CineDojo: 10 Mortal Kombat Fun Facts | ART OF ONE DOJO

okay tell me I'm not alone in this early 90s young teen forging and destroying friendships over the intense button mashing and frantically trying to memorize and execute the exact sequence to pull off that sweet sweet fatality yep that's it I'm talking about Mortal Kombat the hottest and one of the most controversial games of its time now Street Fighter established the foundation for fighting games but Mortal Kombat came in and turned that model on its head I mean what martial artist didn't spend hours listening to the radio on your tape deck 'we didn't hear that kick-ass electronic Mortal Kombat Theme song to come on so you could just jam that record button honestly probably a lot of you I had too much free time but in all seriousness back then Mortal Kombat was a big deal and it has blossoms at the quite the solid franchise with eleven main entries in the series and a handful of spin-offs and when it was announced that a live-action movie was going to be made I was beside myself with excitement and I couldn't wait to see how it translated to the big screen and now it's also just been announced that we can look forward to a brand new movie that just went into production coming out in 2021 now while it really hasn't quite aged well in the past 24 years yeah it's been that long it still holds a rather unique place in motion picture history and it will always hold a special sense of nostalgia for me this film landed in a couple of different transitional phases first it came out during the early experimentation of videogame movies with the massive failure of the Mario Brothers movie and street fighter film Hollywood was not the friendliest venue for video game adaptations at this time so what was different this time around in my personal opinion both the mario and street fighter films felt like they lacked the confidence to be true to the source material and almost felt apologetic mortal kombat on the other hand knew what it was and it doubled down that commitment and it ended up being the first major video game movie that was successful so it broke that barrier second the early 90s was the transition into CG becoming mainstream in films it was still fairly new and Mortal Kombat found the sweet spot of keeping one foot in the old-school style of special effects and another in the new world of CGI now while the effects don't quite hold up to today's standards it had enough of a WOW factor for us at the time to keep us engaged so today and honor one of my favorite guilty pleasures of martial-arts films we're going to look at 10 fun facts about Mortal Kombat okay so there's actually a reason I chose to do the karate kid' it's our first in the dojo video and Mortal Kombat is our second both films have something in common they were both choreographed by tong seville master and one of hollywood's most notable choreographers at the time master patty johnson and in fact I have three films that I've always considered the Pat Johnson trilogy they are the Karate Kid Mortal Kombat and 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now these films stand out due to mainly because they showed just how versatile Pat Johnson can be look at the dynamics of the films The Karate Kid he had to work with actors most of which had zero prior martial arts experience and he had to portray them in the realistic and relatable way that's not an easy take but with Mortal Kombat he had deal with a diverse cast most of which did have martial arts experience and from a wide array of different arts and portray them in the magical fantasy setting and still have it be exciting with Ninja Turtles he had to direct stunt actors and martial artists in heavy latex suits with mechanical heads and direct them to do their stunts blindly with that film portraying the turtles in the more down-to-earth fashion he had the balance realism with science fiction so why do I think that Pat Johnson was able to do such a great job with these films mainly because he understands the story that the fighting portrays and he also invites a lot of input from the experienced cast and masterfully blends everything together Mortal Kombat is very much in this vein the choreography in this film is amazing and this movie features ninjas kung fu karate Taekwondo tactical combat and magical beasts and creatures now mr. Johnson enlists the advice of Robert Shu who plays Liu Kang and also Francois petit who plays sub-zero both have a lot of extensive experience and working with mr. Johnson they were able to add a lot of flavor to the film's fighting styles and in the little additional fun note the director of the film Paul WS Anderson was and a little bit over his head as this was the biggest film he'd worked on to this date and it was his first action film when they started production he often played it safe by filming all the fight scenes in the white shots but he found it after several repetitions the actors were getting really tired and really fast Robin Shue gave him the advice that in the martial arts film white shots are used only for a few seconds to establish seen in action and then cutting closer for the more intimate action this then helped him streamline the film and it scenes much more efficiently now speaking of Robin Shue and Francois fatty they were just a couple of cast members that had extensive martial arts experience Francois petit was actually the highest-ranking martial artist on staff supposedly currently having the ranks of khai dinh Shihan and ninjutsu and a three black belt in jujitsu seventh degree black belt in karate anthro degree black belt in judo he was very heavily involved with the film and they needed someone in the place of zero so he got the part but his screen time was limited due to the amount of work he did behind the cameras now Robin Shu who played Wu King worked as an action star at stunt man with experienced in karate a Campo and wushu scorpion was played by Chris Casa masa president of the red dragon karate schools and held the number one title forms competitor for four consecutive years reptile was played by Keith Cooke grand champion of five titles at the us world and US Open karate tournaments with experience in karate wushu in Taekwondo he also played the role of younger sub-zero in the sequel Mortal Kombat annihilation Carrie Hiroyuki Tagawa had experienced in kendo traditional karate and was part of the Japanese karate association he also spends his free time developing his own art of chin chin in which he focuses less on the violent nature and more energy and fulfillment side of the Arts Linden Ashby who portrayed Johnny Cage had previous experience in Taekwondo kung fu and karate Trevor Godard who played Kano was an avid boxer in England and held an impressive 58 1 and 1 record as a light heavyweight and he came to America the box for the professional record of two one and one Gerald Okamura studied the arts of kendo tak window Aikido and had a fifth degree black belt in San Shu kungfu and there's kenneth edwards who played art lean he has a background and multiple chinese arts including northern praying mantis yoga and is the founder of the shan tong kung fu Association of America which eerily comes close to Shang Tsung now superstition often plays a part in Hollywood and people like to tribute curses for any ill fate met by cast members such as the poltergeist and Superman curses just to name a couple now I don't personally buy into this however Mortal Kombat had some unfortunate untimely deaths which eerily seemed to be tied to certain characters the character of Jax was supposed to be played by Steve James notable 80s action star but unfortunately he passed away before production began the role was then picked up by gregory mckinney who sadly passed away a couple of years after the film both actors were 41 similarly kano seemed to carry the same fate with Trevor Godard passing away at age 40 and actor Darren salafi who played Kano in the web series Mortal Kombat legacy he was 42 so that's for Mortal Kombat actors that passed away at the young ages of 40 41 and 42 the little eerie if you believe in that sort of thing now on the flip side of this we have the amazing Kari who you could Sigala who did a fantastic performance of Shang Tsung capturing both the charm and deception of the evil sorcerer mr. Tagawa has a distinction of playing Shang Tsung and three different incarnations of the character first in the 1995 film then again he played the sorcerer in the second season of Mortal Kombat legacy at the web series in 2013 and then once again as the voice of Shang Tsung in the recent Mortal Kombat 11 video game I guess he's just not ready to finish him now as mentioned before this movie was developed on the threshold of CGI taking hold in the movie industry Mortal Kombat's budget was nowhere near the likes of effects pinnacle such as Terminator 2 in Jurassic Park but they still utilize the technology to ump the amperage of the film in the battle between Johnny Cage and Scorpion the effects supervisors were originally going to have scorpions fear be a real tangible prop to be used on wires and filmed in camera however during brainstorming and a leap of faith they decided to give CGI a try now while it's pretty low-end by today's standards it did open up a major freedom in the scene and it did add an element of tension in 1995 this was super cool to see on screen by the time MORTAL KOMBAT the movie went into production the videogame Sirius was already firmly established with the first game an even better second game as a part of everyone's home collection the film primarily focuses on the story of the first game but it does include a few overlapping features from Mortal Kombat 2 including the inclusion of Jax katana Outworld and the Emperor of Shao Kahn now while this film was in production so it was the new Mortal Kombat 3 arcade game and they were in fact marketed together in dual campaigns now one of the new features of Mortal Kombat 3 was the inclusion of combat codes or series of icons that players could enter and unlock characters and special features of the game these codes were found everywhere in game manuals magazines advertisements and even in the movie although not always easy to decipher the Mortal Kombat 3 combat codes can be found peppered throughout the film [Music] each mortal kombat character is known for their own signature moves in the game many of them are basic but some are just outright outlandish the movie I felt did a pretty good job including at least one special move for each video game character Raiden harnessed lightning and teleportation so when you played in her leg grab takedown John Cage got both a shadow kick and his split speed back move Sub Zero ice diss epona pnes scorpion used both his spear and his teleportation shang tsung uses shape-shifting Goro his grab and pound move reptile has acid attack and spit and they somehow even worked in Liu Kang's bicycle kick and fireball now there are even some nods to the game's finishing moves including scorpions fire breath and Johnny cages friendship moved from war Kombat 2 however there seems to be two characters that did not get to utilize their signature moves from the game katana and Kano their fights were among the smaller moments of the film but they didn't really break out any video game moves although katana did in the second movie hmm and both of the names start with K coincidence probably the two major non-human characters in this film could not have been made any more different for each other we have the Outworld mortal kombat champion of Goro and the slimy stealthy reptile now reptile was less impressive in design he was a later addition to the film and his animation and texturing did not age well at all but to be fair he was a little cringe-worthy even then CGI was still really expensive and experimental but I do give them credit for including an all CG character which really still wasn't all that common at the time Goro on the other hand was much more impressive looking he was constructed out of a mechanical rig strapped to an actor the actor walked and controlled the lower arms which the rig controlled the mechanical upper arms via motion control Goro's head was also remotely controlled and the blended effect created I felt was a pretty cool and menacing character at the time now it was a little well known that the Goro animatronic experienced a lot of issues and it broke down a lot but the mark of a good film is being able to push through broken technology I'm looking at you Bruce there's this current stigma regarding films and reshoots lately when people hear of a film going to the reshoots the assumption seems to be that something is horribly wrong something's wrong with the film but the truth is reshoots were always were a very common practice in motion pictures many times what works on paper doesn't always translate to a finished edit the reshoots are the way that you nip and tuck your film to be as good as it can be now I think I can fairly say that most fans of the movie are pretty much in agreement on the two best fights in the film the first between the Battle of Johnny Cage and Scorpion and the second Luke hanging a reptile and both of these sequences for the results of reshoots when they played the original cut of the film to test audiences the result was lukewarm with many people feeling that the movies didn't really contain enough action scenes as a result they set Robin Shue out to direct the second unit and film additional scenes the first was actually an expansion of Johnny Cage and scorpion in the original cut of the film the fight ended with Johnny Cage shadow kicking Spectre in the battle in the woods in the reshoots they decided to extend a sequence through a portal and have them undergo an epic underworld Rumble the scene was fierce visually appealing and totally engaging it was a fun sequence and it actually felt like it was ripped right out of the Mortal Kombat game now the human reptile fight was never originally intended to be in the film at all and it was added last minute and ironically it's probably the most high-octane fight of the film and it's in these scenes that you can see the directional differences between Pat Johnson and Robin shoot Pat Johnson's fight scenes featured more character development dialogue and that move the story along Robin Shue scenes were just balls-to-the-wall fun exciting and they captured the spirit of mortal combat you can get a sense of some of the Kung Fu production with frantically fierce and well coordinated counters fast cutting and inclusion of wire work in fact these are the only two fights in the movie that use wire work at all and this is one of the first mainstream American films to feature wire work as well now in a film that features extensive martial arts injuries are unfortunately a possibility now while most of the cast of this film were experienced martial artists and many did their own stunts a few actors did experience some accidents during one of sonya blades fight scenes actress Brigitte Wilson suffered a dislocated shoulder luckily it wasn't she severe and set medics were able to reset it easily and she was able to continue filming them linden ashby had expressed an interest in stunt doubles for many scenes but roberts you talked him out of it saying it was best to do as many of your own stunts as possible he did very well but during his fight with scorpion when a scorpion kicks happened to land between protective padding and he accidentally bruised one of ashbey's kidneys he was ultimately fine but he apparently yearning to blood for a bit hmm Robin Shue convinced him to go without a stunt double and then he was injured in a scene directed by Robin Shue coincidence yeah probably but that's okay Robert you didn't get away scot-free either during his battle with reptile he was flung by the green ninja and he struck a pillar on the set actually breaking two of his ribs he didn't tell anyone because he was afraid that they would halt production so in the end they were the winners at the box office but it wasn't a flawless victory yeah I went there deal with it now as a quit bonus fun fact The Mortal Kombat film is also known for its killer soundtrack now this was another risky move by the filmmakers the studio and record company wanted to fill the movie with pop music but the filmmakers really wanted to try an electronic dance music score the producers really had the fight for it but they eventually got their way and it paid off Mortal Kombat was one of the first films to have an EMD soundtrack go platinum and it did it in less than two weeks and one more bonus fun fact trevor Godard was so good at playing Kano that he actually permanently changed the character for the origin story canon in the original storyline Kano was of Japanese American descent but Godard came in as an Australian and he nailed his audition so well that Mortal Kombat creators John Tobias and boons were totally impressed and they decided to change the character background to Australian and it remained that way in all future games even funnier about this was that Trevor Godard lied he wasn't even Australian he claimed to be Australian he was born in England but he did so well with the accent they all believed that to be as nationality I mean it is fitting Jana was not a man to be trusted so I really hope that you enjoyed this episode I had a lot of fun researching this one and as I mentioned at the beginning that I considered this the second of my own Pat Johnson trilogy with the third one being teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so as you've probably guessed that will be our next new todo feature in the meantime I've listed a bunch of MORTAL KOMBAT goodness down in the description below so go enjoy thank you so much for watching please like subscribe join us on patreon for exclusive content and as always I would love to hear your contributions in the comment section if you're new to the channel we have a ton of content and we're always expanding everyday so get over here yeah this is why I get down