With, in and around me, nothing is obvious.

Ah, definition for conformalism, yes, however.... wether an aesthetic is unimpressive is up to the subjective taste. Given how it seems that the video pinned the fandom into halves, I daresay it is effective.

How...ever. In art, we are currently reaching the limits of creativity. We cannot invent anything new really after postmodernism, unless a sociological revolution takes place. Like a new age, that could completely change the self-perception of the human race.

As for my tolerance of CSI Kombat, it probably has to do something with me enjoying anything ranging from the violence of Shigurui, through the mindfuck of Evangelion, to the classical Lord of the Rings, through 1984, and ending with NIMH. It takes something of an artistic nuclear blast to provoke my ire. MK Rebirth? Gentle breeze. And so far I am not dismissive of it.

As you put it. It was an 8 minute long conceptual exercise. NOthing stable yet.

Whoever "leaked" this test reel is a pretty smart cat.

With E3 literally knocking on the door, and with it the possibility of the next game about to be revealed, what better way to invigorate the lethargic MK community than to post something like this? It's controversial. It's gritty. It's gory. It's realistic. Literally everything people have been screaming for recently. And I don't think I've seen people actually talking, discussing, and arguing about MK in a long long time. So I'd say mission accomplished on that one.

I have been a die hard MK fan since the beginning and I LOVE this new direction they are taking things. its more realistic, grittier and more brutal and I am all for it

Haha ok Mick,

So what is your REAL problem with this quasi/potiential movie? Did it rob you of some specific warm and fuzzy that only the colorful green balls and popcorn gore from MK of old can generate?

Or does the fact that there arent purple-clad sorcerers floating around and arcade cabinets falling on people rub your intellect the wrong way?

You are so weird.

Here's the problem. This "what's wrong with change?" argument is an oversimplification.

I'll repeat the example I've been using this whole time. Elseworlds. DC likes to take their familiar characters (mostly Batman and Superman) and throw them into really strange situations. Sometimes Batman is a vampire. Sometimes Superman is a Communist. Sometimes Superman IS Batman. Sometimes Superman looks like Santa and has to shoot Hitler clones with really big guns. The Elseworlds line runs the gamut from "amazingly good" to "WTF is this shit?"

But here's the key. Regardless of the quality or lack thereof of each Elseworlds story, I've never felt outright annoyed by the mere existence of one. The reason? Because they're self contained. They exist wholly separate from the core material they're based on. That's why seeing Batman blow people up in Batman Returns doesn't bother me much. Because while it's not something the REAL Batman would do, it's what THIS Batman would do within the context of a self contained, wholly separate movie.

Now despite being ok with it as a separate entity, I WOULD be annoyed if the REAL Batman started reflecting the attitudes and actions of this self contained Batman. Just like it would annoy me to see the primary Clark Kent toy with the idea that maybe Communism is pretty cool even though I love the Elseworlds story in which he does just that.

That is the problem here. It's not that people like this departure from MK. It's that people are saying it's a change FOR THE BETTER.

This isn't a case of "they changed it, now it sucks." This is a case of "you want to have fun and do something crazy? Fine. But do it separate and apart from the REAL Mortal Kombat." I'm reading, however, a lot of comments suggesting that this is the direction the series should stick with. As if the last 18 years worth of MK history is now crap because some B-list actors got together and made an 8 minute episode of CSI: Outworld. That sounds painfully capricious to me.

People are afraid of MK changing forever. I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of people are afraid that if a movie happens like this, than the games will follow suit. I don't think this is the case and I believe they can live as seperate beings. However, there are a million other internet bound minions who are not afraid of MK changing and have viewed and given positive feedback on the short buzz creator I'll just start calling Rebirth. I'd love to see an official poll go up somewhere so we can see exactly how the numbers stack.

I have a hypothetical question:
Suppose the announced the next MK and absolutely no one from the past games came back. Not even Scorpion & Sub-Zero.
I wonder how many of the people yelling "People are just afraid of change" and "Don't badmouth it because it's different" would be throwing a shit-fit.

There is a difference between change and abruptly swerving into the nearest mountain.

But you know, change isn't even my biggest issue here.
Like I said in my first post, once you get past the grittified interpretations of the characters and story.....it's the same fucking shit.

Okay, so Scorpion might not be a firebreathing spectre. It's still Scorpion chasing Sub-Zero around because he wants revenge.
So Reptile's gone a from a wormy humnoid lizard who eats people's heads because he wants his people back, to a wormy dude with a skin disease who eat's people's heads for shits and giggles.
Baraka's still an oafish brute who likes ripping people up....only now he was apparantly a surgeon first.
Johnny Cage smokes a cigar.

Whoopti-shit.

Dress it up any way you like...it's the same. Damn. Thing.
It's fake change. It's the same worn out characters dressed up in gritty new clothes. All this "grit" and "realism" is just window dressing designed to distract you from the fact that you're just using recycled shit.
(BTW, when did "gritty" and "realistic" become the same thing? Was I asleep when that happened? Did I miss that memo?)

Speaking of which, Chrome I have a query. You keep trashing the 90's and all it's goofiness and cheeseball XTREME violence and gore. But isn't all this faux "realism" and manufactured "grit" just another fad that people will most likely be mocking a few years from now.
Back then, everything was xtreme....now everything is gritty. At the end of the day, isn't it still just a bunch of children screaming about how this is all SERIOUS BUSINESS?


But anyway, speaking for myself, it goes back to why I don't want a reboot of the games. I don't care how it's dressed up, I'm done with the vast majority of those characters and want to move on. Most of them are simply not worth it.

Call is a pipe dream if you wish...and you'd be right to do so....but I'm still kind of wishing Mortal Kombat would just embrace the identity it's built for itself and move forward on its own terms. Enough trying to recreate the past. Don't leech off the latest bandwagon.

Just be Mortal Kombat.

Clearly you're just afraid of change... (and have no imagination).


That's a very even handed (if non-commital) way to look at it. It doesn't say a lot for fundamental principles of the creative process, but it's an admirable way to go about it.
The rest of what you said was sophmoric and nauseatingly embarassing, but that's just me making a call.

I know everyone here is discussing 'is this or isn't this Mortal Kombat' but I actually have a question about a plot element in the trailer. Sorry if you think it is irrelevant.

Scorpion killed the wrong Sub-Zero in this trailer. Do you think he killed the older Sub-Zero (like in the games), but actually has beef with the younger Sub-Zero (unlike the games), or do you think he killed the younger Sub-Zero (unlike the games), but he wants to kill the older Sub-Zero (like the games).
Or correct me where I'm wrong with the in-game plot. And ... he's actually after Quan Chi!

You still do not get it, do you...

It is because I am nauseatingly sophomoric and irritatingly nondescript, and relativistic.

As I said, and ALSO IN CONJUNCTION TO XIAODHUN: if, there was an MK game that had nothing from previous games, I would still try to determine wether it had any merits. Sure, it would have to do as much as the title with the original series, but hey...

Halloween supposed to consist of different stories each installment. Guess what yanked back the masked psycho for God-knows how many sequels?

If the new stuff is semantically connected to the premise: MORTAL KOMBAT, involving brutal combat in -probably- personal man-to-man, woman-to-woman, cyborg-to-grandmother level, it still retains that one last bit that would make sense for those who are really straining.

If MK9 comes out and it is Dance Dance Revolution I would also protest.

As an "Elseworlds" kind of thing, that was probably the idea that jumped out at me the most. It's far more conventional than what we've lived with, but it was just sort of interesting to think about the whole Scorpion/Sub-Zero dilemma from that perspective. If we're going to be positive, Michael Jai White wouldn't be a terrible Jax, either. A bit more like the original version described in the first few games, ironically.

Knives out

So I've been pining over exactly how to express my feelings about the games and this test footage for a few hours while responding to other people's posts and I think I have it:

When I think of Mortal Kombat games, I think MK1-MK3. I also think of some of the cast of Deception and tack-on Kenshi from Deadly Alliance, but mainly one through three.

When I think of the Mortal Kombat movies, I think of a failure of a shitfest. I would like that to change. Like the Ultimates of Marvel reside in a different universe than that of the 'canon' Marvel characters, I would like there to be a franchise of film that steps up from what I consider one of the most disastrous things to happen to MK; Mortal Kombat Annihilation.

(Now, to go off beat for a moment, I have a lot of problems with MK:A but there WERE some things I liked. I liked the casting, except for Kahn, I liked where the story TRIED to go even though it failed, and I liked the fact it tried to incorporate things from the game, even though again it failed. Don't even get me started on the choppy editing.)

Anyways, would I ever wish for "Rebirth" to tie in and fuse together with the games? No. I LOVED Deception. I loved Konquest, I loved Ashrah, Dairou, Kira (as a character, not her stolen move list), and Onaga. I liked that it attempted to go a bit darker. Never would I want to see the stuff represented in "Rebirth" in an MK game. That's just not how I view that section of Mortal Kombat. I've been playing MK since I was a little kid. I played MK the first year it was out.

As a seperate entity? Absolutely. Chalk me up and show me the film. I'm down for anyones different interpretation of the characters because I love the characters and I'd like to see how they would progress and grow storyline terms in a different setting. So, who cares if Baraka does plastic surgery. I didn't exactly want a motion capture artist yelling 'OOOO MY BALLS!!' in an MK game either but I was treated to experience that at 1am one morning back in 2004. I like reading fan fiction, I like what-ifs, I like alternate universes because I know I can appreciate them for what they are and at the end of the day, go back to the MK that I fell in love with.

I don't think everyone will love what they tried to do with "Rebirth," nor do I expect everyone to. Do I think it's interesting? Yes. Am I interested to see what they could do and where they could take other characters? Yes. Would I go see the movie out of curiousity? Yes. But again, would I ever want it to fuse over into the MK "canon" games? Absolutely not. I wouldn't be opposed to an alternate costume here or there with Baraka looking like his "Rebirth" counter-part as a quick wink-and-nod by Boon & Co. but even that is a little bit of a stretch.

MK has been around since the early 90s, almost twenty years now. I think it's safe for the franchise to start moving in different directions while the core stays the same. Conquest tried telling a prequel, the animated series attempted what I can only describe as possible events in-between games, why not a 'what-if' scenario?

So IF for some unfortunate reason this is the direction they take MK.....is there ANY cannon endings to Armageddon that would suggest something like this?

Great acting wont save it from feeling like a rip-off of other franchises.
It's cute as a "get talking about MK again" ploy but yeah don't make this the foundation of any new MK series movie or games.

I wont be interested. But what I don't like they will probably do.

So anyway back to my original question, are there any cannon endings to Armageddon that would suggest such a change in the realms?

thanks

No, not that I'm aware of. It's just a random, out-of-the-blue alternate take on MK characters.

Full credit goes to the true believers.

Armageddon left us with a plotline threatening the fabric of existence and a string of imaginary "possible" endings that alluded to very different courses of reality. Expecting a mindless reboot out of such a widely open-ended conclusion would be lazy, because there's every reason any new vision should be a continuation of what we've been dealing with.

If the MK universe was cosmically undone by the end of Armageddon, there's every opportunity to reinvent it in a bizarre new way. The universe might've been jump started and twisted slightly, to be relived in this brand-defying course of grimey unpleasantness. It might be that every character is gripped by a nightmarish new reality perhaps the result of an opportunistic villain's entry into the cosmic game -- the short film's version being Jax' nightmare.

The options are endless post-Armageddon and, with some jostling, you could definitely describe what's in the film as a plausible unmaking of the universe per Armageddon. Of course, that would also imply some sort of reordering that gets us back to business as well, if you follow conventional wisdom for these sorts of things.

A series of unrealities could be a lot of fun for an adventure mode, but when the dust settles, it would not be a creatively sound decision to retain any more than hints of such a wildly removed reinvisioning.

In other words, assuming Armageddon was some sort of untennable dead end is wrong. If anything, it's a gateway to infinite possibilities. It could be linear in the fashion we're familiar with (arguably the more sound course of action), or it could be an excuse to do something unduly varied.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of. I want some sound storytelling in the next game. I want to know exactly what happened at the pyramid, who survived and what happened after the dust settled during that apocalyptic battle. Not the infinite dreams Vogel had while smoking pot of what would happen if ::insert character here:: had godlike power and ruled the world. Like Meat's ending for example; "Godlike energy enveloped him, giving him the power to shape-shift. With the ability to become anyone, Meat lost his sense of identity and disappeared into obscurity." A wasted opportunity to take a character that was so underdeveloped he shouldn't have existed in the first place to making even more useless after his first 'official' appearance. Lazy writing.

Bit like twisted metal. We got first twisted metal where we got Calypso who got powers to grant wishes, it's light-hearted nature while twisted metal black had same idea but difference is Calypso is normal man and story is much darker and gruesome than those in previous games. 9 years later, twisted metal black has been well like by fans but hasn't push original twisted metal out of the way since next game we got was twisted metal head on which was sequel to original and not black. I agree with KenshiMaster16 when he says they can live as seperate beings.

I think that's probably not very likely.
I think any version of post-Armageddon MK is going to be a cohesive vision. It's not going to be a confused trickle of one or two endings described in the game. It probably won't have a whole lot to do with any of the endings described in the game.

If it were up to me, I'd use the opportunity to skip ahead a year of time, introduce a new generation of fighters along some of the logical stalwarts, and then have a Konquest mode unravel the time between. Let the old fighters become the new legends, and explain character-driven contexts for their withdrawl from the MK fighting arena, deviation into new storylines that might be explored in the future, or continuation as senior characters.

People confusing the anti-Rebirth sentiments with a fear of change should probably stop to think about the situation as it exists right now, if they aren't going to bother to read any greater subtext or logic into the displeasure.

MK is absolutely poised to be refreshed with a new take on things.
The game started as a mystic martial arts tournament fought every generation. It's being a little bit malleable with modern standards, but you could fairly say at just under twenty years later, we're ready for another generation of fighters in the tournament. There are new owners, we've got a significant break in the story with an open-end, and we could very realistically go back to the start with the best of the old stuff, and a bold new vision for the future of the established fiction.

It just makes sense that any continuation of the series be exactly that -- a continuation. Not a complete arbitrary departure from what's driven the series to significant-to-moderate success for two decades.

Isn't it already stated that this vid has nothing to do with the new game or movie

Vogel being big on details, I highly doubt he'd be up for ignoring the fact that "once a generation" was later revealed to be a fancy way of saying "fifty years" and shorten it to an actual generation.

That said, if Shao Kahn were dead or gave up, and Outworld were no longer the realm trying to invade us, they could simply start the tournament over via a completely different realm or villain wanting to conquer. Or what I thought would be cool is if the tournament was held somewhere else for once because, say, Dark Raiden came up with the idea "If I merge every realm with Earth, I don't have to worry about other realms attacking Earth anymore!" and HE declared war on one of the other realms like Edenia or something.

There's not a whole lot of drama in "Err...if we lose, we still have to lose nine more before the Earth is doomed" though.

I don't get why some people are excited about this trailer.
It looks more like Saw, and Twisted Metal give birth to a unoriginal love child then anything else.

If it has nothing to do with a game or movie then why make it?
Ya know?
That seemed like a LOT of money to shell out for that 8 minutes.
As much as I dont like the Storyline, the actors and effects looked impressive. (remember I DONT want this to work)
That 8 minutes probably cost a pretty penny. If not part of something then why make it?

Viral doesn't mean Viral anymore. They're no longer "accidental leaks". They're made on purpose and "leaked".

It's actually more common than you might think. A filmmaker makes a short little 8-10 thing then shops it around to producers and other actors to see if they'd be interested in making something more out of it.

It's how the Sin City movie got made. I think the first Saw, too.