Karl Urban's Johnny Cage dominated all the marketing. Liu Kang is repeatedly declared, throughout the film, to be "the best fighter we've got". So who defeats the big bad Shao Kahn in 1v1 combat and wins the day?
Kitana, of course! Who else? Get subverted, expectations!
Classic girl bossing aside, Mortal Kombat 2 was one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. My personal highlight was Liu Kang exiting the film like fucking Poochie from the Simpsons. I've never seen a lazier or more convoluted character extraction in my life. I highly recommend you seek out and watch his final scene. It's hilarious.
Anyways, MK2 inexplicably got a pass from all the usual anti-woke content creators. This just keeps happening. Someone like The Critical Drinker will give his stamp of approval to some new media, I'll take a chance on it, only to discover it has many of the same woke elements found in every other mainstream offering. I guess all these "based" YouTube reviewers got one-shot by Buffy when they were teenagers because none of them seem to mind a girl boss.
So two thumbs way down for the new Mortal Kombat movie.
The real problem is that the ending is stupid. Not that Kitana won. Apparently the rules of the tournament are so flexible that even after all declared fighters for Earth have been defeated (and the diegetic score keeper has shown all the Earth fighters have lost, meaning the bad guy wins) Kitana, a fighter on SK’s team just says “I lied, I’m on the other team.” And that’s allowed.
Such an insulting way to close the tournament.
The rest of the movie is a solid B.
That was the second dumbest part of the movie, for sure.
I remember a version of MK where Shang Tsung had to grant a wish to the winner of the tournament; it would have been such a simple way to fix the issue.