen sets seemingly meant to evoke in-game combat stages. But this kind of action is the exception and not the rule in McQuoid’s franchise. 

The editing and direction again play the enemy to the movie itself. While not nearly as egregious as that of its predecessor, it’s enough to hold fundamentally clever choreography back from real greatness. When Kombat is literally the name of the game, that has potential, though thankfully unrealized here, to be a mortal wound. 

Yet another unwelcome holdover from the first film is a strangely melodramatic tone, which is at odds with the games’ too-badass-to-be-wholly-irreverent ethos the film franchise itself claims  to espouse. Po-faced Kitana melodrama plays poorly in contrast to Kano litigating the reconstruction of his eyeball, or any one of the dozen fights on the docket.

At this point, the games themselves, while significantly longer, have — if only through the simulacrum of motion-captured cinematics — shown a more ready command of how this long-lived franchise should be best represented on screen. “Mortal Kombat II’s” action is solid, its script the wrong kind of pedestrian, and its energy the wrong amount of fun. It’s not high art, but that’s not what anyone wanted. What people wanted was something true to the spirit of the games, and while this gets close enough to be a worthwhile diversion — and to be the best of the four live action “Mortal Kombat” movies — it pales in comparison. It’s serviceable for sure. Whether or not fans are the ones being serviced is another story.