This is sort of where I fall on the MK story and worldbuilding as a whole now. It's difficult to separate over 20 years of speculation, cross-media iterations, and fan theorycrafting. I've accepted that the MK story (while not terrible) isn't this masterful work of fiction. Doesn't mean I enjoy the games any less (ok...maybe the 3d ones).

She's vital in every game except MK4 and MKA including spinoff games and media. She's very blatantly the female lead of the franchise.

It's not a discussion for any thread, we're here to talk MK not about each other.

She has a lot of the same moves and fatalities though, in fact in that respect she's never been cooler.

She has become MK's Julia Chang/Sophitia kind of character though. She's unequivocally good but I don't think that's a bad thing. EVERYONE can't be a psychotic blood thirsty warlord. There has to be some variety in characterization and I think Kitana shines in that aspect. There's no one in MK like her.

I would have enjoyed seeing the continuation of the Mileena and Kitana rivalry, but MK9 just kind of cancelled out all that history. So there's no rival for Kitana to have. I hope the Jade and Tanya rivalry can be redeemed somehow.

I'm glad that died. I was sick of Mileena trying to take Kitana's life. She can move on to other things now.

It would have been nice if it had ACTUALLY HAPPENED first and THEN Mileena moved on to other things.

That's the thing about rebooting and telling the origin stories over again, you can't act like the things the audience has seen before still happened and skip them to avoid being repetitive. They didn't fucking happen yet.

Reboots are SUPPOSED to be to capture NEW audiences who aren't FAMILIAR with the series history (y''know, the people who are teens and young adults now who weren't old enough to be in the arcades in the 90's?) and teach them about it. They're not supposed to be FOR us longtimers whining "but I've already seen this before!" (Although MK9 really could have been for BOTH groups and still told a good story since we actually HAVEN'T "seen" anything from MK1 thru 3 before outside the movie, but they chose to ignore that opportunity because they'd already tried in Shaolin Monks and screwed that one up too...)

The fact that MK9 isn't a proper reboot, and outright erased important character backstories because it didn't want to be bothered retelling them, is kinda why it's so fucked up.

In the old timeline didn't Mileena already go on to other things? Hell she was in control of an army and successfully replaced Kitana. Which I think showed Mileena in a much better light. She had to take on the General/Princess role Kitana had left and impersonate her. There is absolutely no chance in hell Mileena from MK9 could pull that off.

I think she developed rather well in the original timeline, along with her 'twin' sister. It's this new arc that really fucked the female ninjas, especially Mileena.

Yes old timeline Kitana and Mileena were nicely developed. New timeline, fucked everything up. Mileena now has the "mind of a child" or whatever they said in 2011, so she's pretty much just a crazy brain dead version of her old self. The most she has potential for now is just to be another henchman.
Mileena was such a great character before and she had a long history with Kitana, now that is all moot.

Uhm there is still magic in the world, maybe Mileena absorbs some kind of gem or power boost that gives her insane otherworldly intelligence...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...hahaha...haha...heh... aahh... Haven't laughed like that since the last time someone said something laughable. ;P

lol otherworldly intelligence is kind of funny..

but hopefully she's matured somehow mentally if shes in mkx

Just for the record, I wasn't serious or anything :-p

Hehe, alright, but it was still funny. Glad to see you have a sense of humour. ^^

I think an interesting dynamic to make her less "Good perfect princess" is to make her the new queen of Edenia. Put focus on some of the difficult and morally ambiguous decisions leaders have to make for the good of their people.

Let's see...what's going on in this thread?

Razors pissed off again at something? What an unusual sight. Though I've got bad news for him - MK-Team would have killed everyone anyway, reboot or not. What they are doing with MKX, is what they were planing to do after MKA (of course if he remembers old interviews around that time). However, Midway bankruptcy delayed this plan and NRS was forced to prove themselves to the new IP owners with actually good MK game (good as in "good in everything and for everyone - not only for storynerds and long time fans"). Hence MK9. After that, they have returned to original plan - which is to add new blood to the series.

And by the way, all your whining about destroyed lore and stuff doesn't make sense, as it can be evidenced from MK9 the lore is intact, it's just characters development was partially nullified. But it's OK with me since, it gives more opportunities to move forward with new and exciting directions. Given, what could be seen about MKX, characters mass murder in MK9 wasn't bad writing, but just a setup for the future story. Heavy price for the people who can't think out of the box, but neccessary evil neverthless.

Oh, and Kitana was nicelly developed...though after MKDA she was kind of stale.

I just never really saw her that way, because I'd always assume that role went to Sonya.

This^

Their roles in the movie are the way the series and characters are meant to be, in terms of plot-importance. Sonya is a background character with her own subplot, Kitana is the main female because she's part of the main plot, connected to both the main character and the main villain.
Of course, this doesn't apply to the MK9 timeline where they decided to tear apart all traditional story structure and kill off the main characters. In retrospect, it seems like the reason they did that was so Ed could finally have his "as much newness as possible" game. By removing Liu Kang and Kitana from the equation (not to mention the most developed and popular version of Sub-Zero, the character closest to being a second protagonist because his subplot was almost as important as the main plot), now the plot has room for them to invent all new main protagonists...at the expense of ruining the origin story portion of their franchise.

They didn't need to retcon anything. They could have just made the same game (MK9) but kept the original story of MK-MK3. It would have been a good opportunity for them to fill in any plot holes and confirm anything as canon that needed to be.

Like a nice little remake of MK-MK3. Or MKT I guess. They could have just kept Armageddon around. All the characters died, so we get a nice remake of the original games. Then in this game (MKX) they can introduce new characters, like they wanted and then the returning classics just have whatever new storyline that works without any explanation as to why or how they're not dead and how they're playable in this game, because we wouldn't feel the need to question it and just enjoy playing as some of our old favorites. Unless NRS felt the need to include the coming back from the dead as part of their story. Not that any of this matters at this point, but those are my thoughts on the situation.

That is the truth.

[quote]Kitana feels [b]DEAD[/b] now[/quote]


Changed that for you, you're welcome!

Original games are still here to play and they did not dissappear with release of MK9.
And they did not ruin anything - just setup a new direction. And I think it was better decision, than retelling stories that have been already told.

I agree. It does suck that a lot of people took the storyline so seriously and then essentially had it erased or altered, but the story had gone askew. Getting back to the roots was the best thing they could have done imo, and it's basically an admittance by NRS that the storyline they had been working with for over 10 years was mostly not good, despite moments of brilliance. I don't think there's anything wrong in admitting your failures and trying to fix them, or move on from them. MK9 did a brilliant job of condensing a decade's worth of information into one mostly cohesive story that paid tribute to its past as well as to its fans. The past is the past, it'll always be there. There's nothing wrong with new.

It really didn't.

Okay, in what ways did it not?