Mortal Kombat is a tough act to follow. Paul W.S. Anderson’s faithful 1995 adaptation of the hit videogame series was a surprise success at the box office that remains beloved by fans to this day, so making another MK movie isn’t as simple as just, well, making another MK movie. Any new adaptation has to simultaneously stand on its own merit while living up to a considerable amount of expectation, which might be one reason why it’s been over 20 years since the last time we heard someone shout “Finish Him!” in a movie theater. Luckily, director Simon McQuoid and the filmmaking team behind 2021’s Mortal Kombat are intent on not only meeting fan expectations, but smashing those expectations to pieces like an ice grenade to the torso.

Co-produced by blockbuster hit machine James Wan (Aquaman, Furious 7, The Conjuring), McQuoid’s take on Mortal Kombat aims to stand out among the current generation of action films by featuring the greatest martial arts sequences ever captured on film. Obviously, a major component of that equation is to assemble an amazing cast of some of the greatest martial artists in the world, and McQuoid has certainly done that. But another equally important factor is the individual fights themselves. During a set visit conducted in 2019, McQuoid explained the process he and the film’s actors and stunt coordinators utilized to ensure every bout carried emotional weight and importance in addition to being exhilarating to watch:

“The fights themselves, what we’ve attempted to do… is to innovate within. To drive character forward and story forward within the fight. So we spent a lot of time on that. The fight team are incredible on this movie. The first thing I said to Kyle [Gardiner], who is the stunt coordinator, he runs the whole thing, I said to him, ‘Ok Kyle, we have to make the best fights that have ever been on film. So, no pressure.’ ... But it was really about building character and story within the fight itself so it didn’t just feel like a plugin. It actually felt like part of the scene and part of the act.”

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Image via WB

“That is the goal, is to try to make the most badass fight movie that’s ever been shot,” said producer Todd Garner. “It’s a very tall order, but we’re gonna do our best and we’ll see what happens.” Garner then elaborated on the story-driven approach to the action, comparing the meticulous and extensive fight choreography to that of a dance movie. “The closest thing I can think of is that it feels like a dance movie. Where it’s just like, we got this. You’re not faking anything … These guys are just, you know, they’re the best at what they do. [Lewis Tan, who plays a new character named Cole Young] has done every piece of fighting choreo in this movie. And they all have.”

RELATED: 27 Things We Learned About the New Mortal Kombat Movie From Our Set Visit

Joe Taslim (The Raid: Redemption, The Night Comes For Us), who plays iconic Mortal Kombat villain Sub-Zero, echoed McQuoid’s statements about the importance of each fight having dramatic significance:

“A fight scene and a heavy drama scene [are] the same. In a heavy drama scene people throw lines, and translate [emotion] into words. In a fight scene, we don’t say. We deliver to our kicks [and punches] pain, agony, [and] struggle. So that’s actually a drama scene. And that’s not easy. If you do it yourself, of course. If you don’t use a double. (laughs) … That’s hard. It’s not easy. There’s no lines. But we know for sure that it’s not just a fight, right? It’s a story. What is the purpose of this fight? I need to know if, does this character think he’s gonna win? Or he knows he’s gonna die but he keeps fighting? Or, he’s just playing with this guy, underestimating him? Those things are very important in a fight. It’s acting. If you see a really cool fight scene, a lot of cool fight scenes [are] just empty because people are just focusing on the fight… It’s soulless, because sometimes people get carried away with how to look cool on camera… But the most important thing is, the way you treat action is the same [way] you treat drama. It’s all about delivery of emotion. What is the fight for, what is the motivation? … People need to see what is inside, not just the blood [and the bruising], but what is happening inside that face? So I think that’s what I’m trying to do with every fight scene in this movie. It needs to show so that people can relate. So people can feel it.”

“My martial arts instructor said this one thing which always stuck with me, that fighting is the most honest language you can have,” said Ludi Lin, who portrays franchise hero Liu Kang. “Because in the ring, a punch in the head, you know, it hurts, it hurts. You can’t lie about that, right? So sometimes these action scenes, they deliver because when you have good action, when you have physicality, that’s something that gives you a guttural emotional reaction as well. So that plays into the characters, and the... intricate and interesting arcs of these characters and what they’re striving for. And the fighting has a meaning. So hopefully that comes across.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

Taslim also mentioned a specific four-minute-long fight scene of his that he kept looking for ways to tweak and perfect as they were filming. “There’s one crazy fight,” he said, “that... every day I discuss it with Simon, with our action directors, to make it better and better and better.” It seems likely that the fight he’s describing is a showdown between Sub-Zero and his undead nemesis Scorpion (played by Japanese screen legend Hiroyuki Sanada), considering that rivalry has been a staple of the Mortal Kombat franchise since the very first game was released back in 1992. If there was one fight to go all-out on in a Mortal Kombat movie, it would be Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion.

That said, if you’re trying to make the best martial arts movie ever, you’d want to go all out on every fight, which is a spirit the entire cast and crew took to heart. Garner said that the actors were constantly coming up with new elements to elevate the film’s action sequences, including one particularly impressive display by Max Huang, who plays the Shaolin monk Kung Lao:

“Oh, everybody’s made suggestions. 100%. Max showed up and goes, 'I just want to show you this.' And he does a 540, with no wire. And throws the hat! And he’s like, 'I wanna do that.' And I’m like, 'Okay.' (laughs) He went to Jackie Chan Academy for a month to train. And Joe is the fastest human being on the planet. And so, everybody. Every single actor is like, even [Sanada], is like, 'I can do it.' And he’s 57 years old! And he’s doing it! It’s fucking amazing.”

RELATED: We Know Joe Taslim's Playing Sub-Zero in 'Mortal Kombat'. Is He Also Playing Noob Saibot?

An epic martial arts film like Mortal Kombat is, by definition, going to contain a whole lot of fighting. “I don’t think there’s a martial arts move that we don’t use,” Gardner said, citing that each of the movie’s fight scenes contains around 200 different beats of choreography. With that sheer amount of high stakes emotional action on display, McQuoid was worried about audiences becoming desensitized after a while. “What I also wanted to do was, surprise! They’re not all the same style of fight,” the director said. “There’s a lot of fights in it, so we didn’t want to get people bored of the fights. Because there’s a percentage of people who just love fight movies and they’ll just obsess over it, but there’s also, you know, even people who like a martial arts film, you can get fight fatigue. So that was something we just knew to have to balance, to make sure.”

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Image via WB

Keeping the different fighting styles varied was relatively easy, Gardner said, because each cast member brought their own unique talents to the table. “Ludi’s style is very different from Max’s style, which is very different than Lewis’ style, which is obviously very different than Joe’s style. Even Joe is like, ‘I can’t flip like that. I can’t do a 540 and throw a hat. That’s not what I do. But I am the fastest human on the planet.’” He then shared an anecdote about a fight scene they had filmed between Taslim and Mechcad Brooks, who plays Special Forces badass Jax, that left everyone stunned by Taslim’s speed. “Mehcad, he had the first fight against Joe, and he was just like, ‘Ok, that just happened.’ Like, it was so fast. Even the camera is like, ‘You guys, can you slow down a little bit?’”

Garner also broke down how the fighting itself was being filmed, likening it more closely to movies from Indonesia and China rather than the current trend of Hollywood action vehicles. He also indicated that adopting a “low-budget” style of using long takes instead of a frenetic Bourne Identity pace with continuous rapid cuts helps to both keep the audience engaged and to better showcase the incredible level of talent and choreography on display:

"Weirdly, it’s been done quite a bit on television. A lot of these guys are coming from shows… What’s interesting about the tv shows they’re doing is it’s much more like what’s coming out of Indonesia and Korea and China because they don’t have the budgets. So they’re like, 'We got one camera, maybe two. Have at it, guys!' Obviously I’m being facetious, but they’re going to do 50 or 60 beats of choreo and the cameras are just going to move, and these guys are doing it. You know, they’re hitting each other. It’s no joke. These guys are… some of the stuff they do, I just can’t believe they’re not knocking each other out. And then you got movies like Deadpool and things like that that are kind of doing it a little bit, but nothing on this scale. But again, going back to the stuff you want to see, it’s sort of going back to that low-budget idea of just kinda let ‘em go and watch it. From being able to watch it as opposed to kind of that more MTV cutting pattern."

As a person who has been a fan of the Mortal Kombat series since the very first arcade game and has memorized the entirety of the 1995 film, I can say without hyperbole that I could not be more excited for this new Mortal Kombat movie. The footage we’ve seen in the recent red band trailer is fun and exciting and seems to line up perfectly with the filmmakers’ vision of an epic martial arts film. And the fact that the cast and crew seem just as enthusiastic about the project and the quality of the action sequences is an extremely good sign.

Mortal Kombat hits theaters and HBO Max April 16.

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