Mortal Kombat's Sequel Should Spend More Time in Outworld
The Mortal Kombat series has a number of different Realms its inhabitants reside in, but the two [...]
The Mortal Kombat series has a number of different Realms its inhabitants reside in, but the two core settings for most stories are Earthrealm and Outworld. Just as it's unreasonable to expect the new Mortal Kombat movie to pack in everyone's favorite characters into just one film, it's similarly unreasonable to expect it to present viewers with a full, well-rounded view of both Earthrealm and Outworld in under two hours of runtime. But hopefully, whenever the inevitable sequel is released, we'll be able to see more of Outworld.
Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for Mortal Kombat Are in This Article
This isn't to say that the Mortal Kombat reboot didn't spend enough time in Outworld – it spent probably as much time as it needed to, but that amount of time simply wasn't much. Earthrealm, the archetypal "good" realm filled with underdogs, was the primary setting for the Mortal Kombat film which makes sense given how Cole Young, our new protagonist, comes from there. Outworld's inhabitants spent more time invading Earthrealm than they did in their own world as they cheated their way through the pre-tournament battles, so we didn't see them often in their natural habitat.
How much time did the Mortal Kombat movie spend in Outworld, you may ask? If you take all the scenes set in Outworld and add up the time we spent there, it comes out to approximately four minutes and 30 seconds set away from Earthrealm (it was never specified where Jax's final fight with Reiko took place, but it sure looked like Outworld, so we included it to give it the benefit of the doubt). That's under five minutes in a movie with a runtime of one hour and 50 minutes which isn't much, but again, that's to be expected.
The shots we did see of Outworld depicted it as a barren and inhospitable place, something Mortal Kombat veterans will already be familiar with. With unnamed inhabitants shambling around their leaders as despots mobilized their forces, it looked like more of a Mad Max setting than anything else. The Outworld inhabitants at least had a strong showing in the Mortal Kombat movie with Shang Tsung, Mileena, Reptile, Reiko, Nitara, and Goro all representing their domain. Honorable mentions go out to Sub-Zero and Kano as well because of their new allegiances.
Those familiar with Outworld will know that it's made up of conquered and annexed civilizations. That also means that it's filled with diverse groups including the Shokan people such as Goro and others from the same race not included in Mortal Kombat as well as Tarkatans, the race of people Mileena gets her teeth from. Others like the traitor Kano and mercenaries such as Kabal and Erron Black have been known to call Outworld home as well after fleeing Earthrealm.
Many of those backstories and references related to Outworld were only touched on briefly, if at all, in the Mortal Kombat movie which actually bodes well for any sequels in the future. The shroud of mystery left hanging over Outworld in the first movie might've made for a disappointing showcase of the bad guys' homeland, but it means there's more to look forward to later.
More Outworld is just part of what we want from our Mortal Kombat sequels, too. You can see a more in-depth discussion about what we'd like to see here to see if your hopes align with our own.
