Today marks the 25th anniversary of the original Mortal Kombat film, and director Paul W.S. Anderson has been providing some new information on the cult classic. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Anderson discussed two of the most difficult fights in the film: Johnny Cage versus Scorpion and Liu Kang versus Reptile. While both fights proved to be some of the most popular in the film, they required quite a bit of effort to pull off. Cage and Kang both came out on top in those contests, but bringing the fights to the screen proved to be a team effort.
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“They were both long fights that involved a combination of aerial wire work and close-quarter combat,” Anderson said to Entertainment Weekly. “They were the hardest in terms of the amount of effort that went into planning them and the difficulty in terms of their execution.”
Mortal Kombat was released in theaters on August 18th, 1995. Prior to the film’s release, the majority of video game adaptations loosely related to the games that inspired them. While movies such as 1993’s Super Mario Bros. and 1994’s Double Dragon struggled with the source material, Mortal Kombat proved quite faithful. With an ensemble cast that looked and acted like their video game counterparts, Mortal Kombat is still beloved by fans, after all these years.
Part of that success is due to the film’s fight scenes. Mortal Kombat‘s PG-13 rating prevented the filmmakers from replicating the franchise’s most brutal fatalities, but Anderson and the rest of the team were still able to pull off some gruesome moments. The aforementioned Scorpion fight, in particular, featured some effective brutality. The battle begins with Scorpion sending a small, dragon-like creature from the palm of his hand (as opposed to the spear from the games). The effect holds up well after all these years, and gives the film one of its creepier moments. The character is later dispatched by Cage in a fiery explosion, leading to a spray of body parts that still kept the gore to a minimum. It’s easy to see how the fight was difficult to pull off!
A reboot of the Mortal Kombat film franchise is set to release in January. Time will tell whether or not the film can live-up to its predecessor. You can check out all of our previous coverage of all things Mortal Kombat right here.
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