Mortal Kombat, the 2021 film based on the long-running video game franchise, spent nine years in development before getting made. Especially in the era of "10 new Star Wars shows every week!", that is a long time for an IP-based blockbuster film to spend in the gestation period. At the risk of being uncouth: What took them so long?
During a set visit that Collider attended in Australia, producer Todd Garner explained — in some instances, while scenes were literally filming behind him — how this film originated, evolved, and turned into the final product over nine years. And if you're a real Mortal Kombat fan, you'll know its origins began with the Mortal Kombat: Legacy live-action TV series, which began as a series of low-budget web videos from director Kevin Tancharoen:
"Five years ago I got involved, they had been developing it for four years. And it was right around the time that that Kevin Tancharoen [series released]. And so they had the idea that maybe just go super dark and kind of like The Crow. Tancharoen's stuff was super contained; obviously, the guy was doing it on a shoestring budget, and it was very dark and kind of contained. And so when I read the script, they gave me the movie to work on, I [said], 'This isn't what we should do,' which was stupid, probably. I said, 'This isn't what we should do, we should really try to open this up.' And they were gracious enough to go, 'Okay, if we're gonna do that, let's do it.' And so we brought [producer] James Wan on and brought [writer] Greg Russo on, and said, 'Okay, if you were really gonna do this, and not just try to make it like The Crow, not just try to make it like Kevin did where he's like, 'Well, I only have this much money, so I'm gonna be in an apartment building with guys kicking the shit out of each other,' what would you do?' And so we started from the premise of, 'What would Marvel do?'"
Obviously, when you're looking for comps for a potential blockbuster sci-fi/fantasy/action film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as assembled by Kevin Feige is a pretty good place to start. But Garner and his team wanted to analyze what makes the MCU work a little more thoroughly. "How were the Avengers assembled?" asked Garner during pre-production. Here's their analysis of MCU universe DNA, and how they applied it to the Mortal Kombat film — especially in its utilizing a new main character, Cole Young (Lewis Tan):
"You start it with one guy who is a point of access — Iron Man — and you kind of wandered into the Avengers. You didn't just start with the Avengers. So who would be that guy [for us]? There were a few ideas that were just hard because they were super specific; if you came in with Liu Kang, it would be a weird [adjustment]. So we said, 'Okay, maybe we just start neutral and come into the movie, and then really set up the canvas where we can meet all of the characters that people love.' You're never gonna get everybody's favorite character. I always like to say to people, 'Who do you normally play?' And them I'm like, 'Welp, okay! That movie is not this one!' But we tried to really get the right characters in, and tried to be intelligent about [whether] we were just throwing characters in just to have them in the movie so we can placate people, or do they really belong in the movie. So that then became the weeding out process."
This is a canny explanation of, to borrow a colleague's parlance, how the MCU was made. And it will be interesting to see how that universe's PG-13-rated world is applied to an R-rated world in which the trailer features a man who breaks someone's skin so hard blood flies out, and then they freeze the blood in mid-air, and then they stab the guy with his own blood. Star Lord would never.
Mortal Kombat comes to theaters and HBO Max April 16, 2021.