Theme: Aliens

Mortal Kombat (2021) – Lewis Tan

Mortal Kombat (2021)

This movie gets off to a dark, gritty start that’s quite hard to watch; but this may be a necessary evil to build up towards what happens later in the movie. It’s definitely focused more on the gritty side, than the coolness, compared to the original, but it makes use of modern sound and visual effects for a deeper impact than the original movie from 1995 which was very cool but lacked seriousness, depth & grounding. This movie has a generally higher quality of production than the original, even if a less cool plot, and it has a higher quality of acting generally, even if the characters are less funky. Overall there’s a much more serious tone this time round, but that doesn’t mean it lacks cool effects, it’s just very careful and conservative with their use, and makes a real statement any time the special effects come out.

Throughout the first half hour this movie’s plot develops nicely – it gets increasingly intriguing and you end up kind of hooked. By 25 minutes in, things have become quite clear – we can see who the star of the show is, and some of the other main characters, and what general direction the movie is taking.

45 mins in, things get a bit dark & depressing again. The dark patches continue to be mixed in with uplifting elements for a good half an hour until everyone fights and the lead character’s powers come out for the first time, which is closely followed by the same thing happening to his comrade Jax, then things start to get quite exciting again. The lead character in this movie is not Liu kang this time, although he is a major supporting character here. The lead character this time round is Cole Young (played quite well by Lewis Tan) – a descendant of Scorpion whose entire bloodline was thought to be killed by Sub-Zero but one baby remained, looked after by Raiden, then Scorpion came back from the dead to help his descendant defeat Sub-Zero in the 90th minute, helping to create an epic final battle.

The cast is comprised of a mix between strong, weak and mediocre actors. Strong actors here, aside from Lewis Tan in the lead role, include Joe Taslim playing Sub-Zero very well, and Hiroyuki Sanada playing Scorpion quite well too. Josh Lawson also does a decent job as Kano, and Mehcad Brooks is not bad in the role of Jax.

Raiden (leader of the good guys), Shang Tsung (leader of the bad guys), Liu Kang (good guy) and Sonya Blade (good girl) are all key characters here too, but their respective actors didn’t impress me. Random stuntmen could have probably done their jobs just as good if not better.

Considering its strengths and highs, I’m going to rate this movie generously, scoring it Pretty Good, which puts it a couple of levels above the original – a serious accomplishment. Now imagine if the four key characters listed above had much stronger actors playing those roles – I’d have to rate it even better, and it would be pretty close to the level of the best action movies ever made.

Mortal Kombat (1995) – Christopher Lambert and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Based on the very popular video game called Mortal Kombat, which at the time was in hot competition with Street Fighter, this incredibly cheesy movie is a classic combination of slightly cheap and very catchy. It’s no blockbuster and has no A-lister stars in lead roles (although the beautiful Talisa Soto (from Licence To Kill) plays a minor role here, as Princess Kitana) but it does have some very suitable cult icons in major roles such as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who plays the main antagonist (a sorcerer called Shang Tsung), and Christopher Lambert as Lord Raiden who is a mostly back-seat leader of the protagonists with outstanding magical powers but limited scope for using them (also spelt Rayden to avoid copyright issues with a 1990 arcade game called Raiden by Tecmo).

This movie is slightly one dimensional, as any movie would be on a less than blockbuster budget, and since it’s made in the 90s its CGI effects look cheap by today’s standards (don’t miss the remake from 2021); but this movie still does a pretty good job at sustaining attention by following a fantastical storyline, being consistently action packed, and having frequent bits of good humour in the intermittent quieter moments.

If you’re old enough to be a fan of the old Mortal Kombat video games, you’ll be extra fond of this movie series in a way that more recent generations just won’t understand.

Considering its unique balance of strengths and weaknesses I could make a case for rating this movie anywhere between Bang Average and Pretty Good, but we’ll go for Above Average in this instance, where it sits right at home with a lot of similarly super cool and very busy but somewhat shallow movies.

Everything lacking in this movie, such as modern effects and a bit more grounding, is kind of present in the 2021 remake, however, that movie lacks much of the cheesy iconography and coolness of this one. If we could somehow combine the best of both of them, we could easily end up with one of the best action movies ever made.

Bear in mind also, the role of Johnny Cage in the video game was originally intended for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but he ended up going elsewhere and eventually did a deal with the main rival video game Street Fighter and appeared in the film adaptation of that game alongside Kylie Minogue (who many years later he admitted to having an affair with during the making of that movie). Their chemistry was great and the movie was fun and the Street Fighter video game was kind of the more dominant one, but when it came to the movies, the Mortal Kombat movies were by far the best, so maybe Van Damme picked the wrong side! Anyway, Johnny Cage in this movie was played by someone seemingly random (Linden Ashby) with a bit of kickboxing type experience but nowhere near Van Damme’s physical talent or charismatic star power. He’s still good fun, but he’s no Van Damme.

Talisa Soto kind of stole the show here with her beauty even from her minor role and without a strong dance partner, while aside from that, Lambert & Tagawa stole the show with their incredibly cheesy charisma. Lambert especially is probably what’s most memorable about this movie. The special effects behind the likes of Raiden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile & Goro are pretty good too, for a mid 90s movie. Their outfits are pretty good too. And the theme tune music is outstanding, when it appears, but it doesn’t appear often enough or varied enough for my liking – it’s an outstanding concept that deserves to be expanded on and utilised more in this movie, but this is only something proven by its long-running cult following over spanning many decades – it was probably not something so easily provable and commercially justifiable at the time of making this movie.

Other cast members include Robin Shou who played Liu Kang – probably the main protagonist here; Trevor Goddard who plays Kano, one of the antagonists, responsible for luring Sonya onto the boat and into the tournament; and then there’s Bridgette Wilson who plays Sonya Blade, a special forces operator who unwittingly ends up on the team of protagonists defending the realm of Earth.

Sequel

While Mortal Kombat (1995) was a generally respectable movie with a touch of B-movie cheese; its immediate sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) looks more like a straight B-movie. Continuing from the story at the end of the original, at first it’s nice to see the beautiful Talisa Soto returning in a more significant role here, but she’s kind of landed in the sh*t with this one. It’s a shame to see her lower herself to being present in this level of production – the cinematography is thoroughly unclassy and the script leaves much to be desired this time round. Literally none of the other actors returned except Robin Shou as a mediocre Liu Kang. I guess Lambert and Tagawa were either not interested or couldn’t be afforded, and that should tell us all we need to know about the quality of Annihilation. Considering how Lambert kept making the Highlander movies until they became unwatchably bad, it should come as no surprise that this movie is really quite unbearable at times since he’s been replaced by James Remar, who is not really a bad actor per se, but doesn’t have Lambert’s funky touch. I couldn’t help but fast forward through the very monotonous parts of this movie, of which there were many, thus I have to rate this one Barely Watchable, which is a massive step down from the original which I rated Above Average due to its impressive coolness on top of its respectable production level.

If you really want to enjoy another good Mortal Kombat movie, don’t miss the modern remake from 2021 which is no worse than the 1995 original. Don’t even bother with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) if you ask me, just give it a miss.

Transformers 7: Rise Of The Beasts (2023) – Anthony Ramos

This movie gets off to a messy start, but builds up an intriguing plot with some interesting characters by the end of the first half hour. Unfortunately though, the creativity soon dries up, the momentum dies down, and the quality dwindles. There are some interesting bits throughout, but it’s too few & far between for this movie to rank alongside the best Transformers movies (like the first and the fifth) – instead it ranks barely better than the worst (the 3rd and the 6th). I’d probably say it’s the third worst in the series, which makes it the fifth best, and I’m going to give it a Bang Average rating by the skin of its teeth – helped by the very ending which was not bad.

The new lead cast member – Anthony Ramos playing Noah Diaz – has great potential, but his demeanour in this movie is all too frequently gaumless when he’s not being too hot-headed. And his co-star girlfriend, Dominique Fishback playing Elena Wallace, is no better – the look on her face when trying to save the world is like that of a lazy low-IQ teenager who’s just been asked to do some household chores by her mother. Through these lead cast members, the script of this movie pushes some very shallow-minded approaches to dealing with emotional problems. Contrary to what this movie is teaching our kids, chanting sports terminology like ‘home team’ is not a meaningful message to deliver or a good way to spend the last few seconds of one’s life, and reciting your legal name and postal address is not serious solution for an identity crisis and lack of self-belief. Hasbro just can’t help themselves when it comes to setting terrible examples of leadership and emotional problem solving via their Transformers movies, and instilling disfunctional mindsets in our youth.

One of the coolest things in this movie is how the Autobot Transformer called Mirage, being nearly dead, gave all his kit to Noah who wore it like an Iron Man suit, which combined with his soldiering skills turned him into a top player on the battlefield. Albeit clearly part of a broader military recruitment push – a card which was played very hard at the end of the movie after the final battle was done; it was still a cool scene when it happened.

Bumblebee (2018) – Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena

This begins with a bit of a prequel backstory, and gets off to a decent start thanks mostly to John Cena (as Agent Burns) who in the backstory set in the 80s was a special forces soldier on a training exercise when he sees Bumblebee landing on Earth, shortly followed by a couple of Decepticons.

But it goes a bit downhill when John Cena takes a back seat after the opening scenes, and the new lead cast member emerges as Hailee Steinfeld (playing Charlie Watson). Steinfeld was also a major supporting cast member in The Marvels (2023) which was a terribly ill-conceived and uncoordinated tomboy-power flop so that doesn’t stack up well for this movie.

When it gets going, this movie turns out to be like a cross between Transformers and Herbie, as Bumblebee takes the form of a yellow beetle car and the lead characters drive around in it, talking to it/him, experiencing various stunts, and getting him to help out with all kinds of tasks.

I would have liked to have seen John Cena take a more sustained role in this movie, and it would have been nice to get some additional good cast members involved too. Imagine if Cena had as much screen time as Jorge Lendeborg Jr (playing Memo, Charlie’s aspiring boyfriend). It could have been way more awesome but I guess that’s just not the genre this movie was going for – they wanted it childish and emo. For this reason I’m going to rate it Below Average, on a par with Transformers 3, thus declaring it joint weakest of all Transformers movies to date.

Sequel

Bumblebee (2018) was the sixth Transformers movie, and there’s been one more since – that’s Transformers 7: Rise Of The Beasts (2023). It comes with an entirely new cast of humans (yet again), plus the usual squad of Transformers, and a whole load of new ones too (the Beasts).

Transformers 5: The Last Knight (2017) – Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins and Laura Haddock

There’s a bit of a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones vibe to this movie, which kicks in shortly after the first hour is done. The whole movie goes on for 2 and a half hours.

It’s good to see the return of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, as Cade Yeager. This movie also features Anthony Hopkins as a supporting cast member called Sir Edmond Burton – he’s neither in a very major nor very minor role, but somewhere in between, and is listed second in the cast list in the closing credits, probably in part due to his level of fame. It’s good to see Josh Duhamel back as Colonel William Lennox. And the lead female this time called Viviane Wembley is played by Laura Haddock – she’s probably the best lead female in a Transformers movie thus far.

The best part of the movie is probably when Mark’s character cunjures a sword for himself long with the power to stop the swinging sword of one of the Earth-guardian transformers, thus saving Optmus Prime’s life when they’re about to execute him for betrayal even though he’s already realised his mistake. At that point, the guardians see Mark’s character has the amulet of King Arthur and they immediately recognise him as their leader. This only lasts a few seconds, but it’s probably the best part of the movie. The next best parts don’t last long either, which makes this movie quite thin considering it’s 2-and-a-half hours long. For this reason, even though this is one of the better Transformers movies – possibly even the best one to date – at least about as good as the first two – I’d still rate it pretty much Bang Average – on a par with most of the others, because the difference isn’t significant enough to justify distinct ratings, and the density of this one isn’t enough to justify a score of Above Average.

All Transformers movies ranked (up to this point)

If I had to rank all transformers movies thus far, I think I’d go 5, 4, 1, 2, 3. I’m confident in saying that movie 1 is slightly better than movie 2, and also that 5 is slightly better than 4, and that 3 is comfortably the worst of them all. But when it comes to 5 vs 1, that’s more of a style preference – do you prefer the originality of the movies 1 & 2, where the core concepts were first coined, or do you prefer the more powerful cast, magnificent script and less childish acting from movies 4 & 5? I’m tempted to go with the latter but it’s not a clear-cut decision by any means.

Transformers 4: Age Of Extinction (2014) – Mark Wahlberg

Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014) is the fourth movie in the Transformers movie series. It has a better lead cast member in Mark Wahlberg, and its plot has a better level of originality & intrigue than the previous movie in the series. It’s also a bit more grown up – a bit less childish than those before it, at least to begin with, and not by much.

The final battle scene drags on a bit, much like the last movie, but I guess it’s a bit more multi-faceted this time.

I’m disappointed in how Optimus Prime convinced the old dinosaur transformers to help him – by telling them he will kill them if they don’t. What kind of leadership skills is this movie trying to teach our youth? What kind of a world is Hasbro trying to create with this type of tripe?

The tedius ending and the awful example of supposedly benevolent leadership, along with multiple instances of inappropriate, low-IQ emotional outbursts, come together to bring this movie back down to being roughly on a par with first couple of Transformers movies, although it’s still comfortably a bit better than the 3rd.

Dark Phoenix (2019) – Sophie Turner

After a 10 minute warm-up, giving a bit of a backstory, an exciting early development occurs where the X-Men are persuaded by the POTUS to take an unsafe outer-space voyage in their own plane to investigate and rescue the crew of a mysteriously stopped shuttle mission where all communications strangely died.

After this, the movie dwindles into one big gritty drama fest with very little action. Massively underplaying the potential of the movie based on the awesome core concept that’s scarcely even a significant factor in the minute-by-minute script of this movie.

Quite a contrast with X-Men: Apocalyse, which builds up nicely and ends on a high – this movie attempts to start on a high then forgets all about it and bores us with way too much cheap emotional stuff. Then when there is action, it’s generally good X-Men fighting other good X-Men without thinking too much about it. What on earth kind of mindset is this movie trying to fester in our children? A lack of thought process, a lack of cohesive mindset, and a tendency to fight violently with good friends for the pettiest of reasons, it seems.

Arguably the best scene of the movie comes 90 minutes in, when the X-Men team finally decide to work together against the aliens, after the humans finally decide to let the captive X-Men free after most of their men have been killed by the aliens. I guess that’s the silver lining to the dark grey cloud that pretty much covers this entire movie. This scene then morphs into the grand finale battle between Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner these days) and the leader of the aliens, after a bit of an emo-fest of a telepathic chat between Grey and Xavier. The grand finale battle itself is a bit of a girl-power fest too – it even goes so far as to debate the power of being emotional. I would have liked to see some better tai chi postures, to add a touch of realism to the fight scenes which are all about projecting energy, which to the trained eye look quite silly due to being full of typical rookie mistakes like bending the hand back too far when doing a pushing action which to the untrained looks like extra powerful posturing but to the trained eye is just a very weak way to direct energy and is a potential broken wrist. The final fight scene ends with a big explosion where nobody knows what happened to either one of them. This, followed by 5 minutes of common drama, make the grand finale somewhat anticlimactic and the entire movie significantly weaker than X-Men: Apocalypse, and one of the weakest X-Men movies of all time – possibly the worst one. I’m going to rate it Bang Average considering it’s got some pretty good bits to it, but even that may be being a bit generous since it’s 2 hours long and the good bits are few and far between, and what’s between is really quite bad so keep the fast-forward button handy especially if you’ve seen this movie before.

It’s tempting to liken the disappointment of this movie, with the disappointment of Avengers: Endgame from the same year, since both followed on from the cast and storyline of a much better movie beforehand. In the case of Endgame, it was a poor “part 2” to the much better Avengers: Infinity Wars (“part 1”), and in the case of Dark Phoenix, it was a poor continuation of storyline from the much better X-Men: Apocalypse where Sophie Turner’s character Phoenix / Jean Grey showed her true power to save the day at the end.

Transformers (2007) – Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox

This movie is frequently quite childish, and is heavily banging the American military drums, but aside from that, it’s not a bad movie – it’s quite action packed from start to finish and has a decent basic story to it. The basic idea is, a bunch of sentient alien robots (Transformers) landed on Earth, and the good ones are battling the bad ones to save Earth and the human race from the destruction that the bad Transformers are planning.

Shia LaBeouf is officially star of the show; and Megan Fox plays his girlfriend who comes along for the ride most of the time, so is probably the second main character, officially. But in terms of charisma and screen presence there’s a few actors who stand out above both of them, including Josh Duhamel who plays the captain of the camouflaged military team operating in the Middle East; John Turturro who plays team leader in the secret Sector 7 agency, wearing a black beret; and funny guy Anthony Anderson who plays a useful hacker (who’s lost a lot of weight these days, but not at the time of this movie). Now if these three were the lead characters and it had less of a childish script, and it had a strong lead female added too, then it would probably be a significantly better movie, but as it stands I can’t rate it any better than Bang Average.

Peter Cullen‘s voice was also a notable feature in this movie, as the voice of Optimus Prime – leader of the benevolent side of Transformers.

Sequels

The first three Transformers movies are led by Shia LaBeouf.

The immediate sequel – the second movie in Hasbro’s Transformers movie series – is called Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009) and is pretty much the same quality as the original. It gets off to a better start but soon dwindles back down to the standard set by the original. It has a slightly new plot concept, but nothing significant. It has all the same cast members, and a very similar storyline, with another strong dose of pro-military persuasion. It’s equally childish, with a similar amount of decent action, although the action gets a bit more monotonous this time round I think. For this reason, and the fact it lacks the originality of the original, I would rate the second slightly weaker than the first, but by no significant margin – I’d rate them both Bang Average and suggest watching them sequentially for full context. One of the more interesting aspects of this movie is how Shia’s character goes into crazy genius mode from time to time, just like his grandfather did, drawing symbols on walls in the language of the Primes and debunking Einstein’s theories etc.

Third up, is Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and while the first 90 minutes are drama-heavy, with occasional uncoordinated action, the final hour is a long final battle scene which brings the story together and rounds it off. Overall, this third movie lacks originality and creativity in plot and action, just like the second movie – probably worse. As such, I’m tempted to rate it Below Average, but it’s not significantly worse than a lot of movies rated Bang Average. Much of the cast is the same here, but the lead female has changed from Megan Fox (who’s nowhere to be seen here, she just disappeared from the storyline without explanation) to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and I’d describe this change as going from bad to worse, which is representative of the movie as a whole since it’s a bit worse than the previous two. One of the more interesting aspects of this movie, is how the Decepticons attempt to control certain humans including Shia’s character by turning into unremovable torturesome wrist-watches.

After this initial trilogy starring Shia LaBeouf, the next couple of Transformers movies are led by Mark Wahlberg which I think is an improvement, then after a couple of movies with him, the series goes rapidly downhill, with a movie led by Hailee Steinfeld in 2018 followed by a movie led by Anthony Ramos in 2023.