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The recent ambitious live-action version of Mortal Kombat was viewed as a debatably successful adaptation of a longstanding, reputable video game franchise in more ways than one. In the past, the film had displayed some of the fun, campy elements of its original games, but with an action-packed story that made the film more a cult classic than an initial hit. On the other hand, the new movie didn’t fully appease either party (story-driven or its action-seeking fans) but still managed to earn itself a strong enough following to solidify a sequel film due to a few standout performances.
In a brand new conversation with ComicBook.com, the Mortal Kombat 2 scribe Jeremy Slater discussed the brutality of the first film and its relation to being both campy at serious in tone. “I feel like the gore in Mortal Kombat is awesome, and it’s part of what people come for; you always have to find that balance between fun gore and gross gore, right?” Slater explains in an interview with the publication, adding, “Because there are times where you rip someone’s heart off, or the best kill in the first movie is Kung Lao’s spinning hat just sort of slicing her in half, and that’s the perfect example of fun gore because it’s disgusting, but everyone laughs at the same time, right? You want to make sure that everyone is sort of laughing at the sort of audacity of the gore, and they’re not sitting there sort of sickened by close-ups of dripping entrails and visceral and things like that.”
The writer then notes, “There’s a tongue in cheek aspect of Mortal Kombat in terms of the violence and in terms of the gore, there’s a little bit of winking at the audience and saying like, ‘Yeah, we know this is ridiculous, but it’s really fun, and we’re all in on the joke together.'” before eventually concluding, “So we’re looking at how do we emulate those gore moments from the first one that were really, really successful and got huge audience reactions and how do we give the audience, even more, this time around.”
How do you think Mortal Kombat 2 could improve this time around?