Mortal Kombat II (2026) | Film Review

I will say this, MORTAL KOMBAT II understands exactly one thing: if you’re going to make a movie this dumb, at least rip someone’s spine out with conviction.

Picking up after the first film, Earthrealm’s champions are finally pulled into the actual tournament as Shao Kahn prepares to crush what little resistance remains. Cole Young returns alongside Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Jax, Kano, Kitana, Johnny Cage, and Sub-Zero in a globe-hopping bloodbath where alliances shift, heads roll, and apparently every disagreement must end with someone being mutilated.

The cast boasts Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Adeline Rudolph as Kitana,but really all eyes are on Karl Urban as a rather middle-aged, washed-up actor version of Johnny Cage.

For at least the first half hour, Urban feels completely detached from the material, like a man who lost a bet and wandered onto the wrong set. His version of Cage leans heavily into the washed-up, middle-aged action star of it all, which honestly works conceptually. But there are several moments where it feels like his stunt double deserved co-star billing. I am not convinced Urban himself threw more than two punches the entire runtime. His stunt double was busy, that’s what I’m saying. Eventually, though, he settles into the role’s smug absurdity, and by the third act, he’s almost gleefully having as much fun as the audience.

Look, this is a terrible movie as a whole. The dialogue sounds AI-generated from a Hot Topic clearance rack, the story barely survives from one set-piece to the next, and character motivations are essentially “because fatality.”

But director Simon McQuoid clearly knows why people bought a ticket. They came for one-on-one martial arts brawls that end in gruesome dismembering of your favorite characters, perhaps with a little extra blood than we would ever have received in the 80s.

The fights are vicious, fast, and gloriously mean-spirited. Bones snap like feeble twigs. Limbs fly across the screen. And the fatalities? Fantastically gory in ways that would make the arcade cabinets blush. I caught this in 4DX, so not only did I feel like I was INVOLVED in the fisticuffs, I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.

Mortal Kombat 2 is cinematic junk food drenched in blood. Completely ridiculous, occasionally exhausting, and insanely stupid. The acting approaches soap opera quality and the “script” was probably on the back of a game cartridge. BUT seeing these characters come to life (Baraka is an impressive realization) and watching them exact vicious brutality on each other, well, that’s almost entertaining enough.

Almost.