Konstant Kommotion: The Reckless Realms of Mortal Kombat

I.

The first Mortal Kombat reboot was novel. And arguably necessary.

While the original four games finish with Earthrealm’s defenders clearly succeeding, Deadly Alliance (5/V) begins with Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, successfully killing Liu Kang and ends with many prominent heroes meeting the same fate. The duo receives their comeuppance in Deception (6), being defeated by Onaga, who is then beaten by the remaining heroes, but they are left with a world where a corrupted Raiden and their enemies are conspiring amongst themselves. Approaching Armageddon (7), things felt appropriately apocalyptic.

Meta-textually, the series had reached an evident restart point. Popular characters from the first three games had been killed, much of the newer cast had far less appeal and the story had grown unenjoyably convoluted. At best, this period could be credited with creating characters and concepts that had enough potential to be reinterpreted more successfully later.

II.

Mortal Kombat (9)* begins by retconning the original ending of Armageddon so that Shao Khan and Raiden are the only survivors of the ultimate clash of good and evil. Raiden, in dire straits, sends a vague message and contextless visions to his past self. What begins as an abridged retelling of the first three games that diverges drastically, due to past Raiden’s stringent fealty to his ambiguous premonitions. MK9 ends with a pyrrhic victory for the side of light: Shao Kahn is punished by the Elder Gods, but at the cost of many heroes’ lives. Even worse, it is revealed that Shinnok had been manipulating events to his advantage.

This reboot honors the history of the game, the prior timeline causes the events of the new one, while establishing a new direction. While MK9 dabbles in nostalgia setting up a new direction, Mortal Kombat X (10) firmly commits to the new status quo. It begins with some of the dead heroes being saved from Quan Chi’s necromantic thrall and Johnny Cage defeating Shinnok. The story jumps 20 years ahead, where a few factions are navigating a power vacuum.

What ends up giving the side of darkness the upper hand this time is Scorpion’s understandable but ill-timed quest for revenge on Quan Chi, setting up circumstances for Shinnok’s resurrection and dooms the remaining dead heroes to remain revenants. While Shinnok is defeated, Raiden is corrupted in the process. The final scene presents him, with the living head of Shinnok, threatening the new leaders of Netherealm, Liu Kang & Kitana, with a vow to be more aggressive in his defense of Earthrealm.

As MK 11 starts, one would assume that the game would explore the concept of this uneasy alliance between the heroes and their warped guardian.

Enter Kronika, a time god. A literal deus ex machina and the embodiment of the Mortal Kombat team’s reaction to the mixed response to MKX. Her first move is to bring many of the past versions of characters to the present, which (somehow) reverts Raiden to his former self. While the game has some great character moments and follows some interesting narrative paths, it’s ultimately all for nought. It is revealed that, in Kronika’s pursuit of the “perfect” timeline, she has reset it many times over, often pitting the heroes against each other to prevent them from working together. In an unexpected move, Raiden gives his godly power to Liu Kang, who defeats Kronika. Aftermath, the DLC story mode, adds Shang Tsung into the mix and ends with letting the player choose who has control over the new era.

III.

Liu Kang’s new era, as portrayed in Mortal Kombat 1 (12), sees various characters reinterpreted to varying degrees of familiarity and pulling characters and concepts from Deadly Alliance & Deception. It’s not another retelling, but a new tale.

Curiously though, this MK1 (Lui Kang’s version) begins with a version of Shang, a snake oil salesman, meeting someone with Kronika’s likeness calling themselves Damashi (a guise used by Onaga in Deception). Soon a deadly alliance of Shang, Quan Chi and Shao is formed, threatening Kang’s attempt at utopic design.

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Damashi is revealed to be neither Kronika nor Onaga, but Shang Tsung. Specifically, the one that fought Kang in Aftermath. Before the existence of two timelines can be processed, Titan-versions of the cast appear, revealing that all the MK11 arcade mode endings, where each character becomes a timekeeper, created their own timelines. Players are thrown into a multiversal battle, one that culminates in fights against variations and mashups of characters while climbing up a pyramid, referencing Armageddon.

When put together, the arcade-mode endings of this game, which spring from plot points that were dropped during the last act of the story, seem to create a general idea of where things will go. However, the Invasion mode and the Khaos Reigns story mode DLC suggest that these realms will also be under constant multiversal threats. Together, it leaves this timeline at a crossroads.

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Despite my misgivings with some narrative choices, the overall improvement of the writing throughout the series is notable. What once was an odd assemblage of violent high fantasy and dubbed martial-arts movies, now has created a uniquely rendered universe (twice). Once flat characters have gained dimension and compelling motivations. Mortal Kombat has become a thing more confidently itself. Well, mostly.

In my retelling of the lore, my frustration with the second reboot and introduction of the multiverse is specifically with their execution.

The problem with the second reboot is that the status quo set up in MKX’s ending was worth exploring and the conditions were not sufficiently dire enough to warrant a reboot when compared to the previous one. (Also, wouldn’t it make more sense for a hypothetical MK12 to be the “time one”?)

The introduction of the multiverse in MK1, outside of counter-intuitively lowering the stakes, is poorly paced. It’s easy to enjoy the wild ride of the last act as it’s happening, but afterwards I found myself wishing the initial reveal was saved for a stinger, so that the multiverse could be explored with more depth. (Again, having a hypothetical MKII be the “multiverse one” writes itself.)

The series is obviously capable of great ideas but tends to give them the briefest lives.

The unifying problem for both instances is that both choices are poorly justified in-universe, making it hard to ignore the editorial decisions behind them. There is a subtext persisting throughout the series one could use to better rationalize these occurrences: the cosmology of the Mortal Kombat universe abhors any singular being exerting too much control over it, distorting or fracturing itself out of any grasp. But without this or any guiding principle for the overarching storyline, the series will repeatedly and recklessly rush towards spectacle, leaving bodies, timelines, universes and stories in its wake.

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*Mortal Kombat vs. DC is technically Mortal Kombat 8.

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Alex J. Tunney is from Long Island, which may explain all the writing about videogames, food and reality TV. You can find all of his writing collected at alexjtunney.com.