Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms

"Battle of the Realms feels all over the place, attempting to tell to tell too many stories at once and not doing any of them justice."

-IGN "To sum up how bad this film is. Somehow, Mortal Kombat 2021 not the worst MK movie released in 2021."

-The4thSnake "I 'm not some coming from a place of hate at all. In fact, I go out of my way to almost never use that word it'' s a very strong word but... I think I did hate this movie."

-TrueUnderDawg

Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms is a sequel to the critically acclaimed movie:mh:grestestmovies:Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge which is also based on the game series that started in 1992.

Plot
As Shang Tsung failed Shao Kahn into bringing victory in Mortal Kombat, Shao Kahn decides to redo the tournament and taking place in Outworld, meanwhile a younger Sub-Zero is planning to avenge his brother by killing Scorpion while a trio of Cyborgs are after them both.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The movie has a very hard time to decide who to focus on as the movie switches from Mortal Kombat 2 & Mortal Kombat 3’s story, Shinnok's arc and Sub-Zero's revenge arc, because of this many of the character who weren't on the previous movie have a very hard time in getting any development, have no personality or background only for the studio to repeatedly use the “If you know their names or know how they look like then you know who they are” excuse. Since this movie has a lot of Mortal Kombat characters, most of the fan favorite characters get violently killed off as all the new villains and heroes (Sektor, Cyrax, Kung Lao and Stryker for example) have no background or personality other than the studio also using the “they’re based from the games” excuse.
 * 2) Unlike Scorpion's Revenge, every character has a lack of chemistry towards each other since they barely talk to any of the new characters.
 * 3) Unlike the previous movie, many of the characters make the worst decision while also having options that they don't decide to use, such has Stryker having firearms but decides not to use them in the tournament (despite it not being an established rule), Smoke having the ability to teleport himself and his friend but doesn't use it to teleport very far away from the Cyborgs from capturing them or turning into smoke when he was tied.
 * 4) The scene of the death of Kung Lao was worse unlike the 2021 film. Kung Lao gets brutally killed off but first somehow Kung Lao can't even catch HIS OWN hat and after Shao Kahn kills him, the scene skips that moment right away and Kung Lao is quickly forgotten about with none of his friends mourning his death. This also happened to Stryker.
 * 5) Plot hole:During the Shinnok arc, the Grandmaster know who Shinnok was and how dangerous he is but still served him knowing the consequences he was gonna make.
 * 6) False Advertising: except for the "important" character - Kung Lao, Stryker, Kintaro, D'vorah, Jade, Reiko, Li Mei, and Baraka have been heavily featured in trailers, however, on average they have a minute or less of screen which all of them get brutally killed off.
 * 7) The movie has 12 new Mortal Kombat characters and majority of new character get violently killed off with little screen time on each of them.
 * 8) There is too many important villains in the story, instead of the movie focusing on Shao Kahn and the tournament, the Grand Master and the cyborg trio, the movie has the major antagonist Shinnok. Shinnok has very little screen time and his final battle was forced as somehow Shinnok was able to get all the artifacts of the realms (except one) despite never traveling there and his final battle was no other than a kaiju battle.
 * 9) Liu Kang has many accomplishments but it was very forced since the movie wants to strictly follow the game's lore.
 * 10) Since movie wants to strictly follow the story of Mortal Kombat 2, 3 and 4, the movie will get predictable and the most prime example is Smoke getting captured then converted & Shao Kahn losing.
 * 11) Plot Armor: This movie has the most ridiculous plot armor:
 * 12) * Liu Kang can somehow beat Shao Kahn despite that fact when he couldn't beat Goro and it was more blatant when Liu Kang was handicapped by Shang Tsung only to beat him right after he was handicapped and still manage to beat Shao Kahn.
 * 13) * Kintaro (who is the same race and league as Goro) easily loses to Jax despite him couldn't beat Goro either.
 * 14) * Liu Kang, Jax, and Sonya somehow manage to survive their fight with Shao Kahn despite him clearly killing all of his opponents afterwards.
 * 15) * The Cyborg trio can easily beat Scorpion and Sub-Zero, however, they can’t beat any onis when Scorpion and Sub-Zero can easily beat them.
 * 16) Every single Mortal Kombat match are terrible as they are short, last barely a minute or a half, and the worst offender was “Kintaro vs Jax”, just like Goro from Mortal Kombat (2021) both are boss characters who were turned into complete jobbers. Every new villain disappear after their match despite Shao Kahn never announcing If they were dead while never get mentioned afterwards.
 * 17) As the movie has a serious tone, this is a rare amount of jokes they attempted but end up getting forced or either just not funny.
 * 18) Baraka returns with no explanation other than “we didn’t see him die” excuse only for him to never contribute anything in the story while getting killed off with minimal effort which the movie would’ve made no difference if he didn’t return.
 * 19) Unlike Johnny Cage from Scorpion’s Revenge, he is very annoying in this movie. Also, it doesn't help that Joel McHale often yells at a majority of his lines, making his voice even more annoying.
 * 20) Scorpion is very nerfed in this movie, In the first movie he was able to take down lots of Armies, Demons, Goro and Quan Chi, but here he's not able to handle the Cyborgs.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The animation and the voice acting (despite being grating at times from Joel McHale) is still impressive, specially since most of them come from the games
 * 2) Some of the unintentional funny moments are good.
 * 3) The gore is still amazing to see.
 * 4) Awesome action scenes, just like its prequel.
 * 5) Ultra Instinct Shaggy appears in the intro, as per fan request when he was requested to be in Mortal Kombat 11.
 * 6) Lui Kang transforms into his dragon form like in his fatality and it's awesome.
 * 7) Unlike the latest NRS games, the villains especially Shao Kahn do actually accomplish victory and also their own story arc.
 * 8) Seeing Raiden turned into a mortal and starting to experience how it feels living like that is interesting, also Raiden is still likable.
 * 9) It's nowhere near as bad as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation which similarly covers Earthrealm's champions facing Shao Khan and his warriors in Mortal Kombat to prevent all realms from merging.

Videos
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Trivia
During the Warner Bros. Animation screen in the beginning, Scorpion gets grabbed by Shaggy from Scooby-Doo with glowing eyes and having a green aura around him, likely referencing the Ultra Instinct Shaggy meme.