Transformers actress Megan Fox provided her likeness and her voice for Nitara—a Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance vampiress reintroduced in NetherRealm Studios’ Mortal Kombat 1 reboot released September 19—but fans can’t take it seriously. Though NetherRealm blessed Nitara with incredible combos, none of them are impressive enough to detract from what fans are calling needlessly lifeless voice acting.
Nitara is undead, but she shouldn’t be boring. “It literally just sounds like [Fox is] reading off the paper with no effort at all,” TikTok gaming commentator Stoney Tha Great said in a recent video. “I’m just saying, if you’re playing a blood-sucking vampire demon, you should probably sound like one.”
Though it pains me to say this about my celebrity crush and star of the 2000s’ all-time best horror comedy, Jennifer’s Body, Fox is often disappointingly colorless in her MK1 dialogue. Some of her fight introduction lines especially—“The blood spilled today won’t be mine,” “I will battle you to death”—should inspire panic but instead elicit mild concern about her eternal monotone, which some MK fans are comparing to another unpopular celebrity voice performance: Ronda Rousey in MK11.
Read More: Mortal Kombat Brings Nitara Back As Megan Fox
I’d remind everyone, though, that Mortal Kombat is not best known for its subtlety. It’s a ridiculous fighting game series with physics-defying evisceration and an incomprehensible sci-fi story—unintentionally terrible voice acting only enhances its camp, I think.
But, no matter your thoughts on how passionate a Megan Fox demon should sound, NeatherRealm brought in Hunter x Hunter voice actress Cristina Vee Valenzuela to record Nitara’s screams, grunts, and other in-battle murmurings, she wrote on Twitter. Some things are better left to the professionals.
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