I emerge from a screening of Mortal Kombat II with a renewed cynicism toward IP-driven entertainment; toward the moviegoing experience; toward American culture on the whole. I’ve always been a critic with a tendency to go easy on movies that don’t quite make the grade, just so long as they had good intentions. I could easily forgive a bad movie on account of the fact that movies are miracles. Making one is never not a Herculean task — I’d rather a bad movie than no movie at all.
I’d tell myself that even when the film in question wasn’t for me, someone out there probably loves it, and their parade wasn’t worth raining on. They can’t all be Citizen Kane, can they?
And really, why should they be? Some movies are designed solely for the sake of mindless fun. And for films of such meager ambition I’ve always been happy to extinguish my critical functions, allowing room for the my baser appetites to reign supreme.
Unfortunately, I fear I can no longer be that guy. It’s time for me to draw a line in the sand and demand something better from the things I consume. It’s time for me to stop giving my time, money, and effort to things that don’t return the favor. Someone has to be a standard-bearer, and I am willing to step up to the challenge. I offer myself as tribute. Gone are the days of just being happy that I’m getting a new Star War or Marvel. It’s time I start treating these things like I would the latest arthouse flick. And sure, you’re correct to ask why Mortal Kombat II, a movie that no filmgoer of even middling intellect could reasonably expect much from, is what drew my ire. It’s a fair ask. Cuz really, this is exactly the type of film that should aim squarely for the lowest common denominator and hit it with the accuracy of Scorpion’s hand chains. Why am I suddenly inclined hold the fourth attempt at adapting a near-plotless video game to such a high standard that it broke my critical faculties?
I’ll tell you why. It’s not because the movie was bad (which it is, just not notably so), but because it’s an empty, pointless, loud film that is emblematic of a filmgoing experience that has tanked to the point of no longer being worth my time or money. Said filmgoing experience has also become emblematic of our culture at large: everything that used to be good sucks now, and we’re all too addicted to our handheld slop-troughs to stop lapping it up like a good little consumer piggies. We have all become mindless cogs in a system designed to enshittify everything it touches. Everything gets more expensive by the day and lower quality by the minute, while a handful of people who don’t need the benefits of this dichotomy reap every last one of them. Everything sucks, and the vast majority of people don’t give a shit. In fact, they like it that way. It used to be that McDonald’s sucked, but it was cheap enough to make the trade-off worth it. Now it’s just as expensive as real food, and we still inhale it because its shittiness has become its appeal. We are comforted by shit. We crave shit. We will pay top dollar for shit.
The reason we get lowest common denominator entertainment, lowest common denominator experiences, and lowest common denominator nourishment is simple:
We are a culture ruled by the lowest common denominator.
We have softened standards to the point where we functionally don’t have any at all. Throw in a little racism, misogyny, and queerphobia and that’s how you get a sentient tumor/avowed rapist to be the leader of the free world.
I digress.
The reason I’m so goddamn testy about this particular film is that even if the film were any good (which again, it is not), it never stood a chance against the terrible environment in which it was exhibited. Let’s go through every way in which this moviegoing experience was enshittified.
- The film started five minutes early, which means much of the crowd spent the first few minutes getting situated. Don’t worry, the theater left the house lights on for much of the first act because they don’t care. And why should they care? Theaters have all become turnkey operations designed to be run by kids who aren’t getting paid nearly enough to care.
- The screen remained unmasked. Granted, no one masks their screens anymore, despite the fact that it’s a huge detriment to picture quality, but it’s a former standard that should be reinstated. Unfortunately, the shareholders who own these theaters don’t care enough about the experience to have someone slide a curtain a few feet.
- Multiple people used their phones for the entirety of the film. Just texting away, and never setting them down for a second. Sure, it’s a huge distraction to everyone else in the room, but these cretins don’t care. They’re the main character here on Earth, and you can fuck off of you don’t like it. Bonus shittiness: Since this was an advanced screening, there was an agent from the studio in attendance whose sole purpose is to keep an eye out for phone users. This particular agent made a “no phones” announcement before the film, and then did nothing else, because she didn’t care.
- One guy popped out his Nintendo Switch a few times to do a little mid-movie gaming. Does he know that there’s a movie on the gigantic screen in front of him? Probably, but he doesn’t care. No, he wasn’t playing Mortal Kombat.
- Immediately to my left, in the press row, two critics/influencers were conversing through most of the movie. Sure they’re there to do a job — one which requires paying attention to the movie — but they don’t care. It’s more important to them to narrate the action to one another than to let the film work its magic. (If this same duo does it again I will name names).
- Advance screenings like this are increasingly taken over by influencers, who now outnumber critics. This is because influencers won’t critique a film. Their sole function is to provide free advertising. They will never give a bad review because they’re just happy to be there — happy to hype up a film in exchange for internet currency. Criticism, an essential piece of our conversation with art, is being edged out by people who simply MUST snap a photo of the title card, lest no one believe that they … went to a movie?
And wouldn’t you know it? Mortal Kombat II is the perfect movie for a setting like this. It’s a film with nothing to it beyond brand recognition, and fan favorite Karl Urban doing a severely watered down version of his The Boys schtick. It’s the type of colorful, empty film that works best if you’re dicking around on your phone or playing your Nintendo Switch, or having a full conversation with your friend, looking up at the screen every few minutes to see if you recognize anything. Sure, it’s about as good as a fourth Mortal Kombat film could be, but I only say that from a place of criminally low standards. In a better world, someone could take the video game that used to make parents everywhere shit their pants, and do more with it than just display it for 90 minutes every few years.
And what pisses me off most about this subpar moviegoing experience: the crowd at this particular screening was EATING IT UP. Huge, booming reactions to the lamest, most tired crap, because anything with even a tiny bit more dramatic weight would distract them from all the other wonderful things in their hands and laps that AREN’T the movie. “This movie is boring,” they’d surely text their friends directly from the front row.
But maybe I’m the asshole. Maybe I’m just a dinosaur in a world that has moved beyond the communal experience of film. Maybe I’m crazy to think that we should hold films to the same standards of decorum, exhibition, and audience behavior as a Broadway show (which, as I’ve come to understand, is on the decline as well, albeit at a slower rate). As the guy who often politely asks that someone put their phone away or stop talking, I am increasingly met with a general consensus of “just ignore it” or “it’s not that big a deal.” The misbehavior of crowd members has become standard. The battle has been lost.
But fight on I will! And you should too!
Moving forward, if a film wants my time, it had better fucking earn it. If I’m paying real food prices, I don’t want toy food. I’m no longer subjecting myself to a largely frustrating night out where I give money to a studio that only wants to entertain the animals who aren’t bothered by the steep decline in the quality of our entertainment. I’m no longer spending money at a theater that cannot be bothered to provide competent exhibition of its films. I’m no longer being kind to the enshittifiers on either end of this cursed cinematic pipeline. Not the studio heads who don’t give a shit about art, nor the Neanderthal masses who will consume dreck with slavish passivity simply because it has the right branding.
Standards don’t exist unless we hold to them. I’ll start. Please join me on my quest.
Directed by Simon McQuoid
Written by Jeremy Slater, based on the video game created by Ed Boon and John Tobias
Starring Adeline Rudolph, Karl Urban, Martin Ford, Tati Gabrielle
Rated R, 116 minutes
