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1473
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203701/characters/nm0228672
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en
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Mortal Kombat (Video Game 1992)
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Mortal Kombat (Video Game 1992) Richard Divizio as Kano
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IMDb
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203701/characters/nm0228672
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It looks like we don't have any photos or quotes yet.
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1473
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.tiktok.com/%40robbrucek/video/7081586826149891333%3Flang%3Den
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en
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Make Your Day
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1473
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/107185529320066/video-game-consoles/
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Facebook
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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de
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico
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https://www.facebook.com/login/
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1473
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dbpedia
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2
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https://browniehideout.wordpress.com/2023/04/16/sonic-x-development-log-by-production-chief-m/
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en
|
Sonic X Development Log by Production Chief M! Talking about the inside stories on the production and the highlights of each episode! (March–November 2003)
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2023-04-16T00:00:00
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This is a translation of journal entries from the now-defunct TMS-E.com page on Sonic X. The posts were written by the production chief named "M," or Miyamoto Hideaki, who provided some insight on the show's creation as it was airing in Japan. He ended up leaving after episode 26 to work as a producer on…
|
en
|
Uncle Windii's Brownie Hideout
|
https://browniehideout.wordpress.com/2023/04/16/sonic-x-development-log-by-production-chief-m/
|
March 17 (Mon)
Sonic X is about to air very soon. The first episode is finally almost finished, and while I was relieved, I was discovered in that moment and asked to write something if I was so bored. So, I decided to write a production log in this section… sigh.
All that said, I’m going to be writing about various staff stories and topics while Sonic is on air. Hope you enjoy!
March 18 (Tue)
Today was the production presentation. It was a ceremony to announce that this is what Sonic is all about. However, many Tokyo Movie staff members are shy and are not good at giving speeches at such events. Producer M was one of them. However, when the time came, he was able to give a concise speech that was easy to understand. The first episode was screened and was well received, which was a relief. However, the director’s comment in his greeting that he would normally refrain from doing so, but that he made requests to the staff without hesitation for this series, was a little worrisome…
March 19 (Wed)
Yesterday’s anxiety had become a reality. The director suggested that we do another retake. N, who was the production assistant, had mixed feelings shown on his face because he thought it was finished. In the end, we decided to fix every detail. The total number of cuts was 20. The crew is almost done!
March 31 (Mon)
One week to go until the broadcast. The title of the first episode is “The Supersonic Hero Takes the Stage!”
There are plenty of highlights in this episode, like a mecha battle, a car chase, and a pretty boy (?). In particular, the scenes created by the mechanical animation director, Mr. Watabe, are breathtaking. Another highlight is strange mechs appearing one after another in every episode. The robotic character named Decoe is my favorite.
April 1 (Tue)
Both the opening and ending are completed for the second episode.
The appeal of these two episodes is, after all, Tails (this is just my personal opinion). In fact, the cute Tails is the most popular among the staff. He’s also apparently easy to draw. Rouge comes in second, by the way. It seems that the appeal of this work is that it can depict flashy action. We’ll have to wait and see where Tails’s charm lies in the second episode!
April 7 (Mon)
The ratings for the first episode of Sonic X have been announced. The ratings were higher than expected and the response was positive. That was relieving. Since the highlight of the first episode was the action sequences rather than the story, we were happy to see the ratings increase over time. The entire staff will work hard using this as a springboard!
April 8 (Tue)
I checked the materials for episode 3. This completes all work on the third episode.
The appeal of the third episode is Knuckles’s way of life. Knuckles is just as cool in the anime as he is in the games. He is a lone warrior who values his friends but chooses solitude for the sake of his own destiny. Hmmm. I wish I could live like Knuckles, but I’m just too easily carried away by the world these days. I’m sorry…
April 21 (Mon)
I usually write this journal on Mondays, but this time it took two weeks. The reason is that a cold has been going around, and I and even the director have come down with it.
With fever and cough, I couldn’t work. Checks were delayed, meetings were not possible, and I was very weak. What was most troubling was that I could no longer taste, and even the only thing I looked forward to, the taste of food, was lost. I want to eat a steak dripping with blood…
Oh? What is the highlight of the fourth episode? It’s Mr. Stewart.
April 22 (Tue)
Continuing from the other day, I would like to talk about episode 5. This time, Mr. Tomonaga storyboarded the episode, which is quite interesting. The highlight of the episode is Amy. Amy on the train going to the picnic is my personal favorite scene because it shows her character so well. I was surprised that she brought her hammer to the picnic too! Speaking of which, it turns out that Tails also always carries a screwdriver. “It’s just a matter of habit,” is what Tails says, but I still think the people around Sonic are a bit strange.
May 5 (Mon)
The world is in the final stages of the Golden Week. However, there is no Golden Week for TV. This means that we, the production staff, cannot take a break… So, today, we have to edit the video again. Episode 5 aired yesterday, and now we are editing episode 7. It was completed about two weeks ago. However, there are still some things I want to fix. My greed is never satisfied.
May 6 (Tue)
Finally, the Golden Week is over and I am more enthusiastic about my work.
The highlight of episode 6 is the voice of the teacher robot, which I personally find appealing, because usually the voice actor’s voice is changed by a tool, but this time it is almost entirely natural. Mmm, it is wonderful and tasteful.
Another recent favorite among the staff is the messenger robot. He has a cute face and voice, but his personality is that of a kindergartener. And yet, he is still evil. After all, a character with some “bite” to them is very appealing. Expect to see more of the messenger robot in the future!
May 15 (Thu)
As I am writing this log, I hear a chime that signals 2:00 AM. The reason why I am working at this hour is because I have to check the dubbing of Sonic episode 9. Dubbing is the process of adding music and sound effects such as the sound of a booming explosion to a picture. Normally, this process takes about 2-3 hours, but for Sonic, it takes about 10 hours due to the challenge of the staff to create different music for each episode. The work usually finishes around 2:00-4:00 in the morning. Staff, please take care of your health.
May 16 (Fri)
Alright, back to looking at the highlights of each episode. Episode 7 is a sitcom, a complete change from the previous episodes. The S-Team leader also makes an appearance. By the way, this leader was cool when he first appeared in the first episode, but I think he is gradually showing his true colors and becoming a rather irresponsible guy. Well, personality aside, each of these S-Team racers are modeled after someone. The model for the S-Team leader is, of course, Mr. X from S*nic Team. If you don’t know who that is, check the opening credits to find out.
May 19 (Tue)
Now that we’re back to looking at the highlights for each episode, this week we have episode 8. As the subtitle (“Emergency Takeoff! X-Tornado”) suggests, it is the X-Tornado. It is a mecha original to the anime, and the director, Mr. Kamegaki, has put his heart and soul into it. By the way, this X-Tornado is supposed to be a modified version of Tails’s Tornado 2 (a blue airplane), but where are the hints of that…?
May 22 (Fri)
I’m sleepy. Yesterday, the dubbing was finished at four in the morning. Before that, we had to do a retake of episode 9, which was a nerve-wracking task. For episode 9, the main star is Amy. Amy is a fun character because she’s one of Sonic’s more emotional friends. Even in episode 9, her feelings for Sonic and her anger toward the Eggman robot are expressed with her entire body, which is very cool. In a way, she is like Dokin from Anpanman. Nowadays, girls are more energetic than boys. Amy may be a textbook example of this.
June 9 (Mon)
It’s been a while since the last Sonic journal entry. Sorry about that.
The highlight of episode 10 is Cream. I didn’t know that she had mastered the art of enchantment as a child. Hmm, I wonder what she’ll be like when she grows up. She might win over Rouge’s charm. Rouge will get her time to shine in episode 11. The Phantom Thief Rouge, with her youthful and adult glamor, is popular among the animation staff. She can be depicted in an action scene, of course, but her body shape is the most attractive feature…
June 10 (Tue)
Episodes 12 and 13 are about the attack on Eggman’s base. Naturally, there is a lot to see, but I think Sonic’s action is the highlight. By the way, there is an amazing mecha in episode 13. Eggman has created a mecha that looks just like the famous Maz*nger X. I was a little impressed to see that perhaps Eggman had also seen Maz*nger X. I can’t wait to see what he does with it. (Or maybe doesn’t…)
June 13 (Fri)
Today is Friday the 13th. Actually, the ending will change starting with episode 14. I can’t tell you who will sing it yet, but the theme of the song is Amy. Speaking of Amy, she is a girl who dreams of romance with Sonic. She may be the one who is the most honest about her feelings, even when things get crazy. We have finally finished the storyboard and are hard at work. How will Amy’s love story end?! Stay tuned!
July 1 (Tue)
Before we know it, it’s July. It has already been three months since the start of the broadcast. Next week will be the new ending. As I wrote in the last entry of the production log, the image of the ending this time is Amy. Naturally, the song is also about love. We didn’t have much production time, but I think it will be enjoyable, so please look forward to it.
July 2 (Wed)
The Sonic studio is getting too cramped… In addition, we have decided to start production of a new work in October (Sonic is not over, it will keep going), so we will move to a new studio. We had a quick preview of the new studio and found it to be quite spacious. It is big, as it used to be a gym. And above all, it is well-equipped. Man, I’m feeling more motivated to work! But it looks like it will be hard to move around.
September 20 (Sat)
The other day, the Sonic team moved to a new building near the head office, which surprisingly used to be a beauty salon. It has a Jacuzzi, a shower, and a shell-shaped washbasin. Hmm, I think this might be the most eccentric studio in the history of animation production companies. The fact that it is hardly an environment for work is the key.
By the way, in addition to the Sonic team, this room also houses the studio for PoP*LoCrois, which airs after Sonic at 9 AM, is also in this room. Some of the staff members are also the same (M in particular).
I hope that both productions will be able to make something good, and while engaging in friendly competition, they will get along well with each other and increase their ratings…
September 22 (Mon)
Summer ended before it got too hot (and before there was even a vacation). Even though it is the fate of production, we couldn’t go anywhere this year either… sigh.
But the Sonic team is hotly passionate! Because today we’re editing episode 26. We put all our energy into this episode, you know. I think it’s quite enjoyable because we didn’t make any compromises. The music is also very special, and they even used a song by Oda Kazumasa. Of course, the usual ending is also played. Which song will be played where? You’ll have to watch it to find out.
November Journal Entry
Hello, my name is I, and I have taken over production management duties from Mr. M.
Now, I would like to make this journal, feeling outrageous that I have to write it out of the blue because Mr. M (the traitor) was suddenly transferred (he bailed) to be in charge of another show.
Sonic X follows the storyline of the games. Therefore, the episodes, which are as exciting as a series finale, come in short cycles, so we are having a hard time making them. The episodes are enjoyable, but Mr. M disappeared at such a critical time. (Mr. M, don’t think treating me to a pizza once is gonna let you off the hook!)
In particular, “The Scream of Perfect Chaos,” which was broadcasted the other day, was the most animation-intensive episode in Sonic’s history with all our heart and soul put into it. And Mr. M suddenly disappeared in the middle of this busy schedule.
Undeterred, the entire production team worked hard to make it happen. I would like to express my appreciation to all the staff members and to Mr. Tokum*ru, the production assistant, for their hard work.
There are still many more highlights (and some grumblings) to come, so don’t miss Sonic, everyone!
Message from Kanemaru Junichi (on the old X-Web bulletin board)
The biggest event that took place on the old X-Web during the Sonic X broadcast period was a post on the Sonic X BBS from Sonic’s voice actor, Mr. Kanemaru Junichi himself.
This time, we would like to publish the post from that time again with permission.
|
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dbpedia
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https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/sully-top-boy-tvs-greatest-characters/
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en
|
Sully of 'Top Boy' is one of TV's greatest characters
|
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2023-09-20T10:00:00+01:00
|
'Top Boy' is one of Netflix's best and most successful series. It stars Kano, Ashley Walters, Dave and Little Simz. Kano's Sully is an incredible character.
|
/favicon.ico
|
Far Out Magazine
|
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/sully-top-boy-tvs-greatest-characters/
|
Hear Me Out: Sully of ‘Top Boy’ is one of TV’s greatest characters
With one violent shot to the head, the reign of Sully, the unhinged co-protagonist of Netflix’s Top Boy, came to an abrupt end. Just like every unfortunate character of the British TV series who had lost their life, Sully went out, not with drawn-out drama, but a sudden, almost existential bang, with the series allowing no time for mourning as it cut to black, showing an unknown figure dash towards the distance, continuing the cycle of ferocious violence.
With that, the series, which had started on Channel 4 back in 2011, came to an end, bringing the tale of drug dealers Sully (Kano) and Dushane (Ashley Walters), who ran the black market business in a fictional version of East London, to a dramatic close. Indeed, there was only one way the brutal series could have come to a close, with both protagonists passing away as a result of their own greed and dogged approach to ‘success’.
At first, it is Dushane who is set up to be the series ‘hero’, being a savage yet seemingly morally sound individual who looks after his ailing mother and even keeps an eye out for his drug-dealing underlings. Five series later, however, the character mutated into something far more cruel, bitter and selfish, making his long-term friend and business partner, Sully, seem more intellectually sound.
Yet, Sully is Top Boy’s crowning jewel, a deeply complex character whose identity steadily melts away from one series to the next until we’re met with a shell of the former icon in series five. Poisoned by the way of life he has chosen to pursue, Sully is a lonely soul, controlling his gang with an iron fist with no mental capacity for sympathy after having his soul battered by years of emotional torment.
Only on a handful of occasions has the character ever even allowed the viewer past his seemingly impenetrable psyche, with each experience only making him even more emotionally resilient. The inciting incident that pointed towards his downfall came in series three, episode four, ‘Bonfire Night’, when his only friend, Jason, a loyal, innocent and vulnerable young boy, was burned to death in a house fire.
Indeed, the mere fact that Sully’s best friend was a young boy who had little personal closeness to himself says a lot about the complex, emotionally reserved character, with Jason’s death plunging him even further into a pit of despair and depression. Such a state made it far easier for him to dispatch his long-time friend Dris (Shone Romulus), and by the time he killed the young dealer Jamie (Micheal Ward) at the end of series four, he was already the soulless husk of a man who could be seen maundering the apocalyptic fires of Summerhouse during the show’s finale.
But, it’s difficult to truly discuss the power of Sully’s character without too addressing the performance of Kane Brett Robinson, otherwise known as Kano. Whilst several rappers feature in the series, including Bashy, Little Simz and Dave, none compare to the gravity that Kano brings to his character, with the entire atmosphere of the show sinking into its seat when he arrives on the scene, bringing a deranged mentality takes the series by the scruff of its neck.
Such isn’t easy to take on either, with the character having a lack of emotional range on paper, practically never smiling over five series of the show. Yet, Kano brings layers to the role. Behind every violent stare, there is pain, desire and emptiness, even when he’s at his happiness, fog clouds his vision, preventing him from fully embracing the moment with the knowledge of life’s hardships having stained his every thought.
|
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1473
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dbpedia
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2
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https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/166/oa_monograph/chapter/3358963
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en
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Mortal Kombat
|
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Page 41 →Two Cinematic Influences and Cultural Politics
We make movies. The only difference is that ours come in a box. Whether it’s a video-game cabinet or a home machine, we’re creating movies.
—Roger Sharpe, director of marketing, Midway Games
The genre of fighting games is not typically known for its strong narrative content—unlike, say, the deep character immersion and long quests associated with more reputable genres like role-playing games (RPGs)—and fighting games are more often associated with the quick and largely disposable thrills of each matchup. Although the post-match taunt screens of the Street Fighter games might offer some small glimpse into particular characters’ personalities, for example, players are far more likely “to know our on-screen equal through the expressive range of their movements (the iconic language of animation)” during in-match gameplay and the overall investment in mastering a given character’s special moves (Surman 2007, 215). While the challenges of two-player competition depend on the respective skill of one’s human opponent, the single-player mode of most fighting games is typically arranged as a series of bouts against either a representative selection or a full roster of computer-controlled opponents, with the AI difficulty ratcheting up as one approaches a final “boss” character(s). As Chris Goto-Jones (2016b, 45) argues, then, most game genres make mastery of the control scheme an instrumental starting point for exploring a larger virtual world, but Page 42 →fighting games rehearse incrementally more difficult battles in order to make mastery of the control scheme the game’s overall goal. And as Nicholas Ware (2016, 159) adds, the “repetition of the fight-through-the-tournament structure of storytelling is a patterning that frames not only the individual narratives of the playable characters but also the experience of the player.”
Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 286) notes that broadly sketched characters, especially ones that embody certain cultural stereotypes, may be “much easier to write and create than complex realistic characters,” in addition to allowing players “to quickly and easily distinguish characters from one another, so players can recognize their opponent and adjust their fighting style appropriately.” The storytelling limitations of fighting games are thus largely generic in nature but also contingent on technological and design limitations. The character roster in early Mortal Kombat games was partly determined by memory constraints, for instance—hence why separate storylines for each character might be a convenient justification for including so many “palette swap” characters (e.g., Scorpion/Sub-Zero/Reptile, Kitana/Mileena/Jade) (Begy 2012, 211). In other cases, new characters in sequels evolved from unused character designs that time or space did not allow in previous games, such as MKII’s Jax having initially been planned in place of Mortal Kombat’s Sonya, before the designers elected to replace him with MKI’s sole female character; or Baraka’s (MKII) original character design as a fighter armed with hook swords, which later became the basis of MK3’s Kabal. Moreover, an MKII subplot involving MKI characters Kano and Sonya being captured by the evil emperor Shao Kahn (and shown held in chains in one of the MKII arena backgrounds) was solely invented due to memory constraints, since there was not enough space for all MKI characters to return alongside the newly introduced character sprites, and the audit menus in MKI machines had already shown Sonya and Kano as the first game’s least-selected characters (Quan 1994c, 118).
Mortal Kombat’s cocreator John Tobias admitted, “It’s difficult to set up a storyline with an arcade fighting game,” because “you’re pretty much limited to the Attract Mode” (Kunkel 1994, 38). Hence, comic books, strategy guides, and other paratexts can provide extra narrative information that cannot be conveyed through in-round gameplay alone (Wolf 2001, 101). Indeed, MKI’s attract mode offers not only a brief justification for the titular tournament and short character biographies of each selectable fighter but also Midway’s mail-order offer for a Mortal Kombat Collector’s Edition comic book (Tobias 1992), which provides additional Page 43 →backstory. Even before the first game’s success was a sure thing, then, comic books were already a crucial part of the world-building process that would become all the more apparent across the sequels, especially in the increasingly baroque cosmology introduced in conjunction with Mortal Kombat 4.
The backstory established in the attract mode and comic book for MKI begins five hundred years ago, when the mysterious sorcerer Shang Tsung emerges as the unexpected winner of a Shaolin martial-arts tournament. After being bested by a Shaolin master, the Great Kung Lao, Shang enlists a secret weapon—a four-armed demigod named Goro, prince of a desolate parallel dimension called the Outworld—to defeat Kung Lao and maintain indefinite control over the tournament. Relocating the once-a-generation tournament to his island stronghold in the East China Sea, Shang uses Goro’s ensuing five centuries of victory for turning the onetime Shaolin-hosted tournament into a death match and absorbing the souls of dispatched combatants to ensure Shang’s own immortality. Among the newest challengers at the Mortal Kombat tournament are Liu Kang, a Shaolin monk intent on restoring the tournament to its former glory; Johnny Cage, a Hollywood martial-arts star joining the tournament out of egotism; Kano, a wanted member of the Black Dragon Society criminal organization; Sonya Blade, a U.S. Special Forces lieutenant in pursuit of Kano; Raiden, a thunder god guiding the human combatants in their challenge to the forces of evil; Sub-Zero, a mysterious member of a Chinese assassin group, the Lin Kuei; and the revenant Scorpion, formerly a member of a rival assassin group (the Shirai Ryu), now returned from Hell (or the “Netherrealm”) to exact revenge on Sub-Zero for the (apparent) murders of his family and himself.
According to the MKII attract mode and Collector’s Edition comic book (Tobias 1993), Liu Kang kills Goro and defeats Shang Tsung during MKI’s tournament, while Scorpion kills Sub-Zero, and both Kano and Sonya are drawn through a dimensional portal when Shang retreats to the Outworld to beg a second chance from the evil emperor Shao Kahn. The emperor devises a plan to win ownership over the Earth (or “Earthrealm”) through a new winner-takes-all tournament held in the Outworld, headed by the newly revivified Shang and another monstrous four-armed warrior, Kintaro. Liu Kang returns home to find the Shaolin Temple destroyed by Baraka’s band of Outworld warriors at Shang’s command, but there he reunites with an eponymously named descendant of Kung Lao (a fellow member of the secretive White Lotus Society, founded by Raiden). Two factions of combatants form—the evil OutworldersPage 44 → led by Shao Kahn (Shang, Kintaro, Kitana, Mileena, Baraka, Reptile) and the Earthrealm warriors led by Raiden (Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Sonya’s former teammate Jax)—and we eventually learn that, by dint of the Elder Gods, the victor of ten Mortal Kombat Grand Championships in a row entitles their represented realm to gain possession of an adjacent realm. Goro had been defeated by Liu Kang short of one remaining victory, thus holding off the interdimensional takeover, but regardless of the newly announced tournament’s outcome, it is merely a distraction from the Outworld’s impending invasion of Earth.1 Although Liu Kang is again victorious in this second tournament, the invasion finally occurs in MK3, in spite of the Elder Gods’ prohibitions, via a dimensional rift opened when Shang reincarnates Shao Kahn’s long-deceased wife, Sindel (former queen of the realm of Edenia), on Earth and crosses over to retrieve her, with much of the action occurring in a postapocalyptic Chicago.
Yes, if this all sounds rather arcane, it still pales in comparison to the inordinately expanded story through which later sequel/prequel games and paratexts would “retcon” (i.e., establish retroactive continuity with) the original trilogy’s narrative events via a plethora of additional subplots, characters, and alternate timelines (see chapter 4). Whereas video games tend to allow the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps left by general nods toward world-building (Wolf 2012; Aranda 2016, 419), even from this simplified overview we can see that the series contains far more narrative cues than the average fighting game, thus complementing the games’ aforementioned inclusion of hidden characters and other “Easter eggs” as clues to a much larger implied diegesis than can be conveyed through gameplay itself. Although Mortal Kombat was arguably the first fighting game series to develop “lore,” fighting games are a deceptively complicated genre for maintaining a coherent series-long narrative, because each playable character likely has some (small) degree of backstory, and winning the game as a given character typically reveals a character-specific ending that bookends their competition (Hutchinson 2019, 72–73). As Ware (2016, 160) posits, the fighting between different characters thus implies a fighting of different narratives for supremacy, but it is difficult to tell which of these character endings is “canon” until a sequel game confirms who actually won the previous tournament. Consequently, a garden of forking paths is retroactively shoehorned into a serialized framing narrative whose potentially clumsy convolutions bespeak the various narrative fragments that are either confirmed or denied in each subsequent game.2
Page 45 →And yet I argue that in addition to clarifying this overarching frame narrative through Midway’s authorized paratexts, a web of cinematic allusions and other cultural touchpoints also serve as important extradiegetic fabric for the Mortal Kombat series. Much as Janet Staiger (1992) notes that early tableau-based films like Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter, 1903) may look very “primitive” and narratively confusing to modern viewers because we lack the close familiarity with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s then-popular 1852 novel that period viewers would have already gained through that cultural moment’s intertextual surround, we might see a variety of films and other references as helping to flesh out the story world in Mortal Kombat’s many tableaux of hand-to-hand combat. This is not to say, of course, that all Mortal Kombat players (especially given their youth demographic) would have recognized the many films that John Tobias has cited as either direct or indirect inspiration on the series. Still, the games’ overall narrative has far more coherence when one has some familiarity with both the wuxia and kung fu strands of Hong Kong martial-arts cinema, plus the Jean-Claude Van Damme films that had initially brought that star to Midway’s attention before the failed Universal Soldier licensing deal.
A number of earlier martial-arts-themed video games had at least superficial links to movies, especially when tied to particular stars: from Chuck Norris Superkicks, to Kung-Fu Master’s Japanese reissue as an unlicensed tie-in with Jackie Chan’s martial-arts comedy Meals on Wheels (Sammo Hung, 1984), to Datasoft’s (U.S.) 1984 Bruce Lee platform game. But few fighting games possess Mortal Kombat’s dense indebtedness to specific films and cultural mythologies previously transmitted through cinema. By tracing the history and influence of Hong Kong martial-arts cinema up through the popularity of Bruce Lee in the 1970s, the Americanization of such films via rising stars like Van Damme in the 1980s, and the wuxia revival in pre-reunification Hong Kong’s “New Wave” films, we will find a mélange of historical signifiers that may indeed have been cobbled together from an orientalist cultural imaginary among an all-white team of American game designers but whose very transnational circulation also complicates some of the more one-sided accusations of racism and sexism leveled at the early Mortal Kombat games.
From Wuxia to Kung Fu Films
wuxia pian (chivalric swordplay films). Wuxia films are typically set in a fantastical version of China’s premodern past, featuring sword-wielding heroes (both male and female) with superhuman abilities to fly weightlessly through the air and unleash energy bursts (dubbed “palm power”) from their hands or weapons. Over half of all Shanghai film production from 1928 to 1931 consisted of wuxia films, but government censors cracked down on their production in 1931, fearing not only that their supernatural elements might promote superstition but also that their mix of old folk culture with new cinematic special effects might slow China’s path toward modernization (Desser 2000, 31; Cheuk 2008, 86–87; Hunt 2003, 6–7; Zhen 2001, 55–57). After World War II and the 1949 Communist Revolution, much of this production shifted to Hong Kong, from which companies like Shaw Brothers could more easily distribute films across the Asia-Pacific region (Chung 2007, 671–75). Wuxia films made intermittent comebacks over subsequent decades, especially once the success of Japanese chanbara films like the Zatoichi series (1962–89) led Hong Kong studios to send aspiring filmmakers to train in Japan and come back ready to revive wuxia films as a homegrown Chinese form of swordplay cinema. But wuxia films were largely considered passé after the box-office failure of King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1971) (Hunt 2003, 3; Teo 1997, 98; Teo 2009, 143).
Kung fu films, by contrast, emphasize the variety of empty-handed combat styles that, according to legend, were developed in Bodhidharma’s time at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province during the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589 CE), though the films themselves are typically set in somewhat more contemporary settings. Shaw Brothers’ The Chinese Boxer (Jimmy Wang, 1970) is often credited as the first breakthrough kung fu film, with its success and the following year’s Bruce Lee vehicle The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury, Lo Wei, 1971) helping displace the wuxia film’s popularity by 1972 (Teo 1997, 103). Whereas wuxia films relied heavily on montage and special effects like wirework to depict their heroes’ superhuman attributes, kung fu films increasingly highlighted the pro-filmic authenticity of martial artistry, with stars like Lee effectively “re-masculinizing” martial-arts cinema by displacing wuxia’s frequent female heroes and elevating masculine spectacles of bodily mastery (Tasker 1997, 322–38; Hunt 2003, 46, 53, 119; Bowman 2011, 64). Warner Brothers, meanwhile, helped popularize kung fu with Western audiences by first distributing the Shaw Brothers’ King Boxer (aka Five Fingers of Death, Jeong Chang-hwa, 1972), producing the television series Kung Fu (1972–75; starring David Carradine as a former Shaolin monk Page 47 →in a role originally considered for Lee), and finally coproducing Lee’s crossover vehicle Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). With many kung fu films deliberately made for export, and distributed by exploitation film companies to inner-city grindhouse theaters on double bills with horror and blaxploitation films, kung fu became so popular that Hong Kong–made films outgrossed Hollywood films at the box office for much of 1973 (Desser 2000, 20, 22–26, 34–35).3
Meanwhile, within the realm of martial arts itself, a series of governmental initiatives—first during China’s Republican era and then following the 1949 Revolution (A. Morris 2004)—formulated wushu in order to consolidate China’s many disparate fighting styles beneath the banner of a state-approved, competitive gymnastics style increasingly distanced from the practicalities of hand-to-hand combat. Although there are no hard-and-fast distinctions between regional styles (Kennedy and Guo 2005, 80–83), wushu is more indebted to the kicks and lower body strikes commonly associated with Northern Chinese martial-arts styles, as opposed to the fists and upper body strikes from the Southern styles later associated with “kung fu.”4 With acrobatic movements derived from Chinese opera traditions and the associated spectacle of long kicks, wushu became more closely aligned in the popular imagination with the realm of myth, fantasy, and pastness also seen in wuxia films, as opposed to the relatively more modern, realistic, and historically specific connotations of kung fu films. Overall, Chinese viewers discerned wushu and kung fu as very different styles during the 1960s and 1970s, with the former seen as more of a gymnastic sport than the latter’s association as a web of practical combat styles (Hunt 2003, 29–31; Teo 1997, 98; Bordwell 2000, 201).
This distinction is significant for my purposes because many of Mortal Kombat’s live actors, such as its original martial-arts consultant Daniel Pesina and his students, used their wushu training to develop the game’s moves. This fact helps explain not only the series’ emphasis on jump kicks and other long leg attacks; the popular linkage between wushu and wuxia’s fantastical elements also helps justify the series’ use of energy projectiles and other forms of “palm power” (already popularized by Ryu’s Hadōken in the Street Fighter series). The dropped frames of its pixilated sprites additionally recall the use of “undercranking” to artificially speed up the filmed movements in kung fu films—a controversial practice among purist fans of martial-arts movies, for supposedly “cheating” the authenticity of the filmed martial artist’s speed. (Many of the Mortal Kombat clones discussed in chapter 4 are marked by inferior pixilation Page 48 →techniques, recalling the campier aspects of sloppy undercranking in some low-budget kung fu movies.)
The successful double-billing of kung fu and horror movies certainly resonates with Mortal Kombat’s supernatural characters and gory fatalities. The carnivalesque, gross-out quality of the latter—which prevents players from ever taking such winkingly outlandish deaths too seriously—provides another link between the sense of lowbrow vulgarity that courses through much of Hong Kong genre cinema (e.g., grotesque forms of abjection, slapstick tomfoolery, ribald bodily functions) and also finds a home in the culturally “lower” end of the horror genre (Bordwell 2000, 7, 97). Take, for instance, Jeffrey Sconce’s (1994, 112–13) discussion of the “highly self-reflexive and comic mediation on the spectator” in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (Rachel Talalay, 1991), when Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) sucks a stoned teenager into a video game, toying with the teen before killing him off with a nod to the tagline for Nintendo’s 1989 Power Glove peripheral (“Now I’m playing with power!”). This moment arguably looks ahead to the Mortal Kombat games in its temporary suspension of framing narrative and character identification alike to foreground the film’s central appeal: “incredible spectacles of death” delivered by an impishly effective showman. Krueger himself would become a playable character (available as a premium download) in the rebooted Mortal Kombat (NetherRealm Studios, 2011), while Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios, 2015) would offer other downloadable horror avatars, such as Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th [Sean Cunningham, 1980]), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [Tobe Hooper, 1974]), and the titular monsters of Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and Predator (John McTiernan, 1987)—thus indicating the horror genre’s easy overlap into Mortal Kombat’s own generic territory.
Of course, a major difference between kung fu movies and fighting games is that, regardless of the long-take aesthetic privileged by martial-arts purists, many kung fu films still rely on montage and other quick editing tricks to depict spectacular combat moves, whereas each round of a fighting game constitutes a single long take within which all the action unfolds, even as combos still recall the precision of Hong Kong fight choreography (Hunt 2003, 2, 36, 39, 193). Aaron Anderson (1998) observes that watching cinematic martial-arts fights feels closer to experiencing music or dance than actual real-world fights, and the combat tends to fall on a spectrum between depicting characters as rarely seriously injured (e.g., the slapstick combat of Jackie Chan) and depicting characters as sustaining graphic and painful-looking injuries. And unlike Page 49 →many martial-arts films, where the visible accumulation of fatigue and bodily damage signals the approaching end of a fight, the health meters in fighting games invisibly monitor the character’s remaining vitality. That is, the combatants in most fighting games (with notable exceptions like the “body damage system” in Bushido Blade [Lightweight [JP], 1997]) do not realistically slow down or lose their abilities to inflict damage across the course of a given round, regardless of the rather unrealistic degree of damage their bodies should have suffered throughout.
Much like exploitation movies, fighting games are also full of fast, cheap thrills and forms of readymade spectacle (e.g., special moves) that are geared for quick player turnover more appropriate to the coin-op market than long-play games designed for home consoles. And unlike the long training sequences, romantic and political subplots, and other extended backstory in martial-arts films, the gameplay of fighting games is largely confined to the actual fights themselves (Poole 2000, 56–57, 188)—more like engaging with the trailer for a martial-arts film (i.e., all the most sensationalistic “good parts”) than the film as a whole. The Mortal Kombat games, then, would seem to operate at both ends of Anderson’s (1998) spectrum, with combatants’ fighting abilities visibly unaffected, despite the many spurts of blood they may lose during each round, but with the end-of-match fatalities serving as a sudden shift toward graphic mutilation that reinforces the severity of the loss.
The overall gameplay in the early Mortal Kombat games combines the empty-handed combat of kung fu movies with the more supernatural elements of wuxia films (e.g., “palm power”), thus representing a combination of what were once considered distinctly different fighting aesthetics. Swordplay itself did not become a major factor in the series until MK4 allowed each playable character to draw and wield their own distinctive weapon during combat, while more “authentic” combat styles were added as playable options in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), albeit with the menu interface flattening these culturally localized fighting traditions into just one of many toggleable choices.
Although some allusions to Japanese mythology were included (e.g., “Raiden” from Raijin, a mythological god of thunder), Pesina argued for including more Chinese cultural influences in the games, including not just the influence of wushu itself but also related weapon techniques like the rope dart (sheng biao), originally a medieval Chinese weapon that here became the basis for Scorpion’s spear. Pesina likewise pushed for characters such as Sub-Zero to be depicted not as Japanese “ninjas” (a trope cinematically popularized in the United States by Cannon Page 50 →Films’ Enter the Ninja [Menahem Golan, 1981]) but rather as part of the mythical Lin Kuei (“forest ghosts”), a nomadic clan of secretive Chinese warriors who supposedly date back to the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) and later crossed into Korea and Japan, becoming a formative influence on Japanese ninjutsu (McCarthy 2018).5 The Lin Kuei were actually the invention of American martial artist Randall Brown (1984), writing in the mid-1980s under the pseudonym Li Hsing (1984; 1986), who dubiously describes having been trained by the last surviving Lin Kuei master, an émigré to the United States who had since bequeathed this secret history in an effort to keep the clan alive in America.
According to John Tobias’s original concept art, Liu Kang was initially going to be a Japanese character named “Minamoto Yoshitsune” (after Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a military commander immortalized in the twelfth-century epic Heike monogatari), before he was later made a Shaolin monk and thus more clearly tied to the mytho-historical origins of Chinese martial arts. The actual Shaolin Temple in Henan Province had been destroyed multiple times over the centuries—albeit, and contrary to legend, not by the Qing dynasty—though Qing authorities did suspect the monks of harboring anti-Qing rebels due to the temple’s past support of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Nevertheless, this legend about a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century temple burning—which supposedly scattered fugitive priests with martial-arts expertise throughout China—spread through popular martial-arts fiction (and, later, movies) (Shahar 2008, 184–85, 190–96). Leon Hunt (2003, 48–52, 58, 69, 71) observes that the Shaolin Temple mythos was not popularized in martial-arts cinema until the television show Kung Fu and a concurrent series of films including, among many others, Shaolin Martial Arts (Chang Cheh, 1974), Five Shaolin Masters (Chang Cheh, 1974), Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh, 1976), Executioners from Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung, 1977), and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Liu Chia-liang, 1978).
Another mytho-historical allusion is Liu Kang’s supposed neglect of the Shaolin Temple (as implied in the MKII comic book [Tobias 1993]) in favor of the “White Lotus Society,” which in sequels is described as an ancient sect cofounded by Raiden and Shaolin Temple elders. The actual White Lotus religion (Bailian jiao) was a loosely organized sect dating back to the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420 CE), whose millenarian beliefs “took on violent and rebellious characteristics as it incorporated elements of Daoist magical techniques, Manichean theologies, and folk shamanism” by the time of the Ming dynasty (Wang 2014, 42). Due to its millenarian beliefs, White Lotus adherents were allegedly involved in Page 51 →many anti-dynastic uprisings, with the very name “White Lotus” becoming a catchall label for stereotyping and persecuting heterodox sects and political dissidents during the Ming and Qing dynasties (ter Haar 1992, 244–45, 249). Much as Qing authorities falsely blamed the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui), a secret society rumored to date back to the same fugitive Shaolin priests, for helping foment the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), the White Lotus Society was scapegoated for their seemingly magical beliefs and intense secrecy (ter Haar 1992, 281; Shahar 2008, 184; Murray and Baoqi 1994, 82, 152). Indeed, orientalist scholars turned to Pu Songling’s 1740 book Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a collection of supernatural tales about ancient China, as a reference point for attempting to link the White Lotus Society’s “magic” to modern imperial struggles like the Boxer Rebellion (Goto-Jones 2016a, 163–64). Like the story of the Shaolin Temple itself, then, kung fu films such as Intruder at White Lotus Temple (Chi Lo, 1971) and Clan of the White Lotus (Lo Lieh, 1980) would mix myth and history in dubiously verifiable ways.
The Bruce Lee Influence
Such mixtures of historical facts and legends primarily descend to Mortal Kombat by way of Enter the Dragon, the 1973 Bruce Lee film upon which MKI’s narrative is most closely modeled. In this transnational coproduction between Warner Brothers and Raymond Chow (founder of Golden Harvest, the largest producer of martial-arts films aside from the Shaws), Lee plays a Shaolin monk who must restore the temple’s honor and avenge his sister’s death by fighting in an invitation-only tournament held on a private island by Han (Shih Kien), a former Shaolin student who has turned his martial-arts training toward evil. Because Han’s island occupies international waters off the coast of Hong Kong, over which the British colonial powers have no authority, a British spy agency tasks Lee with digging up dirt on Han’s criminal enterprises during the tournament, with the assistance of two American combatants, Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly). As Leon Hunt (2000, 76, 78, 80–81) argues, the film was deliberately made as a transnationally traveling text. Its espionage plot and orientalist archvillain recall Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), many of the Asian actors’ dialogue is post-dubbed into English, and Kelly’s casting as Williams was deliberately meant to appeal to the Black crossover market between blaxploitation and martial-arts films. Hence, the film leans heavily toward orientalist kitsch, evincing a tension between “Asiaphilia” and “Asiaphobia” by both “fetishiz[ing] Page 52 →the ‘Orient’ and replay[ing] ‘Yellow Peril’ archetypes” (Hunt 2003, 158; see also Frayling 2014).
Although Enter the Dragon’s modern setting means that it does not share the mythical temple-burning story presented in so many Shaw Brothers films, Han’s name conflates the Han Chinese with the Qing (Manchu) ethnic minority who conquered them in founding the Qing dynasty. This helps justify why Han so closely resembles Sax Rohmer’s infamous archvillain, Fu Manchu, a Qing loyalist who would have opposed Shaolin rebels against the dynasty. As Hunt (2000, 81) notes, Williams’s rebuke that Han “come[s] right out of a comic book” is even a reference to Marvel Comics’ deal with the Rohmer estate to revive the Fu Manchu character in their Master of Kung Fu series (1973–83).6
In MKI, then, Enter the Dragon’s conflict between Lee and Han becomes reworked into Liu Kang’s battle against the Fu Manchu–inspired Shang Tsung, another usurper of the Shaolin Temple’s former glory. While hardly the only fighting game character to be modeled after Lee, Liu Kang’s high-pitched vocalizations—an example of the “expressive amplification” of sound effects that David Bordwell (2000, 232–33) finds so endemic to Hong Kong genre cinema—are another obvious allusion to his cinematic inspiration, as further confirmed by Liu Kang’s Dragon Transformation fatality in MKII and explicit use of Jeet Kune Do (the martial-arts system developed by Lee in 1967) in MK: Deadly Alliance. From Han’s and Shang’s private junks sailing the combatants to the island (as depicted in the MKI Collector’s Edition comic), to both Han and Shang sitting on golden dragon–decorated thrones as they watch the tournament unfold, to characters like Roper prefiguring the money-driven egotist Johnny Cage, MKI’s setting and framing narrative share many inspirations from Enter the Dragon. Yet, as Paul Bowman (2011, 78–79) observes, the supposed “Shaolin kung fu” that Lee uses in Enter the Dragon is an exaggerated fantasy of “kung fu,” not an authentic representation of actual styles—in part because Lee’s self-developed Jeet Kune Do was itself a cultural hybrid of different styles, not unlike how his character mixes the mytho-historical Shaolin monk with the Cold War–era spy.
Lee’s fighting style, however, would become the crux of another cinematic influence on Mortal Kombat: his unfinished original production, The Game of Death. Lee began filming Game of Death for Golden Harvest in 1972, shooting about one hundred minutes of footage before agreeing to pause production to star in Enter the Dragon, but his untimely 1973 death meant that the project was aborted. (Enter the Dragon’s director, Robert Clouse, would later cobble together eleven minutes of Lee’s 1972 Page 53 →footage into a ridiculous framing story featuring a handful of Lee lookalikes, but this 1978 Game of Death bears little resemblance to Lee’s original concept and is better considered one of the many “Brucesploitation” films released to cash in on Lee’s death.) In Lee’s original version, he would have starred as martial artist Hai Tien, whose family is being held for ransom by Korean mobsters until Hai battles his way to the top of a wooden pagoda to acquire a treasure for the mob, with each of the pagoda’s five stories guarded by a master of a different martial art. Joined by several accomplices, each step in Hai’s vertical ascent is meant to showcase Jeet Kune Do’s ability to adapt to and overcome the best of competing styles (Goto-Jones 2016b, 47).7 If this sounds familiar, recall that the 1984 beat-em-up game Kung-Fu Master was directly based on a similar ascent through five levels of a temple to rescue the avatar’s wife. For our purposes, though, we can see the vertical ascent through a series of fighters with different styles and skill sets as inherited by Mortal Kombat’s “Battle Plan” screens (renamed “Ladders” in later sequels), which visually represent the sequence of upcoming fights as, for example, climbing a mountain (MKII) or a derelict skyscraper (MK3), with the bosses positioned at the top. And much like Jeet Kune Do’s goal of becoming so adaptable to an opponent’s style that it becomes a sort of “non-style,” MKI’s “Mirror Match” requires one’s avatar to fight against their doppelganger before continuing on to the bosses, as if overcoming the weaknesses of one’s own style is a prerequisite for reaching the top. Mortal Kombat’s status as a “game of death” in its own right, then, arguably owes a major debt to several of Bruce Lee’s posthumously released works.
Tsui Hark and the Return to Wuxia
Although John Tobias cites Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest kung fu films, plus the obvious influence of Enter the Dragon, as inspirations for Mortal Kombat, he recalls, “My biggest influences came from Tsui Hark films—Zu Warriors [sic] & The Swordsman. We had to get them from bootleggers in [Chicago’s] Chinatown” (@therealsaibot, September 1, 2011). As one of the leading lights of Hong Kong New Wave cinema (ca. 1979–90), Tsui Hark’s energetic, genre-bending films are credited with reviving the wuxia film in the 1990s, with The Swordsman (1990) and the Once Upon a Time in China trilogy (1991–94) depicting ancient Chinese mysticism confronting (and eventually adopting) Western weapons and science during the late Qing dynasty. Critics disagree whether the mythicized pasts in Tsui’s wuxia films nostalgically recall a period of national(ist) Page 54 →unity or instead signal a more postcolonial/transnational awareness of the arbitrariness of borders, but they tend to concur that his films serve as loose allegories for Hong Kong’s impending 1997 handover to China (Sarkar 2001, 163–71; Teo 2009, 148, 162; See-Kam 2010, 45, 48–49).
Born in Vietnam but relocating to Hong Kong during the war, Tsui later studied filmmaking in the United States at a time when optical special effects in big-budget films like Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) were starting to dominate the global film market. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Tsui prefigured the later wuxia revival with his early film Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), an ambitious attempt to combine Hong Kong–style wirework with Hollywood-style optical effects overseen by an imported team of U.S. special-effects artists. Aspiring to compete in the global market, this Golden Harvest production returned only HK$3 million on its $30 million budget, with its narrative about unlikely heroes striving but perhaps failing to restore national stability thus sharing an ironic resonance with the film’s own costly gamble (Schroeder 2004, 3, 10, 12, 32–33, 41–43).
Set in the enchanted Zu Mountains during an ancient period of intertribal warfare, West Zu army scout Ti Ming-chi (Yuen Biao) deserts with an East Zu soldier (Sammo Hung), and they adventure to a cave where they are rescued from flying humanoid creatures by itinerant swordsman Ting Yin (Adam Cheng). They are soon united with several warrior-monks on a journey to destroy the Blood Demon, an evil entity temporarily held at bay by the magician Long Brows (Sammo Hung). Reeling from their first encounter with the Blood Demon, the team takes refuge at the Ice Countess’s (Brigitte Lin) fort. Although Ting Yin remains possessed by the Blood Demon’s magic, the rest of the team scales Heaven’s Blade Peak to retrieve the Twin Swords, the only weapon that can defeat the demon. They manage to vanquish the demon just as Long Brows’ magical hold loosens, but despite achieving victory through unlikely teamwork, the two original soldiers finally return to their respective armies to find them engaged in perpetual combat.
With its gloomy and fantastical diegesis, the mystical world of Zu bears a closer resemblance to MKII’s Outworld than anything in the first game, complete with haunted temples and dark forests and wastelands. The shadowy presence of Shao Kahn as an evil emperor was inspired by Star Wars’ Darth Vader (Mick-Lucifer 2012), but the horn-covered Blood Demon also bears a fascinating similarity to Shao Kahn: both characters attempt to overrun borders but are held off by a Raiden-like figure’s (inadequate) magical boundaries (Schroeder 2004, 34). Some of the Page 55 →“palm power” elements in Zu closely prefigure certain moves in the Mortal Kombat games: from the Ice Countess’s ability to freeze her opponents with bursts of blue ice energy (à la Sub-Zero), to the warrior-monks using their blade-rimmed hats as throwable metal discs (à la Kung Lao), to Ting Yin’s sword blade spreading out into a spinning array like Kitana’s fan. The projectile moves in Mortal Kombat—in which characters do not throw actual weapons so much as energy projections from those weapons (e.g., Kano’s knife, Mileena’s sais)—are a convention straight out of wuxia films like Zu. And we might even see Bhaskar Sarkar’s (2001, 169–70) argument about the “tropes of physical amputation” in Hong Kong New Wave films, allegorically reflecting hysteria over the prospects of Hong Kong’s post-reunification body politic, rendered into an apolitical visual trope in Mortal Kombat’s over-the-top fatalities.
Zu was also John Carpenter’s biggest inspiration for his martial-arts fantasy Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a secondary inspiration for Mortal Kombat (Swires 1986, 13). Much as the influence of kung fu films descended by way of Enter the Dragon, this Americanized take on Tsui’s attempted wuxia revival finds cocky Anglo-American trucker Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) teaming with San Francisco restaurant owner Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) and magician Egg Shen (Victor Wong) to infiltrate the Chinatown underworld, battling rival gangs and a Fu Manchu–esque sorcerer in order to save several kidnapped women. Throughout, magic is depicted as a dark and wondrous force transplanted from the Orient, much as Western stage magicians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries invoked and perpetuated orientalist stereotypes in order to “conjure” entertainingly mysterious images of Asia for their patrons (Goto-Jones 2016a).
Across Carpenter’s oeuvre, “the [western genre’s] frontier mythology lingers, but its trajectory is reversed. . . . The primitive forces of wild places are not so much to be overcome as survived, and it is often those forces that seem inevitable and overwhelming, reclaiming the spaces abandoned by an American culture in retreat” (Phillips 2014, 125). In this regard, the orientalist mise-en-scène in Carpenter’s film—also shared by Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), whose main villain gave us Kano’s MKI Heart Rip fatality—takes on even more racialized “Yellow Peril” overtones by locating an “unassimilated” core of ancient Chinese magic amid an ethnic enclave within one of America’s largest cities.
Sylvia Shin Huey Chong (2012, 272) observes that the 1980s saw multiple films about Chinatowns as sites where “good Asian Americans” might Page 56 →be separated out from “bad Orientals,” as part of wider post-Vietnam concerns about the extent of Asian American assimilation.8 In Carpenter’s film, the sorcerer, posing as elderly and reclusive Chinatown banker David Lo Pan (James Hong), must appease the evil God of the East by sacrificing the kidnapped women to regain his youth, not unlike Shang’s reprieve from Shao Kahn in MKII. Meanwhile, three demigod figures loyal to Lo Pan—Thunder, Lightning, and Rain—provide obvious inspiration for Raiden by wearing conical bamboo hats, shooting lightning from their hands, and flying through the air (figs. 9–10), although the death of one such character, blowing up like a balloon until he pops, also prefigures Kitana’s MKII Kiss of Death fatality (figs. 11–12). There Page 57 →is even a moment at the film’s climax where Lo Pan and Egg Shen use “palm power” to conjure battling avatars, connected to their hands by long strings of energy, as if playing their avatars with home console controllers!
Films like Big Trouble in Little China illustrate how Chinatowns and other East Asian diasporic communities within the United States can serve as convenient backdrops for non-Asians’ fantasies about cultural slumming in “exotic” and “edgy” locales, even as these same locations may also be sites of more authentic transnational exchange. As Tobias recalls, venturing into Chicago’s Chinatown was necessary to acquire bootlegs of the Tsui films at a time when they were not yet officially distributed in the States, since diasporic video stores filled this gap.9 Moreover, the Mortal Kombat design team photographed examples of ornamentalPage 58 → Chinatown architecture—including the main Chinatown gate and a smaller “Welcome to Chinatown” display at the intersection of Wentworth Avenue and Cermak Road—to be mapped into the backgrounds of several MKI arenas (such as the “Courtyard” scene depicted in fig. 10). Both filmic and real Chinatowns, then, were sources of Mortal Kombat’s inspiration in multiple ways, albeit largely as a means of supplying the games with orientalist texture.
The Van Damme Connection
Finally, we can return to the game’s aborted origins as a vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme, since his films—and, more specifically, how his films narrativize the appropriation of East Asian martial arts for American sensibilities—were a major early influence on the Mortal Kombat series. Tobias clearly went back to Van Damme’s low-budget Cannon Films releases like Bloodsport (Newt Arnold, 1988) and Kickboxer (Mark DiSalle, 1989) as inspiration once the Universal Soldier tie-in deal fell through. By Tobias’s own admission, the character of cocky movie star Johnny Cage “ended up being a spoof on the whole Van Damme situation” (Quan 1994b, 26), with Cage’s initials and splits-punch move as allusions to the real-life star. As several scholars have argued, Bruce Lee’s Vietnam-era crossover fame among American audiences led to the popularity of 1980s-era white action stars like Van Damme, who appropriated East Asian martial arts as a means of rendering them racially “closer” for American viewers to comfortably appreciate (especially when those skills were turned back against “Oriental” villains), while also fitting into wider Reagan-era attempts to redeem America’s past involvement in Vietnam. Military-colonial encounters had provided the context for such cultural appropriation even before the Vietnam War, with American servicemen bringing martial-arts knowledge back to the United States after World War II, the Occupation, and the Korean War (Desser 2000, 38–39; Hunt 2003, 9–10, 12; Chong 2012, 178–79, 186, 251).
Take, for instance, the plot of Universal Soldier itself, which opens during the Vietnam War in 1969 as American soldier Deveraux (Van Damme) and his commanding officer Scott (Dolph Lundgren) kill each other when Deveraux attempts to prevent the mad Scott from executing innocent Vietnamese civilians. Frozen and later reanimated as part of a secret team of cyborg-zombie soldiers remotely controlled by the military (a premise that seems readily adaptable to a video game), Deveraux eventually regains his autonomy and goes rogue after flashing back Page 59 →to what happened in Vietnam; Scott is sent to take him out in a replay of their past conflict. The film clearly frames Deveraux’s rediscovery of his past moral fiber as a means of redeeming America’s culpability for the war; as if to cement the point, Deveraux even realizes his past identity while watching a TV interview of Richard Nixon explaining how he had accepted Gerald Ford’s pardon for the crimes committed during his presidency. Although the plot of Universal Soldier is, compared to Van Damme’s earlier movies, more of an attempt to replicate the success of RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, its linkage of Van Damme’s star image with redeeming the war tells us something about his previous martial-arts films set in places like Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Based on Frank Dux’s dubious account of winning the Kumite, a secretive martial-arts tournament held by the International Fighting Arts Association (Stewart 1980),10 Bloodsport’s Hollywoodized narrative of Dux (Van Damme) deserting the army to compete in the Hong Kong–based tournament in memory of his mentor Senzo Tanaka (Roy Chiao) adds a fictional backstory that nicely allegorizes Dux/Van Damme’s own appropriative relationship to East Asian martial arts. During a flashback, we see young Dux and his friends break into his future mentor’s home to steal a Japanese katana sword, but when caught in the act, Dux begs for the chance to earn the sword by training alongside Tanaka’s son. After Tanaka’s son unexpectedly dies, Dux convinces Tanaka to finish training him so that Dux can fulfill the father’s desire for a new familial generation of Kumite competitors. Despite Tanaka’s initial resistance (due to Dux’s non-Japanese ethnicity), the now-grown Dux completes his training and effectively becomes Tanaka’s surrogate son. In this story of a white man “redeeming” himself by earning his right to the Asian martial arts that he initially attempted to steal—and later confirmed by Dux’s climactic defeat of the murderous (Asian) champ Chong Li (Bolo Yeung)—Bloodsport presents the Euro-American appropriation of martial-arts traditions as justified, much as Van Damme’s own star image inherited Lee’s cinematic legacy. The film even draws a clear contrast between the serenely meditative Dux (depicted, like Tanaka himself, as a first-generation immigrant, though likely a convenient excuse for Van Damme’s thick Belgian accent) and the more stereotypical American represented by his friend and fellow Kumite combatant, Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb), a boorish biker who is not far off in characterization from Big Trouble’s cowboy-like Jack Burton.
In light of the fact that “Ultimate Kumite” was a working title for Mortal Page 61 →Kombat (Mick-Lucifer 2012), Dux and Jackson’s initial scene of Americans bonding abroad, with Dux defeating the boastful Jackson at several coin-op rounds of Karate Champ in their hotel lobby (figs. 13–14), is retrospectively all too appropriate:
JACKSON: You like this kind of fighting, huh? You want to see some real fighting, you can see me fight at the Kumite.
DUX: I’m here, too, for the Kumite.
JACKSON: Aren’t you a little young for full contact?
DUX: Aren’t you a little old for video games?
In this playful exchange, the conflation of the Kumite with a canonical fighting game looks ahead to Bloodsport’s influence on Mortal Kombat via its no-holds-barred tournament setting in a shadowy Hong Kong underworld, depicted not unlike the Chinatown underworld in Big Trouble in Little China. Bloodsport’s main villain, Chong Li, is even played by the hulking Bolo Yeung, who had a similar role as one of Han’s murderous enforcers in Enter the Dragon. Both Chong Li and the similar, long-queued villain Tong Po (Michel Qissi) in Van Damme’s Kickboxer provided visual inspiration for MKI’s four-armed monster Goro—a deeply problematic linkage of Asian-ness with monstrosity that, in a more feminized form, again stretches back to Fu Manchu. As Eric Lichtenfeld (2007, 111–15) notes, Van Damme’s early films for Cannon tended to follow this formula of a shadowy tournament milieu with racially marked villains, and his contract to keep making low-budget exploitation films for Cannon prevented him from achieving the same level of breakout mainstream success as another European expatriate with whom he was initially compared, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet, whereas many of the so-called hardbody action films of the 1980s featured their stars’ passively displayed muscularity, Van Damme’s films combined images of his overdeveloped physique with the kinesthetic bodily movement that has been the primary appeal of martial-arts movies and fighting games alike (Anderson 1998).11
Another notable connection between Bloodsport and Mortal Kombat is its allusion to the Black Dragon Society (KokuryKokuryKokuryūkai’s early origins also derived in part from Uchida’s judo training alongside future members of the group (Adams 1969, 46), including Jigoro Kano, a possible namesake for the Mortal Kombat character who is described as belonging to a “Black Dragon Society” criminal organization.
The Japanese group’s infamous name was later appropriated by American ex-GIs like Count Dante (née John Keehan), a Chicago-based karate expert who founded the Black Dragon Fighting Society (BDFS) in 1969 as a fraternal organization of martial-arts specialists who held periodic Kumite tournaments. A ruthless self-promoter, Dante’s mail-order ads for the 1968 pamphlet World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets appeared in Marvel comics like Master of Kung Fu and other pulp publications during the early-1970s kung fu craze, promising a free BDFS membership card with every order (Taylor 2018). Although Dux, another member of the BDFS, would claim that the “real-life” Senzo Tanaka (also rumored to have been one of Dux’s inventions, much like Randall Brown’s supposed Lin Kuei master) was formerly a member of the KokuryKokuryKokuryūkai. In this regard, Bloodsport’s own mytho-historical backstory helps shed light on not just more of the mélange of East Asian references thrown into Mortal Kombat’s diegesis but also the very process of cultural appropriation involved in doing so, including the one that originally made Van Damme a star.
Playing with Race and Gender
Up to this point, I have described the Mortal Kombat games as drawing upon a mishmash of cultural reference points, primarily drawn from China and Hong Kong, albeit filtered through second- or third-hand Page 63 →derivations like martial-arts films. It seems quite clear from the mise-en-scène (e.g., the ubiquitous dragon symbol, yin-yangs, Buddhist statues, etc.) and music of these games that Mortal Kombat’s blender of influences is the orientalist imaginary—a generalized sense of nationless exoticism vaguely located in “the Asiatic” as “forms, spaces, and personages that many players will find similar to Asia but that are never exclusively Asian” (Patterson 2020, 58). As John Tobias himself admits, the game’s world derives from “a balance between fantasy—which in this case is represented by [E]astern influences—and reality, which is represented by [W]estern influences” (Mick-Lucifer 2012). The Outworld and its denizens are especially infused by orientalist visuals, as if the Orient itself is a sort of dark and mysterious alternate dimension that shares far more with the supernatural Outworld than the comparatively staid backgrounds seen when the Outworld invades Chicago in MK3.
Still, without denying that these American game designers created a blatantly orientalist diegesis, I argue that simply castigating the series as “racist” requires overlooking some important nuance. On one hand, the transnational travel of martial-arts films means they are seldom “pure” national-cultural products to begin with, but rather products of cross-cultural influence. Recall that the 1960s popularity of wuxia films in China and Hong Kong was partly modeled after Japanese chanbara films and that many of the later 1970s kung fu films were deliberately made for export to the United States and elsewhere. Hunt (2003, 13) notes that exported kung fu films are more likely to flirt with (self-)orientalist imagery, in part because they are already the product of pan-Asian influences aiming for broader Asia-Pacific circulation. Much as “Shaolin” continues to circulate in and beyond China as more of a dubious brand name than historical fact (Burton-Rose 2017), Enter the Dragon as a U.S.–Hong Kong coproduction exemplifies this tendency toward “self-orientalism” for foreign marketability, opening the likelihood that, in Bowman’s (2011, 79) words, “many of the subjects called, hailed, or interpellated into position by ‘Asian’ martial arts did not (and do not) necessarily know about, care about, or feel any need to distinguish or discriminate between, say, (Chinese) ‘kung fu’ and (Japanese) ‘Samurai.’” At the same time, though, the immense popularity of Enter the Dragon and other East Asian martial-arts films among Black viewers during the 1970s (and beyond)—often rooted in their identification with underdog heroes fighting against cultural imperialists—demonstrates that this transnational exchange is not simply a tension between white versus nonwhite cultures and that some varieties of cultural appropriation can produce more politically ambivalent ends.
Page 64 →On the other hand, American-based mini-majors like Cannon Films (itself founded and run by two Israelis) relied heavily on presales of international distribution rights (especially for home video sales) in order to finance a large production slate of low-to-medium-budget exploitation films like the early Van Damme vehicles (Wasser 2001, 121–25, 176). This meant that many of the white hardbody action stars—including Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Chuck Norris—whose 1980s popularity partly stemmed from embodying appropriated martial-arts spectacle, also became popular stars in East Asia. (Van Damme’s reputation as “the muscles from Brussels” further complicates this picture, since his heavily accented star image is nominally less “American” than most of his generic peers.) Consequently, small Hong Kong producers would begin copying the kickboxing-type films popularized by Van Damme, making their own homegrown variants in an attempt to stay competitive in the transnational market for martial-arts cinema (Yip 2018, 87).
The Mortal Kombat series coincidentally predated the late-1990s period when Hollywood itself began importing filmmaking talent from post-reunification Hong Kong, from directors (John Woo and Tsui Hark) to fight choreographers (Yuen Woo-ping), to stars (Jackie Chan and Jet Li). Meanwhile, American-made films like The Matrix (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999) and Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003–2004) were joined by successful wuxia films by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [2000]) and Zhang Yimou (Hero [2002]). As Andrew Schroeder (2004, 52, 55) observes, this flow of talent from “East” to “West” reverses the trajectory that Tsui had attempted years earlier when bringing over American special-effects expertise for Zu, with Hollywood now adapting effects like wirework and visual morphs that had been pioneered in Hong Kong. Tsui himself would direct several Hollywood films starring Van Damme during this period, including Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998), but neither is seen as a high point in either’s careers. Indeed, in recounting Mortal Kombat’s origins as a planned Van Damme tie-in, the Chicago Tribune ironically observed, “In the long run, MK’s pixel-ized blood sport [has] proved to have greater staying power than Van Damme’s recent celluloid offerings” (Hollingsworth 1995). What we find, then, is that martial-arts films have typically constituted a “minor” sector of the transnational film market where staying competitive means quickly exploiting a two-way flow of cross-border inspiration from one (often low-budget) variant to another (M. Morris 2004), creating a sort of international contest for one-upmanship not unlike the battling world warriors of Street Fighter II and so many other fighting games.
Page 65 →Much as the opening credits of Bloodsport prefigure SFII by depicting a training montage of different fighters from around the world preparing for the Kumite, I argue that the characters in SFII are more crudely stereotypical than most characters seen in the first few Mortal Kombat games, since each SFII character is explicitly depicted as representing a different country rather than framed as a combatant within Mortal Kombat’s more escapist world of fantastical lore. That is, Mortal Kombat’s overall diegesis still evinces a problematically orientalist vibe, but because most of its characters and character-specific arenas are not blatantly framed as caricatures of real-world nations or cultures, the white American designers’ broad deployment of orientalism operates somewhat differently from Capcom’s more specifically Japanese deployment of stereotype. Nicholas Ware (2016, 161), for example, notes that SFII’s Blanka, a Brazilian beast-man, reflects Japanese racism toward “ethnically Japanese Brazilian immigrants coming to Japan during the economic boom years to work factory jobs,” whose “Japanese ethnicity gave them easy access to work visas” but whose “Brazilian culture and Portuguese language use . . . threatened the perceived homogeneity of Japanese cultural identity.” Rachael Hutchinson (2019, 77–78, 82–83) likewise explains that SFII was the product of a period when Nihonjinron, an essentialist “theory of the Japanese people,” was a cultural buzzword, helping explain the cultural caricatures posited as various “Others,” positioned against the normative Japanese male who serves as the default protagonist in most Japanese-made fighting games.
SFII’s rather stereotypical characters may seem more difficult to take seriously, however, because the candy-colored sprites themselves are so cartoonish in style, perhaps encouraging us to read their “diverse” cast of reductive cultural representations as more campy than outright offensive (Patterson 2020, 54–55). By contrast, Mortal Kombat’s sprites generally rely on the indexicality of real-world actors and are thus more open to casting critiques. Indeed, the portrayal of some Asian characters, such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion, by white actors like Pesina was a questionable choice, but the sprites’ low resolution and the actors’ full body costuming at least obscures their most racially identifying features (with notable exceptions like Ho-Sung Pak’s portrayal of the semi-clothed Liu Kang). Hence, Josh Tsui, a Chinese American employee at Midway, substituted for the unmasked Sub-Zero, revealed in medium close-up in that character’s MKII ending screens. As noted above, the series’ first Black character, Jackson “Jax” Briggs, was originally planned for inclusion in MKI, but Midway decided to create Sonya as a female character with the same Page 66 →Kano-hunting storyline; Jax was instead introduced in MKII as a Special Forces major attempting to rescue Sonya from captivity by Shao Kahn. Although Sonya and Kano ironically proved the least-selected characters in MKI, Midway’s decision to include a sexualized female character (likely inspired by SFII’s Chun-Li) over a heavily muscled Black character—effectively treating femaleness and Blackness as superficially interchangeable nods to “diversity”—may have been motivated as a broader appeal to heterosexual male gamers than to the smaller contingent of nonwhite American gamers.
Meanwhile, some early critics of Mortal Kombat claimed that the games reinforced stereotypes of nonwhite (and especially East Asian) ethnicities. During his U.S. Senate hearing testimony (C-SPAN 1993) over video game violence (see chapter 3), for example, psychologist Eugene Provenzo claimed that video games depict Asians as violent or evil. However, his own published research (1991, 126) cites only one anecdotal quote, from a fourth-grade boy who “wasn’t sure if the Ninja were Chinese or Japanese, but that the Chinese and the Japanese were the enemies because ‘just because they are from Japan they might want to do something different from you. And they are dangerous because they might want to fight with you.’”12 More specifically, Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), argued that games like SFII and MKI potentially reinforced “existing stereotypes of Asians as martial arts experts,” but he admitted that if Asian characters were simply omitted from such games, “then the [Asian] community would feel that the origins of martial arts are belittled and inaccurate.” In the same article, Asianweek writer May Lam (1994) was less concerned, noting that “players can choose to be an Asian or non-Asian character, thereby not automatically restricting Asian characters to the ‘enemy’ role,” and even Aoki concurred that a multiracial cast of characters could demonstrate that “not only Asians know kung fu.” When the first Mortal Kombat live-action film (Paul W. S. Anderson, 1995) was released the following year, Aoki (1995) criticized Japanese American actor Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa for playing the villainous Shang Tsung, arguing that it reinforced the same anti-Japanese xenophobia seen in his earlier Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman, 1993) role, but Aoki would grudgingly admit that Liu Kang’s (Robin Shou) emergence as the film’s “funny, hip-talking” hero helped balance out the film’s racial politics. Much as SFII’s Blanka reflected Japanese xenophobia against Brazilian immigrants, the resurgence of “Yellow Peril” rhetoric around the rumored Japanese corporate buyout of late-1980s America (which was rhetorically linked to Japan’s Page 67 →1980s success with exporting cars, computers, and video games to the States) was indeed a justifiable concern on Aoki’s part. The fact that so many of the Mortal Kombat imitator games of 1994–95 (see chapter 4) relied on crude, undeniably racist stereotypes implies that competing designers perceived such broad characterizations as a potentially copyable element of Midway’s success.
Still, much as Bloodsport’s Frank Dux supposedly earns the right to appropriate Tanaka’s knowledge/sword through a perseverance that “transcends” race, many American gamers mistook the Mortal Kombat games for a Japanese franchise, based on its overall gameplay quality. This was due to the predominant (if reductive) association between Asians and martial-arts mastery, both on- and offscreen—to the extent that being said to have “Asian hands” is an orientalist compliment among white fighting gamers (Harper 2014, 113–14; Goto-Jones 2016b, 113–14). Indeed, the popular association between Japan and martial-arts fighting games is a notable example of a specific game genre that, unlike many other genres, retains its “cultural odor” when released outside Japan (Iwabuchi 2002, 27). Nevertheless, Mortal Kombat’s inclusion of blood and gore marked the games as American products in a different way, to the extent that they were censored (either banned outright or toned down with green “blood” sprites) in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other East Asian nations (Ng 2008, 220).13
Rachael Hutchinson (2007, 287) notes that fighting games that use blatant stereotypes may offend and thereby detract from a game’s enjoyment for some minority players. Meanwhile, some white male players might reinforce existing racial or gender prejudices by, say, always choosing white avatars when pitted against nonwhite characters or taking special pleasure in defeating female characters (289–91). Yet, much as I suggested in the previous chapter that players are far more likely to select characters based on respective skill sets (also see Hutchinson 2015) or the desire to see certain finishing moves, and not out of a strong investment in a character’s backstory, Hutchinson (2007, 295) compellingly argues that most players are far likelier to hone their skills across a demographically diverse variety of characters over time, with the sheer diversity of playable characters undercutting the potential for racial and gender stereotyping.
Were imbalances built into gameplay through weakening the skills of nonwhite or female characters relative to other combatants, that would indicate bias on the part of game designers, but the fact that MKII’s top-tier characters (including Mileena, Jax, Kitana, Liu Kang, and Page 68 →Kung Lao) are all female or nonwhite (Cureton 1994; Char-Li, Vega, and Guzman 1994, 82) suggests that this was not the case here. Unlike a martial-arts film, where the viewer is given one or more sympathetic protagonists with which to identify, the fighting game continually returns to the Character Select screen, since one is not obliged to remain the same character after each two-player match or after suffering a defeat in one-player mode. Following Hutchinson (2007), then, this means that moral or political alignments between player and avatar are often fragmentary or tenuous at best. Still, a loud contingent of racist gamers led an online backlash against Jax’s Mortal Kombat 11 (NetherRealm Studios, 2019) character ending—wherein the victorious Black character, having gained the magical power to control time itself, travels centuries into the past to prevent transatlantic chattel slavery altogether. Whether accusing the game’s creators of injecting Black Lives Matter–era identity politics into the game or deploying the white-supremacist canard that the game promotes “white genocide” (Fahey 2019), this outsize response to a common trope of alternate-history speculative fiction supports Hutchinson’s (2007) caveat that racist attitudes brought into the game’s reception by a subgroup of angry gamers may be a stronger force than in-game representations themselves.
The social contexts for playing fighting games have never been politically neutral zones, since American coin-op arcades have long been seen as a homosocial “boyzone,” where female players were less common or located at different games than many of the adolescent male players—the latter often silently “cruising” each other to ascertain potential play partners with whom to express male homosocial intimacy via the gender-appropriate means of (the avatar’s) fists. As Carly A. Kocurek (2015a, 181, 196) observes, present-day (male) players’ memories of arcades as male-dominated spaces may be rather selective, with the recently expanding demographic of female gamers and the overall decline of the coin-op market producing a politically regressive nostalgia for the arcade as a gender-segregated space. This regressive nostalgia among a gamer subculture whose cultural reputation for “nerdiness” already compromises their (self-)perceived masculinity helps account for the politically reactionary defense of eroticized female characters, homophobic insults, and the sexual harassment of female game players and designers that is perhaps more common within the fandom of fighting and first-person-shooter games than in less violent genres (Skolnik and Conway 2017, 12–16).14 Indeed, despite the comparisons that professional e-sports gamers make between themselves and professional athletes training for more traditionalPage 69 → sports, fighting games foreground the sheer disjunction between actual and virtual performances of physical and athletic prowess.
Despite the title of their oft-cited anthology From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (1998, 8–9) have very little to say about Mortal Kombat itself, apart from briefly citing male gamers’ gravitation toward fighting games as emblematic of gendered differences in gameplay, thus positing Mortal Kombat as a cultural “bad object.” These gendered tastes may be roughly analogous to those also seen among female fans of horror cinema, who predominantly (but not exclusively) dislike more violent and gory subgenres (Cherry 2002), but it is important to note that exceptions will always exist. Among recorded examples that would complicate selective nostalgia about arcades, for instance, consider the nine-year-old girl who wrote to a Chicago Tribune advice column asking how she could make new friends, since all of the girls at her school made fun of her for liking video games, “especially Mortal Kombat II” (Wendi 1995). Such comments suggest that, even if minimized in the discourse, female Mortal Kombat fans have always been present, especially once ports for home consoles allowed the games to travel beyond the traditional boyzones of American arcades. As a more recent example, Lisa Nakamura (2019, 135–36) cites a Black female gamer who professionally competes in Mortal Kombat tournaments but often receives both racist and sexist abuse from her online opponents under the guise of “trash talk.”
For some critics, the Mortal Kombat games became unfettered celebrations of masculinity, with female characters supposedly depicted as castrating dragon ladies (Kinder 1996, 34; Hunt 2003, 121, 132) whose challenge to phallic power aligned them with the “monstrous-feminine” (Creed 1993), not unlike the villainous female roles in some martial-arts films and Japanese “pinky violence” films. Although not as scantily clad as, say, the female combatants in the Dead or Alive series (Tecmo [JP], 1996–), I agree that Mortal Kombat’s female characters are visually framed for their sex appeal as well as their fighting prowess. Examples include their sexualized Kiss of Death fatalities, Kitana’s fan as a coquettish prop-of-femininity-turned-deadly-weapon, or Mileena’s vagina dentata–inspired MKII fatality (leaning in to kiss her defeated opponent but instead sucking them into her sharp-toothed mouth and spitting out a pile of bones). Long-running rumors about “nudalities” for these female characters were yet another product of the arcades as an adolescent male hothouse, growing from the same linkage between sexuality and death already seen in the Kiss of Death fatalities (see fig. 12). As John Tobias admits:
Page 70 →Our player demographic was primarily a hardcore male audience and so the look and design of our female characters pandered to them back then just as they do today. I have no problem being apologetic for that. The only solace I can offer is that . . . those characters had very strong, atypical female archetypes . . . and at the very least could kick the hell out of their male counterparts. (Mick-Lucifer 2012)
This more optimistic take gained an unlikely echo of legitimation in Judge Richard Posner’s majority ruling in a 2001 case striking down an Indianapolis ordinance that would limit minors’ access to violent video games, in which Posner describes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as, “surprisingly, a feminist violent video game.” Even as a female character’s “success depends on the player’s skill,” he suggests that “the game is feminist in depicting a woman as fully capable of holding her own in violent combat with heavily armed men.”15 As noted earlier, game balance is indeed one important measure of parity between characters of different races or genders, yet this hardly explains why, by the series’ third game, most of the female characters were increasingly attired like BDSM dommes, their cleavage prominently displayed in precariously low-cut vinyl outfits.
The wuxia influence on Mortal Kombat may be significant here, since unlike kung fu films, women are often as powerful as men in wuxia films, although there are plenty of more recent examples of powerful women in action cinema as well, some of whom are more blatantly sexualized than others (see Tasker 1993; Schubart 2007). Because female players are more likely to feel alienated from such hypersexualized characters (Hutchinson 2015), the use of flesh-and-blood actors to indexically depict Mortal Kombat’s increasingly sexualized female characters only raises the political stakes of such male-dominated design choices. Even Elizabeth Malecki, who played Sonya (one of the series’ more conservatively attired women) in MKI, recalls wanting her character “to be a positive influence for girls, and especially to both be fit and to be confident and strong.” But when the controversy over the game’s violence broke out in late 1993, she found that no teachers or principals would accept her offer to visit school classrooms with her positive message (McCarthy 2018). The wider implications of this politically charged moment, especially as the Mortal Kombat games migrated from the boyzone of arcades into the comparatively mixed-gender space of the family home, is the subject of the next chapter.
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Mortal Kombat Timeline: The Complete Story Explained
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2023-09-13T14:57:18+00:00
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Now that Mortal Kombat 1 has finally been released, here's absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about the Mortal Kombat timeline and story up until this point.
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Den of Geek
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https://www.denofgeek.com/games/mortal-kombat-timeline-story-explained/
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He and Liu Kang went off to talk to the Elder Gods, who did absolutely nothing, claiming that technically, Kahn hadn’t done anything wrong…yet. While that was going on, the Earthrealm warriors fought off the Lin Kuei. That was easy enough, but prior to the attack, Kahn decided to kill Shang Tsung and use his life forces to enhance Sindel. Single-handedly, this stronger version of Sindel killed Jade, Stryker, Sub-Zero, Kabal, Jax, Smoke, and Kitana. Nightwolf sacrificed himself to finally stop her. Raiden and Liu returned to find Kitana dying. Liu had finally had enough of Raiden’s foolish decisions and called him out on it.
Desperate, Raiden went to the Netherrealm to suggest a deal with Quan Chi. Quan Chi had no need as he already had a deal going with Shao Kahn: in exchange for his services, he got to keep the souls of the warriors who fell during the war between Earthrealm and Outworld. He then had the undead versions of everyone from Sindel to Kung Lao attack Raiden. Raiden left empty-handed, but Quan Chi did make sure to give him some inspiration to figure out how to stop Kahn.
“HE MUST WIN!” meant Shao Kahn. If Liu Kang fought him, Kahn would be warded off, but he’d survive to fight another day and eventually kill them all. If Kahn simply merged the realms like the egomaniac he was, the Elder Gods would finally have reason to act on it. Quan Chi had set him up to fail all along! Liu thought the plan was nonsense and went after Kahn anyway. Raiden got in Liu’s way and accidentally killed him. Begging for forgiveness, Raiden was horrified when Liu cursed his name before dying from the wounds.
Kahn merged the realms and became stronger. The Elder Gods powered up Raiden and helped him defeat Kahn. They then tore his soul to pieces. Shao Kahn was dead. Finally. In response, Raiden’s amulet fixed itself.
It came at a terrible cost. Of the good guys, only Raiden, Johnny, and Sonya survived. As they left, Quan Chi appeared to admire Kahn’s destroyed helmet. Everything was going according to plan. Shinnok would escape the Netherrealm soon and there would be barely anyone to oppose them this time.
The Netherrealm Invasion Redux (Mortal Kombat X)
The odds were worse than the original timeline’s war against Shinnok. Not only were the good guys reduced to just Raiden, Fujin, Johnny, Sonya, and Kenshi, but the bad guys had a bunch of resurrected and corrupted heroes on their side. Despite all that, Johnny Cage still defeated Shinnok. It turned out that Johnny was part of a special bloodline of Mediterranean warriors bred and trained to kill gods. When Sonya was in peril, Johnny’s genetic powers kicked in and he was able to overpower Shinnok and imprison him into his own magical amulet.
Quan Chi mortally wounded Johnny and tried to recreate him as one of his revenant soldiers. Raiden used his own magic to combat it and not only did it save Johnny’s life, but it returned all the other revenant warriors in the room to regular human form. This included Jax, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero (Kuai Liang, in his human form). Raiden finally had a way of saving his fallen friends from damnation. Unfortunately, Quan Chi escaped, so nuts to that.
After the war, Johnny and Sonya got married and had a daughter, Cassie. The union was short-lived and they got divorced, mainly due to Sonya’s Special Forces duties. Jax was too haunted by his memories as a demon soldier and settled down with his psychiatrist. They also had a daughter, Jacqui. Sub-Zero killed Sektor and rebuilt the Lin Kuei from the ground up.
Scorpion didn’t know what to do with himself, but Kenshi reached out to him and helped him reconnect with his humanity. A man once again, Scorpion decided to rebuild the Shirai Ryu, recruiting those who also lost loved ones.
Raiden hid Shinnok’s amulet away from reality by use of the Kamidogu pieces, now in the form of daggers. He gave them to different people to protect against evil.
Elsewhere, with Shao Kahn gone, his daughter-of-sorts Mileena took the throne in Outworld. Kotal (Buluc), who had worked as Shao Kahn’s underling over the years, convinced others to follow him and forced Mileena into hiding during a sudden uprising. Baraka was one of the victims of this little episode, killed by D’Vorah, a creepy bug lady. Now named Kotal Kahn, the new emperor’s inner circle included D’Vorah, the mercenary Erron Black, Ermac, Reptile, and the bloodthirsty savage duo of Ferra and Torr.
The Reiko Accords (Mortal Kombat X Comic Series)
Kenshi was undercover as a member of the Red Dragon, but his cover was blown. The Red Dragon knew more about him than he did, including how he had an illegitimate son with an old flame named Suchin. Kenshi was too late to save Suchin, but was able to protect their son, Takeda. Kenshi handed Takeda to Scorpion to protect and raise while Kenshi went off to destroy the Red Dragon himself.
Havik orchestrated a plot that cursed the Kamidogu daggers and possessed certain warriors. Using Reiko and others as pawns, Havik worked to summon Shinnok’s amulet and use it for himself as a way to spread chaos through the realms. His machinations caused the deaths of Mavado, Kintaro, Reiko, Goro’s father, Kotal Kahn’s father, and the entire Shirai Ryu (barring Scorpion and Takeda).
While Havik’s threat was great enough that even Kotal Kahn and Mileena decided to work together against him, he was done in by Takeda and Scorpion. Scorpion decapitated Havik, teleported into the Netherrealm with the still-alive head, and handed it over to Moloch and Drahmin for the sake of torture.
After the adventure, Kotal Kahn and Sonya agreed on a pact known as the Reiko Accords that made them uneasy allies.
The Kombat Kids (Mortal Kombat X)
20 years had passed since the Netherrealm War. During that time, Sub-Zero made amends with Scorpion and proved to him that their entire rivalry was based on the manipulations of Quan Chi. To atone, Scorpion dedicated himself to making Quan Chi suffer.
Johnny Cage organized a task force of youngsters to train so that they could take over for the old guard. This included Takeda, Cassie Cage, Jacqui Briggs, and Kung Lao’s cousin, Kung Jin. Meanwhile, Kano got his hands on Shinnok’s amulet and sold it to Mileena to help her regain her spot as empress of Outworld.
Cassie’s team went to Outworld to get aid from Kotal Kahn. Kotal got the wrong idea and tried to have them killed, but cooler heads prevailed and the two parties worked together to apprehend Mileena. D’Vorah executed her. Afterward, Kotal Kahn refused to return Shinnok’s amulet as Raiden had failed to keep it safe twice over. Little did Kotal realize that D’Vorah had been working for Quan Chi and Shinnok all along and this was part of her plan.
Thanks to Jax coming back from retirement, the Special Forces were able to apprehend Quan Chi. Scorpion then appeared and forced everyone to watch him beat and torture the sorcerer, not caring about the fate of others. D’Vorah showed up and handed Quan Chi the amulet. His final words were a spell that would resurrect Shinnok…just before Scorpion chopped Quan Chi’s head off. Not only was Shinnok back, but the fallen heroes could never be turned human again. Only then did Scorpion realize his folly.
Shinnok took over the Jinsei Chamber and poisoned the energies with his evil, all while torturing Johnny Cage. Cassie’s crew, alongside the Lin Kuei, fought through Kotal Kahn’s forces and Shinnok’s revenant warriors. Jacqui even avenged her father by defeating Ermac.
Cassie faced Shinnok’s true form. Seeing her father in peril caused her powers to kick in and she was able to win just like Johnny did 20 years earlier. To purify the Jinsei, Raiden had himself placed within its energies. Shinnok was defeated, the world was saved, and Johnny and Sonya reconnected.
But it wasn’t all a happy ending. Raiden’s sacrifice caused him to become corrupted and he started wielding Shinnok’s amulet as a weapon. He became like his darker self from the original timeline, ready to wipe out anything he considered a possible threat to Earthrealm. To show he meant business, he traveled to the Netherrealm and warned the new rulers – the revenant versions of Liu Kang and Kitana – by throwing the living and suffering head of Shinnok at their feet.
He also tried to start a war with Outworld, but Kotal Kahn held him off by invoking Mortal Kombat. Thanks to the help of Bo’ Rai Cho (Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Shujinko’s master), Earthrealm was defeated and Outworld was deemed safe from Raiden’s wrath. Still, Raiden was able to trick Cassie Cage into killing Shujinko, thereby preventing the resurrection of Onaga in this timeline.
Kronika’s Revenge (Mortal Kombat 11)
The Titan Kronika was the mother of Shinnok and Cetrion, the Goddess of Virtue. Kronika controlled the sands of time and wished for reality to favor both her children, meaning endless conflict between good and evil through the ages. In her frustration, Shinnok’s beheading had upset the balance in favor of good.
While Kronika could manipulate the lives of humans, her powers did not work on gods. She had, in fact, been attempting to perfect reality by creating timeline after timeline, only for Raiden to screw everything up for her no matter how hard she tried. In many of these timelines, she manipulated Liu Kang into fighting Raiden, as the two of them together were a potential threat to her.
Meanwhile, Raiden led the Special Forces on a mission into the Netherrealm to cripple Liu Kang and Kitana’s forces and destroy their castle base. While successful, it came at the cost of Sonya’s life. Kronika appeared in the Netherrealm shortly after to rewind the castle back to normal and recruit the revenant versions of Liu Kang and Kitana. Her plan was to create a new timeline where Raiden did not exist. She just needed certain items to help amp up her abilities to make it possible.
To help with her plan, Kronika created a massive time rift and various heroes and villains from the era of Mortal Kombat II came into the present. While many were able to interact with their counterparts, gods exist under different rules and the sinister, modern version of Raiden vanished completely. His younger self was horrified to discover what kind of monster he would become while most of the others were confronted by the tragedies they were destined to endure. The visiting good guys included Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Kitana, Sonya, Jax, Johnny Cage, and Jade. Obviously, the recent death of modern Sonya made things awkward. That and the two Johnny Cages coexisting.
Kronika mainly recruited warriors by promising them a rewarding life in the new timeline, even if her plan was for constant war. In the present, she had her unkillable servant Geras, Cetrion, D’Vorah, Kano, Frost, and Jax (tricked into helping, as Kronika exploited his guilt-ridden PTSD). From the past, she brought in Shao Kahn, Skarlet, Noob Saibot, Kano, Erron Black, Kabal, Scorpion, Sektor, and Cyrax. Frost, feeling that the Lin Kuei had lost their way and Raiden never gave her the respect she deserved, restarted the Cyber Initiative and had herself turned into a cyborg. Many Lin Kuei warriors were kidnapped and transformed into cannon fodder for Kronika.
Turned out that Kotal Kahn and Jade were lovers before all this and this time rift was a welcome reunion. The rift also brought back Baraka and his Tarkatan race, who Kotal had previously wiped out completely. Attempting genocide on them once again, Kotal was stopped by Jade and the two ended up being captured by Shao Kahn.
Needing soldiers to face Kronika’s armies, Kitana rallied Baraka and Sheeva to join her side, as Shao Kahn would only make them slaves. Shao Kahn crippled Kotal Kahn in battle, but the execution was interrupted by Kitana’s uprising. Kitana sliced Shao Kahn’s throat, wounding him horribly, albeit not mortally. Kotal stepped down as ruler of Outworld and gave the spot to “Kitana Kahn.”
Speaking of dead characters, Sektor self-destructed, taking the Special Forces base out with him. Sonya ended up killing the younger version of Kano, which in turn killed the modern Kano. The modern Scorpion died from a poison attack from D’Vorah. The incident inspired his younger, demonic self to switch sides and join the heroes. Cetrion killed all of the other Elder Gods, choosing familial loyalty over morality.
Out of desperation, Raiden wielded Shinnok’s amulet and it made him turn more violent and hateful. But then a fight with the younger Liu Kang sparked Raiden’s memories of their multiple battles in previous timelines. Raiden realized that he and Liu Kang working together was the key to victory. Kronika mocked the thunder god and stole Liu Kang away.
Raiden led a siege on Kronika’s keep in the Netherrealm. Kronika’s demons and cyborgs were met by Shaolin monks, Special Forces soldiers, Outworld warriors, and so on. The unkillable Geras was taken out by being wrapped in an anchor and dropped into an endless ocean of blood. Modern Jax realized he was on the wrong side and joined the heroes. Revenant Liu Kang absorbed the soul and power of the younger Liu Kang, only to still lose to Raiden. Raiden grabbed Liu Kang and figured out a solution: he fused his soul to Liu Kang’s. Liu became a god of fire and lightning, not only giving him the power to lead the charge but also making him immune to Kronika’s manipulations.
Kronika rewound the siege, so while Liu Kang was unaffected, his allies were gone. The two battled it out as Kronika brought them back to the dawn of time. Liu Kang won the battle, burned Kronika into glass, and then shattered her. Raiden left Liu Kang’s body, choosing to live as a mortal. Still a god, Liu Kang would be the new keeper of time and would sculpt a new timeline. Mortal Raiden agreed to use the rest of his natural life to help mentor the new god.
Shang Tsung’s Betrayal (Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath)
Before Liu Kang could get too far, a portal opened up, revealing Shang Tsung, Fujin, and Nightwolf. Apparently, the three refused to join Kronika’s side and were banished from time itself. Only Shang Tsung’s sorcery could free them. Shang warned Liu Kang to stop, as he needed Kronika’s magical crown to successfully wield her hourglass. If he did not, all of reality would fall apart. Unfortunately, Kronika’s crown was destroyed in their final battle.
Shang suggested sending himself, Fujin, and Nightwolf into the events of the previous story to steal away the crown. After a private conversation with Fujin, Liu Kang accepted these terms.
The trio appeared around the time Kitana had wounded Shao Kahn and took over as ruler of Outworld. Shang’s master plan involved kidnapping Sindel’s revenant and resurrecting her to counter the eventual fight with Cetrion. While there were bumps in the plan, it all seemed to work out and the heroes even started to lower their guard around Shang a bit more. Fujin was given possession of the crown.
Of course, Shang Tsung and Sindel were scheming together. They rescued Shao Kahn and changed the course of the war. The likes of Sheeva, Kotal Kahn, and Kung Lao were killed as Shao Kahn reclaimed his throne. Shang took Raiden’s form and insisted Fujin hand over the crown. After a pregnant pause, Fujin did so. Enhanced by the crown, Shang absorbed the souls of Fujin and Raiden before betraying his other allies and absorbing the souls of Shao Kahn and Sindel. Shang Tsung then had the power necessary to kill Kronika.
Fire God Liu Kang appeared from a portal. He set all of this up and let his friends take the fall, knowing that it was the only way for this scenario to succeed. The two rivals faced off and Liu Kang won. Shang Tsung turned to dust as Liu Kang placed the crown on his own head. He then became a Titan and began work on a brand-new timeline.
Though as he would later learn, his victory against Shang Tsung was not as cut-and-dry as he originally thought…
The New Era (Mortal Kombat 1)
Lord Liu Kang fashioned a new reality with the magic hourglass. After eons of planning and setting things up with Geras at his side, Liu Kang realized he missed personally dealing with mortals and was afraid that his role as Keeper of Time would drive him mad as it did Kronika. He did away with his nigh-omnipotence and instead downgraded himself to God of Fire and Protector of Earthrealm. Geras secretly hid Liu Kang’s lost power away, feeling he might one day need it.
In this new timeline, Liu Kang bartered peace with Outworld’s rulers Jerrod and Sindel. Every hundred years, they would have a fighting tournament between Outworld and Earthrealm as a celebration. This worked out and the two sides had an equal set of wins over the years. Liu Kang did feel that the upcoming one was incredibly important for Earthrealm to win because Outworld’s General Shao was becoming bolder and an Outworld victory would increase his chances of desiring an invasion.
General Shao was, of course, Shao Kahn reimagined in the new timeline. Liu Kang tried to put certain villains in positions where they would either feel sated by their success or would be toiling in obscurity. The latter included Shang Tsung (a down-on-his-luck snake oil salesman) and Quan Chi (a miner). A being named Damashi, looking and sounding an awful lot like Kronika, interfered and told the two that they were destined to help her rule the realms. The two became skilled sorcerers and wormed their way into the Outworld government. Quan Chi became a trusted advisor with a knack for prophecy and Shang Tsung was put to task with treating Princess Mileena’s disease Tarkat, which was gradually transforming her into a toothy, bloodthirsty monster.
At some point, Jerrod had been murdered. Sindel ruled Outworld with her daughters Mileena and Kitana at her side. Mileena was the heir to the throne, but her disease and secret relationship with her bodyguard Tanya risked her role being compromised. Kitana was loyal to her and tried to keep her on track, all while expressing she had no interest in becoming Empress.
With the help of the Lin Kuei, who were dedicated to Earthrealm’s protection, Liu Kang gathered his champions for the upcoming tournament. They were faded movie star Johnny Cage, yakuza member Kenshi, braggart farmer Kung Lao, and his humbler best friend Raiden. Raiden earned his spot as Earthrealm’s representative and was granted lightning abilities by Liu Kang.
The tournament was a success for the most part. Raiden had defeated every challenger Sindel had thrown at him, including General Shao. The only issue was when Shao got drunk on wine and paranoia during a banquet which almost caused an incident. As it turned out, Quan Chi had told Sindel and Shao a fake prophecy of Liu Kang conquering Outworld and Shao was itching to prevent it. So much so that he was preparing to work against Sindel to protect Outworld.
After the tournament had ended, Geras appeared to tell Liu Kang about how Shang Tsung’s planned life was disrupted by a mysterious benefactor and he was manipulating Sindel. Liu Kang sent some Earthrealm heroes to investigate, but due to a misunderstanding, he fueled the ire between the realms and made war seem more likely. Kung Lao, Johnny, and Kenshi (sans eyes) returned home with the help of Baraka, Reptile, and Ashrah, all heroes in this reality.
Shang Tsung and Quan Chi intended to weaponize Onaga’s mummified army like in the original timeline. They were able to recruit many warriors to their side. The most notable one is Sub-Zero (Bi-Han): the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei who grew so restless using the Lin Kuei to protect Earthrealm that it corrupted his goals. There was also Havik, a citizen of Seido who wanted to burn it all down in the name of anarchy, and Rain, the High Mage of Outworld who followed Shang Tsung to increase his sorcery abilities.
Quan Chi had also created this reality’s Ermac, made from the souls of those buried in a forest cemetery. This included the ghost of Jerrod, who was later able to take control over Ermac’s body and join with the heroes.
Desperate to prevent a war between realms and wanting to stop Shang Tsung’s plans by any means, Liu Kang came clean about his role as a former Keeper of Time to Sindel, while also showing evidence of Shang’s evil. While they succeeded in defeating Shang Tsung, Sindel was mortally injured. Her soul was absorbed into Ermac’s body, allowing her and Jerrod to be together again. Mileena became the new Empress of Outworld.
Damashi showed herself and revealed her true form. It was shockingly “Titan Shang Tsung,” a more powerful Shang Tsung from a parallel timeline. It turned out that the epic battle between Liu Kang and Shang Tsung over Kronika’s hourglass in the previous game had unforeseen consequences. It created not only a timeline where Shang Tsung won the fight and became Keeper of Time but also timelines where the other warriors were the ones who usurped Kronika. Titan Shang Tsung wanted to wipe out Liu Kang’s vision completely and then conquer the other timelines.
Liu Kang was able to re-bond with the energies that turned him into a Titan. He summoned the Titan versions of his allies from different timelines. Together, they brought together an army of heroes from the multiverse while Titan Shang Tsung brought together an army of villains. The two sides had a gruesome battle on a pyramid in Titan Shang Tsung’s timeline, ending in the death of Titan Shang Tsung. The survivors returned to their correct timelines.
Hours later, a Titan version of Havik appeared in the aftermath, angry that he missed all the chaos. He intended to create another multiversal battle, but he would make it last.
Back in the main timeline, Johnny Cage helped ease the public into one day accepting the existence of Outworld by creating a Mortal Kombat Cinematic Universe. Kenshi, with the help of government agent Jackson Briggs, was able to take down the yakuza. Afterward, the two founded the Outworld Investigation Agency. Scorpion (Kuai Liang in this reality) and Smoke escaped the Lin Kuei to start their own ninja clan (the Shirai Ryu) and later recruited a young Hanzo Hasashi. Raiden also trained with them to help him control any possible anger issues.
General Shao and his second-in-command Reiko tried to take over Outworld with their own army, but Kitana was able to lead Outworld’s army to draw them back. Shao unleashed Onaga from imprisonment, hoping to one day weaponize him. Reiko attempted to tame Onaga, knowing it was probably going to cost him his life.
Havik (the regular one, not the Titan one from the cliffhanger) offered to protect Rain in exchange for his help. Rain used his water magic to create a massive tidal wave that annihilated Seido’s capital. While Havik was ecstatic about liberating his people, the massive loss of life overwhelmed Rain and he returned to Outworld to surrender himself and accept punishment.
The process of regaining his power caused Liu Kang to lose his immortality. He would still live for eons, but he was no longer eternal, and he needed a successor as Keeper of Time. He chose Geras to take over. Geras now watches neighboring timelines, ever vigilant for the next threat to come.
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Mortal Kombat 11's Kano Can Teach You A Ton About Australia
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[
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[
"Edmond Tran"
] |
2019-12-12T01:58:32+00:00
|
Here's what our good mate Kano can explain about the land down under.
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en
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https://www.gamespot.com/a/bundles/gamespotsite/images/favicon.ico
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GameSpot
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https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-11s-kano-can-teach-you-a-ton-about-a/1100-6466837/
|
OPINION -- When I first saw Kano's ugly mug in Mortal Kombat 1, I hated him. I really hated him. He had a bullshit knife projectile, an even more bullshit cannonball roll, and I mean just look at the guy--he wore a bright white gi, a dumb bandolier (for what?), and a cheap-looking metal mask. I hated the sight of him, especially because he was the one Obviously Bad Guy in the original roster. He was also just straight-up the least interesting character. In a game with ninjas and magical projectiles, Kano was just a boring goon with a knife; a waste of space.
He didn't get any better in the following 26 years, suffering from some questionable redesigns--especially the one where he started wearing a lock of Sonya Blade's hair around his neck like a creep. In Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, instead of being a man of Japanese-American descent, Kano was retconned to be Australian, a supposed nod to the misinterpreted accent of Trevor Goddard's (RIP) cockney version of Kano in the 1995 Mortal Kombat film. This was an interesting decision, but not one that fundamentally changed how unexciting Kano was.
That is, until 2019. In Mortal Kombat 11, a game filled to the brim with objectively top-notch character redesigns, Kano is suddenly all about his Australianness. It's a great move, the perfect move even, and what's more, this redesign is executed in an unprecedented, brilliant way. In fact, MK11's Kano is the best and most authentic Australian character in any video game, ever. Yes, even more Australian than Roger, the playable kangaroo in Tekken.
Hear me out: In Mortal Kombat 11, there's a depth to Kano's character writing that goes beyond an imagined upbringing and accent that elevates him far beyond just a caricature. You can see it in the way he carries himself. The humorous Australianisms, throwaway swears, and casual "mates" that drop naturally into his quips. His more relaxed personality and grounded appearance--he looks like a dad you might meet at a beach BBQ, downing beers with his gut hanging out, embarrassing you in front of your friends with his 70s pornstar moustache and misguided, chauvinistic jokes.
Every little detail about Kano in Mortal Kombat 11 is in service of fleshing out his new personality--no longer just a Crime Dude with a knife, he personifies the mischievous, rowdy, and give-no-shits nature of the best and worst Australian society has to offer (often associated with being a "larrikin," a dated but idealised embodiment of these tropes).
It's rounded out with a stellar voiceover job by JB Blanc, who I was convinced was a native Aussie until I looked him up (he played Gustavo Fring's personal surgeon in Breaking Bad!), which sounds genuine without being over-the-top and cartoonish like say, Junkrat in Overwatch (though I love him too). Kano in Mortal Kombat 11 is endlessly entertaining to me--he is the world citizen's Johnny Cage.
I friggen' love Kano now. I love how well he represents my country despite being a baddie. I love how you can learn so much about Australian culture by simply observing and studying Kano. In fact, I love the details about his character so much that I spent far too much time ignoring my regular work and compiling this handy dossier of Kano-isms to teach you about Australia. Hey look, you've read this far, might as well keep on learning with...
KANO: A CULTURAL GLOSSARY
KNIVES
Kano's primary weapons of choice are his signature knives. Now, the obvious connection you might be drawing here is the well-weathered Crocodile Dundee quote ("That's not a knife...") but there's a more modern line to be drawn--Australia's strict gun laws. It is incredibly difficult to own any kind of firearm in this country unless you have a very good and specific reason, as it damn well should be. Kano doesn't have the luxury of bringing firearms into a fighting tournament like literally all the American fighters, so I imagine he just had to get really good with whatever he could obtain from the shops easily. Sure, he's supposed to be an inter-dimensional arms dealer or something, but according to Baraka in Mortal Kombat 11, all the guns he provided to the Tarkatans were busted anyway so who the hell knows?
BEERS
On top of a seemingly infinite supply of knives to throw, in Mortal Kombat 11 Kano also has a seemingly infinite supply of beer to drink. And he drinks. A lot. There's an intro animation where he drinks a beer. There's an outro animation where he drinks a beer. There's a between-rounds animation where he drinks a beer while spacing himself out for the next round. One of Kano's fatalities has him sculling (quickly drinking) a beer, glassing (hitting) his opponent with the bottle, and then waltzing with their corpse like the fun-loving guy he is.
Drinking is Kano's most endearing new character trait to me, because of how true to character it is--Australians love to drink, for better or worse. We have one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the world. It is a central part of our cultural identity. It's part of our day-to-day. Pubs are places you take your families for lunch. One of our best former prime ministers was famous for inhaling beers, and even has a brew named in his honor. Hell, I had a couple of beers at lunch before writing this. Drinking defines our best times and our worst times--having a laugh, and having a brawl. Kano's drinking behaviors exemplify both.
PISSING
Kano's default intro animation sees him pissing on the floor before a fight ("Bloke's gotta mark his territory"). It doesn't matter if it's outside in the dirt, in a robotics lab, or on a nice glossy stage. His brutality victory animation also sees him piss on the floor. I mean, I get it--a person who drinks as much as Kano is going to need to piss a lot, and honestly, when you're camping or driving through the rural areas of Australia you'd be forgiven for pissing on the side of the road or by a tree--only about 0.2% of Australia's landmass is urbanised (though 90% of the population occupies that 0.2%, it's wild). After a big night of drinking I could understand if you needed to piss in an alley or something, even though it's legally a punishable offence here.
But Kano's pissing habits are more likely an indicator of his disregard for the self-seriousness of Mortal Kombat's pageantry, which is definitely an Australian attitude to take. However--I just want to make it clear that we don't all piss on the street at every opportunity, okay? Okay.
SHIRT, NONE
Kano doesn't wear a shirt in his MK11 default costume. He definitely isn't the most toned fighter on the roster, though he does alright ("Over 50 and still a rippa!"). It's a dad-bod flaunt more than anything, and like most dads he's probably reached an age where he doesn't give a shit anyway, especially when you're in Outer Realm and it's friggen' hot. It's hot in Australia, too. Our summers regularly hit over 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit), even higher with climate change, so it's not a big deal to see people walk around without shirts. You do what you gotta do, and Kano is a practical guy.
KANO, THE NAME
I have no idea where series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias actually got the name "Kano" from. My best guess, via Google, is that "Kano" is a Japanese name that loosely translates to "masculine power", and given that his original nationality was Japanese-American, I guess that checks out. It still checks out in Mortal Kombat 11--Kano is a pretty manly middle-aged white man, after all. But man, Kano works so well as an Aussie-as-hell Australian name.
We like to truncate long words in Australia, but not only that, we like to add an "O" to the end of words, too. Avocado? Avo. Liquor store? Bottle-O. Gas (service) station? Servo. Afternoon? Arvo. I could go on forever. With Kano's retconned nationality, I could 100% believe that "Kano" is just an Australian nickname for something longer. What could that be? Kane? Kayden? Caleb? It could be anything. But it works--"Yea mate, Kano's (Kayden's) gone to the servo (gas station) to pick up some durries (cigarettes)".
SHITS, NONE GIVEN (See also: SELF-DEPRECIATION)
There was a thing in entertainment news recently, where middle-aged American actress Anjelica Houston threw shade at the middle-aged cast of Poms for, what I can gather, doing what she thought was a dumb middle-aged movie idea. Jacqui Weaver, a beloved middle-aged Australian actress who is part of the Poms cast, publically retorted in a separate interview, seemingly without any regard for social etiquette or self-preservation, saying simply, "She can go f*** herself."
Australians aren't one to beat around the bush and put up with bullshit. The blasé, single-minded dismissal of pretentiousness, I think, is an endearing cultural trait. Kano does this so many times in his interactions with the rest of Mortal Kombat's high-and-mighty cast of rulers, gods, and narcissists, casually dismissing whatever holier-than-thou shit they might have going on. This sits comfortably together with a self-deprecating lack of awareness, too, for better or worse. Some of my favourites:
Noob Saibot: "I am Death's hand!"
Kano: "Bugger off, mate"
and:
Sonya: "I only deal in dead criminals."
Kano: "Talkin' out of your clacker (anus), luv."
not to mention:
Kano: "Why is it we ain't we mates, Raiden?"
Raiden: "Perhaps your life of sin and licentiousness"
Kano: *pause* "Yea that could be it."
CRIME
Okay, so despite his newfound endearing dad energy, Kano is still a dishonest dude by nature. He's a little bit of a sleaze:
Kano: "Want to taste Australia's best blood sausage?"
Skarlet: "I would rather taste your blood, Kano."
Kano: *pause* "Would you settle for me sausage?"
...and he's definitely still wickedly unscrupulous, often talking about making shady deals, cutting people open, and delivering heads in boxes. No doubt you've already drawn the "Australia is a criminal colony" conclusion, and look, that's fair. A lot of white Australians are descended from the convicts who arrived from England in the 18th century, but a lot has changed since then.
Today, Australia is a massively multicultural nation that is heavily comprised of immigrants and refugees (my family included) from all over the world--Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa--and we're also home to some of the world's oldest indigenous cultures. What I'm saying is that the English criminals we're often associated with are a part of our history rather than our identity. Kano is an exception, rather than a rule to our modern upstanding values. But then again, our current, mostly Anglo government regularly locks up refugee families and children in off-shore detention centres so hey maybe not.
And now, a crash course in Australian slang:
KANO'S FIGHT QUIPS: EXPLAINED
"On Ya Bike!"
F*** off, basically. You don't actually need to be referring to someone's physical bicycle for this to work.
"Best chuck a u-ey!"
A u-ey is usually in reference to a u-turn in a car, but also can be used to refer to a 180-degree turn. Again, Kano is basically telling someone to f*** off. Related: doing doughnut in a car is called a "dough-ey".
"Nice bit of tucker."
"Tucker" means food, but I know very few city people who use that term in casual conversation. Also, Kano eats a lizard while he says this, and I don't know any Australian who has ever eaten a lizard. Does a crocodile count? They taste like chicken."Don't be a bludger.""Bludger" is slang for a lazy person. "Bludging" might also mean skipping out on school or procrastinating. You hear a lot about bludging in this country.(To Cassie Cage) "You sound like a shithouse American tourist."
Basically what it sounds like. American tourists are shithouse.
(To Baraka) "That's a bonza attitude!"
"Bonza" means good!(To Kano) "Whaddaya say we split some stubbies?"A "stubby" is a term for a small-sized bottle of beer, as opposed to a "longneck", although the measurements for beer vary by region in Australia.(To Scarlet) "Now your blood's worth bottling.""You're very special", basically, but to be honest I have never heard anyone say this so someone at NetherRealm obviously just Googled "Australian slang" when they ran out of ideas.(To Kotal) "Let's just give it a burl.""Give it a go", basically. We had a former GameSpot employee who said this quite regularly, and for a long time I thought he was just making words up.(To Jax) "We ain't here to f*** spiders"A turn of phrase that means you came here for a specific reason. Not f***ing around, and not spider f***ing, naturally. That's gross.(To Jax, when asked about his first crime) "I was an ankle biter, five or six."Ankle biter is Australian slang for child. Australian children do not actually bite your ankles. Except for maybe that feral kid in Mad Max 2.(To Johnny Cage) "Good luck with that, ya drongo.""Drongo" is Australian slang for "idiot" or "stupid person".(To Liu Kang) "Whatta bunch of dills.""Dill" is also Australian slang for "idiot" or "stupid person".(To Kabal) "Back off, you ungrateful yobbo.""Yobbo" is also Australian slang for "idiot" or "stupid person" (we have heaps), but usually a rude or particularly unsophisticated one.
KANO'S MOVELIST NAMES: EXPLAINED
Spewin'"Spewin'" is what you say if you can't believe something happened. I guess it also means "vomiting". The combo string that has this name involves Kano spitting (not vomiting) in his opponent's face so I think "Spewin'" probably refers to the act of surprise here.Fair Suck Of The SavThis is another one I have never heard anyone use seriously, but it basically means "to have a fair go", and the "sav" refers to a sausage, which is a little gross. We also call sausages sandwiches "sangas". They are our national food--a staple at hardware stores, school fetes, and at polling places during government elections.
Cut Snake
What happens when you cut a snake? It gets angry. "Cut snake means "angry". Don't cut a snake.FIGJAMThis is incorrectly written out in lower case letters in Mortal Kombat 11, but it's actually an acronym for "F*** I'm Good, Just Ask Me", as immortalised in the hip-hop track of the same name by the Australian group, Butterfingers.Penal ColonyAustralia was originally founded as a penal colony. Makes sense.Face Like A Dropped PieAnother kind of obvious turn of phrase--what happens when you drop a pie? It gets pretty ugly. Personal-sized meat pies are another iconic Australian food thing. Most people in the world think the idea of meat in a pie is gross. Those people are wrong.
KANO'S GEAR NAMES: A CRASH COURSE IN CLASSIC AUSTRALIAN ROCK
A number of Kano's equippable eye masks are actually classic Australia rock music references, and I was honestly giddy when I saw some of these mentioned. Not familiar with one of Australia's golden eras of music? Mortal Kombat 11 is a great place to start. Follow those YouTube links for a good time.
Hunter Kollector
Hunters & Collectors, more affectionately known as the "Hunnas", were an 80s pub rock band. Holy Grail is a karaoke classic I remember GameSpot's editor-in-chief belting out on the regular back in the day.
Mental and EverythingMental As Anything were a laid-back 80s pop-rock band. They're great, I love them. The Nips Are Getting Bigger is one of their best songs, but it's definitely not the biggest. That accolade goes to...Live It UpLive It Up, which is Mental As Anything's biggest hit. This is an absolute classic. Listen to it now. I think it was in Crocodile Dundee? I haven't actually seen that movie, so I wouldn't know.Midnight Oil MarauderAnother 80s group, Midnight Oil remain one of Australia's most successful political rock bands. Their frontman, Peter Garrett had a long stint as a government minister. He's also well known for his uh, unique dance moves.Bed BurnerBeds Are Burning is Midnight Oil's most famous track, and probably one of the most iconic Australian rock songs of all time. It's a protest song that deals with the ever-present issues of indigenous land rights.Cold ChiseledCold Chisel are yet another beloved 70s/80s Australian pub rock band fronted by Jimmy Barnes, who Americans might know better as the screaming cowboy in the sky in that one video. Their best song, another karaoke classic, is Khe Sanh, which tells the story of a returning Vietnam veteran.Mister Dirty DeedsEveryone knows AC/DC, right? Right. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is what this is a reference to. Good band, good song. Bon Scott was gone too soon.Cruel SensationI want to say that this one is a reference to New Sensation, a song from Aussie 80s rock band INXS. But it could also be a reference to another 80's rock band, The Cruel Sea.Kill.u.tonightSimilarly, I reckon this one is a reference to Need You Tonight by INXS. Another great song. That guitar riff! These are ALL great songs.Eye HooksThis gross reference is likely related to 70s glam-rock band Skyhooks. They had a bunch of hits, but Horror Movie is probably the one that skyrocketed them to success. They're basically Rocky Horror Picture Show, the band.
TL;DR
I've left out a bunch of things, and there are certainly a few Kano references in Mortal Kombat 11 that don't quite hit the mark. But man, going through all these Kano details makes me so proud to be an Australian, and so happy to see and play as a genuine Australian character. I'm so damn impressed by the effort, commitment, and execution of dad Kano. It definitely feels like there were some bonafide Australians (maybe Queenslanders? There are a higher amount of maroon [state colour] outfits and QLD location references) who worked hard to turn Kano into the lovable bogan (unrefined person) he is in Mortal Kombat 11. That, or some really dedicated Americans did a lot of in-depth research and managed to pull it off with measured grace.
Either way, good onya. Kano is the best Australian to ever appear in a video game, and everyone at NetherRealm who had a hand in his redesign or even so much as looked at Kano during development deserves a promotion. That would be bonza (good).
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https://www.theverge.com/24043480/netflix-the-kitchen-review-daniel-kaluuya-kano
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en
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Netflix’s The Kitchen is a stunning parable about the future of housing inequality
|
[
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[
""
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[
"Charles Pulliam-Moore"
] |
2024-01-20T15:30:00+00:00
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Netflix’s The Kitchen from co-directors Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya is a bleak, beautiful sci-fi vision of the future of housing inequality.
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en
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/icons/favicon.ico
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The Verge
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https://www.theverge.com/24043480/netflix-the-kitchen-review-daniel-kaluuya-kano
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There are no aliens or sentient killing machines menacing the ordinary people going about their lives in Netflix’s new dystopian action drama The Kitchen from co-directors Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares. But the film’s arresting story about the monsters of the future and how the most disadvantaged members of society have to stand up to them feels all too real and like a reminder of the ways systemic poverty creates its own dystopia.
Set in a near-futuristic London where fluorescent hologram ads dance across signs and camera-encrusted police drones loom silently high up in the air, The Kitchen is a chronicle of the goings-on in its titular neighborhood. After years of public housing across the United Kingdom being bought up by private companies and transformed into expensive luxury flats for the wealthy, the Kitchen — a towering, dilapidated apartment complex long-scheduled for demolition — is the only place in London where people like Isaac (rapper Kane “Kano” Robinson) can really afford to live.
The Kitchen is beyond poor, and its residents never know whether their power and water will be shut off by the city. But it’s still a bustling hub of commerce where vendors sling food on streets dense with playing children and old men relax on the doorsteps of barbershops. There’s always an atmosphere of tension as Kitcheners brace themselves for yet another one of the city’s violent police raids meant to expel them from their homes.
But the Kitchen’s air is also constantly filled with the sound of music broadcasting from the Lord Kitchener’s (Ian Wright) pirate radio station along with his calls for the neighborhood’s predominantly Black and brown community to hold fast to the idea that they have a right to exist in a place where their families have survived for decades.
As a Kitchener himself, Isaac — who works with his friend Jase (Demmy Ladipo) for a company that composts the dead whose families can’t afford traditional funerals — knows that the neighborhood is so much more than a block full of people illegally squatting in condemned buildings. But after a lifetime of watching the Kitchen be razed and its residents brutalized by cops in riot gear, all Isaac wants is a shot at getting out and moving into the kind of high-rise where he can shut himself away from the world and his feelings.
The Kitchen makes it easy to recognize the parallels between its vision of futuristic housing inequality and our present-day reality in which renters and would-be homebuyers across the globe are increasingly being priced out of the limited, highly competitive real estate market. But the film’s script from Kaluuya and co-writers Rob Hayes and Joe Murtagh and its focus on young Londoners navigating the complexities of near homelessness makes The Kitchen read like a scathing reflection of the long-term devastating impacts of the UK’s Margaret Thatcher-era right-to-buy policies.
The Kitchen presents its namesake as a cramped Kowloon-like mosaic of barely livable spaces packed with outdated technology that contrasts sharply with the spacious neighborhoods nearby, where gleaming driverless cars idle by luxury boutiques. At all times, Kitcheners like Isaac and Staples (Hope Ikpoku Jr.) — the leader of a biker gang whose robberies provide the Kitchen with its only source of food — are surrounded by reminders of basic comforts they’re denied.
But out of the many ways The Kitchen illustrates how society systemically dehumanizes the poor, few are as profound as its depiction of Isaac going to work every day and convincing his neighbors to buy into a service they all understand as being meant to erase them from the public consciousness. That erasure is part of what scares young orphan Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) so much about seeing his mother’s remains turned into tree fertilizer at Life After Life, where he first meets Isaac. What really scares Isaac, though, is his unshakable sense that simply by being from the Kitchen, Benji’s mother’s fate was inevitable and a glimpse of what’s in store for Benji if he doesn’t escape the Kitchen himself.
As Isaac and Benji come into each other’s lives, The Kitchen becomes a kind of coming-of-age story as well as a rumination on the power of communal action and found families. Isaac — a stoic character Robinson portrays with a brilliant emotionally-congested quality — wants little to do with Benji when the pair first meet. There’s no room for a kid in Isaac’s plan for the future or really even in his present-day corner of the Kitchen where he has to lock himself in whenever the police show up ready to evict people by beating them to death.
But for all of Benji’s resourcefulness, he’s just a boy Isaac knows will end up running with Staples’ crew or murdered because they live in a world filled with systems designed to leave people like them with no other options. From somewhat different angles, the concepts central to The Kitchen have been explored in other genre films like Attack the Block and They Cloned Tyrone, which both leaned much harder into their respective hard sci-fi elements.
What makes The Kitchen feel so distinct, though, is the way its subtle touches of speculative futurism work to highlight realities about how at-risk communities are surveilled and how riots end up becoming people’s organic response to state-sponsored violence. Through both the Lord Kitchener’s broadcasts and Isaac’s looming sense of dread, The Kitchen never lets you lose sight of the fact that the Kitcheners are fighting for their lives in a war they’re not likely to win.
But at the core of that fight, there’s an undeniable sense of hope and beauty to the lives of everyone in the Kitchen. The Kitchen’s ability to showcase that beauty in intimate scenes between Isaac and Benji and in larger moments like the movie’s surprising third-act dance sequence, all while telling a story that’s so heartbreaking, is a feat. And it’s precisely what makes the film one of Netflix’s most powerful new releases that you’re all but certain to start hearing more about now that it’s streaming.
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https://theanimationcompendium.wordpress.com/category/anime/
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en
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The Animation Compendium
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"Hamish Morgan-Giles"
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2020-01-26T18:05:49+00:00
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Posts about Anime written by Hamish Morgan-Giles
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en
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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The Animation Compendium
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https://theanimationcompendium.wordpress.com/category/anime/
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Given that adaptations are the bread and butter of the anime industry, it is only natural that many of the most popular series are based on pre-existing manga, novels, video games and even toy lines. Producing and creating an adaptation, be it a film or television series, that manages to work on it’s own merits can be a lofty challenge, due to the differences in art forms and the pressures of built in expectations from fans of the source material. Although there are adaptations which have been met with great success, just as many face difficulty with transitioning from one medium to another, due to a variety of reasons and circumstances.
This brings us to Children of the Sea (2019), which is the 14th theatrical film by the highly prolific Studio 4°C , best known for Mind Game (2004), Tekkonkinkreet (2006) and the Berserk Golden Age Arc Trilogy (2012-2013). It is adapted from the manga series by Daisuke Igarashi, with a screenplay written by Hanasaki Kino and was directed by Ayumu Watanabe, who previously worked on Space Brothers (2012-2014) and After the Rain (2018). The film debuted in Japanese cinemas on May 19th, 2019, and later premiered in the UK at Scotland Loves Anime on October 13th, 2019, where it was introduced by Jonathan Clements. Does it soar to the sky, or does it sink below expectations?
There is… admittingly, quite a lot to unpack about this film, but first, the premise. The film begins with a 14-year old girl named Ruka Azumi, who on the first day of the summer holiday, is kicked out of the high school sports team due to her aggressive behaviour. She also just so happens to be alone and not on good terms with her alcoholic Mother. A few days later, Ruka goes to the local aquarium, which is where her divorced Father works, and makes friends with two boys, named Umi and Sora. Although the two look like regular human beings, they are actually creatures of the sea who have been apparently raised by Dugongs (no, I’m not making that up), and have strong swimming capabilities. Because of the two boys being accustomed to living in the ocean, they can’t survive on land, which for Ruka, creates further curiosity about the boy’s origins and other supernatural phenomena that has been occurring throughout the world… I think?
On a technical level, Children of the Sea is undeniably impressive, with many key figures having had decades of experience in the anime industry, even reuniting some Ghibli alumni. The film features gorgeous art direction and background art handled by Shinji Kimura, who previously worked on Project A-ko (1986) and My Neighbor Totoro (1988). Kimura brings his A-game to the film with stunningly intricate and beautiful visuals, highly evident in the tactile depiction of the lived-in harbourside town and the beaches surrounded by sways of clouds that are literally eye-catching. Kenichi Konishi, who previously worked on Paprika (2006) and The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013), takes the role as the film’s Animation Director, and has helped to contribute some truly solid animation. This is demonstrated in an early scene showing Ruka swimming alongside the two boys and many forms of sea life which is beautifully depicted with graceful movement and a convincing sense of realistic weight.
Konishi also handles the character designs, which are faithfully recreated from Igarashi’s original manga, though possibly to its detriment, as they are a bit off putting and unsettling to look at. This very evident during close ups, where they all look a little dead behind the eyes, which creates an uncanny effect strangely reminiscent of Hisaishi Hirai. One of the most strangely designed side characters is Dede, who’s an old seafarer with a twanging mouth harp like a rubber band. Her diminutive, wisened appearance is presumably intended to make her seem sage-like, but with her strange looking buckteeth, it’s hard not to see her as a racial caricature. I’m not sure if she is supposed to be Ainu or an African-American blackface stereotype, but it is nonetheless rather questionable. Personally, I think that streamlining the character designs would have probably helped in the long run, as they all look like they suffer a bad case of insomnia.
The legendary Joe Hisaishi, known for his work on Hayao Miyazaki films such as Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001), composed Children of the Sea’s score, marking his first non Ghibli animated project since Venus Wars (1989). It has an ambient style that evokes composers such as Éric Serra, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream, with an emphasis on piano, strings, flutes and synthesizers. While the music is fine, and generally well composed, I did get the feeling that it was sometimes used in a needlessly overbearing way, and at times became a little distracting. I felt that one early scene at the aquarium could have used more mellow music to feel more intimate. To make matters worse, most of the score consists of variants on the same 3 cues, making it a rather repetitive and pretty dull listening experience outside the actual film. As far as minimalist Hisaishi soundtracks go, I think that Sonatine (1993) was far more a successful venture by comparison.
That said, if I’m going to be very honest, these excellent production values deserve a much better film, as Children of the Sea has a few problems that, quite frankly, hold it back from being something truly special. It starts off as a coming of age story with magical realism elements about burgeoning adolescence. Then, it switches gears into a cosmic sci-fi fantasy film which attempts (key word being attempt) to be a meditation on man’s connection with nature and the universe, which comes off as incredibly jarring and contrived. As the film is adapted from a 5 volume manga series, and tries to cram in so many themes, concepts and ideas with only a mere 2 hour running time, it comes across as overly ambitious and really unfocused. Various subplots get introduced and then are suddenly dropped, almost as if the writer simply cut out too much from the original source material, and at the same time, not enough, meaning the film fails to work as a standalone piece.
Contributing to the sloppy storytelling is the characters, who are all very one note and underdeveloped considering it’s running time. We never really learn much about who they are, as the film constantly jumps back and forth between various different groups of characters, without ever really giving much time for them to be developed. For instance, all that’s given to us about Sora is that he’s an asshole for… basically, no reason, making him, more or less, a lazy copy of Griffith from Berserk (1997).
It was an hour into the film when, after what should have a significant and important moment, I had a realisation; I wasn’t invested in these characters nor did I have any real incentive to care due to a complete lack of chemistry. This is especially a problem with the side characters, who all feel like extended cameos from deleted arcs of the original manga, and are involved in subplots that go absolutely nowhere. Ruka’s Mother, for instance, is missing for a good majority of the film after a certain point, making her arc feel pointless. Along with Dede, Jim and Anglade pretty much only serve to go into expository philosophical tangents about metaphysical ideas in a cheap attempt to appear profound, when instead, these just grind the pacing to a halt, and exist simply to pad out the running time. I personally feel like these side characters could have easily have been cut out to allow more opportunity for other characters to grow and make the film far more cohesive.
Children of the Sea never finds a strong solid core, partially due to being completely aimless about what it’s trying to say for a good majority of the film, making it a boring and meandering slog that fails to engage the viewer. This is Kino’s second screenwriting credit after Kuro no Su – Chronus (2014), and the jumbled, confusing and disjointed nature of the script really feels like a first draft that needed just a little more care, as if the writer is two steps ahead of the audience and the script editor was on holiday.
After a plodding first hour, the film becomes borderline incomprehensible by the third act, eventually divulging in a kaleidoscopic acid trip, set in some kind of alien space whale thing, that is clearly aping the Stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the Third Impact sequence from The End of Evangelion (1997). While spectacular on a visual and animation level, this sequence desperately tries to be deep and meaningful, but is just a pretentious load of whiff-whaff that is overlong, hollow, tedious and due to a lack of investment in the characters, feels completely unearned. As a result of this nonsensical direction in the story, it actually means the line “I didn’t understand anything” can be seen as unintentionally hilarious. The ending doesn’t really tie up any of it’s loose ends, and while there is a callback to the beginning that does try to insist that the protagonist has grown, it honestly feels rather arbitrary and lacks a sense of proper catharsis. An incredibly random post credits scene doesn’t do much to help either, as it only asks more questions than it answers and is very eyebrow raising. In the words of a certain clown out of Springfield, it will most likely make the audience go “What the hell was that?”.
I feel that Children of the Sea would have worked far better as a 30 minute short film which could focus on mood and let the pretty visuals do the talking, or as a 6 episode OVA series to allow more breathing room to develop the ideas and characters. As far as more artistically ambitious anime films are concerned, Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg (1985) works far more effectively as a cohesive whole. It has gorgeous animation, a strong sense of mood, haunting score and a better utilisation of philosophical and existential themes. The reliance on visual storytelling and lack of dialogue also encourages the viewer to project their thoughts and feelings onto the characters and the world they inhabit. Meanwhile, Children of the Sea is merely a glorified advertisement for the manga.
Gorgeous visuals, beautiful art direction and Joe Hisaishi’s score don’t undermine the fact that Children of the Sea is a disappointment, especially considering the protege on board. While it strives to be artistic and profound, due to incoherent storytelling, lack of any real strong emotional core or hook, poor characterisation, disjointed pacing and reliance on too much clunky exposition, it fails to make a splash. It is simply far too ambitious for its own good, and tries to say too much without saying anything at all, so it can be best described as vacuous. With more careful consideration and planning out, it could have been something rather special, but as it is, Children of the Sea is a waste of potential. You’re best off just sticking to the song by Black Sabbath instead.
I give this film 2 rubber bands out of 5.
On May 25, 1977, a small little indie film titled Star Wars (1977) was unleashed onto the world and captured the imagination and hearts of fans and artists alike. It featured a brand new world with sweeping spaceship battles, larger than life characters, crazy aliens and took many familiar genre and story elements, repackaging them in a refreshing way. It soon became one of the highest grossing films of all time, but you probably already knew that. As is to be expected with any landmark film, rip offs and cash-ins soon followed, giving the space opera genre a resurgence in pop culture.
In live action cinema, it seems that everyone had massive hopes of becoming the next big success, resorting to possibly “non-copyright infringing” movies. These included the likes of Starcrash (1978), which was the first ever appearance of David Hasslehoff’s mullet, Hawk the Slayer (1980), featuring John Terry as Han Solo’s brother and Jack Palance as Darth Vader’s cousin, Message from Space (1978) featuring Vic Morrow’s moustache, and the revival of Flash Gordon (1980), which had a soundtrack by Queen and featured the priest from The Exorcist (1973) as the goatee-rocking Ming.
In the Far East, the Japanese have always had a keen interest in science fiction, with authors such as Leiji Matsumoto (Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato), Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Phoenix), Mitsuteru Yokoyama (Tetsujin 28, Giant Robo) and Go Nagai (Mazinger Z, Devilman) making influential all time classics. The success of Star Wars further lead to space operas such as Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1983), Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980), Space Adventure Cobra (1982-1983) and Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight (1985).
On July 7th, 1984, 409 days after the release of Return of the Jedi (1983), Lensman (SF Shinseiki Lensman in Japanese) was released in Japanese cinemas and is notable for a few reasons. For one, it was one of the first animated films, alongside Golgo 13 (1983) and Rock & Rule (1983), to incorporate CGI for certain scenes. Secondly, it is an adaptation of a novel series that was serialized between the 1930s to the 1950s, from the founder of Space Opera, Edward Elmer Smith. Interestingly, when first conceiving Star Wars, George Lucas (THX 1138) actually used terminology from various pulp sci fi novels in an early draft of the script, including a few taken from the Lensman novels as a point of inspiration.
The film was produced by Madhouse (Paprika, Summer Wars) and was directed by Kazuyuki Hirokawa (Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Space Warrior Baldios) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) in his directorial debut.
After an oddly familiar opening text scroll, the film begins in the 25th century on the backwater planet, Mqueie. An 18-year old farm boy named Kimball Kinnison, who is living with his father Gary, dreams of leaving his home, and plans to travel to Earth with a longtime friend, Peter van Buskirk. Gary warns them about a signal of for an incoming ship, known as the Britannia, which Kim hijacks and lands safely on Mquie. He is then given a Lens, which brands him as a Lensman (a cross between the Jedi and the Green Lantern), and starts him off on a rip roaring adventure to defeat the villainous Boskone Empire and save the Galaxy.
The film follows a rag tag group of characters led by Kimball, including the archetypical damsel in distress, Clarissa (AKA, a more useless Princess Leia), the bumbling strong sidekick Peter van Buskirk (A.K.A., a more dim-witted Chewbacca) and the sharp shooting bounty hunter Worsel (AKA, like Han Solo mixed with a Pterodactyl). This rebel alliance is fighting against the evil Boskone Empire, who are all led by Lord Helmuth (A.K.A Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine’s spikey mecha love child), and his hoard of completely disposable sidekicks. Throughout the story, Kimball’s gang is joined various side characters, the most memorable of which being DJ Bill (A.K.A Dragon Ball’s Master Roshi meets Maiyart from Wicked City), and the loving father, Gary (A.K.A Uncle Owen meets Obi Wan).
Despite being only minor roles, DJ Bill and Worsel were my favourite characters. DJ Bill was likeable for his crazy antics and carefree party boy attitude, and Worsel’s cool stoicism and caring side were appealing as well as his action set pieces. Although the film is nearly two hours long, most of the characters just tend to feel a little weak and it would have been nice to have had more moments of character development for them to feel three dimensional. It would also have been nice to have had some slower moments for reflection or world building to make the universe feel more tangible.
Overall, the Animation is pretty solid, with some generally stimulating and kinetic action sequences. Strangely enough, when the characters are attacked by tentacle monsters, it never goes below the belt, as one would be forgiven for expecting from an 80s anime that was released around the same as Lolita Anime (1984-1985) and Cream Lemon (1984-2006). The backgrounds were produced by a team of experienced artists, who created incredibly detailed animation and unlike a lot of anime released at the time, are not still, but move with the characters.
The characters designed were handled by Kazuo Tomizawa (The Door into Summer, Legend of the Galactic Heroes) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri himself. The characters themselves have a very nice aesthetic that feels like a mix between Moebius, Heavy Metal and the Valerian comic books. The mecha designs were created by Koji Morimoto (Noiseman: Sound Insect, Toki no Tabibito: Time Stranger) and Takashi Watabe (Cyber City Oedo 808, Neo Tokyo), and both did a great job at creating weird and otherworldly spaceships and robots.
The computer generated animation is blocky yet charming, and used effectively. For the most part, it is incorporated into the world fairly well, though it can be confusing when ships that were CG suddenly become hand drawn. One scene later in the film shows Kimball fighting against illusions conjured up by Helmuth, that felt like a cross between TRON (1982) and Enter the Dragon (1973), and the use of 2D animated character vs CG illusions worked particularly well.
The score was composed by Akira Inoue (Lily C.A.T, The Cockpit), featuring insert songs by The ALFEE (Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy, Figure 17) and consists of an eclectic mix of 80s power ballads, synth pop and J-pop. While the music is sometimes at odds with the action on screen (upbeat J-pop over a sad scene or 80s cop-show style electro funk over the aforementioned tentacle scene), it generally is an enjoyable soundtrack that creates a welcome break from the usual orchestral scores of the era.
The English dub was handled by the infamous Streamline Pictures (Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, Robot Carnival), who were one of the first companies to dub anime into English long before Manga Entertainment (Macross Plus, Lupin III: Mystery of Mamo) and ADV Films (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kino’s Journey) entered the scene. The dub itself fits the pulpy cheesy sci-fi vibe, with a lot of overacting and occasional under-acting, which gives it a charming quality. Having seen some of the Japanese dub, that audio track features far superior voice acting and performances.
Sound design is overseen by Susumu Aketagawa (Akira, Barefoot Gen) and is generally solid throughout the film. The combination of synthesisers and foley sound creates a rich otherworldly texture that fits the setting of the movie, with sound effects and cues that are reminiscent of films such as TRON (1982), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). The voices are also well mixed to convey realistic depictions of space in a fantastical setting.
In the vast landscape of science fiction anime, Lensman isn’t exactly the most complex or challenging film, but it does feature nice designs, excellent animation, solid action sequences and effective sound design. However, it lets itself down by a lack of development for the characters and a story which seems rushed even though the film is fairly long. For fans of classic space operas, Lensman is certainly quite the curiosity piece, and well worth a look.
3/5
Due to licensing and legal issues with the original estate that owns the original novels, Lensman has not seen a re-release on DVD or Blu-ray, meaning that one will have to look hard for the VHS tape or the Japanese Laserdisc. Here’s hoping that one day, Discotek Media, who have licensed rescued many classic anime, will get their hands on it.
In the history of anime the director who is certainly the most famous and revered in the Western hemisphere is Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke). He has made quite a few cracking films himself, and even film buffs have likely heard his name, at least in passing. There is already tons of coverage about the poster boy of Ghibli and many directors haven’t had quite the same exposure.
As someone who has been a fan of anime for a long time now, I have found it very fruitful to explore different directors and what they manage to bring to a project. There is always something beautiful and unique that many directors bring, whether it is their style of writing characters or telling stories, the techniques they employ, or the way they use animation’s limitless potential to present ideas and beliefs which live action simply can’t.
In this list, I will be covering my Top 5 Favourite Anime directors that aren’t Miyazaki-san, and are deserving of as much praise and recognition.
Osamu Dezaki
Osamu Dezaki, born on November 18th, 1943, started out as a manga artist at Toshiba, yeah, that Toshiba, they have their own manga division. His long career in anime began by working as an animator and episode director on Mushi Production series such as the first breakthrough anime TV series, Astro Boy (1963-1966) and Dororo (1969).
(Ashita no Joe 2, 1980-1981, TMS Entertainment)
He then became quite notable for his work on classic boxing drama Ashita no Joe (1970-1971), which lead to a second season that aired 9 years later. Dezaki was known as being the founder of the studio Madhouse (Death Note, Cardcaptor Sakura) and for being incredibly versatile in various genres, leading to an eclectic body of work. Such examples include pulpy film noir with Golgo 13 (1983), escapist space opera with Space Adventure Cobra (1982-1983), fantasy adventure with Gamba no Bouken (1975), medical thriller with the Black Jack OVA (1993-2011), and even did various films and specials for Lupin the Third and Hamtaro.
For many fans, Dezaki’s strongest work was with shoujo series such as Rose of Versailles (1979-1980), Aim for the Ace! (1973-1974), Dear Brother (1991-1992) and classic novel adaptations such as Treasure Island (1978- 1979) and Nobody’s Boy Remi (1977-1978). Many of his shows also contained character designs by Akio Sugino (Phoenix, La Seine no Hoshi), giving them a distinctive look.
(Aim for the Ace! Movie, 1979, Madhouse)
Dezaki had a love of cinema and theatre which was clearly shown throughout his career, with strong usage of stark lighting similar to the work of Jean Pierre Melville, Hitchcockian Dutch angles, split screens akin to Brian De Palma, as well as triple takes and speed lines to enhance the impact of an exciting scene. Most famously, he invented an iconic technique known as “Harmony” or “Postcard Memories”. These were freeze-frames, interpolated as sketchy illustrations, designed as a cost cutting technique that were often saved for dramatic scenes or moments of great change in the characters. These techniques are still being used today, so you could say Dezaki helped the medium find its own identity and style.
(Rose of Versailles, 1979-1980, TMS Entertainment)
The combination of his stylistic techniques and his flair for melodrama gave Dezaki’s work a grandiose and theatrical quality that is still unmatched by any other director in the medium. He passed away at the age of 67 on April 17th, 2011 due to lung cancer, leaving behind an incredibly versatile and strong oeuvre of work, and his influence can be seen in directors like Akiyuki Shinbo (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Bakemonogatari) and Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill La Kill).
Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii, born on August 8th, 1951 in Tokyo, is probably one of the most varied, versatile, fascinating and iconic directors in the history of anime. Starting off as an episode director on shows such as Belle and Sebastian (1981-1982), Ippatsu Kanta-kun (1977-1978) and Yatterman (1977-1979), he oversaw the first 106 episodes of the wacky sci-fi romantic comedy Urusei Yatsura (1981-1986), as well as the first two movies, Only You (1983) and Beautiful Dreamer (1984).
(Angel’s Egg, 1985, Studio DEEN)
A year later, he made the existentialist art-house film, Angel’s Egg (1985), which alongside Beautiful Dreamer, cemented him as a director unafraid to take risks. This isn’t surprising, considering his cinematic influences include European directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (Blowup), Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker, Solaris), Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, Alphaville), Andrzej Munk (Man on the Tracks), Chris Marker (La Jetée), Federico Fellini (8½) and Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal).
(Patlabor 2: The Movie, 1993, Production I.G)
He then founded the company HEADGEAR, and worked on Mobile Police Patlabor franchise, a mecha series mixed with police procedural elements that was also very heavily character driven. The franchise had various manga, novels, OVAs, TV shows and two theatrical films, both directed by Oshii. The success of the series led to Oshii working on the influential Ghost in the Shell (1995), which would eventually spawn a sequel released a decade later titled Innocence (2004). He has also created the Kerberos saga, which has lead to two live action films, manga, radio dramas and an anime film written by Oshii called Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999).
Some common themes in his work are the exploration of society, government corruption, terrorism, identity, urban warfare, faith, technology, humanity and religion. This is further cemented by his motifs, including animals such as birds and Basset Hounds, reflections of mirrors, windows and water. Oshii usually includes ma (interval) montages, and moody atmospheric visuals set to haunting music by his frequent collaborator, Kenji Kawai (Ranma ½, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor).
(Ghost in the Shell, 1995, Production I.G)
Oshii’s well known for working within science fiction and often explores profound subject matter in his work, coupled with challenging use of symbolism. While he has been known to influence directors like The Wachowski’s (The Matrix) and James Cameron (The Terminator), Oshii’s style is very much his own. He is known as the Stray Dog of anime for a reason, to the point that in a Johnathon Ross interview, he said that he thinks he’s a reincarnated Basset Hound. Maybe we will never know, but I’d like to think that.
Hideaki Anno
Hideaki Anno, born on May 22nd, 1960, grew up spending a lot of his free time exploring the arts, and during his time in Junior High School he attended the art club. In 1980, he attended the Osaka University of Arts, made friends with Hiroyuki Yamaga (Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi) and Takami Akai (Banner of the Stars), and made short films with them. On August 20th, 1983, a little after Anno dropped out of University, he made history by being the animation director on the infamous Daicon IV Opening Animation. This influential short film, considered a holy grail within anime fandom, gave Anno the opportunity to work as an animator on all-time classics like Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984).
(Aim for the Top! Gunbuster, 1988-1989, GAINAX)
Anno, along with Yamaga and Akai, founded the legendary studio GAINAX in 1984. This lead him to become prolific in his field, working as an animator on works like Megazone 23 Part I (1985), The Wings of Honnêamise (1987), and Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1992-1998). In 1988, he made his directorial debut with the OVA series Aim for the Top! Gunbuster (1988-1989). This 6 episode mecha series became infamous for it’s heavy and emotionally charged ending.
After his experience on Nadia the Secret of Blue Water (1990-1991) Anno became very depressed as a result of interference from NHK. This lead to the creation of the iconic TV series, Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996). The series is well reknown for utilising the super-robot anime framework to explore themes such as depression, loneliness, identity and existence often with heavy psychoanalysis of the characters. The show’s success lead to a follow-up film titled The End of Evangelion (1997), which was both incredibly nihilistic and surreal.
(Neon Genesis Evangelion, 1995-1996, GAINAX)
Anno was one of the first directors in anime who proclaimed to be an otaku (obsessed fan), meaning his work is not only influenced by but also directly references other anime, manga and pop culture. This includes creators such as Yoshiyuki Tomino (Space Runaway Ideon, Mobile Suit Gundam), Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey), Go Nagai (Devilman, Mazinger Z), Gerry Anderson (UFO, Thunderbirds) and Kihachi Okamoto (Battle of Okinawa), in addition to tokusatsu and kaiju icons Ultraman and Godzilla.
Anno is perhaps best known for creating works that explore the human condition, with Evangelion and Kare Kano focusing on characters who are forced to question their place in life and society, their vulnerability and having to face overwhelming pressure, reflecting on the director’s personal experience. He uses cinematic techniques, such as stroboscopic montages, static long cuts that create an uneasy sense of tension and introspective, philosophical dialogue. Anno then combines this with cost saving avant-gardt techniques, such as the use of incomplete storyboards and simple text frames to ask questions to the character and viewer alike. He sometimes even throws in live action footage to often surreal and otherworldly effect.
(The Wing of Honneamise, 1987, GAINAX)
Thanks to a prime focus on characterization, coupled with a willingness to take risks by playing with various techniques and styles of storytelling gives Anno’s work a personal touch that makes his work incredibly fascinating and memorable.
Masaaki Yuasa
Masaaki Yuasa, born on March 16th, 1965, is one of the most extraordinarily unique and visionary auteurs in modern anime. Throughout his career, he has worked as an animator on works ranging from Esper Mami (1987-1989), Chibi Maruko-chan (1990-1993), episodes and many of the movies of Crayon Shin-Chan, Noiseman Sound Insect (1997), Agent Aika (1997-1999), My Neighbours the Yamadas (1999) and Samurai Champloo (2004-2005).
(Mind Game, 2004, Studio 4°C)
Besides being an incredibly versatile animator, Yuasa also penned the screenplay of the incredibly trippy OVA Cat Soup (2001), and would eventually become a director starting off with his first feature length film Mind Game (2004). Based on a manga by Robin Nishi and produced by Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet, Memories), the film was lauded for having a dynamic utilization of various animation styles and a story featuring inspiring themes about living life to the fullest coupled with quirky humour and characters. The film soon caught the attention of directors such as Satoshi Kon (Paprika, Millennium Actress), Mamoru Hosoda (Digimon Adventure: Our War Game, Wolf Children), Bill Plympton (The Tune, Cheatin’) and even psychedelic artist, Keiichi Tanaami (Oh! Yoko).
Over the past decade, working as a freelancer, Yuasa has directed the body horror series Kemonozume (2006), the Happy Machine segment of Genius Party (2007), thought provoking sci fi series Kaiba (2008), surreal dark comedy The Tatami Galaxy (2010), the Kickstarter backed short film Kick-Heart (2013), and the sports drama Ping Pong the Animation (2014).
(Kick Heart, 2013, Production I.G)
After establishing the studio Science Saru with his affiliate EunYoung Choi (Black Lagoon, Casshern Sins) Yuasa directed the Space Dandy (2014) episode “Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Baby” and in his first international collaboration, the Adventure Time episode “Food Chain”. He is currently busy with two feature length films due out this year with Night is Short, Walk on Girl and Lu over the Wall, and will be directing the newest adaptation of Go Nagai’s iconic manga, Devilman: crybaby, which will be airing in 2018 on Netflix.
(The Tatami Galaxy, 2010, Madhouse)
He has been inspired by animators such as Tex Avery (Red Hot Riding Hood, Blitz Wolf), Ladislas Starevich (Tale of the Fox), Rene Laloux (Fantastic Planet, La Maîtres du Temps) and Nick Park (The Wrong Trousers, Chicken Run), as well as the film Yellow Submarine (1968). One of Yuasa’s traits is that his animation plays with style, form and technique, giving his work an incredibly post-modern touch. One shot could be high in detail, the next could be rotoscoped, the next shot could be zany and loose. His work often includes existentialist themes and content, which in addition to the off-beat and unique playing with animation styles has a quirky approach and refreshing feel that allows Yuasa’s work to stand out, even within anime. Here’s hoping that Yuasa continues to create many wonderfully wacky and oddball shows and films for years to come.
Isao Takahata
Isao Takahata, born on June 29th, 1935, has had a long career working in the medium, and has worked in a variety of genres and styles, leading to a unique body of work.
After seeing the original cut of the French animated masterpiece, The King and the Mockingbird (1952 & 1980), Takahata became entranced with the possibilities of what animation could achieve. His beginnings at Toei Animation (Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon) were certainly humble, working as an assistant director on The Littlest Warrior (1961) and The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (1962), and was an episode director on Ken the Wolf Boy (1963-1965). His feature length directorial debut was the fantasy adventure film Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968), where he would become lifelong friends with anime legends Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuo Otsuka (Panda and the Magic Serpent, Animal Treasure Island).
(The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, 2013, Studio Ghibli)
After doing work on Himitsu no Akko-chan (1969-1970) and Mōretsu Atarō (1969-1970), he co-directed alongside Miyazaki episodes 13-23 of Lupin the Third (1971-1972). He would then oversee both Panda! Go, Panda! short films (1972-1973), as well as directing classic World Masterpiece Theater TV shows like Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother (1976) and Anne of Green Gables (1979).
(Grave of the Fireflies, 1988, Studio Ghibli)
In the early 80s, he directed the slice of life comedy Chie the Brat (1981) and music themed fantasy film Goshu the Cellist (1982), all before becoming the co-founder of Studio Ghibli in 1985. After producing Nausicaa (1984) and Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), he would go on to direct the poignant semibiographical drama, Grave of the Fireflies (1988), the nostalgic and lyrical Only Yesterday (1991), the environmentalist fantasy comedy Pom Poko (1994) and the creative and heartwarming comedy My Neighbours the Yamadas (1999). 14 years later, after he struggled for a long time trying to get it made, Takahata released the beautifully emotional Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013), an adaptation of the classic Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
Paku-san, as Miyazaki calls Takahata, has been influenced by Italian neorealism, French New Wave, Frederic Back (The Man Who Planted Trees), Yuri Norstein (Hedgehog in the Fog), Kenji Miyazawa (Night on the Galactic Railroad), Bertolt Brecht (The Threepenny Opera) and Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story, Late Spring). Takahata’s work often deals with small, character driven stories that deal with melancholy, childhood, loneliness, emotion and tends to focus on relatable, mundane situations that are reflective, contemplative and riveting to witness.
(Only Yesterday, 1991, Studio Ghibli)
Through the power of animation, Takahata conveys metaphor and plays with different visual lenses to symbolically represent the state of the character’s mind and feelings. In Only Yesterday, the present day is presented as crisp, clean and polished, while the flashbacks to Taeko’s childhood is shown as hazy, dreamlike. These qualities give Takahata’s work a weight, realism and impressionistic feeling that is rarely found in animation, making him quite an unsung hero. Though he is retired due to Ghibli’s indefinite hiatus, he has left his mark on the medium, and should be looked at in the same level of respect as Miyazaki.
Honourable Mentions
I hope you have enjoyed my list. It has been an incredibly difficult task trying to choose just 5 directors given the large amount of brilliant creators that have worked in anime.In case you want to explore further, here’s a few who didn’t quite make the list but are all worth exploring:
Koji Morimoto (Memories, Robot Carnival)
Kunihiko Ikuhara (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Mawaru Penguindrum)
Noburo Ishiguro (Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Space Battleship Yamato)
Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers)
Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999, Space Pirate Captain Harlock)
Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, 5 Centimeters Per Second)
Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo)
Junichi Sato (Princess Tutu, Aria)
Ryutaro Nakamura (Kino’s Journey, Serial Experiments Lain)
Sayo Yamamoto (Yuri on Ice, Lupin the Third: Woman Called Fujiko Mine)
Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Neo Tokyo)
Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time)
Who would you say are your choices for favourite directors in anime? Are there any others who you think deserve more recognition? Leave a comment, I would be really interested to find out! 🙂
We have just entered the seventh year of the 2010s, and so thus far, it has been a pretty flourishing and fruitful era for animated cinema. 2016 was a pretty solid year for animation, with films such as Zootropolis, Anomalisa, Your Name, Finding Dory, Kubo and the Two Strings and The Red Turtle paving the way for a hopefully equally strong 2017.
While most lists will be covering the usual Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks fare, I thought it would be good to compile a list of my 5 most anticipated animated films that are a bit off the beaten track. I hope you find out about some titles you weren’t previously aware of.
Lupin the Third: Chikemuri no Ishikawa Goemon (Goemon Ishikawa’s Spray of Blood)
Lupin the Third is one of the most iconic and influential franchises in the history of Japanese pop culture, debuting as a manga series in 1967 by Kazuhiko Katou, best known under his pseudonym, Monkey Punch. As the series has grown in popularity, it has had various anime adaptations, including 5 TV shows, 9 theatrical films, over 20 TV specials, some OVAs and even a few live action films for good measure.
The series is oft-considered an amalgamation of James Bond, Robin Hood, Ocean’s Eleven and Loony Tunes all rolled into one, focusing on a group of thieves, including dashing thief Lupin the Third, the sharpshooter Daisuke Jigen, the femme fatale Fujiko Mine, and the samurai Goemon Ishikawa XIII.
A stellar line up of directors have put their stamp on the franchise, showing different sides to the storylines and characters. These directors include Osamu Dezaki (Black Jack, Rose of Versailles) Masaaki Osumi (Moomin, La Seine no Hoshi), Gisaburo Sugii (Dororo, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie), Shinichi Watanabe (Excel Saga, Nerima Daikon Brothers), Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill), and those two Ghibli legends, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, The Wind Rises) and Isao Takahata (Tale of Princess Kaguya, Grave of the Fireflies). The most recent director who has put his stamp on the series is Takeshi Koike (Redline, World Record), who directed the TV show, Lupin the Third: The Woman called Fujiko Mine (2012) and the movie, Jigen’s Gravestone (2014).
I have been a fan of Lupin the Third ever since I discovered it through The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), a wonderfully made adventure film that featured excellent animation, likeable characters, great action scenes and a brilliant soundtrack by Yuji Ohno (Captain Future, Space Adventure Cobra). In this film, he’s portrayed as a gentleman, whereas in most other depictions, such as The Mystery of Mamo (1978), he’s shown to be a bit of a cheeky playboy who has a funny haphazard quirkiness to him.
Takeshi Koike’s third project, produced by TMS Entertainment (Akira, Golgo 13) and subtitled Goemon Ishikawa’s Spray of Blood, and focuses on our titular samurai as he is branded as a traitor when he fails to prevent the assassination of the leader of a criminal syndicate for whom he was serving as a bodyguard, and is seeking revenge.
The goon targeting Goemon and the gang is “The Spectre of Bermuda”, known for a high body count. Judging from what I’ve read, it sounds like it will have a Chambara feel to it, with stylish sword play and over the top violence. The portrayal of Lupin and the gang this time seems a lot darker, being reminiscent of the Osumi episodes of the 1971 show, with more of a focus on the underground and violent nature of crime.
It was recently released in Japanese theatres on February 4th, 2017, with no word on an English release yet. I expect Discotek Media to release it, given the amount of support that has been shown through loads of DVD re-releases and sets for the franchise.
I’d recommend giving the series a try if you’re a fan of Cowboy Bebop or even James Bond. If you want to dip your toes in the series, a good starter point would be Castle of Cagliostro or the 1971 TV show, thanks to contribution by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
Mary and the Witches Flower
On August 3rd, 2014, after making 21 films, Studio Ghibli, perhaps the most internationally famous Japanese animation company of all time, announced that they were taking an indefinite hiatus from making feature films. This was after Hayao Miyazaki retired and their latest films receiving acclaim, but fairing very poorly at the box office. This move upset many fans, who now doubted if the spirit of Ghibli would live on.
In 2016, Ghibli worked on The Red Turtle, being the company’s first international collaboration, which ended up winning a few awards and receiving glowing praise, some of which came from Miyazaki-san. If you didn’t catch my review of this film, here’s the link to it.
https://theanimationcompendium.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/the-red-turtle-review-2016-michael-dudok-de-wit/
On December 15th, 2016, fans were surprised and excited at the announcement of a new film Mary and the Witch’s Flower, from former Ghibli film director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Arrietty, When Marnie was There). Being produced by former Ghibli film producer Yoshiaki Nishimura (Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo), and based on British children’s book The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, it is being made at a brand new company made up of ex-Ghibli animators, Studio Ponoc, which is the Croatian word for midnight. Any fan of Ghbili’s catalogue of films should keep a close eye on this studio. Given that many companies are focusing on CG animation for ease of access, seeing Ponoc continue to keep hand-drawn animation alive is quite reassuring.
It follows a girl named Mary, who after being sent to her great aunt’s house, gains magical powers, but only for one night. This film looks like a mix of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, and it will be released in Japanese cinemas this summer.
Altitude Film Sales (Moonlight, Green Room) have secured the international distribution rights to Mary and the Witch’s Flower, and are intending to release it in cinemas this year.
Godzilla (2017)
Godzilla is one of the most recognized and celebrated monsters in cinematic history, with the big G turning 63 years old this year. There have been 29 Japanese movies since 1954, with 2 American adaptations, cartoon shows and video games that have starred the atomic breathing beast.
With the success of the latest Japanese entry, Shin Godzilla, directed by Hideaki Anno (Gunbuster, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Shinji Higuchi (Attack on Titan live action films), Toho have hired Polygon Pictures (Tron: Uprising, Ronia the Robber’s Daughter) to produce the first ever anime film instalment in the franchise. It only took the better part of 6 decades for this to eventually happen, given The King of the Monsters has had tons of homages and references in various shows, but the prospect is certainly exciting. It is worth mentioning however that Godzilla did previous have an anime excursion in the form of the educational OVA series, Godzilland (1994-1996).
(I have a feeling he won’t look this cute in the new version.)
Godzilla (2017) will be directed by Kobun Shizuno (Knights of Sidonia, Soul Buster) and Hiroyuki Seshita (Ajin, BLAME! The Movie), with the screenplay being overseen by acclaimed writer Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Thunderbolt Fantasy). Not much about the film has been shown, outside of some concept art, but it certainly seems promising, with futuristic spaceships, primordial forests and space exploration to hopefully be present in the plot. Only thing I’m hoping is that the human characters are hand-drawn, as CG in anime always tends to be low frame rate and look a bit uncanny and off-kiltler for my liking.
Godzilla (2017) hasn’t been licensed for a Western release yet, though given the crew behind it, I’m sure it’ll get licensed.
The Breadwinner
Cartoon Saloon is a relatively new studio, formed in 1999 and are based in Kilkenny, Ireland. They have released films such as The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014), both of which are based on Irish folklore, and have received acclaim for stunning animation, touching storylines and having an imaginative flair that is quite refreshing. They are certainly positioning themselves to be a studio to look out for in the future.
Their newest outing, The Breadwinner is based on a 2001 children’s book by Deborah Ellis, and is directed by Cartoon Saloon’s own Nora Twomey, co-produced by Tomm Moore and would you believe it, Angelina Jolie. The story is based on Ellis’ own conversations with Afghan children in refugee camps, and tells the tale of Parvana, a young Afghan girl who must protend to be a boy in order to help her family survive.
It promises to be both enlightening and touching, and if Cartoon Saloon’s previous efforts are anything to go by, the visuals will be subtle and stunningly presented. It will be released sometime later this year and distribution will be handled by GKIDS in America, and StudioCanal in Europe.
Night is Short, Walk on Girl & Lu over the Wall
OK, so I’m cheating a bit here, but I really wanted to talk about both of these new films from one of my most respected anime directors, Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Ping Pong: The Animation). I do hope you understand.
First of all, I’ll talk about Yuasa’s new collaboration with Tomihiko Morimi, Night is Short, Walk on Girl. Yuasa previously adapted Morimi’s novel, The Tatami Galaxy, a psychological dark comedy that was acclaimed for sharp humour, thought provoking dialogue and quirky characters. Night is Short, Walk on Girl takes place in Kyoto, and follows a misguided romance between a black-haired girl and her admirer, and promises to be a surreal, psychedelic and unique story, including side characters like the Underpants Leader, the God of the Old Books Market, and someone who proclaims to be the mythical creature, Tengu.
The character designs are beautifully handled by Yuusuke Nakamura (Tatami Galaxy), with a soundtrack by Michiru Oshima (Full Metal Alchemist, Ico) and will be animated by Yuasa’s own studio, Science SARU (Space Dandy, Garo the Animation).
Night is Short, Walk on Girl will be released in Japanese cinemas on April 7th, with no English release date as of yet. Here’s hoping it gets picked up for an international release.
The second film, Lu over the Wall, also produced by Science SARU, is an original script penned by Yuasa, and as such, is his first original feature length film, with character designs by manga artist Yoko Nemu (Pandora, Gozen 3-ji), music by Takatsugu Muramatsu (When Marnie was There, Hime Chen!) and art direction handled by Kouji Oono (Wolf Children, Usagi Drop).
The story focuses on a middle school student named Kai, who lives in a countryside harbour whose life changes when he meets a mermaid named Lu, slowly forming a bond which allows him to grow and slowly open up about his feelings. The story sounds like a cross between The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Your Name and Ponyo with Yuasa’s fantastical and quirky animation style for good measure.
Lu over the Wall will be released in Japanese cinemas on May 19th, a month after Night is Short, Walk on Girl. No one as of yet as licensed this film for a Western release, but hopefully it’ll be released in the West sooner than later.
The Final Fantasy series is one of the most successful franchises in the history of video games. Because of their early titles reviewing poorly and selling even worse, the original game released back on December 18th, 1987 for the NES was intended to be Square’s last game. It was a surprise success that lead to dozens of follow-ups, spin-offs, remakes, re-releases, radio dramas, manga, cover albums and more fan-fiction, fan art and cosplay then one could ask for. Because of the series being lauded for complex rewarding gameplay and exploration, memorable characters, epic worlds, great stories, fantastic soundtracks, thrilling plot twists, stunning production values and an absolute cornucopia of pretty boys, it only seemed natural that the world of Final Fantasy would adapt perfectly to cinema… one would hope.
Like many other video game franchises that have been adapted onto the silver screen, Final Fantasy hasn’t had the greatest track record, with the first being a 4-episode Original Video Animation, Legend of the Crystals (1994), a distant sequel to FFV that featured underdeveloped characters and dumb attempts at comedy.
Whilst this was a relatively obscure release, seven years later, Square Pictures unleashed series creator Hiranobu Sakaguchi’s cinematic debut, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001). Featuring an all star cast including Steve Bucemi (The Big Lebowski), Alec Baldwin (Beetlejuice), James Woods (Videodrome) and Donald Sutherland (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) , it was the first feature length CG animated film to attempt realistic looking character models, though the story was more Ray Bradbury through the guise of Robert A. Heinlein then one would expect from the franchise. As a result, the film lost over $100 million, making it a total box office bomb and lost SquareSoft more money then any previous undertaking, forcing them to merge with Dragon Quest developer, Enix, to stay afloat.
The next attempt at a movie took the safe route by making a feature length sequel to the highest selling game in the series with Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005), directed by character designer Tetsuya Nomura (Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts). Being part of a series of Final Fantasy VII related spin offs, Advent Children was very popular and sold incredibly well on DVD, to the point that it was re-released with extra scenes in 2009. It has been met with a largely mixed reception, with the soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu and visual presentation being met with high praise. However, it has faced criticism for being an unnecessary sequel containing sloppy writing with many plot holes, in addition to poorly written dialogue and inconsistent characterization that often undermined a lot of the development from the original game.
This brings us to 2016, with Final Fantasy XV suffering many delays, changing directors and being in development for a decade, Square Enix decided to release supplementary material to familiarize fans with the world and the backstory. This included Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, a 6-episode online distributed anime series, and the third feature length film in the franchise, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, directed by Takeshi Nozue, who had previously worked on cut scenes for Final Fantasy IX, X and XIII, and produced by XV’s director, Hajime Tabata.
For generations in the world of Eos, the kingdom of Lucis has been protected by a crystal in a never ending war against the militaristic empire known as Niflheim, who are slowly taking over the world’s nations, thanks to their unsurmountable technological advances and power. Lucis responded by forming a magical barrier created by the power of the crystal, causing Insomnia to remain untouched by the Niflheim’s forces. Meanwhile, Noctis Lucis Caelum was sent to Tenebrae to recover from an injury with the help of his father, King Regis, whom were greeted by Lunafreya Nox Flueret and her family. The Niflheim forces appear in Tenebrae in a coup de tat against the Lucian bloodline, Regis and Noctis escape the attack, resulting in Luna and her family being taken hostage by the empire.
Cut to 12 years later, Niflheim and the forces of Tenebrae fight against Lucis, due to Tenebrae’s apparent betrayal by their ally, as high ranking military officer Ravus blames the king for his mother’s death. Regis forms a group of knights dubbed the Kingsglaive, made up of refugees from the overthrown nations, who fight using magic against enemy forces.
In the middle of a big battle, Nyx Ulric is told to retreat by his superiors due to Niflheim’s firepower, the Diamond Weapon. However, against his orders, Nyx saves Libertus Ostium from being killed by Cerberus. Nyx continues his duties as part of the unit by being a security guard within Insomnia.
Throughout the film, the story is presented through an omnipotent perspective, presenting the conflicts within the Kingsglaive, the Lucian Royalty and the Niflheim Empire, concurrent with the beginning of the game. The film firmly fits within the genre trappings of Science fiction, fantasy and action cinema.
The best aspects of the story are that the political intrigue within the Lucian dynasty is quite fascinating, and some of the world building does make the viewer want to explore Eos when the play the game… and that’s all I have to say regarding the positives.
With a screenplay penned by Takashi Hasegawa (Round About Midnight), one of Kingsglaive’s biggest problems is that the characters are either their just to be cannon fodder without much exploration or complete idiots that have motivations that make no bloody sense.
For example, Ravus witnesses the death of his Mother at the hands of General Glauca, and despite being clearly shown that the empire killed his Mother and thus forcing the Lucian royals to flee, when he’s an adult, he blames Regis for his Mother’s death and wants revenge. This attempt at creating a morally ambiguous character completely backfires due to a motivation that makes no sense, and feeling more like a plot device then an actual character.
Another example of a poorly handled character is Crowe Altius, a mage who is sent on a mission to rescue Luna from Niflheim and bring back her to Lucis. Before she leaves, they make sure to remind the audience that she is like a little sister to Nyx and Libertus, though they seem just as unsure as the audience as to why Crowe is given this task. In the midst of her mission, before she is able to accomplish anything, she’s found dead in the trash. Not only is her death poorly handled, as the film expects its audience to care and feel sad for a character they literally know nothing about and cements that she exists solely to give Nyx and Libertus a motivation. So the surrounding war, the destruction of their homeland and tensions between higher ups isn’t enough to motivate them, but the death of a vapid doll who they feel is their own property is the catalyst that gives the two men a reason to fight… uh… hmm… progressive much?
Princess Luna, the main female protagonist in the Final Fantasy XV world, came across a passive prop existing as the clichéd damsel in distress, and apparently has the intellect of a goldfish. While it is hinted that she is an oracle of some kind, the film never takes time to show any of her abilities. In one scene where Nyx and Luna are flying around in a ship whilst Lucius is under attack, with Luna wanting to go straight to Regis, Nyx tells her not to go, and Luna replies with “Not all miracles are made by magic.”, a phrase she constantly says throughout the story. She then takes a leap of faith and jumps out of the ship, determined that she will make the landing. Then Nyx just comes out and saves Luna before she possibly dies, not only making both characters look like complete idiots, but also undermining the belief Luna preaches throughout the film.
In a franchise renowned for well written and realized female characters, that include Tifa, Celes, Rydia, Rosa, Faris, Terra, Aerith, Garnet, Rinoa, Yuna, Ashe, and Freya, Crowe and Luna feel like a massive step backwards in terms of female characters. There have been summoners, commanders, soldiers, farmers, mages and freedom fighters… and Kingsglaive just has female characters that are there to be dragged along as props, or as plot devices to be killed off, giving male characters a reason to take action.
For a film that’s just shy of 2 hours, it honestly feels like it should have been another hour longer, to allow more depth to the characters and for certain revelations to feel properly built up instead of rushed. This mainly comes down to overuse of exposition, where characters tell each other things about themselves rather then actually presenting them, similarly to the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. Because a lot of the characters are movie-exclusive, and thus won’t appear in the game, it’s hard to get invested in the cast when most of them have a lack of screen time, minimal development, or are so poorly written that seeing them killed off can only be a good thing.
Another issue the film has is having too much exposition, leaving the viewers often baffled and confused, which isn’t helped by dull poorly written dialogue. This issue is presented within the opening, where the film apparently expects you to have read at least 50 Wikipedia articles or have watched and read every bit of promotional material for the game to understand what’s going on. It was clearly trying to evoke the introductory sequence to Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but without giving the audience a reason to care about the world or the ongoing conflict.
Overall, Kingsglaive clearly feels like content that was cut from the game, as it probably would have worked effectively as a 4 to 5-hour long prologue to allow players to explore the world and be able to feel more immersed into the story.
The visuals in Kingsglaive are certainly worthy of praise, with them being handled by Square Enix’s internal animation studio, Visual Works (Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts) and have been overseen by animation director, Hirotaka Sawada (Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny, Final Fantasy XII). Visual Works’ previous outings in creating cut scenes for video games make them a perfect fit for making animated features, given their crazy attention to detail and always pushing the limits of what CGI can achieve. The kingdom of Lucis, the forests of Tenebrae, the battlefields, the cafes, outskirts and the inside of castles all are exceptionally crafted thanks to the work of Shigenori Suzuki (Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Dissidia: Final Fantasy).
Because the world of Final Fantasy XV is a mixture of the real world and a traditional fantasy one, there’s a contrast with characters wearing fashion designer suits in a world full of fantastical castles and realistic architecture. This immaculate attention to realism can break immersion when there is product placement with characters looking at Samsung Galaxy smartphones, logos for American Express, All Japan Airlines, Uniqlo and probably the most shameless example, a scene where two characters are talking to each other in a car that honestly felt like an excuse to give Audi a corporate blowjob.
The motion capture, with the character models handled by Yusuke Suzuki (Final Fantasy X, Kingdom Hearts), is pretty damn good for the most part and shows how far CGI has come in depicting realistic designs, though they still suffer from the uncanny valley effect plaguing all realistic looking CG characters. They don’t look very stylized, will likely date quickly, and the effect of trying to make clearly animated characters look real just feels off. At least in Advent Children, while the character designs were fairly realistic in terms of build, they still had a stylised look to the faces, avoiding the problem of the animation dating quickly.
This is not helped by poor lip-syncing, with mouth movements not matching the audio, as the 3D scan actors are not the same as the voice actors, creating a feeling of awkwardness. Seriously, if your going to a motion capture animation, allow the voice actor to be involved in the 3D scan process, to end up with better lip-syncing and to have more natural mouth movements.
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children used the advantages of animation to create action sequences that were dazzling, well framed, over the top and had a kinetic quality one would find in wuxia films, except with pretty boys wielding spiky hair and giant swords. By far the worst part of the cinematography in Kingsglaive is unfortunately the action sequences, as they go for the style of action one find in films such as Taken 3, with hectic shaky cam, poor framing and incomprehensible editing, which is very disappointing.
For example, there is a 10 second shot of Libertus fighting a monster on the battlefield, and there’s 16 cuts, making it hard to understand what’s going on. In the same scene, where Nyx is fighting Cerberus, there is around 28 cuts that have poor framing and is so incomprehensible the viewers are likely to be baffled. In the medium of animation, using shaky cam for action sequences is quite frankly a stupid idea, since there are limitless possibilities to creating great action set pieces, as shown in films such as Sword of the Stranger, End of Evangelion, Redline and Akira.
Another issue with Kingsglaive is the editing, handled by Keiichi Kojima (Final Fantasy XIII, Front Mission Evolved) with scenes constantly cutting to black, 46 times in total, making it feel more like a modern movie trailer and gives Kingsglaive the feeling of a poorly strung collection of cut scenes that so happens to have been released in cinemas.
Its almost as if the editors just recently discovered how to cut and fade to black in Adobe Premiere, meaning the editing lacks flow, structure and overall feels amateurish.
The score was composed by John R. Graham (The Forger, Bitch Slap), with additional tracks by Yoko Shinomura (Super Mario RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles). While a few tracks such as “Prologue”, “Luna” and “Somnus (Instrumental version)” do stand out and have effective composition, a lot of the score sounds like temp music one would hear from a Hollywood superhero blockbuster. Perfectly fine and suits the film, but is not very memorable and feels a bit safe. Compare this to the soundtrack of Advent Children, which featured the work of famed series composer Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy I-X, The Last Story), featuring strong use of piano, strings, violin and chorus that results in nice melodies and haunting cues that stand out, such as “The Promised Land”, “Divinity II” and “Cloud Smiles”. It probably helps that the Advent Children soundtrack featured remixes from the original game. There is one scene that does feature the Final Fantasy Opening Theme that feels weirdly placed in the background during a crowd scene.
The voice acting in Kingsglaive is a bit of a mixed bag, with famed actors such as Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, Eye in the Sky), Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, 300) and Sean Bean (GoldenEye, Les Miserables) acting as the lead characters, whereas many of the minor characters are voiced by people known for working on anime English dubs, such as Wendee Lee (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Fushigi Yugi), Dan Woren (Persona 3, Bleach), Jamieson K. Price (Planetes, Metropolis) and Michelle Ruff (Your Name, Sailor Moon). The acting all over the place, with some of the acting coming across as pretty decent and well acted, while others don’t fare so well.
For example, Sean Bean’s performance as King Regis is very commanding and fitting of the character, giving his character a sincerity and authoritative quality that makes him a convincing ruler. It’s a shame that he isn’t playing Regis in the game, acting is some of the best in the film. However, in the case with Libertus, voiced by Liam Mulvey, his performance felt very cringe worthy, often sounding like he has something in mouth, always out of breath, and whenever he tries to do a dramatic scene, comes across as forced and unnatural.
The sound design and SFX are done pretty well, with the sound of wind, the clashing of swords, gunfire, screaming soldiers, vehicle sounds and explosions doing a fine job of adding to the scene, yet never becoming distracting.
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is a baffling mess of a film. While the visuals and audio work is beautifully effective, the movie does a very poor job at getting one interested in playing the game, given its meant to act as a prologue. It has badly written characters with poorly explained backstories and motivations, too much exposition, incomprehensible fight choreography, feels rushed with many plot holes and has incredibly questionable editing. As a prologue, it doesn’t work, making me question if the game will suffer from the same writing problems and inconsistencies that this film suffers from. It had a lot of potential, but it ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, feeling more like an extended trailer for the game that was created from poorly truncated cliff notes. While die-hard fans will appreciate some of the call-backs and references to the games, as a film, it is neither engaging or exciting, and combined with all of it’s writing, editing, pacing and characterization problems, makes the audience feel dumbfounded and frustrated.
2/5
If for some reason, after reading this review, you still feel inclined to see it, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is available on Blu-ray and DVD, as well as available for streaming on Amazon Prime, Xbox Live and Playstation Network. The film is also included for free with the Deluxe Edition of Final Fantasy XV.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingsglaive-Final-Fantasy-Blu-ray-Region/dp/B01H1TZVII/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488751972&sr=8-1&keywords=KINGSGLAIVE+FINAL+FANTASY
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingsglaive-Final-Fantasy-Aaron-Paul/dp/B01L0GIDRY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1488753273&sr=8-2&keywords=kingsglaive+final+fantasy
http://www.game.co.uk/en/final-fantasy-xv-deluxe-edition-only-at-game-1122796
Throughout the history of of artistic expression, many works covering LGBT themes have been made, reacting against the status quo of society. In the short time that cinema has existed, there have been much lauded gay film makers such as Kenneth Anger and John Waters, making experimental and often quirky films representing the LGBT community. More recently, films such as A Single Man (2009), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Philadelphia (1993), Weekend (2011), Carol (2015), Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) and the recently Oscar nominated Moonlight (2016), have explored the lives of those who happen to be different, allowing the members of these communities to have their voices heard.
In the field of animation made within the Western hemisphere, recent television shows such as Steven Universe, Adventure Time, The Legend of Korra, Gravity Falls, and movies such as Paranorman and Zootropolis, have all included various depictions of the gay community. This is sometimes done to either make it a major part of the storyline, or simply as a way to add diversity and realism to the cast.
Japan has always been curious about LGBT subject matter, dating back to the 1600s with ukiyo-e artists such as Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Nishikawa Sukenobu, Hishikawa Muronobu, Chokyosai Eiri, Hiroge and even Hokusai, who would sometimes produce art exploring gay and lesbian sexuality. Homosexuality was even encouraged amongst the samurai.
This fascination with homosexuality has continued into modern pop culture, with manga artists such as Riyoko Ikeda, Moto Hagio and CLAMP, all making series that contain various forms of homosexuality. As far as anime is concerned, shows such as Yuri on Ice, Revolutionary Girl Utena, From the New World, Wandering Son, Cardcaptor Sakura, Sweet Blue Flowers and even Sailor Moon usually have characters that are with in the LGBT sector, allowing audiences to delve into the character’s inner psyche and their relationships. Many of these shows have gone on to have big fan followings, with many fans praising these works for exploring subjects that have been otherwise considered sinful or taboo in Western culture. Within the medium, there are several sub-genres that specifically explore LGBT romance and relationships, like Shounen Ai, Shoujo Ai, Yuri and Yaoi.
On February 20th, 2016, the film Doukyusei (Classmates in English) debuted in Japanese cinemas. It was produced by A-1 Pictures (Anthem of the Heart, Anohana) and Aniplex (Fate/zero, Gurren Lagann), and it is based on a 1 volume manga by Asumiko Nakamura (Utsubora: The Story of a Novelist). It is the first feature length film directed by Shouko Nakamura, who previously directed episodes of Mawaru Penguindrum and Kill la Kill.
On a hazy summer afternoon in Tokyo, Hikaru Kusakabe, a second year music student attending an all boys school, is doing vocal practice for an upcoming chorus festival. While singing, he notices that bespectacled honour student, Rihito Sajo, is not singing, giving Kusakabe the impression that he doesn’t like singing. After classes have finished for the day, Kusakabe is just about to head off to band practice, until he decides to head back to get his lunch bag. He notices Sajo nervously reading the score notes and singing alone, and decides to join in to help. With both getting along, they agree to hang out and practice in free time. As the days go by, Kusakabe and Sajo become friends, as they offer up casual conversation, practice singing and they walk home together. Their mutual feelings for each other elevate, and on a serene night at the park, peak when least expected.
The story of Doukyusei is told in a series of character-driven vignettes, similar to 5 Centimeters per Second (2007), where over the course of the senior year, Kusakabe and Sajo’s relationship gradually becomes more intimate. As this is within the Shounen-Ai (Boy’s Love) sub-genre, questions around the relationship are brought up and explored in a gentle, tender and sedate fashion. One can compare this approach to telling a story about a gay couple to Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (2011).
While the romance story being told here isn’t anything original, through the initial attraction, tender and intimate moments, to the internal and personal conflicts, it is written very well and allows the viewer to become engaged within the relationship between the two lead characters, regardless of one’s sexual orientation. With Kusakabe being outgoing and direct, while Sajo is reserved and demure, the relationship is shown as loving, emotional, caring and touching, making their dynamic feel genuine, which is ultimately the core of the film.
Because of how much of the film focuses on the two main characters, smaller elements of the story are either not fully explored or feel rushed. Without being spoilerific, this makes one moment feel less important. There is also a minor character, Manabu Hara, the music teacher who seems very intriguing and fascinating, and is only given a small amount of screen time, a shame, since more moments of bonding would have been nice. These issues mainly stem from the 60 minute run time. While that allows the core relationship to be the focus, an extra 30 minutes to provide extra world building would have helped.
With art direction handled by Chieko Nakamura (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yurikuma Arashi) and colour design by Ritsuko Utagawa (Baccano, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie), Doukyusei has an aesthetic that is washed out and easy on the eyes. Although the animation is quite simplistic compared to A-1 Picture’s other work, the style fits very well in presenting a calm, sedate and gentle vibe. Rather than the design having a very overstated and brash quality, it is often understated, with many scenes having a focus on primary colours. One such example includes having a classroom surrounded by desks, curtains, walls, lockers with light watercolours, whereas the outside is plain white light, making it feel naturalistic, calm and nostalgic.
The backgrounds of the high school, the park, neighbourhoods, bars and train stations do a solid job at conveying a down to earth, naturalistic vibe that one doesn’t usually find in Western animation. The trees and plants are incredibly well detailed, in a picturesque sense that makes the world feel relatable, with an added impressionistic touch. This approach to showing the life of the characters felt organic, akin to the flashback sequences in Only Yesterday.
The character animation and designs, overseen by Akemi Hayashi (Fruits Basket, Peacemaker Kurokane) is expressive and has a delicate nuance to the character’s movements that tell us about their personality. Kusakabe’s carefree personality is shown through the loose and floaty movement of his legs while running, while Sajo’s demure and observant behaviour is presented through the way he calmly walks. Meanwhile, Asumiko Nakamura’s original art style is reflected very well with the character designs. They have been well adapted to the anime medium, having a very pleasant looking, delicate, loose and gentle aesthetic that firmly puts them in the aesthetic of bishonen (pretty boy) design. The use of split screens, highlighting important moments in the character’s life is a nice call back to the oeuvre of Osamu Dezaki (Rose of Versailles, Golgo 13), while also paying respect to the original manga.
The sound direction by Akiko Fujita (Tailenders, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt) begins in a sedate way, starting off the film with the sound of wind and cicadas chirping in the summer heat. This ambience is at times quiet sounding, at times loud, depending on the shot and the focus they want the audience to have. In other words, prominent, yet not overbearing. Occasionally, it will disappear, which is quite noticeable, punctuating the action at specific moments, drawing the viewer’s attention to specific aspects of the story. The quality of the recordings is very clear, crisp and warm, with the arrangements being simple yet purposeful.
The voice acting is naturalistic, yet emotive, with monologues at times being half sung to show the mood of the character. The dialogue is mixed subtly, yet done in a realistic manner. It often uses close or distant mic-ing to focus attention on certain characters, rather than the shot. For example, the teacher can be in the background with students responding to his words in the foreground, yet the teacher sounds close and the students sound distant. There’s very few layers of sound used. For example, a reduced, minimalist ambience and the dialogue of the characters being the only sounds in a scene, making the scene feel like it exists in a bubble. At times this bubble can be interrupted by the soundtrack coming in and cutting out all the dialogue and ambience, creating an otherworldly vibe.
The score is composed and performed by acoustic guitarist, Kotaro Oshio, and it is the first film soundtrack of his career. The guitar playing is beautiful, relaxed and presented in a way that’s adds to the atmosphere of the film, and sounds so nice it almost feels like its playing itself. All in all, the use of sound creates a very dreamlike feel to the everyday life that the characters go through.
Doukyusei is a very simple, yet considered film with all of the elements, with nice character designs, animation, story and sound all contributing to the overall feel, without ever being overbearing. While some more world building and exploration of side characters would have been appreciated and added some extra depth, the core characters felt fleshed and their romance was effectively portrayed. Within the sector of LGBT cinema, this films a very tender, heart-warming and simple story, where the protagonists simply happen to be gay, rather than being overly preachy. In a Western world, Doukyusei is a welcome change, from the live action centric catalogue of LGBT works, using animation to beautifully portray a very genuine relationship.
4/5
If you are curious in checking out Doukyusei, a region free Blu-ray has been released by Aniplex of America with English subtitles, complete with Trailers and commercials, illustration cards and a deluxe booklet.
http://doukyuseimovie.com/blu-ray/
While it is not available in the UK, heres hoping that it gets licensed by Anime Limited, as this film deserves a decent release over here.
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https://blendermarket.com/products/asian-boy-charachter/ratings
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en
|
Asian Boy Character Little Kano
|
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A Unique Market for Creators that love Blender
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en
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Blender Market
|
https://blendermarket.com/products/asian-boy-charachter/ratings
|
Built by Blenderheads, for the Blender Community
Blender Market's goal is to give our community a trusted platform for earning a living with software that we all love, Blender.
Made with love from the humans behind CG Cookie
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https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a39580962/top-boy-kano-rewrites-scenes/
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en
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Top Boy's Ashley Walters shares co
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2022-03-30T10:00:01.606635+00:00
|
Top Boy star Ashley Walters has revealed that co-star Kano regularly rewrites his scenes, saying it has resulted in some "iconic" scenes in the series.
|
en
|
/_assets/design-tokens/latest/digitalspy/static/images/favicon.b8735b8.ico
|
Digital Spy
|
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a39580962/top-boy-kano-rewrites-scenes/
|
Top Boy star Ashley Walters has revealed that his co-star Kano likes to rewrite his scenes.
Grime artist Kano, who plays Sully, has been a main cast member since the London crime drama's very first season and has transcended his craft to become one hell of an actor.
However, his co-star Ashley Walters has now revealed something even more impressive, explaining that Kane Robinson (that's Kano's real name) will rewrite some of his scenes in the show – and that they end up being some of the series' "most iconic".
"A little bit of insight, this guy is like [director Martin] Scorsese," Walters said of Kano during an interview with Robert Bruce on Capital XTRA recently.
Related: Top Boy's Kane Robinson reacts to season 4's shock ending
"So what happens is, I'll come in in the morning, into my trailer and someone will knock... 'Kano would like to see you', and then I have to go and have an hour discussion with this guy about a scene that he's rewritten, that he won't show me," Walters continued.
"So we'll get into this scene and this guy will just come with a whole monologue, new scene! But, in his defence, some of those moments have been the most iconic scenes and have made me step up my game.
"Some of the speeches he goes on with, and I'm like, 'First of all this is not in the script', you're looking, I can't obviously cut the scene right now, but this is not in it. But by the end of it, I'm crying. I felt it so much, like, 'Rah this is so deep.'"
Related: Top Boy's Saffron Hocking teases Lauryn and Sully showdown in season 5
Walters continued to suggest that Kano's alterations "elevate the show", and the former Cuffs lead also referenced how this "devotion to these characters" spreads to the rest of the cast and allows them to create an authentic experience on-screen.
"That's what we, more than actors in the show, that's what we're bringing to the table, our devotion to these characters," Walters said.
"And that trickles down to the other actors as well. They see how we are professionally, how we move over the show, how we move on set and everyone kind of takes that on board as well. That's why I think we get a well-balanced authentic real experience."
We wonder if they'd entertain Joseph Sikora's Power Book IV: Force crossover idea?
Listen to Robert Bruce on Capital XTRA Monday to Thursdays 7pm - 10pm and Saturdays 4pm - 7pm.
|
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dbpedia
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https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/top-boy-season-5-cast/
|
en
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Meet the cast of Top Boy season 5
|
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[
""
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[
"James Hibbs"
] |
2023-09-07T16:29:25+01:00
|
It's time to say goodbye to the Summerhouse crew in Top Boy season 5, but do you know Dushane from Sully? Here's the cast and characters for season 5.
|
en
|
Radio Times
|
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/top-boy-season-5-cast/
|
It focuses on a group of drug dealers operating in Hackney, including their internal politics and attempts to make it to the top of the game.
The series has starred Ashley Walters and Kano since the very start, but who else appears in the show's final season and who do they all play?
Read on for everything you need to know about the cast of Top Boy season 5.
More like this
Top Boy season 5 cast: Meet the characters of the Netflix drama
Ashley Walters plays Dushane Hill
Who is Dushane? Dushane has been on the show since season 1 and is a drug kingpin and head of the Summerhouse crew.
Where have I seen Ashley Walters before? Walters has appeared in Doctor Who, Hustle, Silent Witness and a whole host of British dramas. He is also known for his starring role in the Sky series Bulletproof.
Kane Robinson plays Gerald "Sully" Sullivan
Who is Sully? Sully has been Dushane's partner in the game on a number of occassions, but will they be able to work together in season 5 or can there only be one top boy?
Where have I seen Kane Robinson before? Better known as Kano, Robinson is primarily a rapper, songwriter and grime artist, although he also appeared in the 2012 British thriller Tower Block.
Simbiatu Ajikawo/Little Simz plays Shelley
Who is Shelley? Shelley is Dushane's girlfriend, who he met when she was carer to his mother. She is mother to Tish and owns a nail salon.
Where have I seen Little Simz before? Simz is best known as a rapper and singer, but also appeared in the E4 series Youngers, as well as recent films and show including Venom: Let There Be Carnage and The Power.
Jasmine Jobson plays Jaq
Who is Jaq? Jaq is a key member of the Summerhouse crew, who is trusted by both Dushane and Sully.
Where have I seen Jasmine Jobson before? Jobson, who was BAFTA nominated for her work in Top Boy, has also appeared in the ITV series Dark Heart, BBC's Noughts + Crosses and the 2020 thriller film Surge, which also starred Ben Whishaw.
Araloyin Oshunremi plays Stefan Tovell
Who is Stefan? Stefan is a young man who in season 5 is mourning the loss of his brother Jamie.
Where have I seen Araloyin Oshunremi before? As well as Top Boy, Oshunremi has also appeared in another popular Netflix series, Heartstopper.
NoLay plays Mandy
Who is Mandy? Mandy is a close friend of Shelley's who came out of prison ahead of season 4.
Where have I seen Nolay before? Nolay is best known as an MC/rapper.
Saffron Hocking plays Lauryn
Who is Lauryn? Lauryn is Jaq's sister who was previously forced to leave London.
Where have I seen Saffron Hocking before? Besides Top Boy, Hocking is perhaps best known for her role in the BBC sitcom White Gold, although she has also appeared in recent shows such as Moon Knight and Riches.
Barry Keoghan plays Jonny
Who is Jonny? Jonny is a brutal, threatening member of an Irish gang.
Where have I seen Barry Keoghan before? Keoghan has appeared in a number of high-profile roles in films including The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Green Knight, Eternals, The Batman and The Banshees of Inisherin. He will soon be seen in the film Saltburn, and on TV he had a role in Chernobyl.
Shaun Dingwall plays Jeffrey
Who is Jeffrey? Jeffrey is Lizzie's husband and a big player in the drug game who works with Dushane.
Where have I seen Shaun Dingwall before? Dingwall is perhaps best known for his role as Pete Tyler in Doctor Who, while he has also starred in Noughts + Crosses, Grantchester, Death in Paradise, Silent Witness, Goodbye Christopher Robin and many other series and films.
Joshua Blissett plays Kieron
Who is Kieron? Kieron is a dealer for Summerhouse.
Where have I seen Joshua Blissett before? Blissett has previously appeared in projects including Blue Story and Young Wallander.
Adwoa Aboah plays Becks
Who is Becks? Becks is Jaq's girlfriend who took in Lauryn in season 4.
Where have I seen Adwoa Aboah before? Aboah is best known as a fashion model, but she also recently appeared in Disney Plus series Willow.
Savanah Graham plays Erin
Who is Erin? Erin is Dris's daughter who grows close with Stefan.
Where have I seen Savanah Graham before? Top Boy is Graham's first on-screen credit.
Dudley O’Shaughnessy plays Si
Who is Si? Si is a loyal member of the Fields gang who looks after Stefan.
Where have I seen Dudley O'Shaughnessy before? O'Shaughnessy has previously appeared in series including Suspects and Doctors.
Top Boy season 5 is available to stream on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight.
|
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https://www.savingcontent.com/2014/08/11/kano-revealed-for-mortal-kombat-x/
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en
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Kano revealed for Mortal Kombat X
|
[
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"https://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-Du25N_rBQaxq0.gif"
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"SAVING CONTENT"
] |
2014-08-11T00:00:00
|
Today, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios released a new Mortal Kombat X gameplay video showcasing Kano, leader of the
|
en
|
Saving Content
|
https://www.savingcontent.com/2014/08/11/kano-revealed-for-mortal-kombat-x/
|
[youtube http://youtu.be/0a2CZzSGarI]
Today, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios released a new Mortal Kombat X gameplay video showcasing Kano, leader of the international crime syndicate The Black Dragon, as he goes up against new-to-the-series character D’Vorah.
Narrated by Mortal Kombat co-creator and NetherRealm Studios’ creative director Ed Boon, the new gameplay video features the overgrown Jungle environment and guides players through Kano’s character variations and play styles. Kano’s variations include “Cutthroat,” “Cybernetic” and “Commando.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Lights Off
Related
Related
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https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a39580962/top-boy-kano-rewrites-scenes/
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en
|
Top Boy's Ashley Walters shares co
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[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Dan Seddon"
] |
2022-03-30T10:00:01.606635+00:00
|
Top Boy star Ashley Walters has revealed that co-star Kano regularly rewrites his scenes, saying it has resulted in some "iconic" scenes in the series.
|
en
|
/_assets/design-tokens/digitalspy/static/images/favicon.b8735b8.ico
|
Digital Spy
|
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a39580962/top-boy-kano-rewrites-scenes/
|
Top Boy star Ashley Walters has revealed that his co-star Kano likes to rewrite his scenes.
Grime artist Kano, who plays Sully, has been a main cast member since the London crime drama's very first season and has transcended his craft to become one hell of an actor.
However, his co-star Ashley Walters has now revealed something even more impressive, explaining that Kane Robinson (that's Kano's real name) will rewrite some of his scenes in the show – and that they end up being some of the series' "most iconic".
"A little bit of insight, this guy is like [director Martin] Scorsese," Walters said of Kano during an interview with Robert Bruce on Capital XTRA recently.
Related: Top Boy's Kane Robinson reacts to season 4's shock ending
"So what happens is, I'll come in in the morning, into my trailer and someone will knock... 'Kano would like to see you', and then I have to go and have an hour discussion with this guy about a scene that he's rewritten, that he won't show me," Walters continued.
"So we'll get into this scene and this guy will just come with a whole monologue, new scene! But, in his defence, some of those moments have been the most iconic scenes and have made me step up my game.
"Some of the speeches he goes on with, and I'm like, 'First of all this is not in the script', you're looking, I can't obviously cut the scene right now, but this is not in it. But by the end of it, I'm crying. I felt it so much, like, 'Rah this is so deep.'"
Related: Top Boy's Saffron Hocking teases Lauryn and Sully showdown in season 5
Walters continued to suggest that Kano's alterations "elevate the show", and the former Cuffs lead also referenced how this "devotion to these characters" spreads to the rest of the cast and allows them to create an authentic experience on-screen.
"That's what we, more than actors in the show, that's what we're bringing to the table, our devotion to these characters," Walters said.
"And that trickles down to the other actors as well. They see how we are professionally, how we move over the show, how we move on set and everyone kind of takes that on board as well. That's why I think we get a well-balanced authentic real experience."
We wonder if they'd entertain Joseph Sikora's Power Book IV: Force crossover idea?
Listen to Robert Bruce on Capital XTRA Monday to Thursdays 7pm - 10pm and Saturdays 4pm - 7pm.
|
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1473
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0
| 1 |
https://muc.fandom.com/wiki/Kano
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en
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Kano
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https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/muc/images/f/f6/Kano.png/revision/latest?cb=20131228101201
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2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00
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"No charm!" — Kano's main motto "All of your bombs fill fly! But it will still be a beatin' to your bloody neck!" — Kano to his fellow Black Dragons Kano (real name; Kane) is the current leader of the Black Dragon Clan, and features in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few...
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/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico
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Made up Characters Wiki
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https://muc.fandom.com/wiki/Kano
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Kano Biographical information Real name Kane Also known as Kano, Fahkin' Criminal!, Kan-o, Kan oh right, I forgot the o., Terminator Nationality Australian Age 45 Status Alive Birthplace Sydney, Australia, Oceania Physical description Eye colour Brown, other is mechanical and glowing red Hair colour Brown, black Ethnicity Caucasian Height 5'10 Weight 90.7kg Blood type A- Gender Male Career, affiliations and family information Affiliation(s) Black Dragon Clan, Kabal (formerly), Jarek, Arbok, Nightspirits, Kira, Shao Kahn, Mileena, 9-Man Clan, Gary Bluechart Enemies Sonya Blade, Jax Briggs, Johnny Cage, NYPD, Kabal, Red Dragon Clan, Sub-Zero, Kurtis Stryker, Red Harlow, Navado (formerly), Globgloglabgalab, Forletti Family, Belokk Occupation(s) Black Dragon Clan leader, black market weapons' dealer, criminal, bounty hunter Video Games, Movies and Cartoons information Main appearance(s) (Video Games) Mortal Kombat I, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat III, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Mortal Kombat: Return of The Dragon King; Konquest, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, Mortal Kombat X, Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, Mortal Kombat 12 Voiced by (English) Michael McConnohie Portrayed by Trevor Goddard
"No charm!"
— Kano's main motto
"All of your bombs fill fly! But it will still be a beatin' to your bloody neck!"
— Kano to his fellow Black Dragons
Kano (real name; Kane) is the current leader of the Black Dragon Clan, and features in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat I arcade game. He was the first member of the Black Dragon clan to appear in the series, followed by many others.
About Kano[]
A half of Kano's face is covered with a metal plate, he founded this metallic mask in a Soul Well prior to the events of the series, with the plated eye being a glowing red orb capable of emitting laser shots. Originally a criminalistic and cowardly leader of the international gang known as the Black Dragon Clan, he rises beyond the level of mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. It was through his resourcefulness that he convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life, while he was captured in Outworld and it was through ruthless ambition that he later ascended to position as a bounty hunter for hire of Outworld's armies. Kano combines the features of a cowardly minion, a lone survivor, a crazed madman, and an intelligent commander. His actions have made him the archenemy of Lt. Sonya Blade.
Info[]
Kano is the leader of the Black Dragon organisation, a criminal empire of cut-throat madmen and criminals. In 1990, he freed fellow Black Dragon cohorts No-Face, Tasia, Jarek and Tremor from a US Special Forces security facility, under the pretence that they would reform the Black Dragon organisation. In reality, he intended to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. Annihilating an entire squad at the site of the prison break, he and his cohorts escaped.
With his Black Dragon associates given their assigned tasks, Kano headed to Outworld where he recovered the Eye of the Terminator (better known as Kano's Mask), an artefact through which he would acquire incredible power. Unfortunately for him, however, Major Jackson Briggs had overcome his accomplices and caught up to him. The two fought, and Kano was defeated. Jax used a portal to transport them back to Earth, and proceeded to bring Kano into custody, though Kano escaped soon after.
Kano entered Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat Tournament after hearing rumours that Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches: Kano intended to steal them for the Black Dragon Clan at the time led by Kabal. At that time, the Black Dragon was the primary target of the Special Forces and would remain so for a number of years. He was pursued by Lt. Sonya Blade, who held a personal grudge against Kano because he had killed her former partners. While Kano was free to take part in the tournament of his own accord, Sonya and her unit were captured by Tsung's Masked Guards. Tsung offered Sonya an ultimatum: compete in MK, or she and her unit would be executed. If she won, they would all be free to go. Sonya and Kano survived the tournament but many others died, including Sonya's men. After the final battle between Shang Tsung and Liu Kang, Kano teamed up with Sonya and Johnny Cage to fight Goro despite already being defeated. During the battle, the island began to crumble because of Shang Tsung's defeat and before they knew it, Kano and Sonya found themselves in a forest in Outworld. They were found and captured by Shang.
Kano and Sonya both spent the duration of the second tournament chained up on display in Kahn's Arena, where they were forced to observe the battles that took place. Eventually, they are freed by Jax, who then takes advantage of the opportunity to arrest Kano. As they cross the portal back to Earth, Kano escapes and runs back into Outworld.
Although most Earth warriors assumed Kano to be dead, he instead managed to save his own life by convincing Shao Kahn to accept him as a weapons instructor or a bounty hunter for his armies. As a man with knowledge of Earth's weaponry, he was the most suitable candidate. Later, during the events of Mortal Kombat 4, Sonya tossed Kano to his surmised death from the roof of a flat building, but he was found by Motaro, who imprisoned him. After Motaro was attacked and killed by Sheeva, Kano was freed from his prison. He and Sheeva hatched a plan to murder Shao Kahn, but Kano turned on Sheeva in the decisive moments and Sheeva was left at the mercy of the emperor. Due to this Kano was then hastily promoted to general of Outworld's rapidly shrinking army.
Eventually Kahn's forces were defeated. Earth was free, and so was Edenia. Shao Kahn's act of promoting Kano, however, proved to be a lucky shot, as Kano was a very competent general. Even in the face of overwhelming odds and the tactical mastership of Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army, Kano stood ground and eventually managed to repel the invading army. He returned to Shao Kahn's Castle just in time to watch from the shadows as Shang Tsung and Quan Chi sprung their attack on the weakened emperor and killed him. As soon as the emperor was finished, Kano declared his allegiance to the new rulers of Outworld, the Deadly Alliance. The two had Kano oversee the enslavement of a small village, called Sun Do, who would construct a temple over Onaga's tomb to house the soulnado. During its construction, Kano was personally assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervened.
His intervention was due in no part for any particular affinity for the criminal, however. The Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon member Navado; he would eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano. Navado attacked and left Kenshi for dead, earning his battle, however Kenshi survived his assault.
It would seem that Navado won the fight, as in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: Konquest, Kano is found by Steven to have been held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan for quite some time at the Red Dragon Caves. Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Steven that the Red Dragon had been trying to experiment on him, as well as their own clan members in Lisbon, in an effort to create real-life genetically engineered dragons and Hybrid Dragon. Kano mentions that they were trying "something new" on him, although he leaves before he elaborates on what that "something" is.
Kano is later seen climbing the Pyramid of Argus where he strikes down Stryker and stabs Bo' Rai Cho in the back before falling down with Kobra due to his puke. He attempts to climb back up but is one of the many characters knocked off the Pyramid by Shao Kahn.
Current timeline[]
Kano is at the first Mortal Kombat Tournament, appearing during Shang Tsung's addressing of all of the combatants prior to the beginning of the said tournament. Kano appears on the bridge high above the Pit 2 after Johnny Cage defeats Sonya Blade in a fight. Kano ambushes Johnny from behind, throwing him off the bridge, and makes a move to kill the beat-down Sonya. However, Johnny was able to grab onto the edge of the bridge to avoid the pit, and leaps back onto the platform to face Kano just as he prepares to kill Sonya. Kano loses the fight, but disappears and adapts into the unknown while Johnny and Sonya engage in a conversation.
When Sonya frees Jax Briggs from the scary Goro's Dungeon, she attempts to call for an evacuation for Jacks. Shang appears with Kano, as the rescue helicopter is shot down by the sorcerer. Sonya faces Kano in a battle and defeats him. Sonya attempts to arrest Kano, but Shang Tsung stops her, and Kano leaves with Tsung.
Kano later appears along with Sektor in the Forest of Death, attempting to sell Sektor some Black Dragon Clan weaponry. Smoke appears, and Kano tells Sektor that he will take care of him, no charge. Despite his claims, Kano is defeated by the Lin Kuei Clan of as ninja.
Kano appears during the Earth invasion. After Kabal is severely burned by Kintaro, Kano takes Kabal back to Outworld and supplies him with the breathing equipment (AKA Kabal's Mask). As Kabal awakens in his new form, Kano attempts to sway Kabal back into the Black Dragon, but Kabal berates Kano for selling the Outworld warriors their firepower and the former allies engage one another in combat. After gaining the upper hand, Kabal forces Kano to bring him to a portal out of Outworld back into Earth. Kano does so, and while making a wisecracking comment, is rendered unconscious by Kabal.
After regaining consciousness, he goes to the Clock Tower with Goro and Kintaro and watches over POW's while waiting for Robot Sub-Zero. Unaware of Sub-Zero's reprogramming, Kano, Goro and Kintaro are frozen while Sub-Zero frees the prisoners. After thawing, he warns Noob Sailbot of Sub-Zero's treachery. Kano is not seen or mentioned again following this.
In Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, Kano first appears in the Flash's story, where he attempts to steal a jewel already stolen by Catwoman, though she manages to retrieve it and escape through a nearby portal not familiar with her. Kano battles the Flash after becoming annoyed by the hero's aggressive attitude, but his eye lasers are dodged by Silva and he's defeated in battle. He's almost killed by the rage-infected Flash but Gregory McCain prevents him from fulfilling the deed, sparing Kano's life.
Much later, Kano and Sonya are teamed up to investigate the worlds' merging and the two get in a fight with the Joker and Deathstroke at a graveyard, only to be teleported to OA. Kano fights with Deathstroke, who compliments his skill. After Joker defeats Sonya, he shoves Deathstroke aside and defeats Kano, humiliating him.
When the two return to the Sky Temple to report their findings, Kano becomes infected by the rage after being mocked by Shang Tsung for losing to a clown, snapping at Liu Kang for trying to defend him and battles the sorcerer, but is once more defeated. Kano is almost killed by Tsung, but Sonya intervenes, reluctantly, sparing his life. Kano then participates in the final battle against the DC Universes heroes and villains, facing the Joker once again, but he is knocked out, only to revive later after Dark Kahn's destruction and witnesses the restoration of the planets.
Before the main events of the storyline in Mortal Kombat X, Kano stole Shinnok's Amulet and left a duplicate in its place, as well as a trap for anyone who would discover the duplicity. The Black Dragon mercenary would then sell the amulet to Mileena for many gold coins to be used as a weapon against her usurper and uncle, Kotal Kahn.
Kano is first seen alongside Kotal Kahn and D'Vorah, bargaining over weapon prices and information on Mileena's location. Unbeknownst to Kotal Kahn, Kano had already been hired by Mileena to eliminate him, and makes his move after their carriage is attacked by Mileena's Tarkatan hordes. However, Kotal manages to fend off Kano's attacks. After defeating the criminal, Kotal attempts to finish him off, but is blasted away by Tanya, allowing Kano to escape with his life.
Kano is mentioned by Li Mei and thousands of Outworld refugees who crossed over into Earth seeking asylum from the war. She alludes to "an Earthrealmer with a glowing red eye" as being among those who crossed the portal with them, and Sonja instantly recognises that this is in fact Kano. She heads off to the refugee Camp to intercept him before he can escape, and discovers the slain corpse of an Outworlder along the way, recognising it to be Kano's work.
Kano somehow sneaks into the Special Forces' refugee camp disguised as an alien refugee. Sonya spots him, and after being confronted by Sonya and Kenshi, Kano reveals himself and offers info in exchange for his freedom. Sonya refuses to negotiate, and Kano responds by threatening to go after Cassie Cage, initiating a brawl between the two.
Kano is defeated, and an enraged Sonya nearly strangles him to death. As Kano begs for his life, Johnny shows up and urges her to show restraint, explaining that they still need info on the amulet. Sonya complies with Cage, and demands the info out of Kano, which he agrees to. Kano is not seen again after this, presumably brought into custody for his crimes.
As of the New Era events Kano has become the leader of the Black Dragon following Nightspirits' death (whom he himself killed to takeover the clan).
Mortal Kombat Film[]
Kano appeared in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and was played by the late Trevor Goddard. He seems to have very bad table manners, as shown when Sonya, Liu Kang and Johnny Cage are spying on him, Goro, and Shang Tsung are eating with him. In spite of their alliance, Shang Tsung and Goro have little respect for him. Kano also appears to harbour an obsessive infatuation for Sonya regardless of her hatred for him. She now had a personal interest in seeking revenge against Kano for killing her boyfriend so many years ago. Shang Tsung hires Kano to lure Sonya into the Mortal Kombat Tournament and promises to grant Kano some money and gold he desires for his efforts after he faces off against Sonya in the tournament, demanding that Sonya is not to be harmed but merely humiliated, claiming that he has plans for her. During their match, Kano gleefully taunts Sonya about how he murdered her partner with his kitchen knife. After beating Sonya harshly, Kano is caught off guard by a leg lock from Sonya, and is soon trapped between her thighs and at her mercy. Shang Tsung betrays Kano and goads Sonya into finishing him off. By pleading for his life, Sonya lets go Kano's neck and Kano is only knocked out.
Quotes[]
"Your eye is gettin' a good use for that neck, mate."
"Ah, I'm sorry mate."
"Ok, mate."
"Shang! Now that was a real bloody roof!"
"Bounty Hunterin' is a good job, mate. It's a challenging work. I guaranteed you won't go angry."
"Bloody hell, you're awful!"
"Bloody hell!"
"God save the Queen!"
"Teams are trying to create real Red Dragons - they'd been able to create a hybrid of a man in Lisbon!"
"They've been using their OWN clan members as test subjects!
"NO CHARM!"
"Awww, sith..."
"Another reason to gut ya!"
"I'm gonna make a necklace out of your teeth."
"Your helmet's gonna make a nice bowl for your brains!"
Powers and abilities[]
Kano is very opportunistic, manipulative, and resourceful, so he mostly engages in fights he has an advantage in like the coward that he is. He usually uses his Black Dragon members (Tasia, Tremor, Jarek, and No-Face) to engage his enemies and to wear them down, so he can have the advantage in the cowardly fight. Although Kano uses others to his advantage, he is extremely adept in hand-to-hand combat and displays great powers with his knives, particularly his signature weapon: a pair of butcher knives.
In addition to his skills, Kano has had several cybernetic upgrades throughout his body, particularly his cybernetic eye, which he can omit a laser beam from. Another of Kano's special moves is his ability to tuck into a cannonball and propel himself toward his opponents like an army chopper Julio wishes to steal. Kano is also shown to be incredibly strong and powerful, as he can punch through a person's body. He is even capable to punching through metal, ripping out vital organs, ripping off someone's head, and even rip out an entire skeleton out of his opponent with his bare hands.
Trivia[]
He has some quotes the same as Sniper from Team Fortress 2.
Kano roughly resembles the Terminator from the Terminator series of films.
Kano was rumoured to be in MK4 through morphs, but this was later proven false.
Kano and Sonya were the first characters to be confirmed for MK3.
Although originally Kano was thought to be American-Japanese.
In Deadly Alliance, Kano hung Sonya Blade's hair around his neck as a symbol of their rivalry, which he tore from her head during their battle atop the skysdinosaur in Outworld.
Kano is the only human fighter in MK shown to have any body hair, specifically chest hair.
In the Krypt of Deadly Alliance, the coffin CO contains a comedic ad for "Kan-os", a breakfast cereal with a cartoonish image of Kano on the box.
In MK 9, Kano is the only characters whose victory pose is retained in the challenge tower, spitting on the floor and saying "No charm!", whereas everyone else's is changed.
Bounty Hunting license[]
{|style="width: 650px; padding:20px; background-color:#000033;"
|
Surname: None First Name: Kano Age: 35 Homeworld: Earth
Boss:
Shao Kahn (former)
Now none, works as a mercenary for hire
Kills/Captures:
Braan - killed for stealing information on Shao Kahn.
Ghosk - captured for breaking the Outworld law.
Many more kills and captures
Notes:
One of the few human bounty hunters.
|}
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Mortal Kombat Movies, TV Shows, and Other Weirdness
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"Gavin Jasper"
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2019-11-21T14:45:00+00:00
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We look at the weird movie franchise, the TV shows, and other strange adventures in the Mortal Kombat universe.
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en
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Den of Geek
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https://www.denofgeek.com/games/mortal-kombat-movies-tv-shows-and-other-weirdness/
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One thing I read online often enough when Mortal Kombat’s story is brought up is, “Wait, Mortal Kombat has a story?” Or more specifically, “Wait, people care about Mortal Kombat’s story?”
Of course they do. Haven’t you been paying attention? Long before the games started featuring cinematic story modes (first seen in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe), the franchise has been stretched out to nearly all forms of media. Its martial arts grindhouse mythology has been seen in comic books, movies, TV, and more.
The original tie-in came in comic book form. I’ve talked about Mortal Kombat comics at length before, so here’s the gist of it. The first two games had one-shot prologues that you could order off the arcade machines, written and drawn by series co-creator John Tobias. Over the years, they would do the same type of gimmick for Mortal Kombat 4 (the console version), Mortal Kombat: Deception, and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
Meanwhile, across 1994 and 1995, Malibu Comics released a bunch of Mortal Kombat comics that very loosely followed the events of the first two games. Rather than a streamlined story, it took place over the course of various miniseries and one-shots. They were pretty bad, though still a step up from Malibu’s attempt at a Street Fighter series.
DC Comics released a Mortal Kombat X prequel comic that both set up the game’s story and killed off a handful of guys who wouldn’t show up in the games regardless (Hsu Hao, Kintaro, Reiko, Havik). The series ended with a cliffhanger (involving Kenshi being kidnapped by an armless Goro), hoping for another volume, but that never came to pass. Still, events from the comic were referenced in Mortal Kombat 11.
Okay, so comics are out of the way. What else?
Well, back when they were readying the console versions of the first game, they released a special album. Mortal Kombat: The Album wasn’t the game’s soundtrack or anything so simple. In actuality, it was a ridiculous set of techno tracks by a group called the Immortals who put together various songs about the characters in the game. Everyone and their mother knows about “Techno Syndrome,” otherwise known as the game’s theme song, but all the other tracks were completely batshit.
Most notable, in my opinion, is this wonderful, haunting song about the Chinese ninja warrior Sub-Zero.
It took me years to realize he was saying, “Warrior with a mask,” and not, “Why do you wear that mask?” Not that one is all that much better than the other.
There have been plenty of commercials for the games over the years, but the ad for the console version of Mortal Kombat II is where it’s at. It was put together by David Anderson and Bob Keen (director of Lost World). While it doesn’t have any more narrative than, “game characters meet up and fight each other,” it’s one of the most badass things done with the series and makes you wish the movies could have looked more like it. Check it out.
In 1995, a novel was released by Jeff Rovin known simply as Mortal Kombat. I myself have read it, but that was over 20 years ago, so my memory is shoddy. The book was a prequel to the first game, featuring most of the roster and a few names from the second game (I know Baraka showed up to sacrifice some poor sap at one point). A big chunk – probably too big a chunk – was dedicated to telling the story of the original Kung Lao and how he won the first tournament and then got dethroned by Goro. Otherwise, it takes place about a year before the first game, telling the story of Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Raiden, and Scorpion working together against Shang Tsung, Goro, Kano, and Sub-Zero.
Sadly, Johnny Cage didn’t get mentioned even once.
The only weird thing I recall about the book was Scorpion’s backstory. Since the game’s lore had yet to name him Hanzo Hasashi, the novel explained him as being Yong Park, a Lin Kuei ninja who left the clan and was punished by having Sub-Zero chop him up with a katana. Then his ghost merged with his adult son Tsui Park and they became Scorpion.
read more: Ranking All the Mortal Kombat Characters
1995 was when the first movie came out, but before that came Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins. It was put together by Threshold Entertainment, fittingly the same people who gave us Foodfight!, the infamously bad animated movie about grocery mascots. As a free VHS rental at video stores, the animated prelude was a way to promote the new movie. It retold the events of the first third of the movie, only with far more exposition and a lot of awful animation.
Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage all meet up on a boat, only they’re using the designs from the game, meaning Liu and Johnny never wear shirts. Sub-Zero and Scorpion attack them until Raiden shows up to ward them off and never shuts up for twenty minutes. He tells them all the stories of Kung Lao fighting Goro, Goro killing his brother, Sub-Zero killing Scorpion, and Shang Tsung killing some random dude.
While the main story was shown in 2D with lots and lots of reused animation (to the point of adding slow motion in order to make it look fresh at times), the flashbacks were done via CGI. 1995 CGI animation wasn’t a pretty sight (cue angry Reboot fans in the comments) and this was no exception. While the motion capture was fine, everything still looked like bad Sega Saturn cutscene footage.
Finally, we got Mortal Kombat: The Movie, directed by Paul WS Anderson. People have lots of differing opinions on this one, but I absolutely love it. It’s flawed to the gills, but it so fully embraces the campy mythology of what makes up the game when you get past the blood and guts and not-quite-as-good-as-Street-Fighter gameplay. It understood the ridiculousness of the games and didn’t try to be something else. That’s why people constantly refer to it as one of the best – or possibly only good – video game adaption.
Part of it comes from how much fun everyone was having with it. There are so many great performances that have since become iconic for some of the characters. Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage acts as our window by constantly making reference to how ridiculous everything is while powering through regardless. Trevor Goddard as Kano was so wonderful for how little he appeared that they ended up retconning Kano into being Australian in the games themselves. Christopher Lambert’s Raiden added a loving smirk to everything going on. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s Shang Tsung chewed almost all the scenery. Goro, created with animatronics and voiced by Kevin Richardson, was a delight to watch.
Then there was Scorpion’s hand snake. That was odd.
Two years later, we got the sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, directed by John R. Leonetti and…hoo boy. The first five minutes were the only time I’ve ever considered walking out of a movie in my entire life. The first movie was based on the first game, which itself borrowed a lot from Enter the Dragon. The second movie was based on the third game, which had a complete mess of a storyline.
It didn’t help that the great cast and characters from the first movie were long gone. Robin Shou as Liu Kang and Talisa Soto as Kitana were the only ones to return. Kano, Shang Tsung, and Goro were already killed. Sonya and Raiden were recast. Johnny Cage was both recast and killed within the first few minutes.
It was cheesy, but without anything holding it together to make it good on any level. Characters from the games would just show up, do something, then leave and never be mentioned again. Dialogue, acting, and most definitely special effects were worse than before. The funny thing is, the movie originally had a stinger to promote a third movie where Shinnok and Quan Chi were going to plot against the heroes. Knowing that a sequel wasn’t in the realm of possibility, they wisely left that on the cutting room floor.
Probably the best thing to come out of that sequel was the official website, where one of the people involved in the movie went on this huge, desperate, yet smug rant about how fans should help keep the movie from bombing by seeing it multiple times. As explained, they tossed in a bunch of random crap from the games with zero context out of love and therefore the movie is good. Years later, people are still laughing and cringing at this cry for help.
Speaking of laughing and cringing, it’s time to discuss Mortal Kombat: The Live Tour. Diving headfirst into the kiddy crowd, the franchise lent its name to a 1995 tour across America where people got to see a live stage show filled with martial arts, flipping, lasers, and smoke machines. The story had to do with some of the heroes rescuing their friends from Shao Kahn’s clutches and who knows what else.
I’ve never been to one of the shows myself and it’s something that will forever haunt me. All I have to go on is footage like this.
Oof.
In the tail end of 1996, we got Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, a Saturday morning cartoon series with an animation style that seemed to be trying a little too hard to be Batman: The Animated Series. It acted as a follow-up of sorts to the first movie, where the team of Raiden, Liu Kang, Kitana, Sonya, Jax, Sub-Zero, Stryker, and Nightwolf all hung out in a high-tech cave and watched out for otherworldly invaders. It was pretty crappy, but not the worst thing out there. If anything, the episode where Shang Tsung was resurrected was legitimately good.
There were a few notable things about the show. It gave us the very first appearance of Quan Chi in any media, including the games. Kurtis Stryker was voiced by Ron Perlman while Luke Perry played Sub-Zero. But the most interesting thing about the show was that it’s the closest thing we have to an official crossover between Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
And no, Wreck-It Ralph doesn’t count. That wasn’t actually Kano.
On USA, the channel that aired both animated shows, they had a big crossover thing about a guy called the Warrior King. He would appear in various cartoons (also including Savage Dragon and Wing Commander) in an overarching story that links them all together. While the character also appeared throughout an episode of Street Fighter, they were a bit more subtle in the Mortal Kombat tie-in by having it revolve around the Warrior King’s mystical orb and not the character himself. So yeah, while Capcom and NetherRealm may never see eye-to-eye and give us a real Ryu vs. Scorpion fight, at least there’s this roundabout meeting between the two franchises.
Defenders of the Realm lasted a mere 13 episodes in the end with the finale being a cliffhanger. In it, Shao Kahn was dethroned in Outworld, but then Shang Tsung and Sheeva went to war over who would take over while the heroes had no choice but to flee for safety.
Mortal Kombat would return to television in 1998 with Mortal Kombat: Conquest. The live-action series acted as a prequel, taking place in-between the original Kung Lao defeating Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat tournament and his fatal loss to Goro. In other words, it took place roughly 500 years ago, making it easier on the budget. Kung Lao hung out with his buddies Siro and Taja (played by Terminator 3‘s Kristanna Loken). It featured a lot of Mortal Kombat characters who were old enough to appear back then, such as Raiden, Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, Quan Chi, Kitana, Mileena, Reptile, and Noob Saibot. Otherwise, there were some legacy characters like earlier incarnations of Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and the Black Dragon.
It was your usual second-rate Hercules/Xena fare. Less-than-stellar fight choreography, bad acting, awful special effects, and try-hard sexuality. If anything, at least Jeffrey Meek did well enough in his double role as both Raiden and Shao Kahn. His Kahn skull mask was pretty cool and made it more annoying that Kahn in Annihilation only wore it for one scene.
Being late-90s and being shown on TNT, a couple of episodes had guest appearances by WCW wrestlers Meng and Wrath. It also had an appearance by pre-famous Eva Mendes.
Much like its animated brother, Mortal Kombat: Conquest lasted a single season and also ended on a cliffhanger. This one stuck out a lot more, considering the final moments had all the good guys killed and Shao Kahn standing tall. I guess he didn’t need Goro after all. Whoops.
For years, Mortal Kombat stayed out of the public spotlight and all we had were rumors that someone was trying to make a third movie, which never seemed to go anywhere. The most we got for a while was Scorpion (voiced by Ed Boon) making a cameo appearance on Comedy Central’s animated reality show Drawn Together. The gag was that they were doing auditions for replacement housemates and Scorpion tried out. Xandir, a Link pastiche, was happy to see another video game character and…
You know what? I’m just going to let the clip speak for itself.
Huh. Didn’t know Scorpion was Jewish.
In 2010, just prior to the announcement of Mortal Kombat 9, a video was released on YouTube called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth. Created by Kevin Tancharoen, the short film acted as an introduction to a rebooted take on the series. There’s no Outworld or fight to save Earthrealm or anything so fantastic. It’s a gritty, down-to-earth reimagining about a crime lord in Deacon City and his circle of psychopaths in some underground fight club.
In it, we get Jackson Briggs (Michael Jai White) informing captured assassin Hanzo Hasashi (Ian Anthony Dale) about Shang Tsung’s activities, the reimagined identities of Reptile and Baraka, the death of actor-turned-informant Johnny Cage, and how if Hanzo enters the tournament and kills the bad guys for them, he’ll get a chance to kill his longtime rival Sub-Zero. It’s a pretty inventive take on the mythos, reminding me of Marvel’s Noir comics from around the same time.
That ultimately led to two seasons of Mortal Kombat: Legacy, a YouTube series on Machinima that also reimagined the series, but in a way that meets the concept halfway. While certain characters are given a more relatable redesign, it’s still about Outworld’s invasion and we get stuff involving Kitana and Mileena backstory as ancient assassins for Shao Kahn and Raiden being an actual god.
Once again, it ended on a cliffhanger that never got to be finished, mainly focusing on Liu Kang’s descent into being Shang Tsung’s lapdog. Otherwise, the tournament wasn’t really so much a tournament as it was basically Hunger Games with Kung Lao, Stryker, Johnny Cage, and Kenshi running around on an island.
There was supposed to be another season of episodes called Mortal Kombat X: Generations, but whether or not iit was supposed to tie into the Legacy series is hard to say. Casper Van Dien reprised his role as Johnny Cage, but it focuses more on the events leading into Mortal Kombat X than whatever was going on in Legacy. Before we even knew anything about Mortal Kombat X, a cast list for Generations was leaked onto the internet, revealing character descriptions for the likes of Takeda, Erron Black, and Kung Jin.
Apparently, while the whole thing had been filmed, it was never released in any capacity and the only thing close to footage is one or two behind-the-scenes photos.
|
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https://barkingdagenhamcollege.ac.uk/why/kane-robinson-kano
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en
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Kane Robinson (Kano)
|
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He also has a starring role in the returning crime drama Top Boy on Netflix He is also one of two of our alumni to appear in a video game back in 2007 he…
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en
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https://barkingdagenhamcollege.ac.uk/assets/layout/icons/favicon.ico
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Barking & Dagenham College
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https://barkingdagenhamcollege.ac.uk/why/kane-robinson-kano
|
Kano
Kane studied a BTEC in Graphic Design in 2001-2003 and went on to do a degree in Graphic Design. Kane Robinson, better known as Kano, is a British rapper and actor from East Ham, London. A significant contributor to grime, Kano is widely considered one of the pioneers of grime, British rap music, and culture, alongside artists such as Skepta, Wiley, and Dizzee Rascal.
The rapper/actor has his sixth LP Hoodies All Summer seeing him combine music and drama to devastating effect.
Kano has been in multiple films including Rollin' with the Nines, Point Blank & Towerblock. He also has a starring role in the returning crime drama Top Boy on Netflix
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https://www.fightersgeneration.com/characters2/kano.html
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en
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Kano (Mortal Kombat)
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BIO:
Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, he rises beyond the level of mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. It was through his resourcefulness that he convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life, and it was through ruthless ambition that he later ascended to position of general of Outworld's armies. Kano combines the features of a cowardly minion, a lone survivor, a crazed madman, and an intelligent commander. His actions have made him the enemy of Lt. Sonya Blade. A portion of Kano's face is covered with a metal plate, with the plated eye being a glowing red orb capable of emitting laserlike beams.
Kano is the leader of the Black Dragon organization, a criminal empire of cut-throat madmen. Making his first chronological appearance in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, he freed fellow Black Dragon cohorts No Face, Tasia, Jarek and Tremor from a U.S. Special Forces security facility, under the pretense that they would reform the Black Dragon organization. In reality, he intended to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. Annihilating an entire squad at the site of the prison break, he and his cohorts escaped. With his Black Dragon associates given their assigned tasks, Kano headed to Outworld where he recovered the Eye of Shitian, an artifact through which he would acquire incredible power. Unfortunately for him, however, Major Jackson Briggs had defeated his accomplices and caught up to him. The two fought, and Kano was defeated. Jax used the eye to transport them back to Earthrealm, and proceeded to bring Kano into custody, though Kano escaped soon after.
He entered Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament after hearing rumors that Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches: Kano intended to steal them for the Black Dragon. At that time, the Black Dragon was the primary target of the U.S. Special Forces and would remain so for a number of years. He was pursued by Lt. Sonya Blade, who held a personal grudge against Kano because he had killed a former partner of Sonya's. While Kano was free to take part in the tournament of his own accord, Sonya and her unit were captured by Shang Tsung's minions. Tsung offered Sonya an ultimatum: compete in Mortal Kombat, or she and her unit would be executed. If she won, they would all be free to go. Sonya and Kano survived the tournament but many others died, including Sonya's men. After the final battle between Shang Tsung and Liu Kang, Kano teamed up with Sonya and Johnny Cage to fight Goro. During the battle, the island began to crumble because of Shang Tsung's defeat and before they knew it, Kano and Sonya found themselves in a forest in Outworld. They were found and captured by Shang Tsung. Eventually, both Kano and Sonya were rescued by Jax, but before Kano could be arrested, he escaped back to Outworld.
Although most Earthrealm warriors assumed Kano to be dead, he instead managed to save his own life by convincing Shao Kahn to accept him as a weapons instructor for his armies. As a man with a knowledge of Earthrealm weaponry, he was the most suitable candidate. Later, during the events of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Sonya tossed Kano to his (surmised) death from the roof of a high building. He was found by Motaro, who healed and imprisoned him. In turn, Motaro was attacked and killed by Sheeva, who freed Kano from his prison. Although they originally hatched a plan to murder Shao Kahn, Kano turned on Sheeva in the decisive moments, with Sheeva's death as a result. Kano was then hastily promoted to general of Outworld's rapidly shrinking army.
Eventually Kahn's forces were defeated. Earthrealm was free, and so was Edenia. Shao Kahn's act of promoting Kano, however, proved to be a lucky shot, as Kano was a very competent general. Even in the face of overwhelming odds and the tactical mastership of Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army, Kano stood ground and eventually managed to repel the invading army. He returned to Shao Kahn's palace just in time to watch from the shadows as Shang Tsung and Quan Chi sprung their attack on the weakened emperor. As soon as the battle was finished, Kano declared his allegiance to the new rulers of Outworld, the Deadly Alliance. The two had Kano oversee the enslavement of a small village, who would construct a temple over Onaga's tomb to house the Soulnado. During its construction, Kano was personally assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervened. His intervention was due in no part for any particular affinity for the criminal, however. The Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon member Mavado; he would eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano. Mavado attacked and left Kenshi for dead, earning his battle.
It would seem that Mavado won the fight, as in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Kano is found by Taven to have been held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan for quite some time (possibly explaining his absence from Deception). Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Taven that the Red Dragon had been experimenting on him, as well as their own clan members, in an effort to create real-life genetically engineered Dragons and Human-Dragon Hybrids, Kano mentions that they were trying "something new" on him, although he leaves before he elaborates on what that "something" is. In his Mortal Kombat: Armageddon ending, when Kano defeats Blaze, the transformation completes and he becomes a reptilian black dragon.
ORIGIN:
Mortal Kombat
OTHER APPEARANCES:
Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat 3 Ultimate, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat X, Mortal Kombat 11, Mortal Kombat 1 (Kameo)
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https://www.freaksugar.com/kano-mortal-kombat-x/
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Kano Flips Into MORTAL KOMBAT X
|
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2014-08-12T16:48:59+00:00
|
Kano is back to kick some ass in the latest MORTAL KOMBAT X trailer!
|
en
|
Freaksugar
|
https://www.freaksugar.com/kano-mortal-kombat-x/
|
Hello baby. Did you miss me?
Yarp, the cycloptic, laser-eye blasting Aussie is back and ready to rumble in Mortal Kombat X joining returning fighters Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Raiden. It’s unsure what role he’ll play in the new story but he’ll more than likely make Sonya and Cage’s daughter, Cassie Cage, a living hell.
The video above shows off some of his new moves against insectoid kombatant, D’vorah. The big changes here are represented in rearranging Kano’s moveset via his color coded energy orb. His three stances – Cutthroat, Cybernetic, and Commando – each have strengths and weaknesses that will determine how he’ll stack up against foes.
In fact, each character will differ slightly depending on how you wish to play by incorporating 3 different styles. I’m a bit skeptical about how this will impact the final release but, if anything NetherRealm is great at making a spectacle. At least on the surface, these stances add a somewhat denser fighting mechanic that will help you tweak characters to your liking.
Overall, Mortal Kombat X is shaping up to be another hard hitting entry into the long-lived series and if we can base anything on the excellent MK9‘s story mode, will hopefully be equally bonkers.
|
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https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/
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en
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infamouskarl
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2021-06-13T19:39:43+00:00
|
#Analysis on Video Game Characters, Plots and other media
|
en
|
https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
|
infamouskarl
|
https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/
|
NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED
Welcome back to my blog! Let’s now tackle the final Mortal Kombat installment that featured digitized actors and figures. Mortal Kombat 2 surpassed the first Mortal Kombat’s success and the MK fan base intensified. As expected, the developers immediately worked on the third installment and this time, newer techniques and advanced tactics were introduced such as the run button, character-specific combos and multi-tiered stages. Aside from the staple finishers such as character fatalities, stage fatalities, babality and friendship, a new finisher was also added: Animality, where the character transforms into an animal and executes a unique finish on the defeated opponent. Additionally, the in-game story now thickens as it now involves the merging of Earthrealm and Outworld.
Richard DiVizio makes a return as his original MK character, Kano. The character of Kano was dropped during the second installment because he was deemed not popular enough and the producers ensured that his comeback will be more appreciated by the fans. This time around, his costume has been upgraded; he now wears a black, modified Shaolin uniform with red linings, red forearm and leg guards, black shoes and gray utility belt bags; one on his waist and one across his chest. He also retained his trademark cybernetic right eye.
For Kano’s story, it was revealed that although he survived the first tournament, he and Sonya were captured by Shang Tsung’s armies and were presented as captives to appease the Outworld Emperor, Shao Kahn. Jax, Sonya’s senior officer, rescued Sonya and also freed Kano to arrest him. However, Kano escaped capture and instead convinces Shao Kahn to spare his soul during the Outworld invasion. Kano was then assigned by Shao Kahn to train the Outworld warriors on how to use Earth’s weapons.
To address his supposed unpopularity back in the first installment, Kano’s moves this time were more fleshed out: his knife throw animation was improved and he can now perform his cannonball roll attack diagonally upwards. He gains new moves such as the knife swipe, an air throw and chokehold throw. His new fatality finishers are composed of his eye beam and the bizarre ability to extract the opponent’s whole skeleton from the body.
Rich was assigned another character, a new entry to the roster, Kabal. For this character, he was provided a different set of costume: a black leather jacket and gloves, brown cargo pants, black knee guards and shin guards, white shoes and a long black wig as his hair. However, the most iconic item from his costume is his respirator mask connecting his vials of oxygen supply via a black, rubber tube. This was explained by the developers that they wanted to introduce a heavily injured character but was still able to fight.
During the invasion of Earthrealm by Shao Kahn, extermination squads were sent out to eliminate the people of earth. Kabal was a survivor of one of the attacks initiated by the said extermination squads. His injuries and disfigurement were so severe that he can only survive by the assistance of artificial respirators. Wanting vengeance, he teams up with the Earthrealm warriors to defeat Shao Kahn. It was also revealed that Kabal was a former member of the Black Dragon criminal organization and was acquainted with Kano.
Despite being a new character, Kabal immediately became a top-tier character because of his unique over-powered moves and overwhelming speed. His most iconic move is the Tornado Spin Dash, where with superhuman speed, he dashes past the opponent, causing the opponent to spin around and becomes dizzy, giving Kabal a free hit on the opponent. He is also able to perform a plasma projectile blast from his mask, which can be done either at ground or in mid-air. Kabal also has the ability to summon a ground saw from behind the opponent attacking them at their feet (the ground saw looked like a mutated spinning blades from Outworld; the developers probably didn’t have enough time to animate an actual ground saw). Kabal also uses Chinese-style hookswords especially during combo attacks. His finishers are nothing short of outrageous; in his first fatality, he inflates the opponent’s head using his respirator until they float and eventually explodes while in his second fatality, he reveals his heavily disfigured face and uses it to literally scare the opponent that the opponent’s soul escapes the body and runs away from him.
Another returning actor is Anthony “Tony” Marquez, reprising the role of Kung Lao. While retaining his trademark hat, Tony’s costume was now updated to show more of his physique by wearing a black sleeveless garb, exposing his chest and arms, modified shaolin pants that were digitally altered to appear light brown, silver forearm and shin guards, and black Kung Fu shoes. Additionally, the “Wu” Chinese character was retained on his garb.
For his story in MK3, Kung Lao was able to defeat Outworld opponents and avenges the death of his great ancestor. He then returns to Earthrealm to train a new generation of Shaolin warriors alongside Liu Kang. However, they have to put their plans on hold after Shao Kahn started his invasion. Kung Lao and the remaining Earthrealm warriors must band together to defeat Shao Kahn and stop his plans.
For MK3, Kung Lao’s moves were retained, however, his hat throw was modified where he throws his hat in a vertical motion towards the opponent. His hat throw fatality was also modified where instead of simply decapitating the opponent, his hat also slices through the limbs and waist of the unlucky opponent. He has a new outrageous fatality where he upgrades his whirlwind spin move, turning into a human tornado, sucking in the opponent to his direction, where the opponent explodes into various body parts; like food being thrown into a food processor!
Also returning is John Parrish, reprising his role as Major Jackson “Jax” Briggs. For his costume, Jax retains his utility belt, black military boots and black athletic pants where the red linings were digitally altered to appear purple. A major update was his entire arms and hands painted silver which were digitally altered to appear metallic.
During Mortal Kombat 2, Jax was successful in rescuing Sonya. In the process, he also freed Kano to arrest him but Kano was able to escape back to Outworld. Jax and Sonya tried to warn the United States government about the impending menace from Outworld. However, because they lacked proof, their report was ignored as Shao Kahn initiated the Outworld invasion of Earth. To prepare for the impending battle, Jax fitted his arms with indestructible bionic implants.
Jax maintained his “big strong guy” archetype in this installment as most of his original moves were retained to boast his brute strength. For his new moves, he now has a projectile attack where he can launch missiles from his arm implants and an effective dash punch that can knock the opponent off their feet. His new fatality capitalizes on his arm implants where he converts it to long blades, slashing the opponent to pieces. He also has a new, outrageous fatality where magically becomes a giant and stomps the opponent under his foot.
The last of our returning actor is Brian Glynn, who reprises his role as Shao Kahn and retains his exact set of costume from Mortal Kombat 2. His original costume was probably very iconic to the fans so the developers decided to retain it.
After being defeated in Mortal Kombat 2, Shao Kahn became frustrated with the continuous failed attempts to conquer Earthrealm. However, he devised a plan in order to merge Outworld with Earthrealm: Shao Kahn instructed his shadow priests, led by Shang Tsung, to resurrect his deceased queen, Sindel, in Earthrealm. Sindel’s resurrection in Earthrealm would allow Shao Kahn to pass through the borders between of the two realms. Reclaiming his queen, Shao Kahn thus forced a merger between the Outworld and Earthrealm, slowly turning Earth into a part of Outworld. With his invasion, Shao Kahn sent out his extermination squads to wipe out lives in Earthrealm.
Shao Kahn was again the final boss in the game and by default, was unplayable. However, by using a cheat code, he can be playable but cannot perform finishers. Like in the previous game, he still has no jump/aerial moves, his basic punch/kick attacks cause more damage than the regular characters and he retains his ground dash attack. He gains new special moves: his green projectile arrow was replaced with a green fireball from his eyes, a rising dash attack for anti-air attacks and a hammer smash attack. With all of these elements combined, he is one of the most over-powered characters in the game.
We welcome our first new actor to join the MK3 crew, the beautiful Kerri Hoskins. Kerri worked as a production assistant and model for Playboy Magazine. She has also worked for Midway as an actress for NBA JAM. Kerri became part of the MK crew after Liz Malecki, the original actress who played Sonya, separated ways with Midway; Kerri was roped in to become her replacement. With her stunning good looks and experience in boxing, wrestling stunts and gymnastics, Kerri was an amazing addition to the cast. For her costume, Kerri wore a more updated style of athletic wear consisting of black, white and green colors, black headband, gloves and arm bands, white shoes and a thin belt with metal circles. Additionally, her long blonde hair was tied in a ponytail with some side fringe in front.
During Mortal Kombat 2, Sonya was held captive in Outworld together with her nemesis, Kano. She was soon rescued by her superior, Maj. Jackson “Jax” Briggs. Kano was freed as well but was able to escape their arrest. Returning home, Sonya and Jax warned the US Government about the impending Outworld invasion of Earth. However, their superiors ignored their warnings for lack of proof. As Shao Kahn’s invasion began, he strips the Earth of all human life and claimed every soul as his own. However, Sonya and Jax’s souls were protected as they were among the chosen few to represent Earthrealm in Mortal Kombat. Realizing that there are other Earthrealm warriors who survived, Sonya and Jax set on a mission to team up with these warriors and stop Shao Kahn’s plans.
For MK3, Sonya’s classic moves were retained but were made flashier. She gains a new move where she performs a rising bicycle kick, which provides an excellent anti-air attack. She also retains her Kiss of Death fatality and this time, has two variants: the classic one which burns the opponent alive and an updated one where she blows a pinkish energy field causing her opponent to explode. Her friendship finisher shows her performing aerobics arm exercises (this would be further updated in UMK3 and MKT where she causes blue flowers to bloom across the stage).
Our second new actor to join the MK3 crew is John Turk. A professional bodybuilder with experiences in Taekwondo and competitive fighting, John previously worked in the Chicago police department and eventually shifted his career to modelling and acting. At the time, his modelling agency sent him to audition for a spot in the production of Mortal Kombat 3. With Daniel Pesina, the original actor for Sub-Zero, separating ways with Midway, John Turk was hired to take over the character of Sub-Zero. For this installment, Sub-Zero has been unmasked and a huge vertical scar was placed across his right eye. He was given an updated costume: he wore a sleeveless garb with square designs that exposes his arms and pectoral muscles, black tight pants with bold stripes across his thighs and crotch area, gray belt, shin guards and wrist guards, black strings laced across his forearms – the square designs and stripes were digitally altered to appear blue. Additionally, his hair was dyed black as a reference to Sub-Zero’s in-game White-Asian heritage. (https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/ethnic-retcons-in-video-games/)
After the events of Mortal Kombat 2, Sub-Zero returned to the Lin Kuei clan only to discover that the clan has started converting their members into soulless cyborgs. Sub-Zero refused to take part in this directive and left the Link Kuei. Because Sub-Zero has broken the sacred codes of honor, the Lin Kuei sent out their first batch of cyber ninjas to assassinate Sub-Zero. With the start of Shao Kahn’s invasion, Sub-Zero must not only defend himself from the threat of Outworld but also from the Lin Kuei.
For MK3, Sub-Zero retained his iconic ice freeze projectile but has added a new arsenal of attacks. He gains a new move called ice shower, where he aims his ice freeze attack upwards with the actual ice raining over the opponent. With a successful hit, the opponent will freeze and would be in a vulnerable state. Additionally, the player can control where the ice shower attack will fall in reference to Sub-Zero’s location. He also gains the ice clone move where he is able to create a clone of himself made from ice as he jumps back away from the clone. If the opponent comes into contact with the clone, the opponent will freeze and be vulnerable for attacks. His new fatality finishers were also a departure from his classic ones: for this installment, he now freezes his opponent in close then shatters their body over his head. His second fatality involves him breathing out a mist of ice towards his opponent, freezing them and break into pieces once hitting the ground. To further reference his control over ice, his friendship finisher involves him making a snowman out of himself :D.
John was then assigned another existing character, Shang Tsung. John was given Shang Tsung’s role after Philip Ahn, the original actor, separated ways with Midway. For this installment, Shang Tsung’s costume now consist of a black sleeveless garb exposes his arms and pectoral muscles, a black loincloth that is knotted to also form a belt, underneath is a pair of tight pants digitally altered to be colored dark yellow, a pair of black tight boots and gray wrist guards. John also had to wear a long black wig tied into a ponytail. Black paint was applied across his eyes and face and his eyes were digitally altered to appear pupilless to give him a menacing look. Also, a fake goatee was also applied to him as a reference to Shang Tsung’s facial hair.
Being Shao Kahn’s lead sorcerer, Shang Tsung was instrumental in Shao Kahn’s plan in conquering Earthrealm. Shang Tsung led Shao Kahn’s shadow priests to resurrect Sindel, Shao Kahn’s deceased queen, in Earthrealm. With the successful resurrection of Sindel leading to a merger between Earthrealm and Outworld, Shang Tsung was granted more powers than ever before and was assigned to eliminate the Earthrealm survivors of the invasion.
Unlike previous installments where Shang Tsung was designated either as the main boss or the antepenultimate boss, he was not assigned a boss status in this installment. He retains his classic flaming skulls projectile and his ability to morph into other playable characters, being able to execute their own special moves. This time around, he gains a new move where he summons three consecutive flaming skulls rising from the ground, towards his direction. His soul steal fatality was made flashier this time around, where he would levitate the opponent in the air, extracting the soul and leave his opponent in a decomposed state.
The next new actor on our list is Eddie Wong, who portrays Liu Kang. Ho Sung Pak, the original actor who played Liu Kang in the first two games, has separated with Midway and the production team needed a replacement for him. Eddie Wong, an actor and stuntman, was roped in for the role of Liu Kang. For this installment, a few modifications were done on Liu Kang’s costume: while his MK2 pants were retained, black shin guards were added and this time, Liu Kang is now wearing white socks underneath his black Kung Fu shoes. His studded forearm guards and red headband were retained however, his hair is now much longer with a few fringes hanging in front.
During MK2, Liu Kang again emerged as the champion of Mortal Kombat, beating Shao Kahn and his minions. After the tournament, Liu Kang went back to Earthrealm alongside Kung Lao to train a new generation of Shaolin warriors. However, with the start of Shao Kahn’s invasion of Earthrealm, Liu Kang had to put his plans on hold as he finds himself the prime target of Shao Kahn’s extermination squads.
For MK3, Liu Kang retained all his moves from the previous games and no new moves were introduced. However, he has two new fatalities: the first one in which he disappears from the screen and transforms his essence into fire within the opponent, burning his opponent to the ground. His second fatality involves him disappearing again only for a classic MK1 arcade machine dropping onto the opponent, outrageously crushing them as he reappears on screen. In MK3, a new finisher was introduced called “Animality” where fighters can transform into their spirit animal as a finisher. To reflect his classic fatality from MK2, Liu Kang transforms into a green, mythical Chinese dragon, devouring the upper half of his opponent.
Next on our list is Amelia Montelongo who plays a new character, Sindel. Fondly called “Lia”, she was the youngest actor to join the crew at the age of 19. During the development for Sindel, the developers were looking for a fit actress who can perform the required movements. At the time, Lia was dating Brian Glynn, the actor who played Shao Kahn and was referred to the play the part. A fitness enthusiast, Lia has experience in taekwondo and is also a skilled dancer. After a successful audition, she was then assigned the role of Sindel, who coincidentally is Shao Kahn’s queen in the story! For Sindel’s costume, Lia had to wear a sleeveless leotard, a sleeveless vest, goth-style stockings and fingerless gloves – all of which with a white, black and digitally altered violet color theme. She wore black nails and a long, top-heavy, white wig with a black streak across the middle. She was also given a heavy eye make-up and her eyes were digitally altered to appear pupilless, giving her a strong, menacing look.
For Sindel’s in-game story, she was introduced as Shao Kahn’s long-deceased queen who died an untimely death. After he was defeated in Mortal Kombat 2, Shao Kahn devised a plan to invade Earthrealm. He had his shadow priests resurrect Sindel in Earthrealm, which will effectively cause a merger between Outworld and Earthrealm. Being reunited with Shao Kahn, Sindel was resurrected in a brainwashed state, completely loyal to the Outworld Emperor, as they began stripping the Earth will all human life. However, it was soon revealed that Sindel was actually the rightful queen of another realm called Edenia, and together with her husband, King Jerrod, are the parents of Kitana. It was revealed that 10,000 years ago, Shao Kahn attacked Edenia and merged it with Outworld, murdered King Jerrod, took Sindel as his queen and adopted the young Kitana as his daughter. These events were all too much for Sindel to bear and she decided to take her own life. However, Shao Kahn and his sorcerers were able to stop Sindel’s transition to the afterlife and was able to get hold of Sindel’s soul until it was her time to be resurrected.
Being a new character in the installment, Sindel’s fighting style provides a unique gameplay and strategy: she has a straight projectile move where she releases a blue fireball from her mouth which can also be done in mid-air but diagonally downwards. She also has a unique move where she screams towards the opponent who gets paralyzed towards her direction, enabling her to make a free hit. She is also the only character who is able to fly and can float across the screen; during this state, the only attack she can perform is her mid-air fireball move. Among all the characters, her throw move is the most unique, where her hair magically grows, grabbing the opponent and tosses them at the other side. Her fatalities are nothing short of being bizarre. In her first fatality, she lets out an inhuman scream that causes her opponents’ skin to literally fall off, leaving behind a bloodied skeleton. In her second fatality, her hair magically grows and entirely wraps the opponent and with a flip of her head, sends her opponent spinning with their body parts being scattered out of the screen.
Another new actor to join the MK3 crew is Michael O’Brien who plays a new character, Kurtis Stryker. Michael is an actor and has played minor roles in films. Stryker’s costume consists of a simple white, short sleeved-shirt with a wide pattern digitally altered to appear blue with the neckline and sleeves having thick black linings. He also wears black police pants, combat boots, fingerless gloves, a utility belt bag, a chest holster and a cap worn on his head, but turned backwards.
For his story, Kurtis Stryker was introduced as New York-based police officer, leading the riot control brigade. When Shao Kahn began his invasion on Earthrealm, an Outworld portal appeared over New York City, panic and chaos raged out of control as Shao Kahn and his minions, started taking human souls among the population. Stryker emerged as the lone survivor of this onslaught as the thunder god, Rayden, appeared before him explaining that he was among the chosen few to represent Earthrealm in Mortal Kombat. Stryker was instructed to travel west to team up with the remaining Earthrealm warriors and stop Shao Kahn’s evil plans.
Being a police officer, Stryker’s attacks are based from police combat tactics and weapons. He is armed with a police baton which he uses in his combo attacks, throw attack and special moves. In his first special move, he somehow swiftly floats feet first, towards the opponent, grabbing them with his baton and tossing them over his head. His next baton special move is actually a sweep move where he swings his baton across his opponent’s legs and knocks them off their feet. He has projectile moves where he launches grenades either at a low or high angle. In the succeeding UMK3 installment, he obtains an effective gun blast attack. He also applies his police background in his finishers: he either sets up explosives on his opponent’s body causing them to explode or fires his taser gun, electrocuting his opponent. In his friendship finisher, he acts as a traffic enforcer, allowing other fighters to run across the screen. With these unique set of attacks, Stryker is easily one of the most overpowered characters in the game. Despite that, he was low-tier character due to his very generic, realistic design as opposed to established classic characters with iconic status.
The next new actor on our list is Sal DiVita, portraying a new character, Nightwolf. During that time, Sal was already working for Midway and was already acquainted with several MK crew members and actors. He has worked both as a game developer and actor on several wrestling games produced by Midway. During the development of Mortal Kombat 3, he was tapped by the John Tobias to join the crew as he already had the required physique, and was assigned the game’s first Native American character, Nightwolf. For his costume, Sal wore a black leather vest with small circular metal studs in the chest area and huge red wolf symbol at the back. His athletic pants were digitally colored blue with the sides having black linings and square cutouts. He also wore a black belt adorned with circular metal studs, moccasin boots for his footwear, gray wrist guards, a black, shoulder-length wig, armbands and headband, both digitally altered to appear blue. Additionally, he also wears two white feathers pointed downwards attached to the right side of his headband and a red, wolf-like silhouette face paint. His eyes were also digitally rendered as pupilless.
Nightwolf was introduced as an American Indian historian, shaman and preserver of his Lakota people’s culture. When Shao Kahn began his invasion on earth, Nightwolf uses his shamanic knowledge to protect his tribal lands from Shao Kahn’s forces. With his tribal lands becoming a protected area from Shao Kahn, Nightwolf helps the remaining Earthrealm warriors to regroup in his area as they plan to stop Shao Kahn’s evil plans.
Nightwolf’s move list capitalizes on his shamanic spiritual powers combined with traditional Native American weapons. His most effective attack is the hatchet uppercut which serves both as a regular and anti-air attack. He is capable of creating a magical bow and arrow made from green energy which serves as his projectile move. He has a ground-based, elbow dash attack and his most effective move, the reflector, where he charges his body with green energy giving him the ability to reflect his opponent’s projectile attacks back to the actual opponent (this move, however does not work on Motaro, the sub-boss of MK3 who by default, is able to reflect back projectile attacks). For his fatality finisher, Nightwolf summons a pilar of light from the sky towards the opponent that causes the opponent to decompose and eventually disappear together with the light. His second fatality involves him drawing his hatchet as he summons lightning to charge it and delivers the same lightning bolt towards the opponent, electrocuting them. For his Animality, as his namesake, he transforms into a wolf, viciously attacking the opponent. He has two versions of friendship finishers: the first one where he magically morphs into MK2 Rayden as an MK2 arcade machine drops by his side, and the second one, where he juggles 3 hatchets.
Sal was assigned a new costume and this time, in a form of new concept – a ninja cyborg. The costume is composed of a black body suit, various robotic-style armor – robot head, breastplate, guards for the shoulders, elbow and forearms and a fauld – all of which are colored red, and additional armor – a belt, knee and shin guards – all of which are colored gray. The robot head was inspired by the designs of Star Wars’ Boba Fett and the Predator. The developers planned to have two cyborg characters – one is the default red while the second one will be digitally colored yellow – however, they couldn’t decide on finalizing names for them and for a long time, they were simply named “Ketchup” and “Mustard”. Finally, the developers settled on “Sektor” for the red one and “Cyrax” for the yellow one. The developers then added a third cyborg ninja, but this time, based from an existing human character, Smoke. For Smoke, his armor has been digitally colored grayish-blue, with puffs of smoke emitting from his body just like his original human form.
Sektor, Cyrax and Smoke were originally human assassins serving the Lin Kuei clan alongside Sub-Zero. However, the Lin Kuei clan soon initiated an automation technology that would convert their human assassins into soulless cyborgs. Sektor and Cyrax volunteered for this automation and became the first prototypes of cybernetic ninjas. Sub-Zero and Smoke were unwilling to submit to this process and tried to escape the Lin Kuei. While Sub-Zero was able to successfully escape, Smoke was captured and was forced to undergo conversion. Eventually, the three cybernetic ninjas were programmed to find and assassinate Sub-Zero while Shao Kahn begins his invasion of Earthrealm. Without souls, the three cyborgs went undetected by Shao Kahn and his minions, as they try to complete their mission.
With a very excellent concept of cyber ninjas, Sektor, Cyrax and Smoke became favorites among fans thanks to their unique design and effective move list: Cyrax can make his body explode into pieces only to teleport at the opponent’s opposite side, reforming his entire body. Sektor and Smoke boast an effective rocket punch where they teleport downwards and reappearing at the opponent’s opposite side from the bottom, uppercuts the opponent off their feet. The cyborgs are also able to launch various weapons from their robotic chests. Cyrax and Smoke have their own version of rendering a free hit: Cyrax launches a net of green plasma while Smoke launches a three-pronged spear; these weapons trap the opponent and with a successful hit, brings the opponent towards them for a free hit. Sektor is able to launch a basic missile projectile and a homing one that follows the opponent wherever they go. Cyrax is able to launch bombs at certain distances and explodes after some time delay where the explosion launches the opponent into the air. Among the three cyborgs, only Smoke is able to render himself invisible. It’s also noteworthy that when they are hit, black oil spurts out instead of the default red blood from other human/human-like characters (this only applies during actual fights and not during finishers). When it comes to their signature finishers, it’s also not short of being outrageous and brilliant: Sektor crushes his opponent by launching a compactor, Cyrax activates his self-destruct program which causes himself and his opponent to explode, and Smoke fills the entire world with bombs and the entire earth, and its occupants, explodes into oblivion.
After Goro achieved an iconic status after the first game, the MK developers soon wanted to introduce a female version of him in MK3. This led to the introduction of Sheeva, the first female four-armed Shokan warrior and also, the first playable Shokan character in the series. Like Goro and Kintaro, a stop-motion figure was created for the character of Sheeva. Sheeva was sculpted with a muscular, female physique and just like her Shokan predecessors, had 4 arms each with 3 huge fingers. Her long, black hair only grows from the top of her otherwise bald head and is surrounded by small, white horns. Her costume is simply a red cloth strap fashioned like a sling bikini, a black belt with a Yin and Yang symbol and gray forearm and ankle guards. Interestingly, her name is based from the Hindu deity Shiva, who also had four arms.
Sheeva’s story reveals that she and her Shokan race of Outworld have been long-time allies with Shao Kahn and his minions. Noted for her fierce, fighting prowess, Sheeva was handpicked by Shao Kahn to become the personal protector of his newly resurrected queen, Sindel. As Shao Kahn started his invasion of Earthrealm, Sheeva became suspicious of Shao Kahn’s loyalty towards the Shokan when he designated Motaro, along with his Centaurian race, to lead his extermination squads. Sheeva’s suspicion arises from the fact that the Shokan race has been in a long-time conflict with the Centaurian race, with each group considering the other their natural enemy. Despite Sheeva’s suspicions, she accompanies her masters in the ongoing Earthrealm invasion.
Unlike Goro and Kintaro, Sheeva is more agile and is capable of various attack patterns. However, her attack power is at range with most regular characters. Sheeva inherits the signature Shokan move, the teleport stomp. She also has another stomp move that causes a ground damage towards her opponent. Her finishers emphasize her brute strength and four arms: her first finisher involves her pounding her opponent, driving them deep into the ground while for her second finisher, she literally rips the skin and flesh of her opponent from their skeleton. Sheeva is also notable for being the first MK character spurting green-colored blood when being hit (this only applies during actual fights and not during finishers).
For MK3, the developers soon departed from the four-armed Shokan as a sub-boss and opted for a Greek mythology-inspired creature, the Centaur. We are introduced to Motaro, the sub-boss of Mortal Kombat 3. Like previous sub-bosses, a stop-motion figure was made for the character of Motaro. His human upper body part was sculpted with a very muscular built, black ram horns on his head and sharp bones protruding from his elbows. While for his lower body part, it is that of a brown-colored horse: he wears a black and gray armor strip on the horse breast part while his tail is that of a snake and is gray in color.
Motaro belongs to the Centaurian race from Outworld where they are the natural enemies of the Shokan. After the defeat of the Shokan warriors, Goro and Kintaro in the previous Mortal Kombat tournaments, Shao Kahn soon began to favor the Centaurians over the Shokan, as he aided them in the subjugation of the Shokan race. As Shao Kahn started his invasion of Earthrealm, he designated Motaro and his Centaurian warriors to lead his extermination squads.
Designated as the sub-boss of MK3, Motaro is by default, unplayable. However, by using a cheat code, he can be playable but cannot perform finishers. In terms of strategy, Motaro is the most over-powered character in the game: his regular punch and kick attacks does a heavy deal of damage, projectile attacks launched against him will reflect back to the attacker by default (projectile trapping moves such as Smoke’s spear and Cyrax’s green net simply passes through him), he can launch fireballs from his tail which causes an explosion knocking the opponent off their feet, he can also use his tail as a long-range sweep attack, he is capable of teleportation and his grab special move where he grabs his opponent and delivers a huge blow sending them across the screen – all these elements make him the most brutal and difficult character to fight with.
MK3 became a huge success with fans. However, both fans and critics soon pointed out that the iconic masked ninja characters are obviously missing in the game. To rectify this concern, the developers decided to update the game, leading to Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (UMK3). John Turk, who originally portrayed the MK3 characters Sub-Zero and Shang Tsung, was hired to the play the masked ninja characters for UMK3. From the MK2 design of the ninja costume, while the black, hooded, body suit was retained, the colored garb was made thinner and divided into segments, on a field of black, the front loincloth flap was also made thinner, the back flap was replaced with a colored area on the body suit, the arm guards are now designed with color and the colored shin guards were retained. These ninja roles include the classic favorites: Scorpion, Reptile and Classic Sub-Zero, previously unplayable characters: Human Smoke and Noob Saibot, and new characters: Ermac, Rain and Chameleon.
Scorpion’s story in UMK3 began when Shao Kahn invaded Earthrealm. Aside from Earthrealm, Shao Kahn also wanted to invade the Earth’s Netherrealm, where Scorpion resided. As Shao Kahn tried stealing Netherrealm souls, Scorpion was able to escape and is able to roam Earth once again. He was then enlisted by Shao Kahn to vanquish the remaining Earthrealm warriors. Scorpion retained his signature moves, the spear and teleport punch, as well as his trademark finisher, the “toasty”. In this installment, he now uses an axe during his combo attacks and gains a new finisher where he teleports himself and his opponent into the Netherrealm (which is a playable stage) and his opponents burns to death in the fiery pit. This was further updated wherein as they are teleported to the Netherrealm, multiple clones of Scorpion appear and attack the opponent as the screen fades to black.
In UMK3, Reptile continued serving his Outworld masters, Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn. After Kitana escaped Shao Kahn’s clutches before his Earthrealm invasion, Reptile was assigned to capture Kitana and stop her renegade actions at all costs. Reptile complies with the hopes that his masters would grant his request to resurrect his now-extinct species. For his moves list, Reptile retains his signature moves – acid spit, force ball and invisibility. His original fatality was updated where aside from devouring his opponents head, he also devours his opponent into sections, leaving only the legs. He also gains a new fatality where he vomits out a huge amount of acid towards the opponent, melting their flesh.
The UMK3 appearances of the classic Sub-Zero and human Smoke are actually non-canon. The first Sub-Zero was killed by Scorpion during the first Mortal Kombat while Smoke was already converted into a cyborg form by the time of MK3. They were simply added to the roster so players are able to play their UMK3 appearance. Human Smoke’s move list is exactly the same with Scorpion’s. His unique fatality, which was introduced in MK Trilogy, involves him becoming invisible and possessing his opponents causing both of them to explode. Classic Sub-Zero retains his MK2 move list and his spine rip fatality from the first game but for some reason the actual finisher was not shown as the screen faded to black. However, he gains a new fatality where he uppercuts the opponent into the air as he conjures a giant ice spike to which the opponent falls.
Noob Saibot, who was an unplayable secret character in MK2, makes his playable debut in UMK3. His unusual name is derived from the surnames of the developers, Ed Boon and John Tobias, spelled backwards. His story reveals that he was the original Sub-Zero from the first game. After he was killed by Scorpion, he ended up as a wraith in the Earth’s Netherrealm. During this time, he belonged to a group called the Brotherhood of the Shadow, who served a fallen elder god. He was then assigned to secretly observe the events in MK2 and by UMK3, was tasked to side the Shao Kahn and assist in his invasion of Earthrealm. Noob Saibot is probably one of the most over-powered regular characters basing from his moves list: he can produce a shadow clone of himself that will run towards the opponent and throw them to his direction, he has a teleport slam where he teleports from above, reappearing at the opponent’s opposite side from below, grabbing them and slamming them to the ground. His most unique and effective move is the disabler, a projectile attack where he launches a dark cloud at the opponent and with a successful hit, the opponent will be unable to perform attacks or blockings for a limited time. For his fatality, he performs his teleport slam move and slams his opponent multiple times until they explode.
We are now introduced to a new ninja character, Ermac whose costume was digitally altered to red and skin was darkened. Ermac’s story reveals that he is actually a being comprised of the souls of vanquished Outworld warriors collected by Shao Kahn. This new being is now tasked to aid Shao Kahn and his forces in his invasion of Earthrealm. For his move list, he has a projectile where he launches a green fireball (similar to Shao Kahn’s), a teleport punch similar to Scorpion and his trademark move, the telekinetic slam, in which with invisible telekinetic force, he slams the opponent to the ground, to be bounced towards him. His fatality is an upgrade of his telekinetic slam move where he causes his opponent to slam to the ground multiple times until they explode.
Another new ninja character is the purple-clad Rain. Rain originally hails from Edenia, the realm which was originally ruled by King Jerrod and Queen Sindel before it was merged with Outworld by Shao Kahn. Rain eventually became a member of Shao Kahn’s minions, choosing to betray his homeland rather than to suffer at the hands of Shao Kahn. Rains attacks are basically composed of a projectile where he launches a water ball and with a successful hit, the opponent is left stunned and is being floated towards his direction, and a lighting summon attack that bounces his opponent off the ground and into mid-air. Rain is also the only regular character whose roundhouse kick will cause their opponent to actually cross the other side of the screen towards his opposite direction (this move doesn’t work on sub-bosses and Shao Kahn). For his fatality, Rain summons several lightning bolts towards the opponent causing them to explode.
The final ninja character derived from this template is Chameleon. Chameleon was a secret character and was playable in UMK3 via a cheat code. He was simply introduced as one of Shao Kahn’s deadliest warriors. What’s unique about Chameleon is that his costume color consistently changes, which will reflect the move list and finishers of the ninja he is mimicking at the moment. Using him as a character requires the general techniques learned from the regular male ninja characters.
UMK3 also marks the return of the female ninja characters, Kitana and Mileena. Widely considered as huge favorites back in MK2, their return in UMK3 was greatly appreciated. However, this time around, the secret unplayable female ninja from MK2, Jade, makes her playable debut. The new actor to join the crew is Rebecca “Becky” Gable, a professional model and has experience in ballet and jazz dance. She was hired for the role after Katalin Zamiar, the original portrayer, separated with Midway. The costume used is an update of the original; the leotard is now cut in a more revealing fashion with a huge slit made in the upper portion and is closed by black strings, the upper part is the majority-colored area while the bottom part is black. This time, the leggings are now thigh-high, the gloves are shorter, with black bands placed on arms and forearms. The colored mask was retained but the hairstyle is now styled into a neat bun. This template was used for a fourth palette swap, a new character, Khameleon, who uses a grayish-green color scheme and is presented with a transparent effect.
It was revealed that after MK2, Kitana murdered Mileena and was accused of treason by the high courts of Outworld. Kitana was able to escape from Outworld to Earthrealm but Shao Kahn soon sent a group of warriors to capture her. With Shao Kahn’s ongoing invasion of Earthrealm, Kitana soon discovers that her deceased mother, Sindel, has been resurrected by Shao Kahn in a brainwashed state. Kitana must find a way to reunite with Sindel and warn her of their true past. As for Mileena, she was resurrected by Shao Kahn himself to assist him in tracking down Kitana. Apparently, Mileena has the ability to read Kitana’s thoughts which will be useful in her capture. Jade was one of the warriors appointed by Shao Kahn to track and capture Kitana. It was revealed that both Jade and Kitana were close friends, as they are both Edenian and with the task assigned to her, Jade is torn between betraying Kitana or disobeying Shao Kahn. As for Khamleon’s story, it was revealed that she belongs to Reptile’s supposedly extinct species. She chose to remain hidden in the shadows, finding the perfect opportunity to assassinate Shao Kahn as vengeance for driving her species to extinction.
In discussing their move lists, Kitana and Mileena retain all of their classic weapons and moves from MK2. For their finishers, Kitana retains her classic fan decapitation and kiss of death while for Mileena, she retains her infamous maneater fatality. Additionally, in this installment, Kitana and Mileena can use their weapons during combo attacks. As for Jade, she was given a different move set and weapons: for her projectile, she launches a purple razor boomerang, where depending on the input, can go upwards, straight, downwards or even returning back to her direction, she has the nitro kick where she turns smoking green, performing a dash kick towards the opponent, knocking them off their feet and her most effective move, invincibility, where for a second, Jade glows with blinding light, causing all projectile attacks to simply pass through her. She uses her trademark weapon, the staff, in her attack combos, throw attack and finishers. Khameleon’s gameplay is similar to Chameleon, where she will mimic the move list of Kitana, Mileena or Jade based on the random stance during the battle.
After the success of UMK3, the developers decided to create the final update to the MK3 game which was Mortal Kombat Trilogy. This update would include all character designs presented ever since the first game. This included the previous portrayals of the actors who maintained relationship with Midway like Richard DiVizio (MK1 Kano and MK2 Baraka), Anthony Marquez (MK2 Kung Lao), John Parrish (MK2 Jax) and Carlos Pesina (MK1 and MK2 Rayden). However, the only character that has yet to be recreated was Johnny Cage. With Daniel Pesina, the original portrayer of Johnny Cage, already separated ways with Midway, the developers hired Christopher “Chris” Alexander, a professional model and a college football player, for the role. The costume used was almost the same as the previous one used in MK2 – black athletic pants, blue belt and shin guards. The shoes are now colored black while the wristbands were replaced by forearm-length gloves. Additionally, Johnny now wears his sunglasses throughout the game, even during battles.
For his storyline, it was revealed that during Shao Kahn’s invasion of Earthrealm, Johnny was one of the many victims killed by extermination squads led by Motaro. However, the merger between Earthrealm and Outword prevented Johnny’s soul to ascend to the afterlife. His soul once again takes possession of his body, becoming a chosen warrior and teams up with the other Earthrealm warriors to defeat Shao Kahn and his minions. Johnny retains his special moves from MK2, except for the infamous split punch – this move would require a different hit animation from other actors, something which was not recorded during the development of MK3 and UMK3. He gains a new fatality – the backbreaker where he lifts his opponent above his heads and crashes them onto his back, causing them to explode.
During MK Trilogy, all playable characters had their own “versus pose” which was used during their solo introduction or during the actual versus screen. However, with the re-use of MK1 and MK2 sprites of Rayden and Baraka, a versus pose for the said characters needed to be done. To achieve this, Rich DiVizio, who originally played Baraka in MK2, had to don the Baraka costume and mask once again. While for Rayden, the original actor, Carlos Pesina, was unavailable at the time and hence, the ever-available and reliable Sal DiVita took over.
Here are some additional behind the scenes/live action shots:
So that’s it! That concludes the actors who portrayed our all time favorite digitized chracters in the first 3 Mortal Kombat games. This post brought back to me a lot of 90’s nostalgia and Mortal Kombat was my favorite video game at that time.
To the producers, developers and actors involved in these games, thank you so much for making my childhood awesome!!!
*NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED*
Welcome back to my blog! Let’s continue on with my tribute to the actors of the Mortal Kombat game. With the massive success of the first game, the development team and the producers completed the second installment in 1993. With new improvements to the game, new default and hidden characters, deeper storylines, new finishers (an additional fatality, friendship and babality) and brand-new stages, Mortal Kombat II surely did not disappoint and further enhanced its legacy in video games.
<MAJOR SPOILER ALERT BELOW>
Daniel Pesina reprises his role as the Hollywood actor/martial artist, Johnny Cage. He also continued directing choreography and assistance for the other actors involved. With Johnny Cage becoming a household name among video game enthusiasts, Johnny’s costume soon departed from its original concept based from Bloodsport; his new costume now consists of black athletic pants, white rubber shoes, blue belt, leg guards and wrist guards. In his versus screen pose, he also appears with a blue and dark orange leather jacket and his most iconic item – the sunglasses – which he wears during in his victory pose.
For his in-game story, Johnny became acquainted with Liu Kang from the first tournament. After learning that Liu Kang has ventured to Outworld to seek revenge against the warriors who massacred his Shaolin brothers, Johnny followed him, seeking adventure and inspiration for a new movie.
This time around, Johnny has been given a new special move, the shadow uppercut and an additional fatality – the torso rip. To add more to his Hollywood celebrity persona, Johnny’s friendship finisher is probably the most iconic among all characters – he pulls out a photograph of him, signs his autograph and is shown towards the actual players (kinda breaking the fourth wall).
Daniel Pesina also reprises the ninja-inspired roles of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Although the costume used was virtually the same, a few modifications were made: the hood became tighter, the face mask was redesigned and knee guards were added. Additionally, Scorpion’s eyes were digitally edited to become pupilless – a nod to his undead status.
For their in-game story, Scorpion finally avenges his death by killing Sub-Zero in battle. After the second Mortal Kombat tournament has been announced, the Lin Kuei Clan became aware that Shang Tsung was still alive and that Sub-Zero was probably killed during the first tournament. Thus, they sent Sub-Zero’s younger brother (also codenamed Sub-Zero) to accomplish the mission of assassinating Shang Tsung. Scorpion learns of this new Sub-Zero and stalks him into the tournament. As for their iconic fatality finishers, Scorpion retains his “toasty” finisher while for Sub-Zero, he freezes his opponent using his deep freeze move, approaches the opponent and performs an uppercut that crashes his opponents into pieces.
Reptile, who was a hidden character back in the first game, becomes a playable character in this installment. This time, however, he has his own exclusive moves – acid spit, force ball and invisibility. He’s probably the first versus fighting video game character who can render himself invisible. His story reveals that he is the personal protector of Shang Tsung and while appearing to be human, Reptile actually belongs to a species of reptilian-like creatures from Outworld. This is evident during his fatality where he reveals his reptilian head, lashes out his long tongue and devours his opponent’s head.
The producers then decided to make two additional palette swap Ninja characters: Smoke, clad in gray color with puffs of smoke emitting from his body, and Noob Saibot, who is clad entirely in black that he resembles a faceless shadow. They were both introduced as secret unplayable characters, each with a different requirement in order to fight them. Additionally, in the Living Forest stage, Smoke would randomly peek out from a tree making his presence felt. When it comes to special moves, they both inherit Scorpion’s spear.
Another actor who reprises his previous role is Carlos Pesina, portraying Rayden. He retains his original costume from the first game but this time, he now wears an outer garb which was digitally edited to appear blue, black forearm guards and Chinese symbols on both arms meaning “thunder” and “lightning”.
In game, witnessing the events from the heavens, the Thunder god realizes the evil intentions of Shang Tsung and the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn, for hosting the second Mortal Kombat tournament. Rayden once again assumes a human form and ventures to Outworld to stop both Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn.
Rayden maintained his favorite status among the gaming community and was given a new special move, the electric shock, where he grabs his opponent and electrocutes them; this special move was extended to become his iconic fatality where he electrocutes his opponent until they explode.
Also making a return is Ho-Sung Pak, reprising his role as Liu Kang. Liu Kang’s costume for this installment has improved a lot – his pants are now colored black and red, he gains studded forearm guards and now wears a red cloth headband. His new costume was a huge departure from being a Bruce Lee clone and in my opinion, this costume really gives Liu Kang his own identity.
Liu Kang defeats Shang Tsung during the first tournament and decides to go home to his Shaolin temples and brothers. However, upon his return, the temples were in ruins and his Shaolin brothers massacred. He discovers that the perpetrators of the attack were Outworld warriors. Upon learning of the second Mortal Kombat tournament, Liu Kang travels to Outworld, seeking to avenge his fallen comrades.
For this installment, Liu Kang gains additional special moves – he can now execute his fireball in a crouching position and even in mid-air and his most infamous special move, the bicycle kick (not to be confused with the soccer move) where he launches himself in mid-air towards his opponent and repeatedly kicks them with his feet alternately, all while screaming a Kung Fu gibberish. Despite retaining his “peaceful” uppercut fatality, Liu Kang gains a new fatality finisher where he transforms into a green mythical Chinese dragon and devours the upper half of his opponent.
Our last returning actor is Richard DiVizio. In the first game, he portrayed Kano, but for Mortal Kombat 2, he portrays a new character, Baraka. Baraka was designed for the game to have an outlandish, savage-looking, mutant-like fighter. To achieve this, the producers made Rich wore a tight, Nosferatu mask and attached press-on nails which were painted silver as his teeth. To further enhance his monstrous appearance, Rich was also made to wear forearm gloves where long fake blades would extend out. For his attire, he wears a white, modified sleeveless Shaolin uniform with red linings, white shoes, black pants, leg guards and a metal fauld.
For Baraka’s story, he belongs to a species of mutants called Tarkatans who reside in the wastelands of Outworld. His fighting prowess gained the attention of the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn, and was recruited in his armies. Baraka soon led the attacks towards Liu Kang’s Shaolin Temples and upon his return to Outworld, participated in the second Mortal Kombat tournament.
His special moves and finishers have a lot to do with his blades: blade spark, where he sparks his blades to form a projectile against the opponent; blade fury, where he extends his blades and moves his arms in a shredding motion; and blade decapitation fatality where he beheads his opponent with his blade.
Our first new actor to join the Mortal Kombat crew is Dr. Philip Ahn, a medical doctor and a martial artist specializing in taekwondo. Phillip is a friend of Ho-Sung Pak and was invited to work out in the same athletic club as Daniel Pesina. He eventually became friends with Danny and was introduced to Ed Boon and John Tobias. Impressing the MK crew with his martial arts skills, Phillip was soon recruited to play the youth-restored Shang Tsung. For Mortal Kombat II, the developers made Shang Tsung a playable character, thus the overall design change from a robed, elderly sorcerer to an athletic, youthful fighter. For his costume, Phillip wore black Kung Fu pants, Kung Fu shoes, black and yellow garb exposing his chest and arms, yellow forearm and leg guards and a black Mandarin hat. His eyes were digitally altered to appear pupilless. Also, since Phillip cannot naturally grow a goatee facial hair, his in-game images were digitally altered to make him appear having a goatee.
For his story, Shang Tsung lost control of the Mortal Kombat tournament after being defeated by Liu Kang. Facing his master, the Outworld emperor Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung was sentenced to execution for his failure. However, he was able to convince Shao Kahn to spare his life after proposing a plan to hold another tournament in Outworld. By this, he plans to lure Earthrealm warriors to Outworld where they would have to eventually face Shao Kahn himself. Shao Kahn restores Shang Tsung’s youth and sees their plan go into motion.
Shang Tsung is designated as the antepenultimate boss. For his move list, he retains his flaming skulls projectile and his ability to morph into other playable characters and execute their own special moves. He is notably the only character who has a total of 3 fatality finishers. For his most iconic fatality, Shang Tsung grabs his opponent and steals their soul, leaving the body in a decomposed state. His second fatality involves him magically zooming into the opponent’s ear and as he reverts to his original size inside the opponent’s body, causes the opponent to explode into pieces. In his third fatality, he morphs into Kintaro, the Shokan sub-boss of the MK2, and brutally punches the opponent, knocking off the opponent’s upper body.
Another new actor joining the Mortal Kombat crew is Anthony “Tony” Marquez. Anthony is a karate and Wushu expert and is childhood friends with the Pesina brothers, Ho-Sung Pak and Richard DiVizio. His other credits include performing stunts and soldier roles in the film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. For the role of Kung Lao, the idea came up that another Shaolin fighter will be added to the Mortal Kombat character roster and thus, Daniel Pesina recruited Anthony specifically for the role. Lead designer John Tobias initially thought that Anthony was too small and skinny for the role so Anthony focused on his weight training regime for four weeks and was soon eventually cast for the role of Kung Lao. His costume consisted of a dark blue sleeveless Shaolin uniform topped with a black, sleeveless garb with a red Chinese character, “Wu” which means military/warrior/martial arts. He also wears silver forearm guards, black kung fu shoes, leg guards and his most iconic item, the black hat with a razor-brimmed effect.
Kung Lao’s story reveals that he was a former Shaolin monk together with Liu Kang. A member of the White Lotus Society, he is the last descendant of the Great Kung Lao, the legendary Shaolin monk and previous Mortal Kombat champion, until defeated by the Shokan prince, Goro. After the attack on their Shaoilin brothers by Outworld warriors, Kung Lao joins Liu Kang in venturing Outworld to avenge their fallen comrades.
Despite being both Shaolin fighters, Kung Lao’s move list is extremely different from Liu Kang’s: he has a projectile move where he throws his hat in a horizontal motion towards the opponent (the player can control the hat’s motion, either going straight, upper or lower; his hat will magically reappear on top of his head); a whirlwind spin move where he spins arounds in a fixed position and if the opponent comes close to his spin, will get hit; and a teleport move where he jumps above the screen to reappear jumping at the opponent’s opposite side from below the screen. His fatalities are related to his hat weapon: he performs his same hat throw move to decapitate his opponent or he slashes his opponent with his hat literally cutting the opponent in half.
The next new joiner in the list is Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar. Credited as “Katalin Zamiar”, she was at the time, a graduate student and a forensic science instructor holding a degree in anthropology. For her martial arts credentials, she practices karate and Okinawan-style martial arts, specializing in Sai and is also proficient handling the war fan. She was recruited by Danny Pesina for the female ninja roles of Kitana and Mileena. Lead designer John Tobias wanted to have female counterparts of the ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero who would have a rivalry of their own. Katalin’s costume consisted of a dark blue, sleeveless leotard, long forearm gloves, knee-high boots and a ninja face mask that only exposes her eyes and a black sash belt. The default dark blue color was used for Kitana’s costume, while for Mileena, the color was digitally edited to purple. They are further distinguished by their weapons of choice; Kitana is armed with a pair of steel-effect war fans while Mileena utilizes a pair of Sai.
For their in-game story, both Kitana and Mileena were introduced as twin sisters serving as personal assassins for Shao Kahn, the Emperor of Outworld. This turns out to be a complete façade as it was revealed that they are not in fact, twin sisters; Kitana is actually the daughter of the rightful rulers of Outworld who were overthrown by Shao Kahn while Mileena is a misshapen Tarkatan clone of her created by Shang Tsung to monitor Kitana’s every move and ensure her loyalty to Shao Kahn. During the events of the second Mortal Kombat tournament, Kitana was caught in contact with an Earthrealm warrior and Mileena was assigned to investigate on her.
In terms of gameplay, both Kitana and Milleena would become top tier characters and favorites in the game. Kitana’s special moves revolves around her war fans, using it as a projectile towards her opponent (which can also be done while in mid-air) and additionally has a unique fan lift move, that levitates her opponent above the air in a vulnerable state. Mileena, on the other hand, has her own moves differentiating her from Kitana; she has a teleport kick where she slips out of the screen downwards only to reappear upwards near the opponent performing an airborne kick, a rolling attack that knocks the opponent off their feet and a projectile move where she launches bluish energy-charged Sai against the opponent (which can also be performed in mid-air).Their fatalities are nothing short of being outrageous: Kitana’s “kiss of death” where she removes her mask to reveal her beautiful face and kisses the opponent by the cheek and causes their body to inflate until it exploded; Mileena’s “maneater” where she reveals her disfigured Tarkatan teeth and kisses the opponent by the cheek, devouring the opponent and spitting out their bones
The producers eventually made a palette swap female ninja character: Jade, digitally clad in green and altered to appear having darker skin tone. She was introduced as secret unplayable character, with a requirement in order to fight her. Jade is also in the Living Forest stage, where she would randomly peek out from a tree. She shares the same moves as Kitana (her war fans were digitally altered to appear copper-effect) but with speed quicker than most characters and invincible against projectile attacks.
Our next joiner is John Parrish, a bodybuilding and weightlifting champion. Additionally, he has trained in Northern Kung Fu and has both military and gymnastics background. At the time of the release of the first MK game, John was working as trainer in the same athletic club where Daniel Pesina and most cast members trained. John became acquainted with Danny and got to play the first MK demo and joked that there are no black characters in the game. During the development of Mortal Kombat 2, the producers made a sketch of a new character and specifically recruited John for the role of Maj. Jackson “Jax” Briggs. His original costume was a yellow, sleeveless Shaolin uniform and pants. However, during actual filming, he accidentally ripped the pants. His new design consisted of black athletic pants, with red and white designs on the sides, gray utility belt and forearms guards, and black military boots.
For his story, Jax is a leader of a top US Special Forces unit. He receives a distress signal from his team member, Lt. Sonya Blade, who went missing after a mission in apprehending the criminal, Kano. Embarking on a rescue mission to save Sonya, he is led to Outworld and found Sonya captured alongside Kano, both taken captives by the Outworld Emperor, Shao Kahn. Jax must compete in the Mortal Kombat tournament in order to save Sonya.
Themed as the “big strong guy” character, Jax’s move list emphasizes his brute strength and he became a favorite among players. Unlike most characters, he has 3 throw special moves: the body slam, where he grabs the opponent and slams them repeatedly on the ground; gotcha grab where he grabs the opponent by the throat and repeatedly punches the opponent’s face; and the backbreaker, an airborne grab where Jax catches the opponent mid-air and breaks their backs by dropping their head-up body towards his head. His most iconic move is ground pound, where he strikes the ground with his fist, sending a shockwave to ground-based opponents. His fatalities also reflect his superhuman strength where he either pulls off his opponent’s arms or by clapping his fists on the opponent’s head, causing it to explode.
Next on the list is Brian Glynn, a competitive bodybuilder who won several championships at that time. Brian became part of the Mortal Kombat crew after he was spotted by John Parrish in a gym and was informed that the Mortal Kombat producers were looking for a very muscular guy for the role of a new villain, Shao Kahn. Brian proceeded with the audition and was cast for the role of Shao Kahn. To emphasize his impressive physique, his costume design was the probably the most revealing and detailed among the cast members: black briefs and footwear, thick body straps crossed to hold a small breastplate, spiked spaulders, spiked gauntlets, spiked knee guards, shin guards, leather loincloth and belt – all colored reddish brown, and his iconic, kabuto-style, skull helmet. His in-game sprites had to be re-sized for him to look taller and bigger than the rest of the characters.
Shao Kahn’s story reveals that he became the Emperor of Outworld after seizing power from its rightful rulers, the parents of Kitana. He raised Kitana as his own child and sent his lead sorcerer, Shang Tsung, to earth to conquer it by means of the winning 10 victories in the Mortal Kombat tournament. However, Shang Tsung failed to win the 10th victory. Upon his return to Outworld, Shang Tsung convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life and planned to hold another tournament in Outworld where the Earthrealm warriors would surely face Shao Kahn.
Shao Kahn was the final boss in the game and was unplayable. Unlike most characters, he has no jump/aerial moves. However, his punch and kick attacks cause more damage than the regular characters. His special moves consist of a green projectile arrow and a ground dash attack. He usually performs taunts during battles, allowing the player to get a free hit at him. Overall, in both design and presentation, he definitely became a memorable villain to the gaming community.
The MK developers wanted to introduce a playable anthropomorphic tiger-themed fighter for MK2. However, because of the foreseen difficulty of a capturing a fur-lined costume in motion, the concept was revamped. This new concept led to a huge, four-armed sub-boss just like Goro from the first game and we are introduced to Kintaro. The stop-motion figure used for Kintaro was sculpted by Curt Chiarelli, who was the same artist behind the Goro figure used in the first game. Just like his predecessor, Kintaro was sculpted with a very muscular physique, 4 arms each with 3 huge fingers and wears white leg wraps, a black loincloth, with a red sash belt with a Yin and Yang symbol. He was further designed with a receding hairline, full beard, knee guards, wrist guards, spiked spaulders and body straps crossed to hold a small breastplate. To further differentiate him from Goro, the entire back of his body was designed with tiger stripes – a nod to the supposed, original concept.
For his story, Kintaro was a comrade of Goro who are both of the Shokan race. Upon hearing of Goro’s defeat at the hands of Liu Kang, Kintaro joins Shao Kahn’s armies during the second Mortal Kombat tournament to avenge Goro.
As mentioned earlier, Kintaro was designated as a sub-boss before fighting Shao Kahn and was unplayable. Like Goro and Shao Kahn, Kintaro performs taunts during battles that allows the player to get a free hit at him. His moves are more powerful and flexible than Goro’s: he can jump towards opponents, his uppercut usually send the opponent flying past the screen before falling to the ground, a teleport stomp that inflicts huge damage towards the opponent and his ability to grab an opponent mid-air and throw them on the ground. His brutal moves made him notorious among gamers as one of the most difficult MK bosses.
While not as visible than the actors who played the main characters, some supporting cast members’ appearances were contributed to development of the storylines. We know that Daniel Pesina played Sub-Zero but for Sub-Zero’s ending where he removes his mask, the MK developers used the face of Joshua Tsui. Fondly called “Josh”, he was a new employee at Midway during that time and the developers immediately needed an Asian male to be used as the face of Sub-Zero. Since he was the only Asian male at the moment, he was roped in for this sole purpose. Additionally, the images of Richard DiVizio and Elizabeth Malecki as Kano and Sonya, respectively, were re-used in both the Kahn’s Arena stage where they were held captives and in Jax’s ending where Sonya was rescued and Kano was able to escape arrest. As for the playable absence of their characters, the producers explained that Kano and Sonya were the least popular of the initial seven playable characters from the first game hence they were dropped in the second game to make way for new characters.
So there, the second batch of actors/characters in the MK games. Here are some additional behind the scenes/live action shots:
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Page 122 →Page 123 →Notes
Introduction
1. Wherever relevant or not immediately apparent from context, I have cited the home country of game studios upon their first mention, using the familiar abbreviations JP (Japan), U.S. (United States), and U.K. (United Kingdom). I have also used the North American names for game consoles, such as SEGA “Genesis” instead of SEGA “MegaDrive.”
2. See Bogost 2015; Sharp 2015; and Parker 2018.
3. My discussion here is rooted primarily in the U.S. context, given how arcades in East Asia tend to have a more socially “wholesome” image (see Ashcraft and Snow 2008), helped in part by the relative absence of gore in most Japanese games—a cultural difference that the Mortal Kombat series exploited as a means of product differentiation.
Chapter 1
1. Note that the generic terms “fighting” and “beat-em-up” are still sometimes used interchangeably, especially in British game criticism. For the sake of clarity, however, I will distinguish between these two varieties of hand-to-hand combat games.
2. Also see Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. 862 F.2d 204, 9 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1322 (9th Cir. 1988).
3. To overcome such imbalances in two-player competition, the second player to select their avatar might deliberately “counter-pick” a character whose own weaknesses will help rebalance the upcoming match (Harper 2014, 61). To help with this issue, Mortal Kombat II also introduced a “Random Select” function, which allows players to defer to serendipity instead of counter-strategize—a very popular option among arcade players already skilled enough to use any character (“Special . . . Kombat II” 1994, Electronic, 114).
Page 124 →4. According to programmer Ed Boon, MKI was affected by similar imbalances, with Sub-Zero’s moves considerably stronger than the other characters (LaMancha 1994, 35).
5. See “Fighter’s History” 1994, 120; “Letter of the Month” 1994, 14; and Capcom U.S.A., Inc. v. Data East Corp., 1994 WL 1751482 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 1994).
6. On the cognitive/embodied experience of “force transfer” in hand-to-hand combat games, also see Gregersen 2016, 53–70.
7. Although not entirely identical, also see the character tier provided in Cureton 1994, 69.
8. Franchise crossover games would, however, be created by each company separately (see chapter 4), using licensing deals with the major American comics firms, including X-Men vs. Street Fighter (Capcom, 1996) and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Midway, 2008).
9. Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (1897–1962) was a Parisian theater specializing in realistic depictions of graphic violence and gore—often presented in a morbidly tongue-in-cheek tone—and has been credited as an influence on gory horror films, especially via the generic influence of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
10. Capcom would later introduce Akuma, a hidden playable character in Super Street Fighter II Turbo (1994), unlockable via a combination of carefully timed button presses on the Character Select screen—as if both acknowledging the earlier Sheng Long mishap and taking inspiration from Midway’s own introduction of secret characters.
11. The purple-attired character Rain would originate in a similar manner as a Prince-themed in-joke by Ed Boon, briefly seen during a flash of demo gameplay in the “attract mode” of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995), and was later made a playable character in subsequent games.
12. Also see the respective pages for the Mortal Kombat games on the Cutting Room Floor website (n.d.). Other major Easter eggs, such as Boon’s separate diagnostic menus for the first three coin-op games, would not be discovered until as late as 2015.
13. For MKII, Tobias initially wished to digitize real-life kickboxer Kathy Long as a character, but this idea was dropped due to time constraints (Quan 1994b, 29).
14. Wrestling games are already generically closer in spirit to fighting games than boxing games, since they typically rely on theatrical personas with signature moves, health meters to mark character strength, and so on. In its incorporation of foreign objects to be used as optional weapons, such as pool cues and crates, Pit-Fighter more closely resembles a wrestling game than a fighting game in many respects.
15. See Ahn, et al. v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 965 F. Supp 1134 (N.D. Ill. 1997); and Pesina v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 948 F. Supp. 40 (N.D. Ill. 1996).
16. Ahn, et al. v. Midway, et al.
Chapter 2
1. Tobias had originally planned for Total Carnage to feature a backstory “involv[ing] the world being invaded by ghouls from a dimension called Outworld,” Page 125 →but the game’s cocreator, Mark Turmell, vetoed the inclusion of unnecessary themes and storylines (Ali 2019, 62).
2. As one of the first 3D fighting games (and a Mortal Kombat competitor), Tekken (Bandai Namco [JP], 1994–) provided a fitting “extra dimension” to its gameplay by developing the increasingly complex story of the Mishima family across its many popular sequels. The Tekken series, then, is a prominent exception to the fighting game’s oft-criticized lack of narrative depth, much as it also represents an attempt to reassert Japanese dominance over the mid-1990s coin-op market.
3. On the grindhouse market, see Church 2015, and for a sample of such double bills circa 1974–75, see Cope 1975. Also see Prashad 2001 and Bowman 2021 on this period.
4. Note that the pinyin term gong fu roughly translates as “hard work/practice over time” and can refer to any gradually acquired skill, not specifically martial arts, whereas wushu actually translates as “martial art.” By the 1960s–70s, however, these meanings were effectively reversed once wushu was reconceived as a noncombative gymnastic sport and “kung fu” became internationally associated with empty-handed martial artistry. In this chapter, I use the latter-day associations of these two terms for the sake of consistency with common usage.
5. Given the basis of the lawsuits that some of these original actors would later file against Midway, it is perhaps no surprise that today they claim a considerable amount of creative input, even if not enough to legally qualify them as joint authors. On the issue of authorship, it is also notable that Japanese character names and cultural allusions (such as the blind swordsman Kenshi as a Zatoichi trope) would significantly increase in the Mortal Kombat games made after Tobias left Midway in 1999.
6. According to Daniel Pesina, additional inspiration for Johnny Cage and Jax respectively came from Marvel’s characters Iron Fist and Power Man, whose own comics series ran concurrently with Master of Kung Fu (Myers 2018).
7. The documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (John Little, 2000) reconstructs as much of Lee’s vision for Game of Death as possible from the extant footage.
8. Konami’s controversial rail-shooter Lethal Enforcers, discussed in the following chapter, would include a level set in Chicago’s Chinatown, featuring stereotypically attired Chinese villains (see fig. 15).
9. On such diasporic video stores, see Hilderbrand 2009, 27–32.
10. Dux’s story was later called into question in Johnson 1988. This has led to several ensuing decades of counterarguments over the veracity of Dux’s account, though my primary interest here is in how Bloodsport dramatized the story as a Van Damme vehicle. According to Dux’s original account, for example, despite fighting until knockouts, there were no deaths at the actual Kumite, nor were betting spectators allowed.
11. On hardbody films, also see Jeffords 1993; Tasker 1993; and Ayers 2008.
12. Notably, Provenzo’s research does not specify the exact game being described here, but it is likely either Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo, 1988), Double Dragon, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989) for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System—all of them, ironically, Japanese productions—and not one of the Mortal Kombat games.
13. On the tradition of “alternative blood” to evade censorship, also see Kocurek 2015b. This form of localization could operate in the opposite direction, however, Page 126 →with the Japanese-designed Bushido Blade featuring a splash of red blood upon fatal sword strikes in the American version, in place of the yellow flash in the original Japanese version.
14. This same toxic masculinity often overlaps with the aforementioned white supremacism expressed by a contingent of gamers fearing that their bubble of ludic escapism is being threatened by racial/sexual minorities (see Nakamura 2019).
15. American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, 244 F.3d 572 (7th Cir. 2001).
Chapter 3
1. Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952). Film distributor Joseph Burstyn legally challenged the New York State Board of Regents’ 1951 ban of Roberto Rossellini’s film The Miracle (1948), which had been accused of sacrilege. The U.S. Supreme Court’s “Miracle decision” in Burstyn’s favor, which struck down the ban, also reversed an earlier 1915 ruling that had declared motion pictures unprotected by the First Amendment.
2. Coin-op gamers of the early 1990s will recall, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insertion of antidrug messages (“Winners Don’t Use Drugs”) into the attract mode for many games, apparently convinced that idle youth were as likely to reach for a crack pipe as a joystick.
3. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283 (102 S.Ct. 1070, 71 L.Ed.2d 152) (1982).
4. During the same period, Midway/Williams developed the Williams Action Video Entertainment Network (or “WaveNet”), an attempt to remotely network arcade machines for competitive play via an ISDN connection. Although installation costs for these ISDN connections might have put off some arcade owners, Williams hoped that their widespread adoption would revolutionize the coin-op industry’s business model by allowing companies like Williams to remotely disseminate new software and updates for free, in exchange for a share of each arcade’s revenue on those games. In April 1996, Williams began field-testing WaveNet on ten Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 cabinets in the Chicago area, but this early experiment with networked gaming was short-lived, and its ambitious revenue-sharing model did not come to pass (Webb 1996, 18).
5. Its sequel, Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters (Konami, 1994), in fact, uses an Old West setting instead.
6. The Options menu on the SNES prototype even included a selection between “Bloody” and “Bloodless” game modes, but it is unclear if this was to be a standard menu option or unlockable only with a code.
7. The ESRB ratings include E (Everyone), T (Teen), M (Mature 17+), and AO (Adults Only 18+).
8. For example, MKI was banned and confiscated in Germany in 1994 under a Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons law against content that glorifies or trivializes violence.
9. For overviews of these debates, see Sicart 2009; Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca 2013, 255–79; Schott 2016; Markey and Ferguson 2017.
Page 127 →10. However, they do allow that players with preexisting dispositions toward aggression were more intrigued by violent game content for its own sake, even if that violent content still did not correlate with their overall enjoyment of the games themselves.
11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011).
Chapter 4
1. Time Killers was considered so bad that it inspired its own parody game, Timeslaughter (Bloodlust Software [U.S.], 1996); whereas reviews of Naughty Dog’s almost self-parodic Way of the Warrior noted how the Panasonic 3DO’s “beautiful” CD-based graphics did not compensate for horrible gameplay since, even with its “humor value,” the game “isn’t even good by accident!” (“Review . . . Warrior” 1994, 38).
2. Emulated versions of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy would be further repackaged on Midway Arcade Treasures compilations (2004–2005) for the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox, in addition to serving as unlockable hidden games within the later sequels, as if having acquired the historical status of the PONG and Galaga games hidden in the original trilogy.
3. This compiled story information derives from several sources: Santoro et al. 2018; Mortal Kombat Wiki (n.d.); and Jasper 2017.
4. A hyperdiegesis is “a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text” (Hills 2002, 104).
5. Although the number of grandmothers who embraced MK: Armageddon is doubtful, Boon’s rhetoric is consistent with the Wii’s reputation as a game console adapted by “casual” gamers of many ages, as explained in Juul 2009.
6. “Mokap,” a hidden character in MK: Deadly Alliance, wears a motion-capture suit covered with reflective balls, alluding to this now-common cinematic process.
7. Also see In re MIDWAY GAMES INC., et al., Debtors. Threshold Entertainment, Inc., Plaintiff, v. Midway Games Inc., et al., Bankruptcy No. 09-10465, Adversary No. 09-51081 (446 B.R. 148 [2011]).
8. An R18+ rating for video games would be introduced by the release of Mortal Kombat X four years later, allowing the uncensored sequel to be sold to adults.
9. Mortal Kombat 11 (2019) replaces X-ray attacks with high-damage “Fatal Blow” attacks, enabled once a character’s health drops below the 30 percent mark, thus allowing a losing player to potentially turn the tables on their opponent. Meanwhile, MK11 splits the tripartite meter into separate offensive and defensive meters, giving players more strategic in-round options for how to use accumulated energy toward enhanced moves.
10. A playable Scorpion, however, would be available to Injustice players as a premium download, much as NetherRealm’s Injustice 2 (2017) features Sub-Zero and Raiden as downloadable characters. Likewise, NetherRealm introduced a mobile game for iOS and Android devices in conjunction with MKX, based in purchasing and collecting a virtual card deck of fighters and their corresponding powers, which incentivizes in-game microtransactions by also unlocking content on the home console version.
11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011).
Previous Chapter
Four. Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention
Next Chapter
Glossary
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https://dbpedia.org/page/Makoto_Kano_(video_game_designer)
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About: Makoto Kano (video game designer)
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Makoto Kano (加納 誠, Kanō Makoto, born October 30, 1950), also credited as Makoto Kanoh pre-1995, is a Japanese game designer and supervisor. He was born in Kyoto, Japan. Kano began working for Nintendo in 1974. He was one of the original designers in Nintendo's creative department. Originally, he designed toys and board games before working on the series. Kano eventually became one of the lead designers of the Game & Watch series. By 1984, he was heavily involved in several Nintendo R&D1 games, including Hogan's Alley, Gyromite, and more specifically the Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Famicom Wars series. Some other projects he has worked on at Nintendo include Super Metroid, the Super Scope for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Mario & Wario.
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http://dbpedia.org/resource/Makoto_Kano_(video_game_designer)
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dbo:abstract
Makoto Kano (加納 誠, Kanō Makoto, born October 30, 1950), also credited as Makoto Kanoh pre-1995, is a Japanese game designer and supervisor. He was born in Kyoto, Japan. Kano began working for Nintendo in 1974. He was one of the original designers in Nintendo's creative department. Originally, he designed toys and board games before working on the series. Kano eventually became one of the lead designers of the Game & Watch series. By 1984, he was heavily involved in several Nintendo R&D1 games, including Hogan's Alley, Gyromite, and more specifically the Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Famicom Wars series. Some other projects he has worked on at Nintendo include Super Metroid, the Super Scope for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Mario & Wario. Kano is credited with creating several early Nintendo characters during the 1980s. Ultimately, his best known achievement may have been creating the concepts of the Metroid, Famicom Wars, and Kid Icarus universe. (en)
Makoto Kanoh (parfois crédité sous les noms « M. Kanoh » et « Makoto Kanō ») est un créateur de jeux vidéo. Il était notamment le concepteur de scénarios et de personnages pour Metroid et Super Metroid. (fr)
加納 誠（かのう まこと、1950年10月30日 - ）は、日本のゲームクリエイター。京都府出身。元任天堂クリエイティブ課（後の情報開発本部）および社長室所属。 Mr.ゲーム&ウォッチのデザイナーとしても知られる。 (ja)
rdfs:comment
Makoto Kanoh (parfois crédité sous les noms « M. Kanoh » et « Makoto Kanō ») est un créateur de jeux vidéo. Il était notamment le concepteur de scénarios et de personnages pour Metroid et Super Metroid. (fr)
加納 誠（かのう まこと、1950年10月30日 - ）は、日本のゲームクリエイター。京都府出身。元任天堂クリエイティブ課（後の情報開発本部）および社長室所属。 Mr.ゲーム&ウォッチのデザイナーとしても知られる。 (ja)
Makoto Kano (加納 誠, Kanō Makoto, born October 30, 1950), also credited as Makoto Kanoh pre-1995, is a Japanese game designer and supervisor. He was born in Kyoto, Japan. Kano began working for Nintendo in 1974. He was one of the original designers in Nintendo's creative department. Originally, he designed toys and board games before working on the series. Kano eventually became one of the lead designers of the Game & Watch series. By 1984, he was heavily involved in several Nintendo R&D1 games, including Hogan's Alley, Gyromite, and more specifically the Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Famicom Wars series. Some other projects he has worked on at Nintendo include Super Metroid, the Super Scope for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Mario & Wario. (en)
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https://www.watchmojo.com/articles/top-10-biggest-moments-from-mortal-kombat-11
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Top 10 Biggest Moments from Mortal Kombat 11
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Yes the Krypt may be heavily flawed but damn was that story mode amazing. So today, we're counting down our picks of the Top 10 Biggest Moments from Mortal Kombat 11. If you haven't played through the Story Mode yet, be advised that there will be SPOILERS!
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https://www.watchmojo.com/articles/top-10-biggest-moments-from-mortal-kombat-11
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Top 10 Biggest Moments From MK11
There may be some flaws in its other modes, but the story is incredible! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Biggest Moments From the story mode of Mortal Kombat 11!
For this list, we’re highlighting some of the best moments in “Mortal Kombat 11’s” story mode! If you haven’t played through MK11’s story and don’t wanna be spoiled, come back once you’ve beaten it. This is your spoiler warning!
#10: The Death of Sonya Blade
We were only thirty minutes into the story, and MK11 already killed off a character. In order to dismantle the Nether Realm’s army, Raiden creates a diversion for Special Forces to infiltrate and destroy Liu Kang’s fortress. However, when a massive fight causes debris to fall, Cassie Cage finds out her mother is buried in the rubble, and she wasn’t going to make it out alive. The Cage family has managed to escape death several times, but with Sonya gone, it made us fear for Cassie and Johnny’s future. We’re not crying, YOU’RE crying!!
#9: Frost’s Traitorous Reveal
In the first few chapters, we see Kronika is accompanied by Geras and a mysterious hooded figure. We find out, in Chapter 4, that this person is Frost, Sub-Zero’s former apprentice from MKX (as well as a few titles before). While Frost was revealed hours before MK11 launched, it was her role in the story that caught us off guard. Frustrated with Sub-Zero’s teachings, Frost began fighting for Kronika when she anointed Frost as commander of the Cyber Lin Kuei. You know, in hindsight, she would be the one to backstab Subs; she seemed to have a pretty aggressive personality in MKX.
#8: Johnny Cage vs. Sektor & Kano
If seeing Johnny Cage cringe at his younger self wasn’t enough for you, Chapter Six must have been an adrenaline rush! When the Cyber Lin Kuei are about to escape with Cassie, Sonya, and Young Johnny as hostages. Old Johnny takes control of a massive tank and engages in a firefight against Sektor and a fighter jet. Shortly after, he finds a younger Kano prepared to shoot him before pulling off the best nut punch in gaming history. Johnny’s always been treated as the idiot of the MK cast, but damn, he sure knows how to make a fight entertaining!
#7: Jade & Kotal Kahn’s Relationship
When the eras merge in Chapter Two, we did not expect Kotal Kahn to have such an important history. Turns out the former Outworld general had the hots for Jade back in the day, and oh my gawd, they are great together. Throughout the story, we see the full potential of their relationship; not only do they make each feel loved and happy, but they work very well as a team...most of the time. Romance isn’t exactly what we’d expect in a “Mortal Kombat” game, but Jade and Kotal showed that even in a world bathed in blood, there is still some love.
#6: Scorpion’s Redemption
We often ponder what we’d say to our younger selves, and Scorpion is one of the few fictional characters who has been given that chance. In a confrontation with his younger self, Grandmaster Hasashi calls out his younger self, revealing his true reasons behind his hellish fury. Things take a turn for the worst when they are ambushed by D’Vorah, who succeeds in poisoning Hasashi. When she retreats, Scorpion finds his future self dying in his own hands. Hasashi asks him to abandon Kronika and fight on his behalf before saying, (“The Shirai Ryu are worthy. It’s heart, not blood, that makes them warriors.”) It’s a touching, yet depressing moment that shows Scorpion is much more human than the ball of rage he typically is.
#5: Closure for Cassie
As one would expect, things got weird between Cassie and the younger Sonya Blade. When Sonya reads up on the report of her older self being KIA, she assumed Cassie intentionally left her behind. Luckily, things got better between the two at the end of Chapter Eight. After killing Kano (in the most badass way possible, too), Sonya admits she didn’t read the file completely and comes to accept her inevitable fate. Sonya didn’t get a lot of time to say her last words to Cassie before she died. So, seeing this felt like Cassie had finally been given some closure and can move on. Well, once the timeline is fixed, of course.
#4: All of Chapter 7
Oh, it’s time to talk about Chapter Seven? Well, here’s the short end of it: BEST. CHAPTER. EVER!! Previous games have shown Princess Kitana has a competent fighter, but she’s been a damsel in distress a few times too many. However, MK11 has solidified her as a bonafide badass! She successfully ambushes Skarlet alongside Liu Kang and Kung Lao, she manages to get Baraka and his Tarkatans to ally with her, AND she kills Shao Kahn, thus saving Kotal Kahn’s life. Kitana proves she’s not just a pretty princess; she’s a cunning, vicious, and noble warrior. Outworld is finally in good hands.
#3: Liu Kang Becomes a Freakin’ God!!
Just when it seems like Raiden was going to save the day, Chapter Twelve goes and throws a curveball at us! Upon his defeat by the Thunder God, our corrupted Liu Kang taunts Raiden into killing him, to which Raiden responds with, (“I would rather save you.”) We weren’t sure what was going on at first, but when the light dimmed, our jaws dropped - Fire God Liu Kang is here to whoop ass!! We had seen this version of Liu Kang before, though. In “Mortal Kombat 2011”, Liu Kang became a Fire God and Earthrealm’s new protector in his arcade ending, but that wasn’t canon yet. Now, it is, and he looks so cool!
#2: The Endings
For the first time in the series, “Mortal Kombat 11” has multiple endings in its story mode, and it all depends on your fight against Kronika. Obviously, if you lose, she resets time. Although, the biggest takeaway from the other two endings is that Raiden is giving up the mantle and allows Liu Kang to remain a god. He tells Liu Kang that he is now protector of all the realms and must rebuild history. If Kronika won one round against you, Liu Kang rebuilds with Raiden. If Kronika lost both rounds, you get the best ending and see Liu Kang begin to reform history alongside Kitana. #RelationshipGoals!
#1: Timelines?! ... PLURAL???
After a fight with Liu Kang, Raiden suddenly begins seeing alternate versions of themselves fighting each other. Most importably, it shows their pre-reboot fight atop the Pyramid of Argus from “Mortal Kombat Armageddon”, and their fight in the merged ruins of Outworld and Apokolips from “Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe”. What were these visions? (“memories...memories not only from this timeline, but from timelines that have come before.” “Wait a sec, timelines? Plural?!”) Raiden says that Kronika has reset the timeline more than once, which means some “Mortal Kombat” games may have been set in different eras. Like “Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe” since it’s officially recognised as MK8, as well as why certain characters, like Kotal Kahn, have never appeared in previous games, yet are referenced in history. This completely changes the lore of “Mortal Kombat”, and it’s probably NetherRealm’s way of allowing future developers of the studio to create their own story...in a few years, of course.
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Top Boy's Kane 'Kano' Robinson lands lead role in Netflix film
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[
"Top Boy",
"Kane Robinson"
] | null |
[
"Jess Bacon"
] |
2022-03-30T14:09:46.089767+00:00
|
Top Boy’s Kane 'Kano' Robinson has secured his first lead role in new dystopian movie The Kitchen, co-written and created by Black Panther star Daniel Kaluuya.
|
en
|
/_assets/design-tokens/digitalspy/static/images/favicon.b8735b8.ico
|
Digital Spy
|
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a39583712/top-boy-kane-robinson-kano-netflix-the-kitchen/
|
Top Boy's Kane 'Kano' Robinson has secured his first lead movie role.
The musician and actor, who plays Sully on the hit Netflix series, will star as Izi in the streaming platform's new film The Kitchen.
Created, co-written and co-produced by Black Panther star Daniel Kaluuya, the futuristic dystopian drama promises to examine social class and the structures that confine us.
It's set in London in the year 2044, where the gap between the rich and the poor has been stretched to its limits.
Related: Top Boy's Ashley Walters reveals co-star Kano rewrites his scenes
With social housing eradicated, the working class are forced into temporary accommodation on the outskirts of the city.
The Kitchen is London's last village of residents who refuse to move out. The story centres around Izi, who lives in The Kitchen and is desperate to get out with 12-year-old Benji, who after the death of his mother is searching for his family.
The story follows how the unlikely duo battle to stay alive in a system that is working against them.
The film is written by Kaluuya (Get Out) and Joe Murtagh (Calm with Horses, Gangs of London) from an idea that Kaluuya, Daniel Emmerson (Calm with Horses) and Kibwe Tavares had.
Related: Top Boy's Saffron Hocking teases Lauryn and Sully showdown in season 5
The Kitchen is led by first-time feature film director Tavares, after his extensive work in shorts, theatre and architecture. He was also an executive producer on the acclaimed BBC sci-fi drama Noughts & Crosses.
The movie will also introduce young actor Jedaiah Bannerman, who will co-lead the movie alongside Robinson in the role of Benji.
Kaluuya explained that he thought of the idea after a conversation he had in a barbershop in 2011.
"In 2011, I was in my barbershop and there was a guy boasting about smash and grabs – kids doing million-pound heists in a minute, getting paid £200 to do it," he said. "I saw the potential to unlock a unique story door to the inequality, fatherhood, class, joy, resilience, courage, defiance and care of London."
Almost a decade later, Kaluuya and his team have brought his vision to life and he said: "[We] are immersing ourselves in a dystopian London that interrogates what 'care' means, at home and as a society and the dangers in our future if we stay indifferent to everything around us."
The Kitchen will be filmed across London and Paris and be released on Netflix in 2023.
|
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https://www.mycast.io/talent/kano
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Kano Fan Casting
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View casting suggestions for Kano, and make your own suggestions for roles you think they should play in upcoming films!
|
myCast - Fan Casting Your Favorite Stories
|
https://www.mycast.io/talent/kano
|
Join myCast
Do you love movies? Fan casting? myCast is the place for you!
Join thousands of other users in fan casting your favorite stories. Take 30 seconds to create a completely free profile, which will allow you to:
Add your own stories and characters
Make casting suggestions
Vote and comment on casting suggestions
Add and edit talent profiles
Post to the forums
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Create a free account
Join myCast
Do you love movies? Fan casting? myCast is the place for you!
Join thousands of other users in fan casting your favorite stories. Take 30 seconds to create a completely free profile, which will allow you to:
Add your own stories and characters
Make casting suggestions
Vote and comment on casting suggestions
Add and edit talent profiles
Post to the forums
Already have an account?
Login to an existing account
|
||||||
1473
|
dbpedia
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0
| 0 |
https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Kano
|
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Kano
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[
"Contributors to Mortal Kombat Wiki"
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2023-06-15T18:06:37+00:00
|
Kano (Japanese: 加納)[2] is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. The leader of the Black Dragon clan, he is a ruthless scoundrel and archnemesis to Sonya Blade and the Special Forces. Kano made his debut as one of the few original characters in the first Mortal Kombat arcade...
|
en
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https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mkwikia/images/4/4a/Site-favicon.ico/revision/latest?cb=20230627174410
|
Mortal Kombat Wiki
|
https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Kano
|
“
One thing we Black Dragon know, there's no fun in a fair fight.
„
—Kano to past Sonya in Mortal Kombat 11
Kano (Japanese: 加納)[2] is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. The leader of the Black Dragon clan, he is a ruthless scoundrel and archnemesis to Sonya Blade and the Special Forces.
Kano made his debut as one of the few original characters in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game. He is the first Black Dragon clan member featured in the series and has been a recurring antagonist to the franchise since his debut. He serves as a major antagonist towards Sonya Blade and her family.
About Kano
As a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, Kano rises beyond mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. Originally from Australia, Kano is highly opportunistic and incredibly selfish, willing to betray his own realm and even his own allies for money or personal gain. As a result, he quickly became part of Shao Kahn's inner circle, and eventually the general of Outworld's armies (in the original timeline). One of his more notable features is his facetious and twisted sense of humor, almost always making light of dire circumstances. His vulgarity is an additional outlier among other characters, most evident by his penchant for callously spitting, drinking and urinating wherever he pleases. His assortment of dirty fighting tactics also compliments his unpleasant personality. He combines features of a cowardly minion, a lone survivor, a crazed madman, and a ruthless commander. He is despised by the majority of other characters in the series for his selfish, untrustworthy nature, complete lack of morals, and overall crudeness. However, he seems to enjoy the fact that he is hated, even viewing it as a source of pride. He is the archenemy of Sonya Blade, who is obsessed with finding and bringing Kano to justice.
A portion of Kano's face is covered with a metal plate, the result of a disfiguring injury he sustained at the hands of Jax prior to the events of the series, with the plated eye being a glowing red orb capable of emitting laser beams.
Since Deadly Alliance, he speaks with an Australian accent and makes regular use of Aussie idioms and slang.
Appearance
In his debut, Kano is depicted as a white male with a black buzzcut, sporting a white Gi accessorized with a brown bandolier strapped around his chest & shoulders and knives holstered on his ankles. He also has a cybernetic Eye Shield prosthetic over his right eye, which has become part of his signature look.
As with most returning characters in MK3, Kano's look underwent a dramatic overhaul. Instead of a white karate Gi, Kano now wears a sleeveless red and black tunic, a pair of shiny black tights with red seams, and black sneakers. He is also completely bald in this appearance. However, a bandolier is still strapped around his body, and he continues to wear an eye shield over his right eye. His knives, strapped to his shins, are now laser-edged.
Across Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon, his primary look once again underwent a dramatic change. He now sported slicked back hair and has a new variation of his Eye Shield, covering slightly more of the right side of his face. He wears a black vest, arm bands, gloves and a necklace made up of a lock of Sonya Blade's hair that he ripped off of her. He wears khaki colored pants with knee pads and knives holster to his boot.
In the reboot, Kano once again sports his MK3 attire, albeit more loose-fitting. It also comes with slightly more advanced cybernetics. He sports a head full of hair and a full beard. Having tattoos of Dragons on both arms and chest. His Eye Shield and Cybernetic Heart are once again updated and his gauntlets seem to have some sort of enhancements as well.
His alternate outfit has another variation of his Eye Shield & Cybernetic Heart. He wears an open tan vest, black leather gloves and gray pants with leg guards and knives strapped to his shins, as well as a tooth necklace around his neck.
In Mortal Kombat X, Kano's overall appearance changes. Looking older, with a low messy haircut, a scruffy beard. His Eye Shield is upgraded and take up a huge portion of the right side of his face and is connected to wire which appear to enter into his body from the back. He is shirtless, sporting a muscular but not as toned of a body and can see multiple scars across his body. He has two dragon tattoos that are on both arms and chest. His bandolier is slightly different, it straps around both shoulders and across his stomach. They all connect to his Cybernetic Heart which serves as a power supply for his Cybernetics and can power up his moves. He wears camouflaged cargo pants with combat boots. Depending on the variation chosen, his knives are either placed on his back or at his hips. Gauntlets on both forearms as well as armbands. Kano also has a couple of grenades or some type of explosive charges connected to his belt. Two versions of Kano appear in Mortal Kombat 11, being his present and past self, both sporting different attires and overall appearances.
Present Day Kano: He sports a little more hair on his head with the right side shaved to accommodate for his Eye Shields. His facial hair consists of a chevron mustache with long sideburns that do not connect with the mustache, he also has some scruff on his lower lip that resembles a soul patch. The bionic eye is much sleeker now, with an angular design and no external attachments. His bandolier holds his Cybernetic Heart with 3 straps around his chest. His body is muscular and lean, slightly scarred with bushy chest hair and has a single dragon tattoo on his left arm and another dragon on his right forearm. He has fingerless gloves on both hands and a grey bracer on his left forearm. He is sporting olive green cargo pants with leg guards and his signature knives strapped to his shins and leather boots with blades hidden in them.
Past Kano: He is bald and has no facial hair and wears a new version of his MK3 attire, consisting of a red and black gi with a black undershirt, a smaller eye shield that only covers an area around the eye socket and a bandolier holding his cybernetic heart going around his torso, metal bracers on his forearms, a large utility belt with several pouches, black leather pants with leg guards and knives strapped to his shins and leather boots with blades hidden in them.
Character Development
In an early sketch of Kano by John Tobias, he had an eye patch instead of a metal face plate with a bionic eye, and 2 katanas. Another design of Kano had a large helmet with two red eyes. This concept was also dropped later on to be replaced by a metal plate over his right eye. In Kano's Deception Bio Card, Ed Boon mentions how Kano's bionic eye in the first MK (involving digitized actors) was created by cutting out a piece of a plastic mask and painting it a silver color, then gluing it to Richard Divizio's head.
In an episode of Icons/Gamemakers, hosted by G4, Ed Boon stated that the eye implant was directly based on ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' in which the T-800's right side of his face begins to peel off from damage, revealing his mechanical visage.[3]
In an interview with Ed Boon, he states that Kano's cybernetic heart is based on Marvel's Iron Man's arc reactor.
Kano was initially written as being born in Japan and adopted by an American.[4][5] Later, his nationality was retconned to Australian after Trevor Goddard's film performance was positively received.
Game Information
Kano was left out of the Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System version of MK due to memory constraints.
In Deadly Alliance, Kano had a move with his Butterfly Knives called "ear to ear". This was based on a line in the first Mortal Kombat movie, where Kano mockingly claimed that he used his knife to slit the throat of Sonya's partner, from "ear to ear". He also had a fast tag combo in MK 2011 as well as a combo in MKX that share the same name.
Combat Characteristics
Powers and Abilities
Kano isn't the most disciplined fighter but has proven himself to be a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having received extensive training in Street Fighting, Military Combat and has trained under the Martial Arts of Xing Yi, Aikido, but tends to resort to more of a Street Brawler style of fighting. He is not above utilizing underhanded tactics to get the upper hand in a fight. Kano is an opportunistic fighter and tends to engage in fights when it best suits him, but if challenged directly he will not shy away from the challenge. What he lacks in discipline (finesse & footwork), he makes up for it by being extremely adept in combat and has proven to be a challenge for even the more skilled fighters. What differentiates Kano from his opponents, however, is his dependence on Weapons/Technology rather than Special Powers. He is highly proficient at using knives in combat and often carries multiple bladed weapons on him at once. He has a signature pair of knives he uses in combat, whether they are thrown at the opponent or uses them in hand-to-hand combat. In addition to his fighting skills, Kano has been outfitted with cybernetic enhancements throughout his body, most notably his Cybernetic Eye which can emit a laser beam. His other enhancements help boost his power in combat.
Although Kano depends mostly on Weapons/Technology rather than special moves, he does have a Special Ability to tuck himself into a "Cannonball" and propel himself toward his opponents knocking them down. This has been a signature move of his since the first game. Also, several of his finishers involve him ripping vital organs (or sometimes entire skeletons) out of the opponent's body. Along with the elder Sub-Zero's Spine Rip Fatality, Kano's Heart Rip helped Mortal Kombat garner significant controversy over its violence factor.
As of Mortal Kombat X, Kano's cybernetics have been upgraded and extended through his entire body. This includes a cybernetic "heart" similar to Hsu Hao, which serves as a booster to his cybernetic enhancements. He now uses thermal grenades as part of his already deadly arsenal.
Signature Moves
Cannon Ball: Kano curls into a ball and flies at his opponent. In MK 2011 and MK1, this is known simply as Ball. In MKX, this is known as Kano Ball and also hits the opponent twice if they're too close. In MK11, this is called Black Dragon Ball. (MK, MK3, UMK3, MKT, MK:DA, MK:SM, MK:A, MKvsDCU, MK 2011, MKX, MK11, MK1)
In MK 2011, the enhanced version is called Kano Ball. Kano will spin in the air momentarily before launching at the opponent, hitting them several times. This can be charged (delayed) and is unblockable if held for the full charge.
In MKX, the enhanced version is called Black Dragon Ball and, like the MK 2011 version, can be delayed, but unlike the MK 2011 version, it can be blocked. The enhanced version also deals increased damage. This attack can also be canceled before it knocks the opponent down, briefly stunning them and allowing for combo extensions.
In MK11, amplifying the attack has Kano slash the opponent with his knives after striking the opponent, knocking them down and dealing increased damage. Kano can amplify the attack regardless if the opponent blocked the initial hit.
Down Ball: Kano performs a Ball from the air to the ground, hitting the opponent if in his way. In MKX, this is known as Air Ball and will also make Kano connect with a low kick as soon as he lands, tripping his opponent. If Kano does not make contact with his opponent, he will only trip his opponent once he lands. In MK11, this is called (Air) Black Dragon Ball and after Kano strikes the opponent, he crouches in a position ready to attack. (MK 2011, MKX, MK11)
In MK 2011, the enhanced version is Downward Ball and allows Kano to do his Air Throw before the opponent hits the ground.
In MKX, this move can be enhanced as soon as Kano lands, which will make him pounce at the opponent's torso to force them against the ground instead of the low kick. If Kano does not make contact with the opponent, he will just pounce the opponent. Enhancing the attack makes it unblockable. Kano can not enhance the attack if the initial hit is blocked.
In MK11, amplifying the attack has Kano perform a front flip, kicking and slashing his opponent with his retractable boot blades, knocking them down and dealing increased damage. Kano can amplify the attack regardless if the opponent blocked the initial hit. Additionally, Kano can amplify the attack if the initial hit misses and delay the moment of amplifying it.
Upwards Cannon Ball: Kano aims his Cannon Ball upwards to an aerial opponent. This moves is known simply as Up Ball in MK 2011 and MKX, and in MKX it hits twice if the opponent close to Kano. In MK11, this is called Up Black Dragon Ball and can only be used if the Equip Ability Vege-Mighty is active (See Below). Additionally, in MK11, instead of immediately flying upward, Kano will initially fly forward before moving upwards in a diagonal direction. (UMK3, MKT, MKvsDCU, MK 2011, MKX, MK11)
Both in MK 2011 and MKX, the enhanced version is called Uprise Ball. In MK 2011 Kano will do an animation like Up Ball except he will roll downwards after getting to a certain height. In MKX, it has armor and increased damage.
In MK11, amplifying the attack has Kano slash the opponent with his knives after striking the opponent, knocking them down and dealing increased damage. Until his other Black Dragon Ball attacks, Kano can not amplify this version if the attack misses but can still amplify it if the opponent blocks the initial hit.
Psycho Cannon Ball: This version sees Kano flying all over the screen in random directions. (MKT)
Knife Throw: Kano throws a pair of knives at his opponent. In MK 2011 and MKX he only throws one knife, and in MKX, this attack is called Blade Throw. In MK11, the attack is called Blade Toss and lodges into the opponent's chest. (MK, MK3, UMK3, MKT, MKvsDCU, MK 2011, MKX, MK11, MK1)
In MK 2011, the enhanced version is called Knife Toss. Kano throws two knives at once.
In MKX, the enhanced version is called Blade Toss and has Kano throw two knives in a row for increased damage. The second knife thrown has an increased hitbox and can hit ducking opponents. Kano is much more safe when this version of the attack is blocked by the opponent. The enhanced version of Knife Toss is called Multi Blades, which has Kano throw three knives at different heights that knock the enemy into the air a short distance, opening them for a short juggle.
In MK11, amplifying the attack has Kano crouch and send a second blade at the opponent. The second blade has and increased hitbox and can hit ducking opponents.
Blade Swipe: Kano slashes his opponents with his knife in an upward swing. In MKX, this is known as Blade Slice. (MK3, UMK3, MKT, MKX - Cutthroat Variation)
The enhanced version is called Bloody Slice and has Kano stab the opponent's abdomen before pulling the blade up to throw them in the air for a juggle.
Blade Spin: Kano spins both of his knives around his body, knocking the opponent up into the air if it connects. Only usable by MK Kano. (MKT)
Air Throw: While in the air, Kano uses his legs to push the opponent to the ground. In MK 2011, he chokes his enemy in mid-air to slam them against the ground and roll away after it. (MK3, UMK3, MKT, MK 2011)
Chokehold: Kano would grab his opponent and lift them in the air by the throat and proceed to stab them in the chest. In MK 2011 and MKX, this is known as Choke. In MK 2011, Kano simply grabs and throttles the opponent violently, making them kneel helplessly and laughing hysterically as he does so. In MKX he does the same animation, but ends it by knocking the opponent away with a knee to their face. In MK11, this is Kano's Throw (Forward). (MK3, UMK3, MKT, MK 2011, MKX - Commando Variation)
In MK 2011, the enhanced version is called Kano Choke. Kano grounds the opponent and constantly smashes their head on the ground whilst laughing. He then quickly rolls over them to the other side.
In MKX, the enhanced version is called Strangle and has armor. Instead of bashing his knee into opponent's face at the end, Kano will stab them in the chest with his knife three times, lifting them up with the knife to deliver a punch to their face that knocks them away.
Knife Toss: Kano throws a smaller, spinning knife at his opponent. This replaces Blade Throw in the Cybernetic Variation. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
The enhanced version is called Multi Blades, which has Kano throw three knives at different heights that knock the enemy away. When used in the corner of an arena, this can be used to continue combos in some instances; otherwise, the opponent is knocked away by the blades. The juggle effect is present outside the corner of an arena, however this window is very small. Kano is also much more safe when this version of the attack is blocked by the opponent.
Eye Laser: Kano shoots a laser from his eye at the opponent. In MKX, this is known as Eye Burst and will stun the opponent if the attack lands. In MK11, this is called Optic Blast and works as a projectile again. This ability replaces Blade Toss when equipped. In MK1, he moves his partner out of the way and puts his hand on their head to make them duck while he's performing the move. (MK:DA, MK:A, MKvsDCU, MKX - Cybernetic Variation, MK11 - Equip Ability, MK1)
The enhanced version is called Eye Blast, which has increased damage and again, stuns the opponent, leaving them open for another attack.
In MK11, if this attack is performed on an opponent as a Kounter or Punish, the attack turns into a Krushing Blow, with the laser beam piercing the opponent and going through them, causing blood to splatter and dealing over double the original damage.
Upward Laser: Kano shoots his laser upwards to hit a foe in the air. The attack is unblockable once it hits airborne opponents. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
This move can be enhanced if it hits the enemy, which will make Kano quickly fire a second laser that sends the enemy flying into the air, allowing for a juggle.
Inner Rage: Kano concentrates for a short amount of time before covering his hands in red energy. Using this move increases the amount of damage dealt. In MKX, this is known as Power Up, and has Kano pound his cybernetic heart to activate it. It also increases his damage for a period, but this time at the cost of making Kano himself lose health over time until the buff wears off. Once Kano takes damage from an unblocked attack, he will lose the damage buff. (MK:A, MKX - Cutthroat Variation)
The enhanced version is called Charge Up which activates much faster.
Fist of Power: Kano rapidly lunges forward and strikes the opponent with an energy covered fist. (MK:A)
Parry: Kano will counter any physical attack. (MKvsDCU)
High Kounter: Kano will counter any high physical attack by knocking the opponent down with a vicious clothesline. In MK11, this attack is called Rack Off, and has Kano perform an "Up Your's" gesture with his arms and has him grab the opponent by the arm, stabs them with one of his knives then shoves them to the ground. (MKX - Commando Variation, MK11 - Equip Ability)
The enhanced version is called Survivor's Kounter and deals increased damage.
In MK11, amplifying the attack has Kano blast the opponent in the face with his Bionic Eye after driving the knife into their arm, dealing increased damage and knocking the opponent away about half way across the arena.
Equipping the Time to Kill Jinsei Augment modifies Rack Off, allowing it to be delayed for up to four seconds. During this time, Kano recovers 2% of his health while delaying Rack Off. (MK11 - Jinsei Augment Bonus)
Low Kounter: Kano will counter any low attack by pulling the enemy down to the ground, stabbing their chest with one of his elbow blades and then rolling away. (MKX - Commando Variation)
The enhanced version, Dirty Kounter, does more damage.
Rib Strike: Kano grabs the opponent to strike their rib cage with his knee twice before knocking them away with a knee to their face. (MKX - Commando Variation)
The enhanced version, Rib Breaker, does more damage and has armor on startup. When enhanced, the attack will connect on standing opponents during a combo.
Power Slam: Kano grabs his opponent and does a German Suplex, leaping up and lawn darting them into the ground. (MKX - Commando Variation)
The enhanced version is called Power Bomb, has armor on startup and deals increased damage. When enhanced, the attack will connect on standing opponents during a combo.
Vege-Mighty: Kano pounds on his cybernetic heart, overcharging it with energy. This gives Kano armor and slightly increased damage on his Black Dragon Ball, as well as unlocking his Up Kano Ball. The buff wears off after a Black Dragon Ball or Up Kano Ball or after a short while. Kano can perform a Black Dragon Ball immediately after performing this ability in a combo when timed correctly. Connecting or being struck by a Krushing Blow or Fatal Blow ends this effect prematurely. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Equipping the Tucker Bag Jinsei Augment modifies Vege-Mighty, granting Kano the ability to improve up to four additional Black Dragon Balls. Connecting or being struck by a Krushing Blow or Fatal Blow ends this effect prematurely. (MK11 - Jinsei Augment Bonus)
Bio-Magnetic Pull: Kano pulls his opponent towards him using his Cybernetic Heart. This ability conflicts with Bio-Magnetic Trap when equipped, disabling the option to select Bio-Magnetic Trap. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Amplifying the attack has Kano blasts the opponent with his eye laser, which re-stands and stuns the opponent, allowing for combo extensions.
This attack can also be cancelled into after Kano does another special move beforehand, which spends a bar of offensive meter as well as allowing for longer combos.
Bio-Magnetic Trap: Kano throws his Cybernetic Heart as a trap onto the floor at varied distances to prevent the opponent from jumping. This ability conflicts with Bio-Magnetic Pull when equipped, disabling the option to select Bio-Magnetic Pull. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
The enhanced version allows for Kano to throw his knife at the opponent and if they are near the trap, the knife pulls them towards the trap, dealing damage over time.
Lumbar Check: Kano grabs his opponent, hoists them above him as he lands on his back and breaks the opponent's spine on his knees. This attack is capable of striking an opponent during a Getup Roll, similar to a standard Throw. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
An amplified version does additional damage, as Kano drives the blades hidden in his boots into his opponent's back.
If the attack is used as a Kounter or Punish to a Getup Roll, the attack turns into a Krushing Blow when amplified, with the boot blades plunge deep into the opponent's back, dealing increased damage and causing massive damage-over-time.
Snake Bite: Kano leaps towards his opponent with his knifes out, slashing and knocking them in the air briefly before stabbing them and knocking them back down to the ground. This ability requires two ability slots when equipped. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Amplifying the attack has Kano pick the opponent up with his knives embedded in their chest and bounce them off the ground, dealing increased damage and allowing for a brief juggle.
Molotov Cocktail: Kano throws a bottle of flammable liquid at the ground setting an area on fire. If the opponent is in that area, they receive damage-over-time. The attack can be used at different ranges, called Close/Far Molotov Cocktail, respectively. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Can combine Molotov Cocktail with Bio-Magnetic Trap.
Chemical Burn: Kano steps backwards and sprays the opponent with deadly chemicals at a short range, which deals damage-over-time. This attack is considered a projectile. If the opponent if hit with Molotov Cocktail, they receive unblockable damage and will be briefly stunned, allowing Kano to use additional attacks. Connecting or being struck by a Krushing Blow or Fatal Blow ends this effect prematurely. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Amplifying the attack has Kano throw a lighter at the opponent and set them on fire. This does not produce the same effects like with Molotov Cocktail. If the lighter doesn't connect with the opponent, it creates a small burning patch where it lands.
Equipping the Sick Killer Jinsei Augment modifies Chemical Burn, doubling the range of the attack and doubling the attack's damage-over-time effect. (MK11 - Jinsei Augment Bonus)
X-Rays/Fatal Blow
X-Ray - Just the Tip: Kano plunges a knife into his opponent's right thigh, going through and snapping the femur. Before the opponent can react, Kano proceeds to stab them in the left thigh, resulting in another broken femur. Then he delivers a devastating kick to the front of the skull, causing heavy fracture damage. This attack is unblockable. (MK 2011)
X-Ray - Lacerater: Kano slashes his opponent with an elbow spike, turning them around. After that, he stabs his knife into the abdomen of his opponent, and diagonally slices the opponent's ribcage in half, exposing the organs. He then grabs the opponent behind the neck, and thrusts them upwards, breaking their spine. (MKX)
Fatal Blow - Not Here to F#ck Spiders: Kano headbutts the foe alongside a burst with his Cybernetic Eye. He then grabs one of his knives to stab the opponent in the stomach three times, he then steps on its handle and on the opponent's face, causing them to fall over with his foot smashing their head as they hit the ground. Kano then kicks the opponent in their ribs, then stomps on his knife still buried in their stomach pressing it in further, and lastly reveals a hidden blade in his boot, which he drives into the opponent's throat, dragging his opponent's body to his front. (MK11)
Kameo Fatal Blow: Kano walks to the opponent and stabs their shoulders with his knives, causing them to kneel before using his bionic eye to blast their head. He then hits them with his knees to stand them up, following th player's fatal blow afterwards. (MK1)
Other Moves
Free-Fall Super Move: Kano hits his opponent with a charged Kanoball, knocking them to the ground. (MKvsDCU)
Throw: Kano slashes his opponent in the stomach twice with a knife, then either headbutts them to the ground (Forward Throw), or stabs them in the gut and throws them over his shoulder (Backwards Throw). (MK 2011)
Throw: Kano grabs his opponent and headbutts them twice and on the third strike, he launches the opponent into the air, knocking them away. (MKX)
Delinquent: Kano stabs the opponent with his elbow blade then kicks them in the chest. Kano can perform follow-up attacks with this combo depending on the variation selected, with the exception of the Cutthroat Variation. (MKX)
Miss Me?: Kano grabs his opponent and slams them in the opposite direction. (MKX - Commando Variation)
The combo-ender can be enhanced, which bounces the opponent after slamming them for extended combos.
Ear To Ear: Kano grabs the opponent and blasts them with his Laser Eye. This will re-stand the opponent. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
Stomach Ache: Kano straps a bomb to the opponents stomach, blowing them back. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
The combo-ender can be enhanced, which has the opponent fall to the ground before exploding into the air for extended combos.
Kombat Boots: Kano kicks the opponent this slices them with his elbow blade. (MKX)
In every variation except Commando, the combo knocks the opponent away or when used in the corner can otherwise offer a brief juggle. The combo also has a follow-up attack exclusive to the Commando variation;
Wood Chipper: Kano grabs the opponent and slams them in the opposite direction. (MKX - Commando Variation)
The combo ender can be enhanced, which bounces the opponent after slamming them for extended combos.
Treacherous: Kano lunges in, stabbing and kicking the opponent in the stomach. This combo has follow-up attacks. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
Black Market: Kano grabs his opponent and blasts them with his Laser Eye. This will re-stand the opponent.
Gut Blast: Kano straps a bomb to the opponent's stomach, blowing them back.
The combo ender can be enhanced, which has the opponent fall to the ground before exploding into the air for extended combos.
Snap Boot: Kano kicks his opponent in the chest. This attack has follow-up attacks. (MKX)
No Escape: Kano kicks the opponent in the shin to open them up for possible additional attacks.
Burner: Kano grabs his opponent and blasts them with his Laser Eye. This will re-stand the opponent. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
Big Boom: Kano straps a bomb to the opponent's stomach, blowing them back. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
The combo ender can be enhanced, which has the opponent fall to the ground before exploding in the air for extended combos.
Throw (Forward): Kano lifts the opponent up and chokes them, then proceeds to headbutt them away. (MK11)
If Kano performs this on an opponent who has failed a Throw Escape during a previous Throw before, the attack turns into a Krushing Blow, where when Kano delivers the headbutt, it crushes the upper half of the opponent's skull inward and dealing over double the original damage. If this is successful, Kano can not perform the Krushing Blow version of his Throw (Backward).
Throw (Backward): Kano grabs the opponent by the shoulder, then the groin and proceeds to hoist them over his head and scoop slams them on the ground. He then headbutts the downed opponent. (MK11)
If Kano performs this on an opponent who has failed a Throw Escape during a previous Throw before, the attack turns into a Krushing Blow, where when Kano delivers the headbutt to the downed opponent, it crushes the upper half of the opponent's skull inward and dealing over double the original damage. If this is successful, Kano can not perform the Krushing Blow version of his Throw (Forward).
Blade Evade: Kano slashes the opponent with one of his knives and backs away in the process to create space between him and his opponent. This attack re-stands the opponent. This attack has armor breaking properties, ignoring the armor granted by specific abilities and Fatal Blows. When breaking the opponent's armor from a Break Away, the attack will deal slightly increased damage. (MK11)
Fair Suck Of The Sav: Kano punches the opponent in the face, spits in their face then knocks them to the ground with a headbutt. When Kano spits at the opponent, it is considered a projectile. Kano is safe when this combo is blocked by the opponent. (MK11)
Enzuigiri: Kano thrusts his leg forward with a boot blade extended, stabbing the opponent in the stomach before using the opponent to pivot and kick them in the head with the other leg. (MK11)
If the attack is used as a Kounter or Punish, the attack turns into a Krushing Blow, where Kano's blade plunges deeper into the opponent's stomach, causing blood to splatter, dealing increased damage and causing massive damage-over-time.
Manhandled: Kano gains access to Figjam, Takedown and Penal Colony combos. Kano also gains the ability to perform Snake Bite after using Wheel Kick at the cost of a bar of Offensive Meter. (MK11 - Equip Ability)
Figjam: Kano does two quick knife slashes and strikes with an axe kick, using the doubled over opponent as a platform to jump up and slam down with an elbow drop. (MK11)
This combo can be amplified, where Kano elbows the downed opponent in the back of the head and stabs them in the back with one of his knives after delivering the elbow drop, dealing increased damage.
Takedown: Kano slashes the opponent with his knife, kicks his opponent in the shin and stabs them in the stomach, where he picks them up overhead and slams them down in the opposite direction. (MK11)
Spit the Dummy: The combo can be amplified, where Kano bounces the opponent off the ground for a juggle instead of slamming them on the ground. Amplifying the combo causes it to deal slightly less damage at the expense of juggling the opponent.
Penal Colony: Kano performs a wheel kick, bringing the opponent down, gets up and kicks them in the top of their head before they get up, knocking the opponent away. Kano can not perform this combo is Wheel Kick is blocked by the opponent. (MK11)
If the opponent fails to block Wheel Kick at the right time, continuing the combo turns the combo into a Krushing Blow, where when Kano kicks the opponent's head, it shatters the top of their skull, dealing over double the original damage.
Bloody Hell: Knife attacks that stick into the opponent now cause a damage-over-time effect. Knives stay stuck in the opponent for triple their original duration. (MK11 - Jinsei Augment Bonus)
Using Your Noggin (Forward Throw): Kano drives his knife into the opponent's shoulder, stabs them twice in the gut and knocks them away with a headbutt. (MK1)
Mobile Game Moves
Killer Instinct: Kano's Attack is increased by 30% if the opponent has less than 40% Health remaining. (MK Mobile Silver Card - Passive)
Dirty Fighting: Kano inflicts Cripple or Weaken to the opponent for 5 seconds after performing a Combo-Ender. For each Black Dragon teammate on Kano's team, he gains +15% more Health and gains a bar of Power at the start of the match. (MK Mobile - Black Dragon Card - Passive)
Cyborg Eye: Kano has +25% increased Critical Chance and is immune to Blind. (MK Mobile - Commando Card - Passive)
Cheap Shots: When the opponent blocks any of Kano's attacks, there is a 25% chance the opponent will be stunned, setting them up for a free hit. Kano has 100% increased Critical Chance against opponents affected by stun. (MK Mobile - Klassic Card - Passive)
Kano Ball: Kano backhands the opponent, kicks them, then curls into a ball and flies straight at them to deal damage. The opponent becomes stunned, setting them up for a free hit. (MK Mobile - Silver Card, Black Dragon Card, Commando Card, Klassic Card)
Blade Throw: Kano kicks the opponent in the shin then throws both his knives at them. The opponent is affected by a Bleed damage-over-time effect. (MK Mobile - Silver Card)
Ball Kick: Kano curls into a ball and flies into the air, then flies back down and kicks the opponent's legs. Kano gains Strength, increasing all his damage dealt for some time. (MK Mobile - Silver Card)
Attitude Problem: Kano slashes his opponent twice with his knives. The opponent is affected by a Bleed damage-over-time effect. (MK Mobile - Black Dragon Card)
Black Dragon Combo-Ender: Ending his current combo, Kano grabs the opponent by the arm, stabbing them with one of his knives then blasts them in the face with his Bionic Eye, knocking them down. This can only be performed if at least two cards from the Scoundrel's Equipment Set are equipped to his Black Dragon Card. (MK Mobile - Black Dragon Card)
Piss and Moan: Kano kicks the opponent twice then grabs the opponent to strike their rib cage with his knee twice before knocking them away with a knee to their face. After the kicks, the attack is unblockable. (MK Mobile - Commando Card)
Ear to Ear: Kano elbows then kicks the opponent. He then grabs them and blasts them with his Bionic Eye. The opponent is affected by a Fire damage-over-time effect. After the kick, the attack becomes unblockable. (MK Mobile - Klassic Card)
Fatalities
Heart Rip: Kano's signature Fatality has him literally ripping the heart out of his opponent's chest, then hoisting the still beating organ in the air in triumph. In the SNES version, he appears to not be holding a heart after performing the Fatality. In the Genesis version without the blood code, the heart is monochrome and lacks a beating animation. Variations of this Fatality have also been used by other members of the Black Dragon: Jarek in MK4 and Kobra in MK:D. (MK, MKT, MK:SM, MK1)
Deadly Roundhouse: Kano slides up on one foot and performs a roundhouse to his opponent, launching them straight up into the air, possibly snapping their neck when they drop to the ground. (MK) (Game Boy version only)
Eye Laser: Kano fires a concentrated heat beam of energy towards the opponent to boil their body until it tears into pieces. In the Game Boy version, the laser catches the opponent on fire instead. (MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Skeleton Rip: Kano pulls out the victim's entire skeleton by grabbing the skull from their teeth and jerking it out, leaving the rest of the body to fall flat on the floor in a heap of skin. (MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Organ Donor: Kano pulls out his opponent's heart, liver, and kidneys two at a time, and kicks the opponent away. In the Game Boy Advance version, he rips out the heart and one kidney (at the same time), then tosses them on the floor; he then rips out the other kidney and tosses it. (MK:DA)
Knife Toss: Before executing this Fatality, he slowly walks away from his opponent, ostensibly giving up, then he abruptly turns around and throws both Butterfly Knives into the opponent. (MKvsDCU)
Flip Stomp: Kano grabs the opponent, flips backwards with them, then jumps into the air. He comes back down and stomps on them with full force. (MKvsDCU)
Heartbreak: A variation of his signature Fatality, Kano turns the opponent around and punches the heart out through his victim's back, holding it so they can see it. He then crushes the heart in his hands, pulls it back out and hoists it in the air while blood still pumps out. (MK 2011)
Eat Your Heart Out: Another variation of his signature Fatality, Kano rips the heart out of his opponent's chest, then proceeds to rip off their head. He jams the opponent's head into the hole in their chest and kicks them away. (MK 2011)
Head Case: Kano draws one of his knives and slashes open the opponent's stomach, causing their intestines to spill out onto the ground. As the victim is about to drop on their back, Kano catches them from behind, hoists them up in front of him and proceeds to burn through their head with his eye laser, leaving a huge, smoldering hole through their head. (MKX)
Knife To Meet You: Kano throws one knife into the opponent's throat, causing them to choke and gurgle helplessly. Kano pretends to walk away before abruptly turning around and throwing his second knife into the opponent's face. The victim collapses, shoving the blades all the way through the head and neck. This Fatality is similar to his Knife Toss Fatality. (MKX)
Last Dance: Kano pulls out a bottle of beer and drinks the entire bottle before smashing it in the opponent's face and stabbing their neck with the now broken base. He laughs and grabs the opponent's hand just as they begin to fall, performing a duet dance with the opponent, to which a musical track plays, all while their blood gushes out of the neck of the bottle. (MK11)
Face Like A Dropped Pie: Kano tackles his opponent and grabs him/her. He delivers a strong headbutt, followed by four more, leaving broken pieces of the skull on the opponent's bloodied face. He finishes with one final headbutt, completely destroying the head. (MK11)
Brutalities
Mortal Kombat X
Ballin': Kano performs an enhanced Air Ball, tackling the opponent which rips off their lower legs after he pounces them. (MKX)
Opponent must be blocking.
Terminate: Kano performs his Throw with the final headbutt knocking the opponent's head clean off into the air. (MKX)
Requires a number of Throws to connect during the match.
A button must be held.
Just The Tip: Kano performs a Bloody Slice, slicing the opponent vertically in half from the waist up after stabbing them. (MKX - Cutthroat Variation)
Can not be performed on a juggled or airborne opponent.
Glaring Light: Kano performs an enhanced Upward Laser on an airborne opponent, with the second blast obliterating the lower half of their body in the air. (MKX - Cybernetic Variation)
Must connect a number of hits before finishing with an enhanced Upward Laser.
Wham Bam: Kano performs either a Power Slam or Power Bomb that destroys his opponent's head upon impact with the ground. (MKX - Commando Variation)
Certain buttons must be pressed.
Pop Off: Kano performs a Choke on his opponent, only this time, he grabs their head and crushes it like a balloon. (MKX - Commando Variation)
Certain buttons must be pressed.
Mortal Kombat 11
The Klassic: Kano performs an uppercut, decapitating the opponent with a rising uppercut with their spine still attached. This Brutality is shared with every character. (MK11)
Must not block an attack for the entirety of the final round.
A button must be held.
Sorry Mate: Kano performs his Throw (Forward), strangling the opponent until their neck snaps, killing them instantly. (MK11)
A button must be pressed repeatedly.
Will not trigger on Krushing Blow, if it has not been activated during the match.
Not Lookin' Good: Kano performs his Throw (Backward), with the final headbutt on the down opponent completely destroying their head. (MK11)
A button must be held.
Will not trigger on Krushing Blow, if it has not been activated during the match.
Spine Adjustment: Kano performs an amplified Lumbar Check, only this time, after stabbing the opponent in the back with his boot blades, he forcibly rips them in half at the waist while holding them up with his legs. (MK11)
A button must be pressed repeatedly.
Will not trigger on Krushing Blow, if it has not been activated during the match.
Trapped Wallaby: Kano performs a Bio-Magnetic Trap on an opponent affected by a knife attack, pulling the opponent down to the ground until their bones break, killing them instantly. (MK11)
Kano must perform an attack that causes one of his knives to protrude form the opponent before using Bio-Magnetic Trap.
Brutal Blade: Kano performs either regular or amplified Blade Toss that lodges two knives into the opponent's face. The opponent falls forward, causing the blades to pierce through their head and gouge their eyes out, similar to his Knife to Meet You Fatality in MKX. (MK11)
Requires a number of Blade Tosses to connect during the match.
Head Case: Kano performs an amplified Rack Off, blasting the opponent's face with a beam from his Bionic Eye until their head explodes. (MK11)
A button must be held.
Look What I Found: Kano performs his Figjam combo, only this time, after delivering the elbow drop, he plunges his hand into the opponent's back and rips out their skeleton in its entirety before dropping it on the ground. (MK11)
A Mercy must be performed.
Bonzer: Kano performs a Black Dragon Ball that completely obliterates the opponent's upper body. (MK11)
A button must be held.
Can not be performed on a juggled or airborne opponent.
Laser Pointer: Kano performs an Optic Blast and obliterates the opponent's mid section (MK11)
Requires Kano to be at certain health level.
A button must be held.
Will not trigger on Krushing Blow, if it has not been activated during the match.
Another Bloody Day: Kano performs an amplified Chemical Burn, leaving the opponent to burn until a charred body is left. (MK11)
A button must be held.
Mortal Kombat 1
You Alright Mate?: Kano performs his Forward Throw and crushes the top of the opponent's head with a headbutt. (MK1)
Knives Out: Kano performs Knife Toss and throws the knives right into the opponent's eyes, similar to his Brutal Blade Brutality in MK11. (MK1)
Other Finishers
Friendship #1: Kano blows a bubble from a piece of gum in his mouth and the bubble explodes in his face. (MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Friendship #2 - Kiss The Crook: Kano walks up to a BBQ grill. He removes the lid, uses his Bionic Eye to fire up the grill, and proceeds to cook shrimp and sausages. (MK11)
Animality - Eight-Legged Embrace: Kano turns into a tarantula and locks himself onto his opponent, crushing their guts while they spew out of the opponent. (MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Babality: Kano gives the cutthroat sign, but falls due to the weight of his metal eye. (MK 2011)
Mobile Game Brutality: Kano performs a special combo-ender, only this time when he blasts the opponent's face with his Bionic Eye, their head eventually explodes. (MK Mobile - Black Dragon Card)
Black Dragon Kano must be equipped with at least two cards from the Scoundrel's Equipment Set.
This requires the opponent to be at a certain health level.
Can only be performed on the last opponent on the opposing team.
Movie and TV appearance
Mortal Kombat
Kano appeared in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and was played by the late Trevor Goddard. He seems to have very bad table manners, as shown when Sonya, Liu Kang and Johnny Cage are spying on him, Goro, and Shang Tsung later in the film. Apparently, as he states to Goro, his dad taught him how to fight honorably. Despite their allegiance, Shang Tsung and Goro have little respect for him. Goro looks down upon him as part of his broader hatred of Earthrealm humans, while Shang Tsung chides Kano's lack of dignity or manners. Kano also appears to harbor an obsessive infatuation for Sonya regardless of her hatred for him. The film expanded upon Kano's rivalry with Sonya from the games; she now had a personal interest in seeking vengeance against Kano for killing her partner. Shang Tsung hires Kano to lure Sonya into the Mortal Kombat tournament and promises to grant Kano the reward he desires for his efforts after he faces off against Sonya in the tournament, demanding that Sonya is not to be harmed but merely humiliated, claiming that he has plans for her. During their match, Kano gleefully taunts Sonya about how he murdered her partner with his wicked-looking Raptor knife, putting a "big smile" on him "ear to ear" (he also states in this same confrontation that he is not above killing his mother, as Sonya asks him if she used his raptor knife to stab her in the back, although he states that he did not). After beating Sonya harshly, Kano is caught off guard by a leg lock from Sonya, and is soon trapped between her thighs and at her mercy. Shang Tsung betrays Kano and goads Sonya into finishing him off. Despite pleading for his life, Sonya proceeds to break Kano's neck.
Goddard portrayed Kano with a Cockney English accent, which was misinterpreted as Australian, leading to the character being retconned as originating from Australia. In Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and Mortal Kombat (2011), Kano is modeled after Goddard's look in the film and speaks with an Australian accent.
Defenders of the Realm
Kano appears in two episodes of the animated cartoon Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. He is the main antagonist in Episode 6 (Familiar Red) and also reappears in Episode 11 (Amends). The cartoon explains Kano's past rivalry with Sonya, showing him in a flashback scene having killed Wexler, Sonya's partner, in a carefully rigged bomb (which almost killed Sonya as well). The flashback continues with a recreation of a scene in the first movie, where Kano loses to Sonya in the Mortal Kombat tournament. In Amends, they also touched Kano's relationship with Kabal, showing their past history as clan members in the Black Dragon clan.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy
Late British actor and martial artist Darren Shahlavi portrayed Kano in Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
In the series, he is the leader of the Black Dragon organization and has been hired by the Lin Kuei to aid them in their Cyber Initiative plans. Like in the games, he has an antagonistic relationship with Jax and Sonya, having killed Sonya's partner in the past.
The last episode of the series chronologically takes place before the first, Kano is among the scientists and doctors and the Lin Kuei Grandmaster as they observe Cyrax and Sektor's tests before they undergo the procedure to become cyborgs. Kano is amused and entertained by Cyrax's enraged reaction at discovering he and Sektor had defeated two Lin Kuei who had already undergone the procedure. Kano next sees the battle between the cyborgs Cyrax and Sektor against Hydro, with Kano declaring, "I'll put my money on the red one", as he casually plays with his knife.
In the first episode of the online series, Kano is overseeing the production of robotic parts and weaponry in the warehouse he and the Black Dragons are using as a base. Kano heads down into the warehouse, ordering his men to work faster to meet their deadline. Kano stops one of the Black Dragons who is carrying a crate full of parts and picks up an eye piece. Though the Black Dragon member tries to explain what it is and its function, Kano only mockingly sneers in his face that he already knew what it was and orders him to work faster.
Though not seen, Kano soon after captures Sonya Blade after finding her in the warehouse and intercepts a message she tried to send to Jax Briggs revealing her location. He and the Black Dragons hold Sonya hostage for two days, torturing her.
Kano then heads down to where they're keeping Sonya and delights in mocking and taunting her physical reaction to seeing her. Though when Sonya spits on him after he grabs her by the neck, he quickly headbutts her and pulls out his knife, threatening to cut her heart out like he did to her former partner. Kano then reveals he knows Jax and Stryker are coming, but he's set up a trap, having already moved the robotic parts and has his men in place to kill them.
When one of his men informs him that Jax and Stryker's team have arrived, he bids farewell to Sonya and heads backup stairs. Kano then springs his trap, ordering the Black Dragons to "Kill them all" and a massive gunfight erupts. Though the Black Dragons and Kano are able to kill several of the cops, Jax and Stryker work together to take out several of Kano's men. Kano himself soon runs out of ammo and races off, with Jax in close pursuit.
Choosing to stand his ground, Kano draws his knife and fights with Jax hand-to-hand, and though they are almost evenly matched, Kano loses his knife and resorts to grabbing a nearby high-tech weapon. As Kano and Jax struggle over the weapon, it fires and the two run away as the explosive goes off, sending them both flying.
In the second episode, Kano recovers, but when he sees Jax is still conscious, he runs off, with Briggs once more in hot pursuit. The two face off again in a deeper part of the warehouse, with Jax demanding to know where Sonya is. Kano briefly gets the upperhand in the fight after resorting to smashing Jax's head with a nearby glass bottle, and mocks Jax, saying, "I'm going to enjoy this as much as I enjoyed torturing your sweet Sonya!"
This proves to be Kano's undoing however, as Jax furiously beats Kano down, with the mercenary never landing a single blow. Beaten and nearly unconscious, Kano is defeated when Jax strikes him so hard across the face, he knocks out his right eye and partially collapses his skull.
Kano escapes justice though, and in the ensuing confusion, his men save him, dragging him out of the warehouse. He is then brought to an unknown location, where a surgery team repairs the damage done to his face and replaces the damaged portion of his skull with a cybernetic plate. As the very same eye weapon he was studying earlier is placed in his socket, Kano awakens as his new eye glows red.
Wreck-It Ralph
Kano (voiced by Brian Kesinger) appears in the 52nd Disney film, Wreck-It Ralph, as a member of the "BAD ANON" support group along with the other video game villains. In the movie, he performs a bloodless version of his trademark fatality on Cyril from House of the Dead, and berates Ralph for attempting to challenge the program by abandoning Fix-It Felix, Jr.. Kano's look in this movie is a combination of his designs from the game series’ first and third installments (red and black outfit with short hair on the scalp and the face). The film's credits call him "Cyborg" most likely as a way of avoiding a direct reference to a video game franchise that targets an older demographic compared to the Wreck-It Ralph film.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind
Kano serves as the central antagonist of the movie Snow Blind. Featuring a future flung and far more ruthless version of the character and christening himself "King Kano", he and his Black Dragon clan have embarked on a mission of conquest to to rule over all of Earthrealm, raiding defenseless villages and callously murdering everyone who doesn't submit. With Kabal, Kobra, Kira and Tremor as his enforcers with an elderly Shang Tsung as emissary, Kano has pillaged and killed uncontested until the arrival of a young Kenshi, armed with his spirit sword Sento. During the climax of the movie, it is revealed that the events of the movie are a continuation of Kano's MK11 ending, having later killed Kronika at some point and used her skull and crown to run the Sands of Time. His ambitions are thwarted in a final confrontation with Kuai Liang when he is knocked into the gears of Kronika's Keep, crushing his body.
Snow Blind's incarnation of Kano is decidedly much different than any previous version of the character, having converted most of his body into cybernetics, including a large retractable blade and a chest laser similar to Hsu Hao and is strong enough to fight Kenshi, Hanzo and Kuai Liang all at once and even being able to kill a rejvunated Shang Tsung. He is also able to survive having his head knocked off as it is attached to a very sturdy wire.
Comics
Comics Published by Malibu:
Kano appears in the Malibu Comics series with a personality and a history based on his portrayal in the 1990s games. He was also one of the two protagonists (the other being Raiden) of a 3-issue miniseries titled Rayden & Kano. During the Blood & Thunder series it is shown the origin of Sonya's vendetta against him, when he kills Lieutenant Lance, Sonya's partner, during a tournament battle by means of a heart rip. His motivations to loot the island are replaced by his discovery of the Tao Te Zan and the powers it grants. During the series' epilogue in the Tournament Edition issue, he's finally captured by Sonya and Jax and sent into custody.
He would later escape (as shown in the Breakout mini-story that came with the U.S. Special Forces issue 1°) and during the Battlewave series he would be disposed by his superiors in the Black Dragon due to his failure, only to be rescued by Raiden. Raiden would attempt to use Kano to eliminate Shao Kahn by means of a mystical sword that drew power from an individual of evil turned to the side of good, but Kano betrays Raiden and joins Shao Kahn, remaining in his forces the following issues.
Quotes
Mortal Kombat (film)
"Good boy. She's here, right on time. I love punctuality in a woman. Don't you... Mr. Shang Tsung?"
"Maybe me and Sonya should share a cabin. Have our own little honeymoon cruise."
"That's it, baby. Come to papa." (as Sonya boards the boat)
"Say mate! I believe in a fair fight. Y'know, one-on-one, man to man, hand-to-hand, just like my daddy taught me. But what I saw out there was not very fair."
"So he freezes this guy right? And then he explodes! Could see his guts and everything... almost lost my lunch!" (To Goro, describing how Sub-Zero had just killed someone moments earlier)
"What I wanna know, if this Shang Tsung guy's so great, how come he's got such a crummy looking boat, hm? Anyway, the guy gives me the creeps. "Treasure... these... moments"." (to Goro, mocking Shang Tsung)
"Subterranean? What's that? Something like underground?"
"Yeah? Well, I'm kind of an underworld boss myself, y'know. Well, I mean, back home." (to Goro)
"Yeah, and I'd like to get back to my amassing as soon as possible if you don't mind. Now, when do I get paid?" (to Shang Tsung)
"Hello, baby. Did you miss me?" (to Sonya)
"Ooh, now look at this! This little baby brings back memories now, doesn't it?"
"Nah. It put a big smile on your partner though. Ear... to ear!"
"Give it up, baby! I've studied all your moves!"
"Does it hurt, baby?"
"No, Sonya, don't! Aww, gimme a break!" (just before Sonya kills him)
Mortal Kombat: Legacy
"I know what it is! Work faster."
"Sonya Blade. I understand you've been looking for me. Well, here I am. Look at you...so excited to see me, you're quivering."
"Hey! Do not pester me or I will cut your heart out like I did to that bitch of a partner of yours!"
"Right on time. I'm gonna miss ya, baby."
"I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, Detective Briggs! I'm gonna enjoy this as much as I enjoyed torturing your sweet Sonya!"
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
"Not so fast, grunt! She's my prize, and you're going nowhere with it!" (To Jax)
"You don't stand a chance against me!"
"I have the upper hand here!"
"Afraid to take me one on one?" (In battle, referring to Jax, Kung Lao, and Liu Kang all fighting him at once)
"Give it up, worms! I am the master here!"
"Why do you even try to defeat me, Jax?"
"I don't care how many of you there are!"
"I'm gonna slice you to ribbons!"
"Did you think you could beat me?"
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
"Kano's the name!" (To Taven)
"Seems they're trying to create real red dragons. They've been able to create a hybrid of man and lizard - using their own clan members as test subjects." (Explaining the Red Dragon experiments to Taven)
"They were trying something new on me. But they'll never finish!"
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
"This oughta fetch a tidy sum."
"You don't look so good, mate."
"Hey!"
"Back off, freak! She took it."
"I don't like your attitude! You need to be taught some manners!"
"You gave Kabal a run for his money!"
"Then let's get down to business, sweetie."
"Is this some kinda trick?"
"She's easy. It's me you've gotta worry about!"
"It was a skinny one, dressed in purple with green hair. Stronger than you think."
"I don't need you to make excuses for me and I don't need your approval!"
"You think you could've handled him?! You can't even handle me!"
"Over there! Dark Kahn's forces!"
Mortal Kombat (2011)
"My turn!" (doing his X-Ray)
"No charge." (doing his X-Ray)
"Good idea!" (to Johnny Cage)
"Now that he's softened you up, it's my turn!" (to Sonya)
"I don't do fair." (to Sonya)
"Oh, I've got a knack for survival. You, on the other hand, are gonna die here!" (to Sonya)
"Pretty boy ain't gonna save ya this time!" (challenging Sonya)
"With a whole army totin' these, no one in Outworld or Earthrealm could stand up to you." (selling Shang Tsung RPG launchers)
"I'll take care of him. No charge. One dead Lin Kuei in a tick." (confronting Smoke)
"Shang Tsung's power healed the rest of ya. But your lungs? Yeesh." (to Kabal)
"Yeah, you're all proper police now. The Black Dragon ain't the same without ya, mate. You should come back. We're in the money on this war."
"Guilty as charged."
"What are you on about, eh? You're here, ain't ya?"
"Not so keen on being dead now, are ya?" (after Kabal defeats him)
"Shao Kahn's the big boss 'round here, and soon, Earth's new master." (to Kabal)
"You're a right genius, you are!" (to Kabal)
"Don't care really, so long as I get paid." (to Cyber Sub-Zero)
Mortal Kombat X
"Emperor, what's the expression? It's not worth the dirt on my shoe?" (discussing payment with Kotal Kahn)
"Keep your fifty million. Mileena's giving me twice that to take you out." (to Kotal Kahn)
"'Allo love! Been a while." (to Sonya)
"Aw, let's keep this between friends. A trade! Info for freedom." (to Sonya)
"Well then... If mother won't play nice... maybe daughter will." (to Sonya)
"Back off... and all's well. Piss me off... and Cassie's gonna meet Uncle Kano." (to Sonya)
"You kill me... never find... amulet!" (whilst Sonya strangles him)
Mortal Kombat 11
Story Mode
Kano (Present)
"Take the deal, trust me." (To his younger self)
"Otherwise, who can you trust?" (Older Kano to Younger self)
"You weren't kidding. S'like a mirror, reflecting the past." (Older Kano to Geras)
"We get paid in the New Era. Kronika'll make sure the Black Dragon come out on top. Not only in the black market. In every market!" (To Erron Black about the Black Dragon in the New Era)
"Well, well. Got ourselves a full generation swap here." (Older Kano to Older Johnny Cage)
"Don't think so. Between Ninja Mine and Lady Liberty, we've got all the leverage. We're leaving." (To Cassie Cage)
"Kabal. Go get me lesser half." (To Kabal)
"Taken care of." (To Kabal after triggering the detonator)
"She more than burns you, Kabal. She goes black-ops on your arse. Shocks, knives, the Bloody works. Patch you together myself. Well, most of you." (Older Kano to Kabal)
"Nah. But now he's motivated." (Older Kano to Younger self)
"Where do you think you're going?" (To Cassie Cage)
"Worse thing is, it's those Netherrealm stiffs did you in, shoulda been me." (To Sonya Blade)
"Now this is a pickle." (To Sonya Blade)
"Can you break his neck faster than I can gut Pretty Boy?" (To Sonya Blade)
"Don't forget, it's two-for-one." (To Sonya Blade)
"He dies, so does your little girl!" (To Sonya Blade)
"For what?" (To Sonya Blade, but also his last words as well)
Kano (Past)
"Our Lady Kronika'll get all the service she needs. But I can't quote a fee until I know the job." (To Geras)
"There's some frame damage, circuitry looks good. But looks like someone did a software wipe. Fixing won't come cheap." (To Geras)
"But anything's possible, with the right help." (To Erron Black)
"How 'bout that, over fifty and still a ripper." (To Older Self)
"Right then, let's get to business."
"I'm next, Hollywood." (to Johnny Cage)
"Oh it gets bloody worse, Sonya and your little girl..." (to Johnny Cage)
"...they're gonna die. Right in front of your face." (to Johnny Cage)
"Rise and shine, Sonya." (To Sonya Blade)
"Yeah, you won't be needing that stuff love. One thing we Black Dragon know, there's no fun in a fair fight." (To Sonya Blade)
"Miss Law and Order really did that to him?" (Young Kano to Older self)
"Tempting, love. but we think our next contender is a Beaut..." (to Sonya Blade)
"You'll damn sure fight, or you'll both die." (to Sonya Blade)
"Ah you caught me love. But put on a good show, eh? it'll be less painful." (to Sonya Blade)
"Best thing about this future, love. I'm alive, but you're dead as a doornail." (To Sonya about their fates)
"Let's have ourselves a do-over." (Young Kano to Sonya Blade)
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge
"These lads aren't here for the tournament, they're being paid to kill you."
"Hello, luv. Nice to see you again."
"Well, you're do a better job than Jax."
"Huh, what gives?"
"Screw it, he's not paying me enough for this."
"Sonya, darling, just a bit further.
"So glad you made it. It's gonna be a joy to watch you end up like your partner."
"Now, finish her!"
"Impossible."
"Stay back! I'll slit his throat!"
Mortal Kombat (2021)
"I hate to interrupt your bullshit, blondie! Well, I gotta piss again."
"Kano None-of-your-fucking-business!"
"Do I sound Russian to you, you fucking idiot?"
"I also give really good foot massages."
"You know, next time be more punctual."
"Lucky for you, I don't have any standards."
"New guy, get me out of here. I could help you."
"I was about to go for a stroll, but maybe I'll stick around, you fucking idiot!"
"The fuck was that!? That was my knife, too! Fucking poetry." (after Sonya throws a knife at Reptile, but ends up hitting Kano instead)
"Kano wins! You fucking beauty!"
"Just working on a Kano graphic novel. I fancy myself a bit of an artist."
"Well, all the best artists are a little twisted, mate."
"Uh, you got a pen? You want me to write this down? Get fucked. 'Cause I'm not gonna help you. You kidnapped me. You tied me up. You threw a knife through my fucking leg, on purpose. And then that lizard thing took off half my face. Lucky for me, you can hardly notice it."
"You live in this shithole and you got two million dollars? Pig's arse." (after Sonya attempts to bribe him to fly her and Cole to Raiden's Temple)
"Three million. That's my final offer. And anything I find in that temple, I keep. No fucking splitsies. Plus, if you're bullshitting me, I'll fucking kill ya. It's no skin off my sack."
"I was gonna head there anyway! Ya fucking idiot!"
"Hey. Fuck you, pretty boy. I'm a popular guy. Everyone loves me."
"There I was trying to shove this guy's nuts down his throat. And all I kept thinking about for me mum for Christmas?"
"Alright, thank you for flying Air Kano! I know you had fuck-all choices. Tray tables up! Time to jump out of this shitbox!"
"Well, do or die, princess!" (shoving Cole out the plane)
"27, 28 k's. Maybe 30 to be safe. Straight up, 32, eh? We say 35, there'll be no surprises."
"Ah, let's look at the scoreboard, shall we? I got us the plane. I know how to find your precious little mountain retreat or whatever it is. I killed the lizard man. Huh? Any of you rip anyone's heart out?"
"I think I know what's going on here. You're jealous, girlie, of me little marking."
"Hey, I'm talking to you. If you want it so much, all you got to do is kill me. Take it. Now, come on. What do you say? You wanna dance?" (provoking Sonya into a fight)
"Go on then, take it. You're so close, just take it. Take it!"
"Yeah, that's why you don't have one of these. You don't have the mongrel in you!" (after Sonya spares him)
"Okay, that's far enough, MC Hammer." (seeing Liu Kang)
"Fuck the temple! Wait! You just shot a fireball out of your hand. How'd you do that? Hang on. Hang the fuck on. Does that mean I'm gonna get superpowers at any point?"
"The fuck?" (after Liu Kang puts his hand on his shoulder)
"Now this one really speaks to me." (looking at a Mortal Kombat mural of The Great Kung Lao's death)
"Put what back?" (after stealing Shinnok's amulet)
"Alright, just circling back on those superpowers. I think I get it now. It's kinda like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get. Is it gonna be fireballs? Is it gonna be lightning? Huh? Could be shit. Could be a frisbee hat, you know? No offense, whoever you are."
"Never heard of him." (after Kung Lao announces himself as the descendant of The Great Kung Lao)
"So, Liu, instead of fireballs, what else is gonna shoot out of my hands? Like, knives or guns?"
"You know, maybe your arcana is getting your ass kicked by a hat." (after Cole loses to Kung Lao)
"Is that the only move you know, mate?" (after getting leg-sweeped by Liu Kang)
"Put a fucking shirt on, Magic Mike." (to Liu Kang)
"Thos are great, mate. They make those in men's sizes?" (mocking Jax's new arms)
"Kung Pao. Pass us an egg roll, would you?"
"Your ears painted on, mate? Egg roll."
"You got a death wish, mate?" (as Kung Lao taunts him)
"Well, how about I take that stupid fucking sombrero you wear and shove it so far up your ass, you start speaking Spanish. How does that sound?"
"Princess, why don't you try being one of them silent monks?"
"I've a better idea. How about you two get on your knees and take turns sucking my sack?" (to Liu Kang and Kung Lao)
"Failure? Fucking failure? Let me educate you, motherfucker. I'm Kano! I'm The Black fucking Dragon! And who are you two, huh? You're some fucking cave-dwelling hippie, twirling his anal beads, taking orders from this Wu Shu wanker who wears a hubcap as a helmet! Now sit down! Shut up! AND PASS ME A FUCKING EGG ROLL!" (as his right-eye starts glowing red)
"Laser beam! It's better than fireballs, you pussy!" (after unlocking his arcana)
"You know, I see a little bit of arcana there. Give me one more crack at it." (beating up Cole)
"You getting enough sleep, mate? Your eyes are a little redder than usual." (to Kabal)
"You don't tell me about The Black Dragon. I'm The Black Dragon!"
"That mask cutting off your air supply, you dumb prick? I don't take orders from anyone, Kabal."
"You know the problem with these new lightning sticks? They just don't make 'em like they used to." (after bringing down Raiden's shield)
"Ah, girls can be so mean. Don't worry, darling! You're still good enough for me!" (throwing Sonya over a ledge after she loses to Mileena)
"Honey, I'm home!"
"Dammit, I'd come out if I was you"
"Fucking Bitch" (taking knife out his back)
"You owe me 3 million dollars!" (fighting Sonya)
"Ah, fucking hell! That was a bit harder than I thought"
"Tell me Blondie, how does that feel?" (Kano choking Sonya)
Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind
"Oh, so you found the Well of Souls then?"
"Oh, sorry, mate."
"Are mine? I'm way past having a soul."
"YOU! CAN'T! BEAT! ME!"
"No one can."
Trivia
General
The version of Kano from the original Mortal Kombat game is a secret character in the CD-based versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Strangely, instead of having his victory pose from the original game, MK Kano's victory pose was changed to a modified version of his Mortal Kombat 3 victory pose.
The knife that Kano uses in the Mortal Kombat film is a Gil Hibben Raptor.
In each game Kano is absent, he either makes a cameo imprisoned, a substitute fighter from the Black Dragon borrows his techniques, or both during Deception when Kira was introduced.
Richard Divizio once stated that Kano's favorite food is White Castle hamburgers. However, this likely just means that they are Richard Divizio's favorite food as well. [6]
Although Kano's cybernetics began to grow more elaborate beginning in Mortal Kombat X, the only part of Kano's body that has been actually physically modified with mechanical implants is his Cybernetic Eye. The Cybernetic Heart strapped across his chest is only worn, rather than being physically integrated into his chest as had been the case for Hsu Hao.
He appears as an enemy in Batman Arkham City Lockdown, another game developed by NetherRealm Studios, specifically during the Gotham Steel Mill challenge.
The Brazilian cartoon makers enterprise Mundo Canibal homage Kano by using his Heart Rip Fatality in the video Briga de Galo. After the Fatality, the announcer also says "Fatality" as a mention to the Mortal Kombat games.
Kano's official theme is titled, "Use Your Might".
A modified version of Kano is featured in the Disney film Wreck-It Ralph, making him the only character from an M Rated video game franchise featured in the film. Kano even performs his iconic Heart Rip Fatality on a Zombie character in the meeting with the villains, however due to the PG rating, there is no blood or gore. He is credited as "Cyborg" in the film's credits.
Mortal Kombat
Kano makes his playable debut in this game.
Kano also debuts as the first Black Dragon clan member in the series starting in this game.
Mortal Kombat II
Kano was rumored to be in MKII through Shang Tsung's morphs, but this was proven false.
Kano does however appear in the stage Shao Kahn's Arena, still in his appearance from the first game, shackled in chains as a spectator. Though this stage later reappears in Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Kano, as well as Sonya, are no longer featured, though their empty prisons remain.
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
In the original plans for Mortal Kombat Special Forces, the circumstances surrounding Kano's cybernetic eye would be revealed. This ultimately did not make it into the final product, with Kano having his cybernetic eye from the beginning of the game.
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
In the Krypt, the koffin CO contains a comedic ad for "Kan-Os", a breakfast cereal with a cartoonish image of Kano on the box.
In Deadly Alliance, if Kenshi's Telekinetic Contortion Fatality is performed on Kano, only his real eye pops out.
In Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Kano's alternate costume resembles his MK outfit, while if both players choose Kano as their character, his second color will resemble his MK3 outfit.
In Deadly Alliance, Kano hung Sonya Blade's hair around his neck as a symbol of their rivalry, which he tore from her head during their battle atop the skyscraper in MK3.
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Kano appears as a hidden boss in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, and all the Black Dragon Mercenaries resemble Kano in this game.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
In the game, Kano’s DC counterpart is The Joker.
In Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Kano's ending shows him turning into the Mortal Kombat equivalent of the Joker as the kombat rage drives him insane.
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Kano, along with Jax, has an X-Ray that deals 41% damage, the most damaging of all of the playable characters.
Their X-Ray Moves are two of three that cannot be blocked, along with Sheeva's X-Ray move.
In the cinematic trailer from MK 2011, Scorpion kills Sub-Zero with Kano's Eat Your Heart Out Fatality.
Kano is the only character whose victory pose is retained in the Challenge Tower, whereas everyone else's is changed.
Though he is seen using the attack in several cutscenes of MK 2011's Story Mode, Kano's Eye Laser cannot be used as a special move in said game.
However, the Eye Laser special does return in Mortal Kombat X.
Mortal Kombat X
The color of Kano's cybernetics change color depending on what variation you choose. Originally, his Cutthroat variation was going to be green, but was changed to blue later in development. His Commando and Cybernetic variations remained yellow and red, respectively.
The green coloring, however, can be seen if the player selects Kano's variationless version.
Kano's entrance animation alters slightly depending on his variation. If his Cybernetic variation is selected, when he catches his knife he sheathes it on his waist, while his other two variations (and no-variation) have him sheathe it on his back.
Kano will uses his later knives regardless of the variation when he performs his fatalities.
In one of the one of his interactions with Takeda, Kano says "That's Not A Knife" which is a reference to Crocodile Dundee.
If Sub-Zero performs his Bed Of Ice Fatality from the right side, the shards of ice will not go through Kano's Bionic Eye. It will penetrate through his regular eye only if performed on the left.
Additionally, any Fatality or Brutality involving Kano's eyes popping out will result in only one eye, his left eye, to pop out of its socket.
Interactions with Tremor show Tremor wants to leave the Black Dragon. This is likely due to Kano abandoning Tremor in the comics once Tremor was shot and captured by the Special Forces.
Kano and Torr are the only characters with more than one exclusive Brutalities for a Variation that are not Secret Brutalities.
Mortal Kombat Mobile
His Black Dragon Card was originally a Gold card called Cutthroat that could be bought in the Store at a cost of 77000 coins.
This card was also the only card in the game without a Passive, as it merely said that the card cost less in the Store.
He is one of the few characters with a Gold Card that was upgraded to a Diamond Card, this being his Cutthroat card being upgraded to his Diamond Black Dragon Card.
Kano is one of the few characters with more than one exclusive Equipment Card.
Kano is one of twelve character cards that can kill the opponent with a Brutality, the others being Sub-Zero, Jade, Kabal, Scorpion, Liu Kang, Raiden, Noob Saibot, Sonya Blade, Skarlet, Shang Tsung, and Reptile.
Shao Kahn can also kill his opponent, however it is not considered a Brutality.
Injustice 2
Kano was mentioned in Injustice 2 by Raiden, who is featured as a playable guest character, revealing that Kano recruited Bane into the Black Dragon.
Mortal Kombat 11
Kano, Johnny Cage and Jax are the only characters to have team-up cutscenes between their past and present selves in MK11 Story Mode.
Kano is the only character in the Story Mode whose present self dies as a result of his past self dying.
Kano can be also count as one of the first characters to be dressed up as DC characters, the first character who properly wore DC character inspired costume is Cassie. In ironic reverse, Kano wore a superhero costume that models DC’s Cyborg, while Cassie wore a super-villain costume inspired from Harley Quinn.
Kano's Move Lumbar Check which sees him drives both knees into the back of his opponent is most likely a reference to WWE wrestler Cedric Alexander, who does the same move as a finisher. Additionally, one of his Cybernetic Hearts is called Ruby's Riot Shield which may also be a reference to female WWE wrestler Ruby Riott.
In the Kustomization, Kano has one of his customizable Bionic Eyes named "Jack's Epic Eye". This is a reference to Irish YouTuber Jacksepticeye.
Kano is a primary target of RoboCop, revealed through many interactions with characters and RoboCop that Kano committed many crimes in RoboCop's universe.
Errors
Kano's face plate has technical issues in MK 2011. The plate is invisible when he's attacked with X-Ray Moves, and it is incorrectly shown on the left side of his head for his Versus image as Player 2.
In MKX, in his default outfit when Kano crouches, his grenades clip through his right thigh and will pierce through while crouched.
When viewing Kano's Revolution outfit in the Kollection, one can see that his Laser Eye goes over the hat, bring to question as to how the eye was placed over the hat if Kano had the eye first.
The hanging fabric of Kano's default outfit will clip through his Butterfly knives in his Cybernetic variation.
The handle for his knives for his Cybernetic variation will always clip into his thighs when crouching.
The arm wraps that hold his elbow blades always clip into his biceps.
Due to needing his large knives for his fatalities, when Kano performs a fatality in his Cybernetic variations, the knives will appear out of thin air.
If Kano is struck right as he connects an Air Ball, the opponent will hover briefly above the ground before landing and standing back up. The same thing will happen with Jason Voorhees's Temple Slam.
In MK11, if one were to equip any of Kano's younger appearances without him having a shirt on, one can see in the character customization that his cybernetic heart is floating in the air and is not connected to his chest whatsoever.
Equipping an appearance with a smaller shirt will result in half of the heart to not be attached to Kano's equipment.
References
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https://thatshoujomangablog.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/man-up-the-role-of-shoujo-in-depicting-men-masculinity-and-relationships/
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MAN UP! The role of shoujo in depicting men, masculinity and relationships
|
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2013-06-11T00:00:00
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Hello, all. Here's my entry for the Manga Olympics for Bloggers. My writer cap is on and ready to give periodic electrical pulses to my neurons, so let's get started, shall we? *ahem* You can debate the credibility of a hetrosexual female's discussion of masculinity, but I'm going to do my best regardless. Before we…
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en
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https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/e3cb42518595e135c88276e16cf2454a37066201bf6df7c3442d6d6158d4a60a?s=32
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THAT Shoujo Manga Blog ♥
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https://thatshoujomangablog.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/man-up-the-role-of-shoujo-in-depicting-men-masculinity-and-relationships/
|
Hello, all. Here’s my entry for the Manga Olympics for Bloggers. My writer cap is on and ready to give periodic electrical pulses to my neurons, so let’s get started, shall we?
*ahem*
You can debate the credibility of a hetrosexual female’s discussion of masculinity, but I’m going to do my best regardless. Before we begin, I will state that I do think that gender, masculinity and femininity are purely societal constructs. There was one story of a father wearing a skirt so that his son wouldn’t get teased, and I thought it was touching and a very “masculine” thing to do.
Getting back to the subject at hand, this is actually an issue that has been eating away at my feminist-y brain for a while now. Given the new phenomenon of so-called “herbivore men” in Japan, described as lacking motivation and a “hunger” for females, it’s rather interesting that males in shoujo manga are still exhibiting rather masculine qualities – they want to take care of the girl, they step up in a fist fight when she gets badmouthed. These scenarios are everywhere, in both new and old shoujo manga.
But is this really a good thing? Is there really only one definition of masculinity within shoujo manga?
Let me give you an example from Ouran High School Host Club.
Look at that image for a second. All of the characters look like very masculine, desirable guys, right? It’s too bad most of the guys you meet in real life won’t be this attractive. Now, on a very shallow level, this is how I interpret the imagery of Ouran. This gets back to a key role of men in shoujo manga – as eye candy. It’s basically the same thing as shounen and seinen manga – people want to look at attractive members of the opposite sex (or of the same sex, if that’s your preference), and within the realm of shoujo manga, attractive guys satisfy that desire. This is on a very shallow level, again.
Look again at the character with the bunny, who is called Hunny-sempai within the series. Within Ouran, his struggle with exhibiting masculine qualities is detailed within the manga – as the son of a judo practitioner, and is under significant pressure to get rid of his cake and bunny pajamas and put on a hakama like a REAL MAN. However, because of Tamaki and the host club’s acceptance, Hunny is able to embrace his true interests and act how he wants, regardless of how other people in society might perceive it.
However much Hunny might not exhibit traditional masculine qualities for his age (he’s actually one of the oldest members in the group), many girls reading this manga actually like him more than Tamaki, what I consider to be the ‘traditional’ embodiment of shoujo masculinity.
Getting into masculinity in more detail, I’d like to bring your attention to the graphic below.
Now there’s a beautiful girl, right? WRONG. That’s a man.
Crossdressing and guys is now a recurring element in shoujo manga as of late. From Usotsuki Lily to Kuragehime to even Fruits Basket, the premise of men crossdressing is now gaining prominence as its own niche within shoujo manga. While crossdressing is not an uncommon theme within manga in general, it’s interesting that masculinity is being challenged in such an interesting way.
In Usotsuki Lily, Hinata (the female protagonist) is initially turned off by En’s crossdressing habit, breaking up with him in the beginning because of it. However, they eventually get back together because HInata realizes that she loves En, regardless of his outward appearance. I think that this is a highly commendable theme within the realm of shoujo manga. It encourages girls to look past the traditional definitions of masculinity, and to look at a person’s personality as the basis for a relationship rather than appearance.
Speaking of masculinity, En is actually a fairly “masculine” guy, regardless of his outward appearance. However, unlike conventional shoujo heroines, En displays this through his actions rather than his clothes. He takes care of girls, and cares about what they say, something I don’t think is done enough on both sides of a relationship. He’s definitely macho underneath the breast pads and skirt, but it’s his actions and protectiveness of Hinata that show that he’s a tough, masculine guy.
With this in mind, it’s important to look at men in shoujo manga as being a projection of what girls/women want (or think that they want). A lot of shoujo readers want a guy who’s attractive, who pays attention to them, protects them, and is able to fulfill a lot of the traditional male roles of provider common of the past century. This model isn’t yet antiquated in Japan, so that’s why these roles continue to persist, and they’re still common themes in shoujo manga. However, these points play into a depressing aspect of shoujo manga – the fact that it has the potential to build unrealistic expectations.
Let’s face it – guys like Tamaki Suoh of Ouran High School Host Club don’t exist in real life. I’m not saying that sensitive, caring and funny guys don’t exist, it’s just that you probably won’t find a guy as out-there as Tamaki who happens to be half French and half Japanese. It’s just impossible.
However, shoujo manga still has a role to play in educating girls in what relationships they should be seeking out. Shoujo manga as a genre generally does a good job of discouraging things like physical and emotional abuse, and while it doesn’t offer the most realistic perspectives on sex, it’s slowly improving on the realism front.
I think the most important role, and the most constructive role that men play in shoujo manga, is of an aspirational nature.
Arima and Yukino’s relationship is one of the most complex relationships I’ve seen in shoujo manga since I’ve started reading manga in general (the anime doesn’t depict most of this, so if you’ve only seen the anime, you’re really missing out!). Yukino and Arima are both equal on an intellectual level, they communicate well, and they basically exhibit everything that people in a successful relationship should do. When Arima has emotional problems, Yukino doesn’t just sit passively and take it. She takes action and asks him what’s wrong, and asks what she can do to make things better. Best of all, while Yukino and Arima are both professionally driven people, Arima doesn’t pressure Yukino into giving it all up for the sake of their future children – he encourages Yukino to follow her dreams and pursue success. This is a virtue I wish more men in the world had.
The point is that shoujo manga, when done well, demonstrates what a successful and healthy relationship should be like, and encourages young girls to aspire towards that. I think that’s a worthy pursuit that all shoujo manga authors should undertake.
In regards to how shoujo authors define masculinity, traditional values of physical strength, and varying definitions of attractiveness prevail. However, I think that this may be set to change as Japan evolves as a society and women start to take more prominent roles in government and the private sector.
I think that in general, while stereotypical shoujo tends to paint a very stereotypical and rigid depiction of masculinity, good shoujo manga is a bit more fluid. It can stray into that stereotypical territory, but it can also have some smart commentary with real world applications. Besides, I don’t think shuojo manga readers, for the most part, actively seek out positive male role models when searching up shoujo manga.
We’re just here to see Tamaki Suoh’s bare chest. 😀
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https://www.academia.edu/50886107/Mortal_Kombat_Games_of_Death
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Mortal Kombat: Games of Death
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"David Church",
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2021-08-15T00:00:00
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Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway’s Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent “fatality” moves performed by photorealistically rendered characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers,
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https://www.academia.edu/50886107/Mortal_Kombat_Games_of_Death
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This experimental article explores the question of whether it is possible to examine the experience of playing fighting games (video games) as a form of self-cultivation or practice and, in so doing, whether it becomes possible to shift the debate about the potential impact of violent video games on the people who play them (and on society around them). The article draws on five years of surveys and interviews with gamers from around the world, but seeks to interpret this data through a critical and creative reading of the games themselves as well as a reading of the so-called bushidō tradition (of texts about the intersection between Zen and the martial arts). The article concludes that fighting games might be experienced as forms of martial arts in themselves, complete with potentials for self-transformation, but that this form of engagement requires appropriate intentionality from players, which provokes a space for a manifesto to guide players' intentions. From the Dragon to the Beast Bruce Lee is one of the most recognized names in contemporary history. It is no exaggeration to say that he changed the face of the martial arts, of the movie industry, and of Asian masculinity. 2 After the worldwide release of his landmark movie, Enter the Dragon (1973), and his untimely death in the same year, Lee's legend was secure. He became an icon; his brief presence on the world stage was a transformative moment in the lives of people all over the world, and remains a powerful inspiration to this day.
Playing the (International) Movie: Intermediality and the Appropriation of Symbolic Capital in Final Fight and the Beat ‘em up Genre Final Fight (Capcom 1989) is considered one of the most accomplished examples of “beat ‘em up,” a digital game genre that rose to international popularity in the second half of the 1980s. The streets depicted in this genre, appearing as a nearly mythological place where the heroes crush legions of foes in a sort of vigilante-like fantasy, are characterized as corrupted and degraded in compliance with representations of “street violence” in big American cities that were articulated in popular gang movies, such as The Warriors and Streets of Fire, and vigilante movies, such as Death Wish and Dirty Harry. Final Fight did not found the beat ‘em up genre by itself: it was in fact produced having on the background a specific, however recent, textual tradition and canon. This canon comprised texts produced within the same medium (i.e., other video games, mostly of Japanese production), but also drew from an intermedial corpus. In particular, for its design and narrative tropes, Final Fight inherited and incorporated a number of elements coming from the Hollywood action cinema that had been translated into the newer digital medium of video game. I argue that the evolution of this Japanese genre, marked by such milestones as Nekketsu kōha Kunio-kun (Technōs Japan 1986) and Double Dragon (Technōs Japan 1987), was intertwined with a process of negotiation with this international canon. The instantiations of the “street violence” discourse offered by Hollywood cinema provided the Japanese designers with a framework rich in aesthetic, narrative and even motivational elements to be appropriated in order to shape the massive and reiterated physical violence that was performed in their games. Combining historical and intertextual research with an analytical framework based on game studies and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory (1991, 1995), I argue that the classical beat ‘em up games that were produced in Japan carried out at a local level a function of symbolic appropriation and redistribution, because they remediated a cinematic textual canon (which was for a significant part of foreign origin) into the video game medium. Video game was, in other words, the means by which a portion of the Japanese cultural industry became able to appropriate the symbolic capital of Hollywood products, in such a successful way that such games became international hits, and a playground for trans-national symbolic exchange. https://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol9no1-4
Navigating between society’s moral panics about the influence of violent videogames and philosophical texts about self-cultivation in the martial arts, The Virtual Ninja Manifesto asks whether the figure of the ‘virtual ninja’ can emerge as an aspirational figure in the twenty-first century. Engaging with the literature around embodied cognition, Zen philosophy and techno-Orientalism it argues that virtual martial arts can be reconstructed as vehicles for moral cultivation and self-transformation. It argues that the kind of training required to master videogames approximates the kind of training described in Zen literature on the martial arts. Arguing that shift from the actual dōjō to a digital dōjō represents only a change in the technological means of practice, it offers a new manifesto for gamers to signify their gaming practice. Moving beyond perennial debates about the role of violence in videogames and the manipulation of moral choices in gamic environments it explores the possibility that games promote and assess spiritual development.
The international success of contemporary martial arts films has stimulated critical debates and reflections on the aesthetics, politics, and economics of local/national Chinese cinemas, as well as the ideological implications of reinventing a ‘traditional’ genre for international audiences, against the backdrop of increasingly interpenetrable national and cultural borders brought on by the forces of globalization. This article attempts to delineate an ‘extra’ dimension of the martial arts film in the global context — the creation of a ‘digital imaginary’ that not only reinforces and supplements the more conventional modes of representation, but also enables a ‘universal’ frame of reference that contributes to the global currency of martial arts films. Drawing upon Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004), it will illustrate how this digital imaginary displaces the exotic (Chinese) tradition into the familiar realm of digital media, resulting in a hybrid, multiply coded, culturally ambiguous, and therefore transnational visual medium for global consumption.
The following abstract is aimed to put into question how both the Japanese and Western gaming industries have differentiated themselves so much today, offering game systems and narratives that vary widely from each other. In the history of the medium, this differentiation was initially established because some semiotic and mechanic elements were identified to identifiable Japanese or American market tastes. Most of the time, the reasons that have been made to explain this difference within the medium have relied on either essential cultural differences or market determinism based on historical preferences. However, this paper argues that these differences aren't just formed due to specific cultural images or economic reasons, but mainly because of the formation of an identity discourse on the industry that has ghettoized specific formulas of player engagement to some cultural regions or supposedly minority groups. In the case of Japanese video games, we argue that several design conventions on the part of Japanese game designers have led to a paradigm that is unique to their cultural context. This paradigm can be distinguished from the one prevalent in the West because it has usually favored games that rely more heavily on the use of what we call “explicit narratives” to contextualize their rules, which have been solidified into several known “game genres” like the JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game), the “Visual Novel” and others. This paradigm was also highly influential in creating other genres that are ubiquitous in the medium today, specially during the era of the Japanese industrial dominance of the 80's and 90's. This model also encompass semiotic elements that are either textually related to other forms of Japanese media or have been used almost exclusively on Japanese video games. However, its presence has been reduced significantly today, to the point that it has become representative of games developed exclusively by the Japanese video game industry, even though it might be found outside that region. More so than that, it has been integrated within a bigger cultural discourse that identifies several forms of cultural artifacts as extensions of Japan into Western popular culture. Throughout this paper, we will explore the main elements that characterize this paradigm, including the concept of explicit narratives, and their manifestation on specific games. Finally, we will analyze its current influence on the development of the modern image of Japan, both in gamer consumer culture and the overall gaming industry today.
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Kano will return to slice open more torsos in Mortal Kombat X
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Michael McWhertor"
] |
2014-08-11T00:00:00
|
Your source for the latest in video games, sci-fi, fantasy, tabletop games, anime, horror, books, and comics.
|
en
|
/static-assets/icons/favicon.ico
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Polygon
|
https://www.polygon.com/2014/8/11/5991903/mortal-kombat-x-kano-gameplay-video
|
Kano will return to slice open more torsos in Mortal Kombat X
|
||||
1473
|
dbpedia
|
2
| 32 |
https://www.slashfilm.com/614171/the-12-best-video-game-movies-ranked/
|
en
|
The 36 Best Video Game Movies Ranked
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Scott Thomas",
"Larry Fried"
] |
2021-09-23T18:42:20+00:00
|
It's hard to capture the interactive sense of play that makes gaming so compelling, but these video game movies manage to do it - more or less.
|
en
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SlashFilm
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https://www.slashfilm.com/614171/the-12-best-video-game-movies-ranked/
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What should a great video game movie feel like? Should the "Final Fantasy" film mostly function like a playthrough with a bunch of extra cutscenes? Should plot developments be mostly fetch-quests? Films tell compelling stories, but an entire generation has been raised on video games, and they're used to feeling like they're participating in the plots of the media they consume, whether the project is based on a game or not.
This, I would argue, is a quality the best video game movies share, no matter how faithfully or not they adapt their button-mashing source material. But giving a fixed narrative an active sense of play is unbelievably difficult. For every "Tomb Raider" (2018), there's a "Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" (2003). Still, some films manage to pull it off — here, we're going to look at the 25 best video game movies (which, for our purposes, are movies based on a video game property, not movies that take place in a game), plus one honorable mention.
When considering the legacy of video game movies, it's impossible not to think of "Wreck-It Ralph." It's not technically a movie based on a video game, so it can't be officially counted, but it's also better than arguably every other movie listed, so it kinda deserves to be here anyway. We'll call it an honorable mention as a compromise, but make no mistake: "Wreck-It Ralph" is one of the greatest video game movies of all time, and not just in spirit. Every gamer loved seeing characters like Bowser and Zangief share screen time, or the countless visual gags like the Konami Code or the "Metal Gear" exclamation mark. However, "Wreck-it-Ralph" is, by design, an ode to gaming in all its forms.
The film features riffs on a number of beloved genres, from arcade classics like "Donkey Kong" to modern favorites like "Mario Kart" and "Call of Duty." However, much like how games simplify the duality between heroes and villains, so too do some people with the kinds of gamers we can be. It can often feel like everyone, from MOBA champions to platforming junkies, is kept in their own separate boxes, but we all contain multitudes. Watching Ralph defeat cybug scum and then go on to conquer kart racing isn't just inspiring in terms of pure game-hopping, but also in the discovery of his own self-worth. You can be an arcade lover, a racing fiend, and an FPS sharpshooter all at once, and you know what? That deserves a shiny gold medal.
This may not technically be a "video game movie," but it sure is based on a video game –- arguably the video game -– so it deserves at least an honorable mention. The universal appeal of "Tetris" transcends boundaries — age groups, nationalities, even corporations (the Soviet creation still holds the Guinness World Record for most-ported video game). The only boundary it had left to cross was from gaming to filmmaking. Of course, an actual plot based on the blocks was a non-starter, so the folks at Apple decided to tell the second-best "Tetris" story they could come up with — the one that happened in real-life.
Though the game itself is occasionally featured in the film, 2023's "Tetris" is concerned with the larger international frenzy that brought the game to households worldwide. Henk Rogers (portrayed by Taron Egerton) is a down-on-his-luck game publisher who discovers the fast-paced puzzler at a gaming convention in 1988. He's determined to partner with Nintendo on distributing the game worldwide, but a greedy British opponent and the Cold War isolationism of Soviet Russia put the deal in jeopardy.
The film is a bit dense –- business dealings simply cannot garner the same kind of cinematic stakes as an actual Cold War political thriller -– but the heart in Egerton's performance ultimately wins the day, not to mention a surprisingly intense car chase sequence in the third act. It can't beat an actual video game plot but, for a movie about "Tetris," this is the best it's gonna get.
Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer, is fond of discussing actors' "apex mountain" on "The Rewatchables" podcast. Basically, if any given role finds a performer at the peak of their powers, then it is their artistic pinnacle and should be recognized as such. It's a goofy concept, but a great one, and it leads me to offer the following: "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" is Jake Gyllenhaal's apex mountain midpoint.
What on Earth does that mean? It means that the 40-year-old's role in Mike Newell's adaptation of the classic Ubisoft platformer finds the actor trying to hit new acting heights, but often struggling to summit. Playing Dastan was, in Hollywood's estimation, the logical next step for Gyllenhaal — it's a straight-up movie star part, kind of like a yoked Captain Jack Sparrow. Ironically, however, it was the wrong role for Gyllenhaal (or, really, any white actor), who flourishes in movies by Denis Villeneuve and Dan Gilroy, but strains in PG-rated family-friendly action mode.
That said, Gyllenhall's performance makes Newell's film fascinating even if it rarely rises above competency. Besides, if "Prince of Persia" is the film that makes Mysterio Gyllenhaal's next blockbuster role, it deserves praise. Not every mountain can be one's apex.
Let's get one thing clear: There will never — ever — be a film that strays more from its source material than 1994's "Super Mario Bros." If Aaron Sorkin adapted "Pride and Prejudice" and set it in deep space, it would somehow still be closer to Jane Austin's book than Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel's film is to Nintendo's platformers.
But in the case of the recently released Morton Jankel cut, that doesn't mean that "Super Mario Bros." is bad. While the box-office bomb flopped with fans, critics, and pretty much everyone else, it was also an extension of the aesthetics Morton and Jankel honed on the sci-fi cult classic "Max Headroom." "Super Mario Bros." is set in Dinohattan, a city where humans and dinosaurs co-exist. The dinosaurs' leader, King Koopa (Dennis Hopper), kidnaps Princess Peach (Samantha Mathis) to improve his popularity. Down into the rabbit hole of this dystopia come Mario and Luigi (Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo) to save the day.
What follows is an epic deconstruction of the hero's journey, one as informed by the LA police state post-Rodney King as jumping over pits and gobbling up 8-bit mushrooms. The Morton Jankel cut, assembled by Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive, is an attempt to capture the directors' eclectic vision as originally intended. While it's far from perfect, it's an eerily predictive ride that's as biting as it is ridiculous. Who knows what a game based on this would even look like? Not us, that's for sure.
If the video game movie sub-genre has a landmark moment, it's the third act of "Doom." For its first two thirds, director Andrzej Bartkowiak offers a boilerplate sci-fi menace. There are creatures. There is violence. Even if the presences of a shockingly young Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, a pre-"Dredd" Karl Urban, and a "wow, she's in this?" Rosumund Pike briefly alleviate the movie's frequent doldrums, for most of its runtime "Doom" feels exactly like its title. But then John Grimm (Urban) decides to blast his way through virus-infected crew members, Bartkowiak shifts to a first-person point of view, and boom! Iconic video game cinema is born.
The first-person shooter sequence in "Doom" was enthusiastically received by fans of the game, a rarity for the genre, and remains emblematic of what video game movies aspire to be and what they're expected to deliver. From the way the camera moves to the frame rate, which seems ready to glitch out, Bartkowiak's unbroken shot mimics the rhythms of classic "Doom" so succinctly that it basically qualifies as meta. And while few other video game movies have channeled their source material so directly, this genuinely fun moment earns "Doom" a spot on both this list and also the annals of B-movie cinema. You don't necessarily get "Crank," "V/H/S," or "Hardcore Henry" without "Doom."
The market of mobile games suited for the big screen treatment is slim to none, even with the outrageous success of "Angry Birds." Still, IP gotta IP, so we got stuck with this cash grab of an adaptation that feels like Sony's answer to Illumination's animation empire. Admittedly, Rovio Animation's expansion of their original mobile game is fun and colorful, especially in 3D. Models are expressive, backgrounds are detailed, and the film's absolutely stacked voice cast makes each character feel distinct. A special shoutout goes out to Josh Gad, who has proven he can make any movie delightful off of his presence alone.
Still, you'll be hard-pressed to remember much about this movie after one viewing. Because the game doesn't really have a story with a capital S, the movie's attempts to whip one up are a bit limp. The only reason the plot functions is because most of its characters are simply idiotic, which never makes for a particularly enjoyable viewing experience. Red, the "Angry Birds" poster child and the star of the film, is the only one with any intuition, but he's also incredibly obnoxious, so it's a lose-lose. It isn't until the third act that we get what we really came for: birds crashing into pigs and buildings. The climax has visual gags abound, making us wonder what we could have gotten if the filmmakers had decided to simply make a war film with birds hurling out of slingshots. It likely would have been more fun that way.
Duncan Jones is not a director who settles for half-measures. His debut film, "Moon," hinges on a tone-shifting twist. His follow-up, "Source Code," constructs a convoluted time-loop thriller, then uses it as a Trojan horse for a love story. If Duncan Jones was going to make a video-game movie, it was always going to be huge. The only question was: how big?
The answer, it turned out, was "Warcraft." Jones' least successful movie with critics became one of the highest-grossing video game movies ever, amassing more than $400 million at the worldwide box office and offering, in my humble opinion, the largest scope and most ambitious world-building of any film in the sub-genre.
"Warcraft" feels massive. Its colorful visuals pop. Its score demolishes subtlety. If its narrative stumbles, that's part of what makes watching it such a wild experience. I'm not sure "Warcraft" is an objectively good film, but I'd rather spend two hours watching a good filmmaker take a big swing and miss than 90 minutes of mediocrity. "Warcraft" is absolutely the former.
You know, there's nothing particularly wrong with "Ratchet and Clank." The movie was pelted with negative reviews from critics and a resounding "meh" from fans when it first came out, but in actually watching the lambasted final product, you come to realize that ... it's fine! You've got the game's classic characters, half of whom are brought to life by the series' original voice cast and the other half given new life by a slew of celebrity voices (Paul Giamatti? Bella Thorne?? Sylvester Stallone???). Plus, they're all animated with the same color and charm found in the film's companion game, a remake/expansion of the original 2002 game and a very intentional tie-in to the movie. Well, maybe the movie was tied into the game, considering the game got vastly better reception.
That's the one thing you can hold against this film adaptation: no gamer would recommend a film based on a game over the actual game itself, but even this is a particular case where there's little the movie can offer beyond what the game already provides. At least with other, worse adaptations, the film gives you ... something else, for better or worse. "Ratchet and Clank" tells the same story but with less zany combat, less sharp wit, and less time actually spent with both Ratchet and Clank together. This doesn't make the film itself bad, but it does make it seem like there was a missed opportunity in finally bringing one of Sony's most beloved character pairings to the screen.
Just one year after Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel's "Super Mario Bros." re-envisioned a popular video game to mixed results, director Steven E. de Souza's take on "Street Fighter" ambitiously staked its own claim in Capcom's prized fighting franchise and received a slightly warmer reception. Hint: It made bank. However, neither critics nor the game's fans were eager to embrace its dramatically different look and tone. Three decades later, the film remains a surprisingly decent entry into the video game movie canon and, more generously, a thoroughly realized version of "Street Fighter" that could have succeeded under different circumstances.
For one, it actually tries to take "Street Fighter" and craft a distinct world for it. Most entries in the series are tied to a fighting tournament, but not here. This is somewhat frustrating, until you realize Souza has redesigned "Street Fighter" as a futuristic war epic. M. Bison's (Raul Julia) crime syndicate is up against general Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his troops, while the rest of the characters find their way into the mess in one way or another.
There are hints of espionage, martial arts, mad science, even an energetic prison break sequence. It all isn't balanced especially well, nor written in a way that brings out the best in its characters, but when it's all being performed by such a fun ensemble, you can't help but enjoy yourself. Van Damme and Ming-Na Wen have attitude to spare, but Julia brings it all home, adding incredible gravitas to one of gaming's most iconic villains with ease.
Over the course of compiling this list, two things became abundantly clear: One, Paul W.S. Anderson is the godfather of video game cinema. Two, most people like at least one "Resident Evil" movie — and there is no clear favorite.
There are arguments to be made for "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" and its clear-eyed social conscience. Some pick "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" because it's actually a pretty good zombie movie. As an argument can be made for almost any film in the series, it would appear that the six-film franchise might be more highly thought of than its Rotten Tomatoes scores indicate.
Therefore, let's give credit where credit is due and make some room for 2002's "Resident Evil" on this list, a choice that honors video game cinema's most persistent IP and one that, on its own terms, works as a strangely charming action movie. While it isn't Anderson's finest work, "Resident Evil" acts as a sort of stepping stone between his early movies and his best films, and the torch-bearer for video game movies' appeal in general.
Say what you will about this mess of a movie, at least they gave the fans what they wanted. That's not always something to brag about, but in this case, rendering real-life recreations of our favorite NetherRealm characters slicing each other in two is a noble pursuit. The original "Mortal Kombat" films are fun and goofy in their own way, but they never quite captured the game's joyous violence. From the reboot's opening sequence, it's clear the filmmakers were determined to make each fight scene gory and gruesome, fatalities included. The final product is certainly a blood-spiller — if anything, they could have gone even further with it.
Sadly, that can't quite make up for the rest of the film's flaws. I mean ... how do you make a movie about "Mortal Kombat" without the actual Mortal Kombat tournament? We know, we know, this movie serves as a setup and, as of right now, the sequel is currently in development. But even so, all we're left with now is a perfunctory mini-conflict that attempts to make sense of the utterly ridiculous conceit of this universe. Did we really need to get a psychological sense of why Kano has a laser eye, or why Sonya Blade gets rings on her arms? As the third act gives us fight after fight after fight, it becomes clear what a sequel needs to give us if we really want to see this franchise reach its potential on camera.
After nearly ten years, the kids finally got their "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie and, credit where credit is due, they showed up. The film's uncontested box office success came from its young fanbase and, judging from their reactions, Emma Tammi's take on the rabidly dissected, lore-filled horror dynasty was worth the wait. Many moments perfectly recapture the harrowing silence and surveillance aesthetics of the game, all of which is elevated by the Jim Henson Workshop's remarkably faithful animatronics. Add that to fan-favorite Matthew Lillard understanding the assignment, and it's clear why fans took to the film.
That said, those who are impervious to the hype can see through its thinly veiled fanservice. If anything, sometimes it even gets in the way; the film's plot is ridiculously convoluted and sloppy for a story that essentially boils down to haunted fast food mascots (this is what happens when you cycle through three writers in development). It's also surprisingly dull and under-stylized. If you watched the first 20 minutes of this film alone, you might think you were watching an A24 film about childhood trauma -– not that we're complaining, but that's not what this film ultimately is. It's a silly horror film, which barely manages to squeeze out a few genuine scares due to its PG-13 rating. So, no, "Five Nights" is not the best video game movie, but it is the second highest-grossing. If anything, hopefully it clears the way for more video game movies to make it through development hell.
Of all of the films on the list, few have appreciated in value more than "Silent Hill." Debuting to a 32% percent Rotten Tomatoes score and reviews that called it "a train wreck" and "more deadly than silent," director Christopher Gans' take on Konami's popular chiller now charts on many rankings like this one. What happened?
A prevailing theory is that the cast and crew understood Keiichiro Toyama's game in a way that critics didn't. For all the notable fuss about the exquisite atmosphere of "Silent Hill" and its seamless blend of tension and violence, there is less written about its operatic tendencies. Though many derided the "Silent Hill" film's build towards a third act rife with phantasmagoria, doing so is remarkably faithful to the game — and, in the case of the creatures portrayed on screen (many of which were played by trained dancers, making the film's icky physical movement to be a practical effect), creepily accurate.
As a game, "Silent Hill" was never for everyone. Gans' movie isn't, either. While it certainly falters at points, "Silent Hill" is consistently stunning, and creepy enough to transcend its many shortcomings.
After many Sonic fans embraced its predecessor, "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" was right to steer into the nostalgic skid. The Blue Blur's second cinematic outing saw Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey return as Sonic and Robotnik, respectively, with Carrey now sporting the iconic Dr. Eggman mustache. Tails and Knuckles made their live-action debuts, with longtime Tails voice actor Colleen O'Shaughnessey and inspired stunt-casting choice Idris Elba bringing Sonic's sidekicks to life in a fresh and endearing way. We also saw plenty of other iconic concepts from Sega's hit franchise on the screen, including the Chaos Emeralds, Super Sonic, and even Shadow the Hedgehog in a post-credits tease.
However, for every step forward, "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" takes two steps back. When will these studios finally realize that nobody comes to movies based on video games for the ancillary human characters? Sure, James Marsden and Tika Sumpter are fine as Tom and Maddie, but at some point, their wedding getaway subplot suddenly takes over the movie and ... why? What for? The first film had plenty of wacky real-world hijinks, but it also felt more focused on Sonic's coming-of-age story. Much of the sequel has very little to do with Sonic's globe-trotting adventure, which itself is needlessly prolonged with several pandersome tangents, including a dance number set to "Uptown Funk" about five years too late. The Minions called, and they said to stay in your lane.
PlayStation Productions really came out swinging over the span of just one year. "The Last of Us" earned widespread critical acclaim, and "Uncharted" managed to finally make its way to theaters after years of development hell. Needless to say, it was a bonafide box office success and became one of the highest-grossing video game films of all time. In an industry lacking fun historical adventures a la "Indiana Jones," "Uncharted" gave us a taste of what we've been missing: cryptic riddles, ancient relics, and buried treasure, all wrapped up in a high-flying action spectacle. If we aren't going to get pirate ship battles in a "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie any time soon, I'll take it in my "Uncharted" movie.
That being said, it's only just a taste. Aside from the film's admittedly incredible recreation of the plane escape, "Uncharted" isn't a particularly great adaptation of ... well, "Uncharted." A lot of this comes down to the miscasting of both Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Sully. Both of them are a bit too young and boyish to capture the grizzled charm of the game's protagonists. The pair tries to be quippy, but the original appeal never translates, even if Holland and Wahlberg are perfectly fine as actors. When you tie them both around a film too concerned with being a generic, hyper-choreographed action flick, you have yourself an overall decent film that still feels like a disappointment after years of anticipation.
If anyone was equipped to turn a mobile game into cinematic lunacy, it was Thurop Van Orman. Orman is best known as the creator of Cartoon Network's "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack," but that barely scratches the surface of his accomplishments. Van Orman also worked on "The Powerpuff Girls" and "Adventure Time, and voiced Lil' Gideon for Disney's cult hit "Gravity Falls." Van Orman has more animation bona fides than Jay-Z problems.
So, it's little wonder that he built a better blueprint for an "Angry Birds" movie with "The Angry Birds Movie 2." Characters move like clown-school graduates. Any chance for a pratfall — and there are many, including a rapid-fire "getting the team together" montage — is taken. The eclectic cast (Jason Sudeikis! Sterling K Brown!) seems bolstered by the new crew and brings their A-game to the voice acting. It's almost as surprising as the initial success of the "Angry Birds" game, and it should serve as Orman's calling card for any project he wants to tackle next.
To talk about Paul W.S. Anderson's "Mortal Kombat," we must discuss the reboot released in 2021. Why? Because while Simon McQuaid's gore-heavy film is, in many ways, a better realization of Ed Boon's brutal and colorful fighting game, it's a less successful film overall. The performances don't go for broke, and the fights are cut to shreds. What Anderson's film lacks in sheen it makes up for in spirit, flawlessly capturing the feeling of playing "Mortal Kombat" in a dusty arcade or on a just-out-the-box Sega Genesis.
When Goro shows up, it is giggle and gasp-inspiring. When characters fight, it's never less than fun. In many ways, that's why 1995's "Mortal Kombat" is the template for video game movies. It sees and recognizes its audience. Fighting games are, generally, dialed up to 11. They paint their characters in broad strokes. The action is swift and frequent, and they're and never, ever boring. Anderson's film gets this.
That's why battles happen every 10 minutes or so. That's why someone screaming "Mortal Kombat" ad nauseum over the greatest techno song ever written works like gangbusters. That's why "Mortal Kombat," decades after its release, is still a top-three video game movie. Test its might.
After six films at the hands of W.S. Anderson, it was time for a new take on "Resident Evil," perhaps one that was actually interested in adapting the games. Well, turns out Anderson's successors were so interested that they slightly overcorrected. Subtitled "Welcome to Raccoon City," the 2021 reboot adapts both the original "Resident Evil" and its sequel, crosscutting between the Renfield siblings for double the zombie goodness. The catch? Separating a brother and sister doesn't allow for a lot of dramatic momentum.
It's something the entire film lacks, frankly. We have so many interesting characters and pairings, from Chris Redfield (Robbie Amell) and Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen) to Claire Redfield (Kaya Scolodelario) and Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia), yet none of their respective chemistry (or lack thereof) inspires any compelling character work. We know, it's a zombie movie, there's bigger fish to fry. But "Resident Evil" didn't become one of gaming's flagship horror franchises just because you get to shoot zombies -– you can do that at a Dave & Buster's. The characters remain some of the most memorable in all of gaming. "Raccoon City" does my boy Leon Kennedy so dirty that even an "RE" zombie would find it disgusting.
Still, give credit where credit is due: director Johannes Roberts gives this franchise the atmosphere it so desperately needed. One scene with Chris and a flickering lighter instills more terror than the original six films combined. Featuring solid CGI and bass-quaking sound design, "Raccoon City" shows potential, at least stylistically, as a proper revitalization of this Capcom heavyweight.
Let's try a thought exercise: Pretend that you don't know that "Tomb Raider" is video game royalty. Act as though Lara Croft is just a name, and that Angelina Jolie didn't play her (certainly not twice). Now then, can I interest you in an expensive survival-action film starring Walton Goggins and Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander? That's a much more compelling pitch, right?
2018's "Tomb Raider," which was directed by Roar Uthag of "The Wave" fame, is a better film than its buzz indicated, largely due to the fact that said buzz was framed in the context of Tomb Raider games. While "Tomb Raider" isn't a great adaptation of the video games that inspired it, it's also both unpretentious and visually stunning. Furthermore, the movie never reduced Alicia Vikander to a simple caricature (something that cannot be said of the Jolie films). Ultimately, "Tomb Raider" serves as an example of what happens when you adapt the way a game makes you feel, not just its tropes and signature aesthetic elements.
You know, this one almost works. It gets a bad rap for failing to adapt the boundlessly creative Ubisoft franchise, but it's not necessarily as bad of a movie on its own as everyone would assume. What it lacks in the original game's appeal it makes up for in its own unique vision for the world of "Assassin's Creed." Though it retains many similar story elements, the motivations are more sociological than the source material and, in many ways, more resonant. Sofia, the creator of the Animus, wishes to use the machine to rid the world of man's inherent violence, yet it is violence that enables agency. Sofia's father, Alan, uses Sofia's virtuous cause as a veil for the Templar's plan to rule over mankind, which is itself a form of violence; Cal, on the other hand, uses the Animus to inhabit his ancestor, who himself exacts violence against the 1492 Spanish Christian patriarchy. So who is to say violence must be expunged from the human psyche?
The film's exploration of this theme makes it a fascinating watch, even if its own pretentiousness can sometimes get in the way. Indulgent long takes, stoic color palettes, and heady dialogue often distract from the story, even if it does give the film a unique visual aesthetic outside of the source material. Still, the action more than satisfies, as do Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Irons as the leads. Those three could take turns reading aloud a grocery list and deserve Oscar nominations for it.
Hey, it counts. It may be the only time a video game will ever be adapted into the DC Animated universe but, oh boy, does it count. NetherRealm's hit fighting game was praised for its story mode, featuring a narrative written exclusively for the game, so why not trade one animated medium for another? Superman's power-hungry guilt trip is given striking new life in this adaptation, which also includes elements from the game's comic prequel series that was released following the original game's success. The film may rush through a lot of the nuanced drama in an attempt to fit as much as it does into 78 minutes, but those 78 minutes are still packed with a lot of punch.
NetherRealm's uniquely dystopian story was already a fantastic impetus to explore DC's complex power dynamics, but veteran DCUA writer Ernie Altbacker ("Batman: Hush") goes deeper into how these heroes devolve when pushed to their limits. After "just one bad day," in Joker's own words, Superman can slowly transform into an outrageous tyrant, and Robin into a radicalized rebel. Even Batman, upholder of justice, is revealed to have failsafe methods to destabilize every member of the Justice League, including members who oppose him. This infighting results in a number of intense sequences; DC's adult animated films never shy away from violence, but "Injustice" feels like a new level of tragedy for the genre, sporting an impressively unpredictable body count of beloved characters that even rivals the source material.
Paul W.S. Anderson's "Monster Hunter" is relentless: relentlessly goofy, relentlessly fun, and relentlessly non-stop (yes, that's an oxymoron). It's a film that makes the bus in "Speed" feel like it's going at a leisurely pace. In between action setpieces, there are loads of crazy dialogue ("Never ever seen a flamethrower do this to a man"), ice-cold stares, and tons of killable creatures.
In short, "Monster Hunter" is exactly what it promises to be. To the credit of all involved, it doesn't stray far from the flimsy plots of its source material. Sure, in the "Monster Hunter" games, the protagonist is not a soldier from our world (Milla Jovovich) who gets sucked into an alternate universe full of evil beasts, but if that's what it takes to get to Tony Jaa to play character named the Hunter who travels around with an arsenal of exploding arrows, so be it.
Unlike Anderson's "Resident Evil" films (which are goofily enjoyable in their own right), "Monster Hunter" doesn't get lost in excessive plots or lofty cinematic ambitions. It knows exactly what it is, and mainlines its own supply to deliver so much B-movie je ne sais quoi that it almost tilts back over into minimalism. In the midst of the pandemic that "Monster Hunter" was released in, that was enough to qualify as cinema.
Folks, have we been doing "Tomb Raider" dirty all these years? For a while, the Angelina Jolie starring vehicle was lumped into the bottom of the barrel of video game adaptations. However, following a slew of poor entries into the genre throughout the 2010s, including Lara's own failed reboot in 2018, it might be time for reappraisal. It is by no means a flawless film — it can even be described as mindless at times — but it has style to spare, much like the original game. Director Simon West channels the same wire-working, gun-toting grandeur of filmmakers like the Wachowskis and John Woo, giving Core Design's innovative creation the cinematic treatment it deserved.
It's hard to overstate just how perfect Jolie is as Lara Croft. Though the character herself is written flimsily, which the actress has addressed, Jolie is so effortlessly badass that her characterization still feels fully realized. It's a performance that is emblematic of the film itself, boldly confident, but also cheeky and fun. For every action setpiece, there's a cocky one-liner to follow it up. However, "Tomb Raider" also has heart in the form of Lara's relationship with her father, portrayed by Jolie's real-life father, Jon Voight. That meta angle is just enough to imbue an underexplored facet of the film with enough sentimentality for emotional beats to hit, including a beautiful meeting during the film's climax. It may be a bit mindless, but the original "Tomb Raider" does its original source material justice.
The Rock's second appearance on this list, 2018's "Rampage" is a notable improvement over his first for two reasons. One, director Brad Payton and the film's four credited writers bring an admirably goofy energy to their blockbuster, which is fitting for a movie based on an arcade game about punching nondescript buildings as a kaiju. Two, this film is nuts.
Again: "Rampage" is nuts. Do you want to see a movie in which the werewolf from "True Blood" gets eaten by a larger, flying wolf? That's "Rampage." Have you wondered if Jeffery Dean Morgan could play a character from every state in the South all at once? In "Rampage," he does. You thought Jake Lacy was the embodiment of toxic white privilege in "White Lotus?" You haven't seen "Rampage."
"Rampage" is a film in which a giant lizard and gorilla destroy more of downtown Chicago than "The Blues Brothers" and "Transformers 3" combined — and yet, it's whatever Jake Lacy and Mailin Akerman are doing in their shared scenes that truly strains credibility. "Rampage" rocks even when is at its most questionable, and that, dear reader, is everything a "Rampage" adaptation ought to be.
Video game movies may have a mixed reputation here in the States, but in Japan, they have a much better track record. After all, it only makes sense that a country responsible for several of gaming's most legendary franchises would also be better at adapting them for the big screen. Though not every film makes it Stateside, some fanbases are simply too big to ignore. "Final Fantasy 7" is considered one of the greatest video games of all time, so any expansion on its continuity was bound to attract fans the world over. However, none of us could have anticipated the sheer spectacle of "Advent Children," an audacious continuation that gave fans the now iconic rematch between Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.
Admittedly, anybody new to "Final Fantasy 7" will have a hard time following the film; the exposition comes with a steep learning curve, especially considering the movie non-linearly introduces additional new characters and plot points. However, those familiar with the game will enjoy following up with Cloud, who is still struggling with an identity crisis after learning he was never a member of SOLDIER. His journey in finding self-worth and accepting help from his friends is the heart of the story and a beautiful emotional catharsis for fans. The film is also, simply put, epic; the action is frenetic (sometimes to a fault), the animation is pristine, and Nobuo Uematsu's part-orchestral, part-rock score intensifies every action beat. To this day, fans still point to "Advent Children" as a definitive entry in the "Final Fantasy" mythos.
If "Fast & Furious" can become a blockbuster franchise, who says we can't share the wealth of street racing on film? "Need For Speed" is such a genuinely exciting sports film that it didn't even need the crutch of its original video game to warrant its own existence, but it is a nice bonus. This collaboration between Electronic Arts and DreamWorks proves that cracking certain video games on film isn't rocket science. Sometimes, when life gives you a racing simulator, you make a racing film, and an absolutely hard one at that.
Though it varies from game to game, the utter destruction of the "Need For Speed" franchise gives the franchise the raw thrills its races are known for. To see the filmmakers commit to that with some of the most stunning practical car crashes put to film is oddly mesmerizing. Sure, many of the cars are lookalikes, but the power of cinema doesn't account for that.
Is the film perfect? No. The story's a bit inexplicable at points and the actual driving sequences themselves could have used more dynamic coverage. There's only so many times that silly first-person shot of Aaron Paul driving can make us feel like the director "played the game." Regardless, the film is incredibly entertaining, in part because the entire cast understood the assignment. They're all having a blast but committing to the drama and stakes of the story when it counts. Bless you, especially, Michael Keaton, for all of your gosh darn charisma.
Those teeth. If you were on Twitter in 2019, they're why you remember "Sonic the Hedgehog." The memes that Sonic's original design inspired were incendiary. The fans' outrage was palpable. By the time that Paramount Pictures committed to fixing Sonic's chompers and the discourse about the hours worked by digital animators hit a fever pitch, it was easy to forget that "Sonic the Hedgehog" was a film at all.
And here's the thing: the Sonic movie is good. Is it great? I wouldn't go that far. It's still basically a remake of "Hop" with better action scenes. But "Sonic the Hedgehog" is sweet, memorable, and blissfully weird for a film that initially seemed so misguided. Ben Schwartz's voice work is endearing. The direction is crisp, unfussy, and very family-friendly. And Jim Carrey channels his entire blissed-out '90s comedy run into his performance as Doctor Robotnik. Whether he's arguing about whether James Marsden's Tom Wachowski was breastfed or dancing to "Where Evil Grows," "Sonic the Hedgehog" has — you guessed it — teeth. Now being on Stringer Bell's Knuckles.
It appears we have become full-blown Lara Croft apologists. Sorry not sorry! These movies rule, with the sequel to "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" somehow topping its predecessor in almost every department. It all comes down to its winning formula: brilliantly acrobatic action choreography, gorgeous on-location shooting, and a hunky, wise-cracking sidekick to aid in some good ol' sexual tension. This time around, it's Gerard Butler as Terry Sheridan, not only an independent loot-seeker but also Lara's (Angelina Jolie) ex. We love a near-naked Daniel Craig, but this is a step up.
"Cradle of Life" is also an improvement because -– let's face it -– the original film isn't really about anything. It manages to shoehorn in some actual father-daughter love between Jon Voight and Jolie at the end, but there isn't much more to it. The sequel, though nothing extraordinary, is more explicitly about greed and self-interest, specifically Lara's journey in confronting it when faced with the legend of Pandora's Box. It comes to a surprisingly effective head in the film's finale, when Lara must sacrifice her boner for Sheridan to stop a world-ending plague from blighting humanity. That's progress!
Jolie really was the perfect Lara Croft, accent be damned (it's better in the sequel). She may have looked the part, but she also imbued the character with instant charm, quiet ferocity, and actual sense of adventure. Even in the limited canon of globetrotting treasure hunters, Jolie as Croft stands out among the rest.
Finally, a "Mortal Kombat" movie that gets the story right. That's what happens when you have series creator Ed Boon as your creative consultant, but it's also what happens when you take the material seriously. "Scorpion's Revenge" is the best primer you can get to NetherRealm's fighting series, tackling both Hanzo Hasashi's origin story as well as the first "Mortal Kombat" game. Despite framing EarthRealm contestants Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage as the film's primary protagonists, the film effectively tells both their stories and Scorpion's tale of anti-hero woe all in one go and in a tight 80 minutes. Impressive.
What's more is that "Scorpion's Revenge" is very, very violent. Despite being animated, Warner Bros. Animation and Studio Mir go for the jugular, literally, and do justice to the series' bloodsport. Intestines are slashed, spines are ripped out, and entire bodies get split in half, plenty of which is highlighted by the series' iconic X-Ray shots showing you exactly where characters meet their end.
The film takes pride in its excessive flesh-ripping but never loses sight of the story's darkness; Hanzo's wife and son are murdered at the hands of Sub-Zero, a moment in which director Ethan Spaulding catches the audience off-guard and uses the franchise's extreme violence as extreme tragedy. Similarly, many character deaths are not as gleeful as in the games, rather a means to effectively portray the ruthlessness of the world these characters inhabit. It's not a movie for the faint of heart, but it makes every fatality count.
With the announcement of his latest adventure in the works for the Nintendo Switch, there's no better time to get gaming's favorite gentleman sleuth back on the big screen. After all, his sole cinematic entry is one of the best video game movies, if also one of the least seen. "Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva" unfolds like any great Level-5 mystery, initially presented as disparate pieces that connect to form a much larger puzzle. Thankfully, puzzles are this franchise's specialty, and "Eternal Diva" has more than enough brain teasers to satisfy any longtime fan.
However, the true star here is the story. With no gameplay to fuss over, "Eternal Diva" channels the series' already gorgeous animation and talented voice cast into a heartbreaking tale of memory and mortality. It all begins when a renowned opera singer believes her best friend has been reincarnated into the body of a young girl. Soon after, one of her performances is hijacked by a mysterious villain who thrusts the audience into a competition of riddles in which the winner is promised the secret to eternal life. It all feels like a whirlwind at first but, as tragic backstories are unwound, everything comes together in time for a high-stakes climax the likes of which Layton fans have never seen before. Throw in a dash of class commentary a la "Triangle of Sadness," and you have the makings of another great series of mystery films. If Benoit Blanc and Hercule Poirot can have multiple modern movies to their name, why not Professor Hershel Layton too?
Where 1994's Hollywood production of "Street Fighter" failed to fully capitalize on its ensemble of characters, "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie," released the exact same year, does that and more. This is about as loyal an adaptation as you can find, directly translating Capcom's loose lore into an "Avengers"-esque martial arts epic that sees all of your favorite characters brought to life with incredible fight sequences. Most importantly, they finally got Blanka right. Justice for Blanka!
There's still no fighting tournament in sight, but who needs that when you have M. Bison assembling a team of brainwashed fighting champions for his crime syndicate, Shadowlaw! Interpol agent Chun-Li and military captain Guile team up to stop him, but Bison already has a plan in motion: to target Japanese martial arts master Ryu by brainwashing his best bro, Ken. Along the way, we get cameos from all of our favorite fighters: Zangief, Blanka, Dhalsim, Fei Long, and even E. Honda, who plays a role in the film's climactic final fight. In the words of a very different fighting franchise, everyone is here!
The most important contribution from "Street Fighter II" is the bromance between Ryu and Ken, only shown in flashbacks but so bro-tastic that we could use an entire anime ("Street Fighter: The Early Years?"). Their frenemies-turned-teammates arc gives us a sensational final blow, in which they finish off M. Bison with a dual-hadouken that must be seen to be believed.
Despite "Gran Turismo" being based on a real story (haven't you read the film's tacked-on subtitle?), we're counting this one as a legit video game movie. What differentiates this from something like "Tetris" is that, regardless of its real-world application, Sony effectively gave us an adaptation of the actual game as well — the Venn diagram just so happens to overlap. In fact, it's actually an inspired storytelling decision. Most racing games don't bother with plot, so if you're going to source one, you might as well do it from your own company's history.
"Gran Turismo" centers on Jann Mardenborough (portrayed by Archie Madekwe), a high-ranking "GT" player from Cardiff, Wales who longs to become a real racer. When he becomes eligible for the Nissan-sponsored "GT Academy," a program looking to make players into racers, Mardenborough goes all the way to racing at 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the world's most challenging races. Though the film has rightfully been criticized for twisting the chronology of Mardenborough's story for dramatic effect, it is nonetheless an inspiring story that shows the real-world applications of gaming (with additional training, of course).
What especially elevates this adaptation is the direction of Neil Blomkamp. The revered sci-fi director initially seemed like a strange choice for a racing film, but you can feel the rawness and authenticity he brings behind the camera, even in a large studio project like this. Toss in David Harbour, who so thoroughly understands the assignment he could teach a college course on it, and you've got yourself a fun time at the movies.
The best video game movies know how to tell a strong story while still capturing what fans love about the original game. "Dragon Quest: Your Story" takes things one step further by paying homage to the fans themselves with an ending that was divisive among audiences. Though it comes as a bit of a shock, the plot twist –- that the entire film was really a virtual reality simulation experienced by a "Dragon Quest" player — frames the story directly through the eyes of audience and, in turns, transforms the film into a love letter directly to them.
This would explain a number of narrative choices made in adapting "Dragon Quest V" to film, notably giving the typically blank-slated Hero a name, Luca, and having him marry Bianca over Nera, which is normally a choice made by the player. But that's just it –- Luca is the player. What would otherwise be seen as streamlining the game's story for the sake of plot is now an embracing of the game's element of player choice. The film even incorporates actual in-game footage in its opening few minutes.
It may leave some of Luca's childhood relationships a bit half-formed over the rest of the film, but it's a further commitment to reflecting how a player experiences "Dragon Quest." All of this makes "Your Story" not only a celebration of the series on film, but a showing of gratitude to the fans who have made it one of Japan's most popular RPGs.
It was about time. We all knew Mario could make for a great movie despite the missteps along the way, and we were proven right. Well, basically proven right. In reality, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is a 6/10 without the gamer gloss, but a striking 10/10 for any longtime Mario fan.
Despite our doubts, Chris Pratt makes for a solid Mario and Illumination's realization of Nintendo's most beloved franchise is stunning, from the surprisingly charming streets of Brooklyn to the elaborately vertical platforms of the Mushroom Kingdom. Usually, an onslaught of "Mario" Easter eggs would be interpreted as tryhard corporate hackery, but every detail in the film is implemented in a way that speaks more to the animators' love for "Super Mario" and their desire to get this movie right for the fans. I mean, just listen to that score!!
Is the story itself all that interesting? Not especially. It's your run-of-the-mill adventure plot, made even more copy-and-paste thanks to the well-known conventions of the franchise -– though the switch-up between Peach and Luigi is a welcome touch. The lesson Mario learns isn't an especially novel one, nor is the film's climactic finale. But who cares? They let Jack Black sing! "Peaches" is an unironically bangin' number, proving Black as Bowser was a match made in Koopa heaven from the start. With a stronger tongue-and-cheek sensibility like that going forward, the Illumination Mario-verse could prove to be the strongest silver-screen translation of any video game franchise ever.
Hold it. No conversation about video game movies is complete without the miracle that is "Ace Attorney." Capcom's interactive court drama may have seemed too heightened for a live-action retelling, but the unclassifiable Japanese director Takashi Miike took on the challenge and basically aced it. Towing a difficult line between melodrama and actual drama, Miike's vision manages to complement the game's theatrics with a technically stylized showcase reminiscent of Korean master Park Chan-wook. Plenty of what we love about "Ace Attorney" is still here — the memorable soundtrack (reorchestrated, of course), bold hairstyles, and plenty of Objections! — but put side-by-side with massive production design, impressive visual effects, and sharp editing that reflects the series' intensity.
However, the film's greatest strength is how it takes two separate cases from "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney," "Turnabout Sisters," and "Turnabout Goodbyes," and streamlines them into one larger story. In this version, Mia Fey's death is directly linked to the investigation surrounding the death of Robert Hammond, which gives Phoenix Wright more investment in the story and a more involved character arc. The film also includes more interactions between him and Miles Edgeworth, as well as flashbacks of them as children, which give us a better understanding of their relationship going into the trial against Manfred von Karma. We even get flashbacks about the Fey family as spirit mediums, one of the film's many excellent uses of visual effects. These may seem like natural choices to make, but they work wonders in helping the story function less episodically and more like a single plotline.
The only major summer tentpole to be shot on film in 2019 was Rob Latterman's "Detective Pikachu." I think about this once a week. It's a remarkable fact in its own right, but it's also the key to understanding why the two-year old video game film feels wildly elevated. Here is a family film that goes out of its way to stock up on noir tropes and shoots them like "The Long Goodbye" never happened, all while letting Ryan Reynolds go full Robin Williams. How does this movie exist?
Never mind, that. What matters is that "Detective Pikachu" is excellent. It manages to cram an intelligent look at the limits of male communication and one legitimately frightening set piece into a rollercoaster ride of shadow-soaked comedy and plot twists. It was one of 2019's better films, and it's only going to age like a fine wine. It's place on top of this list was almost destined; however, one 2021 release gives it some seriously stiff competition.
Since its release in 1985, Jonathan Lynn's "Clue" has been an outlier. It's one of the best movies based on a game of any sort; it blends genres like Jamba does juices. Most importantly, it anchors both its story and its comedic engine to its peerless ensemble and their irascibly manic dialogue. "Clue" feels like well-built lightning in a bottle. It shouldn't exist. It does. There's never been anything else like it — until "Werewolves Within."
Is that too much praise for a movie that only came out recently? Absolutely not. Josh Ruben's follow up to the great "Scare Me" gathers an impressive assemblage of young, funny people like Sam Richardson and Harvey Guillen, veterans like Michaela Watkins and Catherine Curtin, and character actors like Wayne Duvall and Glenn Fleishler, and sets them loose upon a twisted supernatural mystery.
"Werewolves Within" is fun. It's socially conscious. Most notably, it captures the exact blend of craft and chaos that made "Clue" so singular almost 40 years ago. It's not that there aren't any video game movies like it — it's that there are almost no movies like it, period. "Werewolves Within" sits as the undisputed king of video game movies. Long may it reign.
It's a shame that the best video game movie is one very few gamers have actually seen. "Animal Crossing: The Movie," or "Gekijōban Dōbutsu no Mori" in the original Japanese, grossed over one billion yen at the Japanese box office, yet has never gotten an overseas release. Now that the franchise has exploded in popularity post-"New Horizons," it's time to officially campaign for this adorable, heartfelt adaptation to finally make it to the States. Co-produced by Nintendo, "Animal Crossing: The Movie" follows Ai, a young girl who moves to the Animal Village. Her excitement to begin a new life will feel familiar to any "Animal Crossing" fan: She explores the island, immediately becomes acquainted with her neighbors, and even begins to work for Tom Nook as a delivery driver. As she and her friends dig for fossils, watch meteor showers, and fangirl over K.K. Slider, any fan of the series will immediately feel right at home with this adaptation.
However, not only does this delightful slice-of-life anime capture the appeal of the series, it also translates its gameplay into a well-paced narrative that expands on the original game's mechanics. Ai is forced to confront some hard truths, such as the heartache one feels when their friends move away. She also must discover what she dreams for herself now that she is independent. These subtle elements in the game are given more resonance through storytelling, which is what makes it the best video game movie of all time.
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View casting suggestions for Kano (Mortal Kombat), and make your own suggestions for roles you think they should play in upcoming films!
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myCast - Fan Casting Your Favorite Stories
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https://www.mycast.io/talent/kano-mortal-kombat
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Join myCast
Do you love movies? Fan casting? myCast is the place for you!
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https://www.facebook.com/PennSAS/videos/origin-stories-ayako-kano/1490601355182365/
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Ayako Kano, a professor of Japanese studies, discusses her love of music and theater, her grandfather’s notebook, plus her path to academia and her...
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Ayako Kano, a professor of Japanese studies, discusses her love of music and theater, her grandfather’s notebook, plus her path to academia and her...
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yT/r/aGT3gskzWBf.ico
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https://www.facebook.com/PennSAS/videos/origin-stories-ayako-kano/1490601355182365/
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https://www.thecinemaspot.com/2024/07/31/batman-caped-crusader-season-1-prime-video-non-spoiler-review-a-further-classist-and-psychological-unveiling-of-gotham/
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‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season 1 (Prime Video) Non-Spoiler Review – A Further Classist And Psychological Unveiling Of Gotham
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2024-07-31T00:00:00
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Bruce Timm's new DC Comics and Prime Video series showcases a brilliant spectacle. Read our full review of ‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season 1!
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en
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The Cinema Spot
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https://www.thecinemaspot.com/2024/07/31/batman-caped-crusader-season-1-prime-video-non-spoiler-review-a-further-classist-and-psychological-unveiling-of-gotham/
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Following the release of Merry Little Batman on Prime Video last December, the streaming platform returns with new material featuring the Dark Knight. Titled Batman: Caped Crusader, the series was originally slated to drop on the HBO Max streaming platform. That is until the project was canceled and then taken over by Amazon MGM Studios. It is important to note that the series is unrelated to the holiday superhero film, which also has an animated series heading to Prime Video, titled Bat-Family. I watched Caped Crusader‘s premiere season twice over and am delighted to report that this is quite the heavy hitter.
Batman: Caped Crusader is created by Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited).
Series co-executive producer Jase Ricci (Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Merry Little Batman, Bat-Family), Timm, and executive producer Ed Brubaker write the stories for the series. Ricci, Greg Rucka, producers Adamma (Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul, Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Adanne Ebo (Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul, Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith), consulting producer Halley Gross, and Marc Bernardin write the season’s teleplays.
Christina Sotta, Matt Peters, and Christopher Berkeley are the directors for the episodes.
In this review, I will discuss Batman: Caped Crusader. As this article’s title suggests, no spoilers will be present.
NOTE: Spoiler language was sent to the writer and editor of this piece beforehand by public relations representatives. The following does not touch upon explicit details regarding narrative and character development.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Batman: Caped Crusader Logline
According to Amazon MGM Studios/ Prime Video Press, here is the logline for Batman: Caped Crusader.
Batman: Caped Crusader is a hard-boiled animated series, that follows the fearsome vigilante in his first year. Forged in the fire of tragedy, billionaire Bruce Wayne becomes something both more and less than human—the BATMAN. Night after night, against overwhelming odds, he wages his relentless one-man war on crime.
Discussion
Batman: Caped Crusader makes wise creative decisions in terms of crafting worthwhile narratives around main characters, supporting roles, and guest antagonists. With a full ten episodes, this first season wastes no time in transforming not just Bruce Wayne/ Batman (voiced by Hamish Linklater) as a human being but others as well. Despite being set up for a specific watch model, the screenwriters’ room does not force some huge storyline on viewers. Rather, the large arc happens behind the scenes while focusing on more individual, episodic narratives. Imagine the formulaic plots suited for the Scooby-Doo franchise with a graver tone due to Gotham as the location setting.
The first few episodes are more of a build-up to the world that fans of Batman are used to. They help recontextualize viewers with power politics and how the court of law is meant to keep Gotham in balance. Different character developments connect from one to another across the season’s episodes. In turn, this establishes a pattern that navigates each character’s decision to impact others’ future course of action. The double entendres or meanings—primarily through lines of dialogue—can define a character’s background or even foreshadow what becomes of them later in the season.
Not to mention, the sound design and German music composer Frederik Wiedmann’s scores are worth watching the series. I love the jazz and classy tunes that play in the background of the episodes. From the pilot’s opening scene to the finale’s epilogue, the execution of both story and action is reminiscent of what made The Animated Series so memorable.
Artwork Awesome Enough For Arkham
The animation team deserves all the praise for bringing these Scooby-Doo-esque stories to life. At a micro level, prop designers Art Lee and Ronnie Senteno create objects that look nice. I like the detail of Harvey Dent’s (voiced by Diedrich Bader) coin, goons’ Tommy guns, the broken arm of a marble statue, and Batman’s Batarang.
Character design lead James Tucker et al animate some of the most vivid figures reminiscent of The Animated Series, notably in the antagonists. Basil Karlo (voiced by Dan Donohue), Catwoman (voiced by Christina Ricci), Harley Quinn (voiced by Jamie Chung), and Onomatopoeia (voiced by Reid Scott) have the most stunning costumes. Karlo’s bright eyes and disfiguration reflect John Carpenter’s The Thing or, staying on the topic of Scooby-Doo, Captain Cutler’s Ghost. Quinn’s jester costume is more menacing than what fans are used to in The Animated Series.
Caped Crusader cannot be a Batman title without some magnificent storyboard artwork and background designs. The action sequences are thrilling to watch, e.g., Batman sword-fences a man in a trenchcoat, collects ectoplasm, and fights goons on the docks of Gotham. One character’s perception of the city as a world on fire is a neat mixture of character designs, background designs, and color. This makes the imagery as wicked on screen as it is on paper. The perforations of the rear car window via gunshots require meticulous attention, and I think that is to be appreciated. At this point in Batman history, the car chases and the rooftop chases are pretty much mandatory for the thrills. What more could we ask for?
Laudable Episodic Screenwriting
The former half of Season 1 is perfect, although the episodes vary in world-building, pacing, themes, or character study. The metonymous opening scene of “Kiss of the Catwoman” alone is enough to call the entire episode a perfect narrative. As a whole, the episode examines the meaning behind a celebrity punch or slap and explains why people should never go as far as to label one a criminal. For a character study, the psychology of Wayne’s trauma as an orphan contributes to his pathos. Many comic book fans scrutinize the “Martha” aspect of Batman v Superman, yet this episode provides a wider spotlight on that correlation between pain and power.
Again, I must commend the screenwriters for their clever, witty, and brilliant work. Few may figure out what a clowder means, but now I know! A transitional period in the season feels like filler in one or two episodes. My least favorite episode gets expository during one scene, with a visually incohesive act structure. Conversely, in that same episode, someone analogizes Gotham to a beating heart, so I give it a pass for trying to go the poetic route. Here, Wayne also taps into his spiritual side, questioning whether ghosts are real. Although he ultimately chooses not to explore this any further, I cannot help but believe it insinuates that the phantasms of his late parents may haunt him.
The season picks the pace back up in its last few episodes. Here, everything transpiring behind the scenes pays off in a way that fans of Batman mythos will find uncanny. It’s nice to see corrupt cops Harvey Bullock (voiced by John DiMaggio) and Arnold Flass (voiced by Gary Anthony Williams) make reckless choices and then get what’s coming to them.
Political Themes
Note: Narratives surrounding Batman and Gotham can never be apolitical. The claim to suggest otherwise requires serious discourse. It is important to note that, while this is a family show, Caped Crusader dips into mature subject matter such as classism, crime, psychology, belief systems, and more.
Like the large focus of executive producer Matt Reeves’s (Cloverfield, Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes) The Batman, Timm and his co-writers weigh in on crucial concepts through the world of Gotham. For one, the citizens experience a rise in inflation and unemployment, leading many to resort to crime. Poverty is a heavy issue in the Western world, and the disparity between the impoverished and the affluent can be felt. The show guides fans to The Narrows and the suburbs, juxtaposing different areas and the people who live there.
Basil Karlo’s circumstances regarding landing movie roles are relatable. This is especially the case today, with job security and professional matters such as SAG-AFTRA unions. The episode dedicated to this character, “And Be A Villain”, is not to be overlooked and possesses merits that desire much care. Like the acting workplace, many characters wear a façade, including Bruce Wayne, who presents his public image as a cliché.
The women’s roles in the series should not be overlooked, too. A failure to recognize their power can go so far as to discredit original comic book characters such as Carla Viti—sister of Carmine Falcone—in, say, The Long Halloween. Many women in the series are painted as leaders, including Harley Quinn, who does not depend on a clown to be at her side. In the ongoing discourse over what the general audience accepts, the women are a major highlight of the series.
The Dark Mind of the Dark Knight
Furthermore, in the discourse of Batman and his rogues gallery, it is incredibly vital to highlight the psychological elements of the storytelling. In recent years, it has often been disputed that Bruce Wayne’s role in his city is to dress up and physically harm the mentally unstable. As a critic, it would be remiss to ignore how this field of science applies to intellectual property such as this. For a character, the titular protagonist’s reserved nature is a mask that is seldom taken off. The screenwriters offer fans an uncommon scenario: What if Bruce Wayne legitimately attends therapy sessions?
Now, I am not implying that the character takes the Tony Soprano route in this series. Therapy is no laughing matter, and that is coming from the fact that he has a few run-ins with Quinzel. Similarly, what humanizes the “antagonist(s)” of each episode is that they aren’t treated as villains. Essentially, these are people who need help. Take Firebug (voiced by Tom Kenny), for example, who is not right in the head. While I cannot explicate what he does or what occurs to him, it is easy for civilians to mindlessly point out the heroes and villains.
What adds that layer of Gothicism to Caped Crusader‘s Gotham is its ability to conceal secrets and depict the macabre through tragedy. More so, the show taps into madness and obsession through its characters. Dent is one character who plays by the book. Like Barbara Gordon (voiced by Krystal Joy Brown), however, handling matters within the parameters of the law may not be enough. These sorts of conditions can be what urge people towards their breaking point. To reiterate, the series examines protagonists and antagonists, two sides of the same coin that can represent either humanity or monstrosity.
The Creators of Batman and Supporting Characters
Batman is created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.
Arnold Flass is created by David Mazzucchelli and Frank Miller.
Lucius Fox is created by John Calnan and Len Wein.
Dr. Harleen “Harley Quinn” Quinzel is created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. The character first appeared in the early-to-mid-1990s Batman: The Animated Series. Firebug is created by Wein.
Papa Midnite aka Linton Midnite is created by Jamie Delano and John Ridgway.
Rupert Thorne is created by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers.
Onomatopoeia is created by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester.
Killer Croc, also known as Waylon Jones, is created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton.
Dr. Leslie Thompkins is created by Dick Giordano and Dennis O’Neil.
The Crew Behind Batman: Caped Crusader
Sarah Noonan (Danny Phantom, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman: The Long Halloween, Young Justice, Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake, Merry Little Batman, My Adventures with Superman) and Agnes Kim (Batman: The Long Halloween, Young Justice, Harley Quinn, My Adventures with Superman) serve as the voice casting directors.
Gene Vassilaros serves as the voice director of the series.
Frederik Wiedmann scores the music of the series.
Marc Stone is the editor of the series, with Noah Rieke as the assistant editor.
In post-production, Harrison T. Barth, Michele Beeson, and Gabriel Gianola—the team behind Batman: The Long Halloween, Harley Quinn, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, My Adventures with Superman, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!—serve as the assistant editors. Michael G. Buck is the post-production assistant editor for the pilot and Episodes 104 onward.
Animation Team
Series executive producer James Tucker serves as the lead character designer.
Derek Charm, Kat Hudson, Kano Kimanyen, and Timm are the character designers of the series. Art Lee and Ronnie Senteno serve as the prop designers.
Elliott Byrne, Robert Harand, and Aletta Wenas are the background designers for all episodes of the series. Brandon Hahn is a background designer for the second episode onwards.
Jeff Palm is a background designer for the third and sixth episodes onwards. Robert Haverland is a background designer for the fifth episode onwards.
William Meaney and John Paik are background designers for the seventh episode onwards.
Richie Chavez is a background designer for the pilot, “In Treacherous Waters”.
Christian Lignan is a background designer for the second and third episodes, “And Be A Villain” and “Kiss of the Catwoman”, respectively. Maimuna Venzant is a background designer for the third episode.
Storyboards
Aluir Amancio is a storyboard artist for the pilot, second, fifth, and eighth episodes.
Carl Peterson and Mickey Quinn are storyboard artists for the pilot, fourth, seventh, and finale episodes. Rozlynn “Roz” Waltz is a storyboard artist for the second, fifth, eighth, and finale episodes.
Sophia Magallanes Morales is a storyboard artist for the third, sixth, and ninth episodes. Emily Hu (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, The Boys Presents: Diabolical, Young Justice, Pantheon) is a storyboard artist for the fourth, seventh, and finale episodes. Milo Neuman is a storyboard artist for the fourth and final two episodes. DJ Zutkovic is a storyboard artist for the second, fifth, and eighth episodes.
Sebastian Montes is a storyboard artist for the third and sixth episodes. Byron Penaranda is a storyboard artist for the sixth and ninth episodes.
Matthew Bordenave (Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Justice League Dark, The Death of Superman, Batman: The Long Halloween, Young Justice, Orion and the Dark, X-Men ’97) and Kathy Liu are storyboard artists for the pilot.
Mike Borkowski, Stephanie Ressler, and Sung Shin (Ben 10: Omniverse, Batman: Hush, Invincible, Batman: The Long Halloween, Young Justice, Pantheon) are storyboard artists for the third episode. Kathryn Marusik is a storyboard artist for the fourth episode.
Vinton Heuck and Stephanie Gonzaga (Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai) are storyboard artists for the seventh episode.
Storyboard Revisions
Evan Munoz is the storyboard revisionist for the pilot, fourth, seventh, and finale episodes.
Ressler is the storyboard revisionist for the second, fifth, and eighth episodes. Irineo Maramba is the storyboard revisionist for the third, sixth, and ninth episodes.
The Voice Cast of Batman: Caped Crusader
Hamish Linklater (Tim Story’s Fantastic Four, FX’s Fargo and Legion, Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, Manhunt) voices Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman.
Jason Watkins voices Alfred Pennyworth, Wayne’s butler and father figure. Watkins also voices Prison Guard 1 and a carnival barker.
Krystal Joy Brown voices Barbara Gordon.
Eric Morgan Stuart voices Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) Commissioner James Gordon. Stuart also voices Prison Guard 2.
Michelle C. Bonilla (Love Death & Robots) voices Renee Montoya, a police detective at the GCPD.
Diedrich Bader voices Harvey Dent, known in the DC Comics as Two-Face.
John DiMaggio (The Animatrix, Kim Possible, Chowder, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the Ben 10 franchise, Adventure Time) voices Harvey Bullock, a corrupt cop. DiMaggio also voices characters Jerry, Wilford Lee, film director Lou Valentine, Morrison, a baby patient, a mugger named Benny, and Manny.
Gary Anthony Williams (The Boondocks, Star Wars Resistance, Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Invincible) voices Arnold Flass, Bullock’s corrupt cop partner. Williams also voices Iggy, The Penguin’s right-hand man, Hendryx, Redding, an elf patient named Mr. Smith, an orderly, and an old man.
Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Big Hero 6, Fox’s Gotham and The Gifted, Lovecraft Country, Star Wars: Visions Volume 1, Dexter: New Blood) voices Harleen Quinzel/ Harley Quinn.
Cedric Yarbrough voices Rupert Thorne. In small appearances, Yarbrough also voices a judge, Linton Midnite, and a circus character named Waylon.
Supporting Voices
Lacey Chabert (Family Guy, Mean Girls) voices Yvonne Frances, an actress in Gotham.
Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants, Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty) voices Eel O’Brian and Firebug. Kenny also voices a condominium doorman and a man named Joplin.
Bumper Robinson (Teenage Euthanasia, Merry Little Batman, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League) voices Lucius Fox. Robinson also voices Reporter 2, Goon 2, and Monster 1.
James Arnold Taylor voices GCPD Detective Marcus Driver and a client or two of Barbara’s.
Donna Lynne Champlin voices Dr. Leslie Thompkins, a medical doctor and a family friend of the Wayne family. Haley Joel Osment (Forrest Gump, The Sixth Sense, Tusk, The Boys) voices Anton Knight, Nocturna’s older brother.
Minnie Driver voices a mob boss associated with The Penguin. Paul Scheer voices Aaron and Ronald “Ronnie” Cobblepot, sons of The Penguin.
Dan Donohue voices Basil Karlo.
Christina Ricci (The Addams Family, Cursed, the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer, The Matrix Resurrections, Netflix’s Wednesday, Yellowjackets) voices Selina Kyle/ Catwoman.
Toby Stephens voices The Gentleman Ghost and Russell Craddock.
Reid Scott (Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, My Adventures with Superman, Merry Little Batman) voices the supervillain, Onomatopoeia.
Roger Craig Smith (the Sonic the Hedgehog and Batman: Arkham games, Merry Little Batman) voices GCPD Officer Corrigan, Jones, Floyd Lawton (credited as “hitman”), and Henchman 2.
McKenna Grace (Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, Malignant) voices Natalia Knight, also known as Nocturna.
Josh Keaton (Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Marvel Studios’ What If…?, Invincible, X-Men ’97) voices Rupert Thorne’s son, Matthew.
Vincent Piazza voices Thorne’s associate, Tony Zito.
Minor Voices
William Salyers (Moral Orel, Regular Show, J.G. Quintel’s Close Enough, Teenage Euthanasia) voices mayoral candidate Jessop and Emil Potter, an associate of Zito.
Yuri Lowenthal voices movie star Darryl Manning, a stand-in actor, and GCPD Detective Cohen.
Jackie Hoffman (Shiva Baby, The Marvel Mrs. Maisel, Glass Onion) voices Selina Kyle’s maid Greta and a Gotham Museum director.
Corey Burton (the Star Wars franchise, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League) voices Jack Ryder and a person on a police radio.
David Kaye voices Quinzel’s butler William Hastings, a clown patient, and Orderly 2.
David Krumholtz (Sausage Party, Sausage Party: Foodtopia) voices Fletcher Demming. Jim Pirri voices Emerson Collins and a schoolboy patient.
Peter Jessop voices a man named Muller and Henchman 1.
Noshir Dalal voices a backup mobster and a guard.
Civilians
Alex Wyndham voices Edmund Haynes.
Jeff Bennett (Adventure Time, Merry Little Batman, X-Men ’97) voices characters Bill, Clarence, makeup artist Jack Ellman, a security guard, a detective, a police officer, and a reporter in the first three episodes.
Jason Marsden voices Gormon and Reporter 1. Gaille Heidemann voices Wilma, an old librarian.
Kari Wahlgren (Rick and Morty, Invincible) voices a guard riding a donation truck, as well as a secretary, Reporter 3, and Zito’s girlfriend Maggie Cain.
Grey DeLisle (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Invincible) voices a partygoer, a scared woman, a newscaster, a radio announcer/operator, Julie Madison, and a bearded lady.
Kimberly Brooks voices Ramona, a secretary, GCPD Detective Romy Chandler, and a waitress.
Sungwon Cho (Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, Sausage Party: Foodtopia) voices a carnival audience member named Morris and a man in court named Matt Milligan.
Voice Performances and Character Developments
Out of all the protagonists, Barbara Gordon and Renee Montoya (voiced by Michelle C. Bonilla) are the greatest. They each want to change the city for the better with stronger optimism than Commissioner Gordon. Barbara’s dedication to upholding the law is naïve, yet her faith in others’ humanity truly counts most. Another character describes Montoya as “honest, intelligent, and incorruptible”. Her dedication to the job as a police detective is respectable, especially considering the alternative. Honestly, she is the best iteration of the figure since Rosie Perez’s version from Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey. Batman’s trust in both women keeps the city intact, and a disconnect from either can mean dropping deeper into a downward spiral. Moreover, Barbara and Montoya’s dynamic is almost like that of sisters in that the detective looks up to Barbara’s father as if he is her own.
The Antagonists
Basil Karlo, Harley Quinn, and Anton Knight (voiced by Haley Joel Osment) hold some of the season’s best deliveries or voice performances. Out of the three, Quinn has the most screen time, and her encounter with Batman is as threatening as Hell. I never expected Chung’s voice to send chills down my spine, but one line does the job for me. It’s compelling, enthralling, spicy, and you will never anticipate when it happens. Quinzel’s personality uncannily mirrors Cory Michael Smith’s Edward Nygma in Fox’s Gotham. There needs to be more of her on the show.
In Gotham, I expected Nicholas A’Gosto’s Harvey Dent to eventually transform into Two-Face… Instead, that never happened. In Caped Crusader, Dent is in his own head about holding political power. This version of Dent is a blend of Tommy Lee Jones’s from Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Aaron Eckhart’s from Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Dent is portrayed as a cocky defense attorney, although he still means business. The proper designers incorporate the infamous coin into the character’s personality.
However, the funny part is the coin isn’t utilized the way fans might expect. It’s easy to shrug that off as integral to the character. Dent is so well-written that one would never stop and think about what his coin symbolizes—not in terms of choices but of humanity. With just a tad more development than Quinn, Bader has more to do as Dent. He delivers an almost gut-wrenching monologue, excellently written on the writers’ part.
Final Thoughts on Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1
When it comes down to it, Batman: Caped Crusader is this huge project for DC Studios. The big question is: Why isn’t it the next big thing? With all the business excuses tied to Warner Bros. Discovery and Warner Bros. Animation, whose ultimate idea was it to cancel this as a project? While it may be nowhere as phenomenal as Batman: The Animated Series, its first season alone proves otherwise. At least, it is getting there. Mind you, the Detective Comics company has many live-action and animation projects related to Batman in development. There is that to take into consideration.
If anything, the series prompts modern audiences to look to what inspired it in the first place. This includes television programs, Batman (1960s) and Batman: The Animated Series. It’s difficult to compartmentalize what makes Caped Crusader so exceptional. Regardless, once you pick this up, you might not be able to put it down. The next season is expected to have a larger roster, and one can tell by the various Easter Eggs, allusions, and brief appearances. Until then, viewers can admire the grounded approach to comic book mythos.
4.5/5 stars
All ten episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 stream via Prime Video starting this Thursday, August 1st!
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I’ve discussed comics based on video games before. Many of them aren’t very good. There are exceptions to the rule out there, like the UDON Street Fighter series. That is, if you can get past the horrid delays and the lack of anything of importance happening in most issues. The Darkstalkers comic wouldn’t have been all that bad had it lasted more than six issues and actually went somewhere.
The subject today is Marvel Nemesis: The Imperfects, based on the similarly named videogame Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. This review is going to be a little different, as I’m going to try and lead you through the process of me reading this series. The experience of reading these issues when they came out is worlds different than if I were to be reading them for the first time now.
The news first hit that Electronic Arts would be releasing a Marvel fighting game. The place-holder of a name “Marvel vs. EA” was the popular term for this new project and immediately, we were lambasted with awful joke after awful joke. As a comedic writer, something that annoys me is when somebody makes an obvious joke that half of the hemisphere had already made and acts like they’re a comedic genius. The kind of people who make jokes about Mr. Fantastic stretching his wang. Anyway, for months on end, everybody chimed in with the same played out “Spider-Man vs. Madden” or “Wolverine vs. Gandalf” punchline. It was really sad.
Over time, details about the game, such as the actual title, were announced. The first footage of the game featured Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Thing and two EA-created characters Johnny Ohm and Brigade. Artist Jae Lee had a major role in the art direction of the game and made the character select images. He would also draw the cover art for the comic miniseries. Mark Millar was brought in for character designs and backstories. The creative team for the six-issue miniseries would be writer Greg Pak and artist Renato Arlem. I was unfamiliar with Pak at the time, so I had no idea that this was a really good thing. Renato’s art style shares similarities with Jae Lee’s style, so that’s also a big plus.
The cover features a foreground shot of the story’s villain, Niles Van Roekel. Behind him are Spider-Man, Wolverine, Elektra and Thing, all infected with some kind of green goop nastiness. Thing is what it looks like when you chew Fruity Pebbles and then open your mouth and stick out your tongue.
Read the rest of this entry �
The Contest of Champions paved the way for the event miniseries that Marvel and DC have become dependant on. The star-studded scavenger hunt wasn’t the greatest story in the world, but it was still memorable and classic for being the first step. Naturally, there would one day be a sequel.
If you can call it that.
When I think of Contest of Champions II, I think of the Infinity Gauntlet. Bear with me on this. Infinity Gauntlet was a popular Marvel miniseries starring a bunch of heroes that was eventually used as the basis for Marvel Superheroes, a very good arcade fighting game. While the game did include characters like Psylocke, Magneto, Juggernaut, Blackheart and Shuma Gorath (that still boggles my mind), the gist of the story was that it was supposed to be a retelling of Infinity Gauntlet, only the heroes aren’t useless.
What does this have to do with Contest of Champions II? Marvel Superheroes was a fighting game based on a Marvel miniseries. Contest of Champions II is the opposite. It’s a Marvel miniseries based on fighting games.
Funny thing about fighting games is that there aren’t many variations of the story out there. For the most part, every fighting game’s story is based on one of two concepts. Sometimes it’s just about a quest where different characters run around with a goal, meet each other and fight. Marvel Superheroes was basically this. The other, more popular one, is the tournament. It’s the easiest reason to have different warriors from different walks of life battle each other, especially when there’s no animosity between some.
The tournament stories are occasionally straight-laced and legit. That’s boring. Many others would have the tournament just be a front. In actuality, the host of the tournament is trying to use this as a way to kill off all threats to his or her plans for world domination. Maybe the host plans on using the beaten warriors as zombie cyborg soldiers. A lot of the time, all the fighting is just a way to unleash some long-imprisoned monster god thing to wreak terror on the lands.
This is pretty much what Contest of Champions II is.
Read the rest of this entry �
So, guess who just got back from a special sneak preview of the Iron Man game coming from SEGA :quagmire:
It was a short preview, and not hands-on, but it looks pretty dope. We saw the 360 rev, which looked really good to be so early. We saw a Siberian stage, with IM versus Russian mercs… Russian mercs run by AIM. Rhodey and Jarvis assist him over a radio.
We saw a couple good scenes. Iron Man can catch missiles and redirect them, turning the enemy against itself. It was an unfinished build, but there was a pretty good sense of speed, and the stage was huge. It’s structured so that you can complete objectives in a mission in the order that feels most comfortable to you, which is kind of cool. Infantry and that kind of thing are really no threat, but heavy armor? Yes, that will rock you but good.
One last thing before I dip– I asked the dev specifically about armors. He said that they’re going to rep the movie first and foremost, but that they’re going to pull on 40 years of Marvel continuity and give us some hot unlockables. War Machine armor is a no-brainer. It’d be kinda cool to see some Hulkbuster armor (renamed, of course) or something from Adam Warren’s Hypervelocity.
One more one last thing– I know one of the dev guys, and he’s local to SF :whatup:
This is probably #348 on the “They made a comic based on this?” list. Somewhere between Pirates of Dark Water and Married with Children. Not saying it’s an undeserved concept. A Vigilante 8 comic sounds pretty good on paper. The reality of Chaos Comics’ output, unfortunately, leaves a lot to be desired.
For those of you who have no idea what Vigilante 8 is, it’s a two-game series from the late-90’s, as part of the all-too-skinny car combat videogame subgenre. You choose one of several cars and drive around different locales, with the mission of not finishing a race, but instead, blowing up every opposing car with rockets, mines and the like. While it never quite received the popularity of Twisted Metal, I personally have always enjoyed the Vigilante 8 series.
The story takes place in the 70’s, during a major oil crisis. The multi-national corporation OMAR (Oil Monopoly Alliance Regime) is out to take out an oil monopoly on the entire world, but the US government won’t back down. As a way to take it to the stubborn Americans, OMAR hires terrorist and explosives expert Sid Burn to blow up several US oil refineries. With his gang, the Coyotes, Burn has an easy enough time beating the law. That’s when the trucker Convoy – who is basically Sam Elliot – starts a group of citizens bent on striking back, calling themselves the Vigilantes. Also, thanks to the discovery of a crashed alien spacecraft, the government has been able to construct some rather advanced weaponry. During a raid by the Coyotes, said weaponry landed in the hands of both the Vigilantes and the Coyotes, increasing the explosive level of their battles.
Read the rest of this entry �
We’re seven issues into the MK series, meaning it’s time to talk about Goro: Prince of Pain. Yes, indeed. Here comes the pain. As you might remember from the last article, Goro was last seen beating up other MK characters until vanishing with no explanation. From there, the story split into Blood and Thunder #4-6 and Goro: Prince of Pain #1-3.
Prince of Pain starts off with Goro wandering around a major US city at night. He comes across a couple cops, who are too stupid to shoot him. Suddenly, a talking crow named Rook appears out of nowhere and vaporizes the cops with green laser vision.
We’re only just getting started. Rook lures Goro to the being that summoned him. He is Zaggot, a green-bearded wizard with a love for all things chaotic. He is completely insane and screams pop-culture nonsense that Goro isn’t meant to understand. Somehow, he’s still not awesome by any stretch of the imagination. I can’t understand it either.
Read the rest of this entry �
In the last article, I covered Malibu’s horrific attempt to do a comic based on the hit fighting game Street Fighter 2. As some of you might know, that wasn’t Malibu’s only attempt at a fighting game comic. Along with their forgotten attempt to make Virtua Fighter’s story look appealing (cancelled after the first issue), Malibu tried some of their magic on the Mortal Kombat series. As a series of mini-series and one-shots, the Malibu Mortal Kombat run went on for 26 issues in total. All-in-all, that’s nothing to laugh at.
But there is stuff to laugh about. Oh, believe me. There is plenty of stuff to laugh about.
This series isn’t to be confused with Midway’s promotional one-shots that came out as prologues for their respective games. Series co-creator John Tobias wrote and did the art for comics based on the events prior to Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and Mortal Kombat 4. You might remember seeing advertisements for these during the demo mode on old MK and MK2 arcade machines (ah, nostalgia), while the harder-to-find MK4 comic came with a pre-ordered copy of the PC version of MK4. These three comics were all decent enough and succeeded in what they were trying to do.
The MK2 one also had a fantastic depiction of the second Sub-Zero, who was shown as being less of a mysterious assassin and more of a tech-savvy businessman with a heart of gold.
Read the rest of this entry �
(Note: I originally posted this article about a year ago, but it fell off the site when hermanos redesigned it. Since we have Mortal Kombat Armageddon coming out in a week and a half, I thought now would be the best time to repost the Malibu comics articles. Expect to see the Mortal Kombat articles back over the next few days)
Street Fighter 2 is probably the most defining videogame in my life. When it came out, I was downright obsessed with it. I’d still be obsessed with it if Capcom would get around to making a new installment. Instead, they give us crap like Capcom Fighting Evolution, which defines itself for the wrong reasons. It actually is Capcom fighting the very concept of evolution.
Back in the 90’s, there was a lot of silly Street Fighter crap that came from the United States. Who can forget the live action Street Fighter movie starring Van Damme and Raul Julia? Or the awful American cartoon? Or the GI Joe action figures? Even worse was the 3D rollercoaster ride where Ryu and Ken blast M. Bison in the balls with a double hadoken.
Read the rest of this entry �
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2021/04/23/mortal-kombat-is-a-surprisingly-great-video-game-movie/
|
en
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‘Mortal Kombat’ Is A Surprisingly Great Video Game Movie
|
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My only big complaint about the new Mortal Kombat movie is that we don’t get to spend more time in feudal Japan.
|
en
|
Forbes
|
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2021/04/23/mortal-kombat-is-a-surprisingly-great-video-game-movie/
|
My only big complaint about the new Mortal Kombat movie is that we don’t get to spend more time in feudal Japan. The opening scene is one of the best in the movie, and it’s the only time we get to explore the past. I could easily watch an entire Mortal Kombat movie set hundreds of years ago without guns and car chases.
Fortunately, even though most of the rest of the movie fast-forwards to present day, it’s still a ridiculously enjoyable ride.
The thing is, most movies based on video games are terrible. Almost all of them. A handful are mediocre and one or two are actually pretty fun. The Sonic movie was an example of a pretty good video game adaptation. The best video game movies aren’t adaptations at all, but rather entirely original stories like Wreck It Ralph and the new Jumanji films. These are great because they make use of video game tropes without feeling the need to attach themselves to a specific video game property.
In some ways, this is how Mortal Kombat succeeds also, even though it’s very much about the weird, grimdark world introduced in the video games. It never shies away from being a ludicrous, over-the-top video game movie. It never tries to hide its roots in self-seriousness or a pretentious story. Instead, it embraces its origin as a video game with lines like “GET OVER HERE!” with gusto and style. This is unabashedly a video game movie from start to finish.
Mortal Kombat also embraces the gory, bloody ultraviolence of the video games series, giving us truly badass fights and some great, twisted fatalities. Sub-Zero freezes another character’s arms off. The entire opening Hanzo Hasashi scene with the Kunai (a rope-knife-spear weapon) is a joyfully blood-drenched bit of martial arts. When Kano—an aggravating Aussie mercenary—kills Reptile, he literally reaches into the monster’s chest and pulls out his beating heart. “Kano wins!” he proclaims gleefully.
Kung Lao offers up the film’s goriest fatality when he uses his sharp-edged hat to cut another character in half. He doesn’t get a great accompanying line, but plenty of the movie’s biggest deaths come with some sort of famous utterance, like the wicked Outrealm sorcerer Shang Tsung’s diabolical quip “Your soul is mine!”
Sonya Blade probably has the most hilarious fatality, but I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice to say, I don’t recall garden gnomes from the Mortal Kombat video games and that needs to be remedied post-haste.
This is how you make a game as brutal and goofy as Mortal Kombat into a movie. It’s live-action but it’s basically a cartoon. It’s very violent but the violence doesn’t ever feel real. It’s not “kid friendly” but I won’t tell you not to watch it with your kids. The script is cheesy but not in a painful, cringey way. It’s just enjoyable. It’s fun. It’s well made. The fights are a blast, the special effects are well done, the good guys are likable and the bad guys are nefarious. Costume design is on-point as well, and the movie’s soundtrack is perfect from start to finish, a vivid, upbeat electronic score that matches the action perfectly.
The whole thing sets up a sequel at the end, with a little nod toward a character we didn’t get to see in this movie (Johnny Cage) and I, for one, will be there for it.
Mortal Kombat is one of those rarest of creatures: a video game movie adaptation that actually works, and does so by leaning into everything that makes both video games and movies fun. The story never gets in the way of the action, and the movie never acts like it’s too good to be a video game. If you want to see Mortal Kombat come to life on the silver screen, you won’t be disappointed.
Now FINISH HIM!
Movie info:
Directed by Simon McQuoid and produced by James Wan, Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson "Jax" Bridges, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han and Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Matilda Kimber as Emily Young and Laura Brent as Allison Young. The film is now in theaters and available to stream on HBO Max.
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https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-video-game-movies/ranker-film
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The 50+ Best Movies Based On Video Games
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[
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[
"Ranker Film"
] |
2011-08-25T00:00:00
|
Over 8K filmgoers have voted on the 50+ Best Movies Based On Video Games. Current Top 3: Sonic the Hedgehog, Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog 2
|
en
|
/img/icons/touch-icon-iphone.png
|
Ranker
|
https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-video-game-movies/ranker-film
|
Adapting popular video games into movies has produced mixed results, with some adaptations failing to capture the essence of their source material. However, sometimes filmmakers were successful in translating the immersive gaming experience onto the big screen. From thrilling action sequences to compelling characters and engaging storylines, these films have demonstrated that it's possible to create gripping narratives from video game lore.
The best movies based on video games are a testament to the creative potential of this sub-genre. They combine elements of the original games with new perspectives to craft a cinematic experience for both fans and newcomers alike. These adaptations have carved out a niche within the film industry and contributed to modern pop culture.
For instance, Sonic the Hedgehog captivated audiences with its charming portrayal of everyone's favorite blue speedster as he teams up with a human counterpart in order to save Earth from peril. The 2002 Resident Evil movie kicked off a highly successful franchise by introducing viewers to an alternate take on the survival horror game series, blending action with terrifying monsters. Additionally, the 1995 version of Mortal Kombat brought fan-favorite fighters from the fighting game into live-action glory, complete with martial arts choreography and memorable catchphrases. These examples showcase how the best movies based on video games can deliver high-quality entertainment that stands on its own merit.
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||
1473
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dbpedia
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2
| 12 |
https://3rdvoicegaming.com/2015/06/10/mortal-kombat-retrospektive-9-mortal-kombat-deadly-alliance-2002/
|
en
|
Mortal Kombat Retrospektive #9: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002)
|
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2015-06-10T00:00:00
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Mortal Kombat returns with a complete overhaul to... pretty much everything, really.
|
en
|
3rd Voice Gaming
|
https://3rdvoicegaming.com/2015/06/10/mortal-kombat-retrospektive-9-mortal-kombat-deadly-alliance-2002/
|
As I mentioned in the previous article, Mortal Kombat was not in a good place at the turn of the millennium and grew less and less relevant as other games stepped up to take its place in the spotlight. Fighting games in general were becoming increasingly niche, arcades were dying as home consoles were getting more advanced, and even the good old moral crusaders you could previously count on for free publicity had moved on from MK to other targets.
One of these new poster boys for video game controversy was a minor 2001 release called Grand Theft Auto III, you may have heard of it. Perhaps the video game industry and the tastes of the audience had changed so much that Mortal Kombat was now completely irrelevant?
Well, turns out that wasn’t quite what was happening. After a few years in the wilderness, Mortal Kombat returned with much fanfare and an awful nu-metal theme in 2002 with the release of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube.
This was the first all-new MK fighting game since 1997 and the first of the main series not to have an arcade version. While it still didn’t skyrocket MK’s popularity back to 1995 levels or anything and, quite frankly, wasn’t all that good, Deadly Alliance was generally well received when it came out and did manage to re-establish Mortal Kombat as a major title in the sixth generation of video game consoles.
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (previously known as Mortal Kombat Vengeance and Mortal Kombat: Dark Alliance, the latter was of course already taken by Baldur’s Gate) is a complete overhaul of the series’ mechanics. The old engine that was still used for MK4/Gold has finally been thrown out and replaced with a fully 3D fighting engine and motion-captured animations based on real-life fighting styles, with each character having two unarmed styles and one weapon style.
The pace of the gameplay has become slow and methodical, and the old high punch/low punch/high kick/low kick layout has been discarded in favor of an Attack 1–4 scheme. The run button has been removed, but the game now has a backdash and some characters can evade attacks with a quick backflip.
Chain combos return with a twist, as each fighter can now switch between different fighting styles by pressing the style change button (L1 on PS2, left trigger on Xbox and GameCube) during combos. The advanced style branch combos, as the game calls them, are how you do the really big damage in this game as the most advanced ones can inflict upwards of 40%. However, they are a massive pain in the ass to actually pull off against an opponent who is fighting back, so you might be better off just repeating a few shorter combos to deal damage.
The weapons aren’t the mostly irrelevant gimmick they were in MK4. In Deadly Alliance, each character’s weapon is a full-fledged fighting style of its own, with its own combos, and weapon attacks do noticeably more damage than unarmed hits. You also take more damage while in the weapon stance, which theoretically balances things out a bit but the difference is quite minor in practice. Many characters can also use their weapons to impale the opponent — losing access to the weapon while it’s lodged in the opponent’s guts but causing damage until the round ends. Some kombatants can also taunt the opponent to heal themselves a bit, or to power up their next attack.
While Mortal Kombat 4 was (rightfully) criticized for not offering anything new aside from some blocky 3D graphics and a couple of token gimmicks, Deadly Alliance arguably goes too far in the other direction. It doesn’t feel anything like the classic MK games, and the gameplay has gone from Benny Hill mode to slow and plodding with stiff animations.
It’s not totally terrible, and back in the day it was enjoyable enough. However, I think most fans of the series would agree that Mortal Kombat really does work better as a straight-up 2D fighter. The arenas themselves are circular and have some sort of a force field surrounding them, although some of them also feature hazards such as statues spitting acid at fighters who get too close.
The fighting styles are a neat idea, but having two unarmed styles doesn’t add much to the game and the system could’ve been streamlined. The increased emphasis on dial-a-combos isn’t necessarily an improvement either, especially considering the fact there is no combo breaker mechanic whatsoever. If you’re stuck in a combo, you’re taking all that damage and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
The new graphics engine is okay and looked quite presentable when the game came out, although the animation is rather stiff and robotic as stated before. The art style is a bit awkward at times as well, as some character designs don’t look right at all. The fighters’ faces get some bruises and wounds during rounds, and someone spent a disturbing amount of time working on the, uh, jiggle physics for the ladies (and Bo’ Rai Cho).
The story is told via a very nice CG animated intro with actual cinematography and production values. Even though the character models themselves aren’t great by today’s standards, it’s still worlds better than anything we saw in Mortal Kombat 4. Quan Chi, still in possession of Shinnok’s original amulet after getting his hands on it in Mythologies, manages to escape Netherrealm and ends up back in Outworld, in a chamber that turns out to be the final resting place of the long dead and forgotten Dragon King and his army.
Quan Chi learns that these mummified soldiers of the Dragon King would be invincible if someone were to revive them, but in order to do so he needs souls from strong warriors. Of course, when it comes to soul-related business, there’s one guy you really gotta call up, and that would be Shang Tsung himself. Quan Chi promises the Outworld sorcerer eternal life and all the souls he wants in exchange for his help, and the titular Deadly Alliance is formed.
Before they can get on with their actual plan, the two sorcerers need to take care of the only two people that have the power to stop them. First of these two is Shao Kahn himself, weakened after his defeat in MK3 but still very much alive and in charge of Outworld. Why not just keep Kahn dead instead of retconning him to be alive just so he can be killed again?
Anyway, the Deadly Alliance swears false allegiance to the Konqueror and murders him. Spoiler: he’s not actually dead after all, but we’ll get to that particular retcon later. With the emperor out of the way, there is now only one person that can disrupt the Alliance’s plans: Liu Kang, the Grand Champion of Mortal Kombat and protector of Earthrealm. Shang Tsung disguises himself as Kung Lao and attacks Liu Kang while the Shaolin monk is practicing at the Wu Shi Academy.
The chosen hero of Mortal Kombat fights well, but doesn’t realize Quan Chi is helping Shang Tsung and is taken down with a surprise attack.
Liu Kang is dead and his soul has been consumed by Shang Tsung, and the game hasn’t even started yet. The sorcerers return to Outworld and begin to revive the ancient army, and with their strongest enemies out of the way there’s just about nothing stopping them from ruling all of the realms. They decide to hold a fighting tournament in Outworld, which is naturally just a ruse and the fighters foolish enough to show up would just get their souls absorbed and put inside a mummified soldier.
Raiden sees that things are going south, so he relinquishes his status as an Elder God and gathers the remaining Earthrealm warriors for a desperate attempt to stop the Deadly Alliance before it’s too late. Now, as we’ve already established, the Dragon King’s army is supposed to be invincible so this is definitely not going to be an easy task.
Deadly Alliance has a total of 23 playable characters, including the two secret ones. The new characters are fairly unremarkable for the most part and a couple of them are downright terrible, but there’s a couple of new faces here that have actually become fan favorites and worthy inclusions to the Mortal Kombat cast. In a rather baffling decision considering this is a fighting game, only twelve of the characters are unlocked at the start. One of the two GBA ports, Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition, also has a couple of exclusive characters.
THE KOMBATANTS:
Kung Lao
Fighting styles: Mantis/Shaolin Fist/Broadsword
Since this game no longer has an obvious main hero, I wasn’t sure who should be shown off first. Kung Lao is, of course, Liu Kang’s Shaolin monk buddy, so I figured I might as well start with him.
As you might expect, he wants to beat the shit out of the Deadly Alliance for killing Liu Kang, but there’s no chance he can do it without a lot of extra training. As such, he travels to Outworld and seeks out Master Bo’ Rai Cho, the man who taught Liu Kang the flying kick he used to defeat Shang Tsung in his first MK tournament. Bo’ Rai Cho trains him to the best of his abilities, and the two journey further into Outworld to stop the Deadly Alliance.
Don’t worry, he’s still got his hat and knows how to use it. He only wears it with his alternate costume, though.
Johnny Cage
Fighting styles: Karate/Jeet Kune Do/Nunchaku
According to his in-game bio, Johnny “had been fed up with the lame writing on his current movie “Mortal Kombat: The Death of Johnny Cage”, in which his character repeatedly died and was resurrected.” No mention of his actual death and resurrection is made at any point, so I suppose this is their way to retcon the whole thing. Sure, okay. Throw it on the pile.
Johnny joins Raiden and the rest of the good guys on their journey to Outworld. Because he’s Johnny Cage, he parachuted to the location they were supposed to meet up at, which would be the beach outside Shang Tsung’s abandoned island fortress.
Cage still has his shadow kick and force balls, as well as a sliding uppercut that can be used to duck under projectiles. I realized just now that he no longer has his nut punch. What the hell? This game officially sucks.
Sonya Blade
Fighting styles: Kenpo/Tae Kwon Do/Kali Sticks
After finishing a mission with her team, Sonya is informed by Jax that someone has destroyed the Outer World Investigation Agency’s portal chamber and that there’s now two OIA agents stranded in Outworld. Sonya and Jax join the other Earthrealm warriors and Raiden at Shang Tsung’s old island fortress to plan their next move and help the thunder god and fellow fighters in their attempt to take down the Deadly Alliance. No matter what it takes, Sonya is going to rescue the agents and bring them home.
Sonya’s special moves are a flying kick and a poison kiss that stuns the opponent. Even though most of her old special moves are gone, she does have some very effective combos.
Jax
Fighting styles: Muay Thai/Judo/Tonfa
When a traitor destroys the OIA headquarters, Jax barely escapes with his life. He swears to catch the culprit and kill them for what they did to his friends, and when he travels to Outworld with Raiden and the other warriors he discovers that the traitor Hsu Hao (sighhhh…) is now working for the Deadly Alliance.
Jax is now capable of using his submachine gun in kombat and says “awwww yeaahhhh” whenever he does. He also has an alternate outfit with normal human arms. Can he remove those metal implants like in the MK: Annihilation film, or is that costume just non-canon?
Kenshi
Fighting styles: Tai Chi/San Shou/Katana
Easily the coolest and most popular character to come out of this game, Kenshi is a blind swordsman with telekinetic powers. Years ago, Shang Tsung found out Kenshi was a descendant of an ancient line of warrior kings and wanted to consume the souls of those kings. At this time, Kenshi was a wandering fighter who only strove to be the best and had no idea of his ancestry, and Shang Tsung (disguised as an old man named Song) convinced him that a warrior as great as him needed an equally great sword… and he knew just the thing.
Kenshi and Song journeyed to the ancient tomb where Song had said the sword was located, and Kenshi proceeded to unseal the well that apparently contained the sword. This well happened to be the resting place of the souls of his ancestors, which overwhelmed Kenshi and left him permanently blinded. Shang Tsung absorbed the souls and left Kenshi for dead.
However, it turns out the sword of Kenshi’s ancestors actually was in the well. It spoke to Kenshi and guided him out of the tomb while also revealing that Kenshi was the descendant of the warrior kings. Kenshi spent the following years training, honing his senses and looking for the man who had deceived him. Eventually, his talents were discovered by OIA agents Jax and Sonya, and Kenshi joined the agency soon after.
While on an assignment to locate a missing agent in Outworld, Special Agent Kenshi came across Ermac and freed him from Shao Kahn’s mind control. Ermac thanked his rescuer by training him at the art of telekinesis, including teaching him the Telekinetic Slam.
Kenshi eventually discovered the Deadly Alliance’s plans, but was unable to contact HQ because of its recent destruction. He was going to have to face the Deadly Alliance alone, which was a problem because the sorcerers already knew he was there and had actually sent one of their henchmen to take care of him.
Cyrax
Fighting styles: Ninjitsu/Sambo/Pulse Blade
The former Unit LK-4D4 had his soul restored with the help of Sonya and Jax, and Cyrax is now Special Agent Cyrax of the Outer World Investigation Agency. On his latest scouting mission to Outworld, Cyrax was attacked by a reptilian creature and his arm console was damaged in the encounter. While he did manage to fend off the attacker, his inter-realm teleporter was now busted and he was stuck in Outworld until he found another way to get out.
Eventually, Cyrax met a vampire named Nitara and struck a deal with her: if Cyrax retrieves an orb from a lava pit and brings it to her, she will return him to Earthrealm. Cyrax didn’t fully trust the vampire but accepted the offer anyway, as he didn’t really have a choice. Even though Cyrax’s cyborg body is able to withstand extreme conditions for a short time, his sensors were fried almost immediately and he had to blindly grab for the orb. He managed to find it, though, and handed it over to Nitara who then sent him back to Earthrealm by creating a portal.
Cyrax can still throw bombs, but his energy net is gone. He can, however, extend a huge sawblade from his chest compartment and has a new spin kick move. Cyrax’s unmasked alternate outfit implies parts of his body (including his arms) are still human, although that doesn’t stop him from pulling his opponent into his chest compartment and grinding their body into pieces.
Kitana
FIghting styles: Eagle Claw/Ba Gua/Steel Fans
Leading the Edenian army’s offensive against the weakened Shao Kahn, Kitana made an alliance with the Shokan armies of Outworld. However, this didn’t last long, as Goro was killed in battle and the now leaderless Shokan spiraled into chaos. Edenia eventually won anyway, due to the death of Shao Kahn at the hands of “unknown assailants”.
Kitana thought she could finally return home and live in peace, but then the Deadly Alliance’s undead soldiers began to show up because Edenia just can’t catch a break. Her army engaged them but were cut down, and their souls left their bodies to fly towards a bright green beacon in the distance. Kitana also learns of Liu Kang’s death and secretly wishes he had joined her in Edenia years ago.
Kitana has been hit hard by the gameplay changes, and she is nowhere near as good as she used to be in previous games. Her only special moves are the “Pretty Kick” (basically just a flying kick) and the fan lift, which isn’t even a lift any more as it only drags the opponent towards her horizontally. I suppose that makes it easier to start a chain combo.
Bo’ Rai Cho
Fighting styles: Drunken Fist/Mi Zong/Jojutsu
Liu Kang’s old master is originally from Outworld, which means he couldn’t enter the Mortal Kombat tournament because that would have counted in Outworld’s favor. Bo’ Rai Cho is a master of the Drunken Fist style and apparently hangs out in Earthrealm because our booze is much better than the swill they have in Outworld. When Kung Lao informs him of Liu Kang’s death, he trains Kung Lao for the coming battle against the Deadly Alliance and accompanies the monk to Outworld.
Bo’ Rai Cho has been described as “too low-brow for Mortal Kombat” and one of the worst characters ever due to his tendency to projectile vomit during fights (with the opponent slipping on the puddles) and fart when he jumps or changes fighting styles. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of him either, but believe me, he’s nowhere near the worst character in Deadly Alliance.
Li Mei
Fighting styles: Baji Quan/Lui He Ba Fa/Sai
Li Mei is an Outworlder whose village was forced into slavery to build a palace fortress around Shang Tsung’s soulnado (a portal to the heavens that the bad guys use to tap into infinite souls). Her fighting spirit caught the eye of Quan Chi, and the sorcerer promised her that her people would be freed if she managed to win a fighting tournament. If she lost, her people would remain slaves and she would serve the Deadly Alliance forever.
Li Mei actually wins the tournament, but in a shocking turn of events, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung turn out to be assholes who never intended to keep their word. Li Mei’s soul was the last one the sorcerers needed for their undead army, and so she finds herself trapped inside a mummified soldier… forever. Or at least until the next game, thanks to Bo’ Rai Cho’s timely interruption.
Li Mei isn’t exactly a fan favorite character, but I don’t mind her. She has some really good special moves and combos, and she fights with sais which reminds me of Mileena. I quite like her storyline as well.
Sub-Zero
Fighting styles: Shotokan/Dragon/Kori Blade
Sub-Zero has taken control of what was left of the Lin Kuei (basically nothing) and is trying to reform the clan as a force for good instead of dickbag assassins who rip people’s spines out for fun and profit. When Raiden shows up and asks for his help against the Deadly Alliance, Sub-Zero joins the god of thunder to show the world that the Lin Kuei is no longer the corrupt and evil organization it was under its previous leadership. Usually, a Grandmaster wouldn’t go on such a dangerous mission, but Sub-Zero thinks it’s necessary if he wants to earn the respect of his students. His freezing powers have been boosted by the Dragon Medallion he obtained a while ago, so he is ready for anything.
For some reason, Sub-Zero looks like a Sub-Zero’s dad in this game. This look wasn’t too popular among MK fans, but at least there’s the alternate ninja costume he can wear. Sub-Zero has apparently advanced way past such beginner moves as the ice slide and the ice puddle, so now he just has his regular ice blast and a different slide that is more like a shoulder charge. He’s also upgraded from ripping out your spine to ripping out your entire skeleton.
Frost
Fighting styles: Tong Bei/Yuan Yang/Ice Daggers
When Sub-Zero took over as the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei, he held a tournament to recruit the best fighters he could find. Frost won the tournament handily, and Sub-Zero was so impressed with her abilities that he broke Lin Kuei tradition and made her his personal apprentice. Frost learned quickly and her freezing powers grew strong, but she also got increasingly arrogant at the same time.
Frost’s training was interrupted when Raiden came to ask for Sub-Zero’s help. Sub-Zero took her with him, hoping that she could learn some humility and perspective from actual battle experience. This did not happen, and in fact Frost had joined her master on the journey to Outworld due to her own selfish reasons.
It turns out Frost had wanted to be the Grandmaster herself all along. She betrays and attacks Sub-Zero and takes the Dragon Medallion, but doesn’t have the strength and discipline to control its power and is consumed by her own freezing ability.
Frost has the ground ice and slide moves Sub-Zero no longer bothers with, and some of her chain combos are completely insane. She also has an alternate outfit that makes her look a lot like Killer Frost from the DC comic books.
Raiden
Fighting styles: Nan Chuan/Jujutsu/Staff
Poor old Raiden. Just when he became an Elder God and thought he could ascend to the heavens and play golf with his fellow Elder Gods (or whatever it is they do up there), Shang Tsung and Quan Chi just had to go and murder Liu Kang and threaten the realms again. Time for the god of thunder to head back down to Earth and gather the warriors once more. He’s getting too old for this shit, I think.
The animation for his electrocution grab move is MK4 levels of hilarious.
Scorpion
Fighting styles: Hapkido/Pi Gua/Ninja Sword
Scorpion was having a blast beating the shit out of Quan Chi in the Netherrealm, but unfortunately the sorcerer managed to escape with some assistance from two Oni (demons from the Netherrealm, basically). Scorpion followed Quan Chi through the portal and ended up in Outworld, but in a different location. Not that that’ll ever stop him from hunting down that bald bastard who killed his family and clan.
What does stop him, though, are the two Oni who have also followed Quan Chi to Outworld. They ambush Scorpion and toss him in the soulnado, which rips his hell-spawned body apart. Scorpion seemingly getting killed off in his ending would be a lot more dramatic if everyone didn’t know that Ed Boon loves him.
Scorpion doesn’t have his teleport punch in this game, which is just as well because half the time it would just teleport him into the exact same spot and get him killed. He does, however, get a new flip kick and is able to summon hellfire. And of course, the spear is still there, even though they changed the input for some reason.
Nitara
Fighting styles: Leopard/Fu Jow Pai/Kama
Nitara is a vampire, on a quest to separate her original realm from Outworld. In order to do this, she needs to get her hands on the orb that binds the realms together. She knows where the orb is, but is unable to actually access it because there is no way for her to survive in a lake of molten lava. One day, the cyborg Cyrax shows up and Nitara sees an opportunity.
Of course, the vampire knows that Cyrax probably isn’t going to wander into a lava pit out of the goodness of his heart (or whatever cyborgs have instead of a heart) and she needs to give him something in return for his services. So, she hires Reptile to attack Cyrax and break his teleporter. Once that is done, she’ll introduce herself to the cyborg and offer to help him get out of Outworld.
The plan actually works and Nitara gets the orb. After sending Cyrax back to Earth, she smashes the orb and frees her realm, waking up back home.
Being a vampire, Nitara can suck blood from her opponents. She can also spit blood back at them and glide for short distances. In case you’re wondering how she can fight on stages that take place in daylight, the explanation is that only Earthrealm’s sun harms vampires. Obviously.
Reptile
Fighting styles: Hung Gar/Crab/Kirehashi
After Shao Kahn is killed by Shang Tsung and Quan Chi while Reptile is distracted by Nitara (for her plan to work, she needs Shao Kahn to be killed and lures Reptile away from his master), the Saurian desperately seeks a new master. He ends up serving Nitara, who manipulates him and Cyrax into a fight.
Eventually, Reptile realizes he has been fooled and his master died as a result of the vampire’s plan (to be fair, the plan probably didn’t make any kind of difference except that Reptile most likely would have died had he been there), so he hunts down Cyrax and Nitara in an effort to get his revenge. However, by the time he gets there, the two are gone and all that’s left is residual magical energy… and a dragon egg. The egg hatches and a beam of light hits Reptile, transforming him. The Dragon King lives again.
As you can see from his picture, Reptile has gone full Lizardman from Soulcalibur for this game. In the story, the change is explained as him devolving and becoming more beastly due to prolonged separation from his race. His in-game model looks goofy as hell, and the ridiculous crab walk he does while using his second fighting style doesn’t look any more dignified. I never thought I’d say this, but bring back the palette-swap ninja look.
Kano
Fighting styles: Xing Yi/Aikido/Butterfly Knives
Kano was presumed dead after his encounter with Sonya during the events of MK3. The two fought on a rooftop and Kano was thrown off, and he would have died if Motaro hadn’t been observing the fight. The centaur healed him and threw him in prison for his failure, but Kano escaped when Sheeva killed Motaro. Kano and Sheeva came up with a plan to assassinate Shao Kahn, but Kano decided to turn on Sheeva at the last second and left her at the mercy of the Konqueror. For this, Kano was promoted to General in Kahn’s army.
Kano turned out to be a pretty damn good general and actually managed to repel the attack from the Edenians and Shokan, albeit with Goro’s death sending the Shokan ranks into disarray. He returned to Shao Kahn’s palace just in time to witness the attack from the Deadly Alliance. Once Kahn had been taken down, Kano emerged from the shadows to offer his services to the Alliance.
Everyone loved the late Trevor Goddard’s performance as Kano in the 1995 MK movie, so now Kano is officially Australian. (Goddard wasn’t, he was actually British and pretended to be Australian to land a certain role, and it stuck). One of his combos, “Ear to Ear” is a reference to a line in the film. By the way, that thing he wears around his neck is a lock of Sonya’s hair that he cut off during their rooftop fight. Not creepy in the slightest.
Mavado
Fighting styles: Long Fist/Wing Chun/Hookswords
Mavado is the leader of the Red Dragon clan, which is kind of like the Black Dragon but red. Actually, the Black Dragon was formed when a bunch of Red Dragon members didn’t like the clan’s code restraining them and went off to start their own, presumably with blackjack and hookers. Mavado seems to prefer using his intelligence rather than brute force, and at one point he seemingly killed Kabal and stole his hookswords.
Mavado is hired by the Deadly Alliance to hunt down Kenshi in exchange for a fight with Kano, the last survivor of the Black Dragon. He does exactly that and defeats Kenshi, who is nearly killed as a result. Presumably, he also defeats Kano, as the latter is said to have been in prison the next time he shows up in an MK game.
Honestly, this guy is kind of boring. He zips around with silly grappling hooks and that’s about it, his only special move is a grappling hook strike. His alternate outfit makes him look like Strider Hiryu, though, and I wish they had kept his original concept that looked like a matador.
Hsu Hao
Fighting styles: Shuai Chiao/Wrestling/Sun-Moon Blades
I could say that this guy is unpopular, but that would be the understatement of the year. The MK fans hate Hsu Hao. The MK developers and writers hate Hsu Hao. Nobody likes Hsu Hao. Seriously, take one look at this worthless doofus. Is that a guy you want to play as in Mortal Kombat?
But hey, maybe he’s better in gameplay? Not really, no. He has a couple of decent combos and that’s it, his special moves (all two of them) are godawful, although I suppose that he might not be completely shit gameplay-wise if you really want to play a grappler character. And even then you’re playing as Hsu Hao, so you lose no matter what. The best thing about Hsu Hao is the fact his alternate outfit makes him look like a giant baby, especially combined with his Shuai Chiao stance.
In the story, Hsu Hao is Mavado’s henchman who is hired to infiltrate the Outer World Investigation Agency. Somehow, Jax and Sonya don’t tell him to go fuck himself the second he walks through the door and he completes his mission, infiltrating the agency and destroying the HQ. Jax eventually catches up with him and rips out his artificial heart, giving him a “most painful death”.
Drahmin
Fighting styles: Netherealm(sic)/Oni/Iron Club
Drahmin used to be a cruel warlord in Outworld hundreds of years ago. When he died, he was cast down to Netherrealm for his crimes and was tortured until he completely lost his sanity and humanity. Eventually, he accepted his fate and was turned into Drahmin, the Oni Tormentor. When Quan Chi was running from Scorpion, he enlisted the help of Drahmin and fellow Oni Moloch by promising them freedom.
Drahmin’s concept is kind of cool, but unfortunately he sucks quite hard. He’s painfully slow and doesn’t have any chain combos, and his special moves aren’t particularly good either so he’s just kind of terrible. He also has a swarm of flies constantly buzzing around him, which is incredibly annoying. And why does he wear pro wrestling trunks? Is he going to challenge for the IWGP world title at the next Wrestle Kingdom?
Quan Chi
Fighting styles: Tang Soo Do/Escrima/Broadswords
The sorcerer has a new look that may remind you of some other video game character. Indeed, when God of War came out, I went “oh, nice to see Quan Chi’s still getting work.”
I think his storyline has been talked about enough in this article, so let’s just get to the gameplay stuff. Quan Chi still has his awesome green skull fireballs and his Rising Star kick, but the most memorable thing about him in this game is his fatality. His leg rip fatality was the best one in MK4 and possibly the entire series, but now he has the worst one of them all — he grabs the opponent’s head and pulls on it, stretching the neck to a ridiculous length. This was apparently added very late in development and no one liked it, but there was no time to make a new fatality for him so it got to stay.
Quan Chi and Shang Tsung are fought one after the other (in separate fights) in the game’s arcade mode. Which one of them acts as the final boss depends on your chosen character, but neither is particularly hard to defeat.
Shang Tsung
Fighting styles: Snake/Crane/Straight Sword
No Mortal Kombat character has been hit harder by the move to 3D than Shang Tsung. His defining trait in the 2D games was his ability to morph into other kombatants, but that was no longer feasible with 3D models. So, now he only has some fireballs (some of which are shot in a circle because 3D!!) and a soul steal move that lets him regain a bit of health.
Just like Quan Chi, he’s fought as an underwhelming boss at the end of the arcade mode.
Moloch
Before you get to the Deadly Alliance, you have to take care of this fine fellow here. Moloch the Oni Destroyer is this game’s horribly powerful sub-boss that will clobber you into submission. His thing is that nothing seems to faze him, projectiles only stagger him a tiny bit and his punches (with a literal wrecking ball in his palm) go through mostly everything.
I did manage to get a flawless victory on him, though. Used a quick attack that interrupted his strikes and then spammed a simple chain combo, although I doubt that would work on harder difficulties than “potato”.
Blaze
Fighting styles: Hapkido/Jeet Kune Do/Xing Yi
One of the secret unlockable characters. Blaze is an elemental from Outworld, on a quest throughout the realms. His quest was interrupted when the long-dead Dragon King’s servants enslaved him with their magic and forced him to protect the last remaining Great Dragon Egg until it finally hatches and the Dragon King returns.
Blaze was first seen in the background of The Pit II in Mortal Kombat II, as a burning figure initially dubbed “Torch”. The name was changed to Blaze for Deadly Alliance in order to avoid copyright infringement. You know, Human Torch and all that.
He was a late addition to Deadly Alliance, which is why he doesn’t have his own fighting styles or a fatality.
Mokap
Fighting styles: Tai Chi/Karate/Tae Kwon Do
The other unlockable character is a joke and Carlos Pesina homage more than anything else. He is a motion capture actor working on Johnny Cage’s latest movie and somehow ends up fighting on the side of the good guys during the events of this game.
GBA EXCLUSIVE CHARACTERS:
Sareena
Fighting styles: Tae Kwon Do/Yuan Yang/Sai
When Shinnok attacked her, the demon Sareena lost her human form and was sent back to the fifth plane of the Netherrealm. She remained there in her demon form until she discovered an abandoned portal leading to Outworld. In Outworld, she learned to feed off the living aura of the realm and was now able to remain in human form without Quan Chi’s sorcery.
She later encounters Sub-Zero, who offers her asylum with the Lin Kuei because she helped his brother many years ago. There is a bit of a cliffhanger in her ending, as it states that Sub-Zero might soon discover it may not be a good idea to befriend a demon from the Netherrealm, while Sareena has a shifty look on her face. Obviously, it never leads to anything interesting or, indeed, anything at all.
Sektor
Fighting styles: Ninjitsu/Sambo/Pulse Blade
Sektor was always a ruthless killing machine, but then his programming got corrupted and he got even worse. The first thing he did was kill the Lin Kuei’s Grandmaster and try to take control of the clan, but Sub-Zero managed to defeat him. In the aftermath of the battle, Sektor flees to Japan and starts his own clan of cybernetic ninjas called the Tekunin.
Noob Saibot
Fighting styles: same as Scorpion, apparently, the wiki only lists Ninja Sword
The dark ninja from Netherrealm is still taking orders from Shao Kahn and turns out to be the person who kills Goro (albeit when the Shokan is already exhausted from battle, but still).
Whew! That was a lot of characters and storyline to cover. And it’ll only get worse from here… Oh, by the way, some of the cut characters included Tiamat and Baphomet. I’m sure they would’ve ended up being dumb and disappointing, but they at least sound a lot cooler than Hsu Hao and Mavado.
Aside from the fatalities, all the moves in this game are taught to you via the new Konquest Mode, an extended tutorial consisting of ten missions for each fighter. Konquest also gives you each character’s backstory in text boxes between the tutorial missions, and finishes with a mirror match with five rounds. Some of the text boxes also have some fairly amusing writing.
Not everyone has the same missions in Konquest; some characters have actual fights on top of the mirror match at the end, and others get to participate in a “Trial of Blood” in which you try to spill 50 or 80 pints of the opponent’s blood before the timer runs out (not too hard if your weapon can impale the opponent, entirely too hard if it can’t). Generally, Konquest teaches you your character’s basic attacks, basic combos, special moves and advanced combos, in that order.
The AI ramps up the closer you get to finishing Konquest with everyone, so by the time you’ve done 178 out of 218 missions it will be in full “fuck you player” mode and winning becomes massively difficult. Some of the harder style branch combos are an absolute nightmare to perform as well, especially if the opponent happens to be moving. You will never be using any of these in an actual fight in this game unless you have four hands, so I don’t know why Konquest insists you learn them in order to progress.
By completing missions in Konquest and winning fights, you earn Koins. These come in six different colors and are used to unlock content in the Krypt, which makes its very first appearance in this game.
Most of the coffins in the Krypt don’t have anything particularly interesting in them (mainly concept art and other junk), but some of them have unlockable characters, outfits and stages. The problem with all this is that you need to grind for Koins to earn all this stuff, and it just takes forever. You can’t even exchange Koins for different ones.
Of course, everybody knows that the best unlock in the Krypt is this:
While looking for this, I noticed there is an actual Cooking with Scorpion series on Youtube. Couldn’t bring myself to watch it yet, but some of the episodes seemed to feature Batman and Sub-Zero as special guests.
All your Koins and unlocks are tied to the profile you create when you start playing, and I think you’re supposed to be able to wager Koins against other profiles but I haven’t really messed around with that because who cares.
Speaking of wagering Koins, Test Your Might returns along with a new minigame called Test Your Sight, where an MK logo is hidden in one of several cups and you need to keep track of the one it’s in. Both of these are still nice diversions, and you can also set them to happen more or less often if you feel like it.
Deadly Alliance was released on all three sixth-gen consoles, and the versions are more or less identical from a technical standpoint and completely identical in content. The DualShock 2 is undoubtedly the best controller for this game’s control layout, though, so unless you’ve got an arcade stick the PS2 version is probably your best bet if you want to play this game for some reason.
I’ve mainly been playing the GameCube version for this article, and let me tell you — that d-pad is useless for Mortal Kombat. I can barely hit the easiest special moves with that thing, and I’m quite sure I could learn to throw fireballs in real life before completing Konquest on the GameCube controller. Then I tried playing the game on the Dolphin emulator and using a DualShock 4, which made things at least a hundred times better and more responsive.
As is probably evident by now, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance is not a great game by any means. It did, however, revive the series for the sixth generation of game consoles and spawned a couple of sequels using the same engine. Since the engine was more or less done, the MK team could focus on improving things and adding more content into the next game. And man, did they ever add more content into the next game.
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2011-09-24T03:47:40+00:00
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Johnny Cage Real Name John Carlton Age 29 (as of MK) Height 6' (1.83 m) Weight 190 lbs. (86 kg) Status Movie Star Origin Earthrealm (Venice, California) Resides Earthrealm Species Human Weapons Bowie Knife (MK4) Pistol (MK4) Nunchaku (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A) Fighting Styles Jeet Kune Do (MK:DA, MK:D) Karate (MK:DA) Shinto Ryu (MK:D) Shorin Ryu (MK:A) Alignment Good Appearances Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat II Mortal Kombat Trilogy…
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https://staticlink02.wordpress.com/mortal-kombat-9-characters/
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Johnny Cage
Real Name John Carlton Age 29 (as of MK) Height 6′ (1.83 m) Weight 190 lbs. (86 kg) Status Movie Star Origin Earthrealm (Venice, California) Resides Earthrealm Species Human Weapons Bowie Knife (MK4)
Pistol (MK4)
Nunchaku (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A) Fighting Styles Jeet Kune Do (MK:DA, MK:D)
Karate (MK:DA)
Shinto Ryu (MK:D)
Shorin Ryu (MK:A) Alignment Good Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception (cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
John Carlton, better known as Johnny Cage, is an action movie martial artist in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the most recurring characters and one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game.
About Johnny Cage
Johnny Cage is a Hollywood movie star. Originally entering theMortal Kombat tournament to display his fighting skills and prove himself to skeptical movie critics and the movie-viewing public, who believed Cage was nothing more than an actor who relied too much on stunts and camera work and not a real proficient fighter. Eventually, Cage becomes one of the most important defenders of Earthrealm. Though he occasionally lapses into his former selfish and materialistic ways, he has always been a brave and loyal warrior for Earthrealm.
Goro
Real Name Goro Age 1995 Height 8′ 2″ (2.5 m) Weight 550 lbs. (249 kg) Status Prince Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Shokan (Draco Lineage) Affiliations Shao Kahn‘s Army
Kitana‘s Army (former) Weapons Dragon Fangs (MK:D, MK:A) Fighting Styles Shokan (fighting style) (MK:D,MK:A)
Kuatan (fighting style) (MK:D) Alignment 1st Timeline: Neutral/Evil
2nd Timeline: Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat (sub-boss)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (sub-boss)
Mortal Kombat 4 (sub-boss)
MK: Deception (GameCube exclusive)
MK: Shaolin Monks (sub-boss)
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
MK 2011 (sub-boss)
Goro is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut in the first Mortal Kombat game as the game’s sub-boss.
Goro is one of the original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game as the sub-boss, and later appeared as the sub-boss of Mortal Kombat 4 (only available on home consoles). He first became playable in the Game Boy port of Mortal Kombat.
About Goro
He appeared as a four-armed Shokan warrior who had been the champion of the Mortal Kombat tournament for nine generations, remaining undefeated for 500 years.
Goro is among Shao Kahn‘s favorite warriors and is well known for his power and brutality. Goro helped the emperor grow closer to dominating Earthrealm, but he lost at the tenth while fighting against Liu Kang, who later defeated the sorcerer Shang Tsung.
Liu Kang
Real Name Liu Kang (劉鋼) Age 24 (as of MK) Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m) Weight 185 lbs. (80kg) Status Mortal Kombat Champion Origin Earthrealm (Honan Province, China) Resides Earthrealm Species 1st Timeline: Zombie/
Spirit (formerly Human)
2nd Timeline: Human Weapons Dragon Sword (MK4, MKG)
Nunchaku (MK:D, MK:A) Fighting Styles Jun Fan (MK, MKII, MK3,UMK3, MKT, MK:D, MK:A)
Pao Chui (MK:D)
Karate (MKII)
Jeet Kune Do (MK:SM)
Choy Lay Fut (MK:SM)
Monkey (MK:SM)
Dragon (MK:SM) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (as Human/Spirit),
Neutral (as Zombie)
2nd Timeline: Good Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deadly Alliance (cameo)
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deception
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Liu Kang (劉鋼) is a character that features in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game. He serves as the main protagonist of the series and is the Grand Champion of Mortal Kombat in the first four tournaments.
Liu Kang is also one of the most easily accesible characters in the series, and one of the most powerful warriors of Earthrealm, and has beaten many to prove his valor. Throughout the series, Liu Kang has been gradually portrayed as the main hero, becoming champion after the first Mortal Kombat tournament. The one character who could be considered the closest thing to a nemesis Liu Kang has is Shang Tsung, who has been repeatedly defeated in battle by the Shaolin monk. Because of this, Kang is often considered to be the biggest threat to the plans of Tsung and his emperor, Shao Kahn. He is a member of the White Lotus Society. Kang was killed by the Deadly Alliance of Tsung and Quan Chi.
About Liu Kang
In the first few entries in the series, Liu Kang was shown to be non-violent, in that his finisher did not explicitly kill the opponent. Starting with Mortal Kombat II, however, all of his finishers involved killing the opponent in one way or another. Due to his zombie state in Mortal Kombat: Deception, he has been shown to kill hundreds of innocent people at a time although it’s not really him committing these crimes, but his body itself.
Kano
Real Name Kano (加納) Age 35 (as of MK) Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m) Weight 200 lbs. (91 kg) Status Mercenary Origin Earthrealm Resides Outworld Species Human Affiliations Black Dragon Weapons Butterfly Knives (MK, MK3,MK:DA, MK:A,
MK vs DC, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Xing Yi (MK:DA, MK:A)
Aikido (MK:DA) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II (cameo)
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
MK: Special Forces
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Kano (加納)[1] is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game.
About Kano
A portion of Kano’s face is covered with a metal plate as a result of a disfiguring injury he sustained at the hands of Major Jackson Briggs prior to the events of the series, with the plated eye being a glowing red orb capable of emitting laser-like beams. Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon he rises beyond the level of mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. It was through his resourcefulness that he convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life, and it was through ruthless ambition that he later ascended to position of general of Outworld‘s armies. Kano combines the features of a cowardly minion, a lone survivor, a crazed madman, and an intelligent commander. His actions have made him the enemy of Lt. Sonya Blade.
Noob Saibot
Real Name Bi-Han (璧漢) Age 32 (at death) Height 6′ 2″ (1.88 m) Weight 210 lbs (95 kg) Origin Earthrealm (China)
(Reborn in the Netherrealm) Resides Netherrealm/Outworld Species Wraith (formerly Human/Cryomancer) Weapons Scythe (MK4, MKG)
Ninja Sword (MK:TE)
Troll Hammer (MK:A) Alignment Evil (as Noob Saibot)Neutral (as Sub-Zero) Appearances As Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat
MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat (2011)
As Noob Saibot
Mortal Kombat II (unplayable)
Mortal Kombat 3 (unplayable)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Unchained
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Noob Saibot, once known in life as Bi-Han (璧漢), was a Lin Kueiassassin turned wraith from the Mortal Kombat fighting games series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the original Mortal Kombat arcade game as Sub-Zero, older brother of the current, younger Sub-Zero. He first appeared as Noob Saibot as a secret character in Mortal Kombat II, first becoming playable in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and was a secret character in Mortal Kombat 4. He holds the unique distinction of appearing, in one form or another, as a fighter in all of the first seven main fighting games.
About Noob Saibot
Reincarnated in the darkest of all realms, the Netherrealm, Noob Saibot is the very incarnation of evil. Before becoming a wraith, he was once Sub-Zero, an assassin among the most powerful of Lin Kuei. As Sub-Zero’s name, clothes, and powers would suggest, his character was icy and distant. In all aspects, he was a cold-blooded and violent assassin absolutely dedicated to his clan, the Lin Kuei. While essentially neutral, his soul had become dark and corrupted from years of violence and remorseless killing. Before his story is revealed to the player, the player can make an educated guess on who he was. He disappears after MK, and reappears in MKII reborn as Noob Saibot.
When he died in the first Mortal Kombat tournament at the hands of Scorpion, his soul, corrupted by years of violence, descended to the Netherrealm’s Fifth Plane. The evil within his soul was released, stripping him of pride, compassion, and everything else “human.” He wishes not only to remain in the Netherrealm, but to conquer and rule it. Though he has been seen in the service of conquerors such as Shinnok and Shao Kahn, his ultimate allegiance is himself.
Raiden
Real Name Raiden (雷電) Age Eternal Height 6′ 7″ (2.01 m) Weight 260 lbs. (118 kg) Status Thunder God Origin Heavens Resides Earthrealm Species God Weapons Hammer (MK4)
Staff (MK4, MK:DA, MK:D,MK:SM, MK:A) Fighting Styles Nan Chuan (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A)
Jujutsu (MK:DA, MK:D)
Judo (MK: Conquest)
Tae Kwon Do (MK Conquest) Alignment 1st timeline: Good (Neutral inMK:D and MKA)
2nd timeline: Good Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3 (cameo)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat Advance
Ultimate Mortal Kombat(Puzzle Kombat)
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Raiden (雷電) is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the firstMortal Kombat game.
About Raiden
Raiden is the eternal God of Thunder and former protector ofEarthrealm. After the second defeat of Shinnok, he ascended to the status of Elder God. Being a god, he possesses many supernatural abilities, such as the ability to teleport, control lightning and fly. As a god, he is used to thinking in terms of eternity rather than normal human lifespans, and as such he has a radically different outlook on life.
Reptile
Real Name Reptile Age Unknown Height 6′ (1.83 m) Weight 189 lbs. Status Enforcer Origin Zaterra (Now part of Outworld) Resides Outworld Species Saurian Weapons Kunai (MK, MK 2011)
Battle Axe (MK4, MKG)
Kirehashi (MK:DA, MK:A) Fighting Styles Hung Gar (MK:DA)
Crab (MK:DA)
Pao Chui (MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Neutral/Evil
2nd Timeline: Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat (unplayable)
Mortal Kombat II
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Reptile is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the originalMortal Kombat arcade game as a secret character. He then became playable in Mortal Kombat II.
About Reptile
Reptile is a green garbed, human-like reptilian creature that embodies the archetype of the unhappy underling. Reptile is said to be physically hideous and repulsive, but he is renowned for his great stealth, impressive fighting skills and unquestioning loyalty. Unlike many other henchmen of the lords he has served, Reptile does not strive for power. Rather, he is caught in a delusional state of mind, an obsession about finding the last remaining member of his race, theSaurians, or freeing his homeworld from Outworld‘s grasp. Thus, he always remains loyal to Shao Kahn, only obeying other masters to survive and reach his goal of returning Zaterra to its former glory. While well-meaning and sincere, this obsession is so important to him that it causes him temporary fits of insanity.
Reptile was hidden in the original Mortal Kombat and thus holds the distinction of being the very first secret character to appear in a versus fighting game. Before battles with an opponent he would make his appearance and jump in the middle of the screen in a Sub-Zero win pose. Above his head would be clues on how to find him, such as “Look to la luna” (“the moon” in Spanish or Italian and hinting The Pit stage), “Alone is how to find me” (denoting that he is only unlockable in single player mode), “Perfection is the key” (directing towards the double Flawless victory), or “Tip eht fo mottob” (“Bottom of The Pit” spelled backward). This concept was then copied for Smoke and Jade in Mortal Kombat II.
He was a merge between the original Sub-Zero and Scorpion characters. Mortal Kombat co-creators John Tobiasand Ed Boon admitted in an interview that the “birth” of Reptile was when they took Sub-Zero and Scorpion and fused the two into one and colored him green (yellow + blue = green). They christened this character “Reptile” due to his green color and their reference to lizards. While he wasn’t given a lot of character depth at the time, he was worked on more (character wise) and later, in Mortal Kombat II, Reptile was developed into a full character with his own special moves and would be available from the outset.
It is not quite clear how old Reptile is. Estimates run in the tens of thousands of years or even millions. What is known, however, is that the Earthrealm was nearly destroyed by a battle between the gods millions of years ago. Reptile’s race of raptors or Saurians, escaped to another realm, Zaterra, where it was then invaded and annexed by Outworld’s emperor, Shao Kahn. As was the usual process for Kahn conquering another world, most of the Zaterrans were killed in the ensuing battles, only leaving a handful of people left. Among those, or among those descended from these survivors, was Reptile. Unlike the others of his kind, who were forced into slavery, Reptile was trained to be a servant of both Kahn and Shang Tsung.
Because of this, it is unclear exactly what Reptile’s place of birth is – although Earthrealm, Zaterra, or Outworld are the three likely choices.
Scorpion
Real Name Hanzo Hasashi (藏半藏 Hasashi Hanzo) Age 32 (at death), (Now a Hellspawned spectre) Height 6′ 2″ (1.89 m) Weight 210 lbs. (95 kg) Origin Earthrealm, Japan
(reborn in Netherrealm) Resides Netherrealm Species Wraith (formerly Human) Affiliations Shirai Ryu Weapons Kunai (All appearances)
Mugai Ryu (MK:D, MK:U, MK:A,MK 2011)
Axe (UMK3, MKT)
Long Sword (MK4, MKG)
Ninja Sword (MK:DA) Fighting Styles Hapkido (MK:DA, MK:D, MK:U,MK:A)
Moi Fah (MK:D, MK:U)
Pi Gua (MK:DA) Alignment 1st Timeline: Neutral
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Neutral) Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception
MK: Unchained
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
MK vs DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Scorpion is a resurrected ninja in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game. He holds the unique distinction, along with Raiden and Sub-Zero (in one form oranother), of appearing in every generation of Mortal Kombat games as a playable character.
Scorpion is one of the most popular characters in the Mortal Kombat series. In life, Scorpion was the codename for a human ninja assassin and one of the Shirai Ryu clan’s finest warriors:Hanzo Hasashi.
About Scorpion
It is known that his father, a former member of the Shirai Ryu, forbade his son from joining the clan, as he did not wish for his son to live the life of an assassin. However, Hanzo joined in spite of his father’s wishes in order to provide his wife and son with a comfortable life.
Now, Scorpion is a black and yellow garbed, hell-spawned spectre, inexorably seeking vengeance against those responsible for the destruction of his clan and the death of his own family. Despite the fact that Scorpion has previously allied himself with the forces of evil (when promised either means of resurrection on Earth or the chance to inflict his wrath against those who butchered his clan), he is not inherently evil. In fact, Scorpion has, at times, indirectly assisted the game’s protagonists, although his reasons for doing so ultimately serve to benefit his own motives.
Fans of the series often perceive Scorpion as the title’s foremost anti-hero, due to his tendency to undertake actions which serve to benefit good, albeit in his own gruesome, self-serving and vigilante manner. Scorpion’s demeanor, characteristics, persona and self-reliance have all contributed to his popularity, with Scorpion ironically appearing as the most human in nature and choice when compared to the purely virtuous, “good guys” and the diabolically evil, “bad guys”. Although Scorpion is featured alongside the forces of evil in the opening scene of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, he remains neutral, due to his fierce hatred of Quan Chi.
When masked, Scorpion appears human, although this is merely an illusion. When revealing his true self, only Scorpion’s skull remains, which sometimes appears on fire. Scorpion’s most popular and recognized skill is his famous spear attack, which is used to draw an opponent toward him. This attack will also stun the opponent for a short amound of time. Scorpion will shout, “Get over here!” or “Come here!”, while executing this technique.
Sonya Blade
Real Name Sonya Blade Age 26 (as of MK) Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) Weight 140 lbs. (63.5 kg) Status Special Forces Member Origin Earthrealm (Austin, Texas) Resides Earthrealm Species Human Weapons Wind Blade (MK4)
Kali Sticks (MK:DA, MK:A) Fighting Styles Kenpo (MK:DA)
Tae Kwon Do (MK:DA, MK:A) Alignment Good Appearances Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat II (cameo)
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Lieutenant Sonya Blade, (USA) or Lt. Sonya Blade, (USA), is a female soldier who is a member of Earthrealm‘s Special Forces unit known as Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA) in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She is one of the few original Mortal Kombat characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game.
About Sonya
A member of a top United States Special Forces unit, Sonya Blade is a beautiful, stern, tough-as-nails lieutenant. Her impulsiveness is catalyzed by her superior and good friend, Major Jackson “Jax” Briggs. Sonya represents a very emancipated and headstrong woman, but for all her stubbornness and pride, she deeply cares about the lives of her friends and comrades. She has a long-standing enmity with the thug, Kano, who had murdered a former partner of hers, and stands for everything Sonya despises.
Shang Tsung
Real Name Shang Tsung (尚宗) Age Unknown (beyond 500) Height 5′ 11″ (1.8 m) Weight 210 lbs (95kg) Status Sorcerer Origin Earthrealm Resides Outworld Species Human/Sorcerer Weapons Straight Sword (MK:DA, MK:A) Fighting Styles Snake (MK:DA, MK:D, MK:A)
Crane (MK:DA)
Mantis (MK:D), Mimics Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat (boss)
Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat: Deception(cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Shang Tsung (尚宗)[1] is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is one of the few original characters, debuting in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game, in which he served as the final boss.
About Shang Tsung
A powerful, deadly sorcerer and a primary villain in the Mortal Kombat series, Shang Tsung is a shapeshifter who needs to consume souls in order to sustain his health and life. In the Mortal Kombat series, he is the epitome of cunning and decadence, as symbolized by his preference for lavish parties, grand palaces, and stylish clothing. Unlike the crude Shao Kahn, this bombast is a facade, disguising Tsung’s true intellectual and mental sophistication. His nemesis is Liu Kang, but throughout his unnatural lifespan, he has earned the hatred of many others, including Kung Lao and Kenshi.
Shang Tsung’s early allegiance to Shao Kahn granted him the status of a free roaming sorcerer. As such, he is able to move between realms without detection by the Elder Gods or local deities, an ability which has granted him many opportunities to commit atrocities over the centuries. Only Delia, Shinnok, Shao Kahn, and Quan Chi can match Shang Tsung’s skills as a sorcerer.
Baraka
Real Name Baraka Age Unknown Height 6′ 5″ (1.96 m) Weight 280 lbs (127 kg) Status Enforcer Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Tarkatan Weapons Razor Cane (MKG)
Tarkatan Blades (All Series) Fighting Styles Silat (MK:D, MK:U, MK:A)
Hung Gar (MK:D, MK:U) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Baraka is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut in Mortal Kombat II.
About Baraka
Baraka was introduced as a mean, unforgiving, and unpredictable warrior in service of the Outworld Emperor, Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat II. He belongs to a race of nomadic mutants, later revealed in Mortal Kombat: Deception to be called Tarkata, a crossbreed between vile Netherrealm demons and denizens ofOutworld, apparently populating the vast wastelands of Outworld. Like most members of his race, Baraka possesses long blades extending from his forearms. Although he has had numerous incursions with the Earthrealm warriors, he appears not to have any particular rivalry or hatred towards Earth or its inhabitants. As a loyal warrior, he fights for those whom he calls “master”.
Blaze
Real Name Blaze Age 1000 years (As of MK:U) Height Boss Form = 12′ (3.65 m)
Normal Form = 6′ (1.82 m) Weight Boss Form = 2500 lbs (1134 kg)
Normal Form = 210 lbs (95 kg) Status Guardian Origin Edenia Species Elemental Allies Argus
Delia Fighting Styles Hapkido (MK:DA, MK:U)
Jeet Kune Do (MK:DA, MK:U)
Xing Yi (MK:DA, MK:U)
Flames (MK:A) Alignment Neutral Appearances Mortal Kombat II (cameo)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat: Deception (cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (playable boss)
Blaze is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series who made his debut as a background character inMortal Kombat II. He made his playable debut in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance as a hidden character, and served as the boss of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.
About Blaze
First introduced in the series as a non-playable character seen in the background of the Pit II arena in Mortal Kombat II, Blaze was depicted as an elemental being from Outworld shrouded in flames.[1] As his name and appearance suggests, he has control over fire, lava, heat, etc.In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance Blaze became a playable character and gained more background information. He would later become the final boss of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.
Blaze’s first chronological appearance was supposedly inMortal Kombat II, visible only as a burning figure in the Pit II background, fighting a character fans have since named Hornbuckle does not come without controversy. Daegon is described in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon as being awoken centuries prematurely, due to Caro losing mental contact with Blaze (because of his imprisonment guarding the last dragon egg) and mistook that for the signal to awake Daegon. Also, in Blaze’s Armageddon Bio, Blaze is set free after the egg hatches during the events ofDeception, and is unaware that Daegon was awoken prematurely. It’s not until Blaze gives the signal to wake both brothers he learns that Daegon had already been freed. If the burning figure in Mortal Kombat II was truly Blaze, that means Blaze had been imprissoned to guard the egg sometime after Mortal Kombat II, which means Daegon could not have been awoken centuries earlier because Blaze would have known. With the Black Dragon dating back to before the first Mortal Kombat and the Red Dragon dating back beyond that, it seems the burning figure seen in Mortal Kombat II could not have been Blaze, since at the time he was already guarding the egg.
Jade
Real Name Jade Age Around 10,000 Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) Weight 130 lb. (58.2 kg) Origin Edenia Resides 1st Timeline: Edenia
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Edenian Weapons Steel Fans (MKII, MK 2011)
Bo (UMK3, MKT, MK:D, MK:SM,
MK:A, MK 2011)
Boomerang (UMK3, MKT,MK:D, MK:SM, MK:A, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Fan Zi (MK:D, MK:A)
Kuo Shou (MK:D) Alignment 1st timeline: Good (formerly Evil)
2nd timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat II (unplayable)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deception
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Jade is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She first appeared as a secret, unplayable character in Mortal Kombat II, and first became playable in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
About Jade
Jade is a childhood friend of Princess Kitana. While her motives were unclear, she served Shao Kahn alongside Kitana and Mileenaas his personal assassin for most of her life. When Kitana finally turned against Shao Kahn, Jade was ordered to capture her for the Emperor. She ultimately chose to join her friend, and has since loyally assisted Kitana in her quest to free their native realm and restore its original beauty. Now residing in the freed Edenia, Jade is a General of the Edenian Army and continues to dutifully serve Kitana and her mother Sindel.
Jade’s confident, self-assured and sassy personality was first thoroughly portrayed in her Girls Gone Wired campaign video, but later expanded upon throughout her story in Mortal Kombat (2011). Always known for her loyalty towards Kitana, she has proven herself to be a dependable, sincere and devoted friend to the princess. She is sarcastic, patronizing and cocky towards her opponents, and incredibly ruthless and towards those she considers a personal enemy (at one point splashing Tarkatan essence on the Edenian traitor, Tanya, and allowing her to be torn to pieces by Baraka’s militia).
As a female assassin adorned in a green skin-tight outfit, Jade was initially very similar in appearance to Kitana and Mileena, the only noticeable difference being her darker skin. She appeared first as a hidden, unplayable character in Mortal Kombat II whose moveset were mostly like Kitana’s including the use of the fan blade weapon. To reach Jade, the player would fight a one-player game on the match just before the “?” on the map of the mountain. If the player won at least one round of the match using only the Low Kick button (no punches, High, or Block button presses), they would immediately be warped to Goro’s Lair to fight Jade. The player did not have to win the match — only one round — to fight Jade.
Jade would later become a regular character in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Her main weapon of choice is a metal staff, but she also uses razor-edged boomerangs (dubbed “razorangs”) as well.
Jax
Real Name Jackson Briggs Age 28 (as of MKII) Height 6′ 8″ (2.03 m) Weight 350 lbs. (159 kg) Status Leader of Special Forces Origin Earthrealm Resides 1st Timeline: Earthrealm
2nd Timeline: Earthrealm (asHuman) Netherrealm (asUndead) Species 1st Timeline: Human
2nd Timeline: Undead(formerly Human) Affiliations Special Forces
Outer World Investigation Agency Weapons Spiked Club (MK4)
Tonfa (MK:DA, MK:U, MK:A)
Machine Gun (MK:DA, MK:A,MKvsDCU, Mortal Kombat (2011 video game) Beta)
Bionic Arms All Appearances (Apart from MKII) Fighting Styles Muay Thai (MK:DA, MK:U,MK:A)
Judo (MK:DA, MK:U) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good
2nd Timeline: Good (as Human)
Unwillingly Evil (as Undead) Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Special Forces
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Major Jackson “Jax” Briggs (U.S.A.) is a cybernetically-enhanced soldier who is the leader of the Outer World Investigation Agency (O.I.A.), Earthrealm‘s Special Forces unit, in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat II.
About Jax
Jax was the first African-American character in the Mortal Kombatseries and made his debut in Mortal Kombat II. He is portrayed as an archetypical American hero. In the chain of command of theSpecial Forces, he is Sonya Blade‘s direct superior, and clearly the catalyzing force of Sonya’s impulsiveness. Jax is clear-headed, careful and always keeping a watch on what his men are doing, but when the need arises, he is a beast on the battlefield with the attitude and ferocity of a lion. He unscrupulously makes use of the most advanced technology to improve both himself and his unit. He is responsible for the crime lord Kano‘s disfigurement, forcing him to wear a metal plate over a portion of his face.
Shao Kahn
Real Name Shao Kahn Age Unknown (beyond 10,000) Height 7′ 2″ (2.18 m) Weight 400 lbs (181.4 kg) Status Emperor Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Outworlder Weapons Wrath Hammer (All appearances)
Staff (MKII, UMK3, MKT,MK:SM)
Shao Kahn’s Sword (Mortal Kombat: Conquest) Fighting Styles Tai Tzu (MK:D, MK:A)
Lui He (MK:D) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat II (boss)
Mortal Kombat 3 (boss)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3(boss)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (boss)
Mortal Kombat Advance(boss)
MK: Deadly Alliance (cameo)
MK: Deception (GameCube
exclusive)
MK: Unchained
MK: Shaolin Monks (boss)
MK: Armageddon
Ultimate Mortal Kombat (boss)
MK vs DC Universe (boss
and playable)
Mortal Kombat (2011) (boss)
Shao Kahn is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat II as the boss, a role he also served in Mortal Kombat 3. He serves as the main antagonist of the series in many instances.
About Shao Kahn
Shao Kahn the Konqueror is represented as the embodiment of evil. In many respects, he resembles a large Asian warrior, and is well known amongst the roster of Mortal Kombat Kombatants for his godlike strength which rivals that of Raiden, the God of Thunder. He is also known for his extreme callousness, brutality, ferocity in battle, and his fondness of personal executions, though he has occasionally spared the lives of his subordinates, if they prove their worth, and his victims such as Sindel and Kitana, raising the latter like his own daughter and treating the former like his own wife. However, his true power that has served him well and allowed him to rise above the image of a mere warlord is his high intelligence and profound knowledge of the black arts. Like his subordinate Shang Tsung, he has the power to consume other souls.
Perhaps Shao Kahn’s greatest strength lies in his ability to work towards his goals with great tenacity and his ability to organize. However, his greatest weakness is his arrogance and overconfidence. Shao Kahn has often underestimated mankind, and therefore tried to conquer Earthrealm many times, with or without a queen (consort), to no success.
Kintaro
Real Name Kintaro Age Unknown Height 8′ 5″ (2.57 m) Weight 650 lbs (295 kg) Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Shokan (Tigrar Lineage) Allies Shao Kahn
Goro
Sheeva Enemies Motaro
Raiden
Liu Kang
Kung Lao Weapons Saber Teeth (MK:A) Fighting Styles Tiger Fist (MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011) (sub-boss)
Kintaro is a character from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat II as the game’s sub-boss and became playable in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. InMortal Kombat (2011) Kintaro returns as a sub-boss for the game and carries a more important role in the game’s storyline, presenting himself as the one that burnt Kabal.
Kintaro replaced Goro after Goro was defeated by Liu Kang inMortal Kombat. He is the only member of his race seen thus far to have unique features. Unlike Goro and Sheeva, Kintaro has tiger striped markings all over his body as well as sharp fangs, claws and feline-like feet. According to his Mortal Kombat (2011)bio, this is indicative of the lower-class Tigrar clan of Shokan, differing from the more elite Draco class that Goro and Sheeva belong to, so there are likely more of his kind out there. It should be noted that in each new game, his feline features stand out more than the last.
Kitana
Real Name Kitana Age 10,000 Height 5′ 9″ (175cm) Weight 128 lbs (58kg) Status Princess Origin Edenia Resides 1st Timeline: Edenia
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Edenian Weapons Steel Fans (MKII, UMK3, MKT,
MKAdvance, MKG, MK:DA,
MK:U, MK:A, MK:SM,
MKvsDCU, MK 2011)
Flying Blade (MKG) Fighting Styles Eagle Claw (MK:DA, MK:U)
Ba Gua (MK:DA, MK:U, MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (Formerly Evil)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3 (cameo)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Deception (Action Replay Only)
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Kitana is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She made her debut in Mortal Kombat II.
About Kitana
Princess Kitana is 10,000 years old, but is considered young in her realm of Edenia and only appears to be in her early twenties. Throughout the years, she rose to great importance; first as the loyal stepdaughter of Shao Kahn, then as his enemy, tearing herself away from his grasp and freeing her home realm of Edenia. She also led an army into Outworld to combat any chance of Shao Kahn rising to power again.
She shared a subtle love interest with Mortal Kombat champion Liu Kang, even after he was murdered by the Deadly Alliance. She has aligned herself with the good side, despite her loyalty to Shao Kahn for most of her life, until learning the truth about her past and real family.
Kung Lao
Real Name Kung Lao (功老) Age 24 (as of MKII) Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m) Weight 175 lbs. (80 kg) Origin Earthrealm Resides 1st Timeline: Earthrealm
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Human Weapons Battle Axe (MKG)
Broadsword (MK:DA, MK:A)
Razor-Rimmed Hat (All Series) Fighting Styles Mantis (MK:DA, MK:SM)
Shaolin Fist (MK:DA, MK:SM,MK:A)
Kenpo (MK:SM)
White Lotus (MK:SM) Alignment 1st timeline: Good
2nd timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat: Deception(cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Kung Lao (功老)[1] is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut in Mortal Kombat II.
About Kung Lao
Kung Lao is a former Shaolin monk and a member of the White Lotus Society. He stands in the shadow of his great ancestor, the Great Kung Lao, but unlike his great ancestor he has no desire to be champion and would rather live a life of peace. As well, he has sought counsel from master Bo’ Rai Cho. Of the Earthrealm warriors, Kung Lao is the most outspoken pacifist, although he will not hesitate to severely punish those who attack him, Earthrealm, or his friends. His trademark is his Razor-Rimmed Hat, which he can employ quite powerfully and effectively in combat. Many of his fatalities involve the use of his hat to some extent.
According to MK co-creator John Tobias in a 1995 interview with EGM, Kung Lao’s hat was inspired by the 1964 James Bond movieGoldfinger, in which a character named Oddjob threw his derby hat as a weapon.
Mileena
Real Name Mileena Age Less than a year as of MK 2011 Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) Weight 128 lb (58kg) Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Half-Tarkatan Half-Edenianclone of
Kitana/Genetic Experiment Weapons Long Sword (MKG)
Sai (MKII, UMK3, MKT, MKG,MKD,
MKSM, MKA, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Ying Yeung (MK:D)
Mian Chuan (MK:D, MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deception
MK: Unchained
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Mileena is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She made her debut in Mortal Kombat II.
About Mileena
Mileena is a clone of Kitana, created by Shang Tsung‘s sorcery in his flesh pits for Shao Kahn, using Tarkatan physiology. Vicious and evil, she despises Kitana, and feels that it is her own right to rule Edenia as Princess in her place. Her fondest wish is to kill her “sister”, and claim her existence for her own. Something of an opportunist, she will make use of any chance to seize power that comes within her hands.
Smoke
Real Name Tomas Vrbada Age 34 (As of MK:D) Height 6′ 1″ (1.85 m) Weight Human: 170 lbs (77 kg)
Cyborg: 555 lbs (252 kg) Status Assassin Origin Earthrealm (Prague, Czech Republic) Resides Netherrealm Species 1st Timeline: Cyborg (formerlyHuman)
2nd Timeline: Human/Enenra Weapons Kunai (MKII, UMK3, MKT, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Mi Tzu (MK:D, MK:U, MK:A),Judo (MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (Unwillingly Evil in MK:D)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances MKII (unplayable)
MK3
UMK3
MKT
MKAdvance
MK:D
MK:U
MK:SM
MK:A
MK 2011
Smoke is a ninja assassin who was turned from a human into acyborg in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat II as an unplayable secret character in human form, and first became playable in Mortal Kombat 3 in cyborg form. He appears in the franchise’s reboot, now retaining his human form in canon for the first time in almost two decades.
About Smoke
Smoke debuted in Mortal Kombat II as a hidden character to fight against. He was often spotted in theLiving Forest stage in which he (along with Jade) peeked out of the trees. LikeReptile when he made his first appearance, he was simply a palette-swap ofScorpion with puffs of smoke surrounding him, but would move extremely fast. He would appear randomly before matches, offering clues that would enable the player to fight him, as Reptile had in the originalMortal Kombat.
Smoke would not have his own storyline until he was featured in Mortal Kombat 3, where he was once again a hidden character, but accessible to players with the use of a code. In this appearance, he would be a tortured, human soul trapped in the body of a cyborg. His most defining feature is the fact that he constantly seems to emit a smoke or vapor. This, combined with his power to teleport and turn invisible, once made him one of the Lin Kuei‘s top assassins.
In Mortal Kombat (2011), its revealed that he has long, flowing, ghostly white hair, which, while blown back in renders and artwork, covers his face in game.
Sub-Zero
Real Name Kuai Liang (奎良) Age 32 Height 6′ 2″ (188 cm) Weight 210 lbs. (95 kg) Origin Earthrealm, China Resides Earthrealm Species 1st Timeline:Human/Cryomancer
2nd Timeline: Cyborg (formerly
Human/Cryomancer) Weapons Ice Scepter (MK4, MKG)
Kori Blade (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Shotokan (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A)
Dragon (MK:DA, MK:D) Alignment Good Appearances Mortal Kombat II
Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Tournament Edition(cameo)
MK: Deception
MK: Shaolin Monks
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
MK vs. DC Universe
Mortal Kombat (2011)
See also: Cyber Sub-Zero
Sub-Zero, also known as Kuai Liang (奎良, and formerly known as Tundra), is a Lin Kuei assassin in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He is the younger brother of Noob Saibot, who was the original Sub-Zero in the first Mortal Kombat game. The younger Sub-Zero made his debut in Mortal Kombat II. In one form oranother, Sub-Zero has appeared in every generation of Mortal Kombat games as a playable character.
About Sub-Zero
Sub-Zero is one of the most popular characters in the Mortal Kombat series. There are in fact two incarnations of Sub-Zero, and they are siblings: the older brother Bi-Han, and younger brother Kuai Liang. Both are blue garbed warriors that are members of theLin Kuei that descended from Cryomancers: an Outworld race possessing the ability to generate and control the powers of ice, although both of them were born in Earthrealm. Kuai Liang bears a scar on his right eye which he received between the events ofMKII–MK3. However – as of Deception – the scar has faded away, possibly because of the effects of his Dragon Medallion.
In their biography, both Sub-Zero brothers were sons of a Chinese Cryomancer father and a human mother. It is known that the father of both brothers was a secret operative for the Lin Kuei in the United States. He married an American woman and together they had two sons. Against the will of their mother, the father took the sons with him to move back to China, and as such both brothers were trained as Lin Kuei assassins. This was later retconned as both brothers being kidnapped by the Lin Kuei (this was revealed in Sub-Zero’s trailer in Mortal Kombat 2011).
Bi-Han appeared as Sub-Zero in the first Mortal Kombat, while Kuai Liang went by the codename “Tundra”. After Bi-Han was killed byScorpion during the tournament, Kuai Liang replaced him for the rest of the games – Bi-Han later became the undead Netherrealmwraith, Noob Saibot.
The younger Sub-Zero clearly shares many traits with his older brother, and was perhaps too similar to his brother upon his introduction. Like the elder, the younger Sub-Zero gives the impression of being a stern, distant and cold man who goes about his business silently, without attracting unwanted attention. However, as time progressed, Sub-Zero evolved – from what fans labeled a “carbon copy” of his brother – into a man of great integrity and self-discipline. The disparities between the brothers, who were once neutral and almost indistinct from each other, have now grown so large that one could speak of the evil twin syndrome.
While the younger Sub-Zero was depicted as a young Lin Kuei warrior who was living in the shadow of his older brother, he has since changed and grown into a warrior who has progressed towards the more humane sides of moral issues. This change in characteristics has not only strengthened him as a man, but has also set him apart from his former Lin Kuei counterparts. This included leaving his clan in disgust and breaking the sacred codes of honor, joining the rebellion against Shao Kahn and assisting Raiden and Liu Kang (along with Earthrealm’s other chosen warriors). More recently, he defeated the cyborg assassin known as Sektor after the events of Mortal Kombat Gold to gain the leadership of the Lin Kuei and become the Grandmaster, where he has grown even stronger and more powerful. He is a dependable ally of Earthrealm who is willing to assist when needed, especially when Raiden gives the call. He is without question one of the greatest and most powerful warriors that Earthrealm has to offer. He, like much of the MK cast, also follows a character archetype, in his case the enigmatic hero that shows up to aid the main hero(es) when needed.
Cyrax
Real Name Unknown Age Unknown Height 5′ 11″ (1.8 m) Weight 650 lbs. (295 kg) Origin Earthrealm (Botswana, South Africa) Resides Earthrealm Species Cyborg (formerly Human) Affiliations 1st Timeline:
Lin Kuei (former)
Outer World Investigation Agency
2nd Timeline:
Lin Kuei Weapons Sabre of Light (MKG)
Pulse Blade (MK:DA, MK:A) Fighting Styles Ninjitsu (MK:DA, MK:A)
Sambo (MK:DA) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (formerly Neutral)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (formerly Neutral) Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Gold
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition
Mortal Kombat: Deception(cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Cyrax is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3.
About Cyrax
Making his debut in Mortal Kombat 3, Cyrax was one of the four cybernetic ninjas created by the Lin Kuei, in an effort to convert all members into unfeeling, cold-hearted, cybernetic assassins to improve their performance. He was assigned to hunt down the renegade, former Lin Kuei member Sub-Zero as designated unit LK-4D4. Of the four cyborgs, he has become the second to recover his humanity. This is due to the efforts made by Sonya Blade andJax Briggs. He has currently allied with them as a token of his appreciation. In the alternate timeline, however, he was automated and dutifully serves the Lin Kuei. Cyber Sub-Zero reclaims his humanity instead of Cyrax.
Kabal
Real Name Kabal Age 35 Height 6′ 2½” (1.89 m) Weight 175 lbs (79 kg) Origin Earthrealm Resides 1st Timeline: Unknown
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Human Weapons Hookswords (MK3, MK:D,MK:A, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Sun Bin (MK:D, MK:A)
Goju Ryu (MK:D) Alignment 1st Timeline: Evil/Neutral (formerly Good)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Mortal Kombat Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Kabal is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3.
About Kabal
Kabal was first introduced in Mortal Kombat 3, sporting long, black hair, hookswords, and a respirator. He was a mysterious chosen warrior who survived an attack from one ofShao Kahn‘s extermination squads. And his origin was unkown. However, he was actually a member of the Black Dragon. At the time of his introduction, he appeared as a force for good, but has since reverted to his evil ways, planning to place himself as the head of the new Black Dragon clan. In Mortal Kombat (2011), Kabal is once again good, although his past as a Black Dragon member is mentioned by Kano. Before his disfigurement, he was a cop partnered up with Kurtis Stryker.
Motaro
Real Name Motaro Age Unknown Height 8′ 6″ (2.59 m) Weight 900 lbs (408 kg) (Minotaur)
1,200 lbs (544 kg) (Centaurian) Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species 1st Timeline: Centaurian(formerly), Minotaur
2nd Timeline: Centaurian Allies Shao Kahn
Shang Tsung
Kano
Baraka Enemies Raiden
Kintaro
Sheeva
Sindel
Jax Briggs
Johnny Cage Weapons None Fighting Styles Horse (MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat 3 (sub-boss)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3(sub-boss)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (sub-boss)
Mortal Kombat Advance (sub-boss)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat (sub-boss)
Mortal Kombat: Deception(cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011) (cameo)
Motaro is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3, in which he also served as the sub-boss.
About Motaro
Motaro made his first appearance inMortal Kombat 3. He is aCentaurian, meaning that he has the body of a stallion and the torso of a man. He also has a pair of capricorn-like horns and has a long, metallic rat-like tail he can use as both an energy channeling point and a limb. He is nearly 9 feet tall. Centaurians are known for their hunting skills and their mystical powers.
Motaro, along with his entire race, harbors a deep-seated hatred for the Shokan, whom he sees as inferior. The two races constantly struggle against each other in order to prove their value to Shao Kahn and to finally define which is superior.
Nightwolf
Age Unknown Height 6′ 3″ (1.91 m) Weight 207 lbs (94 kg) Status Shaman Origin Earthrealm (USA) Resides 1st Timeline: Earthrealm
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Human Fighting Styles Val Tudo (MK:D, MK:A)
Tae Kwon Do (MK:D) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deception
MK: Unchained
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Nightwolf is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3.
About Nightwolf
Nightwolf, an Apache warrior, is aNative American character who, although introduced as a historian and a shaman, does not live in the past. He is a proud and fierce warrior dedicated to the cause of good, and is in contact with Raiden through visions. As such, he draws both on internal and external spiritual energy to enhance his power.
Sektor
Real Name Unknown Age Unknown Height 6′ 1″ (1.85 m) Weight 300 lbs. (136 kg) Origin Earthrealm Resides Earthrealm Species Cyborg (formerly Human) Weapons Laser Pistol (MKG)
Pulse Blade (MK:TE)
Pulse Blades (MK:A) Fighting Styles Ninjitsu (MK:TE)
Sambo (MK:TE)
Kenpo (MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Evil (formerly Neutral)
2nd Timeline: Evil (formerly Neutral) Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Sektor is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3.
About Sektor
Throughout the various Mortal Kombat games he was involved in, Sektor has grown into an ever more menacing mechanized warrior. He represents the closest thing to evil a cyborg can be, and combines traits of both a stealthy ninja and a ruthless killing machine fit for modern warfare. In contrast to his counterpartCyrax, Sektor never bothered to rediscover his human side, and may be unable to. As far as this could be said about a cyborg, it is likely that he suffers from a form of insanity. He is capable of independent thought and action like Cyrax and Smoke; however, unlike the other two cyborgs, the only emotion Sektor really displays is anger.
Sheeva
Real Name Sheeva Age Unknown Height 7′ 3″ (2.21 m) Weight 210 lb. (95 kg) Status Master Jailer Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Shokan (Draco lineage) Allies Shao Kahn
Shang Tsung
Goro
Kintaro
Mileena
Noob Saibot
Baraka
Reptile Enemies Raiden
Motaro
Sindel
Kitana
Jade
Kano
Cyrax Weapons Shokan Daggers (MK:A) Fighting Styles Kuatan (MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate MK3
MK Trilogy
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Sheeva is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series who made her debut in Mortal Kombat 3. Sheeva belongs to the ancient race of the Shokan, a race of mighty four armed halfHuman, half Dragon beings from Outworld that are the archenemies of the Centaurian race. Like all of her race, she possesses a tall, muscular build, and four arms. Notably, Sheeva served as the personal bodyguard of Queen Sindel during Shao Kahn‘s failed invasion of Earthrealm.
Unlike Goro and Kintaro, Sheeva was never a sub-boss in the Mortal Kombat series and was always a playable character, therefore she was not as strong as them.
Sindel
Real Name Sindel Age Over 10,000 Height 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) Weight 128 lbs (58 kg) Status Queen Origin Edenia Resides 1st Timeline: Edenia
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Edenian Allies Kitana
Jade
Raiden
Li Mei
Cyrax
Shujinko
Liu Kang
Sonya Blade
Johnny Cage
Nightwolf
Smoke
Jax
Sub-Zero
Kung Lao
Ermac
Stryker Enemies Shao Kahn
Quan Chi
Shang Tsung
Onaga
Motaro
Mileena
Tanya Weapons Kwan Dao (MK:D, MK:A) Fighting Styles Zha Chuan (MK:D, MK:A)
Fu Jow Pai (MK:D) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (Formerly Unwillingly Evil)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Sindel is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She made her debut in Mortal Kombat 3 with a very important role in the storyline. She can also be seen on the side of the MK3arcade cabinet.
About Sindel
Sindel is an exceptional character in theMortal Kombat series (and in fighting games in general). In spite of her gloomy, gothic appearance, Sindel is benevolent in nature. She rules the realm of Edenia alongside her daughter, Princess Kitana. Sindel’s power appears to be more one of an inner, ethereal nature and she in more than one way. She is a distinctly older and mature character, with flowing grey hair and a regal attitude befitting of her role as Queen of Edenia. She has a natural affinity with aerial magic, as evidenced by her ability to levitate and manipulate sonic waves.
In Mortal Kombat: Deception, creator Ed Boon describes Sindel as a challenging character in more ways than one. Although Sindel is not one of the main characters in the series, she was involved in a big part of the game. This had to do with the fact that her ruling over Edenia, and how it was a target to many rulers like Shao Kahn, Shinnok, and Onaga. Sindel was one of the few evil characters to turn good in the series.
Stryker
Real Name Kurtis Stryker Age Unknown Height 6′ 1″ (1.87 m) Weight 197 lbs (89 kg) Status SWAT Member Origin Earthrealm Resides 1st Timeline: Earthrealm
2nd Timeline: Netherrealm Species Human Allies Kabal
Liu Kang
Sonya Blade
Jax Briggs
Sub-Zero
Kitana
Nightwolf
Raiden
Kung Lao
Sindel
Johnny Cage
Smoke
Jade
Cyrax
Li Mei
Shujinko Enemies Shao Kahn
Kintaro
Shang Tsung
Quan Chi
Mileena
Kano Weapons Nightstick (MK3, UMK3, MKT,MK:A, MK2011)
Hand Gun (UMK3, MKT,MK2011)
Taser (MK3, UMK3, MKT,MK:A, MK2011)
Grenade (MK3, UMK3, MKT,MK:A
Machine Gun (MK:A) Fighting Styles Hua Chuan (MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil (Formerly Good) Appearances Mortal Kombat 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Officer Kurtis Stryker is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat 3.
About Stryker
Stryker was introduced in Mortal Kombat 3as a somewhat stout-looking man sporting a very urban design with a white-blue shirt, combat boots, gunbelt, black police pants, and a backwards cap. However, his appearance changed in Armageddon into a more serious-looking and modernized policeman. Originally described as being a leader of the Special Riot Control division in the New York City Police Department,[1] he employs modern weaponry such as explosives, firearms, tasers, and nightsticks in battle, making him a force that is not to be underestimated. He is seen as the first person to run towards the pyramid in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.
Chameleon
Real Name Chameleon Age Unknown Height Unknown Weight Unknown Origin Zaterra Resides Outworld Species Unknown (possibly Saurian) Allies Shao Kahn Enemies Unknown Weapons Ninja Sword (MK:A) Fighting Styles Crane (MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Chameleon is a ninja who utilizes camouflage during fights in theMortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in the Sega Genesis version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (through a Game Genie). He also appeared as a hidden character in the PC, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogyand as a playable character in MK: Armageddon.
About Chameleon
Chameleon first debuted in the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy as a male ninja with partial transparency that changed color. In the Nintendo 64 version, he was replaced by Khameleon, a female counterpart who is actually an entirely separate character. There was initially little information about Chameleon as he had no storyline or game ending. All that was known about him is garnered from the hidden option to fight him (available upon beating the game), in which he is referred to as “one of Shao Kahn‘s deadliest warriors”.[1] He later returned in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon with a completely new design and a backstory.
Ermac
Real Name Ermac Age Less than 1 year (as of MK 2011) Height 5′ 8″ (1.73 m) Weight 180 lbs (82 kg) Status Enforcer Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Fusion of souls Allies Kenshi
Liu Kang
Jax Briggs
Sonya Blade
Raiden
Kitana
Johnny Cage
Sub-Zero
Shujinko
Kung Lao
Cyrax
Li Mei
Kurtis Stryker
Taven Enemies Rain
Ashrah
Shao Kahn
Onaga
Tanya Weapons Axe (MK:D, MK:A) Fighting Styles Hua Chuan (MK:D)
Choy Lay Fut (MK:D, MK:A) Alignment 1st Timeline: Good (formerly Unwillingly Evil)
2nd Timeline: Unwillingly Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat (glitch)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Ermac is a red ninja who utilizes telekinesis during fights in theMortal Kombat fighting game series, who made his debut inUltimate Mortal Kombat 3. Before that however, he was a subject of fan speculation that began with a glitch in Mortal Kombat.
About Ermac
Making his first debut in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Ermac has been a controversial and mysterious character in the Mortal Kombat series whose existence was rumored since its inception.
Ermac is a Fusion of many souls destroyed in Outworld’s wars who came to be controlled by Emperor Shao Kahnand his Shadow Priests. Because of this, he refers to himself as “we,” “us,” and “our” instead of “I,” “me,” and “my“. Due to the sheer concentration of souls within Ermac, he possesses the gift of telekinesis, and can travel to different realms. However, the depths ofNetherrealm drain his powers and souls. He is weakened dramatically while there, but a mysterious stone dubbed the Soul Stone Shujinko found for him would protect his souls.
Disappearing after the events of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, he only returned in Mortal Kombat: Deception, where he was freed from Shao Kahn’s grip by the blind swordsman Kenshi, whom he repaid by teaching him the Telekinetic Slam. He decided to become a force of good partly in guilt of his past evils. To prove this, he decides to help Liu Kang free the souls of his friends from control of Onaga.
Rain
Real Name Rain Age Beyond 10,000 Height 6′ 1″ (1.85 m) Weight 210 lbs (95 kg) Status Prince Origin Edenia Resides Outworld Species Half-Edenian, Half-God Allies Shao Kahn
Quan Chi
Shang Tsung
Tanya
Reiko Enemies Raiden
Taven
Jade
Kitana
Daegon
Elder Gods Weapons Storm Sword (MK:A) Fighting Styles Goju Ryu (UMK3, MKT)
Zi Ran Men (MK:A) Alignment Evil (Once Neutral) Appearances Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3(unplayable
in Arcade only)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Mortal Kombat Advance
Mortal Kombat: Deception(cameo)
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011) (DLC)
Rain is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
About Rain
Rain was originally meant to appear in Mortal Kombat 3, but didn’t actually appear until Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Rain was originally a red herring inserted by the game developers; a character shown in the game’s attract mode who did not actually exist within the game itself. A recent interview reveals that the insert was made by Ed Boon himself to intentionally trick players. Many MK fans searched for him in vain, with the eventual realization of his status as a joke character (named after a Prince song, Purple Rain) dawning. The joke expands further when it is revealed that Rain is a “prince” himself. He would, however, soon make an actual appearance in the console versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy as a full-fledged character with his own history (that of a traitor to his realm), and move set, to the delight of many fans, as well as the chagrin of others. His popularity is mixed within the MK fanbase. He is a DLC character for Mortal Kombat (2011), released on July 19th. His debut gameplay trailer was released on July 11th.
Quan Chi
Real Name Quan Chi Age Immortal Height 6′ 7″ (2.01 m) Weight 210 lbs. (95 kg) Status Sorcerer Origin Netherrealm Resides Netherrealm Species Demon/Sorcerer (formerlyOni) Weapons Spiked Mace (MK4)
Broadswords (MK:DA, MK:D,MK:A, MK 2011) Fighting Styles Tang Soo Do (MK:DA, MK:D)
Escrima (MK:DA, MK:D, MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deadly Alliance
MK: Tournament Edition
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Shaolin Monks (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (cameo)
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Quan Chi is a character in the Mortal Kombat series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, and first became playable in Mortal Kombat 4. He is also a major villain in the series.
About Quan Chi
Quan Chi became the most powerful sorcerer and necromancer in the Netherrealm and a primary villain in the Mortal Kombat series. Quan Chi combines both cunning and brute force in his never-ending plots to overtake not only Earthrealm, but all of reality. He is an opportunist and will ally himself with anyone who can help him further his own goals. He is notable in particular for his ruthlessness and pragmatism. His manipulative and deceptive nature has earned him many enemies, including Sub-Zero and Scorpion, the latter whose entire family and clan he destroyed. Only Shinnok, Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung and Delia can match Quan Chi’s skills as a sorcerer.
Reiko
Real Name Reiko Age Unknown Height 6′ 3″ (1.91 m) Weight 199 lbs (90 kg) Origin Outworld [1] Resides Outworld Species Outworlder Allies Shinnok
Shao Kahn
Tanya
Rain
Shang Tsung
Onaga
Mileena
Goro Enemies Raiden
Kitana
Taven
Liu Kang
Quan Chi
Kenshi Weapons Spiked Club (MK4)
Scythe (MKG)
Crude Hammer (MK:A) Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011) (cameo)
Reiko is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat 4.
About Reiko
Reiko is a grim and stoic looking man with black and white hair, glowing blue eyes, and a penchant for brutality. He was originally introduced in a typical ninja archetype inMortal Kombat 4. He also has a mask-like black tattoo over his eyes.
Shinnok
Real Name Shinnok Age Eternal Height 6′ 1″ (1.85 m) Weight 285 lbs (129 kg) Status Fallen Elder God Origin Heaven Resides Netherrealm Species Elder God Allies Quan Chi
Shao Kahn
Noob Saibot
Shang Tsung
Tanya
Mavado
Hsu Hao
Daegon
Reptile
Reiko
Sheeva
Moloch
Drahmin
Mileena Enemies Raiden
Elder Gods
Fujin
Sub-Zero
Sonya Blade
Liu Kang
Smoke
Sindel
Sareena
Johnny Cage
Nightwolf
Ermac
Cyrax
Onaga
Kai
Kurtis Stryker
Kung Lao
Li Mei
Taven
Kitana
Shujinko
Jade
Bo’ Rai Cho Weapons Naginata (MK4)
Amulet Staff (MKA) Fighting Styles Kuo Shou, Mimics Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Mortal Kombat 4
Mortal Kombat Gold
MK: Deception (cameo)
MK: Unchained (cameo)
MK: Armageddon
Mortal Kombat (2011) (cameo)
Shinnok is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He made his debut in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero as a boss, and first became playable in Mortal Kombat 4, in which he also served as the boss.
About Shinnok
Shinnok is considered one of the most evil beings in Mortal Kombat. A vengeful and powerful fallen Elder God, Shinnok appeared in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold as the main villain. He has also made an appearance in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. He is seen to be seemingly leading the side of evil.
Unlike Shao Kahn, Shinnok relies less on brute strength and fear-mongering, but more on magical powers and ancient artifacts. He is the ruler of the Netherrealm, possessing millions of years’ worth of knowledge and power, including the ability to perfectly impersonate any other beings of his choosing, as well as to transform into an immense demon. He also possesses extreme cunning, as well as the ability to manipulate events through others. For example, he had Quan Chi convince Shao Kahn to merge Earthrealm with Outworld against the Elder Gods’ will. As a result, both realms were severely weakened and left vulnerable to invasion by the Netherrealm.
Shinnok demands unwavering faith and loyalty from his followers and will not hesitate to kill anyone who doubts, challenges, or even represents a potential threat to him. He is even more brutal, heartless.
Only Delia, Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, and Quan Chi can match Shinnok’s skills as a sorcerer.
Kratos
Real Name Kratos (English translation: “strength” and “power”) Age Unknown Height 6′ (1.83 m) to 6’5″ (1.96 m) Weight Unknown Origin Sparta, Greece Resides Sparta (before being God of War) – Olympus (after) Species Demigod (or Halfgod in the MK Universe) Allies Raiden
Fujin Enemies Shao Kahn Weapons Blades of Exile
The Nemean Cestus
Bow of Apollo
Head of Helios
Blade of Olympus
Icarus Wings
Head of Medusa Fighting Styles Chained-Blades Alignment Neutral (God of War series) Appearances Mortal Kombat (2011) (PS3 exclusive)
Kratos is the main character in Sony Computer Entertainment’sGod of War series, which is loosely based on Greek mythology. Kratos first appeared in God of War, which was released in March of 2005, and whose success led to the development of five additional games featuring him as the protagonist. He appears as a guest character in the PlayStation 3 version of Mortal Kombat (2011) because Ed Boon and the Mortal Kombat team felt Kratos would “fit perfectly”. However, he isn’t part of the story mode.
About Kratos
Eventually revealed to be a demigod, Kratos embarks on a series of often forced adventures in attempts to avert disaster or change his fate. Kratos is usually portrayed as being oblivious to all else in the execution of these adventures, often engaging in morally ambiguous activities and performing acts of extreme violence. Each adventure forms part of a saga with vengeance as a central theme, and provides additional information on Kratos’ origins and relationship with his family and the gods. Kratos has received positive critical reception, being described by reviewers as a “sympathetic antihero.” The character is also associated with products including artwork, clothing, comic books, fast food, the internet, a novel, sweepstakes, toys, and cell phone skins, with Game Guru claiming that “Practically anyone, even if they hadn’t played any of the God of War games, would know about Kratos.” Kratos was featured in GameInformer’s “50 characters that defined a decade” issue, giving props for the games and the deep, well done storyline.
Kratos was officially confirmed to appear in the new Mortal Kombatvideo game at Spike TV’s annual Video Game Awards with a new trailer. On March 23, Gamespot posted a new video showcasing Kratos’ gameplay and stage.
Skarlet
Real Name Skarlet Gender Female Age Less than 1 year Height Unknown Weight Unknown Status Enforcer Origin Outworld Resides Outworld Species Genetic Experiment Allies Shao Kahn Enemies Quan Chi Weapons Ninja Sword
Kunai Fighting Styles Unknown Alignment Evil Appearances Mortal Kombat II (glitch)
Mortal Kombat (2011 video game) (DLC)
Skarlet is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. She made her debut in Mortal Kombat (2011) as a Downloadable Character (DLC). Before that, however, she was a subject of fan speculation that began with rumors of a glitch inMortal Kombat II.
About Skarlet
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Kano | 2,802 followers on LinkedIn. Creating communities through lasting social games. | Bootstrapped in 2008, Kano is a profitable and growing self-funded independent gaming studio. We create and run free-to-play games as a service and have established gaming communities encompassing millions of players worldwide.
Our games fund our new projects and we believe in giving small teams of extremely talented people challenging problems and getting out of their way.
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https://static.licdn.com/aero-v1/sc/h/al2o9zrvru7aqj8e1x2rzsrca
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Are you going summer camping? ⛺️ Our new team members all get a merch bag when they start, and one key item that's been a summer hit is the Kano Camping Mug! The perfect companion for time spent away from our computers. ☕️🌲 #TeamKano #SummerCamping #CampingLife #KanoCampingMug #EmployeeMerch #SummerVibes #WorkLifeBalance #TeamBuilding #OutdoorAdventures #HappyCamping
🌞🌿 Summer Wellness Initiative! 🌿🌞 We're so excited to launch our Summer Wellness Initiative, designed to keep our remote team healthy, happy & engaged during these sunny months. We'll be doing weekly wellness challenges, encouraging each other to explore new activities, and experimenting with new recipes and habits. We'll check back in August and let you know how it's going 🌸💪 #SummerWellness #HealthyLiving #CompanyInitiative
🚀 Big News Alert! 🚀 Thrilled to announce in our latest newsletter: we've officially gone fully remote! 🏠✨ Embracing flexibility and efficiency. Dive in for a nostalgic recap and to discover how we're reshaping the future of work, written by our CEO. https://lnkd.in/eY8iRa-F #RemoteWork #Flexibility #Efficiency #FutureOfWork #CEOInsights #CompanyCulture
🌟 It's a Team Showcase! 🌟 Each month, we shine a light on a team in our company, diving deep into their current projects. Last month, our Creative Content Team impressed us with aa peek into our newest in-game events. We're lucky! 👀✨ Here's a glimpse. 🔥🎨 #behindthescenes #mobilegaming #gamedev #techjobs #monthlyshowcase #lifeatkano
We're #hiring! 🎉 Kano is looking for a stellar People Ops Coordinator to help support our team. If you're super organized, passionate about creating great experiences for employees and like the idea of having autonomy in your work, then consider applying! Details are on our website: kano.ca/careers #nowhiring #workfromhome #remotework #kanoapps #gamedev #mobilegaming #techjobs
🎉 We're thrilled to announce that we've been recognized as one of Canada's Great Places to Work! 🌟🏆 This is a testament to the incredible dedication and positive spirit of our team members. Together, we've created an environment where collaboration thrives, and every voice is valued. 🌈✨ Huge thanks to our amazing team for making this possible! Let's keep doing what we're doing! 🚀 #GreatPlaceToWork #TeamExcellence #ProudMoment 🎉👏
🏃♂️ Lace up those running shoes! We're hitting the pavement once again for the 35th annual Times Colonist 10Km run! 🌟 This Sunday marks over a decade of our team's participation in this event. 🏅 We're proud to run together and support this local community event, as well as each others commitment to health and wellness in the lead up. Oh, and the group brunch afterwards is pretty good too #continuousimprovement for the win! 💪👟 #Team10K #TimesColonistRun #DecadeStrong 🚀🏃♀️
🎉 Summit Week is in full swing, and we're having a blast! 🌟 We hit the lawn bowling greens as a team for some epic fun! 🌿🎳 There's nothing like friendly competition to bring us closer together. Here's to teamwork, laughter, and making memories! 🚀 #TeamBonding #SummitWeek #LawnBowlingFun 🌟🎉
🎉 We're gearing up for our 4th Kano Summit, and the anticipation is palpable! ✈️ The entire team is flying in to the City of Victoria, where spring is in full bloom. We're keeping our fingers crossed for perfect weather to complement our Full Team Event 🤞 Any ideas on what we might be doing? 🌟 #SummitReady #VictoriaBound #TeamBonding 🚀🌈
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joyousmenma93 - the new blog in LiveJournal. There should be new interesting records soon.
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https://joyousmenma93.livejournal.com/tag/game
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Rating: 70/100
Remember my review of Pokemon Trading Card Game GBC? I mentioned at the end of it that it got a sequel game called Pokemon Trading Card Game 2: Here Comes Team Great Rocket that wasn't brought to the US because it had come out at the tail end of the GameBoy Color's life cycle. But fans of the game enjoyed it enough that some of them got together and made their own English fan translation of it so others could play it. I got to do just that, and yeah, as much as I enjoyed the first game, the sequel improves on it in pretty much every way, even if its still held back by the limitations of the hardware its on. Taking place immediately after the first game, a mysterious organization called Team Great Rocket, or Team GR for short, has not only kidnapped and imprisoned the club masters, but stolen everyone's cards, including ours. It's up to the player to fight Team GR, free their hostages, and get everyone's cards back.
By 2020s standards, this is admittedly a cliche and even laughable premise. You partake in card games against an "evil" organization who doesn't do anything all that evil except steal cards and kidnap people, and even then, they treat their hostages well and are decent people outside of that. Then again, the original Pokemon TCG game had even less of a plot, so if anything, TCG2's plot is not only more substantial and has more stakes, but also gives you more to do. I really cannot stress enough just how much content TCG2 has compared to the first game. It adds a bunch of new characters, a crap ton of new cards, allowing for more diverse strategies, a whole new continent and new areas to explore, changing facial expressions for all the characters' portrait sprites, and it even gives you the option to play as a female character rather than just the male character for once. Though admittedly, the game's nature as a direct sequel results in the characters talking to the female MC as if she's always existed in this universe, resulting in some blatant continuity errors should you decide to play as her, since she never existed in the first game. The male MC doesn't have this problem since he's been around since the first game.
Seriously, skilled players can breeze through the first game in a little over two hours, maybe less. With all the new additions TCG2 has, one playthrough can go a little over ten hours, which is massive on GameBoy hardware, not to mention all the different strategies you can come up with and the different cards you can get from the in-game booster packs. But TCG2 doesn't stop there. The plot involves you going to GR Island and battling the residents there, and here's the catch: Most of them want you to adhere to special rules they set up if you want to duel them. They range from stuff like wanting your deck to only have energy cards of a certain type, having a certain number of a certain Pokemon in your deck like Eevee or Magikarp, or even banning you from using trainer cards at all. This actively forces you to come up with different strategies for dueling and use your head, so don't expect to just breeze through the game with just one deck. Thankfully, I never found coming up with new decks and strategies too difficult in TCG2, so the difficulty curve here compared to the first game isn't impossible.
That said, not every decision TCG2 makes has been good, though the majority of them were. One change in particular wasn't very well received with fans. Remember how every time you'd duel Imakuni and win, he'd give your four booster packs, which made for great card farming? TCG2 nerfed it so that whenever you win against Imakuni, he only gives you one booster pack instead, and there's nobody who you can duel to get four booster packs to compensate for this. Not only that, while Team GR's specifications for each member's duels do make for fun strategizing, if you don't have the cards required to battle them, get ready to do a lot of grinding. I personally didn't mind this, as I like doing that sort of thing, but I know others aren't as patient. One of the bosses, Bernard, has a rule where fire-types have no weaknesses, and there's no way to use this to your advantage. Plus, for as much as the game improves on the first game, by modern standards its nothing special on its own, especially compared to later video games, and don't go into this expecting much in the way of character development. Though that's no reason to give it the side-eye. I still found it to be a fun, charming experience, and it's clear the makers of Pokemon Trading Card Game 2 put a lot of love and care into this.
While not much in the grand scheme of things, Pokemon Trading Card Game 2 is the sequel that other media wish they could have in that it expands on and improves upon everything the first game established and more. Sadly, at this point, we know it'll never get an official English release in any capacity, but at least the fan translation exists for those who want to play it on an emulator.
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1473
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https://musicfootballfatherhood.com/2016/03/08/how-kano-has-changed-the-game/
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en
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Made In The Manor: How Kano Changed The Game - Music Football Fatherhood
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2016-03-08T00:00:00
|
A few days ago Kano dropped one of the most important album in years. This is an album that will change the landscape of UK music. Kano has always been a MC who has stuck to his guns and been unapologetically himself and this album Read More ...
|
Music Football Fatherhood | For dads who want more open conversations around fatherhood
|
https://musicfootballfatherhood.com/2016/03/08/how-kano-has-changed-the-game/
|
A few days ago Kano dropped one of the most important album in years. This is an album that will change the landscape of UK music.
Kano has always been a MC who has stuck to his guns and been unapologetically himself and this album is no different. He is undoubtedly one of the best UK MCs of all time, I’d even go as far to say he’s one of the best MCs in the world, period.
I’ve been a fan of Kano’s for well over a decade. I first used to listen to him when he was spitting alongside MCs like D Double E and Sharky Major as part of Nasty Crew in 2002. My cousin would record the Rinse and Dejavu FM sets on tape and bring them down to me at Uni in South-West London. Around the same time I bought his first solo release, Boys Love Girls, on vinyl and played it in all my grime DJ sets.
Kano emerged as one of the stars of Nasty Crew and became a respected artist in his own right. One of the few grime MCs at the time who was able to translate his bars into quality songs. Kano’s first album ‘Home Sweet Home’ is considered one of THE moments in UK music, one of two classic grime albums, alongside Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Boy In The Corner’. The album, released in 2005, was the soundtrack to life for so many people at the time and for many years after it’s release.
His last album, ‘Method to the Madness’, was released in 2010 after which he took some time out to pursue other ventures, notably to star in the TV series ‘Top Boy’.
So roll onto 2015. I’m not going to front, I questioned Kano’s return and direction in music after he released the tracks ‘Hail’ and ‘New Banger’. The tracks were ok but I, along with plenty of other people, didn’t quite feel that it captured the essence of Kano’s sound or was representative of his ability. However, Kano followed that up with the release of the brilliant tracks ‘Garage Skank’ and ‘3 Wheel Ups’ (which I blogged in a previous post: What music I want to hear when my wife and I go raving again) which let everyone know that Kano was back and thus built great anticipation for the album.
Kano made us wait for ‘Made In the Manor’, but it was worth it. Six years from his last project and we are now in a time where there is pressure on artists to fit in with the current sound and deliver a product quickly. But Kano took time to perfect this project. It would have been easy for him to get caught up in the current Trap Rap, Dance or Grime sounds and produce something that he thought would fit in with the current scene. But he was brave and went against the grain. This is why the album is so important and why he has changed the game. Kano has changed the direction of UK music by making it cool, acceptable and to some extent, necessary to be 100% true and honest to yourself and your sound, regardless of what is being played on the radio. Each track paints a picture of life in the UK and the documentary released to support the album offers a great insight into the mind of Kano as he was making the album.
‘Made In The Manor’ is an eclectic album, not tied down to a particular sound. The production is experimental and powerful, full of soul, layers and rawness without compromise. The lyrics are real, relatable and paint vivid stories as only Kano can. My personal favourite tracks are ‘Roadman Hymn’ and ‘Strangers’. Having said that, it’s one of those albums that the more you listen, the more you discover so I’m excited to take more time to listen and appreciate the body of work.
The release of this album, and the epic Fire In The Booth released today, will no doubt have some MCs rethinking their approach. I’m interested to see how some of the other top MCs respond as Kano has set LEVELS.
Every so often an album comes along that changes the direction of music. This album is one of them. Be sure to purchase the album!
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/made-in-the-manor/id1068913842
Salute Kano!!
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1473
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https://myanimelist.net/character/181102/Shouji_Kano
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Shouji Kano
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Read more information about the character Shouji Kano from Meitantei Conan? At MyAnimeList, you can find out about their voice actors, animeography, pictures and much more! MyAnimeList is the largest online anime and manga database in the world! Join the online community, create your anime and manga list, read reviews, explore the forums, follow news, and so much more!
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en
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https://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/favicon.ico
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MyAnimeList.net
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https://myanimelist.net/character/181102/Shouji_Kano
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1473
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Make Your Day
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1473
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1
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https://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/kano/
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en
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Explore Kano: Meaning, Origin & Popularity
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[
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2024-06-14T07:27:45+00:00
|
Explore the historical and cultural journey of the name Kano. Dive through its meaning, origin, significance, and popularity in the modern world.
|
en
|
MomJunction
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https://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/kano/
|
In This Article
Origin, Meaning, And History Of Kano
The name ‘Kano’ has a rich history and is deeply culturally significant. This masculine name is deeply rooted in both Japanese and African culture. Kano is more popular as a given name in Japan, and it also holds importance as a surname rooted in the Kano Clan, a family of great artists descended from the Itō branch of the southern Fujiwara. As a given name, Kano means masculine and powerful in Japanese. It means ‘vow’ or ‘an oath’ in South Africa.
Kano is a meaningful name pronounced as KAY-no in popular culture, though its pronunciation can vary based on dialects and its significance to distinct cultures. Parents can also consider these adorable nicknames, like ‘Nono,’ ‘Kane,’ ‘Kana,’ or ‘Kanz’ to address the little one.
As for its popularity, there are numerous examples, ranging from fictional characters and real cities to accomplished personalities. For instance, Kano is the name of a fictional character from the Mortal Kombat franchise. Another example is of Japanese musician Kano whose songs have been featured in anime series such as Wish Upon the Pleiades and Heavy Object. Moreover, Kano is the name of the second largest city in Nigeria and the capital of Kano State.
The name Kano is powerful and carries many stories and traditions with it, adding to its vast cultural history. It makes an ideal choice for parents looking for a name that reflects cultural diversity while being contemporary.
How To Pronounce Kano?
‘Kano’ In QR Code
Notable People Named Kano
This section covers people who have made the name Kano famous with their contributions in various fields. It indeed is a little more inspiration for you to choose the name for your baby, don’t you think?
Kan? Jigor?Japanese educator, athlete, and the founder of Judo
Kano JigoroMartial Artist and Educator
Kano On The Popularity Chart
Societal influences, family traditions, latest trends, and timeless appeal are a few criteria that shape the choices of parents in naming their newest family members. In this section, we show you how the popularity of Kano has trended over the years in the US, in absolute numbers (per million) as well as in its ranking.
Popularity Over Time
As per the SSA, data covering the name Kano spans 23 years, with the trend starting in 2000 and lasting until 2022. In 2022, the name reached its peak popularity, given to 26 in every million babies. The name had 21 records in 2021.
Source:
Rank Over Time
Kano's ranking has fluctuated over time, rising at intervals and then dipping, reflecting its varying popularity. In 2007, Kano was ranked 13394, it was 6522 in 2016 and 4782 in 2023.
Source:
Popularity Within US States
If you're living in the US, you might be curious about the popularity of Kano in your own state, a state you're considering moving to, or one with which you have a connection. Use the drop-down menu below to select any US state and discover the name's popularity within that region.
Texas
Kano Name’s Presence On Social Media
Before you finalize your baby’s name, you would want to assess if the name is rare or popular. Digital footprint of the name - it’s presence on the internet and social media platforms - can provide you with valuable insights on it’s popularity. A name’s online presence is an important metric for new parents to evaluate their options and make an informed choice. How many people are searching the name on Google, how many profiles are there on Facebook, does the name have a Wikipedia page? Such information surely tells you if the name is ubiquitous or unique. Here is how Kano fares on that count.
Kano’s Mention In Fictional Works
Names With Similar Sound As Kano
If you liked the sound of Kano but searching for a name with a different meaning, you may find that right one from our similar-sounding names.
Popular Sibling Names For Kano
If you are looking for some matching sibling names that resonate with Kano, check our suggestions here.
Other Popular Names Beginning With K
Looking for more baby names starting with the letter K to resonate with your family’s naming tradition or to rhyme with the sibling names? Find a range of alternative names starting with this letter.
Names With Similar Meaning As Kano
Discover names synonymous with Kano’s meaning. Explore alternatives, each with a unique charm but that mirrors the meaning.
Names Rhyming With Kano
The significance of rhyming names extends beyond their aesthetic appeal and a good feel. The repetition and symmetry enhance their memorability. If you want your children’s names to be easily remembered or tune with your name, try some rhyming names. Here are such names that rhyme with Kano.
Anagram Names Of Kano
William Shakespeare is known for his ‘onomastic wit,’ with anagrams being one of them (remember the play Twelfth Night?). Anagram is the rearrangement of the same letters to form different words. Anagramming names has been in vogue for centuries now, and why not when it can create some cute names? Anagram baby names stand out with their unique sound and spellings. You may try an anagram of your name or your partner’s; even better if you combine both names and then try an anagram for the baby. It all stays in the family this way. You may also try anagram names for siblings, especially twins. Here are some anagrams of Kano.
Kona Akon Noak Okan Kaon Koan Knoa
Popular Songs On The Name Kano
Acrostic Poem On Kano
Dive into the lyrical charm of the name Kano with this acrostic poem. Witness how each letter paints together a story, capturing the name’s individuality, strength, vitality, and sophistication. Inspiring, is it? Why not try a similar poem that describes what you think of your baby’s personality?
Adorable Nicknames For Kano
Nicknames are an integral part of your communication with your baby. You tend to use several variations of your child’s name; some are meaningful, while others are simply adorable sounds. Here are a few nicknames you can begin with for the name Kano.
Kano
Nono
Kane
Kana
Kanz
Kano’s Zodiac Sign As Per Western Astrology
Western astrology includes the construction of a horoscope based on the person’s exact time of birth and location to understand the positions of the planet, stars, and zodiac signs at that time. However, in popular culture, it is often narrowed down to the sun sign, which depends on the person’s birth date.There are 12 zodiac signs, each having dominant traits, planetary rulers, elemental connection, and more.
Zodiac sign or Sun sign
The Earth’s orbit around the sun is divided into 12 zodiac signs covering 30-degree sectors. According to Western astrology, the zodiac or sun sign depends on the sun’s position in one of these sectors at the time of your birth. Starting from the sun’s position at the March equinox, the chart goes anti-clockwise from Aries, followed by Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. These signs are ruled by planetary bodies - Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Furthermore, they are categorized into triplicities or elemental signs - fire, water, air, and earth - that govern their characteristics. Each of these zodiac signs features certain personality traits that may determine how a person presents themselves.
Each zodiac sign in Western astrology is linked to a specific range of dates in the year. Unlike Vedic astrology, where names can sometimes be used to infer astrological details, Western astrology relies entirely on the birth date.
To know more about your baby’s zodiac sign, choose the period in which your baby’s date of birth falls, from the options given below. This will give you a glimpse into the world of astrology tailored for your baby.
Kano’s Zodiac Sign And Birth Star As Per Vedic Astrology
Kano Personality Traits As Per Numerology
The numerology belief system envisages a relationship between a name and numbers. The related numbers are believed to give insights into a person’s character. We have researched this area to connect the numerology-based characteristic traits to the letters of the English alphabet. And the results are fascinating.
Numerology followers believe that each letter signifies attributes that can influence a person’s attitude and approach. Among these placements, the most significant are the first letter (Cornerstone) and the last letter (Capstone) of a name. Cornerstone highlights your primary personality traits and explains how you face challenges and opportunities in life. Capstone can tell you about your approach to work and how you complete them. Often, a letter may be repeated twice or more in a name. This repetition signifies the intensification or amplification of the traits associated with the letter in an individual’s personality.
Read to know what characteristics the name Kano is known for in numerology. Here we have avoided repetition of letters and added them just once for a better reading experience.
Infographic: Know The Name Kano‘s Personality As Per Numerology
Kano In Different Languages
Kano In Fancy Fonts
Visualize your little one’s name in different captivating fonts. You can use these fancy styles on birth announcement cards, nursery decorations, personalized gifts, to name a few. Select the perfect font from these options for a touch of personalization.
Double Struck Font
𝕂 𝕒 𝕟 𝕠
Bold Script Font
𝓚 𝓪 𝓷 𝓸
Fancy Style 35 Font
κ α η ⊕
Fancy Style 7 Font
Ҝ Δ Ň Ø
Love Font
K♥ a♥ n♥ o♥
Black Square Font
🅺 🅰 🅽 🅾
Hand Writing 2 Font
K α ɳ σ
X Above Bellow Font
K͓̽ a͓̽ n͓̽ o͓̽
Adorable ‘Kano’ Wallpapers To Share
Liked our fancy fonts for Kano? Why not go a step forward with these beautiful posters? They are perfect to download and use as display pictures or social media posts! You may also use them as part of decorating your child’s room. These personalized wallpapers celebrate the positive vibes of the name, offering a unique way to show how much this name means to you. What’s more! You have multiple options here to choose depending on your mood or occasion.
Kano 3D Wallpaper
Kano Birthday Wallpaper
‘I Love Kano’ Wallpaper
Stylish Kano Wallpaper
Kano Name Initial Wallpaper
How To Communicate The Name Kano In Sign Languages
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~SPOILER FREE~ SUMMARIZING THE YEAR! 2023
|
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2024-01-01T00:00:00
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What a busy year 2023 was! I made a game, I made a big ol' video essay, and I drew far too much. Played some games too, none worth mentioning, not a good year for video games... All that stuff and more is written about in my Talking About 2023 post. But let's focus on…
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en
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https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/731bad0a216474594cf56d68e96715c7e18e5ff09dd1409a7b8f4280ff2c0ed2?s=32
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Please, no hate.
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https://plsnohate.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/spoiler-free-summarizing-the-year-2023/
|
What a busy year 2023 was! I made a game, I made a big ol’ video essay, and I drew far too much. Played some games too, none worth mentioning, not a good year for video games…
All that stuff and more is written about in my Talking About 2023 post.
But let’s focus on anime. When it comes to these posts, I’m always wary to add new categories because it means the scale of these summaries will only creep larger and larger… but I’m kinda regretting not having a best voice actor category. I contemplated it a couple times in the past, once for Hidaka Noriko’s role in Little Witch Academia, and once for Miyamoto Yume’s performance in SSSS.Gridman, but… you know Ueda Reina would’ve swept every other year.
Anyway, this year Yuuki Aoi absolutely killed it. Maomao’s voice in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is surely going to go down as one of the decade’s best, and her voice was basically the entire emotional backbone of Monster Strike: Masamune, so that’s worth praising, I think.
Voices aside, 2023 was a very special year, but maybe not for the expected reasons. Let’s dig up some stats, because I’m a nerd who uses spreadsheets…
For the past few years, I’ve somehow ended up giving out six 2/10 ratings every year. 2020 to 2022 I kept the streak going.
But this year, I somehow gave ten shows a 2/10 rating! That’s more than double my average! …but it kinda makes sense, because this is the most anime I’ve watched in a single year. 74 anime! I normally watch ~50 per year, so 74 is a big jump.
Taking into account the mean, median and mode of every rating I’ve ever given, 2023 is the worst-performing year in my viewing history… and it’s not close. Well, it’s rivalled by 2019 (48 anime 4.6 mean vs 74 anime 4.2 mean), but even that year was better in some respects.
So yeah… this may not have been a great year for anime on the lower end of things. Fortunately, my ratings for the year managed to peak at 8/10, so it’s not one of those underwhelming 7/10 years again. That sole 8/10, absolutely my show of the year, really kept 2023 alive for me. So… let’s begin by talking about that special show.
Categories:
Favorite anime – My favorite anime of the year.
Least favorite anime – My least favorite anime of the year.
Favorite moment – My favorite moment of the year.
Best guy – My favorite male character of the year.
Worst guy – My least favorite male character of the year.
Best girl – My favorite female character of the year.
Worst girl – My least favorite female character of the year.
Best cast – My favorite cast of characters of the year.
Worst cast – My least favorite cast of characters of the year.
Guilty pleasure – A 2023 show I’m ashamed to have enjoyed.
Biggest disappointment – A 2023 show I wanted to enjoy.
Favorite OP – My favorite opening song/animation of 2023.
Favorite ED – My favorite ending song/animation of 2023.
Late to the show – An old show that I watched in 2023.
Movie Talk – A movie I watched in 2023.
Looking forward to in 2024 – A show I’m hyped to watch next year.
Favorite anime: BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! – Covered Previously
Surprise surprise, the show I did an hour-long analysis of is my favourite of the year! Who could’ve seen this coming? An anime about five girls who feel lost, MyGO more than deserves a win.
With a flurry of directorial tricks that keep each episode feeling fresh, some wonderful metaphorical language packed into every nook and cranny of the season’s production, and a level of respect given to the audience’s intelligence that is, unfortunately, lacking from most other writers in the industry, there’s so much that could be said about MyGO.
But I don’t want to exaggerate. It’s far from the perfect anime. As I said in my initial review, the source material isn’t the strongest. A dedicated group of creators who case about the things they’re working on can elevate anything into greatness, by which I mean to imply that the actual events transpiring don’t interest me, nor do the characters appeal to me at a base level. If your average studio was given this material, I wouldn’t care.
It’s because the sakura petals fall so wistfully and Sakiko’s bright piano gets lost to another’s electric guitar that this drama resonates with me.
It’s because the colors of Tomori’s lonely walk home through steep sweltering streets perfectly communicate the atmosphere of the moment that this character resonates with me.
It’s because the clunk of Anon’s guitar case as she runs away from an embarrassingly cute conversation with Soyo sounds so good and reflects her clunky actions so well that this resolution resonates with me.
The story isn’t what makes MyGO‘s production so good; MyGO‘s production is what makes the story so good.
What’s most remarkable is that somehow, spectacularly, the script never gets in the way. In many other anime that I’ve praised for camera work or lighting or sound effects or what-have-you, it’s with the stipulation that the messages being delivered are annoying or obnoxious, or that the level of care isn’t equal across the different aspects of production. There’s always a miscommunication, where the people working on it aren’t in sync with one another fully; the soundtrack wants to show off, or the animators want to go wild, with no care given to the overall balance of the work.
MyGO doesn’t have that.
When the director plans a tame build-up episode centred around simple grounded everyday actions, the person writing the dialogue doesn’t cheese it up or try to keep things dynamic and engaging, they just let things flow. The person plugging in sound effects doesn’t shove in a sparkle of happiness or a honk of rebuttal to punctuate the emotions of each character, they just plug in some ambience. The animators don’t spend an eternity on the motion of someone picking up a bottle, or make a show of a character walking through a room, they just keep it focused. That’s the goal of the episode, and everyone is on board. It feels cohesive, and that’s near-miraculous in my books. Teams don’t have confidence in one another, not like this, not often.
MyGO is a show of confidence. Everyone gets it, everyone understands how to communicate what needs to be delivered, and when they don’t, they trust someone else’s vision. As put so well by one of the band’s songs: “It’ll work out, so let’s play together.”
If no one has a vision, something’s clearly going wrong – they understand that. Every little detail has a thought behind it, not always an enormous world-changing thought, but a show of intent is always there. The goal is always in sight.
That kind of environment won’t always lead to spectacular results—nothing will ever guarantee greatness—but I truly believe that this is the best way forward.
We need more of this in anime.
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Least favorite anime: Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers – Covered Previously
Fierce competition this year. My lowest rating of the year (2/10) was shared by ten different shows, all of which I hated very much, so singling out a single one is difficult… but although nine of those anime were pretty anger-inducing, one, in particular, wasn’t. Instead, it was plainly offensive.
Put aside the thoughts of what we need in anime; what we don’t need is Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers. A corporate attempt at cashing in on otaku culture, feigning reverence for all the weird quirks us anime fans have, but lacking any and all respect. It’s an insult, one that boldly says “if we dress up girls in mahou shoujo outfits, loosely reference some mecha shows, and release a gacha game, people will give us money.”
You can only hope some of that money found its way back to the poor freelancers who tried to make a meaningless action scene look interesting at least.
It’s a very cynical take. Otaku spirit can unite people, and it’ll continue forever, so long as others exist to inspire the next generation. But the things you love may change, or even be corrupted. The creators in charge of making what you watch may be idiots who hate their own audience. You may be a merch-obsessed weirdo, and the world may not want you to exist, and you may be arrogant, and rebellious, and you may not fit into society, but…
These are the ideas Magical Destroyers put forth, and if I list them off so rapidly, you might not think too much of them. The people, the otaku, being described (and targeted) by this anime are not real. They’re not even a facsimile of reality.
You’re a consumer, a stereotypical marketing statistic, who will live off passion even if we give you none back. And aren’t you amazing? You, whose eyes light up at the mention of Akihabara. You, unintelligible obsessive. You, who look like this.
Can’t you feel the love this product has for you? Don’t you want to buy their merch?
They claim it to be a criticism of the way otaku are portrayed in media, they claim it to be an anti-capitalist tale, but they don’t refute any stereotypes and they have a lot of stuff to sell you. But come on, the nerds are under threat by society and you need to join us in the fight! Otaku spirit, banzai!
…It’s just gross, isn’t it?
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Favorite moment: BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! – The Walk Home
Episode 4 of MyGO—a story about a lonely girl whose dream band slash friendship circle fell apart—introduces the emotional reunion of some members of the group. But that’s not what I want to focus on.
Instead, once the band members have split up for the day and began there separate walks home, we’re granted a quiet moment as lonely girl Tomori and affectionate tsundere Taki walk through the night together. A train passes by as piano plays. They step through a streetlamp-lit shopping street populated by the day’s few remaining stragglers. Traffic drives on by, the headlights briefly illuminating the two girls.
That’s it. That’s the moment. Nothing really happens, but the music is great, the artwork is beautiful, it takes great advantage of CG animation in its use of lighting, and the atmosphere of a slightly-bittersweet reunion with friends combined with that emotion you feel during the lonely walk back home after a day of chatter and gossip, all combines to make a wonderful little collection of cuts.
It reminded me a bit of a certain ending sequence in Manaria Friends that I praised in my 2019 summary’s ‘Favorite ED’ section.
Rather than highlight what makes this moment so powerful to me… why don’t I just link to the post where I broke it down frame by frame? Or you could watch the video equivalent. Whichever floats your boat.
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Best guy: Takada Taiyou – Jijou wo Shiranai Tenkousei ga Guigui Kuru. – Covered Previously
It’d be easy to describe Taiyou—a boy who misconstrues a bullied classmate’s cruel nickname as cool—as dense or unaware, and in some contexts, that’s certainly true… but for his age, he’s keenly aware, and that’s what makes him so pleasant to watch.
It’s a good balance. As a carefree kid would be, he’s not the most observant when it comes to social clues. This leads to some comedy and adds some unintentional positivity to the heroine Akane’s life. His similarly comedic misunderstanding that the “Grim Reaper” nickname given to Akane means that she’s actually a powerful magical entity has a similar effect. By pure accident, he is defending Akane from her bullies and raising her self-esteem… but if their friendship was based on misunderstandings alone, it’d be impossible for anyone to believe it’s genuine.
Taiyou has an immense respect for Akane, not only because she’s a cool magical being, but also because of who she is as a person. He understands which topics are sensitive, knows when Akane needs help, and knows when she’s capable of handling things by herself. He’ll offer a helping hand, but he also believes she’s the stronger one out of the two of them, so his behaviour never feels protective or coddling.
More than anything, he’s respectful. He abides by any boundaries that he’s aware of and asks whenever he’s unsure. He doesn’t insult people for making mistakes, but praises them for fixing mistakes. He doesn’t notice a lot of bad in the world, but he still knows how to combat it, and because of all that, I think he serves as a pretty good role model for younger kids.
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Worst guy: Inazaki Robin – Tengoku Daimakyou
I think there’s a place in entertainment for an absolute scumbag. I’ve enjoyed watching awful people do bad things, and I will again in future. If it’s entertaining, I’ll eat it up.
Robin isn’t entertaining.
Not only are his scenes hard to watch, but they actively make the show worse, and as the key character of the anime’s concluding arc, he doesn’t exactly leave me wanting for more.
That’s not to say I enjoyed the other main arcs of the show, but they were far more interesting, despite the equally stereotypical foundations.
Robin’s existence is a major reason for why the two characters acting as the protagonists of half of the story are on a journey to begin with. Without him, without the backstory linked to him, that half of the show wouldn’t exist. As harsh as it may sound, that alone would be a major improvement.
Furthermore, it feels tacked on. The concept of setting a story after all of the major disasters have occurred is cool, no doubt, but it only works if the post-fallout setting stands strong in its own right. Robin’s plotline is incredibly weak, incredibly unfinished, and it has that distinct feel of an author making up a mystery plot on the spot, in stark contrast to the other half of the show which feels meticulously planned.
As the main motivating force for the lead characters’ journey, therefore the main reason to continue following the plot, Robin’s location, motives and actions simply aren’t fun to watch or think about. I don’t care about this guy, I don’t care about the guy who cares about this guy, and… boy is the setting they inhabit a snooze-fest. Take me back to the creepo kids, at least they’re unsettling in a watchable sense.
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Best girl: Hououji Akane – Megami no Café Terrace – Covered Previously
A princely working lady who plays guitar, is proactive in her pursuit of love, and is secretly a total dork? Say no more.
The protagonist of this show is a bit of an immature brat at times, particularly during his introduction, as are the many heroines. Amidst a battlefield of childish spats, Hououji Akane sits back, sips some coffee, and sees right through it all.
She treats people in a very toned-down matter-of-fact way, but finds it funny when people lose their composure, and these two traits combine to make the protagonist act more mature in her presence. It feels like a quiet battle of personalities to begin with, as if the protagonist is being toyed with, but it quickly evolves into a pretty open and trusting friendship.
She’s the quieter one who won’t do anything stupid. The person you can hold a normal conversation with without needing to worry about misunderstandings or breaches of trust.
I don’t dislike the other cast members, for the most part. Their sometimes snarky, oft-energetic, drama-fuelled minds make for fun viewing, and the slow-burn growth of everyone learning to trust one another is a key appeal of the story.
But I think it’s very important that such a story gives you a foot in the door. It needs to establish at least one early relationship that reflects the end-goal (or at least, a later stage) of the entire cast’s dynamic. A flash of quick growth that tells you this comedy show will actually be developing things, not falling into a stagnant Love Hina-esque situation for hundreds upon hundreds of chapters.
Hououji Akane isn’t just a handsome, relatively mature heroine; she’s a crucial storytelling device. Just as the protagonist learns to trust her, you learn to trust the writer. These characters’ relationships can grow and evolve, and if you keep watching, they will.
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Worst girl: Manaria Sousse – Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou – Covered Previously
Wait no, I can’t put a handsome lady in the Worst Girl category! That’s impossible! How did this happen!?
Manaria’s role as a plot device isn’t inherently flawed. In fact, if you logically write out what her role in the story is, it makes sense… so long as you ignore any and all context prior to her introduction.
She is that character, you know? The one who gets introduced mid-story and suddenly she’s the most important thing in the world. Everything warps to fit her presence, even if it sometimes feels forced.
Written with a complete lack of subtlety, that’s fine. An unsubtle disaster is attractive to the target audience, believe me.
But it’s the lack of subtlety within a drawn-out progression of events that gets old, fast. I get the point of the character immediately, I don’t need several episodes of slop to hammer it home. It’s made worse, in my opinion, by how unfitting “the point” is for the plot at the stage Manaria is introduced.
Get her in early, blast past her faster, and she could’ve been a fine little tangent. As it is, she’s a season-defining conflict that feels out of place.
When you throw in some of the questionable statements she makes, some of the questionable actions she takes, and the way every character nods along to her nonsense as if she’s oh-so-smart and perfect, you get a show-destroying influence that massively worsens the overall product. And I’ll say it… she’s not even a good-looking prince. The main heroine suited a suit better than Soussey over here.
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Best cast: Goblin Slayer II – Covered Previously
This was an incredibly difficult category to choose for this year, not because there was a lot of competition, but because… I don’t know if there were any good casts this year.
So, keeping in mind this is by far the weakest ‘Best Cast’ award I’ve ever given… Goblin Slayer‘s second season aired this year, and all the best moments involved side characters.
I’ve said this before, but to me, the big appeal of these types of fantasy shows is the interplay between the setting and its society. A big ol’ fantasy adventure is only as fun as the world it’s set in and the people who live there. I’m not going to tout Goblin Slayer as a golden example, but it certainly does a lot of right.
Whether they’re reexamining the classic guild culture from the lens of realistic work acquaintanceships, introducing a new wave of adventurers who the older generation place their abandoned dreams on, or even zooming back in on the core 5-member party relationship and their respective roles during dungeoneering, there are a lot of quaint character moments that serve the setting well.
It really is a matter of environment. Responsibilities are different during daily home life than they are during long travels, and those are yet different from dungeon-delving responsibilities. Even with just the main cast, we have several redefinitions of what their relationship is. At times, friends, at others, workmates. You protect your friends, just as you depend on them to protect you.
But it’s beyond the main cast where the story’s sparkle shines.
I think a strong contender for Best Moment this year came with an unusual trio: three guildmates—the titular Goblin Slayer included—end up drinking at a bar together. They don’t know much about one another (other than that they work as adventurers at the same guild), they have no obvious common interests, and they’ve even had bad blood at times. That bad blood wasn’t cleanly cleared up, to boot… it just got lost to time, diminished as the days and months passed, as all feelings do.
But one thing leads to another, and these three ageing adventurers begin drunkenly talking about their achievements, their worries, and the dreams they held as youths. That’s their common ground. They’re drunk, in the same place, and they’re all getting older… and none of them like to open up around others. They’re men, bold adventurers! Being sappy isn’t the right image for the job, so these three unlikely confidants have a rare heart to heart where no one else will hear.
None of those characters have names, two of them are little more than recurring side characters at best (arguably more towards the ‘background character’ category), and the conversation itself isn’t pressing, isn’t important, isn’t part of a build-up towards an impending conflict. It doesn’t need to be, because that’s not what Goblin Slayer is about.
What is is about… is relationships.
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Worst cast: Oshi no Ko
I don’t think I’ve used ‘Worst Cast’ in such a positive way before, but… hear me out. I really like this show’s characters.
Oshi no Ko is one of those shows that pretends to be edgy while having no justification for it. Similar in ways to Kuzu no Honkai, the cast do a lot of talking about how rotten they are or how corrupt the entertainment industry is, and yet 99% of the characters are the nicest people imaginable. It’s an incredibly generous take on idol culture, being belial while claiming not to be. It’s a strange contrast.
Hoshino Ai—the lifeblood of this fantasy—is an idol who describes herself as being made up of lies. She works in an oft-described industry of lies. And yet, with the way it’s presented, she feels incredibly genuine. She loves being an idol, her moments of exhaustion from acting the part are few and far between, she’s a great mother, and though she may not speak her heart out very much, her actions certainly do. She’s a very honest girl.
Her company’s president is a man who brings a pregnant Ai to a good hospital, prioritizes her desires over his own financial stability, and sticks with her the entire time.
The president’s wife perseveres through a lifestyle that doesn’t match her vain expectations, and resultingly she becomes a smart, caring and resourceful lady who acts as emotional comfort for the two main characters.
Similarly, the initially confrontational (for a brief second) director becomes a reliable mentor figure, no questions asked.
I don’t think it’s possible for them to play a bad character straight for longer than their introduction; every single time, some random plot beat comes along to make that seemingly bad person perfectly kind and friendly.
Whether you’re watching a group of paper-thin pretty boys fail to act, or a bunch of teens on a reality show getting into dramatics, they all end up being nice people. Even at the very beginning, when Ai performs to a studio of people who purportedly lie with a smile to keep things moving, they all get genuinely taken aback when they see Ai perform.
It sounds good, and the cast is loveable (Kana’s my favourite, her outfits are killer) but they really detract from the fantasy that was built up at the end of episode 1. This isn’t a revenge play at all; it’s a teen romcom with some light drama.
I don’t know if that’s the intention or not. When the verbal claim of people lying is disproven by their genuine physical response to Ai’s music, the conflict is clear. The dialogue is tinted by each character’s perspective, it’s their personal outlook, not a description of what the plot intends to be. I can understand that.
But… if that’s the case, the plot is far weaker than it seems on the surface. At least in lying, it had an identity.
With Oshi no Ko, someone has taken the lens that should be used to examine real-world entertainment industries and instead used it to capture a world where a majority of people aren’t walking scum. The message is clear: “it isn’t a great industry, but the people in it are trying their best!” The presentation is pretty disingenuous, and it hurts the show’s identity overall… That’s why, despite liking the cast, I think they’re the worst this year had to offer: they get in the way of the show’s core fantasy: a detective/revenge plot set in the entertainment industry. I would’ve liked to watch that.
But it’s always nice to see good people doing good things, so if you don’t like the first episode, you may enjoy the rest a lot more.
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Guilty pleasure: Yumemiru Danshi wa Genjitsu Shugisha – Covered Previously
I normally hate these dumb highschool-set Light Novel adaptations where the protagonist thinks he’s different, and the plot is all social interaction, the storytelling has all the tact of a brick to the face, and 14-year-old boys flock to it as if it’s the Holy Bible of life lessons.
Yumemiru Danshi, by all metrics used to generalize and categorize media, should be one of those adaptations… but it’s kinda not.
More than anything, I appreciate how melancholy, how meandering, and how passive the pace feels. The protagonist’s idea of bettering himself is not to engage in games of renown and reputation, nor is it an exercise in changing his true self and pretending to be someone different. He simply takes a break from an environment that’s stifling him and picks up some fresh responsibilities to work through.
It may not be exciting viewing for the young audience this market typically focuses around. Still, it’s certainly more pleasant to watch than something like Toradora or… uh… what’s an example that’s not over ten years old? Oregairu? Aobuta? I didn’t even watch that last one, but I’m sure it sucks.
It’s not really a drama. Sometimes the protagonist helps someone he knows with a personal conflict, but he’s never personally involved in those conflicts. He gives advice, but he’s a pretty distant person. An element of that is the result of his obvious affection: there’s a girl he likes, and nothing will ever change that.
There’s no room to question his heart, but there is room to question the quality of his character. This is a boy who spent years of his life forming his identity around his love for someone else. So here, he’s getting a bit of a late start on the path of self-discovery.
Who is he outside of his relationships?
I’ve said it many times in regards to romance anime: if your characters have no lives outside of the romance, they’re bad characters. Romance isn’t a life-consuming thing. Love will occupy your mind a lot, definitely, but… you have friends, you have family, if neither of those, you surely had interests (plural) at one point in your life. And the person you’re in love with should have had those things too. They don’t just go away the second romance blossoms.
Yumemiru Danshi takes that to an extreme, probably a bit too far, but it makes for an interesting watch. If the main character is already convinced of his feelings, how much screen time does it need to take up? “Very little” is this show’s answer.
But it’s a fun subversion, either way. An anime character realized they had no discernable traits beyond their singular given role, broke out of it, and began to explore what life is. What do I like? What am I good at? What relationships do I have? What do I want to do?
Good questions for anyone to ask.
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Biggest disappointment: Gridman Universe
I don’t wanna beat up Frieren again, not so soon after the previous blog post, so I’ll slot a movie into this section.
I get a deep sense of empathy when watching Gridman Universe. Helmed by the original staff who brought us the great SSSS.Gridman, Gridman Universe is a celebration of the fandom that’s formed up around the franchise in years since. Reigniting old conflicts, reintroducing old characters, and piling in the fanservice… it’s everything a Gridman fan could want! It has to be! We need to give the fans everything! EVERYTHING!
I feel bad for them.
SSSS.Gridman may have not ended on the most solid conclusion, so room for a sequel was always there. There are new places they could go, definitely, and that’s what I was hoping for. The first attempt at succeeding it—Dynazenon—only furthered the worst aspects of Gridman, so I was hoping this return to the original setting would be what the writers need to bring the quality level back up to the lofty heights of the original show.
But new things aren’t fanservice, and it’s very clear to me that the producers wanted fanservice more than they wanted a good movie. Merch is what matters here.
So we have a story that goes against a lot of what SSSS.Gridman stood for, digging up the body of a story that had lived its life, puppeteering it around to perform for the people. The creatives in charge of this project very clearly didn’t want to do this, but they had to, so they made the best of the circumstances. Unfortunately, you can only make so much out of the worst circumstances.
In this lazy repetition of Dynazenon‘s lazy repetition of Gridman‘s best episode, we get a bafflingly high-stakes conflict that abides purely by rule of cool. They answer plenty of questions I didn’t want answered. They bring back all the characters I didn’t want to see again. Half the film is composed of lukewarm action set pieces that build up to big character reveals, each one leaving me asking: “why did you bring them back?”
The story already ended many years ago, but here we are, dragging it back up for merchandising opportunities.
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Favorite OP: spiral – Mushoku Tensei II – Watch Here
Flashback to a different year. A slightly younger Taka is reading a long series of novels. He’s not smitten with them, but one aspect of them really makes an impact: it’s a story of an individual’s self-improvement, spread out over a 30ish-year growth period, that preaches a message of belief in others’ improvement. Trite, unoriginal, but a message worth listening to nonetheless.
Reading those novels back then, my routine improved massively. My head was a little clearer, my goals were more focused, and my lifestyle was more active. Then I finished the last book, and month by month, I began to regress.
I didn’t love those books, and I don’t love this anime adaptation. I don’t even love this song. But as soon as it plays, my life improves.
I would wake up each morning, look up at the sky, and hear this opening theme. Smartwatch on, hair shampooed and rinsed, stomach filled, and heart pumping; the basic health advice known to Humans for thousands of years would come to me.
Unlike the novels, which left behind nothing but memories and text, the anime brought with it a song, and that song continues even after the episodes have run out.
Once upon a time, a man with more years and more mass on him than I, with more trauma than I’ve ever faced, who has lived two lives across two worlds, got up and started to run.
If anything propels me forward, it’s the desire to be better than others… and if a pathetic little weirdo like Rudy can manage to improve himself so much in two lifetimes, I should be able to do that in a fraction of one.
I should be able to, and Spiral will make sure I don’t forget that. There’s no room in my life for regression.
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Favorite ED: Mukyu Platonic – Isekai One Turn Kill Nee-san – Watch Here
I don’t entirely understand why this show of all shows got this kind of an ED, but I’m in love with it… okay, well not entirely.
There’s some jankyness towards the end, it could definitely be cleaned up a bit, but the bulk of it is amazing. It serves to give backstory for an incredibly important character (the Nee-san in the title!) and it does so in a very effective manner. So effective, in fact, that it massively overshadows the 20 minutes of animation preceding it each episode.
I know it’s easier to make a music video look impressive than it is an entire season of anime, but god damn, some of the cuts in this ED are the pinnacle of 2023’s anime output.
The shot where Nee-san is having a breakdown, crumples up onto the floor, and begins clutching at her head, is sooo good. It matches the beat amazingly well, and then they match cut from her disheveling her hair to the flashback of her younger self hiding under a sheet, and the motion of her surprising her brother by “boo”ing out of the covers matches the disheveling motion. I wouldn’t have thought to match those two motions in a thousand years, but it really works.
Then that’s immediately followed by a match cut between a flashback of her giving her brother a piggy back so he can reach the sky, and her climbing the stairs to a rooftop so she can end it all. What a cool parallel!
That’s not even mentioning the screen ratio change between shots, or the amazing sequencing of the isekai presence into this girl’s dismal environment. The slow pan back through screens to switch between the worlds is so hard-hitting.
And yeah, the song’s good. That’s a nice bonus.
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Late to the show: Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Moto Kano datta
It feels strange to say this, but… Tsurekano here is the first Light Novel adaptation I’ve seen where the dialogue and narration feels like it was written by someone who likes writing.
Our two main characters, a couple of awkward book-loving teens, like to spout cringy dramatic lines to themselves, overdramatizing and poeticising the world around them. That may sound like an insult, but it really isn’t. The justification for why these two are the way they are is incredibly strong, as is the utilization of the overly saccharine dialogue.
The most obvious example (used for comedic effect) is the repetition of the thought: “In what can only be described as a youthful indiscretion, I once had what you might call a boyfriend/girlfriend.” It’s a phrase that shows up often, so much so you will no doubt notice it as a repeated element… but it ties together the philosophy of the show very nicely.
In one scene, the show’s leading lady Yume cries while reading a book. Her tears land beside the stain of someone else’s. The only person who had read that book prior to her was the leading man Mizuto. It’s a representation of their minds aligning. As I so often said in my MyGO!!!!! analysis earlier this year, this is a portrayal of two characters being on the same page.
In the story of these two butting heads, the shared poeticism they both unknowingly use is but one example of the two being similar deep down.
One episode (I believe it was episode 10) gives another quick example. The second half of the episode is a mirror of the first, metaphorically, that is. In the first half, there’s a scene where Mizuto watches Yume’s sleeping expression. In the second half, Yume watches Mizuto’s.
In the first half, Mizuto considers kissing Yume before thoughts of the past snap him out of it. In the second, those very same thoughts hit Yume when she’s presented with the opportunity to kiss Mizuto.
What this lovingly crafted structure supports is the plot of a failed first love. The shattered relationship between Yume and Mizuto being revived by odd circumstances forces them to remember past events, question where things went wrong, dismantle their own ideas of who they are, and eventually has them rebuild themselves with a better understanding of themselves and of the world around them.
An idyllic couple who treated life like a dream—like a perfect piece of fiction—didn’t know how to respond when faced with reality; things aren’t going to be perfect. This slow character piece prioritizes the reasons for why the main couple ended up with that philosophy, explores the fallout of their innocence, and tries to rectify all of that with the present-day events unfolding from episode to episode.
It’s natural that repetition would be such a great tool for presenting this second try at a relationship, and the writers understand that. The structure they utilize fits the themes of the story just as much as the poetic prose fits the personalities of the people narrating this tale. The core concept is incredibly well realized.
I have a bunch of complaints with the show, chiefly the side characters—or more accurately, the impact they have on the show’s focus—but those complaints are boring to talk about.
What isn’t boring to talk about is the presentation. I mean, how cool is it that they managed to make family names more emotionally-powered than given ones?
Traditionally, the main couple calling one another by their first names would be the big progress moment. But here, that’s not true, and it takes a lot of work to reach that point.
It’s in the inciting plot line (the two becoming step-siblings) that erases the heroine’s old surname and replaces it with another. It’s how this forces the two to call one another by their given names.
It’s in the memories of the past, where the heroine’s old name is trapped. It’s in the memories of their idyllic first love, of when they were close, of when they were happy.
And it’s in the careful touch of not making names apparently important. It isn’t a big deal, it isn’t something the two talk about… It’s just a tool the author utilizes, alongside all the other metaphors they set up, all the symbolism they use, all the repetition.
It’s so cool to see a story so blatantly crafted by a writer… and it’s so strange that I’m not used to seeing it in other anime.
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Movie Talk: Boku ga Ai Shita Subete no Kimi e
And to a lesser extent, Kimi wo Ai Shita Hitori no Boku e as well.
I feel like, being the massive Gridman fan that I am, I should really be talking about Gridman Universe here… but that movie was appalling. In this section, I want to talk about things I like, so let’s just focus on the romance flicks.
What we have here with BokuAi is a film about… one boy (technically) who gets wrapped up in a time travel plot. However, that time travel plot is the story of a different film, KimiAi, and as you can imagine, the two films overlap and intersect quite a bit. But KimiAi—the film that focuses on the whys and hows of the time travel mechanics—kinda sucks. It’s clearly the main film, it’s literally the A-plot to BokuAi‘s B-plot. It has the main heroine, and in a Visual Novel it’d be the true route… but I think BokuAi is a far better film, and I’d argue it’s stronger as a standalone than it is as part of a duology. Just watch BokuAi alone.
So, while the A film is focused on the main story, our side attraction BokuAi focuses on… romance, life, and growing old. It’s one of those rare romance stories that begins with childhood, goes through adulthood, and ends with an elderly couple. That alone merits a watch, to me. We don’t get enough proper romance tales in anime.
It has a cool aesthetic with some interesting shots—especially compared to its sibling film—which act as great presentation for this lifetime-spanning love story. Watch a young boy grow up, fall in love, live through the trials and tribulations of life, and die happily after living long. His voice actor is absolutely amateur, but the rest of the cast (crucially the actor of his love interest) make up for it.
That love interest is what sells this movie. She’s a bit of a nerdy weirdo at first, stoic, blunt, she says strange things about time travel… As the years pass, those traits remain, but she slowly opens up and grows up. From the start, she’s the one who seems to know what’s going on best, and for a large chunk of the film, she’s the cool (sometimes drunk) office lady who stands out as a remarkable talent in her field. She’s a leading lady, for sure. Very entertaining to watch.
The main appeal really is in watching these two quirky kids grow into a relationship, but there’s some interesting philosophy to boot. Since time is being messed with throughout the film as a result of KimiAi shenanigans, the question of whether any one person is the same person you knew yesterday is very potent, especially in a romance film.
Is the man you married the same man you were betrothed to? Is your child the same person you gave birth to? How much do the small fluctuations—the inconsistencies in our memories—matter to the big picture? These questions can only exist in a story about time travel, and they can only exist in a story where characters grow old… so they really take advantage of the setting to push their moral messaging.
Unfortunately, the Sci-Fi undercurrent derails this core romance at times, and an interwoven subplot involving BokuAi‘s companion film KimiAi takes over the final act to close out the duology’s story, but I found myself feeling satisfied by what I’d watched, if only for the uniqueness of an anime romance that spans an entire adult life.
If you wanna watch two high school misfits who barely know one another close that gap, fall in love, help one another graduate, find jobs, get married, have children, grow old, and retire… well you don’t have many options, so you should take what you can get. Sci-fi trappings are forgivable.
Return to Contents
Looking forward to in 2024: Nanare Hananare
Ooh, okay, now this is a risky one. This doesn’t look like a show I’ll like by any means, it feels like that usual P.A. slop they’ve been coasting on for well-over a decade now, and there’s very little known about it currently other than a bad voice acting credit and a handful of staff roles… and those staff are a real mixed bag.
We’ve got the episode director of Angel Beats!‘ protag flashback storyline and good ol’ Arpeggio, as well as a writer who did good work on Monster Strike‘s second series. Basic, but cool!
Then we’ve got someone who wrote for Little Busters! (uh…), did the screenplay for a chunk of Digimon Tri (uuuuh…), and had a big hand in Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu (oh no!), so they’ve got a very unfortunate history.
But all of them worked on It’s MyGO!!!!!, so they hopefully have a good influence on one another to make good anime, and hopefully MyGO wasn’t just a fluke.
I won’t be surprised if I’m ultimately uninterested in Nanare Hananare, but if I do end up liking it… yay!
Also Trapezium seems cool, but it’s a movie, so I probably won’t get to see it until 2025. I used to watch Construction back in the day, so a story written by a Nogizaka member sounds fun, and I loved the Sarishinohara series, so the sacrificial idol idea is proveably endearing to me.
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Photo Kano
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Description
Likes: Singing and dancing, doing the Usa Peace pose
Dislikes: Difficult books, studying and stories
Class: 1-B
Kanon is the protagonist's younger sister. She loves to sing and dance and dreams of becoming an idol. She often poses or reenacts scenes she has seen in shoujo manga or anime. She has average grades but is athletic. She joined the tennis club since she looks up to Haruka. She is rarely seen without a smile on her face.
Description
Likes: Sports, eating, having fun with everyone
Dislikes: Studying, boredom, BB
Class: 2-A
Nonoka has below average grades, is extremely athletic and has an upbeat personality that allows her to have a lot of friends of both genders. She is the ace pitcher of the softball club. Love is the last thing on her mind. She has been the protagonist's friend since middle school and has frequently given him nicknames based on his interests at the time; the one she uses most frequently is "Darts'un" from the time the protagonist tried playing darts.
[From Wikipedia]
Description
Tomoe is a girl with a rather plain personality who easily blends into the background in the protagonist's class. Her grades are about average and she is not very athletic either. She always distances herself from her other classmates and would react timidly should anyone attempt to start a conversation with her. This shyness comes from having moved many times due to her father's work and not having been able to make fast friends as a result.
Description
Likes: Studying, diving, swimming, being organized, reading
Dislikes: Disturbing others, violating the school's rules
Aki is a third-year student with a rather stern personality, earning her the reputation as the "Captious Student Council President". Her grades are outstanding, the best Kouga Academy has ever seen, and was formerly a member of the swim club, specifically as a diver.
[From Wikipedia]
Description
Likes: Chatting, tennis, reading
Dislikes: Not being able to maintain herself
Haruka is the protagonist's classmate and object of affection. She is very popular among both boys and girls, has good grades and plays tennis very well. She can handle everything with ease but is not the type to show initiative herself. She is the protagonist's childhood friend; but, because he became conscious of her developing body, her beauty, as well as the gossip regarding the two of them once they reached middle school, he has distanced himself from her, much to her disappointment.
[From Wikipedia]
Description
She is a student teacher who came to Kouga Academy in the new term as a math teacher. With the exception of university, she has never been to a school with boys (having always attended all-girls' schools). Since she has a rather upbeat personality, her students often call her informally, which she does not object to and therefore naturally results in her high popularity among the student body. Like Yuko and Ruu, Momoko is an unlockable character.
Description
Mai is a classmate of the protagonist's little sister, Kanon. Her personality is on the meek and shy side. She has average grades but is rather athletic. She engaged in gymnastics during middle school but switched to rhythmic gymnastics in high school.
Description
Likes: Taking pictures (especially of the nature), being alone
Dislikes: Small talk, nosy people, taking portrait shots
Hikari is a member of the photo club. She chooses not to take portrait shots, specializing instead in landscape/scenery and astronomy photos. She is not the type to engage in small talk and therefore is mostly seen by herself. She rarely smiles and is prone to sarcastic comments.
[From Wikipedia]
Description
Rina has a very gentle demeanor and is in the same school year as the protagonist. Her grades are quite good even with the careless mistakes that she often makes. She likes cooking and is the lone member of the Cooking Research Society.
Description
Misa is the protagonist's homeroom teacher. She teaches English. She considers teaching to be her calling in life and therefore she is very thorough in guiding her students. A harsh personality coupled with being somewhat untidy result in zero happenings in her love life. Momoko Ōtani is currently under her supervision.
Description
Hiromichi is the president of the Photography Club. He pursues a wide range of photos from the female students going about their daily lives to the borderline eroticism stuff. Possibly because of this that he is thoroughly hated by every girl in the school, but he seems not to mind.
Description
Katsumi was the ace of the volleyball club until she injured her ankle during her freshman year, forcing her to retire. She is now the president of the Photo Club (not to be confused with the Photography Club), which takes all of the school's official photos. Katsumi created the Photo Club because she was rejected by Hiromichi for membership in the Photography Club (likely due to disagreeing with him on the issue of erotic photography). Since her injury, she has been learning about cameras, using them to record other students' dreams while cheering them on. Katsumi is loved by all of the girls involved in club activities, especially those in the sports clubs.
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Characters of the Mortal Kombat series
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This is a list of playable and boss characters from the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise and the games in which they appear. Created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, the series depicts conflicts between various realms. Most characters fight on behalf of their realm, with the primary heroes defending Earthrealm against conquering villains from Outworld and the Netherrealm. Early installments feature the characters participating in the eponymous Mortal Kombat tournament to decide their realm's fate. In later installments, Earthrealm is often invaded by force.
A total of 77 playable fighters have been featured in the series, in addition to unplayable bosses and guest characters. Much of the franchise's mainstays were introduced during the first three games. Nearly all of the characters have been killed at a point in the story, but have rarely stayed dead.
Introduced in Mortal Kombat (1992)
[edit]
Goro
[edit]
Portrayed by: Tom Woodruff Jr. (1995 film)
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4); Ken Lally (2011 game); Vic Chao (MKX, MK1); Kevin Michael Richardson (1995 film, Scorpion's Revenge); Ron Feinberg (The Journey Begins); Angus Sampson (2021 film)
Goro is the sub-boss of the first Mortal Kombat game. He is a Shokan, a half-human, half-dragon race distinguished by his four arms and enormous size. He became Grand Champion of the Mortal Kombat tournament after defeating the Great Kung Lao, and held the title for the next 500 years as part of evil sorcerer Shang Tsung's plan to manipulate the tournament in order to achieve Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's goal of dominance of Earthrealm. However, these plans were thwarted when the Earthrealm warrior Liu Kang defeated both Goro and Shang Tsung, allowing Earthrealm to regain control of the tournament. Goro disappeared thereafter and was believed to be dead. In Mortal Kombat II, Goro is succeeded by another member of his race, Kintaro, and is not seen again until the 1996 compilation game Mortal Kombat Trilogy, in which all the characters from the first three series games were playable. Goro was initially omitted from Mortal Kombat 4 (1997), but was included as a sub-boss in the home versions of the game.
In the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), Goro is mortally wounded and presumed dead. In the 2004 follow-up game Mortal Kombat: Deception, he has been saved from death by Shao Kahn, with the promise of returning his fellow Shokan to their former glory and the banishment of their archenemies, the Centaurs, in exchange for his allegiance, and resumes his place at Shao Kahn's side. Goro was not playable in either game. He is a boss character in the 2005 beat 'em up title Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. In the 2011 Mortal Kombat series reboot, Goro resumes his role as the sub-boss of the Shaolin Tournament from the first game, and is again defeated by Liu Kang in the story mode. He is playable in the 2015 title Mortal Kombat X (2015) as a bonus pre-order character, again serving as a sub-boss in the game's arcade-ladder mode. In Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), Goro's corpse appears in the story mode and in his "Lair" stage during gameplay. Goro appears in Mortal Kombat 1 as an assist character, or "Kameo Fighter", and via a minor appearance in the story mode as a member of General Shao's army.
Goro's original design was as a two-armed humanoid character named Rokuro, a member of "a race of demon warriors" who would join the tournament "to restore the pride and respect of his race".[1] Series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias drew design inspiration from the stop motion adventure films of Ray Harryhausen, especially his depiction of Kali in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in redesigning Goro with four arms.[2][3] He was originally named "Gongoro" before his final name was determined, and was constructed as a stop-motion clay figurine that eventually fell apart after excessive use in capturing its movements for the game.[4]
Goro has a prominent role in Malibu Comics' Mortal Kombat series that followed the events of the first game, and was the subject of the 1994 three-issue miniseries Goro: Prince of Pain. In the 2015 DC Comics Mortal Kombat X prequel series, he is featured in a subplot that shows him fighting and being maimed by Kotal Kahn in a battle for the Outworld throne.[5] Goro is the reigning champion in the 1995 film Mortal Kombat that follows the events of the original game, and was a life-sized animatronic model that cost over $1 million to construct and required over a dozen puppeteers to operate.[6][7] Goro again reprised his role as the defending tournament champion in the 2020 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge that retold the events of the original game, but was a supporting villain in the 2021 live-action reboot film Mortal Kombat, in which he was computer-generated.[8]
Goro has received positive critical reception for his formidableness as a boss character in the games,[9][10][11][12][13] but his cinematic portrayals, particularly in the 2021 film, have been negatively received.[14][15][16][17] Michael Kennedy of Screen Rant commented in 2021, "While the puppetry used to bring Goro to life [in the 1995 film] had its limitations, Goro played a vital role in the story, serving as a major roadblock to thunder god Raiden's defense of Earthrealm. While he returned in Mortal Kombat 2021, his inclusion felt more like an afterthought than anything."[18]
Johnny Cage
[edit]
Main article: Johnny Cage
Kano
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MK—MK3); Sorin Brouwers (MKvsDC, MK9); Derek Pratt (MK11); Trevor Goddard (1995 film); Darren Shahlavi (Legacy); Josh Lawson (2021 film)
Voiced by: David Allen (2000–2006); Michael McConnohie (2008–2015); JB Blanc (MK11); Michael Des Barres (Defenders of the Realm); Robin Atkin Downes (Scorpion's Revenge); David Wenham (Snow Blind)
Kano is first depicted in the Mortal Kombat canon as a Japanese-born American (Australian in later games.[19]) who was the leader of the Black Dragon criminal empire and a wanted man in thirty-five countries.[20] He enters the Shaolin tournament in the original Mortal Kombat Game after hearing rumors that tournament host Shang Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches, with the intention of looting it for the Black Dragon. However, he is fervently pursued by U.S. Special Forces officer Sonya Blade, who holds a personal grudge against Kano that was left unspecified in the game's storyline. He evades capture by leaping onto Shang Tsung's junk bound for the tournament. When Sonya tracks him onto the private island, she is captured and forced to compete. She and Kano are among the competition's few survivors, and during the final battle between Shang Tsung and Shaolin monk Liu Kang, Sonya reluctantly teams up with Kano to fight off the Shokan Prince Goro. During their battle, the island immediately self-destructs following Shang Tsung's defeat, trapping Kano and Sonya in the otherworldly dimension Outworld.[21] Kano is unplayable in Mortal Kombat II (1993), in which he and Sonya are both captured and chained on display in Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's arena.
In Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Kano escapes the Special Forces' clutches once again, and convinces Shao Kahn to spare his soul at the outset of the tyrant's invasion of Earth on the grounds that he can teach his armies how to use Earthrealm weaponry.
Kano was omitted from Mortal Kombat 4 in favor of new character Jarek, but returns in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002). He and Sheeva hatch a plan to assassinate Shao Kahn, but Kano turns on her by preventing the attack. As a reward, he is promoted to general of Outworld's reduced army and manages to repel Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army. However, after a weakened Kahn is killed by the titular Deadly Alliance of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, Kano declares his allegiance to them. He is assigned to oversee the enslavement of a small village that constructs a temple over Onaga's tomb to house a Soulnado. During its construction, Kano is assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervenes, as the Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon leader Mavado to eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano.
Kano appears in the 2000 spin-off platform game Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, in which he is not playable but is featured in the storyline, freeing fellow Black Dragon cohorts No Face, Tasia, Jarek, and Tremor from a Special Forces security facility under the pretense that they would reform the organization, though he really intended to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. They kill an entire Special Forces unit during the prison break before Kano heads to Outworld, where he recovers the Eye of Chitian, an artifact through which he would acquire incredible power. While Special Forces Major Jax Briggs gets ahold of the object first and transports himself and Kano back to Earthrealm, the latter soon escapes custody.
Kano joins the then-entire playable roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006). In the game's training mode, the demigod Taven finds him being held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan. Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Taven that the Red Dragon had been experimenting on him and their clansmen in an effort to create genetically engineered dragons and human-dragon hybrids. He is one of eleven Mortal Kombat characters representing the Mortal Kombat franchise in the 2008 crossover fighting game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
In the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot that retells the stories of the first three games, Kano is the Black Dragon leader who tricked the Special Forces by acting as an informant and deliberately feeding them false intelligence that led to the deaths of many of Sonya and Jax's comrades, establishing their vendetta against him. During the events of the first Shaolin tournament, Kano battles Sonya following her fight with the pompous actor Johnny Cage, but he is defeated.[22] While Kano is later beaten by Sonya again after Shang Tsung presents him to her as a challenge, the tournament host forbids her from arresting him.[23] Following this, Kano becomes Shao Kahn's arms supplier, giving his armies Earthrealm weaponry for his impending invasion.[24][25][26] After Kabal, a reformed Black Dragon member turned SWAT officer, is severely burned by Kintaro, Kano takes him away to restore his health alongside Shang Tsung and outfit him with a respirator, mask, and hookswords in spite of his former ally's defection. However, Kabal is mortified by his condition and furious at Kano for siding against Earthrealm, so he bests him in combat and forces him to take him to Shao Kahn before knocking Kano out. Kano later joins Goro and Kintaro in holding a group of soldiers hostage before being frozen by the cyborg Sub-Zero. However, Kano manages to free himself and informs his ally Noob Saibot that Sub-Zero broke free of his controller, Sektor.[27]
In Mortal Kombat X, Kano infiltrates the Shaolin Temple and steals the fallen Elder God Shinnok's amulet for Shao Kahn's daughter, Mileena, to assist in a civil war against Outworld's new ruler, Kotal Kahn. He attempts to distract the new Kahn while Mileena sets up an ambush, but Kotal realizes Kano is going to betray him and defeats the criminal. After he defeats Mileena, Kano retreats to Earthrealm. He infiltrates an Outworld refugee camp but is caught by Kenshi and Sonya, who take him into custody.
In Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), Kano aligns himself with the keeper of time Kronika. To assist her further by fixing and mass-producing Sektor, she brings in a younger version of Kano.[28][29] The two Kanos attack the Special Forces base and kidnap younger versions of Johnny and Sonya to force them to fight for the Black Dragon's entertainment before Sonya's daughter Cassie Cage rescues them. Sonya kills the younger Kano, erasing the present version from existence.[30][31]
Kano was the final fighter added to the first game, with his role as the enemy of the female character Sonya.[32] He was initially named Kao, and his faceplate came from being shot while escaping Sonya in an early planned Special Forces game.[33] Kano's bionic metal faceplate was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in The Terminator,[34][35] with the infrared eye added digitally.
Liu Kang
[edit]
Main article: Liu Kang
Raiden
[edit]
Main article: Raiden (Mortal Kombat)
Reptile
[edit]
Main article: Reptile (Mortal Kombat)
Scorpion
[edit]
Main article: Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)
Shang Tsung
[edit]
Main article: Shang Tsung
Sonya Blade
[edit]
Main article: Sonya Blade
Sub-Zero
[edit]
Main article: Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat)
Introduced in Mortal Kombat II
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat II
Baraka
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MKII); Sean Okerberg (MKvsDCU); Dennis Keiffer (Annihilation); Lateef Crowder (Rebirth); Fraser Aitcheson (Legacy); CJ Bloomfield (Mortal Kombat 2)
Voiced by: Dan Forden (MKG); Eric Wackerfuss (MK:D); Dan Washington (MKvsDCU); Bob Carter (MK9); Greg Eagles (MKX);[36] Steve Blum (2019-present)
Baraka is a member of a lowly Outworld race called the Tarkatans, who are known for their violent and unpredictable behavior and characterized by long gnashing teeth and a set of forearm-implanted retractable blades. He spearheads the attack on Liu Kang's Shaolin temple following the conclusion of the first Mortal Kombat tournament, which in turn lures Liu Kang into Outworld to seek vengeance. In Mortal Kombat Trilogy, he is a member of Shao Kahn's forces that takes part in the invasion of Earthrealm.[37] Baraka is not playable in the next fighting installment, Mortal Kombat 4 (1997), but was added to the roster of the 2000 Sega Dreamcast-exclusive upgrade Mortal Kombat Gold, in which Quan Chi offers him a chance to rule the Outworld realm of Edenia by his side if he agrees to join the fallen Elder God Shinnok's army. While Baraka accepts, he secretly plans to betray his new masters. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, Baraka and the remainder of his Tarkatan (formerly "Nomad") race ally themselves with the arisen Dragon King Onaga, and recruits the mutant clone Mileena into Onaga's ranks in order to pose as Kitana. While Baraka is playable along with the entire series roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), he was not among the seventeen characters therein who received an official biography by Midway and he played no part in the game's storyline.
Baraka is a recurring foe in the story mode of 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, in which the events of the first three games are retold, and he is defeated by Johnny Cage, Cyrax, Jax, and Jade. In the retold storyline of Mortal Kombat II, he leads his Tarkatan armies in an invasion of Earthrealm. He is not playable in Mortal Kombat X, but appears in the game's story mode when his fellow Tarkatans aid D'Vorah in loading captive Shaolin monks before they are confronted and defeated by Raiden, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao. In a flashback sequence, Baraka serves under then-Outworld ruler Mileena alongside D'Vorah, but during a meeting with the Osh-Tekk Kotal Kahn, Baraka is killed after D'Vorah betrays Mileena. In Mortal Kombat 11, a past version of Baraka is brought to the present by the keeper of time Kronika. After learning of his death and Kotal Kahn rendering the Tarkatans to near-extinction, he initially allies himself with Kronika and a similarly time-displaced Shao Kahn.[38][39] However, Kitana convinces him to aid her in rescuing Kotal, and he and the Tarkatans take part in Kitana's battle against Shao Kahn and in the final battle against Kronika.[40][41]
In the new third timeline depicted in 2023 Mortal Kombat 1, he was once a well-respected Outworld merchant prior to becoming a leader of the Tarkatans, a species of mutated individuals who are exposed to the mysterious Tarkat virus and outcast to a disarrayed Outworld colony.[42]
The character was first conceived by Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias as a "savage barbarian demon warrior" who was initially planned to be in the first Mortal Kombat game.[43] He was visualized for MKII with a Nosferatu mask adorned with silver-painted false fingernails serving as his teeth, while his arm blades were constructed from silver cardboard.[44]
Baraka appears briefly in the 1997 feature film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by stuntman Dennis Keiffer. He has no dialogue and is killed in a fight scene with Liu Kang, and is only identified by name in the closing credits.[45] In the 2010 short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, Baraka is played by martial artist Lateef Crowder and depicted in the film's alternate modern setting as a psychotic former plastic surgeon named "Dr. Alan Zane", who surgically attaches a pair of long metal blades to his forearms. He later kills Jax's undercover operative, Johnny Cage, in a fight.[46] These changes were not carried over into the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, in which he was played by Fraser Aitcheson and was reverted to his original Outworld origins.[47] Baraka makes a brief appearance in the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, in which he has no dialogue and is killed in a fight against Cage. CJ Bloomfield will play the character in the feature film Mortal Kombat 2.[48]
In 2009, Baraka ranked third on GameDaily's list of the "top ten ugliest game characters".[49] Dan Ryckert of Game Informer, in 2010, noted him among the characters wanted for the 2011 reboot game, as he felt that "people love Baraka" yet noted his absence in subsequent releases since his series debut.[50] Baraka has otherwise received positive reception from gaming media outlets for his character[51][52][53][54] and Fatalities.[55][56][57][58]
Jade
[edit]
Main article: Jade (Mortal Kombat)
Jax
[edit]
Main article: Jax (Mortal Kombat)
Kintaro
[edit]
Voiced by: Rhasaan Orange (2011 game), Dave B. Mitchell (Battle of the Realms)[59]
Kintaro is the sub-boss for both Mortal Kombat II and also in the 2011 reboot. He is also the penultimate boss of Mortal KombatShaolin Monks. A Shokan, he shares his species' four arms and imposing size, but is distinguished by his tiger-like stripes. Kintaro participates in Shao Kahn's attempt to conquer Earthrealm during the second game's tournament, in which he is defeated by Liu Kang. In the reboot, he is defeated by Kung Lao during the tournament. The reboot also establishes him as being responsible for Kabal's injuries. In the 2015 Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, Kintaro is killed by Sonya Blade while she is under Havik's control.
The character was a stop-motion clay figure whose design was inspired by the Japanese mythological character Kintarō. He was initially conceived for MKII as an anthropomorphic fur-lined bipedal tiger, but the concept was scrapped due to the difficulty of creating such a complicated outfit.[60] According to series co-creator John Tobias, Kintaro was redesigned as a "Goro spinoff"[61] who was possibly a Shokan general, but not royalty.[62]
Kintaro appears in the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, voiced by Dave B. Mitchell.[59]
Kintaro has received a middling reception due to his minor role in the series and is often unfavorably compared to Goro; UGO Networks opined in 2012 that Kintaro "serves no real purpose except for being a reskinned Goro whose sole purpose is to avenge the aforementioned's death" in the conclusion of the original game.[63] Game Informer, in 2021, rated him 56th among the series' 76 playable characters: "Kintaro’s arrival wasn’t as impactful as Goro's since the Shokan boss thing had already been done before. NetherRealm also seems content with giving him more and more feline attributes in place of a personality."[64] Den of Geek wrote that he "has virtually no story to speak of outside of the [MK9] retcon".[65] His "Reverse Rip" from the reboot was rated 35th by Prima Games in their 2014 list of the series' top fifty Fatalities.[66]
Kitana
[edit]
Main article: Kitana
Kung Lao
[edit]
Main article: Kung Lao
Mileena
[edit]
Main article: Mileena
Noob Saibot
[edit]
Portrayed by: Daniel Pesina (MKII); John Turk (UMK3, MK4); Lawrence Kern (2011 game, MK11); J. J. Perry (Annihilation); Kimball Uddin (Conquest), Joe Taslim (Mortal Kombat 2)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK:D); Jamieson Price (2011 game); Sean Chiplock (MK11); Kaiji Tang (MK1)
Noob Saibot is an undead wraith from the Netherrealm and a member of a cult called the Brotherhood of the Shadow who worships a fallen Elder God, later revealed to be Shinnok. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, he discovers, reactivates, and reprograms the cyborg ninja Smoke, intending to use his body as the basis for an undead cyborg army. In his ending, he is revealed to be a ressurrected Bi-Han, who previously operated as Sub-Zero before he was killed by Scorpion.[67] In Mortal Kombat (2011), Saibot is resurrected off-screen by Quan Chi and Shao Kahn. While defending the former's "Soulnado", Saibot is defeated by his brother and new Sub-Zero Kuai Liang and presumed dead after being pulled into the Soulnado. In Mortal Kombat 11, Saibot resurfaces as a servant of Kronika, having gained increased power.
The character's name comes from the last names of Mortal Kombat's creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias, spelled backwards. Saibot first appeared in Mortal Kombat II (MKII) as a non-playable hidden character and a solid-black palette swap of the game's other male ninja characters, whom players could fight after winning fifty straight matches. Spurred by the positive reaction to the hidden character Reptile from the first game, Boon added Saibot to MKII without Tobias' knowledge, though Tobias would later create the character's initial backstory as a Netherrealm wraith.[68]
He makes a cameo appearance in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by J. J. Perry, and in a self-titled episode of Mortal Kombat: Conquest, played by martial artist Kimball Uddin.
Noob Saibot has received positive critical reception,[63][65][53][69][70] and particularly for his "Make a Wish" Fatality from the 2011 reboot game.[55][71][72][73][74][75] In July 2011, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart played a video of the finisher while explaining the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the ESRB could regulate video games without government intervention.[72]
Shao Kahn
[edit]
Main article: Shao Kahn
Smoke
[edit]
Portrayed by: Daniel Pesina (MKII); John Turk (UMK3); Noah Fleder (MK1); Ridley Tsui (Annihilation)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MKII, UMK3, MK:A); Ken Lally (2011 game); Andrew Bowen (MKX);[76] Jeremy Ratchford (Defenders of the Realm); Matthew Mercer (Battle of the Realms);[77] Yuri Lowenthal (MK1)[78]
Smoke debuted in Mortal Kombat II (MKII) as a non-playable hidden character who emanates smoke from his body and randomly appears at the start of a match to provide vague clues on how to find and fight him, for which specific requirements had to be met by players. Appearing as an unlockable playable character in Mortal Kombat 3 (MK3), he is stated to be a Lin Kuei assassin who works with Kuai Liang / Sub-Zero. After their clan starts turning their best warriors into cyborgs, Smoke attempts to join Kuai Liang in leaving the Lin Kuei. However, the former is captured, converted, and forced to hunt the latter against his will. With Kuai Liang's help, Smoke discovers he still retains his soul and aids him in defeating Lin Kuei cyborgs Cyrax and Sektor, only to be captured by Shao Kahn's forces. During the events of Mortal Kombat: Deception, Smoke is reactivated and reprogrammed by Noob Saibot into serving him as his ally and template for an army of cyber-demons. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Smoke helps Saibot stage an assault on a Lin Kuei temple in Arctika until he is defeated by Taven.
In Mortal Kombat (2011), during which Raiden creates a new timeline while attempting to avert the events of Armageddon, Smoke is rewritten to become Tomas Vrbada, a Czech member of the Lin Kuei who can transform into his namesake. As a child, he was kidnapped by a cult who sought to sacrifice him to a demon, only for Smoke to become an enenra and slay the cultists.[79] In the present, Smoke is chosen by Raiden to help him stop Shao Kahn from taking over Earthrealm. Though Raiden saves Smoke from becoming a cyborg, Kuai Liang is converted in his place before Smoke is killed by Shao Kahn's queen Sindel. Following this, Smoke is resurrected by Quan Chi as an undead revenant, a role he fulfills while making a minor non-playable appearance in Mortal Kombat X (MKX). Additionally, the downloadable playable character Triborg possesses a form based on Smoke's cyborg form.
In Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), in which Fire God Liu Kang creates a third new timeline, Tomas / Smoke is rewritten once more to become an adoptive brother to Bi-Han / Sub-Zero and Kuai Liang / Scorpion after Smoke's family was killed for accidentally trespassing on Lin Kuei grounds. Though he lacks supernatural abilities, Smoke is skilled in practical magic. After Bi-Han betrays them to join forces with Shang Tsung, Smoke joins Kuai Liang in breaking off to found the Shirai Ryu clan to oppose him.[citation needed]
Smoke, based on his MK3 portrayal, appears in the Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm episode "Old Friends Never Die". Furthermore, he makes a cameo appearance in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, in which he is killed by Liu Kang.
Smoke has received mostly positive reception,[63][80][81][82] while his "Earth Detonation" Fatality from MK3 has been noted by critics for its outlandish nature.[83][84][85][86][87]
Chameleon
[edit]
Portrayed by: John Turk (MKT)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MKT)
Chameleon is a mysterious warrior who possesses the abilities of all the franchise' male ninjas. He is distinguished by his partially transparent appearance and an outfit that constantly changes its colors. Chameleon appeared in the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy with no biography or ending; he is instead only referred to as "one of Shao Kahn's deadliest warriors".[88] His Armageddon ending is also vague, revealing only that he had sought to become Mortal Kombat champion since the events of the first game.
The character was ranked 32nd in UGO's 2012 selection of the top fifty series characters, who wrote "They say copying is a form of flattery, so Chameleon makes our list."[63] Complex rated him tenth in their 2011 selection of the series' ten "most underrated characters",[89] but IGN's Mitchell Saltzman listed Chameleon and Khameleon as two of the worst Mortal Kombat characters. "Unlike all of the other ninja palette swaps that eventually gained their own identity and playstyle, both Chameleons ... feel more like gimmicks than anything."[90]
Cyrax
[edit]
Portrayed by: Sal Divita (MK3, UMK3); Shane Warren Jones (Legacy)
Voiced by: Rhasaan Orange (2011 game); Ike Amadi (MK11); Artt Butler (Battle of the Realms)[59]
Cyrax debuts in Mortal Kombat 3 as a member of the Lin Kuei clan of assassins along with Sub-Zero, Sektor, and Smoke. When the clan decide to utilize modern technology by converting its members into soulless cyborgs, Sub-Zero refuses and defects, which leads to the clan's grandmasters marking him for death. As a result, Cyrax, along with Sektor, and Smoke, are assigned to hunt down and kill him.[91] However, during Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, Sub-Zero captures Cyrax and reprograms him with orders to destroy the emperor, but Shao Kahn is defeated beforehand by the other Earthrealm warriors. In Mortal Kombat Gold (2000), after Shinnok's defeat, Cyrax experiences flashbacks of his former life, and Sonya and Jax bring him to the Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA) headquarters, where they restore his humanity. As a token of gratitude, Cyrax joins the agency as an Earthrealm scout.[92]
In Deadly Alliance, Cyrax encounters the vampire Nitara, who offers to help him return home in exchange for his assistance in finding the egg of the Dragon King. Cyrax submerges himself in a lake of molten lava and discovers the orb that would separate her home realm from Outworld. In exchange for the egg, she honors her promise to Cyrax and sends him back to Earthrealm.[93]
In the Mortal Kombat reboot, Cyrax is introduced during the Shaolin Tournament as a human Tswana member of the Lin Kuei who relies on his chi rather than brute force to carry out clan missions, and is against the Lin Kuei's impending "Cyber Initiative" as he is reluctant to surrender his humanity. However, during the events of the second game, he is nonetheless captured by the clan and transformed offscreen.[94] After capturing Sub-Zero in Shao Kahn's arena during the second tournament and taking him away to be cyberized, Cyrax and Sektor pledging their services to Kahn in exchange. When the Outworld emperor launches an invasion of Earthrealm, the cyborgs attack the Earthrealm defenders to stop them from interfering, only to be thwarted by Nightwolf. Despite this, Shao Kahn's wife, Queen Sindel, arrives moments later and completes the cyborgs' mission.
Cyrax returns in Mortal Kombat 11 as a non-playable character brought to the present timeline by Kronika as part of her plan to restart time by taking part in Sektor's plot to capture Sub-Zero's Lin Kuei warriors and convert them into cyborgs to bolster her ranks. He attempts to stop Sub-Zero and Scorpion infiltrating the Cyber Lin Kuei factory to shut them down, but is defeated and his slave protocol disabled. Upon regaining his humanity, Cyrax is horrified to discover that he has become a machine and, despite Sub-Zero pledging to restore him, chose to sacrifice himself in the process of shutting down the factory.[29]
Cyrax appears in one episode of the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, played by Shane Warren Jones. He and Sektor are shown being transformed at the Lin Kuei's secret headquarters with the operation overseen by Kano.
Cyrax was included with Sektor and Smoke atop GamesRadar's 2011 list of "gaming's most malicious machines",[95] and Complex ranked him the fourth-coolest robot in video games in 2012.[96] His episode of Legacy was well received,[97][98] but critical reaction to his Fatalities has been mixed.[99][100]
Ermac
[edit]
Main article: Ermac
Kabal
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MK3, UMK3 and MKT); Carlos Pesina (MK:D, MK:A); Daniel Nelson (2021 film)
Voiced by: Jarod Pranno (MK:A); David Lodge (2011 game); Jonathan Cahill (MK11);[101] Kevin Michael Richardson (Defenders of the Realm); Damon Herriman (2021 film); Keith Silverstein (Snow Blind)[102]
Kabal was a member of the Black Dragon crime syndicate alongside Kano until Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, but after he is included among Raiden's chosen warriors to defend Earthrealm, he is attacked and maimed by Kahn's extermination squads, forcing him thereafter to rely on artificial respirators for survival and a mask to hide his now-disfigured face. However, the assault also results in him abandoning his life of crime in order to help the Earthrealm warriors successfully thwart Shao Kahn and his forces. Kabal is not playable in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, though he has a significant role in the game's story mode when he is defeated in battle and his signature hookswords stolen by Mavado, a leading member of the Black Dragon's rival clan, the Red Dragon. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, the cleric of chaos Havik brings Kabal back from the brink of death and instructs him to restore the same Black Dragon that he had long tried to disassociate himself from. Kabal complies, recruiting arms dealer Kira and martial artist turned killer Kobra. Kabal later defeats Mavado and takes back his swords. Kabal appears with Kira and Kobra in the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon when he confronts the demigod Taven after the latter defeats the Black Dragon thugs. Impressed, Kabal offers him a chance to join the Black Dragon, but Taven refuses. Kabal challenges him to combat in response, but is defeated.
Kabal is a reformed Black Dragon member turned NYPD riot-control officer alongside Kurtis Stryker in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot. Amidst the chaos of Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, they confront and defeat Outworld warriors Reptile and Mileena, but Kabal is severely burned by Kintaro and kidnapped by Kano.[103] Despite Kabal leaving the Black Dragon, Kano restores his health with the sorcerer Shang Tsung's help, though with a respirator and mask as Kabal's lungs are damaged beyond repair. He is irate with Kano for supporting Outworld, and demands Kano take him to Shao Kahn, where they witness the emperor promote his wife Sindel to general of his armies, before Kabal flees back to Earthrealm. Raiden subsequently invites him to join his band of Earthrealm warriors, but while he and Liu Kang commune with the Elder Gods, Sindel and the Lin Kuei ninja clan ambush Kabal and the other Earthrealm defenders, killing most of them, including Kabal. The fallen are then resurrected by the necromancer Quan Chi as undead revenant slaves. The undead Kabal returns in Mortal Kombat X and is not playable with a minor role in the game's story, but is selectable in Mortal Kombat 11, in which the present Kabal is a revenant servant of Kronika in the story mode. After she causes a time anomaly as part of her plan to eliminate Raiden from history, she brings a Black Dragon-era Kabal into the present that Kano manipulates into fighting Sonya Blade by falsely claiming she was responsible for scarring him in the future.[104]
Kabal was nicknamed "Sandman" during the production of MK3 before his actual name was determined.[105] According to Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias, Kabal's overall design was inspired by the Tusken Raiders from Star Wars, while the circular lenses of his mask were inspired by 1940s-style aviator goggles.[106] Tobias, however, expressed his dissatisfaction with his original design of Kabal in a 2012 interview.[107]
Kabal made one appearance in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, which covered his backstory from MK3. Though he appeared in the script for Mortal Kombat Annihilation, his part was cut, but he was among Shang Tsung's chosen Outworld villains in the 2021 Mortal Kombat film. In the 2022 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind, he is part of Kano's Black Dragon henchmen.
The character has received mostly positive critical reception,[108][109][54][110] but received notoriety for being overpowered in MK3,[111][112] while response to his Fatalities throughout his series appearances has been mixed.[113][87][114][115][116][117]
Khameleon
[edit]
Portrayed by: Becky Gable (MKT)
Voiced by: Johanna Añonuevo (Armageddon)
Khameleon is a Zaterran who possesses the abilities of the franchise's female ninjas. She is the last known female of her race. She was introduced in the Nintendo 64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.[118] Due to Shao Kahn's role in her race's near extinction, Khameleon seeks revenge against him. Khameleon was the franchise's only previously playable character excluded in the original release of Armageddon, but was added to the Wii version.[119] Series art director Steve Beran acknowledged that she was included in Armageddon due to heavy fan demand.[120]
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1, Khameleon makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the story mode as a member of the Umgadi, warrior priestesses who guard Outworld's royal family.[121] Additionally, she also appears as a downloadable assist character, or "Kameo Fighter".[citation needed]
The character placed 33rd in UGO's selection of the top fifty series characters,[63] but IGN's Mitchell Saltzman listed Khameleon with Chameleon among the series' worst. "Unlike all of the other ninja palette swaps that eventually gained their own identity and playstyle, both Chameleons ... feel more like gimmicks than anything."[90]
Motaro
[edit]
Portrayed by: Deron McBee (Annihilation)
Motaro is a Centaurian from Outworld who possesses immense strength, the ability to teleport, fire energy blasts from his tail, and deflect incoming projectiles. First appearing as a sub-boss in Mortal Kombat 3 and its updates, he leads Shao Kahn's extermination squads during his invasion of Earthrealm.[citation needed] Motaro returns in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon as a minotaur due to a curse on his species placed by the Shokan.[citation needed]
Motaro makes minor non-speaking appearances in Mortal Kombat (2011) and Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), with the former seeing him being killed by Raiden and the latter seeing him serve as a member of General Shao's rebellion.[citation needed] Additionally, Motaro appears as an unlockable assist character, or "Kameo Fighter", in MK1 and his quadrupedal physique was restored for both games.[citation needed]
Motaro has also appeared in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge.
John Tobias said that Motaro was inspired by a Micronauts toy figure of Baron Karza, which could be turned into a centaur by combining the toy with a horse figure packaged alongside it.[122] Described by Ed Boon as one of the "oddest shaped" Mortal Kombat characters, Motaro was nearly excluded from Armageddon due to the developers' difficulty of compensating for his unique half-horse body shape.[123][124] With fans desiring to see the character return, the developers removed Motaro's hind legs to allow him in the game.[125]
Motaro placed 31st in UGO's 2012 ranking of the top fifty Mortal Kombat characters, noting him being a tough sub-boss to defeat.[126] Den of Geek ranked Motaro 42nd in their 2015 rating of the franchise's then-64 playable characters.[65] Marcus Stewart of Game Informer rated Motaro 57th in his 2021 ranking of the 76 playable series characters. "You'd think a centaur would be a cooler character, but Motaro hasn't made a ton of noise since his '90s heyday."[127] The bipedal version of Motaro was criticized by Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 and ScrewAttack, with the former considering his four legs "the one cool thing he had going for him" and the latter stating that he had lost his most defining trait.[128][129]
Nightwolf
[edit]
Main article: Nightwolf
Rain
[edit]
Portrayed by: John Turk (MKT); Tyrone Wiggins (Annihilation); Percy Brown (Conquest)
Voiced by: Rino Romano (Defenders of the Realm); Andrew Bowen (MKX);[130] Dempsey Pappion (MK11);[131] Noshir Dalal (MK1)[78]
Rain makes his first series appearance in the attract mode of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, in which he attacks Shao Kahn on the Portal stage.[132] He was then made a playable character in the home version of UMK3 and the compilation title Mortal Kombat Trilogy (1996) with his own distinct set of moves. In Trilogy, Rain has his own storyline in which he is an Edenian smuggled away from his homeland in the midst of the realm's takeover by Outworld emperor Shao Kahn. Thousands of years later, Rain resurfaces during Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm prior to the third Mortal Kombat tournament. Not wanting to suffer at the hand of Kahn's extermination squads, he betrays his homeland and sides with Kahn, who assigns him alongside fellow enslaved Edenians Kitana and Jade in fighting against the Earthrealm warriors.[133] Rain is absent from the series thereafter until the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), and returns as a playable character in the compilation title Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006). As one of only seventeen characters in the game to receive an official biography,[134] he plays his largest role in the original series continuity by learning of his true Edenian heritage from evil Outworld sorcerer Quan Chi, who informs Rain that he is a direct descendant of Argus, the protector god of Edenia, as well as the half-sibling of the game's protagonist Taven and his brother Daegon, both of whom were favored by their father to assume his mantle of Edenia's protectors.[135] Rain consequently starts to refer to himself as a prince of the realm, as seen in Armageddon's training mode, but he still chooses to independently fight on the side of evil. He confronts the game's protagonist Taven in the location of Arctika but is defeated in battle and flees into a portal.[136]
His storyline is altered in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, which makes no mention of his father or siblings, instead simply describing him as having been orphaned at a young age by Kahn's conquest of Edenia and raised under the protection of Edenian resistance fighters. As he gained a reputation as an exceptional warrior, his level of arrogance followed suit, and he betrayed his comrades after being refused leadership of the resistance. This caught the attention of Kahn, who offered the power-hungry Rain an army of his own in exchange for his services.[137] He was not part of the original playable roster but was later added to the game as downloadable content.
In Mortal Kombat X (2015), Rain is not playable and only appears in the game's story mode as Mileena's advisor, and tries to help her reclaim the Outworld throne from Kotal Kahn in the midst of a civil war. However, he plans to take the throne for himself when the war is over, but is stopped by D'Vorah. He returns in Mortal Kombat 11 again as downloadable content, and his role therein is that he manages to escape Kotal's capture. Rain's past is further explained in his arcade ending in which his father Argus had lied to Rain's birth mother, Amara, on the day after Rain was born and faked his death from her, leaving her to commit suicide out of heartbreak while Rain was callously sold to another family without her knowledge. Rain is furious upon later learning this information and swears vengeance against Argus and his own half-brothers Daegon and Taven, but leaves his stepmother Delia to suffer a similar fate as Amara.[138]
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1, Rain no longer has divine lineage, and is instead depicted as an ambitious sorcerer who became the High Mage of Outworld's Royal Court. Rain's real name in this timeline, Zefferro shares a same names a character who was an Outworld overlord of walled city Lei Chen in the Konquest Mode of Mortal Kombat Deception. He assists Shang Tsung and General Shao's attempt to overthrow Outworld's Royal family in the game's story mode. After Titan Shang Tsung's defeat, Rain joins with Havik to evade capture by Empress Mileena. Havik has him use his power to flood and destroy Seido. The destruction caused by their attack leaves Rain wracked with guilt, and he willingly gives himself up to Outworld's authorities to accept any punishment the Empress gives him.
Rain was inspired by the 1984 Prince song Purple Rain, along with MK co-creator Ed Boon, a longtime fan of the musician, also jokingly wondering what color palette had not yet been used for the series' ninja characters at the time Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was in production.[139] After MK Trilogy, the character was given his own distinct designs in future appearances.
Rain has received mixed to negative critical reception for his origins and his Fatalities.[140][87][141][142] UGO ranked him 28th out of the series' top 50 characters in 2012.[63] His later appearances were better received; Den of Geek ranked Rain 36th in his 2015 rating of the 64 series characters due to his MK9 ending and the expansion of his backstory in Armageddon as "a power-hungry jerk who believed that he was owed everything."[65] GamesRadar+ noted his purple palette in the 2011 reboot as "a nice, rarely used color for male fighting game characters", while "his moves are so weird and confounding that they make every match a constant guessing game."[143] Bleeding Cool considered Rain's MK11 appearance as his best to date due to his evolved moveset.[144]
Sektor
[edit]
Portrayed by: Sal Divita (MK3, UMK3); Peter Shinkoda (Legacy)
Voiced by: Andrew Kishino (2011 game); Dave B. Mitchell (MK11, Battle of the Realms)[59]
Sektor debuts in Mortal Kombat 3 as a member of the Lin Kuei clan along with Sub-Zero, Cyrax, and Smoke. When Sub-Zero defects after refusing to take part in the Lin Kuei's utilization of modern technology by converting its members into cyborgs, Sektor, along with Cyrax, is tasked with hunting down and killing Sub-Zero.[91] Sektor is a secret character in Mortal Kombat Gold, in which he is the only active cyborg out of the original three, after Smoke is shut down in an Outworld prison before being enslaved by Noob Saibot while Cyrax's human soul is restored and he joins Sonya and Jax's Outer World Investigation Agency. Sektor believes the Lin Kuei Grandmaster is inferior and kills him, but Sub-Zero in turn defeats Sektor in battle and claims the title of grandmaster for himself. Sektor flees to Japan thereafter and forms his own clan of cyborg ninja warriors.[145]
Sektor is not playable again until the compilation title Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, and plays a minor role in its training mode. In the 2011 series reboot, he is introduced during the first tournament as a human Chinese member of the clan who, along with Cyrax, is paid handsomely by tournament organizer Shang Tsung to compete and kill Earthrealm's fighters. Sektor is fervently supportive of the Lin Kuei's plan to robotize its members while Cyrax is the opposite; Sektor comes to blows with Cyrax when the latter refuses to kill Johnny Cage in battle, but is defeated. During the second Mortal Kombat tournament, a cyborg Sektor attempts to kidnap Smoke so he could be converted as well, only to be stopped by Raiden. However, in a reversal of Smoke and Sub-Zero's MK3 storylines, Sub-Zero is captured by the Lin Kuei inside Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's arena and eventually converted, with Sektor pledging his services to Kahn in exchange. When Shao Kahn launches an invasion of Earthrealm, Sektor and the cyberized Lin Kuei launch their own attack on the Earthrealm defenders to stop them from interfering with Kahn's plans, only to be thwarted by defeated by Nightwolf. Despite this, Shao Kahn's wife Sindel completes the clan's objective of slaughtering the Earthrealm warriors.
In Mortal Kombat X, Sektor is not playable, but his moveset is a part of Triborg's options and his remains appear in the story mode. In between the events of the 2011 reboot and Mortal Kombat X, Sektor became Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei and had the remaining members killed or cyberized. The recently revived Kuai Liang infiltrates their headquarters and uploads a virus into their system that frees Cyrax from Sektor's control as he confronts the Cyber Lin Kuei. With Cyrax's help, Sub-Zero defeats and kills Sektor before Cyrax self-destructs to destroy the facility and the remaining Cyber Lin Kuei.[146] As Sub-Zero begins a new Lin Kuei clan, he examines Sektor's memories from his remains and discovers the Lin Kuei had hired Quan Chi to eliminate the Shirai Ryu clan, leading to Sub-Zero to seek atonement by seeking peace with Scorpion and the newly reestablished Shirai Ryu.[147]
In Mortal Kombat 11, a time-displaced Sektor and his cyber Lin Kuei army are revived by the keeper of time Kronika and brought into her ranks. They are joined by Sub-Zero's former apprentice, Frost, who succeeds Sektor after she is converted into a cyborg. He, Cyrax, and Frost, backed by Noob Saibot, kidnap Sub-Zero's Lin Kuei warriors and forcibly robotize them. After learning of what they had done, Sub-Zero and Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) arrive at the Cyber Lin Kuei's factory to shut it down. Sektor declares to Sub-Zero that allying with Hanzo is dishonorable, but is soon deactivated when Cyrax shuts down the factory. Sektor's body is used by Kronika's allies to revive him and the cyber Lin Kuei.[29] The cyborgs join the Black Dragon crime cartel in storming the Special Forces base, where Kano uses a kill switch installed in Sektor's systems to destroy it.[148] In Sub-Zero's arcade ending, he discovers his deceased older brother Bi-Han having embraced Sektor’s corrupt practices in the Lin Kuei before his death and transformation into Noob Saibot.
Sektor's original cyberized form appears in Mortal Kombat 1 as an assist-based Kameo fighter while his human and now female counterpart in Liu Kang's new timeline will appear in the upcoming story expansion Khaos Reigns. After Sub-Zero's (Bi-Han) brother Scorpion (Kuai Liang) defects from the clan to form the Shirai Ryu following Sub-Zero's betrayal of Earthrealm, Bi-Han attempts to bolster the Lin Kuei's forces with "Sektor's genius" by enacting the Cyber Lin Kuei initiative.[149]
Sektor appears in one episode of the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, played by Peter Shinkoda. He and Cyrax are shown being transformed at the Lin Kuei's secret headquarters with the operation overseen by Kano. The character has a minor part in DC Comics' 2015 Mortal Kombat X: Blood Ties comic miniseries that is set before the events of the game,[150] and he appears in the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021).[151]
Sektor was nicknamed "Ketchup" during production of MK3 before his official name was determined, while the robot ninjas' designs were inspired by Boba Fett and the Predator.[152] He has been lauded by gaming media outlets for his Fatalities over the course of the Mortal Kombat series.[153][154][155][71][156][157][158][159] UGO placed him 26th—one spot behind Cyrax—in their 2012 list of the top fifty series characters.[63]
Sheeva
[edit]
Portrayed by: Marjean Holden (Annihilation)
Voiced by: Dawnn Lewis (Defenders of the Realm); Lori McClain (Armageddon); Lani Minella (2011 game); Vanessa Marshall (MK11)
Sheeva is a Shokan warrior like Goro and Kintaro, and is the series' lone female representative of the four-armed race. She has a long-standing rivalry with Motaro, as the Shokan and his race of Centaurians are bitter enemies. She debuts in MK3 as Queen Sindel's appointed bodyguard and protector following Shao Kahn's invasion of Earth. She is not playable in the series again until Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in which the then-entire series roster is playable. In the 2011 reboot that retells the continuity of the first three games, she is immediately playable and plays a minor role in the game's story mode as Kahn's bodyguard and jailer. In Mortal Kombat 11, Sheeva was a late addition to the roster as downloadable content as part of the game's Aftermath expansion pack. She additionally has a more significant role in the series for the first time, as she aids a time-traveling Shang Tsung in retrieving Kronika's Crown of Souls so Liu Kang can restore history after exploiting her blood oath to Sindel. Sheeva assists in reviving Sindel so she can join them as well, but upon learning of her treachery Sheeva attempts to stop her but is defeated.
The character's name was derived from Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction. She was added to the game due to fan requests for a playable version of Goro, like whom she was created as a stop motion-animated clay figurine.[160] Series co-creator John Tobias opted for a female version of the character as she would be physically smaller in size and thus take up less room on the screen.[161] She was omitted from the home versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 due to memory constraints.
Sheeva (voiced by Dawnn Lewis) had a recurring role in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. In the 1997 film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, she was played by Marjean Holden in a minor role with her only action sequence being a brief scuffle with Motaro, though the film acknowledges her then-current role in the games as Sindel's personal protector. In the 2015 Mortal Kombat X: Blood Ties prequel comic miniseries produced by DC Comics, Sheeva is crowned by Kintaro as the current leader of the Shokan in a peaceful treaty with Kotal Kahn, following the death of previous rule King Gorbak. Sheeva mourns Kintaro's death after Sonya — possessed by Havik — kills him in battle.
Reception of the character has been mixed. While Wirtualna Polska featured Sheeva among gaming's top ten female villains in 2011,[162] she placed a middling 28th in UGO.com's 2012 ranking of their top fifty Mortal Kombat characters,[163] and 47th in Den of Geek's 2019 ranking of the series' 77 playable characters.[65] Game Informer, in 2010, stated that "despite a somewhat cool ground-pound move [in MK3], she was an addition to the series that never really served a purpose or did anything particularly noteworthy."[164] However, her Fatalities over the course of her appearances have been fairly well received.[165][166][167][168][169]
Sindel
[edit]
Portrayed by: Lia Montelongo (MK3); Musetta Vander (Annihilation); Beatrice Ilg (Legacy); Ana Thu Nguyen (Mortal Kombat 2)[170]
Voiced by: Laura Boton (MK:D); Lani Minella (MK 2011); Kelly Hu (MKX); Mara Junot (2019–present)[171]
Sindel debuts as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 3 (MK3) as the queen of Edenia alongside her daughter, Princess Kitana, before their kingdom lost ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments, leading to Shao Kahn invading them to forcibly merge their realms. After he killed her husband King Jerrod and adopted the then-infant Kitana, Sindel committed suicide to avoid becoming his consort. Years later however, Shao and Shang Tsung resurrect her without her memories and brainwash her to assist in the former's invasion of Earthrealm. After Earthrealm's defenders defeat Shao, Kitana convinces Sindel of her true past, turning her against Shao.
Sindel appears as a non-playable character (NPC) in Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4), in which her subject Tanya betrays Edenia and allows Shinnok's Netherrealm forces to invade her palace. Kitana escapes, but Sindel is imprisoned in her dungeon until Shinnok's forces are defeated. Following this, she sends Kitana to form an alliance with the Shokan armies and lead them into battle against a weakened Shao while Sindel stays behind to restore Edenia. Returning as a playable character in Mortal Kombat: Deception (MK:D), Edenia is invaded by Onaga, who killed, resurrected, and brainwashed Sindel, among others, before imprisoning her until she is freed by Jade. Sindel appears as a playable character in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, though she does not play a role in the story mode.
In Mortal Kombat (2011), due to Raiden altering the timeline and changing the events of the franchise's first three games, Sindel is instead resurrected by Quan Chi and receives Shang Tsung's powers before she kills most of Earthrealm's warriors and Kitana before Nightwolf sacrifices himself to kill her. Quan Chi subsequently converts the dead warriors into his undead revenant servants, a role Sindel fulfills while making a minor appearance as a NPC in Mortal Kombat X.
Sindel appears as a downloadable playable character in Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11) via the Aftermath expansion pack, in which her history is retconned. When Shao invaded Edenia, she willingly sided and married him, killed Jerrod herself for his perceived weakness, and claimed Shao did so to appease her subjects. Quan Chi, believing she was distracting Shao, later killed her and staged it as a suicide before using her soul to temporarily stop Shao from invading Earthrealm. In the present, Shang Tsung captures her revenant and revives her to help him steal Kronika's Crown of Souls.[172] Sindel agrees while also reconsolidating her power with Shao before betraying and defeating Kitana and Earthrealm's forces.[173][174] After helping Shang Tsung breach Kronika's keep however, the sorcerer in turn betrays Sindel and Shao, absorbing their souls in retaliation for killing him to empower Sindel.[175]
Sindel appears as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 1, in which Fire God Liu Kang created a second new timeline where Sindel is the Empress of Outworld and biological mother of Kitana and Mileena, the latter of whom is set to inherit her throne, who maintains the Mortal Kombat tournaments alongside Kang in the late Jerrod's memory. Though a fair and just ruler, Sindel is strict in preparing Mileena to succeed her and becomes more determined to protect her realm and the throne following Jerrod's death. She also employs Shang Tsung to help with Mileena's Tarkat disease, unaware that he and General Shao are conspiring against her and encouraging her to turn against Earthrealm until they are exposed by Kang and Earthrealm's warriors. Sindel is later reunited with Jerrod after Quan Chi uses his soul, among others, to create Ermac and the former gains control of the body, before she is killed by her counterpart from Titan Shang Tsung's timeline. Before she dies, she entrusts Mileena with Outworld's throne before Jerrod preserves her soul within Ermac, where the pair work together to fight off the other souls and maintain control of the body.
During production of MK3, Sindel was nicknamed "The Bride" and "Muchacha" by the developers before her official name was determined.[176] She was played by actress Lia Montelongo, who was nineteen years old at the time.[177]
Sindel appears as a supporting character in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, portrayed by Musetta Vander. In addition to her original trilogy backstory and role, she is also named the new general of Shao Kahn's extermination squads following her resurrection and brainwashing.[178] Amidst Earthrealm's warriors' final battle with Shao, Kitana defeats and spares Sindel. After Liu Kang defeats Shao, the latter's curse on Sindel is broken. She also appears in the Mortal Kombat Legacy episode "Kitana and Mileena - Part 1", portrayed by Beatrice Ilg, and will appear in the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2, portrayed by Ana Thu Nguyen.[48][179]
Sindel has been positively received for her role in the games[65][180] and her Fatalities,[159][181][182] but her MK11 retcon was met with heavy fan criticism,[183][184] while her portrayal in Annihilation has been ridiculed.[185][186][187][188]
Stryker
[edit]
Portrayed by: Michael O'Brien (MK3); Lawrence Kern (MK 2011); Tahmoh Penikett (Legacy); Eric Jacobus (Legacy II)
Voiced by: Ron Perlman (Defenders of the Realm); Matthew Mercer (MK 2011, Battle of the Realms)
Kurtis Stryker is a coast NYPD riot control officer selected by Raiden to help defend Earthrealm against invading forces from Outworld. One of the franchise's few characters who does not possess any special powers, he employs modern weaponry such as explosives, firearms, tasers and nightsticks for his special moves and Fatalities. During the events of MK3, he was the leader of the riot control brigade when Outworld's portal opened over New York City. Stryker attempted to keep order among the populace in the ensuing chaos, but soon all human souls were usurped by Shao Kahn with the exception of those that belonged to Raiden's chosen warriors, including himself. Initially ignorant of why he was spared, he entered the fray with the intention of avenging the lives of the innocent that he had vowed to protect and serve. Along with the other warriors, he assisted in liberating Earthrealm from Shao Kahn's clutches. His next playable appearance is in MK Armageddon, in which he is still oblivious as to why he was chosen by the Elder Gods. In the Battle of Armageddon, he fights Mileena, Kabal and Kano, yet he is ultimately slain along with the other combatants. In the 2011 series reboot, Stryker is Kabal's SWAT team leader who joins Raiden and his followers in repelling the Outworld invasion. He is later killed, along with most of the Earthrealm heroes, by Sindel and subsequently resurrected by Quan Chi and forced to fight Raiden, in a losing effort. He makes brief nonplayable appearances in Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 as an undead revenant fighting for Quan Chi and Shinnok.
A character named "Kurtis Stryker" was originally slated to appear in the first Mortal Kombat, but the idea was dropped in place of a female fighter (Sonya Blade). The character would appear in Mortal Kombat II renamed Jax, and Stryker was finally made an original character in MK3. Stryker was originally conceived by the developers as a SWAT-type character with several additional weapons, but the game's memory limitations prevented this. He appeared in Armageddon with a complete redesign into a much more futuristic-looking character, armed with two back-mounted knives that were never used.
Stryker has made several appearances in alternate series media, starting as a featured character (voiced by Ron Perlman) in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. He appeared in the premiere episode of the 2011 first season of the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy as a SWAT leader under Jax's command, and had a recurring role in the 2013 second season. In the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, he represents Earthrealm in the tournament, defeating Baraka in battle but losing to Shang Tsung, after which he is magically manipulated into killing himself by the sorcerer.
The character has received negative reception for his "common man" presence in the otherworldly atmosphere of the Mortal Kombat series.[189][190][191][192] However, Den of Geek ranked Stryker 21st in their 2015 rating of the franchise's 64 playable characters, citing his sucker-punching of Mileena in Armageddon's opening cinematic sequence and Perlman's portrayal in the animated series, in addition to "really [becoming] something worth caring about in the reboot, where he came off as a likeable, disgruntled smart-ass."[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 praised Stryker in the reboot as being "so badass" and "the closest thing you'll get to being John McClane in a fighting game."[128]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Fujin
[edit]
Portrayed by: Anthony Marquez (MKM:SZ); Nic Toussaint (MKX)
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4), David Horachek (MK:A), Troy Baker (MKX), Matthew Yang King (MK11)
Fujin is the god of wind based on the Japanese deity of the same name. He first appears as an unnamed boss in Mythologies: Sub-Zero, in which he unsuccessfully guards Shinnok's amulet from Sub-Zero.[193] He makes his playable debut in Mortal Kombat 4 and succeeds Raiden as Earthrealm's protector when Raiden becomes an Elder God.[194] Fujin returns in Armageddon and is defeated by Taven after attempting to prevent him from continuing his quest.[195] In the rebooted timeline, Fujin appears in Mortal Kombat X's story mode fighting the Netherrealm's forces alongside Raiden, but is not playable until his inclusion in the Aftermath expansion for Mortal Kombat 11, in which he, Shang Tsung, and Nightwolf try to save their universe by obtaining Kronika's crown. Fujin is ultimately betrayed by Shang Tsung, who drains his soul, but keeps him alive to continue draining his powers for eternity. In Shang Tsung's ending, Fujin and Raiden become his servants.
Fujin placed 40th in UGO's 2012 listing of the top 50 series characters.[63] In 2014, Prima Games included Fujin among their twenty "cheapest" characters in the series due to having a crossbow as his primary weapon in Mortal Kombat 4.[111] For his later appearances, the crossbow could only be used for special attacks.
Quan Chi
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MKM:SZ, MK4); Carlos Pesina (MK:D, MK:A); Adoni Maropis (Conquest); Michael Rogers (Legacy); Damon Herriman (MK 2021 sequel)[170]
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4, MK:A); Nigel Casey (MK:D); Ronald M. Banks (MK vs DC,2011 game, MKX); Nick Chinlund (Defenders of the Realm); Darin De Paul (Scorpion's Revenge); Sean T. Krishnan (MK1)
Quan Chi is a nefarious free-roaming sorcerer who is one of the Mortal Kombat series' main villains. He is first seen in MK Mythologies when he hires both Sub-Zero and his rival Scorpion to find a map leading to the amulet in hopes that they would meet in combat; indeed, Sub-Zero kills Scorpion in battle, after which Quan Chi eliminates Scorpion's Shirai Ryu clan and sends Sub-Zero to find the amulet, which is later revealed to be a fake while Quan Chi kept the real one for himself. After reviving Scorpion as an undead revenant, Quan Chi tells him that Sub-Zero was responsible for the deaths of his clan and family. He makes his playable debut in Mortal Kombat 4, in which he joins forces with disgraced Elder God Shinnok, who had been banished to the Netherealm by the thunder god Raiden after centuries of warring, in ruling the realm. He is the title character along with Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), in which he brokers a deal with Shang Tsung for his assistance in reviving the army of Onaga (the game's final boss) in exchange for souls that would preserve Shang Tsung's youth, then eliminate evil Outworld emperor Shao Kahn and the perennial Mortal Kombat champion Liu Kang. They kill Raiden's Earthrealm defenders, but the partnership dissolves when Shang Tsung attempts to steal Shinnok's amulet to take control of Onaga's army for himself. In his futile attempt to stop Onaga, Raiden sacrifices himself by triggering a violent explosion and seemingly killing the Deadly Alliance as well. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), Quan Chi attempts to acquire the godlike power of the elemental Blaze. During the battle royal among the combatants on the Pyramid of Argus in the game's opening cinematic sequence, Quan Chi wounds Kenshi in battle before Shang Tsung (disguised as Ermac) throws him off the pyramid. In the game's training mode, Quan Chi suggests that he, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, and Onaga work together to defeat the forces of good, but is secretly serving as a double agent for Shinnok.
Quan Chi was the lone playable character from the three-dimensional series of games included in the immediate roster of the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot. In the game's story mode, Quan Chi is present at the Shaolin Tournament from the outset, with the resurrected Scorpion serving as his personal assassin. They join forces in the tournament to face the Shaolin monk Liu Kang, but both are defeated. During the second tournament in Shao Kahn's Outworld arena, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung join forces against Kung Lao but are defeated. In the retold events of Mortal Kombat 3 therein, Quan Chi revives the deceased Queen Sindel in order to enable Shao Kahn to invade Earthrealm, after having resurrected the dead elder Sub-Zero — killed by Scorpion in the first tournament — as Noob Saibot to assist him in his plans. He later constructs a Soulnado to take every soul on Earth, but his plans are thwarted by Nightwolf. After Sindel massacres the Earthrealm warriors assembled to stop Shao Kahn's takeover, Raiden seeks cooperation between Earth and the Netherealm by offering Quan Chi their souls as compensation, but Quan Chi has transformed them into his revenant slaves. However, he inadvertently causes Shao Kahn's downfall when he reveals the Elder Gods are obligated to stop the tyrant for failing to honor Mortal Kombat's rules. Raiden kills Shao Kahn and halts his invasion, but Quan Chi makes preparations for Shinnok's invasion, leading Netherrealm's forces in attacking the weakened Earthrealm and Outworld. In Mortal Kombat X (2015), Quan Chi uses the Earthrealm revenants to aid him in retrieving Shinnok's amulet over the course of two years. Though he succeeds in doing so with the aid of D'Vorah, he is decapitated by the resurrected Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) once he learns the sorcerer conspired with the Lin Kuei ninja Sektor to kill the Shirai Ryu.
In Mortal Kombat 1, Quan Chi appears as a DLC character, but makes frequent appearances in the story. In Liu Kang's new timeline, Quan Chi led a meaningless life in the mines before being contacted by "Damashi", who helps him learn his sorcerer abilities.[196] He begins working with Shang Tsung and General Shao to deceive Empress Sindel into turning against Earthrealm and preparing a coup to overthrow her. While creating Ermac, Quan Chi attempts to prepare a soul stealer to unleash on Earthrealm before he is stopped by Ashrah. One of the souls that escapes the contraptions attacks him, resulting in his skin turning white.[197] After discovering that Damashi is Titan Shang Tsung, who is intent on killing everyone in the timeline, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung assist Liu Kang in stopping him. During the final battle, Titan Shang Tsung summons a Titan Quan Chi to assist him, but both ultimately lose.[198]
According to MK co-creator John Tobias, Quan Chi was created as a replacement for Shang Tsung as the main sorcerer character of the series.[199] NetherRealm Studios character artist Solomon Gaitan initially referenced actor Yul Brynner when digitally sculpting Quan Chi's facial features for Mortal Kombat X.[200] Gaitan said that series art director Steve Beran "wanted me to merge Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff's features" during the design process, in addition to researching vultures: "I wanted him to feel like he was in a permanent state of lurking and stalking; waiting for death to happen."[201]
Quan Chi made his Mortal Kombat series debut in one episode of the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and was voiced by Nick Chinlund.[202] The character appeared in four episodes of the 1998 television series Mortal Kombat: Conquest,[203] and in the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Quan Chi appears at the climax of a two-part episode featuring Sub-Zero and Scorpion. In the 2020 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, Quan Chi serves as one of the two main antagonists along with Shang Tsung, and resurrects Hanzo Hasashi to turn him into Scorpion and employ him as his servant for eternity. Damon Herriman will play Quan Chi in the upcoming feature film Mortal Kombat 2.
Quan Chi has received mainly positive critical reception for his role in the games,[204][63][65][109][205] though Destructoid commented in 2015: "Quan Chi is a dark sorcerer shitbag that nobody likes, both in the fandom and in the series' narrative [for] unsuccessfully scheming behind the back of whatever master he is currently serving like an incompetent, bald Starscream."[206] However, Topless Robot cited Quan Chi in Defenders of the Realm as "the only contribution to [the] franchise that this series made."[207] Reception to his Fatalities has been divisive, with his "Leg Beatdown" from MK4 rated among the series' best,[204][208][209][158] and the "Neck Stretch" from Deadly Alliance among the worst,[210][211][212][213][214] a sentiment shared by the MK series' developers.[211][215]
Sareena
[edit]
Portrayed by: Lia Montelongo (MKM:SZ)
Voiced by: Danielle Nicolet (MKX), Mara Junot (MK1), Jennifer Grey (Cage Match)
Sareena is a demon from the Netherrealm. She debuts in Mythologies: Sub-Zero as an assassin assigned by Quan Chi to kill Sub-Zero.[216] After being spared by him, she assists him in defeating Quan Chi but is killed by Shinnok. Sareena returns as a playable character in the Tournament Edition port of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, which reveals Shinnok's attack banished her to a lower plane of the Netherrealm. Escaping through a portal, she is offered asylum in Earthrealm by the younger Sub-Zero. However, the training mode of Armageddon sees her again serving Quan Chi, leading to her being defeated by Taven.[217] Following a background cameo in the 2011 reboot, Sareena appears in the story mode of Mortal Kombat X, in which she assists the Special Forces in battling the Netherrealm's forces. In Mortal Kombat 1, she appears as an assist-based Kameo fighter, where she is able to switch between a human-like appearance and her true, demonic form. She also appears in Ashrah's Klassic Towers ending, in which Ashrah rescues her from Quan Chi's control.[198]
Sareena appears as one of the main antagonists of the 2023 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match voiced by Jennifer Grey. She initially appears as a fictionalized version of Grey herself that Johnny Cage attempts to find in Los Angeles to shoot Ninja Mime with, only to reveal she had been cut off from the Neatherrealm for decades and helped set up Cage's film career with her allies from the Brotherhood of Shadows after she discovered he possessed the "blood of the gods" needed to open a portal to the Neatherrealm and summon Shinnok. While Cage fights Shinnok, she faces off against her former ally Ashrah and unleashes her true demonic form in the process. With help from Cage's assistant Chuck Golden, Ashrah is able to kill and defeat her.[218][90]
Sareena was ranked 26th on Den of Geek's 2015 rating of the series' 64 playable characters, for being "Sub-Zero's one moment of humanity snowballing into something meaningful".[65]
Shinnok
[edit]
Portrayed by: Gary Wingert (MKM:SZ); Carlos Pesina (MK:A); Chris Bashen (MKX); Reiner Schöne (Annihilation)
Voiced by: John Tobias (MK4, MKG); Knute Horwitz (MK:A); Ken Lally (2011 game); Troy Baker (MKX, MK11); Robin Atkin Downes (Battle of the Realms, Cage Match)
One of the franchise's primary villains, Shinnok debuted as the boss of MK Mythologies and made his first playable appearance in the main series with Mortal Kombat 4 in 1997. He appears in MK4 as both a playable character and the final boss of Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat X (2015). He is a banished former Elder God who invades and annexes the realm of Edenia with the aid of Quan Chi's forces and the traitorous Edenian Tanya before declaring war against the Elder Gods, specifically Raiden for his punishment, but his mission fails after he is defeated by perennial Mortal Kombat champion Liu Kang. Shinnok's next selectable appearance is along with the then-entire series roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), and he features in the game's training mode as having been a longtime friend of the game's main protagonist Taven, who is under the impression that Shinnok is still a force of good as he rescues him from an attack by Li Mei. Shinnok also makes a brief appearance alongside the forces of evil in the battle royal in the opening cinematic sequence against the other combatants at the Pyramid of Argus, when he summons giant subterranean skeletal hands that pin Raiden to the ground before he is struck with a lightning blast.
Shinnok only appears in the closing of the story mode of the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, but is the main villain of Mortal Kombat X. At the start of the story mode, he is sealed inside his own magical amulet, which is possessed over the next twenty-five years by many other characters until Quan Chi is beheaded by Scorpion, freeing Shinnok from inside the amulet. With the aid of D'Vorah and the undead Earthrealm warriors from the previous game, Shinnok invades the Sky Temple, where he subdues Raiden and corrupts the Jinsei (the source of Earthrealm's life force) until a Special Forces unit led by the game's protagonist Cassie Cage arrives to battle the transformed Shinnok (now known as "Corrupted Shinnok") and the revenant army. After Cassie is victorious over Shinnok, Raiden then purifies the Jinsei, which strips Shinnok of his powers. Shinnok returns in the prologue of Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), in which he is tortured and decapitated by Raiden after the events of MKX. His severed head is visited by new boss character Kronika, the Keeper of Time, who expresses sadness at his current state. The game's story mode reveals that Shinnok is actually Kronika's son, as well the brother of fellow Elder God Cetrion.[219]
Shinnok's likeness in Mortal Kombat 4 was based on that of series art director Steve Beran, and like Shang Tsung in the digitized Mortal Kombat games, he was able to mimic the special moves of his opponents, but the graphical limitations of Midway's then-new 3D software prevented him from physically transforming into the characters. Series co-creator and programmer Ed Boon admitted in turn that he felt Shinnok was not imposing enough as a final boss in MK4 due to his having no special moves of his own. He was playable in MKX upon completion of the story mode.[220]
Shinnok appears in the 1997 film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by Reiner Schöne and depicted as the father of both Shao Kahn and Raiden. He is not identified by name onscreen until the film's conclusion. The character appeared in the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms and 2023's Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match and was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.[221]
Critical reception has been mainly negative due to his perceived weak stature as a final boss in the series,[63][222][223][224] though his Fatalities have been better received.[225][226] Den of Geek ranked Shinnok 35th in their 2015 rating of the series' 73 playable characters, critical of how he was "just a lazy Shang Tsung" in MK4, while "it wasn't until Armageddon and Mortal Kombat 9 that they were able to make him seem like an actual threat," and further adding that in MKX, he "was pretty fun as a hybrid of Emperor Palpatine and Loki."[65]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat 4
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold
Jarek
[edit]
Performed by: Mark Myers (MK4)
Voiced by: Jon Hey (MK4), James Freeman-Hargis (MK:A)
Jarek is a member of the Black Dragon clan. Established as the last known member of the Black Dragon, he possesses Kano's special moves and Fatalities. He helps defend Earthrealm against Shinnok, but falls off a cliff in the aftermath when the Special Forces attempt to arrest him. In Armageddon, Jarek is revealed to have survived and develops an obsession with killing all of his opponents.[227] Jarek also appears as one of the bosses in Special Forces (2000), in which he is defeated by Jax. In the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, he is imprisoned in Outworld by Kotal Kahn.
The character makes an appearance in the 2022 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind.
Modeled after Midway character artist Hernan Sanchez,[228] Jarek received a tepid reception for his similarities to Kano. The endings featuring him in Mortal Kombat 4 have also been maligned for their voice acting and dialogue.[65][229][230][231][232]
Kai
[edit]
Portrayed by: Kimball Uddin (MK4)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK4)
Kai is a Shaolin Monk and member of the White Lotus Society who is one of the chosen warriors defending Earthrealm from Shinnok.[233] Afterwards, he goes on quest for self-enlightenment, although he returns in Armageddon.
According to Ed Boon, Kai was developed as an "African American character who was very nimble like Liu Kang" with vertical fireball projectiles. He was also the first character to perform a handstand during gameplay, which was intended to be his main fighting style in Armageddon, but Boon stated this was prevented by time limitations.[234]
Kai came in at 47th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters. Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 said, "With all his projectile moves, he's basically the black Liu Kang".[128]
Meat
[edit]
Meat was originally a skin created by art director Tony Goskie that would depict each fighter in Mortal Kombat 4 as a bloodied corpse.[235] After being established as a canonical character in Deception's Konquest mode, he received a backstory and unique special moves in Armageddon. His Armageddon ending reveals that he is an experiment created by Shang Tsung who escaped the sorcerer's clutches before he could be completed.[236] Prima Games' strategy guide for Armageddon also states that Meat assists Shinnok, although this relationship is not established in the game.[237]
Meat placed 49th in UGO's 2012 listing of the top fifty MK characters, noting that he became a fan favorite for his "ridiculously gruesome moves". Conversely, ScrewAttack ranked Meat fourth in its 2011 ranking of the series' ten worst characters for being "a generic [character] model" without flesh.[238] Ryan Aston of Topless Robot placed Meat second in his selection of eight characters "that are goofy even by Mortal Kombat standards," calling him "a gory riff" on Soulcalibur character Charade and his storyline "a truly flimsy excuse for his existence".[188]
Reiko
[edit]
Portrayed by: Jim Helsinger (Conquest), Nathan Jones (2021 film)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK:D), David Beron (MK:A), Robin Atkin Downes (Battle of the Realms),[59] Derek Phillips (MK1)[239]
Reiko is a general who has served Shinnok and Shao Kahn.[240] He first appears assisting Shinnok's invasion in Mortal Kombat 4, while Armageddon depicts him under Shao Kahn's command. After making a background cameo in the 2011 reboot, he appears in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comics, in which he becomes a blood god before being betrayed and killed by Havik.[241]
The character was added to Mortal Kombat 4 to replace Noob Saibot after the developers found the game had too many ninja characters. While his original ending simply depicted him walking through a portal, Reiko's FMV ending showed him wearing the helmet of Shao Kahn. This led to speculation that Reiko was Shao Kahn, which was dispelled when the Konquest mode of Deception revealed that Reiko would sneak into Shao Kahn's throne room to wear his helmet. In an interview, John Tobias stated Reiko was intended to be a reincarnation of Shao Kahn, but this story would be disregarded in later installments.[242] Nevertheless, Reiko's appearance and special moves in Armageddon would be stylized after Shao Kahn.[243]
Reiko was played by Jim Helsinger in the 1998 television series Mortal Kombat: Conquest, where he is one of Shao Kahn's generals. Reiko also appeared in the 2021 Mortal Kombat film, portrayed by Nathan Jones, as one of the Outworld champions. In the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, he is voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.[59] In the 2023 game Mortal Kombat 1, he is voiced by Derek Phillips.[244]
Reiko placed 42nd on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters. Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek rated Reiko last in his 2015 ranking of the series' playable characters for what he considered the wasted potential of his storyline in regards to his connection to Shao Kahn.[65] WhatCulture ranked him fourteenth in their 2015 selection of the series' twenty worst characters for "having zero individuality".[245]
Tanya
[edit]
Performed by: Lia Montelongo (MK4)
Voiced by: Rosalind Dugas (MK4), Beth Melewski (MK:D), Jennifer Hale (MKX), Cherise Boothe (MK1)[246]
Tanya is an Edenian who often acts out of self-preservation. During Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4) and Mortal Kombat: Deception, she betrayed Edenia to join Shinnok and Onaga respectively. In Mortal Kombat X (MKX),[247] she joins Mileena's rebellion against Kotal Kahn with the intention of liberating Edenia from Outworld, only to be defeated by D'Vorah and spared at Cassie Cage's behest. In Mileena's ending in Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11), she and Tanya are revealed to be lovers.
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), Tanya is the leader of the Umgadi, a group of warrior priestesses that guard Outworld's royal family, having become one of its most trusted members after her predecessor Li Mei seemingly failed to save Emperor Jerrod and quit in disgrace. Additionally, Tanya is in a secret relationship with Princess Mileena despite the Umgadi's rules forbidding relationships.[121] After Jerrod is restored through Ermac and reveals Li Mei was not responsible for his death, Tanya investigates the incident and discovers the Umgadi's Matron Superiors were the true culprits and framed Li Mei. The newly crowned Empress Mileena subsequently puts Tanya in charge of reforming the Umgadi.[198]
Named after Ed Boon's sister Tania, Tanya was created to replace Kitana in MK4.[248] She placed 34th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 MK characters.[63] Complex named Tanya seventh in their 2011 selection of the top ten underrated MK characters, calling her "the traitor of all traitors in the series, switching her allegiance more times than we can count".[89] Conversely, Den of Geek rated her 68th in their 2015 ranking of the franchise's 73 player characters for being "a one-dimensional villain whose only quality is betrayal".[65]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
Tremor
[edit]
Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore (MKX), Imari Williams (Snow Blind)
Tremor is a ninja member of the Black Dragon clan. As implied by his name, he is able to manipulate the Earth with his immense strength. He is initially depicted as a brown-clad ninja, but would be redesigned to have a body made out of rocks. Originally intended as a playable character for Mortal Kombat Trilogy,[249] Tremor instead debuted as a boss in Special Forces, in which he is defeated by Jax. He made his playable debut as a downloadable character in Mortal Kombat X, although he has no involvement in the story.[247] In the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, it is revealed Tremor was imprisoned in Outworld by Kotal Kahn.
Introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Blaze
[edit]
Voiced by: Simeon Norfleet (MK:A)
Blaze is a fire elemental created to monitor the warriors of the realms. He appears as a hidden character who is forced to protect the last known dragon egg by Onaga's followers. After the egg hatches, completing Onaga's resurrection, Blaze is able to continue monitoring the warriors and discovers they have become too powerful for the realms in his absence. He serves as the final boss of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in which he brings all the fighters together for a final battle. As part of his mission to prevent an impending Armageddon, Blaze has Taven face him in a fight intended to either kill all the warriors or strip them of their powers. The story mode of the 2011 reboot reveals Blaze was instead defeated by Shao Kahn, prompting Raiden's efforts to change the timeline.
Prior to becoming to becoming a playable character, Blaze originated in the background of Mortal Kombat II's Pit II stage as a Liu Kang palette swap covered in flames and facing off against another Liu Kang palette swap.[250] The character was nicknamed "Torch" by fans, but due to the risk of copyright infringement on the Marvel character Human Torch, Midway officially named him Blaze.[251] In reference to his original role, he has made cameo appearances in Shaolin Monks, the 2011 reboot, Mortal Kombat X, and Mortal Kombat 11.
The character placed 37th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters, which remarked, "Although [guarding the Dragon Egg] doesn't sound like the job of a badass, you'll change your mind once you see Blaze steamrolling his way towards you".[63]
Bo' Rai Cho
[edit]
Voiced by: Carlos Pesina (MK:DA, MK:D, MK:A); Steve Blum (MKX)
Bo' Rai Cho is a martial arts master skilled in the style of drunken boxing. His attacks mostly center around his weight and bodily functions. An Outworld native, but an opponent of Shao Kahn's tyranny, he trained Liu Kang and many other Earthrealm warriors for the Mortal Kombat tournament as his participation would be on the behalf of Shao Kahn. Bo' Rai Cho trains Kung Lao after he learns of Liu Kang's death, and in Deception, he rescues Li Mei from having her soul trapped inside one of the corpses of Onaga's army. Bo' Rai Cho is later tricked by Mileena, posing as Kitana, into leading Kitana's army to certain defeat against Baraka's forces, but Bo' Rai Cho emerges victorious with the help of Liu Kang. He returns in Mortal Kombat X, in which he is attacked by Shinnok.
The character's name is a play on "borracho", the Spanish word for "drunk". According to Herman Sanchez, Bo' Rai Cho was created because Ed Boon sought to have a "slob" fighter, while John Vogel found that he filled the "master" role for the franchise.[252]
Reception to Bo' Rai Cho has been generally negative for his appearance and gross-out nature. Den of Geek ranked him 55th in their rating of the series' 73 characters, calling Bo' Rai Cho "a Shaw Brothers Boogerman, and the gag wears thin after the third time you use his puke attack".[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 unfavorably compared him to Virtua Fighter character Shun Di as "a big, fat guy" who is utilized to "throw up and fart a lot".[128] ScrewAttack rated him tenth in their 2011 list of the series' 10 worst characters, noting that his in-game weapon was plain wooden staff.[238] The character was listed as the eighth-worst Mortal Kombat character by Mitchell Saltzman of IGN, who opined, "Bo' Rai Cho feels like a mess of ideas all sloppily thrown together to create a character of contradictions."[90] However, Bo' Rai Cho placed 37th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 MK characters, which called his comic relief role "a breath of fresh air. Or, in his case, a belch of fresh air".[63] Complex named him one of the series' most underrated characters in 2011.[89]
Drahmin
[edit]
Voiced by: Rich Carle (MK:D)
Drahmin is a demonic Oni who resides in the Netherrealm. He and Moloch are hired by Quan Chi to protect him against Scorpion in exchange for freedom from the Netherrealm, but after Quan Chi betrays them, they align themselves with Shang Tsung to help him counter Quan Chi's treachery. While in Shang Tsung's palace, Drahmin and Moloch encounter Scorpion, who they defeat by throwing into the palace's Soulnado. Drahmin returns in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, in which he is killed by Quan Chi.
Ed Boon described Drahmin as one of the most difficult characters to program because specific code had to be written to prevent Drahmin's arm-mounted club from switching sides whenever the character turned around during gameplay.[253] Den of Geek rated him 47th in their 2015 ranking of the 64 series characters, describing him as "a collection of cool concepts that doesn't make for much of a sum" whereas "Moloch does a lot more with less".[65]
Frost
[edit]
Voiced by: Christine Rios (MK:A); Kelly Hu (MKX); Sara Cravens (MK11)
Frost is a Lin Kuei warrior who possesses the ability to control ice. She was trained directly by Sub-Zero due to the similarities between them and the potential he saw in her, but her skills were compounded by her arrogant nature. When Sub-Zero has her accompany him to help battle Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, Frost steals his Dragon Medallion and becomes frozen by her own powers. Frost is revealed to have survived in the Unchained port of Deception, in which Sub-Zero traps her in a block of ice after she attempts to kill him. She is freed by Taven in the Konquest mode of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, but attacks him after mistaking him for Sub-Zero and is defeated. Frost returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 11, which depicts her receiving cybernetic enhancements. Aligning herself with Kronika by leading the Cyber Lin Kuei against Earthrealm's heroes, she is defeated by Raiden, who shuts down the cyborgs by deactivating her link to them. Frost returns in Mortal Kombat 1 as a kameo fighter.
The character was the first designed by Herman Sanchez for Deadly Alliance.[254] She was placed eighth in Complex's selection of the series' ten most underrated characters in 2011.[89] Den of Geek placed Frost 37th in their 2015 ranking of the series' 73 player characters, calling her addition "a nice touch" to Sub-Zero's rebuilding of the Lin Kuei.[65]
Hsu Hao
[edit]
Hsu Hao is a member of the Red Dragon clan distinguished by his cybernetic heart. After infiltrating the Special Forces, Hsu Hao destroys their Outerworld Investigation Agency branch with a nuclear device. He is eventually found by Jax, who kills him by ripping out his cybernetic heart. Despite this, he returns in Armageddon. Hsu Hao also appears in the Mortal Kombat X comic prequel, in which he is killed by Scorpion.
During development, the character was called Kublai Khan after the Mongolian emperor of the same name.[255] Steve Beran described him as "the anti-Jax" whose cybernetic heart was the result of experiments performed on him by the Chinese army. According to Ed Boon, Hsu Hao had a number of different iterations, with his "Hand Clap" special move inspired by superhero comics.[256]
Hsu Hao is widely regarded as one of the worst characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise. Den of Geek's 2015 ranking of the series' 73 characters placed him as the second-worst.[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 described the character as "a slightly racist take at a Village Person".[128] Naming him the series' worst character in 2014, Destructoid noted that "in a game that was littered with lackluster new additions, he was without a doubt the runt of that litter".[257] This negative reception is also present in the development team, with John Vogel intending his death in Deadly Alliance to be canon and Boon making him the first character officially omitted from the Mortal Kombat X playable character roster.[256][258] In reference to the negative reception, one of Erron Black's pre-match introductions in Mortal Kombat 11 depicts him tossing aside Hsu Hao's severed head. However, Hsu Hao was included in the Joker's MK11 ending, in which they join forces with Havik and Mileena in attacking Orderrealm.[259]
Kenshi
[edit]
Main article: Kenshi (Mortal Kombat)
Li Mei
[edit]
Voiced by: Lina Chern (MK:D); Tara Strong (MKX); Kelly Hu (MK1); Grey DeLisle (Battle of the Realms)
Li Mei is an Outworld native from a small village who is forced into a tournament by Shang Tsung and Quan Chi with the promise that her victory would free her village. However, upon winning the tournament, Shang Tsung attempts to place her soul into the corpse of one of Onaga's soldiers. Deception reveals that Li Mei was saved by Bo' Rai Cho, but her contact with the corpse causes her to feel a connection with Onaga. She makes a brief appearance in the story mode of Mortal Kombat X, where she leads a number of Outworld refugees into Earthrealm after Mileena uses Shinnok's amulet to destroy her village. Li Mei returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 1, in which she is depicted as the First Constable of Outworld's capitol Sun Do who once served Empress Sindel and led her royal guard, the Umgadi, until Emperor Jerrod was murdered.[citation needed]
Reception to Li Mei has been mixed, with criticism directed towards her Deception design. Den of Geek rated her 57th in their 2015 ranking of the series' entire 73-character roster, feeling she was "only distinguished by her ridiculous outfit of a bandana and underwear".[65] Joe Pring of WhatCulture rated Li Mei sixth in his 2015 selection of the twenty worst Mortal Kombat characters for "[wearing] a bandana while dancing around in metal-plated underwear", which he stated "deserves to be ridiculed".[245]
Mavado
[edit]
Voiced by: Alex Brandon (MK:A)
Mavado is a high-ranking member of the Red Dragon clan. As his clan's top priority is the elimination of the Black Dragon, he aligns himself with Quan Chi and Shang Tsung when they promise to hand over Kano to him for his services. He also defeats Kenshi on their behest. Deception reveals Mavado was killed by Kabal after an unsuccessful attempt on Kabal's life, but he returns in Armageddon, continuing to serve the Red Dragon. Mavado has a minor role in the Mortal Kombat X comic prequel, in which he is killed by Cassie Cage.[260]
Originally named "Malvado", the Spanish word for "evil",[261] Steve Beran conceived a matador-style look for the character,[262] but the idea was nixed due to the belief that it did not fit in with the Mortal Kombat universe. He is the first character in the series to use a physical object for a body-propel special attack, which he performs by shooting two bungee cords into the ground and slingshotting himself feet-first to dropkick his opponent. This attack was incorporated into his "Boot Thrust" Fatality.
Robert Workman of GamePlayBook ranked him eighth in his 2010 selection of the worst MK characters, describing his Fatality as "stupid",[224] but Den of Geek, placed him 39th in their 2015 ranking of the series' 73 characters "for his bungee hook attacks" and taking Kabal's weapons after killing him.[65]
Mokap
[edit]
Voiced by: Dusan Brown (Cage Match)
Mokap is a motion capture actor with an extensive martial arts background. He debuted as a hidden character in Deadly Alliance, but has no involvement with the story; his biography follows Johnny Cage's non-canonical ending of a Deadly Alliance film being created. Mokap also has a limited role in the conflict of Armageddon, in which his involvement is said to be by mistake.[264]
Named after the contraction for motion capture, Mokap is based on Midway graphic artist Carlos Pesina, who provided the motion capture work for Deadly Alliance. Pesina admitted it was "pretty flattering" being included in the game, but also remarked it was "weird" seeing Fatalities performed on him.[264]
Mokap is featured in Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, as an African-American man named Charles "Chuck" Golden. In the film, Golden is depicted as Johnny Cage's loyal assistant who idolizes him. He works with Cage to investigate Jennifer's disappearance before the two ally themselves with Ashrah to stop Shinnok from conquering Earthrealm. After they succeed, Golden attempts to follow in Cage's footsteps, eventually becoming his double in video games and nicknames himself "Mokap."[218][90]
Reception to Mokap has been mostly negative. Den of Geek rated him 55th in their 2015 ranking of the series characters, stating that he "didn't really work well as a comedy character because the game did little to differentiate the characters in terms of personality".[65] In their ranking of the 10 worst characters, ScrewAttack placed Mokap second because "nobody wants to play as a dude with balls on his body".[129]
Moloch
[edit]
Voiced by: Bob Ladewig (MK:D)
Moloch is the sub-boss of Deadly Alliance. An Oni demon of immense size and strength, he and Drahmin are hired by Quan Chi to protect him against Scorpion in exchange for freedom from the Netherrealm. After Quan Chi betrays them by leaving them behind, Moloch and Drahmin align themselves with Shang Tsung to help him counter Quan Chi's treachery. They also defeat Scorpion by throwing him into the Soulnado at Shang Tsung's palace. Moloch also appears in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, in which Quan Chi has him killed by the revenant Kitana. In reference to his comic death, Quan Chi is seen holding Moloch's severed head during his Mortal Kombat X pre-match introductions.[265]
Designed by Allen Ditzig, Moloch's concept changed little from his finalized design.[266] Den of Geek rated him 21st in their 2015 ranking of the series' 64 characters, praising his sub-boss role and possessing "some utter brutality that hadn't been felt in a Mortal Kombat boss since Kintaro".[65] Bryan Dawson of Prima Games named Moloch in his 2014 selection of the "cheapest" Mortal Kombat characters for his playable version in Armageddon having "a near infinite combo limited only by the size of the stage" and "ridiculous reach with most of his special moves".[111]
Nitara
[edit]
Portrayed by: Megan Fox (MK1, voice/model);[267] Cristina Vee (MK1, battle grunts);[268] Mel Jarnson (2021 film)
Nitara is a vampire from the realm of Vaeternus who seeks to destroy the orb that binds her realm to Outworld. As the orb is inside of a lava pit that Cyrax is able to enter, Nitara orchestrates a series of events to force Cyrax into helping her in exchange for passage back to Earthrealm.[269] She ultimately succeeds in destroying the orb with Cyrax's assistance, freeing Vaeternus.[270] Her biography in Armageddon states that Nitara leaves Vaeternus for Edenia in an effort to prevent her species from being extermina
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Tournaments, Kontent, Discussions and News about Mortal Kombat
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Mortal Kombat movie review & film summary (2021)
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While the film comes to life in ways that video game flicks often fail to do in its action scenes, it grinds to a halt during a deadly long training/destiny centerpiece that drags the film out to almost 110 minutes, and then it ends with a thud, setting up what feels like a franchise instead of providing a satisfying finale.
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https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mortal-kombat-movie-review-2021
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Almost 30 years after “Mortal Kombat” changed the fighting game landscape forever, a reboot to the film franchise based on these brutally violent games arrives in theaters and on HBO Max for 30 days. Here’s the important thing for fans to know: it’s as R-rated as the games themselves. For the first time really, the truly gruesome appeal of “Mortal Kombat” makes it to the big screen, complete with some combo fighting moves pulled directly from the games, certain character-based catch phrases, and even a few famous fatalities—the finishing moves that included spines being ripped from bodies through the top of your opponent’s head. There are some showdowns that will appeal to people who have played all of the “MK” games (which includes yours truly, believe it or not), including match-ups that involve now-classic video game characters like Sub-Zero, Kano, Raiden, and many more. While the film comes to life in ways that video game flicks often fail to do in its action scenes, it grinds to a halt during a deadly long training/destiny centerpiece that drags the film out to almost 110 minutes, and then it ends with a whimper, setting up what feels like a franchise instead of providing a satisfying finale. Sure, video games aren’t exactly known for closure, but so much of “Mortal Kombat” feels like set-up that you’ll just wish someone could have ... finished it.
Simon McQuoid makes his directorial debut with “Mortal Kombat,” which has basically been in production for a quarter-century given there was supposed to be a third film from the ‘90s series that launched Paul W.S. Anderson, but fell into development hell after the failure of 1997’s abysmal “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.” McQuoid works from a script by Greg Russo and Dave Callaham that’s clearly familiar with the source material, dropping in fan favorites like Raiden and Liu Kang but also digging a little deeper to bring to life characters like Mileena and a truly dodgy CGI version of Goro.
An effective prologue opens the film in 17th century Japan as Lin Kuei assassins led by Bi-Han (Joe Taslim) attack Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his family, killing Hanzo’s wife and son with his, shall we say, freeze power. The choreography in this first scene is surprisingly strong, blending moves familiar to “MK” fans with a level of intense combat that you don’t really see made by Hollywood anymore—think blades stuck through the tops of heads. Hanzo is killed by Bi-Han, but his spirit is taken to the Netherrealm, where he will become ... well, fans of the games know but the movie keeps it a secret long enough that I won’t spoil it here.
The film then jumps forward to reveal that Outworld has won nine out of ten tournaments in Mortal Kombat, meaning one more will spell the end of Earthrealm. Because villains never play fair, Shang Tsung (Chin Han) decides to rig the final tournament in a sense by preemptively killing the champions of Earthrealm, sending his fighters to dispatch them one by one. An MMA fighter named Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a new character to the MK universe, has always wondered what his dragon birthmark means, and discovers that he’s one of the aforementioned champions when Sub-Zero comes for him and his family. Jax (Mehcad Brooks) tries to warn him of his destiny before getting his arms frozen and ripped off by the classic video game villain. It may not be for those easily turned off by violence, but the truth is that “Mortal Kombat” really comes to life in these fight sequences and their fatalities—finally putting on film what fans of the games have loved for so long in a way that most people thought they would never really see. You'll wish there were more of them. After a strong first act of MK one-on-one combat, it becomes less of a focus, much to the detriment of the movie.
Cole finds his way to Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), who, along with a wisecracking Kano (Josh Lawson), takes our truly bland protagonist to Raiden’s temple to train for the upcoming tournament. And here’s where “Mortal Kombat” grinds to a halt, where each character has to spar to learn their “arcana” or special powers and the self-serious dialogue spins its wheels around destiny and responsibility. It’s a shame that the producers of “Mortal Kombat” movies are convinced that there needs to be long training/prep sections in the middle of their stories. No one wants to play a tutorial an hour after they’ve started the game. And the wheel-spinning here drains all possible momentum for a movie that runs close to two hours. It should really be illegal to make a video game film that’s almost as long as "Judas and the Black Messiah."
“Mortal Kombat” recovers a bit with some climactic fights, including a pretty strong one between the two most legendary characters in this franchise. But long before then, fans will probably know how they feel about this flick, one that’s undeniably better than “MK: Annihilation” but feels unlikely to me to maintain the same nostalgic kick as the original Anderson film. There’s enough strong choreography and direct appeals to the fan base to keep them just barely entertained long enough to go back and play one of the excellent recent editions of this series (2019’s “Mortal Kombat 11” is stellar, by the way). Maybe that’s all that matters. But it sure doesn’t feel like the cinematic fatality that fans truly deserve after all these years of fighting.
In theaters today and on HBO Max for the next month.
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https://ew.com/movies/mortal-kombat-cast/
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en
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Meet the Mortal Kombat cast and their video game characters
|
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Nick Romano",
"www.facebook.com"
] |
2019-09-02T11:00:51-04:00
|
From Sub-Zero and Scorpion to the thunderous Raiden.
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
EW.com
|
https://ew.com/movies/mortal-kombat-cast/
|
01 of 11
Ludi Lin as Liu Kang
Ludi Lin from Power Rangers, Aquaman, and Netflix's Marco Polo stars as fan favorite Liu Kang, one of the original characters from the first 1992 Mortal Kombat game. An orphan raised by the Shaolin order, he's often a protagonist.
Mortal Kombat is a fighting tournament between representatives from various realms set up by the Elder Gods. If champions from one realm defeat another realm's champions enough times, that winning realm can then invade. Liu became a champion of Mortal Kombat when he saved Earthrealm (that would be us) from invasion. In the reboot, he can be found training for the Mortal Kombat at Raiden's temple along with some familiar faces.
02 of 11
Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero
McQuoid and the producers were committed to assembling an international cast for Mortal Kombat, and they succeeded.
Joe Taslim, a martial artist and actor from Netflix's The Night Comes for Us film and Cinemax's Warrior series, was cast first as Sub-Zero. With mastery over ice, the Lin Kuei clan grandmaster can freeze opponents in a block of ice or conjure an ice axe to hack them away.
The film opens in feudal Japan when Sub-Zero was then only known as Bi-Han. The beginning sequence sets up the long-lasting blood feud between the clans of Bi-Han and Hanzo (a.k.a. Scorpion). In the present, he's the best warrior of Shang Tsung who's sent to earth to hunt down a man named Cole Young.
03 of 11
Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion
If there's Sub-Zero, Scorpion usually isn't far behind.
Hiroyuki Sanada has too many credits to count, but mainstream audiences will recognize him from Bullet Train, Army of the Dead, Westworld, and Avengers: Endgame.
The character gets his name from the sharp, metallic chain whip tipped with a kunai blade that is his signature weapon. Sanada describes the movie to EW as "a family drama with excitingly brutal fighting."
04 of 11
Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade
As Sonya Blade, The Meg star Jessica McNamee steps into the military boots of this decorated Earthrealm Special Forces officer. In the games, her squadron is one of this realm's many defenses against otherwordly threats, and now she runs the show.
05 of 11
Josh Lawson as Kano
Sonya has lots of friends. Kano is not one of them. The leader of the Black Dragon clan, this black market arms dealer has an underground network that spans continents and realms. His defining feature is a cybernetic eye that, in 2019's Mortal Kombat 11 game, fires off laser beams.
McQuoid says "Kano provides an enormous amount of comedic joy" in the movie. "Josh Lawson did a phenomenal job. He is a very gifted, funny man, and Kano is a super fun character. I think people'll really, really enjoy the ride with him."
06 of 11
Mehcad Brooks as Jax Briggs
Mehcad Brooks stepped away from the CW's Supergirl to pursue other roles. Here's one of them. Jax Briggs has literal muscles of steel as a cybernetically enhanced member of Earthrealm Special Forces. He lost both his arms in the line of duty, but returned with an upgrade: two metallic arms.
07 of 11
Tadanobu Asano as Raiden
Tadanobu Asano played an Asgardian in the Marvel movies as Hogun of the Warriors Three before he took on Raiden, God of Thunder and protector of Earthrealm. Raiden has saved Earth too many times to count over the years by assembling the finest fighters to do combat against enemies.
Asano's Raiden welcomes all warriors who bear the mysterious dragon birthmark into his temple for training against the forces of Outworld.
08 of 11
Chin Han as Shang Tsung
Meet the host of the Mortal Kombat. Shang Tsung was born on Earthrealm but became a sorcerer when he traversed to Outworld and pledged his allegiance to Shao Kahn, the embodiment of evil and the prime antagonist in many of the Mortal Kombat games. Shang must take souls to replenish his life force, granting him the ability to shapeshift and take on the abilities of the souls he absorbs. Chin Han of Skyscraper and The Dark Knight portrays Shang in the movie.
The 2021 movie took a different approach. Tsung is depicted as the emperor of Outworld who sends Sub-Zero to track down Cole Young.
09 of 11
Sisi Stringer as Mileena
Newcomer Sisi Stringer takes on Mileena. Shang Tsu, having conquered the realm of Edenia, raised its princess, the fan-wielding Kitana, as his own. He later makes an evil twin version of her called Mileena, who's a lot more vicious and thirsty for the throne.
10 of 11
Max Huang as Kung Lao
A former Shaolin monk, Kung Lao's most dangerous weapon is also his favorite fashion accessory: his hat. The rim comes packed with a razor-sharp edge that he typically uses to decapitate enemies in the games. Max Huang, an actor and stunt performer, portrays Kung Lao in the film, which sees him training at Raiden's temple with Liu Kang.
11 of 11
Lewis Tan as Cole Young
Lewis Tan portrays Cole Young, a wholly new character to the Mortal Kombat world, who has a mysterious heritage. The actor and martial artist is someone who prides himself on performing his own stunts despite the aches and pains that come along the way from training. Tan previously played Shatterstar in Deadpool 2, and was featured on Netflix's Iron Fist and Wu Assassins. He also played Kung Jin on the web series Mortal Kombat X: Generations.
"When we first meet Cole, he's in a really bad spot," Tan says. "He's down on his luck. He's kind of a washed-up MMA fighter who used to be a champion, who used to believe in himself, who used to have a lot of hope in his career. And it's all gone down the drain. It's a very interesting place for a hero to start, and I think that, along the journey of Mortal Kombat and Cole discovering where he comes from, you're introduced to all these other iconic characters and elements that everybody loves so dearly."
Mortal Kombat is available to stream on HBO Max.
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"Janet",
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"Namita",
"Denny",
"Listen",
"Audio",
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[] | null |
Westway - the BBC World Service Soap. Listen to the latest episode online or catch up with what's been happening by reading our text updates.
| null |
Westway sadly ended on World Service at the beginning of November, after eight years on air. To hear the show in its earlier days, click on the BBC7 link on Westway's Home Page, and Drama Schedule for when it's on, week by week - or Listen Again and Schedule.
YOUR COMMENTS:
Well, nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to the world service.There's me thinking things cant get any worse after the short-wave transmission round the Stuttgart area was axed making it really difficult for me to find any decent reception during the hours when it's possible for me to listen and now Westway is heading west. We've had to put up with some pretty brutal changes over the last couple of years and you have finally succeeded in making the world service into a radio version of CNN and I hate CNN.
I never thought Id see the day when I would voluntarily tune my radio to Deutschlandfunk but there are some people who just dont want to hear wall to wall news coverage and I hope the BBC will survive to one day realise the error of its ways.Goodbye Westway. I don't even think intensive care will save you now.
Greg, Germany
I have been listening to westway every saturday kenyan time only to be saddened by hearing tha the programmed has to come to an end, its my sincere hope that your will instead bring something more earcatching to all listeners. Thank you you so much for your programm may God bless bbc and all its staff across the world as they
bring us events as they happen around the world.
Japhet, Nigeria
I been a fan of westway for years. (since my secondary school days in Antigua).I just love being on the edge of my seat every Friday and Saturday. Now I hear it's being axed at the end of October and replaced with news? you guys wanna be like CNN, well trust me you'll drive me away. Come on man, please reconsider along with thousands of others from around the world. Please don't kill off this off.If this falls on deaf ears,let me just say Thank you, Thank you guys (the cast and production staff) for keeping us on the edge every week for 8 years.But please reconsider.
Marvin, USA
I was very sad when I heard yesterday after the Westway Programme that Westway will be closing down at the end of October. I hope the BBC finds a fitting programme to replace it.
Jonathan, Cote d'Ivoire
PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS SHOW OFF AIR
PLEASE RECONSIDER .....................
Teresa
I will really miss the programme — any chance of a re-think?
David, France
Please send me a photocard of the Westway cast. I will treasure it
always and will miss the series terribly. It allowed me to feel
connected to people all over the world, knowing that so many were
listening simultaneously. Would you possibly consider raffling off
autographed copies of the photocards in the future?
Helena, USA
I’ve found in the past Jamshed to be a complete wimp and Gabriella a nightmare with all of the ‘muffin’ speak, but these last few episodes have struck so close to home, and seem to have been written through experience, that they have been totally unmissable. Any way to keep it running with the remaining cast?
Jonathan, Singapore
I am like Sam, delighted that in a couple of week's time Westway will be history. For too long my sleep has been shattered by that jangling theme tune then if I don't put my hand out and turn down the volume control a torrent of mawkish Politically Correct stereotypes all out of "Central Casting". the plot lines are so predictable and of course have a hidden agenda.
I will be delighted to hear that Jamshed has been consigned to the Garden Shed and that horrible theme tune is heard no more.
Steve, UK
Having listened to the programme from its inception as a teaching tool; Fizzer and his vernacular.....etc, I have nevertheless grown to enjoy the program and will miss it. Jamshed was always the party-pooping boring character but killing him off gives me no pleasure.
Maybe the mistake was to crush too many issues into two weeky episodes.
I live in multi-cultural east London, even George Galloway is let in, fact is stranger than fiction; nevertheless I listen to the 'Everyday tale of Farming Folk' in Borsetshire and have done so for 35 years. A fellow Archars fan of mine once said in response to my 'what do you think about....' "I dont like too much excitement."
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt from his remark ?
Chris, UK
Tonight's ep was superb. Congratulations to the writer, director and of course the actors playing Jamshed, Janet and Gabriella. It was highly moving, without a trace of mawkishness, and so real. I was present with my brother and sisters as our mother slipped away, and it was like reliving the moment again; terrible sorrow at the parting, but deep relief that a loved one's suffering was over.
I shake my head in disbelief that the programme has been axed and that there remain only a couple more episodes. What is going on? Tonight's episode proved how good the programme can be - I've enjoyed it since the start, and while there have been better times than others, it has always been informative, thought-provoking and entertaining, and very well performed. I'm going to miss the characters terribly. On a radio drama, you get much more involved than on TV, and it won't be just Jamshed whose loss I'll be mourning, but the whole cast.
On a general note about World service schedules, finally: No more light entertainment slot, no more Westway. The World Service used to be one of my favourite stations as it had such a diverse mixture of output: news, classical music, rock, pop, drama, comedy, science, arts, politics. It's just a stodgy unimaginative drone now. I still have some old London Calling mags from the past and marvel at the richness of the schedules then compared to today's repetitive blocks of programmes! I won't be listening to the World Service any more.
Chris
Does the BBC ask us what we would like? NO! I only hear glib talk by
'planners' about how they want to concentrate more on news and no
longer offer entertainment programmes on World service.
Very frankly, for those of us who listen every day to the World
service, it's already shocking that we cannot listen on short wave in
Europe during the daytime, but to axe entertainment is an appalling
thing to do. I used to think Westway was rubbish, but I have grown to
enjoy an occasional dip into the plot when out in the car - at least
here in Holland we have medium wave.
And where did 'Just a Minute' disappear to? There are loads of nice
programmes that I can also get here on long wave Radio 4 that would
go down very well on World Service. But, no, everywhere these days
the BBC has to 'compete' in the 'market place' and such BS as the
'marketing boys' come out with. The BBC DOES NOT NEED TO COMPETE! When will the increasingly snide, ambitious idiots who seem to run
things begin to realise that the Beeb is unique, one of a kind in the
World, a beacon of quality that people love dearly. Please, no more
CNBBC on the TV or the radio. Let them do their thing as cheaply and
badly as they do,forget all the stupid slogans, jingles and
catchphrases, and just get on with being the best, as you always were. Is anybody listening? I fear not; probably wasting my time. All the best to anyone who cares.
Kingsley, Netherlands
The overwhelming response to the decision to finish Westway, is NO, DON'T! When this programme gives so much pleasure, and attracts mainly positive comments, why cannot the powers that be, change their plans, and bring back the programme with a suitable gap to reconstruct the series. This obviously would need some alteration to the "final" script, but it would be the only honest thing to do. I do not want more music, or plays, just Westway, which enriched the lives of so many throughout the world, and for which there is no excuse for removing. It is arrogant of the BBC to ignore the comments and suggestions for keeping the programme on.
Geoffrey
I'm a religious listener of your drama soup opera Westway. But it's sad to hear that you will be bringing this exiting show to an end sonetimes at the end of this month. I'm a lover of drama and other plays on radio. I'm a blind person with great interest in radio drama as my kind of movie. And in this light Westway is presently playing the role of a movie going for me.
Jeff, Liberia
May I add my voice to the huge, world wide protest at the axing of this popular series.
I listened, some time ago now to an explanation on Radio 4 Feedback from a senior executive at the World Service of the reasons for closing down the programme. The spokesman talked of increasing the quality drama output on the World Service, with Westway being unsuitable for the new schedules. He promoted an expansion of the Saturday evening play slot which, while an excellent example of top class broadcasting, is unlikelyto appeal to the worldwide following for a twice weekly 15 minute serial.
With the ending of Westway, the World Service are effectively disenfranchising a sizeable world wide audience. Are the listening figures for the World Service so good that senior BBC executives can gamble with a new schedule which does not include one of the most universally popular programmes?
Shame on you World Servce! Have you never heard of the maxim - if it ain't broken, don't fix it?
It is not too late for a rethink, and a climb down by the ambtious staff member who sought to make his/her mark with this radical and foolish change.
Bring back Westway after Christmas! This would allow script writers and actors time to gather their ideas for a sparkling continuation of an excellent series.
Many thanks to the cast and production staff.
Ginnie
I am sorry that Westway is to finish this month. Of course it has had its highs and alas right now in the dying moments, if I can use that expression, it is having a low.
It's a shame you couldn't end on a more positive note and let us listeners remember the last episodes with a smile.
Anyway thanks to all involved and good luck for the future.
Michael, Hong Kong
As one accepts the fact that every beginning has its ending, good or bad, we must therefore know that all good things in life must eventually come to an end. Some endings may be joyful, some are very, very painful. I am sure come October, every listener of the Westway will painfully miss the programme as it departs, our only hope is that by that time you must have found another entertaining programme that can soften the pain of departure that Westway will bring.
Isyaku, Nigeria
I cannot believe that you are really going to let Westway finish next month. It is far too important a programme. Where else can we find important issues discussed, like female circumcision and other culture clashes, or deep moral dilemmas like Gabreilla's abortion, and should people help her keep it a secret. All this is done, not in some pompous politically correct diatribe, but through rich and thrilling drama.
We have many soaps and drama series on television. They consider themselves daring because they deal with drugs or teenage pregnancy. These are always appearing in plays. Westway has dared to go much further, yet has never forgotten to remain exciting drama, has never patronised or "dumbed down".
My friends, colleagues, family and people in local shops and on trains and buses are always discussing the storylines. None of us can wait for the next episode, and all of us listen to it a second time on Sunday. How can you possibly take this wonderful, vital drama away from us?
Simon, UK
Jamshed's dying, David's in love with Jane (again!!) and 'Westway' is on its last legs; after becoming the best series on radio? Whoever said life was fair? BBC should really consider bringing back light hearted stuff like 'Just a minute'. It would really help
Will, Nigeria
I have listened to West Way for only a couple of years but have become a great fan of the programme. Why is it ending? I work in Africa where I normally listen to it. I understand it is going to be replaced by news and music. This you are being fed all day anyway on masses of channels. So why take away this really interesting and involving programme which reflects so many issues in modern society? Please reconsider the decision.
Anne, Uganda
I would also like to voice my protests along with all the others against the imminent axing of Westway, what a non-sensical and detromental decision that leaves the audience simply asking why? why was this crazy decision made? and do the BBC pay any attention to the wealth of dissenting voices apparent on both the website and The World Service. There is not nearly enough entertainment and drama on the BBC and removing one of Westway's calibre from it's schedule just beggars believe.
Michael, UK
I have been an enthusiastic listener to the BBC since the Caribbean got its own frequency a year or so ago. And when I found Westway I became a keen fan, especially when I heard the name of one of the team of writers - Pat Cumper - someone I taught over 30 years ago! Now I hear that the series is to come to an end.....why? I must say I particularly look forward to Wednesdays and Fridays when the episodes are broadcast - as other(s) of your listeners have commented, it makes a change from the news! What will you be giving us as a replacement? Janet, Jamaica
I wrote to you a few weeks back saying how good I think Westway is, and what a shame that drama with such worldwise relevance and skilful construction is being taken off the airwaves. All that is still true for me, but having dropped in and out of your website over the past few weeks I notice that the worldwide community of listeners who have been in touch have gone quiet, including me. This is fine, except that it means that dear old Sam has been sitting at the top of the list for weeks, no doubt giving the executives who decided to axe the programme some self satisfied comfort in their decision.
Well, I do not think it should be left to Sam to have the last word. So, in the hope that those who have appreciated the writing, acting and directing of Westway will join me in saying so, again if necessary, I write to thank you for all the work and insight you have managed to convey, and to reiterate my view that it is a great shame that the programme is to end, for it is capable of doing so much good, and to wish everyone well.
David, UK
I am a listener here in Sierra Leone and I really enjoy your last episodes on the 'Bondo'. Thanks for the programme and I hope most Sierra Leonean mothers will follow the step of Salamatu.
I am also sad that Westway is coming to a close. Will there be another drama series like Westway?
Abdulai, Sierra Leone
I once again realise this is another waste of my time, but can the 'programers' not bite the bullet and pull this rubbish of the air immeadiately.
Unfortunately as an insomniac I occassionally find the
contents of this silly unreal program drifting into my headphones which are then removed within nano seconds. However as I attempt to judge time in the darkness of my bed I unfortunately pick up sad little snippets of PC scripted drivel frustratingly played out before the start of the next program. Last nights masccara running pathos followed by stoic gallows humour was abysimal. The person responsible obviously hadn't a clue on reaction. It was just so so poor. I have complained over the broadcast of this 'soap' a few times, thankfully someone somewhere has seen the logic of dropping its PC propoganda. Regratfully the BBC in its fear of the open society that it contends this soap reflects will not tell me who the luminary who took the correct decesion in dropping this farce is in order that I simply praise him for his foresight.
Sam
I must confess to feeling self-conscious about enjoying Westway - a bit like admitting to some slightly embarrassing secret weakness. However I've been listening to it more or less regularly for about five years. I found yesterday's episode, when Jamshed is told his cancer is not responding to chemotherapy, absolutely gripping. Every day there must be people who find themselves in this appalling situation, but hearing the discussion with the doctors and Jamshed's reaction, made the whole thing far more realistic and thought-provoking than just hearing a statistic, or even a short interview, on the same topic. The programme was obviously thoroughly researched, so I felt I was listening in on a genuine consulation.
Turning to your "Have Your Say" page, I found literally dozens of people protesting that the show is coming to an end. I would wonder how on earth the BBC can ignore all these fervent protests - except that you've already shown that you're quite capable of ignoring the even more fervent protests about the cutting of the short wave services.
Why is the BBC so determined to alienate its listeners? Are you trying to compete with CNN? You don't have to compete with CNN, for heaven's sake, you're the BBC! You've got faithful listeners all over the world who love just the way you are - or used to be, until recently. At the moment you seem to be doing your best to drive away your existing public rather than to attract new listeners.
Anna, Italy
I am very disappointed that Westway is to end, as I have always tried to stay awake, in the UK, to the hear the latest. And would sometimes to doze off, to be awakened by a recognisable voice from the cast, and feel cheered by the characters who were so well depicted, with humour and some depth.
I would like to know why it is being axed! I do not want music on the World Service, for Radio 3 exists for that, and I fear it is another attempt by the BBC to reduce the programmes most people like. to be replaced by some popular trash.
Richard
Just wanted to add my voice to all the others. I was just getting ready to write to ask if you couldn't have Westway on the air three times a week instead of Wednesday & Friday, and now I see that it is cancelled. Above all others it has been my favorite program for several years. Too bad, how sad.
Gloria, Connecticut
Please listen to your listeners and don’t axe this wonderful programme. Like so many other people in the UK, I discovered it through a bout of insomnia when Radio 4 was off air. It was one of the reasons I why I decided to buy a digital radio, and I was delighted to find it being repeated on BBC 7 – what a great way to start Saturdays! As another person said, I don’t want endless repetitions of news on the World Service, and neither it seems do lots of other around the world. This little programme existence demonstrates all that is good about the mixing of cultures in modern day Britain. Please don’t do this – let Westway stay!
Sophia, UK
I love westway - is there any possiblilty you might consider to put all the eight years of westway on one or two cd´s and all the fans be able to listen to it again, after buying the cd´s for some euros / pounds ... Westway is always up to date .
Angelika
I totally agree with the writer of the first letter on the list today. (David, UK) Don't your planners listen to comments?
Maybe you are intending to kill off all the characters before October. You have already disposed of Jamshed's much wanted baby and have given Jamshed time to have the final episode as his death scene. Now I am fearing you'll destroy the Health Centre with either a terrorist bomb or a plane crashing into it.
If you have run out of ideas, why not ask listeners for new story lines.
As for story lines, the last update on the Website was a month ago. What is the reason for that?
Like many who have written, I am very tired of endless news on World Service. Let's have a little light entertainment, please.
Anne, Kenya
Along with so many others I feel that the WS has made a huge mistake in closing the series. I also feel huge frustration that the feedback which you are publishing on the website seems to evoke no response from planners at all. The themes you cover, the quality of the writing and the diversity of the output make this one of the finest serial formats I know.
Anyway, in a dejected but hopefully purposeful way I have written today to Robert Hanks, whose reviews on radio I read with pleasure. Today I feel particularly motivated after listening last night to the fearless handling of the testicular cancer issue. Gripping, just like the work you have done on HIV and all the other themes.
On the one occasion when I heard a planner talking about this I heard that the shift in WS broadcasting was to put creative output on at the weekends, and that there just was no room for Westway. This at least should be challenged. The programme is very important in my view.
David, UK
I have started listening to Westway. I happen to come across this show when i was doing my dissertation. this programme helped me get past the whole thing.
I am very sad to hear that it coming to the end. this show is better than the soaps we get on tv and very easy to follow! Why are you ending it!!!!!!!! It was good while it lasted, but...
Petrina, 22, student
Oh, how l shall miss Westway. Since finding BBC7, it has been my constant companion, and Westway has been a real favourite.H ow I have laughed at Chidi, and how l have cried with Margaret. Mel's giggle always makes me giggle and how l love to hate pompous David. All in all, it's a wonderful mix of personalities and storylines and brings back memories of my home in Shepherds Bush. It will leave a huge gap for many people if Westway is to be taken off the air. Surely us tax payers hold a little sway somewhere along the line.........
To writers and cast members l say a huge thank-you. You have brightened many a bad day for me. Perhaps someone, somewhere is listening.
Sue, UK
Westway abgesperrt! My friend jerry will be heartbroken. we always listen to Westway in the kitchen; last time he cut his finger
when he found out that Gabs was pregnant. I think he probably fancies her. i always liked chidi myself. He sounds very cute, and loyal. I wondered if maybe you still have one of those Westway cards with the cast photo on it, then we could hang it up in the kitchen. Even though its coming to an end, thanks for all the storylines and great characters. It always gives us something to rag about at work!
Shannon (and Jerry), Berlin
I was so sad to read of Westway being cut from the wonderful offerings of the BBC Worldservice. That is the one of the main reasons I purchased my XM Satellite Radio. I have faithfully recorded the show on cassette tape and have every episode from March 9, 1999. But now all my taping will be at an end when Westway ends.
I know you have "killed off" a few characters the "Westway way"... The sad thing now is every character of Westgrove Park will be but a memory... How did Fizza manage that? Oh, working with the BBC Worldservice management, I suspect... What a character! Cheerio, I will miss all of you greatly... Thanks for the years, and over 200 tapes, of enjoyment. Fizza you are still my hero!
Bob Flood, Texas
What can BBC decision makers be thinking of? This is one of my 'must hear' programs, every week. Please don't let them do this! How many negative letters does Westway get?? Compare that to how many positive?? Send those programmers back to the drawing board!!
Saralee, Singapore
I would like to support all the writers who have written expressing their dismay at the cancellation of Westway in October. The serial gives a more relevent picture of life in the U.K more than any current affair talks can and which are recycled from week to week.
It is more realistic than The Archers which is a travesty of rural life. I suppose someone in the World Service Management wishes to make his or her mark and so cancels a popular programme to achieve this.
David
I just want to add my voice to the protest. Westway is one of the reasons I tune into BBC. Although I live in Europe, I have given up watching TV and am now tuned most waking hours to BBC. I don't need endless news, but entertaining and well produced drama progams like Westway. I think BBC is making a serious mistake with it's new programming policies!!
Claire, Copenhagen
What is happening??? l have just heard that my favourite show is to stop in October - what is the World service coming too? l have
listened to Westway ever since it started now 7 years ago, are the writers bored with it or is it money at the BBC?? It is a crime to stop a well-enjoyed show (judging by the letters) so please RECONSIDER and ask the BBC to continue Westway - it is bad enough to have the World service cut during the day and now l have to listen via my computer - so please keep on the programmes that are good.
V de Schoene, Switzerland
I have just learned about the decision to stop broadcasting Westway on the World Service. I simply can't imagine why such a step is being taken. It is an intelligent programme with a multicultural cast that makes reference to experiences that must happen to many. I was delighted when it moved to BBC7, but, really, to remove it from the World Service! Have they gone news-mad?
I hope the cast and producers are aware that so many people hold the programme in the highest regard. They can be proud of their work.
Mrs. Simmons
I've just heard on Radio 4 that Westway is going to come to an end October. That is really sad news! I've been listening to the program for a couple of years now, and it's always been weigh better than the regular daily soap junk you find on television, often quite funny but also dealing with quite serious issues like death and disease in quite a profound way. While most of your programs on the world service are great, this is really one of my favorites. I strongly hope that many more people will write in pleading for the survival of Westway, so that the people responsible for the programming might think it over. Thanks for the great work
Thomas, USA
I´ve been very sorry about the news that Westway will stop being broadcast from October. I was so accustomed to it, I was really hooked. It isn´t just a very interesting and entertaining programme to listen to but most importantly it improves my everyday, conversation English, as I suppose it does to all other foreign listeners. This makes it a very welcome addition to the current-affairs- like vocabulary that dominates the BBC World Service. I hope it´s going to be replaced by a progamme which contains lots of conversational English as well. Thank you for all those years of Westway.
Francesca, the Netherlands
I don’t suppose this will make it onto the website, as it does not toe the ‘party line’ but what is the BBC doing axing Westway? The last thing the world needs is another 24 hour rolling news service. These disastrous institutions distort the news and, where necessary, create it when it doesn’t exist. Those of us who like to listen to the World Service have already been forced to endure the same programme time and time again by the last round of cuts. Now drama is being cut. All we get is news presented by different voices and re-worded again and again. There is no attempt to cater to a mature thoughtful listener, just pandering to an imagined ‘busy lifestyle’ where people tune in for 5 minutes and then move on. Such a listener is not the core of the World Service; it is a figment of some marketing guru’s deluded and limited imagination.
For goodness’ sake keep the variety of the World Service alive. Don’t turn it into anther boring, repetitive rolling news bore-athon.
Roy
Why?
Why are you removing Westway from the airwaves???
Do you know what a friend this magical programme has been to those of us who travel the lonely nights alone with the radio to keep us safe/sane?
This is akin to The Archers being removed from the schedule on Radio 4!
Through sleepless pitch black nights I have found comfort in the characters and storylines of Westway!
Please reconsider your decision!
I discovered the gem that is Westway some time ago in my insomniac twilight zone, and now I find it is to be cut. Why? The story lines are realistic, the acting is estimable and the production values are high, making it streets ahead of most soaps present and past. There is a strong character development and a certain moral stance which is appealing in a rather valueless Britain. Such a good advert for GB on the World Service, and a very entertaining part of BBC 7 for those of us here.
How will I manage without Margaret, Jamshed, Sunita et al - and how does Ben cope with being gay? Will I ever find out? It's as if Trollope ended the Pallisers half-way through.
Please reconsider. The scene where the doctor of Nigerian origin was held up at customs had me in knots of anger and sympathy recently, even if she is full of herself. Eastenders can learn a lot from this hidden nugget.
Chris, London.
Dear wonderful Westway crew,
I have been listening to Westway since I was quite young, and have loved the hearing the characters develop. I'm an avid radio listener and also enjoy The Archers, but I have always thought that Westway is a much more realistic and gripping drama. Westway has served as a comfort to me whilst studying early into the morning, and though I'm sure I can continue to enjoy the early episodes on BBC 7, I have to say how disappointed I am at the news that Westway is being terminated! I would really like to know why the decision has been taken to terminate this wonderful series, as it really will be something I shall miss dearly, as I'm sure many others will too.
Nicholas
I never believe in never.
So can I add my name to the petition to keep Westway on the World Service.
I have followed the show for all of the eight years both here in Singapore and under more difficult circumstances in Sydney Australia.
News and current affairs might make us switch on but Westway keeps us listening.
COME ON it is never too late to admit a mistake, keep them doctors on, they are good medicine in a world of only bad news!!
Andrew, Singapore
I'm a 47 year old South African teaching Vilnius, Lithuania. The BBC is a regular companion of mine, both in my classroom and in my car. Over the past few years I've 'tuned in' to Westway and really enjoy the programme. I'm a huge fan of Aunt Polin, Chidi and now Jamshed's Aunt who's just arrived to fetch Blaze(sp?) and take her back to India.
It always interests me that you manage to keep the issues in the story very topical (except perhaps for the up-coming UK elections). I can't believe theprogramme is coming to an end in October and I am VERY disappointed.
John, Vilnius, Lithuania
I am writing to ask you not to axe this show. I think it is absolutely wonderful and when I travel to Ghana, it gives me a pleasant link with England - especially as you do not have The Archers on the World Service. Please think again.
Araba, Ghana
I shall be sorry. No doubt this follows the principle ‘If it moves shoot it down’.
It has always been a pleasure when insomnia happened to coincide with an episode.
Angela, UK
I am a fan of Westway and try to listen to each episode when I can. A few years ago I use to listen to Westway on my AM Radio in my car while driving to work with a change of job it ended my routine. I am now back listening to Westway on BBC7 and BBC World Service on digital radio which is crystal clear. I cannot believe the BBC is taking this programme off air in October. With this email service you have provided I am reading emails from fellow listeners all around the world from Malawi to Mongolia, from India to Iran, all complimenting the show. I don't know what is happening to TV and Radio in the UK. There are too many reality programmes, dumbing down, too much sex and violence and any opportunity to swear. Am I the only person who thinks like this? I think it great that there are other fellow listeners around the world who love Westway. Don't get rid of something that is good.
Giovanni (London)
I actually live in the UK, (semi-insomniac) but have been addicted to Westway for about 4 years, I really cannot believe you are about to pull it in October. I know you have been altering the type of programmes you put out on the World Service, but I am devastated to learn that you propose to axe Westway. Why? WHY? WHY? I have a choice of dozens of radio programmes, but the World Service keeps me in touch with everything that's happening in other countries, surely there's room for Westway, or have you just run out of storylines? Please think again. I once lived in Kenya for a while, in the 70s and know how important the W.S. is to ex-patriots.
Natalie, UK
Hello whoever writes Westway storylines,
I think some characters are not credible, especially Blaze. she is unbelievably simple-minded and naive. Too much so. Even if we're talking fiction, it helps if the characters approximate real life.
Blaze has also just landed from Mumbay and fit in culturally and socially into London without missing a beat. Apart from her accent, she is virtually british.
Susan
I really enjoy westway and its funny characters and their machingly controversial lives and
they way they go about their business i am a togolese student of computer software programming and enjoy listening to bbc in hole and westway in particular so I am very much seduced by the life of Fr Gillespie and Roy Wallis and the rogue in making Fizza so i hope you will never end this westway I can contribute more serious situations to make the story last again all the best the most powerful of the lama kingdom
Charles, Nigeria
Please don't cancel Westway. I listen regularly, both in the UK and overseas and enjoy the stories very much. We deliberately live in a diverse and multicutural part of London, and I spent many years flying longhaul for BA. This programme reflects a lot of the new Britain and I guess is enjoyed worldwide. I heard about this on last nights "Write On".
John, UK
I just read the announcement at the top of the Westway page about the pending conclusion of the Westway series in October. This is the end of a cycle and perhaps a wakeup call for me.
You see, my mother died the same year, 1997, that Westway began. I'd be very low, depressed, and sleepless with the radio on, KCSN,in Los Angeles, listening to BBC World Service all night. I was not aware of the unusual broadcast schedule you had for it then, but in the middle of it all, on only some night, would come this happy theme and then 15 minutes of the triumphs and travails of the diverse staff and neighbors of the clinic. It became a second home for me. I care much for everyone, though more about folks like Father Gillespie (I am a teacher and the horror of the sexual abuse accusation is one we face often here), Chidi (whom I originally did not like, until he settled down to be more responsible (relatively)), and Margaret, who is just such a vulnerable leader and highly skilled professional with her heart in mostly the right place.
I will miss the series and want to thank all the performers, writers, directors, BBC staff, and, especially, the technicians (who else could make me "see" and "feel" London from a studio?). Life is just like that. You wonder what the hell this cacaphony of stories is, grow to love it, and, then, it is over. Thanks for the heads up. I will listen each weekend with more appreciation to see how you all bring Westway to a worthy end. I still think the way they ended "Northern Exposure", a culty series from the 90s, on CBS, was fitting. Everyone just on another night, a bit closer than on others, but nothing schmaltzy like them trying to present it as the folks had all risen above their problems and life was happy-ever-after; just Kate Rusby singing Iris Dement's "Our Town" and that was it.
Good luck to you all. Thanks for the web page, the pix of the players, the updates, and even getting back to my few e-mails. Let me know if there will ever be another series coming. If not, I still have the live stream news, documentaries, novels, and Prime Minister's Questions. There will always be an England.....even in Sunland (my district of Los Angeles).
Victor,United States of America
I gather that Westway is to close, because World Service is focusing on “serious” and “fact-based” programmes. Please don’t.
I have had periods when World Service was my only access to English language media, and I would listen through the interference in the middle of the night, just to hear something that was not Analysis or the price of wheat in Chicago. It will be a great loss if it goes and is not replaced by a similar programme.
Peter, UK
Why are you axing this programme? Or, why are you allowing it to be axed?
And don't give me any **** about why yet another 24 hour rolling news service is going to prove so valuable. This isn't CNN, it isn't Channel 5 - it's the BBC World Service.
You don't demonstrate the BBC's (and by extension, Britain's) commitment to a genuinely multicultural society by axing the one BBC artefact in which that ideal is so obviously manifest. I appreciate that it's harder to strike over ideals than it is over job cuts, but surely there must be some leverage that you have?
Can you not construct a business case that shows the cost benefits of retaining the programme - the alleged managers of our institutions like that sort of thing these days, and they're not that difficult to construct.
Toby, UK
Please don't take away my Westway! Just found it again after many years of not being able to listen - it's a great drama, and relates to all ages and cultures - please keep this drama available to listeners in the US - we have no great radio dramas to call our own, and have come to rely on BBC World Service for a culturally conscious modern day drama.
Theresa
Are we really going to be deprived of Westway? On Write On, I heard about this dismaying decision for the first time. As a most loyal listener since the very first episode, I am not happy about it at all, but not shocked I must say. Programs are being killed off with alarming frequency, the latest being "What's the Problem?", so I have been waiting for Westway to meet the same fate, and hoping it would not. It is an excellent drama serial, featuring true to life situations, wonderful actors and delightful touches of humour.
Is the BBC about to become a radio version of CNN or Sky News? We are hearing that BBC listeners want news and information. What does this mean? No more entertainment? All the literary and music programs banished to outer darkness? If it comes to that "Westway" does contain information. The HIV episodes certainly contained many facts. To divert for a second, "What's the Problem" was very informative. It all depends on the way you look at it, and the BBC is looking at the definition of information in a most narrow fashion.
I do hope that you will change your mind and not remove Westway. It would be a great loss. If you do, plse announce the date of the last episode well in advance so I can hear it, which I will with a heavy heart.
R. Cummin, Israel
I’m an English teacher living in Spain. I think that Westway serves the same function on World Service radio as “Eastenders” does on TV in the UK. The issues addressed are all relevant to life not only in Britain but in most of the rest of the world. It certainly is “light” listening but it serves its purpose precisely for that reason. When I heard that it is to be discontinued on “Write On” the other week I was rather disappointed as I am sure many other regular listeners will be. The gentleman from the BBC who explained the reason for this was unclear in his explanation and particularly pompous in his attitude. Is the World Service only to be aimed at intellectuals or are we to accept that its audience is worldwide regardless of age, culture and Heaven Forbid, education?
If enough of us wrote into the BBC would we have any effect on this decision?
By the way, the new Louise sounds too like Gabriela to avoid confusion and how is it that Charlie and Louise can get married in the Catholic Church if they are both divorced?
Congratulations on the programme!
Sue, Barcelona, Spain
For many years I have enjoyed listening to Westway. The dialogue and character development is excellent. Now a rumor has reached me that the Westway production may get cancelled. Please don't let that happen! Otherwise, how will we learn how all those peoples' lives turn out? After you have spent years drawing us into their stories, you must not abandon us (and them) now.
James, USA
I had the misfortune of being unable to sleep one night and tuned in to Radio 4 - which, by this time, had become the Overseas Service. Mistake number one!. How I wish I had remained tuned to Classic FM! What was being broadcast? 'Westway'! I could hardly believe the BBC could broadcast such utter drivel! "This must be a one-off", I thought but, on checking the 'Radio Times', I discovered, to my surprise, that it was no such thing but what can only be described as an 'everyday story of social misfits'.
Not one to make rapid judgements, I decided to listen to the next few episodes. Mistake numbers two, three, four and five - I really should have remained tuned to Classic FM. I have done since....
How 'Westway' can be described as drama, I have no idea! The characters are, without exception, socially inadequate, socially maladjusted, inarticulate, unable to speak grammatically-correct English and devoid of even the basic social graces; they seem to spend the entire episodes whingeing, drinking, fighting or arguing and it seems that they are either adulterers, gays, lesbians or HIV positives (not that I discriminate against gays, lesbians or HIV positives) The medical staff can hardly be described as professional; if the doctors and staff in my local practice behaved like the 'Westway' lot, the place would be closed down as a health hazard. The story-line is complete rubbish and, frankly, the BBC should be ashamed of broadcasting such nonsense. I only hope that our overseas listeners do not think this as typical of present-day England.
And why, oh why, is it that there is no Anglican clergyman in the neighbourhood? Or a Baptist, or Methodist Minister? Are all the doctors, the staff, the patients and the entire local population of Roman Catholic persuasion? If your scriptwriters think that, then they really do need a lesson in the social structure of this country. It's surprising, too, that in these days of multi-culture, multi-race, multi-faith and multi-anything-else-that-comes-to-mind, there's no mention of the local mosque, synagogue, temple, Masonic lodge or even witches’ coven!
Thank Goodness we no longer have to pay to receive radio broadcasts and I hope that none of my TV licence money finds its way into the bank accounts of the scriptwriters of 'Westway'. No, they aren't paid! Surely not!
The sooner this programme is removed from the broadcast schedule and replaced with something with even a hint of culture the better for everyone.
P.S. I'm delighted to hear that 'Westway' is to be discontinued. This calls for a national celebration - even a Public Holiday
John Bustin, UK
I can hardly believe Westway will be leaving the airwaves by the end of October. It indeed will be missed.
Has it been eight years now? Wow. I remember the very beginning, the very first program, and how awestruck I was by the sheer excellence it radiated. What the BBC manages to do through the radio medium is perfection. Not just a group of actors who sound like they are reading from a script as they stand before a microphone. NO WAY! The BBC's radio programs come across as being REAL, and so true to life.
The airwaves will be a bit empty when Westway signs off for the final time. What a treasure it has been!
Gwenne (USA)
Please don't take Westway off the air, I just love the program and all the characters. Living in America I get very homesick for London, so spending 30 minutes a week with the westway cast makes me feel at home and part of England for a while.
Please, Please don't take Westway off the air, it will be sadly missed!
Marta, USA
I'm an 18 and I live in Lusaka in Zambia just want to say that i absolutely love the show!!!! i try to never miss and episode but with me working its a bit hard, but the shows i have been able to catch up on are really great!!!!!! my favorite characters are Gabriella, Namita, Fizza, Kelly, Becky and Ned. I totally love their accents!!!!! They are just simply wild!!!
Max, Zambia
I was going to complain about Abi Eniola leaving Westway, but after logging on to the BBC, I now find out something even worse. That you want to take Westway off altogether.
DON'T DO IT.
I listen to Westway every week. I'm a British ex pat living here in Benghazi Libya for the last 27 years. I’ve no TV. I only listen to the BBC. & go to the net once or twice a month if I can. Westway is the only regular programme that I keep up with. PLEASE don't stop Westway. You, the BBC keep taking off programmes with out asking your listeners opinions first... it’s just too much. I will be one very angry EX BBC listener if you take Westway off the world service radio.
Nadine, Libya
I really enjoyed the last episode of the show given that it was the first time I had actually
sat through the whole half hour duration that it lasts. The suspence on whether Joy would make it to Nigeria was gripping.What a palaver! I am now a solid fan .
William Oyange, Kenya
I read in the Independent of 1 April 2005 that Westway will be axed in October. Was this an April fool joke? I hope so. Please don't axe Westway.
Elisabeth
After 4 days I am still annoyed and disgusted at the decision to scrap Westway from the World Service schedules in October. As an insomniac I manage to keep up with its twice-weekly schedule far more often then other radio and TV soaps. But Westway isn’t any old ordinary soap and although work don’t know it, my bleary eyed look at least twice a week is down to looking forward to hearing that inordinately cheerful theme tune at 2.30 am!
Unlike other soaps that live in their own little implausible bubbles, Westway reflects a real UK, not only to insomniac Brits but also to the rest of the world. Its setting in the original global village of London allows it to examine tough and real world issues and their effects on peoples lives. A perfect foil to the almost exclusively news and current affairs based overnight schedule of the World Service.
As a self-confessed news junkie, I am not bemoaning the World Service’s news output. It is in fact by far the best-informed and balanced news service of all the media in the UK, reporting on many issues such as the crisis in Darfur months before all the other media. Surely half an hour a week can be left in the World Services schedule (and some funds in the budget) for this excellent drama led reflection on the world news. I hope this does not signify a degeneration of the overnight World Service schedule into a 24-hour news service of repeating bland news bites.
sarah drea
Please tell me that your April 1, 2005 report stating that Westway is going off the air in October was just a very bad April Fool's Joke! I started listening to the programme about a month after it began, and it's the highpoint of my week. American tv shows aren't that interesting, and it will be a great loss to lose such a fine BBC drama. I enjoyed the multiculturalism --you even had an Albanian character! (My grandparents emigrated to the US from Albania), and the atmosphere at the Westway Health Center was portrayed in a realistic manner. I also like the fact that if I don't have a chance to catch an episode on my shortwave radio, I can hear it repeated from your website. (That was extremely helpful when the Boston Red Sox were in the Playoffs and World Series--I didn't have to miss any of the championship games .) I hope that the BBC Directors will reconsider, and keep Westway on the air. Is there a petition we can sign to show our support of you! r show? Keep up the good work!
Barbara, USA
I've just read in the Financial Times that Westway is ending. Is this true?
If so are there any plans to substitute it with something similar?
It may not be the high spot of World Service output but I do find it compulsive listening, as it seems do a lot of people all round the world!
Elizabeth Lindsay, uk
Did I in my half awake state hear on BBC7 that you are axing Westway????????
If so why??????? It is enjoyed all over the world and is very important to so many people in remote areas.
Wrong decision I think!
Kirsten
Though based in the UK I've been listening to Westway on the World Service for years, and now again on BBC7. I was very disappointed to hear that Westway is to be axed from October. This serial is unique it its portrayal of London's diverse community. As well as being entertaining it deals with difficult issues in a sensitive way. Feedback from around the world shows that this aspect of the programme is very welcome. The programme will leave a gap which nothing else will fill. It seems a pity that 30 mins per week could not be found to retain this series.
Ernest Dobson
I was going through several websites and came across an item that says Westway was being axed by the World Service.
Please say this isn't true! I would be willing to subscribe to Westway for a monthly fee. Anything to keep this wonderful show alive. If it is leaving the World Service is there another BBC outlet for new shows?
I love Westway and hope to keep it around for many a day!
John, Ohio, USA
I'm extremely upset and disappointed to hear that the show is being cancelled. It makes little sense, since surely, with the BBC7 airing the older episodes, Westway is steadily gaining new fans. Why couldn't the number of broadcast times simply be cut down, or the weekend omnibus discontinued? Is there any chance the show could be picked up by another station?
This is such sad news. I've listened for six years; the characters are such a part of my week that it's like visiting with dear friends, and I look forward to hearing them, particularly Margaret. It will be a great loss not to have Westway any longer.
Christina, USA
I have heard the distressing news on Write on that Westway will be coming to an end in October. It will be missed. I will be one of the mourners as I started listening from it's first episode about 6-7 years ago. As the show reaches it's end. I thank you very much for your help and I thank each and every actor/actress as well as the staff and the cast of Westway for their great dedication to the show. Thank you!
Joe Chamma
I'm so sad, because I've just heard that Westway is going to end in October. I've been a Westway addict for about five years, although at the beginning I couldn't listen to each
episode. It's really good to be able to listen to the first episodes on BBC7. I like almost all the characters, and I've learned so much English from them!!! I'm an interpreting
student, and I'll graduate at the end of this year. At the beginning of my university studies I learned so much English from the Westway characters.
As I'm also blind, I would like to make a short remark about Zoe. I've read the message from another listener who thanked you for making Zoe such a natural person. I would like to
thank you for that, too!!! Although I don't like Zoe very much as a character, I'm glad that she is portrait as a normal person with her abilities and mistakes, who just happens to be blind.
Can we, the listeners, do anything to safe our favorite Worldservice program from disappearing? I've already sent a message to Writeon.
Before I go, I would like to thank everyone who has ever contributed to Westway for giving me such an extraordinary program and for teaching me so much English!!!!!
Anja, Leipzig, Germany
I an a long standing listener to Westway and have just read on the net that the BBC is axing Westway . I am so sorry as I really enjoy it and find the BBC’s excuse to end it pretty feeble to say the least. I do hope there is a big outcry and it is reprieved. It gives such a good insight to our British way of life and the way we have so many and varied cultures in our society. I have laughed and cried with the various characters through the years. I will miss it. Kindest regards
Di. Nokes , UK
I am shocked and disgusted by the news of westway being axed as it is such a well written and acted soap. So come on bbc don’t axe westway.
Calvin, uk
BBC7 say you're being axed in October. I'm really, really sorry - I love the show and will really miss it; it's not even as it's being replaced with another serial, from what I gather. The weekday schedules are to be No Fun zones. Well, thanks for seven years of really entertaining and informative listening. All the best - it's been brill.
Chris
I can't begin to tell you how upset and angry I am to hear that 'Westway' is to finish. I have listened to it right from the start, first of all on a crackly, coming and going long wave frequency and recently on digital radio (I live in England). I have also been listening to the BBC7 repeats. I cannot understand why the BBC is taking this excellent programme off. I hardly feel it's worth continuing to listen from now on, as I will only miss the characters more when it does finish. How can you do it?
Surely an April's Fool joke? If not, then I protest at the axing of Westway. It is maturing nicely and it is unthinkable that it should stop now. Louise has to have another baby (you'll need to bring back the midwife, please), and Jamshed's cousin must overcome her "agent" and become a star! Well, maybe not. But please DON'T STOP.
Jytte
PLEASE tell me that yesterday's article was just a very terrible April Fool's Joke, and not the truth. I just read that you plan to discontinue Westway in October! Is this part of the recent budget cuts? What can we do to save the programme? Your radio serial is so much better than most of the shows on American television, and I look forward to listening to it every Wednesday and Friday. I love the cultural diversity--you even had an Albanian character! (My family is from Albania.) And Westway's portrayal of its office is a much more realistic portrayal than all those Hollywood-type shows. Please reconsider and Save Westway!
Barbara, Boston, , USA
I have just heard through a Westway discussion group on the net, that the BBC is ending the series this fall. What are you people thinking?!
Ethel, Tel Aviv, Israel
Dear BBC
I am 40 years old and a mother to two boys 5 and 3 and I work part-time as a lecturer and I am also doing a PhD. I wanted to write and tell you how much I enjoy Westway. However I am often frustrated. I occasionally catch the current shows on the world service but this is too infrequent and I cannot keep up with the storylines. So I have 'started again' on BBC7. I much preferred the show when it was on as an omnibus on Sundays. Now it is on Saturdays, which is always a much busier day I sometimes miss the show and don't have a chance to catch up. As both omnibus editions are on one day, like last week where I went out for the day I missed all the shows. If you had one on Saturday mornings then the second on Sunday evenings I would have much more chance of listening to one or the other.
I love the story lines and the one about Margaret and Lloyd was so moving. Keep up the good work.
Jo Hart
To Westway cast,
I enjoy listening to Westway twice a week. I think all the actors do a terrific job in bringing to life their characters. Please do keep it up!
Romana
Greetings to all members of the cast. It's evermore refreshing listening to you even after 7 years. Thank you Mr. Producer for this very good drama serial. I hope it continues forever.
ERIC EKOW ABAIDOO, ACCRA,GHANA.
Sorry but I just can't warm to Westway. At first I hated it, heard the first few epis then didn't listen for a long time, then, about a year later, it coincided with a car journey to work and I listened in preference to silence - but often I preferred the silence.
It's corny, over-acted, laughingly inaccurate sometimes - and full of unpleasant or unendearing characters. Many of whom, for whatever reason, undergo total personality changes (this is always the mark of a very poor soap)
Not since Chidi has there been anyone to really make friends with. I'm not a regular listener, only when I drive but I've never yet heard anything which might tempt me to listen on line or (heaven help us) re-listen to ancient episodes. So it never quite made it for me and I don't listen if I can help it.
Lynda
I am a regular listener to the BBC, am 26 years old and I come from Nigeria, I’ve been listening to the BBC from the age of 12,my favourite programme which introduced to the BBC is Network Africa. I have recently become addicted to WESTWAY.
CHINEDU, NIGERIA.
I just love the program. I found it when, as a Study Abroud student in London last year I would listen to Radio 4 in the evening and was often still awake when it switched over to World Service, and I am so glad that I was!
Now back in New York City I still keep up via online broadcasts to Westway!
Julie, New York
Yes, I am truly addicted. The storylines are great and the actors are superb. I would love it if you would update your Who's Who page. I'd love to see Billie (she's such a downer!) and Blaze, my absolute favorite new character. Thanks for a great series!
Shirley, USA
Congratulations to your script-writers for the recent episodes. Having some of the same experience as Louise, I found the account of her baptism most moving....and what a joy to hear the lively and informative account of Dr Margaret's return to life and hope, after the encounter with the ignorant First-Aider.
Anna Mary, North Norway.
After hearing that Just A Minute has been cancelled on World Service and now Westway, I am APPALLED.
World Service is NOT just for news and factual programming.
It should encompass and indeed be a main source of news, but COMEDY and DRAMA are essential too!
Please forward this to the Controller of BBC World Service.
Rex Orr, England.
I proud to say this, yes last 13 months Westway is the part of my life, nowadys I cant think servive without bbc.
Now I knew a bit about of world, for that I need to pay my thanks to everyone in bbc.
I would like to say more but my poor english dont co-operate to do that, any way wishes to all to do more for everyone in world.
R S Kumar, Singapore
Dear Westway Writers:
Boy am I happy that spineless boring Jamshed is having a rough time between egocentric Blaze and bossy "Gabs"!
Susanna, Dominican Republic
I am only a comparatively new listener to Westway, having stumbled upon it quite by accident with the repeats from the very beginning on BBC7. So I am way behind with what is currently going on and am stuck way back in the days of the Eclipse and Lloyd's terminal illness.
However, I should just like to say that my husband and I listen to it every week and we think it is absolutely brilliant: the characters, the storylines, even the sound effects. I would like to start listening to the current episodes but as it is on during the night, I haven't got around to using the listen again facility on the net yet.
But I think it is absolutely fantastic! Even my 2 sons of 12 and 7 sometimes listen to the omnibus with us at the weekends.
I think all the characters are believable and the programme deals sensitively with many issues.
My all time favourite character so far has to be Chidi! He is still only young in the repeats from 1999 but he cracks me up every time I hear him, I tell you! My kids love him too!
Mel, UK
I am glad that at least one character at the ‘Westway’ clinic, ‘Margaret’ seems to have her heart in the right place, unlike most people in the real world today.
Ronnie Almeida, Karnataka, India
As an early riser and occasional insomniac, I pick up Westways occasionally. As a Catholic priest might I say I was struck by the very accurate presentation of the dilemma facing a character who wished to enter the Catholic Church in time for Easter. Congrats to the producer on getting all the details so accurately in the steps of the atechumenate programme - not easy even for many clergy, so it is a special tonic to get it done so well and accurately on radio - and also for the humane presentation of Fr. Gillespie. I have told some of my colleagues about your programme.
Hi, It is very nice to listen a pappy kind of voice of Aunt, the Aqua ballyhooed actress. Well done with the character of Anu.
Gaurav, Nepal
My husband and I stumbled onto this while looking for something different to listen to on our XM radio. The show is interesting, has all the elements of suspense, drama and a good story line, and makes you want to tune in for more. Definitely worth listening to.
Shirlene, Maryland U.S.A
Hi
I have been listening to Westway I think from the very first edition and only miss it when I am not at home. I have found it to be very interesting and now with the arrival of Blaze what else can I say. I think it is really a very good programme.
Gascoynia,Sierra Leone
Dear all at westway,
Please send me a post card of the cast. I never miss
an episode, I think I may have a crush on Jamsheet.
Thanks.
Bertha, Zambia
Is the WestWay theme tune available as a ring-tone (polyphonic for a Nokia 6610)?
I'd like it because it would be something of an individualistic choice and because it would produce smiles of recognition from other insomniacs who listen to the World Service in the middle of the night.
Julian, London, UK
Yes, I am truly addicted. The storylines are great and the actors are superb. I would love it if you would update your Who's Who page. I'd love to see Billie (she's such a downer!) and Blaze, my
absolute favorite new character. Thanks for a great series!
Shirley, USA
Congratulations to your script-writers for the recent episodes. Having some of the same experience as Louise, I found the account of her baptism most moving....and what a joy to hear the lively and informative account of Dr Margaret's return to life and hope, after the encounter with the ignorant First-Aider.
Anna Mary, North Norway
Dear Westway,
I just love the program. I found it when, as a Study Abroud student in London last year I would listen to Radio 4 in the evening and was often still awake when it switched over to World Service, and I am so glad that I was! Now back in New York City I still keep up via online broadcasts to Westway!
Julie, New York, USA
Hi there. We listen religiously via SW
out here in the bush in Zambia (we're American
development workers who can't stand a second of
VOA but get a lot of enjoyment from BBC, and
especially Westway).
P.S. Blaze is a truly terrible creature you've created! (So please give Ms. Punjabi a much
BIGGER part in the future! We can't get enough.)
David, Zambia
Hello,
Greetings to all members of the cast. It's evermore refreshing listening to you even after 7 years. Thank you Mr. Producer for this very good drama serial. I hope it continues forever.
Eric, ACCRA,GHANA.
hello west way, thanks a lot for all the dreams you have kept
Charles, Kano State, Nigeria
Here is my annual plea to update the pages for Westway. I think Westgrove Park needs some touching up: Chidi's Chop Shop, any of the newer characters' residences (Sean, Zoe, anyone living in the vicitity). Also, new characters need to be added to the who's who page: Angus, Joy's Uncle and Aunt, etc. Perhaps the cast members do not want their pictures shown. Well, the character's background brief will suffice.
Thanks for all you have done. I really cannot expect more from you since your main work is radio, not the Internet. I have to imagine all this and the map has helped a bit. My two days in London on a trip 12 years ago are all I have for a reference. Well, thanks a lot.
Victor, California, United States of America
I have heard a rumour that there are plans to end Westway on the World Service - please tell me this isn't true!! Many thanks!
Rhys
If you heard a sharp intake of breath this afternoon (Wed, Feb 2nd), it was me. I wouldn't miss "Westway" for the world and love the fact that I can listen on the Internet because my little shortwave used always throw a wobbly just as I wanted to tune in to the show.
But today, Kwame (sp?) comes out with this "It's the Irish in her" when he talks about the God-awful ornament he had bought for his mother - and yes, you've guessed it, I'm Irish and I listen in Germany. "The Irish in her......!!!!" I am not amused.
Jamshed's cousin is making me grind my teeth - is she supposed to be real ??
When are you going to update the "Who's Who" section ??
Love the show and don't worry, I'll keep on listening - but no more of this "Irish in her" business....pleeeeeeeeze.
Regards,
Grainne Meyer
Hi ,
I thought it was just wonderful that the BBC was
sensitive enough to include a little excerpt on the
Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations , on the programme.
I just hope that this will cary on into the other
cultures that are part of the UK , namely the
North,South ,East & West Africans,Indians...etc .
tah !
Josh Jones
Dear BBC,
I enjoy most of your programmes, the best for me being The Westway. It warms up my heart soo much.
Sarah, Uganda
I feel it would be appropriate for the Westway theme tune to be changed to a song by 'The Clash,' as they are a band that somehow symbolise West Central London. They have had many connections with the area around the real Westway (the A40), and a song such as 'Complete Control' (where the Westway is mentioned) or 'Career Opportunities' (where doctor's prescriptions are mentioned) would suit the programme's setting well.
A. Howlett.
reets Mr. and Mrs. Westway (writers, directors, actors, everyone),
The latest installations of Westway have been truly great. Some of the best drama happening today.
Blaze is a thoroughly welcomed addition! Please, please, please keep her around. I've always liked Jamshed for the very realistic and humorous elements he adds. The interchange between Blaze, Jamshed, Gabs, and Dave is wicked. Laugh out loud material.
The character writing for Blaze is perfect - she's tauntingly transparent. We know her intentions are patently selfish but the delivery is so puppy innocent, transparent and simplistic that they're hard to resist.
The way she takes criticism, a potential for the realism of her character to break down, is so believable I have to remind myself, this is an actor not a real person.
Next, I think Kwame - both character and actor have really bloomed. Please keep Kwame around as well. He embodies a subtle combination of blue-collar upbringing with a hint of his African heritage.
Until recently, I wasn't very fond of Kathlene (Kwame's mother), but this week's program revealed so much about both her character and her actor; in particular, when she tells Kwame "Go ahead, you can go after him" (Kofe). Also, her accent is very nice, where is it from?? Thats an Irish accent, right? Dublin?
But the bomb scene (of the past many months, IMO) was when Kofe was battling for influence over his son by degrading Kathlene. After he makes her breakdown by preying on her weaknesses, Kofe attempts to slow things down and Kwame speaks for the first time of the scene ...
Within the few words I was clapping my hands slowly as if to encourage, I dunno. But what a wonderful scene that was. I love the loyalty Kwame has for his mother, very very touching. Kofe took a lickin! Never come between a mother and son.
The closing words Kwame speaks to his father were triumphant and very very well delivered by Kwame's actor. I have recommended that scene to Pick of the World.
- in all, the latest episodes of Westway have been fantastic. The realism is ... haunting. I don't remember such seamless work since the days of Sean and Patrick (which should have won awards to be sure -Patrick both in writing and acting was so well done it makes the listener wonder if the writers/actors hadn't been through the experience of having a druggie in the family).
So, 3 cheers for Westway. Your writers are as good as your actors - absolutely top notch. And of course we wouldn't be saying that if the whole thing were'nt produced to perfection as well (sound techs, producer, etc).
Where does Westway get its writers?? I've noticed a rather continual flow and change of the writers, nearly all excellent.
Best Wishes,
Eric
Thanks for this exquisite programme, it’s good and I love it. I need the stuff.
Chidi, Nigeria
I haveen listening to weestway for about a decade. I wasn't enjoying it. probaly because of the cultural distance and surely because of the way you switch on the setting without warning. I have always loved the setting s where Chidi is. I started loving wetway when yoiu did that unqualifiable episodes on H.I.V in late 2003 please I'll appreciate you sending the chracters,probably some scriprs and all that there is to know.my address is .C/o prof Oladosu Institute of Education
University Of Ilorin Nigeria.
Dear Westway Staff,
I hope that the New Year is currently bringing you the good news you
deserve. Any plans to transform the radio drama into a theatre movie? I am asking this question because I have just seen half a British movie broadcast on a local TV station here in Lebanon. I have noticed at the end of the movie that there are some characters also part of the cast of Westway. The names that I’ve noticed are Nina Wadia, and Archie Punjabi. Other well-known British personalities are Juliet Stevenson, Gary Lineker, John Barnes and another well-known footballer. The movie was about…. Football!
As a daily listener to the BBC World Service and an avid listener to Westway, I was also wondering if you could send me a copy of the new Westway Post card.
Joe, Lebanon
I became a default listener to Westway at 2am on a Monday morning. Somehow I always seemed to wake up to that horrible, but catchy tune. Now I have digital radio and can listen at a civilised time.
I love it and hate it.
Could you send me a photo of the cast? I know that will probably destroy a few illusions but I have to know what they really look like!
Elizabeth, Falkirk.
For quite some time now I have been following your programme with keen interest. There is this character, Kwame who I am very much interested in seeing, because I am a Ghanaian myself.
Yaw Mireku, India
Hi. Will there be a westway book out soon in the UK?
Calvin, UK
Hello Everyone at Westway, I think your show is excellent. Apart from the rather jarring signature tune, I think all the actors are excellent, with beautiful emotive voices. The storylines do tend to get clumsy and sort of repetitive… For instance the signature phone ringing call answer routine by Louise. But all in all, an excellent and educative show. You guys also dole out excellent health information. Keep up the good work! You may want to do an episode on lifestyle diseases (how to avoid them), pollution reduction and healthy relationships. Regards,
Zubin
I just love Blaze, if only because she’s driving Gabriella CRAZY!!!!!
Go girl go!
Marion, Tel Aviv
i love west , that is why i sleep it, and eat westway.
Chikopela
Have been in USA since 2 Feb 2003, so I am glad I did not know Mel was on board a ship. Am going back to Ghana where I usually listen to Westway. Please bring Mel back.
Joseph
I love westway. Me thinks that when Margaret retires, Westway clinic will fall apart. I hope not.
Ivan, Poland
Hello Westway. I just wanted to let you know how great and funny I found the episodes this week, I forgot the name of the author, but I think it was a woman. Great job!
Melanie, a fan!
I live in Germany, and I can only get BBC on AM radio (630)...the reception is poor so I most often listen on line. Can you show pictures of the whole cast, like Faith, Kwame, Uncle Albert, Kofi, etc?
Chidi has grown since I first started listening...his speech patterns and mannerisms have changed (evolved?). Is the actor who operates the Chop Shop the same moocher who nearly killed Father Gillespie while learning to drive?
Germany
I've been listening to Westway since the late 1990s when, if memory serves, the drama began life as an English language education project? Anyway, I much prefer radio drama to the television where it is all too easy to let the pictures hide the fact that some of the scripts and acting are not of the highest standard. This problem simply doesn't exist on the radio and I much prefer to let my imagination enhance the drama.
David, Essex UK
Episode Dated: 26th. January ‘05
Well done! Script Writer and Director, for the wonderful tension created which I am sure is quite normal within such a clinic. Thanks.
Ronnie Almeida, Karnataka, India
Hi,
Will you please send me a photocard of the westway cast- my favourite program.
Obadiah, Nairob,i Kenya.
hi i think westway is so well writen and acted and is so real to life i also enjoy silver street and the archers to keep up the good work.
calvin (22) uk
Hi, I'm Jubril Saliu a regular follower and an ardent listener of the westway program, on the BBC.
I'd like 2 commened d whole cast 4 their wonderful performances.
Mrs Ajiboye, Nigeria
I sincerely congratulate the BBC for their hard work which reflects on the quality of their programmes.Of all the radio programmes, the most entertaining for me is west way,but I seldom have the ever desired opportunity to follow the stories as the come however conciouse I try not to miss out.
I am useing this medium to humbly request for all CDs or cassettes for all the episodes of west way, starting from day one.
BASSEY,MFONOBONG
Hi, I’ve just discovered Westway while hopping through the channels on my Freeview Box. I listened to my first episode tonight and I think I’m hooked already! I actually live on the real Westway in W12 and can’t wait to tell my friends and neighbours that we have our own soap with loyal fans from all over the world.
Chris (London, UK)
I am a 14 year old Jamaican girl. I listen to Westway whenever I can catch it. My favourite personalities are Louise, Kwame and David. I especially liked the April’s Fools Day edition.
Christina (Jamaica)
I am so much enjoying Westway…it’s made listening to BBC 7 totally compulsive!! FORGET THE T.V.!!!! I AM ADDICTED!!! It’s just as radio should be!! Well done!!
Steve (Herts, UK)
Listening to Westway for almost 5 years is amazing. The first I listened to when Steve was around, Kelly’s stepfather put behind bars. I wish you guys would continue to have competitions. Quizzes of old characters, also compositions.
This drama really has everyday events – holidays, homosexuals, deaths in families, court cases, AIDS, having HIV+ people in work places, celebrations etc. May Westway continue for many, many years to come. I love you all!
Saliya Munyama (Zambia)
I am a keen listener to this programme Westway and I have been listening to this programme since from the beginning of it. I fancy the play about HIV aids. I hope the play is going on know will be for ever because it is so interesting.
Achu (Ghana)
Good Morning, Team of Westway; I would like to thank you for your programme. I am a Togolese but I listen to you as often as my timetable allows.
Bakele (Togo)
Absolutely love the show and follow it like the plague! my favourite characters are Dr Graham & Jamshed but I want u all to know that the show wouldn't be the same without all of u could I please have a postcard to match the faces with the names when I narrate the antics of the cast to my pals. I'll keep listening in, keep up the good work!!!! .....oh Jamshed and Sean I love u guys to bits!!!!!!
Aisha (Zambia)
I just got to know about Westway recently, last night to be more specific. I really enjoyed the programme and I promise to be a complete fan of the programme, you just tell me the days and times for the programme and you've just gotten a great fan.
John (Nigeria)
I have just joined the bandwagon of the programme fanatics and no beating about the bush, it's superb. The issues being presented are down to earth and the characters, fantastic too. Keep it up, Westway!
Master Khomba (Malawai)
The manner in which the story in Westway is shaping up has had me glued to this programme. We, in India, hardly have programmes that give importance to the understanding of family ties and mutual trust . Keep up the good work
Pravin Poojary (India)
Gabriella has always been selfish and egotistial, but I am getting really tired of the constant "Muffin" thing. This may be a typical English term of endearment like "honey" or "darling" (both of which I find equally stupid) but how old are these people, 15?
Susanna(Dominican Republic)
I am absolutely hooked on Westway via the Radio 7 website! I love the listen again feature and download Westway and whatever else I fancy to listen to whilst I'm working on the computer. I have always been a spoken word addict rather than music and Westway is amazing. I am not hooked on any TV soap (the only programme I can't miss is Casualty - and I missed Saturday's episode as the video didn't work!)
Mandy
BBC is the GREATEST EVER, Westway is VERY VERY creative & Captivating. I love it. And of course, you, are all fabulous. Am writing from Uganda. Jeff>
I have been an avid fan of this program for over a year, and only wish I'd discovered it sooner! Many aspects of the storyline address very realistic elements of day-to-day life in an impressive manner; from Joy's HIV to the recently-made false allegations against Father Gillespie, it focuses on legitimate issues and situations, and this most recent angle which brings in Zoe Chan Li-fen is no different. A fantastic job well done for making Zoe a normal, typical, hard-working young professional who smokes and drinks and lives her life the way millions of blind people throughout the world do, without making her blindness a factor. Thank you, thank you for not making people go out of their way to act like care-takers, for making Claude a normal dog and not some sort of miracle-worker, and I guess for the overall illustration of the truth about blind people. Zoe can obviously listen to her environment and give her dog instructions based on
what she hears, interact with her colleagues who simply take her blindness for granted, and function without the entire cast feeling the need to call special attention to the fact that her eyes are simply broken. Over here in the U.S., it seems like blind people still have some of their dignity sacrificed when portrayed by the media, and this sends such a strong, negative message to the public which is often untrue. I have never seen such an accurate representation of a blind character before, and I find it highly impressive! Thank you for not making Zoe and those around her who
interact with her clueless and uncomfortable; you can't know how much the unspoken actions help and what a significant impression a positive message can send to the general public. You have truly done a fantastic job!! Do archives exist anywhere of Westway since the program's inception, and is there any hope of increasing the number of episodes? Westway is wonderful, and so many of us are addicted to it. Keep up the good work!
Raquel (California>
Hullo. I was so much impressed by the way the AIDS issue was brought up and how Joy and Chidi handled it.
Westway is a reality show; I like the way Margaret and Father Gillespie's friendship is portrayed in real-life situations. People have always gone through that kind of experience where we bar friends to criticise our actions even when we are wrong.
The case of Kelly is intriguing, she has really portrayed her jealousy of other peoples' relationship with her son.instead of trying to improve her relationship with Liam, she has decided to chase them away. Wish you luck. I wish you would make it into a T.V drama.
Ninsiima (Uganda)
Hi! I just started listing to your programe and loved every minute of it. I liked that last one on Sunday with Zoe's dog. I laugh very hard!
Ricky (Antigua, West Indies)
I listen to the World Service several hours a day, but have never been too keen on Westway. But suddenly, the Father Gillespie storyline and quality of acting has got me hooked! Well done!
Sean (Berlin)
I have been listening to the program for 3 years and just love it. I like the international flavour and the current issues it touches on.
Tony Yuen (Singapore)
I've always liked Westway because it had more to offer than the love affairs of a regular soap, but for the past months it's been sliding into Lala Land with the emphasis on love affairs.
Oh well, if that's the trend, why not at least a new sweetie for poor Denny? He's been left quite alone since Ned broke with him, and the chap deserves a break.
What if he decided like many landlords do to have a Gay Night at the Green Man... perhaps he could hook up with someone?
Dorothy
Now that Chidi has started his Nigerian restaurant, maybe you can post a couple of his menu recipes on your website. It's been very cold here in Boston, and my parents and I had some lima bean soup for supper, which was delicious, but then I listened to Westway, and Joy was preparing some "Nigerian Pepper Soup" which Chidi kept raving about! It sounded delicious, especially when Auntie Polin is ready to defy Albert, just because the soup smells so good! PLEASE!!! Can we have the recipe? It sounds like something I'd like to try at home some weekend.
Barbara (Boston,USA)
I am regular listener to your show. I really enjoy the program. I am so glad that Father Gillespie's name has been cleared, though the story shows how dangerous false allegations of that nature are.
John (Harare)
I'm an ardent listener of your program "Westway" and I must commend your organisation for airing such an educative program.Please keep up the good work.I would also like to recieve the westway photocard so that I can see what my favorite actors and actresses looklike.
Moshood (Nigeria)
Hello! How nice to have a chance to tell you how much I love Westway. I just couldn't size it up at first. I can only report I'm pleasantly addicted. These people are interesting! I like them, or fret about them, or feel sad for them...and cheer for them! They are a lovely community! I live in remote Alaska and there are a total of four of us here...so Westway is an adopted community. I was in London a couple of years ago but it's such an immense city I cannot conjure up what this community might look like. No problem! That's the beauty of radio, my favorite medium...just listen and the whole place comes to life and sprouts vibrant and detailed in the mind's eye...profoundly engaging! I don't think there is much chance for anything to sprout watching television. ! I could easily get television via satellite as this is the only means by which I get the BBC in my remote location but I do not bother. The BBC is my constant and cherished companion. Thank you.
Christine (Alaska)
I would just like to say that I was touched by Joy's HIV issue and I found it especially gripping as it made me think about how I would cope with a partner if he were to be HIV+. Please keep up the good work.
David(Ireland)
I like listening to the drama. Remember the blind nurse and the sausage? Ha Ha!
Nicholas (Uganda)
I am a man of 41 years of age and live in Iran. I am a regular listener of Westway. Thank you for such a nice play. To my knowledge, Westway has been on for some six years. I wonder how long more it will be on. Would you send the free colour photocard?
Shahram (Iran)
Westway’s bold tackling of Joy’s HIV status so echoes the experiences of myself and other people with psychiatric health issues. Psychiatric illnesses are one of our societies taboos and aside from the real symptom of the illnesses, sufferers often then experience the fears, the prejudices and the distancing of their social groups…If Joy were a real person, I would send her a card of unstinting sympathy, empathy and friendship.
Francis(UK)
I have been listening to Westway on and off for several years now and had found it pretty boring until lately. Before it ws more background noise, just a program that was on before the next program. Since the listeners,- and I believe it are listeners, who have written the story's text-, have gotten a hold of the program, I find myself actually looking foward to it and am disapointed when I miss it. The HIV / Joy storyline and her family problems with it, is good. I like the reaction of her uncle, seems more realistic than a pure supportive family reaction. The entire storyline (s) seemed to have gotten a breath of fresh air, regardless of the authors.
Joyce(Germany)
I have to tell you that I have been enjoying the recent turn of events for David Boyce. I am thrilled to see him get his comeuppance by the "love 'em and leave 'em" Lola. To imagine David sitting naked on her bed crying his eyes out was wonderful, wonderful! I have also been touched by Joy's storyline. She has gone through so much in coming to accept her HIV status and now we get to see how her family and larger community will come to terms with it as well. It's a positive message for all. Can't wait until Sean is back on the scene, but you will have to explain why Mel has rejected his advances. He seems like a great guy and she has even said so herself. So, please explain!! Is Janet ever going to come back to Westway? I would like to know that she is happy, but I miss her presence on the show. Perhaps, I am wrong to speculate on this, but does Father Gillespie have a crush on Margaret? I felt he was missing her a bit too much when Mike came on the scene.
Helena(USA)
Now that Chidi has started his Nigerian restaurant, maybe you can post a couple of his menu recipes on your website. I listened to Westway, and Joy was preparing some "Nigerian Pepper Soup" which Chidi kept raving about! It sounded delicious, especially when Auntie Pollen is ready to defy Albert, just because the soup smells so good! PLEASE!!! Can we have the recipe? It sounds like something I'd like to try at home some weekend.
Barbara (USA)
Congraulations on your brilliant and heart wrenching storylines when joy disclosed her HIV status to pauline and albert. By allowing her to be responsible for them knowing, and the manner with which she told them, said so much of your grasp and understaning of the fears and courage that HIV/AIDS sufferers across the world face when it comes to disclosing to loved ones. The lines were punchy, direct and done with such sensitivity. Thank you also for highliting some of the hysterical ignorance, fear and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS.
Thank you Westway for continue to tell these human stories in such realistic settings.
Rabiya (UK)
Just wanted to say I love the story line about the Nigerian family opening a restaurant. I have Nigerian relatives, and your Albert sounds exactly like my uncle!
Eno (USA)
I love westway's jingle so much that I sometime want to hear it even if it's not time to air the programme. My commitment to the programme has caused my father to love the programme, too. He never did know that a radio play could be so touchy. Just hope owners of radio stations here in Ghana would see the sense in radio dramas and minimize the airing of profane songs which is rather causing more harm
than good.
Ransford (Ghana)
I listen out for your "distinctive" theme tune late at night as I go to bed and it's always a delight to be thrown into the first little scenelet. Now I've found you on the internet I can listen to episodes
whenever I like (for instance now, when I'm attempting to write an incredibly boring essay on Renaissance tragedy). Incidentally, it's lovely to read your "Your View" page, to see the wonderful differences in prose styles from English-speakers across the world: different
turns of phrase, metaphoricity, register and so on. I hadn't really imagined that the same words could be put to so many uses.
Nick (UK)
I have recently discovered Westway and I think it's great. I was a Londoner but moved to Austria to join my husband. I have always been an avid BBC radio listener but not of the World Service. Now you are all I have. I listen to to you all day every day until my reception decides to go. Westway is my new Eastenders - Iove it. After listening to the news all day Westway is a refreshing burst of 'real and valid entertainment'. The current story line really touches the bone. My parents come from Ghana and Nigeria and I can tell you,you have got the characters and the storyline so right and as for what happened with Louise the receptionist and that old man... well it had me in stitches. Long live Westway! Can you not consider giving us more?
Yasmin (Austria)
I suppose JOY is WHITE and, evidently, British; that is, even in the casts and in the plays. And, by the same token, Edward is a BLACK MAN; and, perhaps, a Nigerian. The normal traditional taboo in the European countries is that such BLACK vrs WHITE antipodal cultural entities are NOT encouraged or allowed to flirt nor,, much less, MARRY! To wit, the whites or Europeans frown on it abominably. Please remember that even in drama and fiction it pays to be realistic. The same may be said of that CHIDI character and whatever racial balance he is supposed to be masquerading. Is he there just to portray the CUDENESS of the African, or this is also just to throw wool over the African listener's eyes. Please, remove these incongruities from the cast to make the drama more natural and sensible!
Charlie
I found Westway about one month ago, now my favourite programme.
There is one thing I would like to ask you for. Please, do the best for Joy to be better. Does not matter, it is only a play, not real life, but I think, there are many people listening all over the world and hoping for something what would help them. And when your scriptwriters would bring her to recovery, it would be the best solution to my mind. I even think that it could be very important first step and everyone in the world could follow it and does not matter the first step had only unreal basis in someone's fantasy, motivated with effort to help and protect some ill people.
Barbara (Prague)
I love Westway, it is my favourite drama on radio. It's interesting, it's funny, it's mysterious. I like all the characters...they make me smile.. I always enjoy the show, I am one of Westway's biggest fans in Jamaica. Keep up the good work.
Tanisha (Jamaica)
I started listening to your program while still at university...that was some time ago and it still rocks...especially at a time I was looking for a job... u kept me busy and glad with all those episodes. Please make them longer?
James (Zambia)
Today I had again to put up with that annoying show Westway. When do you finally terminate it and bring something reasonable...like weather news.
Henry
Thanks for the interesting programme, though I think it was better some time ago!
J. McFarlane (Scotland)
Akrim would like daily episodes but I think the amount is just right! Enough suspense, enough agony for one week! I very much enjoy Westway with its variety of topics and its eye on what is important in daily life at this time...for example, the predicament of an HIV-positive person: can Joy tell her family? ...good to have this fictional comment alongside the programmes being given us by the BBC as a run-up to AIDS day on 1st December. Ad Multos Annos, Westway!
Anna Mary (Norway)
Do please give us more weekly time of Westway! Just 30 minutes a week is too little for such an educative and exciting programme. At least 15 minute daily episodes should be planned for in the future if the BBC can afford to pay the script-writers.
Akrim (Norway)
I’m one of the newest listeners who just discovered how entertaining your play is. I started listening to your program about three months ago and I can tell you, I haven’t missed an episode and I always listen to the repeats too. Matthew(Kenya)
I’m a listener of your radio station for many years appreciate the programmes of news and entertainment and the Westway is one of my favourites. I’m a solo-learner of English and hearing your programmes help a lot in all aspects of this long process of learning. It’s really rewarding to see how much I have done but there’s still a long way ahead to go through. Surely I’m not on my own because BBC it’s close at hand. I live on a farm and I turn to radio which is my unique means to knowing about what’s happening in the world. I like dramas, knowing about London, England, listening to music, all the education programmes the BBC really makes a difference in my life.
Joao (Brazil)
I am interested with the programme. Each time I listen to it, I learn one of two things. Special thanks goes to everyone who contributes to the programme.
Ngongang
Thought I'd tell you how I've listened to Westway over the years. It's my weekly treat and so I always make a routine of listening. When I lived in Hong Kong I used to cycle every Sunday morning from the Mid-levels along Bowen Road and over the hill down to Deep Water Bay. I'd have lunch at a nice little Thai restaurant (alas no longer there) while listening to the omnibus edition.
Now I live in the States, where as you know there is no radio broadcast. So instead I now have a little WiFi-enabled laptop computer, which I take down to my local cafe, Murky Coffee, here on Capitol Hill, which has free wireless internet.
Westway is still as good as ever and is my anchor in a fast-changing world!
Chris(USA)
The best thing on radio. I listen when working nights, never miss an episode, great stuff.
Ian (UK)
Thanks so much for all the hard work. Your show continues to outshine any other drama series. Keep up the good work and again thanks for being on XM Satellite radio, it made our road trip much better and the distances much shorter!
Darryl (USA)
I agree with another fan that, perhaps, the Sana/Gary story has begun to dominate the show; for a couple of weeks, I wondered where our regulars had gone! Nonetheless, the writers have done such an excellent job writing the character of Sana, and her reactions are very realistic for one who's grieving. Well done!
What has become of Patrick? Remote as the possibility seems now, I had hoped to see a Patrick-Mantha pairing, or a friendship between those two troublemakers. It would make for some entertaining listening.
I'm happy to see the Mike-Margaret relationship working, or at least, still intact, even if it is a challenge for Margaret. She's by far my favorite character on Westway, and it's lovely to see her happy. I really like Mike too, even with his tendency to be overbearing, but that's part of his charm. Hopefully we'll see more of him soon, and perhaps his daughters as well.?
Joanie(USA)
I love Westway and have been listening now for about a year. However I think the Becky/Sana/Gary storyline is becoming a bit of a drag and dominates too much of each episode. I do think they are all very good characters though. I find Janet's character very tiresome, especially her whining!
Christine (N. Ireland)
I do love to listen to the programme and indeed have done so since its inception. Spending 4-month spells on the oceans enables me to tune-in regularly, and I suppose I'm quite addicted now. Ever grateful for such enjoyable stories.
Donald (Maldives)
As a regular World Service listener from Germany I recently realized that I became hooked by the Westway radio play and all its characters... I would like to use this chance to thank you for all the great BBC World radio and TV shows which followed me all over the world and (even though being German) made me feel home wherever I tuned in. Keep on making such a great program!
Rainer (Germany)
I couldn't sleep because of the heatwave and Radio 4 turned into the World Service. I am a teaching assistant, so no work for 6 weeks. I'm now addicted to Westway but when school starts again I'll have to listen to it over the net.
Barbara (UK)
"Always upbeat;
Never Amiss
That's the Westway motto
Tune to the wonderful clinic set-up
Full of crackling issues
Everything sounds to attract;
just by hearing the signature tune introducing the programme
Broadcasted and rebroadcasted at good times;
just for 5m and me
If you think Westway is just a waste of time;
Better be careful (BBC)"
Memory (Malawi)
Way to go! It finally looks as if some fun is getting back into Jane's life! Thanks
Susanna (Dominican Republic)
Dear BBC,
your show westway is highly boring and it suggs.
I have never heard a worse play.
Better you take it out from you program.
regards,
Raghu
I am a big fan of westway. I've been listening in to the program since 2000. Though at times i miss a couple of episodes i always manage to follow the events later. You guy's are truly great.
I've always wondered what some of the characters of westway look like. Your webpage has some but there are those other intriguing ones like Gary Pengelly? Keep up the great stuff.
Ben (UK)
To the producers of westway without all your hardwork they would not be such talented actors/actoressess,a thumb's up all the way for U guys/gals too. I am stuck like a glue to your drama serial and cry if I SHOULD I Miss it... I guess I feel for this medical drama series because I am involved in the same line too... THANKS ALOT SINCERELY,
Christina (Singapore)
I listened to episodes of Westway for the first time this week and now I am utterly hooked. It's making me want to go to London!
E. Jackson (USA)
I'm an avid listener of our radio drama by the title Westway, and I can comment the acting is so good that you feel as if you are watching it.
Linda(Zimbabwe)
I have been a fan of the program for the last 4 years though nowadays it comes in some late hours for us listeners in East-Africa. I particularly like it for it shows people of different races interacting harmoniously(almost) without relying on the usual stereotypes.
Samuel (Kenya)
I'd like to make a complaint. Of course it is statistically proven that men get separated and start a new relationship right away. It is also proven that men have more extramarital affairs (resulting in children) than women but please, does Westway have to be a "reality show"?
Now, that you finally managed to give Margaret some sort of life instead of having this one-sided "Mother Theresa" cardboard character, I'd like the same to be done for Janet.
Since I started to listen to the show, Janet has not had too much fun: Jamshed having a baby with Namita while she wanted one and did not get one, then the separation and her mother's illness and death and now Jamshed with this Gabriella thing. Of course this is how real life is for most women and Jamshed is a very classical (unlikeable) male.
Couldn't you write in some excitement into Janet's life instead of having one bad thing after an other happening to her? I'd really appreciate it, I have "real life" all week long and need some entertainment on the week-end.
Susanna (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC)
I'm just surfing in from the land of the unexpected (that's Papua New
Guinea, in case you didn't know) and just wanted to say I enjoy your program plenty and always look forward to it every weekend. Oh and yes, I wouldn't mind one of your photocards if possible.
Jan (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)
Hi there! As a shortlisted contestant in the Westway competition, am I supposed to get a consolation prize, or were those only for the runner-ups? Well, whatever, it was great fun competing, and the series just gets better and better!
Ethel (ISRAEL)
Ed. Yes, Ethel, your consolation prize is being
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The Dummy Guide to Kano
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Charting the accomplishments and releases from the rapper, actor and certified legend...
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At a time when rappers hold the same cultural significance as the rockstars of the past, the rap scene that was once sidelined and stifled by mainstream culture now dominates it.
The emergence of grime in the late 1990s/early 2000s was the start of a scene thats influence would percolate further than anyone could have imagined during its inception. Characterised by syncopated breakbeats and a jagged, electronic sound, the raw sense of identity and pride that coursed the veins of the music has gone on to pave the way for a new wave of UK artists with help from pioneers such as Skepta, Dizzee Rascal and Wiley.
Firmly among the inner core of MCs who have contributed to bringing the sounds of the underground to the masses is East Ham artist Kano. The 34-year-old has enjoyed an illustrious career, releasing a number of thought-provoking records that transgress genre boundaries while carving out a unique, evolving sound that has allowed the scene to progress instead of stagnating as a relic of the past.
With the release of new album ‘Hoodies All Summer’, we’re guiding you through the life of the UK legend whose presence in our ears and on our screens has served to build a solid foundation for a new generation of creatives.
The Early Days
Kano was born as Kane Brett Robinson in East Ham, London, and raised by his mother who worked as a PE teacher at a local school. Clearly a switched-on child, the rapper-to-be first showed an abundance of talent as a footballer, having trials for Chelsea FC and Norwich FC before eventually losing interest in what could have been. Having gained nine GCSEs at school despite little to no revision, before going on to attend Greenwich University to study Graphics, however he dropped out in pursuit of a passion that would stick with him for life: music.
Growing up in East London during the nineties, a young Kano took interest in a new underground sound that was slowly bubbling up to the surface: an exciting, high-octane evolution of UK garage and jungle that was to shortly become known as grime. The hype around this new breed of music proliferated throughout the streets, with rap battles, homemade mixtapes and illegal raves all growing in stature as this new culture took a hold on the capital.
Music was entrenched in Kano’s family, so when his mum bought his brother a set of decks, Kano instantly began to hone his freestyle ability to spit over his brother’s garage tunes – a skillset that unknowingly at the time would carve the path for his future career.
Labelled ‘Kano’ by his friends (a reference to a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series that used to rip out his opponent’s heart), he tried to think of another MC title outside of this playful nickname, but this ended up being the one that stuck.
N.A.S.T.Y. Crew
A few years after first picking up the mic, Kano recorded the song ‘Boys Love Girls‘ from the comfort of his own bedroom. After showing the raw recording to a young Dizzee Rascal, the East Ham MC took the advice of his friend and touched up the DIY track in a professional studio, subsequently leading to it being his first-ever single. The song proved a local success and earned heavy airplay on iconic pirate station Deja Vu, helping him gain respect within the community and earning him a place in one of grime’s elite collectives: N.A.S.T.Y Crew (Natural Artistic Sounds Touching You).
Widely considered as the pioneers of grime, N.A.S.T.Y. Crew were an East London group founded by Marcus Nasty that boasted an impressive lineup of some of the scene’s biggest names such as Kano, Jammer, D Double E, Footsie, Monkey, Stormin, Mak 10, Sharky Major and Hyper.
The crew had the headline spot on Deja Vu, performing sets every Monday from 8pm-10pm and featuring special guests like Wiley and Dizzee. The collective are still shrouded in a sense of mystery, from reasons as to why certain people were disbanded from the group, to whether or not people were even in the group to begin with – however one aspect that is largely agreed on is that the crew were some of the original founders of grime music as we know it today, with early cuts like ‘Take You Out’ utilising the distinctive angular instrumental and aggressive lyricism that has come to categorise the genre.
2004 saw Kano represent N.A.S.T.Y Crew in an iconic clash between himself and Wiley for the first-ever Lord of the Mics battle.
The vintage video shot in the graffiti-plastered staircase has earned its place within grime legend with the pair of (now youthful-looking) MCs deploying an onslaught of technical wordplay, presumably unaware of the cultural impact each of them would one day have for pursuing their passion.
The Lord of the Mics series went on to become a fabled event in grime, producing some of the most prestigious clashes to date such as the bout between Skepta and Devilman, while also helping the whole scene to spread in popularity.
Home Sweet Home (2005)
Shortly after signing a record deal with 679, Kano decided to leave N.A.S.T.Y. Crew in a bid to focus on launching a solo career. Despite rising up through the ranks of pirate radio and backstreet clashes, the rapper felt like he never properly fit in within the traditional grime scene. Slower tempo tracks that had an element of social commentary were what Kano gravitated towards, made after long days of pirate radio shelling. He was sometimes embarrassed to show his peers this new direction he was taking.
On June 27th 2005, he released debut album ‘Home Sweet Home’, earning gold status in the UK and receiving a flurry of positive reviews from critics and fans alike. The 16-track record was vastly different from anything other ‘grime’ releases at the time, with the production favouring a slower and toned-down approach, rather than the cut-throat synthesised effects that had become synonymous with the genre previously. Precise use of multi-syllabic rhyming schemes on the LP demonstrated Kano’s silver-tongued lyricism upon release and proved that less can definitely mean more.
Although this was the first release in what would prove to be a long and fruitful career for the London MC, the versatility and drive to pioneer new sounds that has come to define Kano’s legacy is fully on display with ‘Home Sweet Home’. Hit single ‘P’s and Q’s’ featured a quicker tempo and animated lyrics, and now stands as one of the MCs most recognisable cuts.
Across ‘Home Sweet Home’s tracklist, Kano has no problem exploring different subject matters and styles while maintaining a level of balance throughout, bringing a sense of maturity to the album. Futuristic collaborations with Mike Skinner and Leo the Lion on ‘Nite Nite’ and Ghetts on ‘Typical Me’ serve to experiment with the traditional values of grime by mixing it with alien genres.
London Town (2007)
Despite the highly acclaimed artistic success of ‘Home Sweet Home’, the album was by no means a mainstream hit and was never granted a full release in the US. So when it came to producing the follow-up LP, Kano found himself stumbling at the same hurdles that many artists encounter when it comes to continuing the momentum from their debut release: do they continue exactly where they left off or do they try a new approach?
Two years after the release of his debut record, ‘London Town’ arrived. The eleven-track LP articulated the visceral stresses and angst brought on by growing up and living in the streets of London. Opener ‘The Product’ kicked proceedings off with a corrosive and menacing sound, introducing listeners to the grittiness of life in the capital. Lyrics surrounding gun violence take hold on the opening two tracks, and, with those darker, intimidating sonics, ‘London Town’ positioned itself as something of a photo negative of ‘Home Sweet Home’.
The album, though, never quite reached those exciting expectations. As the album progresses, the scatter-gun approach that had been taken when constructing the sophomore record came to fruition more and more. When comparing the caustic sound of ‘The Product’ to the soothing piano rooted ‘Sleep Tight’, it would be hard to imagine the two would exist on the same project if you hadn’t already known. Where ‘Home Sweet Home’ found a perfect balance of styles and tempos, ‘London Town’ was jaded by an attempt to portray a gritty representation of inner-city life while also offering hits tailored to the mainstream.
Tracks like ‘Feel Free’ featuring Damon Albarn and ‘Me And My Microphone’ starring Kate Nash are some of the album’s efforts at branching out into different genres and fanbases, however unlike the pioneering tracks such as ‘Nite Nite’ off the previous record, these ones felt somewhat more “factory” produced.
‘London Town’, though, is by no means a bad album. Around 2007, grime was going through a transformative period, trying to work out its place within the onslaught of mainstream stardom. Many artists from the underground scene were given the option to stick or twist, with the idea of adapting to suit the masses more lucrative than being swept under the carpet by the ever-changing landscape of the music industry.
Amongst the glossy and polished attempts at radio play and commercial success on the record, the socially aware and lyrically dexterous Kano still remained firmly in place – the eleven tracks serving to navigate through a transitional phase for himself and the culture, which was done to expand and improve his craft over any quick financial gain.
140 Grime Street (2008)
After parting ways with 679 in 2008, Kano addressed the claims made by some that he had turned his back on the scene by dropping third album ‘140 Grime Street’ – a 16-track showcase of brooding synth hits and momentous drums that reaffirmed his position of power within the grime community and proved his loyalty didn’t lie elsewhere.
The tracklist enlisted powerful features from Wiley on ‘Anywhere We Go‘, Skepta on ‘These MCs‘ and Ghetts on ‘Hunting We Will Go‘; serving to show the world that when he wants to, Kano can turn on his elite grime presence like a tap.
The autobiographical ‘Aim For The Sky‘ intricately described Kano’s rise to commercial prominence, with lyrics like “Done a lot for the scene, so ungrateful they seem / I fly the flag for the UK from the MOBOs right to the B.E.T / I got no time for haters you know, KA’s just doing his thing,” responding directly to attacks in his usual tight-flowed vivacity.
In a year where the genre was becoming increasingly diluted and influenced by the pull of mass appeal, Kano stripped the music back to its core essence and gave the community what they were so desperately aching to hear, with the release to many representing grime’s prodigal son returning home.
Method To The Maadness (2010)
Aside from being a prestigious MC, Kano has fought hard throughout his career to break free from the shackles of labels, wanting to be part of the bigger picture and considered as a versatile and multi-faceted “artist”. After the all-guns-blazing ‘140 Grime Street’, his next album was to underscore his versatility more than any other project in his life at that point, experimenting heavily with electronic influences and new vocal styles.
‘Method To The Maadness’ dropped on August 30th 2010, marking the rapper’s fourth studio album and his most eclectic body of work for the time. Fresh off a collaboration with the Gorillaz on their album ‘Plastic Beach’, the East Ham rapper was intrigued and inspired by new sounds, bigger concepts and bolder ideas more than ever before, and having perviously proved his deep-rooted grime ability will never leave him on his previous record, he felt it was time to dabble in uncharted territory.
The album boldly leapt into an unconventional blend of grime, hip-hop, dubstep and indie rock, resulting in a sound that was not just new to Kano but new to everyone.
Collaborating with electronic pop group Hot Chip on ‘All + All Together’, the cut served as a real standout track on the record, delivering a futuristic yet mature sound that boasted all the elements of an artist who was eagerly learning and developing his craft. Among the intricacy of the album, songs like ‘Get Wild’ featuring Wiley and Aidonia added riot-inducing flare, while ‘Slaves’ effectively utilised the electric guitar to back up Kano’s ever-conscious lyricism.
‘Method To The Maadness’ was never made to please everyone. Being his least ‘grimey’ album to date, this record signified a big step out of his ‘140 Grime Street’ comfort zone, and although not every track on the record will shut down the party, the time and consideration put into the construction of these songs was clearly apparent.
Top Boy (2011 – present)
Taking some time out from music, Kano travelled the world before coming back to the UK to star in a new Channel 4 crime drama series called Top Boy. The rapper had dabbled in acting before, appearing in the 2006 film Rollin’ with the Nines which followed a group of friends trying to set up a successful garage act in order to leave their previous lives behind, however his new role would have a much greater cultural impact.
Kano played the role of Sully, a rising drug dealer in the fictitious Summerhouse housing estate who, with his partner Dushane, must make a series of tough decisions to stay alive and in business.
Top Boy was an on-screen sensation. Never before had the gritty street life of London been portrayed on mainstream TV in such an accurate and harrowing way, and for viewers and actors alike, the series made headway in representing this kind of culture in the media. Kano was eager to get involved with the project in an attempt to shine a light on a segment of society that had mostly gone under the radar for a long time, with the message he had been trying to spread in his music for years now open to flourish on national television.
The show stalled following the finale of the second season and it started to seem as though the street drama might never return to our screens. However after Netflix uploaded the show to their service, a large amount of hype started to gather around the series again and what used to be a national success became an international attraction.
One of the big names attracted to the series was none other than Drake, who liked it so much that he decided to revive the show from the ashes; funding a third, ten episode season in collaboration with Netflix which he became executive producer of. Kano is set to star once again in the forthcoming instalment, with other familiar faces from the music industry including Dave and Little Simz also having pivotal roles. The new season is set to release on the 13th of September 2019.
Made In The Manor (2016)
It had been six long years since the release of ‘Method To The Maadness” and grime was in full throttle. The scene had come a long way since Kano had last put out a full body of work, and thriving off of the foundations he and other MCs had laid down over the last ten years, a new wave of young artists were taking the world by storm, racking up millions of views worldwide.
Fifth album in Kano’s artillery, ‘Made In The Manor’, once again pushed back against the conventions of the time. Grime was now living in the modern age of YouTube hits and Spotify streams, with MCs desperately rushing to land upon the next viral song while rising up against the fray of major labels.
Kano on the other hand, had a deeply intimate and meticulously polished 15-track project at the ready which he was debating not releasing at all, abstractly mirroring the pre-release anxieties of his very first record ‘Home Sweet Home’. When the record did drop, though, the depth and eclecticism of the project quickly became clear and the East London MC, 30 at the time of release, put to bed any doubts of his return; showcasing that he was still the most introspective and perceptive rapper in the game.
The project effortlessly transitions from periods of bravado and swagger on tracks such as ‘GarageSkankFREESTYLE’ and ‘3 Wheel-Ups’ to touching and emotional reflections on broken relationships and long lost relatives on ‘Little Sis’ and ‘Strangers’.
The video for ‘Hail’ cost just £35 to create, mostly due to the fact that Kano directed, filmed, and edited the video completely off his own back, a small touch towards proving the rapper’s care and work ethic that went into the Mercury award-nominated personal project.
Hoodies All Summer (2019)
Where some artists aim for the chart scaling hits and viral singles, Kano has always opted for producing full projects that can fit in his multiple dimensions and inner thoughts a single track could simply never portray. The album specialist has created some of the finest bodies of work the streets have seen, with ‘Home Sweet Home’ and ‘Made In The Manor’ perfect examples of music expertly crafted with elements of touching social-commentary and explosive flare.
New album ‘Hoodies All Summer’ amalgamates the work and experience acquired over and long and fruitful career to produce his most important project yet. The ten-track record raises the bar another level with an artistic vision aiming to capture the social zeitgeist of Britain in the modern age; working as a mouthpiece for the black British working-class youth.
Standout track ‘Trouble‘ highlights the failure of politicians and the aching disparity between the poorest in society to those in power. The immersive track was released with a short film depicting the reality of knife violence on the streets and the detrimental effect it has on all involved.
As well as the deep and thought-provoking meaning behind the new record, musically the album also impresses. Being one of Kano’s shortest projects, an element of fluidity is maintained throughout, with the momentum rarely slowing down or losing impact.
‘Class of Deja‘, featuring D Double E and Ghetts, provides a flashback to the Deja Vu days with a powerful and energetic number that would fancy itself the best grime track of the year, while ‘Can’t Hold Me Down’ flaunts its Jamaican influences with a galvanising party melody.
Kano isn’t scared off or intimidated by his status as one of the best in the game and has enjoyed backing up these claims time after time throughout his lifetime. A boy from Newham who rose to the top of the pile during the emergence of grime, the rapper has since spread his wings and developed his tastes and styles. Aside from the music, his work on our screens has highlighted areas of our society that was once ignored and has helped towards building a solid and structured pathway for people out of the ends.
Despite his accomplishments and stature, the London boy has never forgotten his roots and has dedicated his life to spreading awareness and portraying the reality of the environment he is a product of, making it safe to say that Kano is truly a legend for the culture.
Stream ‘Hoodies All Summer’ here.
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This is a list of playable and boss characters from the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise and the games in which they appear. Created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, the series depicts conflicts between various realms. Most characters fight on behalf of their realm, with the primary heroes defending Earthrealm against conquering villains from Outworld and the Netherrealm. Early installments feature the characters participating in the eponymous Mortal Kombat tournament to decide their realm's fate. In later installments, Earthrealm is often invaded by force.
A total of 77 playable fighters have been featured in the series, in addition to unplayable bosses and guest characters. Much of the franchise's mainstays were introduced during the first three games. Nearly all of the characters have been killed at a point in the story, but have rarely stayed dead.
Introduced in Mortal Kombat (1992)
[edit]
Goro
[edit]
Portrayed by: Tom Woodruff Jr. (1995 film)
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4); Ken Lally (2011 game); Vic Chao (MKX, MK1); Kevin Michael Richardson (1995 film, Scorpion's Revenge); Ron Feinberg (The Journey Begins); Angus Sampson (2021 film)
Goro is the sub-boss of the first Mortal Kombat game. He is a Shokan, a half-human, half-dragon race distinguished by his four arms and enormous size. He became Grand Champion of the Mortal Kombat tournament after defeating the Great Kung Lao, and held the title for the next 500 years as part of evil sorcerer Shang Tsung's plan to manipulate the tournament in order to achieve Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's goal of dominance of Earthrealm. However, these plans were thwarted when the Earthrealm warrior Liu Kang defeated both Goro and Shang Tsung, allowing Earthrealm to regain control of the tournament. Goro disappeared thereafter and was believed to be dead. In Mortal Kombat II, Goro is succeeded by another member of his race, Kintaro, and is not seen again until the 1996 compilation game Mortal Kombat Trilogy, in which all the characters from the first three series games were playable. Goro was initially omitted from Mortal Kombat 4 (1997), but was included as a sub-boss in the home versions of the game.
In the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), Goro is mortally wounded and presumed dead. In the 2004 follow-up game Mortal Kombat: Deception, he has been saved from death by Shao Kahn, with the promise of returning his fellow Shokan to their former glory and the banishment of their archenemies, the Centaurs, in exchange for his allegiance, and resumes his place at Shao Kahn's side. Goro was not playable in either game. He is a boss character in the 2005 beat 'em up title Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. In the 2011 Mortal Kombat series reboot, Goro resumes his role as the sub-boss of the Shaolin Tournament from the first game, and is again defeated by Liu Kang in the story mode. He is playable in the 2015 title Mortal Kombat X (2015) as a bonus pre-order character, again serving as a sub-boss in the game's arcade-ladder mode. In Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), Goro's corpse appears in the story mode and in his "Lair" stage during gameplay. Goro appears in Mortal Kombat 1 as an assist character, or "Kameo Fighter", and via a minor appearance in the story mode as a member of General Shao's army.
Goro's original design was as a two-armed humanoid character named Rokuro, a member of "a race of demon warriors" who would join the tournament "to restore the pride and respect of his race".[1] Series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias drew design inspiration from the stop motion adventure films of Ray Harryhausen, especially his depiction of Kali in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in redesigning Goro with four arms.[2][3] He was originally named "Gongoro" before his final name was determined, and was constructed as a stop-motion clay figurine that eventually fell apart after excessive use in capturing its movements for the game.[4]
Goro has a prominent role in Malibu Comics' Mortal Kombat series that followed the events of the first game, and was the subject of the 1994 three-issue miniseries Goro: Prince of Pain. In the 2015 DC Comics Mortal Kombat X prequel series, he is featured in a subplot that shows him fighting and being maimed by Kotal Kahn in a battle for the Outworld throne.[5] Goro is the reigning champion in the 1995 film Mortal Kombat that follows the events of the original game, and was a life-sized animatronic model that cost over $1 million to construct and required over a dozen puppeteers to operate.[6][7] Goro again reprised his role as the defending tournament champion in the 2020 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge that retold the events of the original game, but was a supporting villain in the 2021 live-action reboot film Mortal Kombat, in which he was computer-generated.[8]
Goro has received positive critical reception for his formidableness as a boss character in the games,[9][10][11][12][13] but his cinematic portrayals, particularly in the 2021 film, have been negatively received.[14][15][16][17] Michael Kennedy of Screen Rant commented in 2021, "While the puppetry used to bring Goro to life [in the 1995 film] had its limitations, Goro played a vital role in the story, serving as a major roadblock to thunder god Raiden's defense of Earthrealm. While he returned in Mortal Kombat 2021, his inclusion felt more like an afterthought than anything."[18]
Johnny Cage
[edit]
Main article: Johnny Cage
Kano
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MK—MK3); Sorin Brouwers (MKvsDC, MK9); Derek Pratt (MK11); Trevor Goddard (1995 film); Darren Shahlavi (Legacy); Josh Lawson (2021 film)
Voiced by: David Allen (2000–2006); Michael McConnohie (2008–2015); JB Blanc (MK11); Michael Des Barres (Defenders of the Realm); Robin Atkin Downes (Scorpion's Revenge); David Wenham (Snow Blind)
Kano is first depicted in the Mortal Kombat canon as a Japanese-born American (Australian in later games.[19]) who was the leader of the Black Dragon criminal empire and a wanted man in thirty-five countries.[20] He enters the Shaolin tournament in the original Mortal Kombat Game after hearing rumors that tournament host Shang Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches, with the intention of looting it for the Black Dragon. However, he is fervently pursued by U.S. Special Forces officer Sonya Blade, who holds a personal grudge against Kano that was left unspecified in the game's storyline. He evades capture by leaping onto Shang Tsung's junk bound for the tournament. When Sonya tracks him onto the private island, she is captured and forced to compete. She and Kano are among the competition's few survivors, and during the final battle between Shang Tsung and Shaolin monk Liu Kang, Sonya reluctantly teams up with Kano to fight off the Shokan Prince Goro. During their battle, the island immediately self-destructs following Shang Tsung's defeat, trapping Kano and Sonya in the otherworldly dimension Outworld.[21] Kano is unplayable in Mortal Kombat II (1993), in which he and Sonya are both captured and chained on display in Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's arena.
In Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Kano escapes the Special Forces' clutches once again, and convinces Shao Kahn to spare his soul at the outset of the tyrant's invasion of Earth on the grounds that he can teach his armies how to use Earthrealm weaponry.
Kano was omitted from Mortal Kombat 4 in favor of new character Jarek, but returns in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002). He and Sheeva hatch a plan to assassinate Shao Kahn, but Kano turns on her by preventing the attack. As a reward, he is promoted to general of Outworld's reduced army and manages to repel Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army. However, after a weakened Kahn is killed by the titular Deadly Alliance of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, Kano declares his allegiance to them. He is assigned to oversee the enslavement of a small village that constructs a temple over Onaga's tomb to house a Soulnado. During its construction, Kano is assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervenes, as the Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon leader Mavado to eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano.
Kano appears in the 2000 spin-off platform game Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, in which he is not playable but is featured in the storyline, freeing fellow Black Dragon cohorts No Face, Tasia, Jarek, and Tremor from a Special Forces security facility under the pretense that they would reform the organization, though he really intended to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. They kill an entire Special Forces unit during the prison break before Kano heads to Outworld, where he recovers the Eye of Chitian, an artifact through which he would acquire incredible power. While Special Forces Major Jax Briggs gets ahold of the object first and transports himself and Kano back to Earthrealm, the latter soon escapes custody.
Kano joins the then-entire playable roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006). In the game's training mode, the demigod Taven finds him being held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan. Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Taven that the Red Dragon had been experimenting on him and their clansmen in an effort to create genetically engineered dragons and human-dragon hybrids. He is one of eleven Mortal Kombat characters representing the Mortal Kombat franchise in the 2008 crossover fighting game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
In the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot that retells the stories of the first three games, Kano is the Black Dragon leader who tricked the Special Forces by acting as an informant and deliberately feeding them false intelligence that led to the deaths of many of Sonya and Jax's comrades, establishing their vendetta against him. During the events of the first Shaolin tournament, Kano battles Sonya following her fight with the pompous actor Johnny Cage, but he is defeated.[22] While Kano is later beaten by Sonya again after Shang Tsung presents him to her as a challenge, the tournament host forbids her from arresting him.[23] Following this, Kano becomes Shao Kahn's arms supplier, giving his armies Earthrealm weaponry for his impending invasion.[24][25][26] After Kabal, a reformed Black Dragon member turned SWAT officer, is severely burned by Kintaro, Kano takes him away to restore his health alongside Shang Tsung and outfit him with a respirator, mask, and hookswords in spite of his former ally's defection. However, Kabal is mortified by his condition and furious at Kano for siding against Earthrealm, so he bests him in combat and forces him to take him to Shao Kahn before knocking Kano out. Kano later joins Goro and Kintaro in holding a group of soldiers hostage before being frozen by the cyborg Sub-Zero. However, Kano manages to free himself and informs his ally Noob Saibot that Sub-Zero broke free of his controller, Sektor.[27]
In Mortal Kombat X, Kano infiltrates the Shaolin Temple and steals the fallen Elder God Shinnok's amulet for Shao Kahn's daughter, Mileena, to assist in a civil war against Outworld's new ruler, Kotal Kahn. He attempts to distract the new Kahn while Mileena sets up an ambush, but Kotal realizes Kano is going to betray him and defeats the criminal. After he defeats Mileena, Kano retreats to Earthrealm. He infiltrates an Outworld refugee camp but is caught by Kenshi and Sonya, who take him into custody.
In Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), Kano aligns himself with the keeper of time Kronika. To assist her further by fixing and mass-producing Sektor, she brings in a younger version of Kano.[28][29] The two Kanos attack the Special Forces base and kidnap younger versions of Johnny and Sonya to force them to fight for the Black Dragon's entertainment before Sonya's daughter Cassie Cage rescues them. Sonya kills the younger Kano, erasing the present version from existence.[30][31]
Kano was the final fighter added to the first game, with his role as the enemy of the female character Sonya.[32] He was initially named Kao, and his faceplate came from being shot while escaping Sonya in an early planned Special Forces game.[33] Kano's bionic metal faceplate was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in The Terminator,[34][35] with the infrared eye added digitally.
Liu Kang
[edit]
Main article: Liu Kang
Raiden
[edit]
Main article: Raiden (Mortal Kombat)
Reptile
[edit]
Main article: Reptile (Mortal Kombat)
Scorpion
[edit]
Main article: Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)
Shang Tsung
[edit]
Main article: Shang Tsung
Sonya Blade
[edit]
Main article: Sonya Blade
Sub-Zero
[edit]
Main article: Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat)
Introduced in Mortal Kombat II
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat II
Baraka
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MKII); Sean Okerberg (MKvsDCU); Dennis Keiffer (Annihilation); Lateef Crowder (Rebirth); Fraser Aitcheson (Legacy); CJ Bloomfield (Mortal Kombat 2)
Voiced by: Dan Forden (MKG); Eric Wackerfuss (MK:D); Dan Washington (MKvsDCU); Bob Carter (MK9); Greg Eagles (MKX);[36] Steve Blum (2019-present)
Baraka is a member of a lowly Outworld race called the Tarkatans, who are known for their violent and unpredictable behavior and characterized by long gnashing teeth and a set of forearm-implanted retractable blades. He spearheads the attack on Liu Kang's Shaolin temple following the conclusion of the first Mortal Kombat tournament, which in turn lures Liu Kang into Outworld to seek vengeance. In Mortal Kombat Trilogy, he is a member of Shao Kahn's forces that takes part in the invasion of Earthrealm.[37] Baraka is not playable in the next fighting installment, Mortal Kombat 4 (1997), but was added to the roster of the 2000 Sega Dreamcast-exclusive upgrade Mortal Kombat Gold, in which Quan Chi offers him a chance to rule the Outworld realm of Edenia by his side if he agrees to join the fallen Elder God Shinnok's army. While Baraka accepts, he secretly plans to betray his new masters. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, Baraka and the remainder of his Tarkatan (formerly "Nomad") race ally themselves with the arisen Dragon King Onaga, and recruits the mutant clone Mileena into Onaga's ranks in order to pose as Kitana. While Baraka is playable along with the entire series roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), he was not among the seventeen characters therein who received an official biography by Midway and he played no part in the game's storyline.
Baraka is a recurring foe in the story mode of 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, in which the events of the first three games are retold, and he is defeated by Johnny Cage, Cyrax, Jax, and Jade. In the retold storyline of Mortal Kombat II, he leads his Tarkatan armies in an invasion of Earthrealm. He is not playable in Mortal Kombat X, but appears in the game's story mode when his fellow Tarkatans aid D'Vorah in loading captive Shaolin monks before they are confronted and defeated by Raiden, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao. In a flashback sequence, Baraka serves under then-Outworld ruler Mileena alongside D'Vorah, but during a meeting with the Osh-Tekk Kotal Kahn, Baraka is killed after D'Vorah betrays Mileena. In Mortal Kombat 11, a past version of Baraka is brought to the present by the keeper of time Kronika. After learning of his death and Kotal Kahn rendering the Tarkatans to near-extinction, he initially allies himself with Kronika and a similarly time-displaced Shao Kahn.[38][39] However, Kitana convinces him to aid her in rescuing Kotal, and he and the Tarkatans take part in Kitana's battle against Shao Kahn and in the final battle against Kronika.[40][41]
In the new third timeline depicted in 2023 Mortal Kombat 1, he was once a well-respected Outworld merchant prior to becoming a leader of the Tarkatans, a species of mutated individuals who are exposed to the mysterious Tarkat virus and outcast to a disarrayed Outworld colony.[42]
The character was first conceived by Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias as a "savage barbarian demon warrior" who was initially planned to be in the first Mortal Kombat game.[43] He was visualized for MKII with a Nosferatu mask adorned with silver-painted false fingernails serving as his teeth, while his arm blades were constructed from silver cardboard.[44]
Baraka appears briefly in the 1997 feature film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by stuntman Dennis Keiffer. He has no dialogue and is killed in a fight scene with Liu Kang, and is only identified by name in the closing credits.[45] In the 2010 short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, Baraka is played by martial artist Lateef Crowder and depicted in the film's alternate modern setting as a psychotic former plastic surgeon named "Dr. Alan Zane", who surgically attaches a pair of long metal blades to his forearms. He later kills Jax's undercover operative, Johnny Cage, in a fight.[46] These changes were not carried over into the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, in which he was played by Fraser Aitcheson and was reverted to his original Outworld origins.[47] Baraka makes a brief appearance in the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, in which he has no dialogue and is killed in a fight against Cage. CJ Bloomfield will play the character in the feature film Mortal Kombat 2.[48]
In 2009, Baraka ranked third on GameDaily's list of the "top ten ugliest game characters".[49] Dan Ryckert of Game Informer, in 2010, noted him among the characters wanted for the 2011 reboot game, as he felt that "people love Baraka" yet noted his absence in subsequent releases since his series debut.[50] Baraka has otherwise received positive reception from gaming media outlets for his character[51][52][53][54] and Fatalities.[55][56][57][58]
Jade
[edit]
Main article: Jade (Mortal Kombat)
Jax
[edit]
Main article: Jax (Mortal Kombat)
Kintaro
[edit]
Voiced by: Rhasaan Orange (2011 game), Dave B. Mitchell (Battle of the Realms)[59]
Kintaro is the sub-boss for both Mortal Kombat II and also in the 2011 reboot. He is also the penultimate boss of Mortal KombatShaolin Monks. A Shokan, he shares his species' four arms and imposing size, but is distinguished by his tiger-like stripes. Kintaro participates in Shao Kahn's attempt to conquer Earthrealm during the second game's tournament, in which he is defeated by Liu Kang. In the reboot, he is defeated by Kung Lao during the tournament. The reboot also establishes him as being responsible for Kabal's injuries. In the 2015 Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, Kintaro is killed by Sonya Blade while she is under Havik's control.
The character was a stop-motion clay figure whose design was inspired by the Japanese mythological character Kintarō. He was initially conceived for MKII as an anthropomorphic fur-lined bipedal tiger, but the concept was scrapped due to the difficulty of creating such a complicated outfit.[60] According to series co-creator John Tobias, Kintaro was redesigned as a "Goro spinoff"[61] who was possibly a Shokan general, but not royalty.[62]
Kintaro appears in the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, voiced by Dave B. Mitchell.[59]
Kintaro has received a middling reception due to his minor role in the series and is often unfavorably compared to Goro; UGO Networks opined in 2012 that Kintaro "serves no real purpose except for being a reskinned Goro whose sole purpose is to avenge the aforementioned's death" in the conclusion of the original game.[63] Game Informer, in 2021, rated him 56th among the series' 76 playable characters: "Kintaro’s arrival wasn’t as impactful as Goro's since the Shokan boss thing had already been done before. NetherRealm also seems content with giving him more and more feline attributes in place of a personality."[64] Den of Geek wrote that he "has virtually no story to speak of outside of the [MK9] retcon".[65] His "Reverse Rip" from the reboot was rated 35th by Prima Games in their 2014 list of the series' top fifty Fatalities.[66]
Kitana
[edit]
Main article: Kitana
Kung Lao
[edit]
Main article: Kung Lao
Mileena
[edit]
Main article: Mileena
Noob Saibot
[edit]
Portrayed by: Daniel Pesina (MKII); John Turk (UMK3, MK4); Lawrence Kern (2011 game, MK11); J. J. Perry (Annihilation); Kimball Uddin (Conquest), Joe Taslim (Mortal Kombat 2)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK:D); Jamieson Price (2011 game); Sean Chiplock (MK11); Kaiji Tang (MK1)
Noob Saibot is an undead wraith from the Netherrealm and a member of a cult called the Brotherhood of the Shadow who worships a fallen Elder God, later revealed to be Shinnok. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, he discovers, reactivates, and reprograms the cyborg ninja Smoke, intending to use his body as the basis for an undead cyborg army. In his ending, he is revealed to be a ressurrected Bi-Han, who previously operated as Sub-Zero before he was killed by Scorpion.[67] In Mortal Kombat (2011), Saibot is resurrected off-screen by Quan Chi and Shao Kahn. While defending the former's "Soulnado", Saibot is defeated by his brother and new Sub-Zero Kuai Liang and presumed dead after being pulled into the Soulnado. In Mortal Kombat 11, Saibot resurfaces as a servant of Kronika, having gained increased power.
The character's name comes from the last names of Mortal Kombat's creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias, spelled backwards. Saibot first appeared in Mortal Kombat II (MKII) as a non-playable hidden character and a solid-black palette swap of the game's other male ninja characters, whom players could fight after winning fifty straight matches. Spurred by the positive reaction to the hidden character Reptile from the first game, Boon added Saibot to MKII without Tobias' knowledge, though Tobias would later create the character's initial backstory as a Netherrealm wraith.[68]
He makes a cameo appearance in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by J. J. Perry, and in a self-titled episode of Mortal Kombat: Conquest, played by martial artist Kimball Uddin.
Noob Saibot has received positive critical reception,[63][65][53][69][70] and particularly for his "Make a Wish" Fatality from the 2011 reboot game.[55][71][72][73][74][75] In July 2011, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart played a video of the finisher while explaining the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the ESRB could regulate video games without government intervention.[72]
Shao Kahn
[edit]
Main article: Shao Kahn
Smoke
[edit]
Portrayed by: Daniel Pesina (MKII); John Turk (UMK3); Noah Fleder (MK1); Ridley Tsui (Annihilation)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MKII, UMK3, MK:A); Ken Lally (2011 game); Andrew Bowen (MKX);[76] Jeremy Ratchford (Defenders of the Realm); Matthew Mercer (Battle of the Realms);[77] Yuri Lowenthal (MK1)[78]
Smoke debuted in Mortal Kombat II (MKII) as a non-playable hidden character who emanates smoke from his body and randomly appears at the start of a match to provide vague clues on how to find and fight him, for which specific requirements had to be met by players. Appearing as an unlockable playable character in Mortal Kombat 3 (MK3), he is stated to be a Lin Kuei assassin who works with Kuai Liang / Sub-Zero. After their clan starts turning their best warriors into cyborgs, Smoke attempts to join Kuai Liang in leaving the Lin Kuei. However, the former is captured, converted, and forced to hunt the latter against his will. With Kuai Liang's help, Smoke discovers he still retains his soul and aids him in defeating Lin Kuei cyborgs Cyrax and Sektor, only to be captured by Shao Kahn's forces. During the events of Mortal Kombat: Deception, Smoke is reactivated and reprogrammed by Noob Saibot into serving him as his ally and template for an army of cyber-demons. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Smoke helps Saibot stage an assault on a Lin Kuei temple in Arctika until he is defeated by Taven.
In Mortal Kombat (2011), during which Raiden creates a new timeline while attempting to avert the events of Armageddon, Smoke is rewritten to become Tomas Vrbada, a Czech member of the Lin Kuei who can transform into his namesake. As a child, he was kidnapped by a cult who sought to sacrifice him to a demon, only for Smoke to become an enenra and slay the cultists.[79] In the present, Smoke is chosen by Raiden to help him stop Shao Kahn from taking over Earthrealm. Though Raiden saves Smoke from becoming a cyborg, Kuai Liang is converted in his place before Smoke is killed by Shao Kahn's queen Sindel. Following this, Smoke is resurrected by Quan Chi as an undead revenant, a role he fulfills while making a minor non-playable appearance in Mortal Kombat X (MKX). Additionally, the downloadable playable character Triborg possesses a form based on Smoke's cyborg form.
In Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), in which Fire God Liu Kang creates a third new timeline, Tomas / Smoke is rewritten once more to become an adoptive brother to Bi-Han / Sub-Zero and Kuai Liang / Scorpion after Smoke's family was killed for accidentally trespassing on Lin Kuei grounds. Though he lacks supernatural abilities, Smoke is skilled in practical magic. After Bi-Han betrays them to join forces with Shang Tsung, Smoke joins Kuai Liang in breaking off to found the Shirai Ryu clan to oppose him.[citation needed]
Smoke, based on his MK3 portrayal, appears in the Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm episode "Old Friends Never Die". Furthermore, he makes a cameo appearance in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, in which he is killed by Liu Kang.
Smoke has received mostly positive reception,[63][80][81][82] while his "Earth Detonation" Fatality from MK3 has been noted by critics for its outlandish nature.[83][84][85][86][87]
Chameleon
[edit]
Portrayed by: John Turk (MKT)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MKT)
Chameleon is a mysterious warrior who possesses the abilities of all the franchise' male ninjas. He is distinguished by his partially transparent appearance and an outfit that constantly changes its colors. Chameleon appeared in the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy with no biography or ending; he is instead only referred to as "one of Shao Kahn's deadliest warriors".[88] His Armageddon ending is also vague, revealing only that he had sought to become Mortal Kombat champion since the events of the first game.
The character was ranked 32nd in UGO's 2012 selection of the top fifty series characters, who wrote "They say copying is a form of flattery, so Chameleon makes our list."[63] Complex rated him tenth in their 2011 selection of the series' ten "most underrated characters",[89] but IGN's Mitchell Saltzman listed Chameleon and Khameleon as two of the worst Mortal Kombat characters. "Unlike all of the other ninja palette swaps that eventually gained their own identity and playstyle, both Chameleons ... feel more like gimmicks than anything."[90]
Cyrax
[edit]
Portrayed by: Sal Divita (MK3, UMK3); Shane Warren Jones (Legacy)
Voiced by: Rhasaan Orange (2011 game); Ike Amadi (MK11); Artt Butler (Battle of the Realms)[59]
Cyrax debuts in Mortal Kombat 3 as a member of the Lin Kuei clan of assassins along with Sub-Zero, Sektor, and Smoke. When the clan decide to utilize modern technology by converting its members into soulless cyborgs, Sub-Zero refuses and defects, which leads to the clan's grandmasters marking him for death. As a result, Cyrax, along with Sektor, and Smoke, are assigned to hunt down and kill him.[91] However, during Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, Sub-Zero captures Cyrax and reprograms him with orders to destroy the emperor, but Shao Kahn is defeated beforehand by the other Earthrealm warriors. In Mortal Kombat Gold (2000), after Shinnok's defeat, Cyrax experiences flashbacks of his former life, and Sonya and Jax bring him to the Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA) headquarters, where they restore his humanity. As a token of gratitude, Cyrax joins the agency as an Earthrealm scout.[92]
In Deadly Alliance, Cyrax encounters the vampire Nitara, who offers to help him return home in exchange for his assistance in finding the egg of the Dragon King. Cyrax submerges himself in a lake of molten lava and discovers the orb that would separate her home realm from Outworld. In exchange for the egg, she honors her promise to Cyrax and sends him back to Earthrealm.[93]
In the Mortal Kombat reboot, Cyrax is introduced during the Shaolin Tournament as a human Tswana member of the Lin Kuei who relies on his chi rather than brute force to carry out clan missions, and is against the Lin Kuei's impending "Cyber Initiative" as he is reluctant to surrender his humanity. However, during the events of the second game, he is nonetheless captured by the clan and transformed offscreen.[94] After capturing Sub-Zero in Shao Kahn's arena during the second tournament and taking him away to be cyberized, Cyrax and Sektor pledging their services to Kahn in exchange. When the Outworld emperor launches an invasion of Earthrealm, the cyborgs attack the Earthrealm defenders to stop them from interfering, only to be thwarted by Nightwolf. Despite this, Shao Kahn's wife, Queen Sindel, arrives moments later and completes the cyborgs' mission.
Cyrax returns in Mortal Kombat 11 as a non-playable character brought to the present timeline by Kronika as part of her plan to restart time by taking part in Sektor's plot to capture Sub-Zero's Lin Kuei warriors and convert them into cyborgs to bolster her ranks. He attempts to stop Sub-Zero and Scorpion infiltrating the Cyber Lin Kuei factory to shut them down, but is defeated and his slave protocol disabled. Upon regaining his humanity, Cyrax is horrified to discover that he has become a machine and, despite Sub-Zero pledging to restore him, chose to sacrifice himself in the process of shutting down the factory.[29]
Cyrax appears in one episode of the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, played by Shane Warren Jones. He and Sektor are shown being transformed at the Lin Kuei's secret headquarters with the operation overseen by Kano.
Cyrax was included with Sektor and Smoke atop GamesRadar's 2011 list of "gaming's most malicious machines",[95] and Complex ranked him the fourth-coolest robot in video games in 2012.[96] His episode of Legacy was well received,[97][98] but critical reaction to his Fatalities has been mixed.[99][100]
Ermac
[edit]
Main article: Ermac
Kabal
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MK3, UMK3 and MKT); Carlos Pesina (MK:D, MK:A); Daniel Nelson (2021 film)
Voiced by: Jarod Pranno (MK:A); David Lodge (2011 game); Jonathan Cahill (MK11);[101] Kevin Michael Richardson (Defenders of the Realm); Damon Herriman (2021 film); Keith Silverstein (Snow Blind)[102]
Kabal was a member of the Black Dragon crime syndicate alongside Kano until Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, but after he is included among Raiden's chosen warriors to defend Earthrealm, he is attacked and maimed by Kahn's extermination squads, forcing him thereafter to rely on artificial respirators for survival and a mask to hide his now-disfigured face. However, the assault also results in him abandoning his life of crime in order to help the Earthrealm warriors successfully thwart Shao Kahn and his forces. Kabal is not playable in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, though he has a significant role in the game's story mode when he is defeated in battle and his signature hookswords stolen by Mavado, a leading member of the Black Dragon's rival clan, the Red Dragon. In Mortal Kombat: Deception, the cleric of chaos Havik brings Kabal back from the brink of death and instructs him to restore the same Black Dragon that he had long tried to disassociate himself from. Kabal complies, recruiting arms dealer Kira and martial artist turned killer Kobra. Kabal later defeats Mavado and takes back his swords. Kabal appears with Kira and Kobra in the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon when he confronts the demigod Taven after the latter defeats the Black Dragon thugs. Impressed, Kabal offers him a chance to join the Black Dragon, but Taven refuses. Kabal challenges him to combat in response, but is defeated.
Kabal is a reformed Black Dragon member turned NYPD riot-control officer alongside Kurtis Stryker in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot. Amidst the chaos of Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm, they confront and defeat Outworld warriors Reptile and Mileena, but Kabal is severely burned by Kintaro and kidnapped by Kano.[103] Despite Kabal leaving the Black Dragon, Kano restores his health with the sorcerer Shang Tsung's help, though with a respirator and mask as Kabal's lungs are damaged beyond repair. He is irate with Kano for supporting Outworld, and demands Kano take him to Shao Kahn, where they witness the emperor promote his wife Sindel to general of his armies, before Kabal flees back to Earthrealm. Raiden subsequently invites him to join his band of Earthrealm warriors, but while he and Liu Kang commune with the Elder Gods, Sindel and the Lin Kuei ninja clan ambush Kabal and the other Earthrealm defenders, killing most of them, including Kabal. The fallen are then resurrected by the necromancer Quan Chi as undead revenant slaves. The undead Kabal returns in Mortal Kombat X and is not playable with a minor role in the game's story, but is selectable in Mortal Kombat 11, in which the present Kabal is a revenant servant of Kronika in the story mode. After she causes a time anomaly as part of her plan to eliminate Raiden from history, she brings a Black Dragon-era Kabal into the present that Kano manipulates into fighting Sonya Blade by falsely claiming she was responsible for scarring him in the future.[104]
Kabal was nicknamed "Sandman" during the production of MK3 before his actual name was determined.[105] According to Mortal Kombat co-creator John Tobias, Kabal's overall design was inspired by the Tusken Raiders from Star Wars, while the circular lenses of his mask were inspired by 1940s-style aviator goggles.[106] Tobias, however, expressed his dissatisfaction with his original design of Kabal in a 2012 interview.[107]
Kabal made one appearance in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, which covered his backstory from MK3. Though he appeared in the script for Mortal Kombat Annihilation, his part was cut, but he was among Shang Tsung's chosen Outworld villains in the 2021 Mortal Kombat film. In the 2022 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind, he is part of Kano's Black Dragon henchmen.
The character has received mostly positive critical reception,[108][109][54][110] but received notoriety for being overpowered in MK3,[111][112] while response to his Fatalities throughout his series appearances has been mixed.[113][87][114][115][116][117]
Khameleon
[edit]
Portrayed by: Becky Gable (MKT)
Voiced by: Johanna Añonuevo (Armageddon)
Khameleon is a Zaterran who possesses the abilities of the franchise's female ninjas. She is the last known female of her race. She was introduced in the Nintendo 64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.[118] Due to Shao Kahn's role in her race's near extinction, Khameleon seeks revenge against him. Khameleon was the franchise's only previously playable character excluded in the original release of Armageddon, but was added to the Wii version.[119] Series art director Steve Beran acknowledged that she was included in Armageddon due to heavy fan demand.[120]
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1, Khameleon makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the story mode as a member of the Umgadi, warrior priestesses who guard Outworld's royal family.[121] Additionally, she also appears as a downloadable assist character, or "Kameo Fighter".[citation needed]
The character placed 33rd in UGO's selection of the top fifty series characters,[63] but IGN's Mitchell Saltzman listed Khameleon with Chameleon among the series' worst. "Unlike all of the other ninja palette swaps that eventually gained their own identity and playstyle, both Chameleons ... feel more like gimmicks than anything."[90]
Motaro
[edit]
Portrayed by: Deron McBee (Annihilation)
Motaro is a Centaurian from Outworld who possesses immense strength, the ability to teleport, fire energy blasts from his tail, and deflect incoming projectiles. First appearing as a sub-boss in Mortal Kombat 3 and its updates, he leads Shao Kahn's extermination squads during his invasion of Earthrealm.[citation needed] Motaro returns in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon as a minotaur due to a curse on his species placed by the Shokan.[citation needed]
Motaro makes minor non-speaking appearances in Mortal Kombat (2011) and Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), with the former seeing him being killed by Raiden and the latter seeing him serve as a member of General Shao's rebellion.[citation needed] Additionally, Motaro appears as an unlockable assist character, or "Kameo Fighter", in MK1 and his quadrupedal physique was restored for both games.[citation needed]
Motaro has also appeared in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge.
John Tobias said that Motaro was inspired by a Micronauts toy figure of Baron Karza, which could be turned into a centaur by combining the toy with a horse figure packaged alongside it.[122] Described by Ed Boon as one of the "oddest shaped" Mortal Kombat characters, Motaro was nearly excluded from Armageddon due to the developers' difficulty of compensating for his unique half-horse body shape.[123][124] With fans desiring to see the character return, the developers removed Motaro's hind legs to allow him in the game.[125]
Motaro placed 31st in UGO's 2012 ranking of the top fifty Mortal Kombat characters, noting him being a tough sub-boss to defeat.[126] Den of Geek ranked Motaro 42nd in their 2015 rating of the franchise's then-64 playable characters.[65] Marcus Stewart of Game Informer rated Motaro 57th in his 2021 ranking of the 76 playable series characters. "You'd think a centaur would be a cooler character, but Motaro hasn't made a ton of noise since his '90s heyday."[127] The bipedal version of Motaro was criticized by Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 and ScrewAttack, with the former considering his four legs "the one cool thing he had going for him" and the latter stating that he had lost his most defining trait.[128][129]
Nightwolf
[edit]
Main article: Nightwolf
Rain
[edit]
Portrayed by: John Turk (MKT); Tyrone Wiggins (Annihilation); Percy Brown (Conquest)
Voiced by: Rino Romano (Defenders of the Realm); Andrew Bowen (MKX);[130] Dempsey Pappion (MK11);[131] Noshir Dalal (MK1)[78]
Rain makes his first series appearance in the attract mode of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, in which he attacks Shao Kahn on the Portal stage.[132] He was then made a playable character in the home version of UMK3 and the compilation title Mortal Kombat Trilogy (1996) with his own distinct set of moves. In Trilogy, Rain has his own storyline in which he is an Edenian smuggled away from his homeland in the midst of the realm's takeover by Outworld emperor Shao Kahn. Thousands of years later, Rain resurfaces during Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm prior to the third Mortal Kombat tournament. Not wanting to suffer at the hand of Kahn's extermination squads, he betrays his homeland and sides with Kahn, who assigns him alongside fellow enslaved Edenians Kitana and Jade in fighting against the Earthrealm warriors.[133] Rain is absent from the series thereafter until the training mode of Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), and returns as a playable character in the compilation title Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006). As one of only seventeen characters in the game to receive an official biography,[134] he plays his largest role in the original series continuity by learning of his true Edenian heritage from evil Outworld sorcerer Quan Chi, who informs Rain that he is a direct descendant of Argus, the protector god of Edenia, as well as the half-sibling of the game's protagonist Taven and his brother Daegon, both of whom were favored by their father to assume his mantle of Edenia's protectors.[135] Rain consequently starts to refer to himself as a prince of the realm, as seen in Armageddon's training mode, but he still chooses to independently fight on the side of evil. He confronts the game's protagonist Taven in the location of Arctika but is defeated in battle and flees into a portal.[136]
His storyline is altered in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, which makes no mention of his father or siblings, instead simply describing him as having been orphaned at a young age by Kahn's conquest of Edenia and raised under the protection of Edenian resistance fighters. As he gained a reputation as an exceptional warrior, his level of arrogance followed suit, and he betrayed his comrades after being refused leadership of the resistance. This caught the attention of Kahn, who offered the power-hungry Rain an army of his own in exchange for his services.[137] He was not part of the original playable roster but was later added to the game as downloadable content.
In Mortal Kombat X (2015), Rain is not playable and only appears in the game's story mode as Mileena's advisor, and tries to help her reclaim the Outworld throne from Kotal Kahn in the midst of a civil war. However, he plans to take the throne for himself when the war is over, but is stopped by D'Vorah. He returns in Mortal Kombat 11 again as downloadable content, and his role therein is that he manages to escape Kotal's capture. Rain's past is further explained in his arcade ending in which his father Argus had lied to Rain's birth mother, Amara, on the day after Rain was born and faked his death from her, leaving her to commit suicide out of heartbreak while Rain was callously sold to another family without her knowledge. Rain is furious upon later learning this information and swears vengeance against Argus and his own half-brothers Daegon and Taven, but leaves his stepmother Delia to suffer a similar fate as Amara.[138]
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1, Rain no longer has divine lineage, and is instead depicted as an ambitious sorcerer who became the High Mage of Outworld's Royal Court. Rain's real name in this timeline, Zefferro shares a same names a character who was an Outworld overlord of walled city Lei Chen in the Konquest Mode of Mortal Kombat Deception. He assists Shang Tsung and General Shao's attempt to overthrow Outworld's Royal family in the game's story mode. After Titan Shang Tsung's defeat, Rain joins with Havik to evade capture by Empress Mileena. Havik has him use his power to flood and destroy Seido. The destruction caused by their attack leaves Rain wracked with guilt, and he willingly gives himself up to Outworld's authorities to accept any punishment the Empress gives him.
Rain was inspired by the 1984 Prince song Purple Rain, along with MK co-creator Ed Boon, a longtime fan of the musician, also jokingly wondering what color palette had not yet been used for the series' ninja characters at the time Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was in production.[139] After MK Trilogy, the character was given his own distinct designs in future appearances.
Rain has received mixed to negative critical reception for his origins and his Fatalities.[140][87][141][142] UGO ranked him 28th out of the series' top 50 characters in 2012.[63] His later appearances were better received; Den of Geek ranked Rain 36th in his 2015 rating of the 64 series characters due to his MK9 ending and the expansion of his backstory in Armageddon as "a power-hungry jerk who believed that he was owed everything."[65] GamesRadar+ noted his purple palette in the 2011 reboot as "a nice, rarely used color for male fighting game characters", while "his moves are so weird and confounding that they make every match a constant guessing game."[143] Bleeding Cool considered Rain's MK11 appearance as his best to date due to his evolved moveset.[144]
Sektor
[edit]
Portrayed by: Sal Divita (MK3, UMK3); Peter Shinkoda (Legacy)
Voiced by: Andrew Kishino (2011 game); Dave B. Mitchell (MK11, Battle of the Realms)[59]
Sektor debuts in Mortal Kombat 3 as a member of the Lin Kuei clan along with Sub-Zero, Cyrax, and Smoke. When Sub-Zero defects after refusing to take part in the Lin Kuei's utilization of modern technology by converting its members into cyborgs, Sektor, along with Cyrax, is tasked with hunting down and killing Sub-Zero.[91] Sektor is a secret character in Mortal Kombat Gold, in which he is the only active cyborg out of the original three, after Smoke is shut down in an Outworld prison before being enslaved by Noob Saibot while Cyrax's human soul is restored and he joins Sonya and Jax's Outer World Investigation Agency. Sektor believes the Lin Kuei Grandmaster is inferior and kills him, but Sub-Zero in turn defeats Sektor in battle and claims the title of grandmaster for himself. Sektor flees to Japan thereafter and forms his own clan of cyborg ninja warriors.[145]
Sektor is not playable again until the compilation title Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, and plays a minor role in its training mode. In the 2011 series reboot, he is introduced during the first tournament as a human Chinese member of the clan who, along with Cyrax, is paid handsomely by tournament organizer Shang Tsung to compete and kill Earthrealm's fighters. Sektor is fervently supportive of the Lin Kuei's plan to robotize its members while Cyrax is the opposite; Sektor comes to blows with Cyrax when the latter refuses to kill Johnny Cage in battle, but is defeated. During the second Mortal Kombat tournament, a cyborg Sektor attempts to kidnap Smoke so he could be converted as well, only to be stopped by Raiden. However, in a reversal of Smoke and Sub-Zero's MK3 storylines, Sub-Zero is captured by the Lin Kuei inside Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's arena and eventually converted, with Sektor pledging his services to Kahn in exchange. When Shao Kahn launches an invasion of Earthrealm, Sektor and the cyberized Lin Kuei launch their own attack on the Earthrealm defenders to stop them from interfering with Kahn's plans, only to be thwarted by defeated by Nightwolf. Despite this, Shao Kahn's wife Sindel completes the clan's objective of slaughtering the Earthrealm warriors.
In Mortal Kombat X, Sektor is not playable, but his moveset is a part of Triborg's options and his remains appear in the story mode. In between the events of the 2011 reboot and Mortal Kombat X, Sektor became Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei and had the remaining members killed or cyberized. The recently revived Kuai Liang infiltrates their headquarters and uploads a virus into their system that frees Cyrax from Sektor's control as he confronts the Cyber Lin Kuei. With Cyrax's help, Sub-Zero defeats and kills Sektor before Cyrax self-destructs to destroy the facility and the remaining Cyber Lin Kuei.[146] As Sub-Zero begins a new Lin Kuei clan, he examines Sektor's memories from his remains and discovers the Lin Kuei had hired Quan Chi to eliminate the Shirai Ryu clan, leading to Sub-Zero to seek atonement by seeking peace with Scorpion and the newly reestablished Shirai Ryu.[147]
In Mortal Kombat 11, a time-displaced Sektor and his cyber Lin Kuei army are revived by the keeper of time Kronika and brought into her ranks. They are joined by Sub-Zero's former apprentice, Frost, who succeeds Sektor after she is converted into a cyborg. He, Cyrax, and Frost, backed by Noob Saibot, kidnap Sub-Zero's Lin Kuei warriors and forcibly robotize them. After learning of what they had done, Sub-Zero and Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) arrive at the Cyber Lin Kuei's factory to shut it down. Sektor declares to Sub-Zero that allying with Hanzo is dishonorable, but is soon deactivated when Cyrax shuts down the factory. Sektor's body is used by Kronika's allies to revive him and the cyber Lin Kuei.[29] The cyborgs join the Black Dragon crime cartel in storming the Special Forces base, where Kano uses a kill switch installed in Sektor's systems to destroy it.[148] In Sub-Zero's arcade ending, he discovers his deceased older brother Bi-Han having embraced Sektor’s corrupt practices in the Lin Kuei before his death and transformation into Noob Saibot.
Sektor's original cyberized form appears in Mortal Kombat 1 as an assist-based Kameo fighter while his human and now female counterpart in Liu Kang's new timeline will appear in the upcoming story expansion Khaos Reigns. After Sub-Zero's (Bi-Han) brother Scorpion (Kuai Liang) defects from the clan to form the Shirai Ryu following Sub-Zero's betrayal of Earthrealm, Bi-Han attempts to bolster the Lin Kuei's forces with "Sektor's genius" by enacting the Cyber Lin Kuei initiative.[149]
Sektor appears in one episode of the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, played by Peter Shinkoda. He and Cyrax are shown being transformed at the Lin Kuei's secret headquarters with the operation overseen by Kano. The character has a minor part in DC Comics' 2015 Mortal Kombat X: Blood Ties comic miniseries that is set before the events of the game,[150] and he appears in the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021).[151]
Sektor was nicknamed "Ketchup" during production of MK3 before his official name was determined, while the robot ninjas' designs were inspired by Boba Fett and the Predator.[152] He has been lauded by gaming media outlets for his Fatalities over the course of the Mortal Kombat series.[153][154][155][71][156][157][158][159] UGO placed him 26th—one spot behind Cyrax—in their 2012 list of the top fifty series characters.[63]
Sheeva
[edit]
Portrayed by: Marjean Holden (Annihilation)
Voiced by: Dawnn Lewis (Defenders of the Realm); Lori McClain (Armageddon); Lani Minella (2011 game); Vanessa Marshall (MK11)
Sheeva is a Shokan warrior like Goro and Kintaro, and is the series' lone female representative of the four-armed race. She has a long-standing rivalry with Motaro, as the Shokan and his race of Centaurians are bitter enemies. She debuts in MK3 as Queen Sindel's appointed bodyguard and protector following Shao Kahn's invasion of Earth. She is not playable in the series again until Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in which the then-entire series roster is playable. In the 2011 reboot that retells the continuity of the first three games, she is immediately playable and plays a minor role in the game's story mode as Kahn's bodyguard and jailer. In Mortal Kombat 11, Sheeva was a late addition to the roster as downloadable content as part of the game's Aftermath expansion pack. She additionally has a more significant role in the series for the first time, as she aids a time-traveling Shang Tsung in retrieving Kronika's Crown of Souls so Liu Kang can restore history after exploiting her blood oath to Sindel. Sheeva assists in reviving Sindel so she can join them as well, but upon learning of her treachery Sheeva attempts to stop her but is defeated.
The character's name was derived from Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction. She was added to the game due to fan requests for a playable version of Goro, like whom she was created as a stop motion-animated clay figurine.[160] Series co-creator John Tobias opted for a female version of the character as she would be physically smaller in size and thus take up less room on the screen.[161] She was omitted from the home versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 due to memory constraints.
Sheeva (voiced by Dawnn Lewis) had a recurring role in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. In the 1997 film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, she was played by Marjean Holden in a minor role with her only action sequence being a brief scuffle with Motaro, though the film acknowledges her then-current role in the games as Sindel's personal protector. In the 2015 Mortal Kombat X: Blood Ties prequel comic miniseries produced by DC Comics, Sheeva is crowned by Kintaro as the current leader of the Shokan in a peaceful treaty with Kotal Kahn, following the death of previous rule King Gorbak. Sheeva mourns Kintaro's death after Sonya — possessed by Havik — kills him in battle.
Reception of the character has been mixed. While Wirtualna Polska featured Sheeva among gaming's top ten female villains in 2011,[162] she placed a middling 28th in UGO.com's 2012 ranking of their top fifty Mortal Kombat characters,[163] and 47th in Den of Geek's 2019 ranking of the series' 77 playable characters.[65] Game Informer, in 2010, stated that "despite a somewhat cool ground-pound move [in MK3], she was an addition to the series that never really served a purpose or did anything particularly noteworthy."[164] However, her Fatalities over the course of her appearances have been fairly well received.[165][166][167][168][169]
Sindel
[edit]
Portrayed by: Lia Montelongo (MK3); Musetta Vander (Annihilation); Beatrice Ilg (Legacy); Ana Thu Nguyen (Mortal Kombat 2)[170]
Voiced by: Laura Boton (MK:D); Lani Minella (MK 2011); Kelly Hu (MKX); Mara Junot (2019–present)[171]
Sindel debuts as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 3 (MK3) as the queen of Edenia alongside her daughter, Princess Kitana, before their kingdom lost ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments, leading to Shao Kahn invading them to forcibly merge their realms. After he killed her husband King Jerrod and adopted the then-infant Kitana, Sindel committed suicide to avoid becoming his consort. Years later however, Shao and Shang Tsung resurrect her without her memories and brainwash her to assist in the former's invasion of Earthrealm. After Earthrealm's defenders defeat Shao, Kitana convinces Sindel of her true past, turning her against Shao.
Sindel appears as a non-playable character (NPC) in Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4), in which her subject Tanya betrays Edenia and allows Shinnok's Netherrealm forces to invade her palace. Kitana escapes, but Sindel is imprisoned in her dungeon until Shinnok's forces are defeated. Following this, she sends Kitana to form an alliance with the Shokan armies and lead them into battle against a weakened Shao while Sindel stays behind to restore Edenia. Returning as a playable character in Mortal Kombat: Deception (MK:D), Edenia is invaded by Onaga, who killed, resurrected, and brainwashed Sindel, among others, before imprisoning her until she is freed by Jade. Sindel appears as a playable character in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, though she does not play a role in the story mode.
In Mortal Kombat (2011), due to Raiden altering the timeline and changing the events of the franchise's first three games, Sindel is instead resurrected by Quan Chi and receives Shang Tsung's powers before she kills most of Earthrealm's warriors and Kitana before Nightwolf sacrifices himself to kill her. Quan Chi subsequently converts the dead warriors into his undead revenant servants, a role Sindel fulfills while making a minor appearance as a NPC in Mortal Kombat X.
Sindel appears as a downloadable playable character in Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11) via the Aftermath expansion pack, in which her history is retconned. When Shao invaded Edenia, she willingly sided and married him, killed Jerrod herself for his perceived weakness, and claimed Shao did so to appease her subjects. Quan Chi, believing she was distracting Shao, later killed her and staged it as a suicide before using her soul to temporarily stop Shao from invading Earthrealm. In the present, Shang Tsung captures her revenant and revives her to help him steal Kronika's Crown of Souls.[172] Sindel agrees while also reconsolidating her power with Shao before betraying and defeating Kitana and Earthrealm's forces.[173][174] After helping Shang Tsung breach Kronika's keep however, the sorcerer in turn betrays Sindel and Shao, absorbing their souls in retaliation for killing him to empower Sindel.[175]
Sindel appears as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 1, in which Fire God Liu Kang created a second new timeline where Sindel is the Empress of Outworld and biological mother of Kitana and Mileena, the latter of whom is set to inherit her throne, who maintains the Mortal Kombat tournaments alongside Kang in the late Jerrod's memory. Though a fair and just ruler, Sindel is strict in preparing Mileena to succeed her and becomes more determined to protect her realm and the throne following Jerrod's death. She also employs Shang Tsung to help with Mileena's Tarkat disease, unaware that he and General Shao are conspiring against her and encouraging her to turn against Earthrealm until they are exposed by Kang and Earthrealm's warriors. Sindel is later reunited with Jerrod after Quan Chi uses his soul, among others, to create Ermac and the former gains control of the body, before she is killed by her counterpart from Titan Shang Tsung's timeline. Before she dies, she entrusts Mileena with Outworld's throne before Jerrod preserves her soul within Ermac, where the pair work together to fight off the other souls and maintain control of the body.
During production of MK3, Sindel was nicknamed "The Bride" and "Muchacha" by the developers before her official name was determined.[176] She was played by actress Lia Montelongo, who was nineteen years old at the time.[177]
Sindel appears as a supporting character in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, portrayed by Musetta Vander. In addition to her original trilogy backstory and role, she is also named the new general of Shao Kahn's extermination squads following her resurrection and brainwashing.[178] Amidst Earthrealm's warriors' final battle with Shao, Kitana defeats and spares Sindel. After Liu Kang defeats Shao, the latter's curse on Sindel is broken. She also appears in the Mortal Kombat Legacy episode "Kitana and Mileena - Part 1", portrayed by Beatrice Ilg, and will appear in the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2, portrayed by Ana Thu Nguyen.[48][179]
Sindel has been positively received for her role in the games[65][180] and her Fatalities,[159][181][182] but her MK11 retcon was met with heavy fan criticism,[183][184] while her portrayal in Annihilation has been ridiculed.[185][186][187][188]
Stryker
[edit]
Portrayed by: Michael O'Brien (MK3); Lawrence Kern (MK 2011); Tahmoh Penikett (Legacy); Eric Jacobus (Legacy II)
Voiced by: Ron Perlman (Defenders of the Realm); Matthew Mercer (MK 2011, Battle of the Realms)
Kurtis Stryker is a coast NYPD riot control officer selected by Raiden to help defend Earthrealm against invading forces from Outworld. One of the franchise's few characters who does not possess any special powers, he employs modern weaponry such as explosives, firearms, tasers and nightsticks for his special moves and Fatalities. During the events of MK3, he was the leader of the riot control brigade when Outworld's portal opened over New York City. Stryker attempted to keep order among the populace in the ensuing chaos, but soon all human souls were usurped by Shao Kahn with the exception of those that belonged to Raiden's chosen warriors, including himself. Initially ignorant of why he was spared, he entered the fray with the intention of avenging the lives of the innocent that he had vowed to protect and serve. Along with the other warriors, he assisted in liberating Earthrealm from Shao Kahn's clutches. His next playable appearance is in MK Armageddon, in which he is still oblivious as to why he was chosen by the Elder Gods. In the Battle of Armageddon, he fights Mileena, Kabal and Kano, yet he is ultimately slain along with the other combatants. In the 2011 series reboot, Stryker is Kabal's SWAT team leader who joins Raiden and his followers in repelling the Outworld invasion. He is later killed, along with most of the Earthrealm heroes, by Sindel and subsequently resurrected by Quan Chi and forced to fight Raiden, in a losing effort. He makes brief nonplayable appearances in Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 as an undead revenant fighting for Quan Chi and Shinnok.
A character named "Kurtis Stryker" was originally slated to appear in the first Mortal Kombat, but the idea was dropped in place of a female fighter (Sonya Blade). The character would appear in Mortal Kombat II renamed Jax, and Stryker was finally made an original character in MK3. Stryker was originally conceived by the developers as a SWAT-type character with several additional weapons, but the game's memory limitations prevented this. He appeared in Armageddon with a complete redesign into a much more futuristic-looking character, armed with two back-mounted knives that were never used.
Stryker has made several appearances in alternate series media, starting as a featured character (voiced by Ron Perlman) in the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. He appeared in the premiere episode of the 2011 first season of the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy as a SWAT leader under Jax's command, and had a recurring role in the 2013 second season. In the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, he represents Earthrealm in the tournament, defeating Baraka in battle but losing to Shang Tsung, after which he is magically manipulated into killing himself by the sorcerer.
The character has received negative reception for his "common man" presence in the otherworldly atmosphere of the Mortal Kombat series.[189][190][191][192] However, Den of Geek ranked Stryker 21st in their 2015 rating of the franchise's 64 playable characters, citing his sucker-punching of Mileena in Armageddon's opening cinematic sequence and Perlman's portrayal in the animated series, in addition to "really [becoming] something worth caring about in the reboot, where he came off as a likeable, disgruntled smart-ass."[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 praised Stryker in the reboot as being "so badass" and "the closest thing you'll get to being John McClane in a fighting game."[128]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Fujin
[edit]
Portrayed by: Anthony Marquez (MKM:SZ); Nic Toussaint (MKX)
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4), David Horachek (MK:A), Troy Baker (MKX), Matthew Yang King (MK11)
Fujin is the god of wind based on the Japanese deity of the same name. He first appears as an unnamed boss in Mythologies: Sub-Zero, in which he unsuccessfully guards Shinnok's amulet from Sub-Zero.[193] He makes his playable debut in Mortal Kombat 4 and succeeds Raiden as Earthrealm's protector when Raiden becomes an Elder God.[194] Fujin returns in Armageddon and is defeated by Taven after attempting to prevent him from continuing his quest.[195] In the rebooted timeline, Fujin appears in Mortal Kombat X's story mode fighting the Netherrealm's forces alongside Raiden, but is not playable until his inclusion in the Aftermath expansion for Mortal Kombat 11, in which he, Shang Tsung, and Nightwolf try to save their universe by obtaining Kronika's crown. Fujin is ultimately betrayed by Shang Tsung, who drains his soul, but keeps him alive to continue draining his powers for eternity. In Shang Tsung's ending, Fujin and Raiden become his servants.
Fujin placed 40th in UGO's 2012 listing of the top 50 series characters.[63] In 2014, Prima Games included Fujin among their twenty "cheapest" characters in the series due to having a crossbow as his primary weapon in Mortal Kombat 4.[111] For his later appearances, the crossbow could only be used for special attacks.
Quan Chi
[edit]
Portrayed by: Richard Divizio (MKM:SZ, MK4); Carlos Pesina (MK:D, MK:A); Adoni Maropis (Conquest); Michael Rogers (Legacy); Damon Herriman (MK 2021 sequel)[170]
Voiced by: Herman Sanchez (MK4, MK:A); Nigel Casey (MK:D); Ronald M. Banks (MK vs DC,2011 game, MKX); Nick Chinlund (Defenders of the Realm); Darin De Paul (Scorpion's Revenge); Sean T. Krishnan (MK1)
Quan Chi is a nefarious free-roaming sorcerer who is one of the Mortal Kombat series' main villains. He is first seen in MK Mythologies when he hires both Sub-Zero and his rival Scorpion to find a map leading to the amulet in hopes that they would meet in combat; indeed, Sub-Zero kills Scorpion in battle, after which Quan Chi eliminates Scorpion's Shirai Ryu clan and sends Sub-Zero to find the amulet, which is later revealed to be a fake while Quan Chi kept the real one for himself. After reviving Scorpion as an undead revenant, Quan Chi tells him that Sub-Zero was responsible for the deaths of his clan and family. He makes his playable debut in Mortal Kombat 4, in which he joins forces with disgraced Elder God Shinnok, who had been banished to the Netherealm by the thunder god Raiden after centuries of warring, in ruling the realm. He is the title character along with Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), in which he brokers a deal with Shang Tsung for his assistance in reviving the army of Onaga (the game's final boss) in exchange for souls that would preserve Shang Tsung's youth, then eliminate evil Outworld emperor Shao Kahn and the perennial Mortal Kombat champion Liu Kang. They kill Raiden's Earthrealm defenders, but the partnership dissolves when Shang Tsung attempts to steal Shinnok's amulet to take control of Onaga's army for himself. In his futile attempt to stop Onaga, Raiden sacrifices himself by triggering a violent explosion and seemingly killing the Deadly Alliance as well. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), Quan Chi attempts to acquire the godlike power of the elemental Blaze. During the battle royal among the combatants on the Pyramid of Argus in the game's opening cinematic sequence, Quan Chi wounds Kenshi in battle before Shang Tsung (disguised as Ermac) throws him off the pyramid. In the game's training mode, Quan Chi suggests that he, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, and Onaga work together to defeat the forces of good, but is secretly serving as a double agent for Shinnok.
Quan Chi was the lone playable character from the three-dimensional series of games included in the immediate roster of the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot. In the game's story mode, Quan Chi is present at the Shaolin Tournament from the outset, with the resurrected Scorpion serving as his personal assassin. They join forces in the tournament to face the Shaolin monk Liu Kang, but both are defeated. During the second tournament in Shao Kahn's Outworld arena, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung join forces against Kung Lao but are defeated. In the retold events of Mortal Kombat 3 therein, Quan Chi revives the deceased Queen Sindel in order to enable Shao Kahn to invade Earthrealm, after having resurrected the dead elder Sub-Zero — killed by Scorpion in the first tournament — as Noob Saibot to assist him in his plans. He later constructs a Soulnado to take every soul on Earth, but his plans are thwarted by Nightwolf. After Sindel massacres the Earthrealm warriors assembled to stop Shao Kahn's takeover, Raiden seeks cooperation between Earth and the Netherealm by offering Quan Chi their souls as compensation, but Quan Chi has transformed them into his revenant slaves. However, he inadvertently causes Shao Kahn's downfall when he reveals the Elder Gods are obligated to stop the tyrant for failing to honor Mortal Kombat's rules. Raiden kills Shao Kahn and halts his invasion, but Quan Chi makes preparations for Shinnok's invasion, leading Netherrealm's forces in attacking the weakened Earthrealm and Outworld. In Mortal Kombat X (2015), Quan Chi uses the Earthrealm revenants to aid him in retrieving Shinnok's amulet over the course of two years. Though he succeeds in doing so with the aid of D'Vorah, he is decapitated by the resurrected Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) once he learns the sorcerer conspired with the Lin Kuei ninja Sektor to kill the Shirai Ryu.
In Mortal Kombat 1, Quan Chi appears as a DLC character, but makes frequent appearances in the story. In Liu Kang's new timeline, Quan Chi led a meaningless life in the mines before being contacted by "Damashi", who helps him learn his sorcerer abilities.[196] He begins working with Shang Tsung and General Shao to deceive Empress Sindel into turning against Earthrealm and preparing a coup to overthrow her. While creating Ermac, Quan Chi attempts to prepare a soul stealer to unleash on Earthrealm before he is stopped by Ashrah. One of the souls that escapes the contraptions attacks him, resulting in his skin turning white.[197] After discovering that Damashi is Titan Shang Tsung, who is intent on killing everyone in the timeline, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung assist Liu Kang in stopping him. During the final battle, Titan Shang Tsung summons a Titan Quan Chi to assist him, but both ultimately lose.[198]
According to MK co-creator John Tobias, Quan Chi was created as a replacement for Shang Tsung as the main sorcerer character of the series.[199] NetherRealm Studios character artist Solomon Gaitan initially referenced actor Yul Brynner when digitally sculpting Quan Chi's facial features for Mortal Kombat X.[200] Gaitan said that series art director Steve Beran "wanted me to merge Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff's features" during the design process, in addition to researching vultures: "I wanted him to feel like he was in a permanent state of lurking and stalking; waiting for death to happen."[201]
Quan Chi made his Mortal Kombat series debut in one episode of the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and was voiced by Nick Chinlund.[202] The character appeared in four episodes of the 1998 television series Mortal Kombat: Conquest,[203] and in the 2011 web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Quan Chi appears at the climax of a two-part episode featuring Sub-Zero and Scorpion. In the 2020 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, Quan Chi serves as one of the two main antagonists along with Shang Tsung, and resurrects Hanzo Hasashi to turn him into Scorpion and employ him as his servant for eternity. Damon Herriman will play Quan Chi in the upcoming feature film Mortal Kombat 2.
Quan Chi has received mainly positive critical reception for his role in the games,[204][63][65][109][205] though Destructoid commented in 2015: "Quan Chi is a dark sorcerer shitbag that nobody likes, both in the fandom and in the series' narrative [for] unsuccessfully scheming behind the back of whatever master he is currently serving like an incompetent, bald Starscream."[206] However, Topless Robot cited Quan Chi in Defenders of the Realm as "the only contribution to [the] franchise that this series made."[207] Reception to his Fatalities has been divisive, with his "Leg Beatdown" from MK4 rated among the series' best,[204][208][209][158] and the "Neck Stretch" from Deadly Alliance among the worst,[210][211][212][213][214] a sentiment shared by the MK series' developers.[211][215]
Sareena
[edit]
Portrayed by: Lia Montelongo (MKM:SZ)
Voiced by: Danielle Nicolet (MKX), Mara Junot (MK1), Jennifer Grey (Cage Match)
Sareena is a demon from the Netherrealm. She debuts in Mythologies: Sub-Zero as an assassin assigned by Quan Chi to kill Sub-Zero.[216] After being spared by him, she assists him in defeating Quan Chi but is killed by Shinnok. Sareena returns as a playable character in the Tournament Edition port of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, which reveals Shinnok's attack banished her to a lower plane of the Netherrealm. Escaping through a portal, she is offered asylum in Earthrealm by the younger Sub-Zero. However, the training mode of Armageddon sees her again serving Quan Chi, leading to her being defeated by Taven.[217] Following a background cameo in the 2011 reboot, Sareena appears in the story mode of Mortal Kombat X, in which she assists the Special Forces in battling the Netherrealm's forces. In Mortal Kombat 1, she appears as an assist-based Kameo fighter, where she is able to switch between a human-like appearance and her true, demonic form. She also appears in Ashrah's Klassic Towers ending, in which Ashrah rescues her from Quan Chi's control.[198]
Sareena appears as one of the main antagonists of the 2023 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match voiced by Jennifer Grey. She initially appears as a fictionalized version of Grey herself that Johnny Cage attempts to find in Los Angeles to shoot Ninja Mime with, only to reveal she had been cut off from the Neatherrealm for decades and helped set up Cage's film career with her allies from the Brotherhood of Shadows after she discovered he possessed the "blood of the gods" needed to open a portal to the Neatherrealm and summon Shinnok. While Cage fights Shinnok, she faces off against her former ally Ashrah and unleashes her true demonic form in the process. With help from Cage's assistant Chuck Golden, Ashrah is able to kill and defeat her.[218][90]
Sareena was ranked 26th on Den of Geek's 2015 rating of the series' 64 playable characters, for being "Sub-Zero's one moment of humanity snowballing into something meaningful".[65]
Shinnok
[edit]
Portrayed by: Gary Wingert (MKM:SZ); Carlos Pesina (MK:A); Chris Bashen (MKX); Reiner Schöne (Annihilation)
Voiced by: John Tobias (MK4, MKG); Knute Horwitz (MK:A); Ken Lally (2011 game); Troy Baker (MKX, MK11); Robin Atkin Downes (Battle of the Realms, Cage Match)
One of the franchise's primary villains, Shinnok debuted as the boss of MK Mythologies and made his first playable appearance in the main series with Mortal Kombat 4 in 1997. He appears in MK4 as both a playable character and the final boss of Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat X (2015). He is a banished former Elder God who invades and annexes the realm of Edenia with the aid of Quan Chi's forces and the traitorous Edenian Tanya before declaring war against the Elder Gods, specifically Raiden for his punishment, but his mission fails after he is defeated by perennial Mortal Kombat champion Liu Kang. Shinnok's next selectable appearance is along with the then-entire series roster in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), and he features in the game's training mode as having been a longtime friend of the game's main protagonist Taven, who is under the impression that Shinnok is still a force of good as he rescues him from an attack by Li Mei. Shinnok also makes a brief appearance alongside the forces of evil in the battle royal in the opening cinematic sequence against the other combatants at the Pyramid of Argus, when he summons giant subterranean skeletal hands that pin Raiden to the ground before he is struck with a lightning blast.
Shinnok only appears in the closing of the story mode of the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, but is the main villain of Mortal Kombat X. At the start of the story mode, he is sealed inside his own magical amulet, which is possessed over the next twenty-five years by many other characters until Quan Chi is beheaded by Scorpion, freeing Shinnok from inside the amulet. With the aid of D'Vorah and the undead Earthrealm warriors from the previous game, Shinnok invades the Sky Temple, where he subdues Raiden and corrupts the Jinsei (the source of Earthrealm's life force) until a Special Forces unit led by the game's protagonist Cassie Cage arrives to battle the transformed Shinnok (now known as "Corrupted Shinnok") and the revenant army. After Cassie is victorious over Shinnok, Raiden then purifies the Jinsei, which strips Shinnok of his powers. Shinnok returns in the prologue of Mortal Kombat 11 (2019), in which he is tortured and decapitated by Raiden after the events of MKX. His severed head is visited by new boss character Kronika, the Keeper of Time, who expresses sadness at his current state. The game's story mode reveals that Shinnok is actually Kronika's son, as well the brother of fellow Elder God Cetrion.[219]
Shinnok's likeness in Mortal Kombat 4 was based on that of series art director Steve Beran, and like Shang Tsung in the digitized Mortal Kombat games, he was able to mimic the special moves of his opponents, but the graphical limitations of Midway's then-new 3D software prevented him from physically transforming into the characters. Series co-creator and programmer Ed Boon admitted in turn that he felt Shinnok was not imposing enough as a final boss in MK4 due to his having no special moves of his own. He was playable in MKX upon completion of the story mode.[220]
Shinnok appears in the 1997 film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by Reiner Schöne and depicted as the father of both Shao Kahn and Raiden. He is not identified by name onscreen until the film's conclusion. The character appeared in the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms and 2023's Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match and was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.[221]
Critical reception has been mainly negative due to his perceived weak stature as a final boss in the series,[63][222][223][224] though his Fatalities have been better received.[225][226] Den of Geek ranked Shinnok 35th in their 2015 rating of the series' 73 playable characters, critical of how he was "just a lazy Shang Tsung" in MK4, while "it wasn't until Armageddon and Mortal Kombat 9 that they were able to make him seem like an actual threat," and further adding that in MKX, he "was pretty fun as a hybrid of Emperor Palpatine and Loki."[65]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat 4
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold
Jarek
[edit]
Performed by: Mark Myers (MK4)
Voiced by: Jon Hey (MK4), James Freeman-Hargis (MK:A)
Jarek is a member of the Black Dragon clan. Established as the last known member of the Black Dragon, he possesses Kano's special moves and Fatalities. He helps defend Earthrealm against Shinnok, but falls off a cliff in the aftermath when the Special Forces attempt to arrest him. In Armageddon, Jarek is revealed to have survived and develops an obsession with killing all of his opponents.[227] Jarek also appears as one of the bosses in Special Forces (2000), in which he is defeated by Jax. In the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, he is imprisoned in Outworld by Kotal Kahn.
The character makes an appearance in the 2022 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind.
Modeled after Midway character artist Hernan Sanchez,[228] Jarek received a tepid reception for his similarities to Kano. The endings featuring him in Mortal Kombat 4 have also been maligned for their voice acting and dialogue.[65][229][230][231][232]
Kai
[edit]
Portrayed by: Kimball Uddin (MK4)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK4)
Kai is a Shaolin Monk and member of the White Lotus Society who is one of the chosen warriors defending Earthrealm from Shinnok.[233] Afterwards, he goes on quest for self-enlightenment, although he returns in Armageddon.
According to Ed Boon, Kai was developed as an "African American character who was very nimble like Liu Kang" with vertical fireball projectiles. He was also the first character to perform a handstand during gameplay, which was intended to be his main fighting style in Armageddon, but Boon stated this was prevented by time limitations.[234]
Kai came in at 47th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters. Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 said, "With all his projectile moves, he's basically the black Liu Kang".[128]
Meat
[edit]
Meat was originally a skin created by art director Tony Goskie that would depict each fighter in Mortal Kombat 4 as a bloodied corpse.[235] After being established as a canonical character in Deception's Konquest mode, he received a backstory and unique special moves in Armageddon. His Armageddon ending reveals that he is an experiment created by Shang Tsung who escaped the sorcerer's clutches before he could be completed.[236] Prima Games' strategy guide for Armageddon also states that Meat assists Shinnok, although this relationship is not established in the game.[237]
Meat placed 49th in UGO's 2012 listing of the top fifty MK characters, noting that he became a fan favorite for his "ridiculously gruesome moves". Conversely, ScrewAttack ranked Meat fourth in its 2011 ranking of the series' ten worst characters for being "a generic [character] model" without flesh.[238] Ryan Aston of Topless Robot placed Meat second in his selection of eight characters "that are goofy even by Mortal Kombat standards," calling him "a gory riff" on Soulcalibur character Charade and his storyline "a truly flimsy excuse for his existence".[188]
Reiko
[edit]
Portrayed by: Jim Helsinger (Conquest), Nathan Jones (2021 film)
Voiced by: Ed Boon (MK:D), David Beron (MK:A), Robin Atkin Downes (Battle of the Realms),[59] Derek Phillips (MK1)[239]
Reiko is a general who has served Shinnok and Shao Kahn.[240] He first appears assisting Shinnok's invasion in Mortal Kombat 4, while Armageddon depicts him under Shao Kahn's command. After making a background cameo in the 2011 reboot, he appears in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comics, in which he becomes a blood god before being betrayed and killed by Havik.[241]
The character was added to Mortal Kombat 4 to replace Noob Saibot after the developers found the game had too many ninja characters. While his original ending simply depicted him walking through a portal, Reiko's FMV ending showed him wearing the helmet of Shao Kahn. This led to speculation that Reiko was Shao Kahn, which was dispelled when the Konquest mode of Deception revealed that Reiko would sneak into Shao Kahn's throne room to wear his helmet. In an interview, John Tobias stated Reiko was intended to be a reincarnation of Shao Kahn, but this story would be disregarded in later installments.[242] Nevertheless, Reiko's appearance and special moves in Armageddon would be stylized after Shao Kahn.[243]
Reiko was played by Jim Helsinger in the 1998 television series Mortal Kombat: Conquest, where he is one of Shao Kahn's generals. Reiko also appeared in the 2021 Mortal Kombat film, portrayed by Nathan Jones, as one of the Outworld champions. In the 2021 animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, he is voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.[59] In the 2023 game Mortal Kombat 1, he is voiced by Derek Phillips.[244]
Reiko placed 42nd on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters. Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek rated Reiko last in his 2015 ranking of the series' playable characters for what he considered the wasted potential of his storyline in regards to his connection to Shao Kahn.[65] WhatCulture ranked him fourteenth in their 2015 selection of the series' twenty worst characters for "having zero individuality".[245]
Tanya
[edit]
Performed by: Lia Montelongo (MK4)
Voiced by: Rosalind Dugas (MK4), Beth Melewski (MK:D), Jennifer Hale (MKX), Cherise Boothe (MK1)[246]
Tanya is an Edenian who often acts out of self-preservation. During Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4) and Mortal Kombat: Deception, she betrayed Edenia to join Shinnok and Onaga respectively. In Mortal Kombat X (MKX),[247] she joins Mileena's rebellion against Kotal Kahn with the intention of liberating Edenia from Outworld, only to be defeated by D'Vorah and spared at Cassie Cage's behest. In Mileena's ending in Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11), she and Tanya are revealed to be lovers.
In the new timeline depicted in Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1), Tanya is the leader of the Umgadi, a group of warrior priestesses that guard Outworld's royal family, having become one of its most trusted members after her predecessor Li Mei seemingly failed to save Emperor Jerrod and quit in disgrace. Additionally, Tanya is in a secret relationship with Princess Mileena despite the Umgadi's rules forbidding relationships.[121] After Jerrod is restored through Ermac and reveals Li Mei was not responsible for his death, Tanya investigates the incident and discovers the Umgadi's Matron Superiors were the true culprits and framed Li Mei. The newly crowned Empress Mileena subsequently puts Tanya in charge of reforming the Umgadi.[198]
Named after Ed Boon's sister Tania, Tanya was created to replace Kitana in MK4.[248] She placed 34th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 MK characters.[63] Complex named Tanya seventh in their 2011 selection of the top ten underrated MK characters, calling her "the traitor of all traitors in the series, switching her allegiance more times than we can count".[89] Conversely, Den of Geek rated her 68th in their 2015 ranking of the franchise's 73 player characters for being "a one-dimensional villain whose only quality is betrayal".[65]
Introduced in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
Tremor
[edit]
Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore (MKX), Imari Williams (Snow Blind)
Tremor is a ninja member of the Black Dragon clan. As implied by his name, he is able to manipulate the Earth with his immense strength. He is initially depicted as a brown-clad ninja, but would be redesigned to have a body made out of rocks. Originally intended as a playable character for Mortal Kombat Trilogy,[249] Tremor instead debuted as a boss in Special Forces, in which he is defeated by Jax. He made his playable debut as a downloadable character in Mortal Kombat X, although he has no involvement in the story.[247] In the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, it is revealed Tremor was imprisoned in Outworld by Kotal Kahn.
Introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
[edit]
See also: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance
Blaze
[edit]
Voiced by: Simeon Norfleet (MK:A)
Blaze is a fire elemental created to monitor the warriors of the realms. He appears as a hidden character who is forced to protect the last known dragon egg by Onaga's followers. After the egg hatches, completing Onaga's resurrection, Blaze is able to continue monitoring the warriors and discovers they have become too powerful for the realms in his absence. He serves as the final boss of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, in which he brings all the fighters together for a final battle. As part of his mission to prevent an impending Armageddon, Blaze has Taven face him in a fight intended to either kill all the warriors or strip them of their powers. The story mode of the 2011 reboot reveals Blaze was instead defeated by Shao Kahn, prompting Raiden's efforts to change the timeline.
Prior to becoming to becoming a playable character, Blaze originated in the background of Mortal Kombat II's Pit II stage as a Liu Kang palette swap covered in flames and facing off against another Liu Kang palette swap.[250] The character was nicknamed "Torch" by fans, but due to the risk of copyright infringement on the Marvel character Human Torch, Midway officially named him Blaze.[251] In reference to his original role, he has made cameo appearances in Shaolin Monks, the 2011 reboot, Mortal Kombat X, and Mortal Kombat 11.
The character placed 37th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 Mortal Kombat characters, which remarked, "Although [guarding the Dragon Egg] doesn't sound like the job of a badass, you'll change your mind once you see Blaze steamrolling his way towards you".[63]
Bo' Rai Cho
[edit]
Voiced by: Carlos Pesina (MK:DA, MK:D, MK:A); Steve Blum (MKX)
Bo' Rai Cho is a martial arts master skilled in the style of drunken boxing. His attacks mostly center around his weight and bodily functions. An Outworld native, but an opponent of Shao Kahn's tyranny, he trained Liu Kang and many other Earthrealm warriors for the Mortal Kombat tournament as his participation would be on the behalf of Shao Kahn. Bo' Rai Cho trains Kung Lao after he learns of Liu Kang's death, and in Deception, he rescues Li Mei from having her soul trapped inside one of the corpses of Onaga's army. Bo' Rai Cho is later tricked by Mileena, posing as Kitana, into leading Kitana's army to certain defeat against Baraka's forces, but Bo' Rai Cho emerges victorious with the help of Liu Kang. He returns in Mortal Kombat X, in which he is attacked by Shinnok.
The character's name is a play on "borracho", the Spanish word for "drunk". According to Herman Sanchez, Bo' Rai Cho was created because Ed Boon sought to have a "slob" fighter, while John Vogel found that he filled the "master" role for the franchise.[252]
Reception to Bo' Rai Cho has been generally negative for his appearance and gross-out nature. Den of Geek ranked him 55th in their rating of the series' 73 characters, calling Bo' Rai Cho "a Shaw Brothers Boogerman, and the gag wears thin after the third time you use his puke attack".[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 unfavorably compared him to Virtua Fighter character Shun Di as "a big, fat guy" who is utilized to "throw up and fart a lot".[128] ScrewAttack rated him tenth in their 2011 list of the series' 10 worst characters, noting that his in-game weapon was plain wooden staff.[238] The character was listed as the eighth-worst Mortal Kombat character by Mitchell Saltzman of IGN, who opined, "Bo' Rai Cho feels like a mess of ideas all sloppily thrown together to create a character of contradictions."[90] However, Bo' Rai Cho placed 37th on UGO's 2012 list of the top 50 MK characters, which called his comic relief role "a breath of fresh air. Or, in his case, a belch of fresh air".[63] Complex named him one of the series' most underrated characters in 2011.[89]
Drahmin
[edit]
Voiced by: Rich Carle (MK:D)
Drahmin is a demonic Oni who resides in the Netherrealm. He and Moloch are hired by Quan Chi to protect him against Scorpion in exchange for freedom from the Netherrealm, but after Quan Chi betrays them, they align themselves with Shang Tsung to help him counter Quan Chi's treachery. While in Shang Tsung's palace, Drahmin and Moloch encounter Scorpion, who they defeat by throwing into the palace's Soulnado. Drahmin returns in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, in which he is killed by Quan Chi.
Ed Boon described Drahmin as one of the most difficult characters to program because specific code had to be written to prevent Drahmin's arm-mounted club from switching sides whenever the character turned around during gameplay.[253] Den of Geek rated him 47th in their 2015 ranking of the 64 series characters, describing him as "a collection of cool concepts that doesn't make for much of a sum" whereas "Moloch does a lot more with less".[65]
Frost
[edit]
Voiced by: Christine Rios (MK:A); Kelly Hu (MKX); Sara Cravens (MK11)
Frost is a Lin Kuei warrior who possesses the ability to control ice. She was trained directly by Sub-Zero due to the similarities between them and the potential he saw in her, but her skills were compounded by her arrogant nature. When Sub-Zero has her accompany him to help battle Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, Frost steals his Dragon Medallion and becomes frozen by her own powers. Frost is revealed to have survived in the Unchained port of Deception, in which Sub-Zero traps her in a block of ice after she attempts to kill him. She is freed by Taven in the Konquest mode of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, but attacks him after mistaking him for Sub-Zero and is defeated. Frost returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 11, which depicts her receiving cybernetic enhancements. Aligning herself with Kronika by leading the Cyber Lin Kuei against Earthrealm's heroes, she is defeated by Raiden, who shuts down the cyborgs by deactivating her link to them. Frost returns in Mortal Kombat 1 as a kameo fighter.
The character was the first designed by Herman Sanchez for Deadly Alliance.[254] She was placed eighth in Complex's selection of the series' ten most underrated characters in 2011.[89] Den of Geek placed Frost 37th in their 2015 ranking of the series' 73 player characters, calling her addition "a nice touch" to Sub-Zero's rebuilding of the Lin Kuei.[65]
Hsu Hao
[edit]
Hsu Hao is a member of the Red Dragon clan distinguished by his cybernetic heart. After infiltrating the Special Forces, Hsu Hao destroys their Outerworld Investigation Agency branch with a nuclear device. He is eventually found by Jax, who kills him by ripping out his cybernetic heart. Despite this, he returns in Armageddon. Hsu Hao also appears in the Mortal Kombat X comic prequel, in which he is killed by Scorpion.
During development, the character was called Kublai Khan after the Mongolian emperor of the same name.[255] Steve Beran described him as "the anti-Jax" whose cybernetic heart was the result of experiments performed on him by the Chinese army. According to Ed Boon, Hsu Hao had a number of different iterations, with his "Hand Clap" special move inspired by superhero comics.[256]
Hsu Hao is widely regarded as one of the worst characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise. Den of Geek's 2015 ranking of the series' 73 characters placed him as the second-worst.[65] Robert Naytor of Hardcore Gaming 101 described the character as "a slightly racist take at a Village Person".[128] Naming him the series' worst character in 2014, Destructoid noted that "in a game that was littered with lackluster new additions, he was without a doubt the runt of that litter".[257] This negative reception is also present in the development team, with John Vogel intending his death in Deadly Alliance to be canon and Boon making him the first character officially omitted from the Mortal Kombat X playable character roster.[256][258] In reference to the negative reception, one of Erron Black's pre-match introductions in Mortal Kombat 11 depicts him tossing aside Hsu Hao's severed head. However, Hsu Hao was included in the Joker's MK11 ending, in which they join forces with Havik and Mileena in attacking Orderrealm.[259]
Kenshi
[edit]
Main article: Kenshi (Mortal Kombat)
Li Mei
[edit]
Voiced by: Lina Chern (MK:D); Tara Strong (MKX); Kelly Hu (MK1); Grey DeLisle (Battle of the Realms)
Li Mei is an Outworld native from a small village who is forced into a tournament by Shang Tsung and Quan Chi with the promise that her victory would free her village. However, upon winning the tournament, Shang Tsung attempts to place her soul into the corpse of one of Onaga's soldiers. Deception reveals that Li Mei was saved by Bo' Rai Cho, but her contact with the corpse causes her to feel a connection with Onaga. She makes a brief appearance in the story mode of Mortal Kombat X, where she leads a number of Outworld refugees into Earthrealm after Mileena uses Shinnok's amulet to destroy her village. Li Mei returns as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 1, in which she is depicted as the First Constable of Outworld's capitol Sun Do who once served Empress Sindel and led her royal guard, the Umgadi, until Emperor Jerrod was murdered.[citation needed]
Reception to Li Mei has been mixed, with criticism directed towards her Deception design. Den of Geek rated her 57th in their 2015 ranking of the series' entire 73-character roster, feeling she was "only distinguished by her ridiculous outfit of a bandana and underwear".[65] Joe Pring of WhatCulture rated Li Mei sixth in his 2015 selection of the twenty worst Mortal Kombat characters for "[wearing] a bandana while dancing around in metal-plated underwear", which he stated "deserves to be ridiculed".[245]
Mavado
[edit]
Voiced by: Alex Brandon (MK:A)
Mavado is a high-ranking member of the Red Dragon clan. As his clan's top priority is the elimination of the Black Dragon, he aligns himself with Quan Chi and Shang Tsung when they promise to hand over Kano to him for his services. He also defeats Kenshi on their behest. Deception reveals Mavado was killed by Kabal after an unsuccessful attempt on Kabal's life, but he returns in Armageddon, continuing to serve the Red Dragon. Mavado has a minor role in the Mortal Kombat X comic prequel, in which he is killed by Cassie Cage.[260]
Originally named "Malvado", the Spanish word for "evil",[261] Steve Beran conceived a matador-style look for the character,[262] but the idea was nixed due to the belief that it did not fit in with the Mortal Kombat universe. He is the first character in the series to use a physical object for a body-propel special attack, which he performs by shooting two bungee cords into the ground and slingshotting himself feet-first to dropkick his opponent. This attack was incorporated into his "Boot Thrust" Fatality.
Robert Workman of GamePlayBook ranked him eighth in his 2010 selection of the worst MK characters, describing his Fatality as "stupid",[224] but Den of Geek, placed him 39th in their 2015 ranking of the series' 73 characters "for his bungee hook attacks" and taking Kabal's weapons after killing him.[65]
Mokap
[edit]
Voiced by: Dusan Brown (Cage Match)
Mokap is a motion capture actor with an extensive martial arts background. He debuted as a hidden character in Deadly Alliance, but has no involvement with the story; his biography follows Johnny Cage's non-canonical ending of a Deadly Alliance film being created. Mokap also has a limited role in the conflict of Armageddon, in which his involvement is said to be by mistake.[264]
Named after the contraction for motion capture, Mokap is based on Midway graphic artist Carlos Pesina, who provided the motion capture work for Deadly Alliance. Pesina admitted it was "pretty flattering" being included in the game, but also remarked it was "weird" seeing Fatalities performed on him.[264]
Mokap is featured in Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, as an African-American man named Charles "Chuck" Golden. In the film, Golden is depicted as Johnny Cage's loyal assistant who idolizes him. He works with Cage to investigate Jennifer's disappearance before the two ally themselves with Ashrah to stop Shinnok from conquering Earthrealm. After they succeed, Golden attempts to follow in Cage's footsteps, eventually becoming his double in video games and nicknames himself "Mokap."[218][90]
Reception to Mokap has been mostly negative. Den of Geek rated him 55th in their 2015 ranking of the series characters, stating that he "didn't really work well as a comedy character because the game did little to differentiate the characters in terms of personality".[65] In their ranking of the 10 worst characters, ScrewAttack placed Mokap second because "nobody wants to play as a dude with balls on his body".[129]
Moloch
[edit]
Voiced by: Bob Ladewig (MK:D)
Moloch is the sub-boss of Deadly Alliance. An Oni demon of immense size and strength, he and Drahmin are hired by Quan Chi to protect him against Scorpion in exchange for freedom from the Netherrealm. After Quan Chi betrays them by leaving them behind, Moloch and Drahmin align themselves with Shang Tsung to help him counter Quan Chi's treachery. They also defeat Scorpion by throwing him into the Soulnado at Shang Tsung's palace. Moloch also appears in the Mortal Kombat X prequel comic, in which Quan Chi has him killed by the revenant Kitana. In reference to his comic death, Quan Chi is seen holding Moloch's severed head during his Mortal Kombat X pre-match introductions.[265]
Designed by Allen Ditzig, Moloch's concept changed little from his finalized design.[266] Den of Geek rated him 21st in their 2015 ranking of the series' 64 characters, praising his sub-boss role and possessing "some utter brutality that hadn't been felt in a Mortal Kombat boss since Kintaro".[65] Bryan Dawson of Prima Games named Moloch in his 2014 selection of the "cheapest" Mortal Kombat characters for his playable version in Armageddon having "a near infinite combo limited only by the size of the stage" and "ridiculous reach with most of his special moves".[111]
Nitara
[edit]
Portrayed by: Megan Fox (MK1, voice/model);[267] Cristina Vee (MK1, battle grunts);[268] Mel Jarnson (2021 film)
Nitara is a vampire from the realm of Vaeternus who seeks to destroy the orb that binds her realm to Outworld. As the orb is inside of a lava pit that Cyrax is able to enter, Nitara orchestrates a series of events to force Cyrax into helping her in exchange for passage back to Earthrealm.[269] She ultimately succeeds in destroying the orb with Cyrax's assistance, freeing Vaeternus.[270] Her biography in Armageddon states that Nitara leaves Vaeternus for Edenia in an effort to prevent her species from being extermina
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Characteristics of the gut microbiome in esports players compared with those in physical education students and professional athletes
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2022-08-26T00:00:00
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Esports is a category of competitive video games that, in many aspects, may be similar to traditional sports; however, the gut microbiota composition of players has not been yet studied.Here, we investigated the composition and function of the gut microbiota, ...
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Front Nutr. 2022; 9: 1092846.
PMCID: PMC9884692
PMID: 36726816
Characteristics of the gut microbiome in esports players compared with those in physical education students and professional athletes
, 1 , 2 , † , 3 , † , 2 , 2 , 4 , 1 , 2 , 5 , 2 , 2 , 6 , 7 , 2 , 2 , 2 and 1 , 2 , *
Maria Kulecka
1Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Clinical Oncology, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
Find articles by Maria Kulecka
Barbara Fraczek
3Department of Sports Medicine and Human Nutrition, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Physical Education, Krakow, Poland
Find articles by Barbara Fraczek
Aneta Balabas
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Paweł Czarnowski
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
4Department of Biochemistry, Radioimmunology and Experimental Medicine, The Children's Memorial Health Institute, Warsaw, Poland
Find articles by Paweł Czarnowski
Natalia Zeber-Lubecka
1Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Clinical Oncology, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
Find articles by Natalia Zeber-Lubecka
Barbara Zapala
5Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland
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Katarzyna Baginska
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Maria Glowienka
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Monika Szot
6Department of Sports Dietetics, Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport, Gdansk, Poland
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Maciek Skorko
7Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
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Anna Kluska
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Magdalena Piatkowska
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Michał Mikula
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
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Jerzy Ostrowski
1Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Clinical Oncology, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
Find articles by Jerzy Ostrowski
1Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Clinical Oncology, Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland
2Department of Genetics, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Warsaw, Poland
3Department of Sports Medicine and Human Nutrition, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Physical Education, Krakow, Poland
4Department of Biochemistry, Radioimmunology and Experimental Medicine, The Children's Memorial Health Institute, Warsaw, Poland
5Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland
6Department of Sports Dietetics, Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sport, Gdansk, Poland
7Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Corresponding author.
Edited by: Joanne DiFrancisco-Donoghue, New York Institute of Technology, United States
Reviewed by: Agnieszka Białek-Dratwa, Medical University of Silesia, Poland; Ulrike Löber, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (HZ), Germany
*Correspondence: Jerzy Ostrowski ✉ lp.moc.namraw@wortsoj
This article was submitted to Sport and Exercise Nutrition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Nutrition
†These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship
Copyright © 2023 Kulecka, Fraczek, Balabas, Czarnowski, Zeber-Lubecka, Zapala, Baginska, Glowienka, Szot, Skorko, Kluska, Piatkowska, Mikula and Ostrowski.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Associated Data
Supplementary Materials
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GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
GUID: C516E14E-647D-4144-94ED-2CAF20A2AC7F
Data Availability Statement
The data presented in the study are deposited in the SRA at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/885289, repository, accession number PRJNA885289.
Abstract
Introduction
Esports is a category of competitive video games that, in many aspects, may be similar to traditional sports; however, the gut microbiota composition of players has not been yet studied.
Materials and methods
Here, we investigated the composition and function of the gut microbiota, as well as short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and amino acids, in a group of 109 well-characterized Polish male esports players. The results were compared with two reference groups: 25 endurance athletes and 36 healthy students of physical education. DNA and metabolites isolated from fecal samples were analyzed using shotgun metagenomic sequencing and mass spectrometry, respectively. Physical activity and nutritional measures were evaluated by questionnaire.
Results
Although anthropometric, physical activity and nutritional measures differentiated esports players from students, there were no differences in bacterial diversity, the Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes ratio, the composition of enterotype clusters, metagenome functional content, or SCFA concentrations. However, there were significant differences between esports players and students with respect to nine bacterial species and nine amino acids. By contrast, all of the above-mentioned measures differentiated professional athletes from esports players and students, with 45 bacteria differentiating professional athletes from the former and 31 from the latter. The only species differentiating all three experimental groups was Parabacteroides distasonis, showing the lowest and highest abundance in esports players and athletes, respectively.
Conclusion
Our study confirms the marked impact of intense exercise training on gut microbial structure and function. Differences in lifestyle and dietary habits between esports players and physical education students appear to not have a major effect on the gut microbiota.
Keywords: shotgun metagenomics, metabolomics, esport players, professional athletes, diet, physical activity
1. Introduction
The colonic microbiota in healthy adults is dominated by the phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes (which comprise over 90% of the bacteria), and to a lesser extent by Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Fusobacteria. The gut phyla comprises at least 1,800 different genera, and 15,000–36,000 bacterial species, which contain ~10 million non-redundant microbial genes (1, 2). This complex ecosystem trains the immune system, protects against opportunistic pathogens, harvests nutrients and energy from the diet, and degrades dietary carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, thereby producing metabolites with both local and systemic actions (3). The relative abundance of gut bacterial strains is impacted by host genotype and ethnicity, age, and sex, and is highly associated with changes in environmental factors such as diet, physical activity, sanitation, illness, and therapies (4–7). It is not surprising, therefore, that changes in the functional composition of the gut microbiota and its metabolites are associated with several disorders, including obesity-related disorders (3, 6–8). The microbiome of obese individuals is less rich than that of normal body weight individuals, the latter being characterized by changes in the relative abundance of the two dominant phyla: Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes (4, 9). In turn, physical exercise correlates with increased richness and diversity of the gut microbiota, a higher abundance of health-promoting bacteria such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Roseburia hominis, Akkermansia muciniphila, and Prevotella species, and an increase in beneficial microbial-associated metabolites, mostly short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) (10–13).
According to the Central Statistical Office, a Polish system of official statistics (http://www.stat.gov.pl/), the estimated number of video games players in Poland in 2021 reached 16 million, and about 2.6 million are esports enthusiasts; the number of sports clubs that have esports sections in their structures or create programs to support esports is growing. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of gamers worldwide, as the gaming industry is constantly evolving. However, according to a report by Newzoo, the global gaming market is expected to generate $184.4 billion in 2022 with a forecast of growth to $211.2 billion by 2025 (14). Esports, like traditional sports, require a combination of physical and mental skills. However, esports players seem to rely more on cognitive abilities to achieve success (15, 16). Searching for excellence, esports players from universities in the United States practice between 5.5 and 10 h a day before competitions; however, 40% do not participate in any kind of physical activity (17). Moreover, prolonged gaming and associated physical inactivity can lead to malnutrition or overeating, and inappropriate eating habits (18, 19). Male collegiate esports players are significantly less active, and have a higher body-fat percentage, with lower lean body mass and bone mineral content, than non-esports players (20). Other negative consequences of esports gaming include upper limb dysfunction, neck, back, or wrists pain, vision problems, metabolic dysregulation, and sympathetic overstimulation (21–23). However, evidence on whether esports players are more or less physically active than the general population is controversial, as esports players may include physical training as a part of their training regimen and to manage stress (24); indeed, 92.7% of 260 male professional esports players with the normal body mass index (BMI) reported high or moderate levels of physical activity (21). The top 10% of higher-ranked esports players were more physically active than the bottom 90% of players (25); however, 80.3% of 1,772 esports players representing five esports across all skill levels were not meeting the WHO physical activity guidelines at the same rates as others in the general population.
To identify objective measures of factors related to the lifestyle, physical activity, and dietary habits of esports players, we used shotgun metagenomic sequencing and small molecule mass spectrometry (MS) to investigate the gut microbiota and bacterial metabolites, as well as SCFAs and amino acids, in a group of well-characterized Polish male esports players. The results were compared with those obtained from two reference groups: endurance athletes and healthy students of physical education. This is the first metagenomic study exploring esports players' gut microbiome.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Participants
This study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology Local Bioethics Board (decision 54/2017). All participants provided informed consent to participate. Between July 2020 and July 2021, 109 male esports players were recruited at the peak of their gaming season. In addition, 36 male education physical education students were recruited as a control group (University of Physical Education, Cracow) and 25 professional athletes (eight marathon runners, three cross-country skiers, and 14 football players) were assigned to an independent endurance sports player group. Of these, 59 and 36 esports players and students, respectively, completed dietary questionnaires.
The inclusion criteria were the professional level of esportsmanship (for esports players), self-declaration of a good health condition and remaining on a Western-type diet without specific dietary restrictions (for esports players and students). Due to the dominance of men in esports, women were excluded from the study. None of the participants received antibiotic treatment in the last 6 months before entering the study.
2.2. Collection of data regarding physical activity and nutritional habits
2.2.1. Evaluation of physical activity
By definition, the physical activity of professional athletes was extremely high. The Polish version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to measure the physical activity of esports players and students of physical education (26). The questions in the questionnaire referred to the time the subjects spent sitting, walking, or performing moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 10 min (without interruption) over the last 7 days. Activities that lasted <10 min at a time were not considered. Energy expenditure (expressed as MET-min/week) was calculated by multiplying the number of days of activity per week by the corresponding MET value and the average duration of that activity (in minutes). The results for all activities undertaken during the week were then summed to obtain the weekly energy expenditure. Based on the results, participants were assigned to one of three physical activity levels: (1) insufficient (low), physical activity that did not meet the conditions for sufficient or high levels; (2) sufficient, when individuals met one of the following criteria: three or more days of intense physical exertion of not <20 min per day, or five or more days of moderate exertion or walking for not <30 min per day, or five or more days of any combination of physical activity (walking, moderate or intense exertion) exceeding 600 MET-min/week; and (3) high, when individuals meet one of the following criteria: three or more days of intense exercise, totaling at least 1,500 MET-min/week, or seven days of any combination of exertion (walking, moderate, or intense exertion) exceeding 3,000 MET-min/week.
2.2.2. Evaluation of the energy and nutritional value of the diet
A quantitative dietary assessment was performed via a thee day running diary method and a weighing method. Participants recorded a food diary listing all foods and beverages consumed for 3 consecutive days, or on 3 days selected at random, specifying their size in grams or home measures (using a detailed table of home measures and grams of foods and selected foods). Before monitoring, all subjects were trained to ensure correct dietary recording, which consisted of specifying precisely the type of meal consumed (breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner), the time of consumption, and the food products and dishes (including the method of preparation).
The Remote Food Photography Method was used if there were difficulties estimating the portion size consumed. This involved taking digital photographs of food before and after consumption and then sending them to the study author to estimate the amount of a portion consumed (compared with a standard serving size) (27). The completed food diaries were analyzed for accuracy and correctness, and participants were asked to fill in any gaps. All dietary data were then entered into the 'Aliant. Dietary Calculator' (version 2.0) assesses the energy value and nutrient content of foods. The average intake of macronutrients (protein, fat, total carbohydrates), fatty acids, fiber, and cholesterol in both groups was related to normal values for the Polish population (28), and recommendations for athletes (29–32), as well as the average supply of selected micronutrients, were related to normal values for the level of safe (Estimated Average Requirement, EAR), recommended daily amounts, and adequate intake (AI) (28).
2.3. Metagenomics and metabolomics procedures
Fecal samples were collected from all participants. The stool was self-collected using a stool specimen collection kit consisting of a Styrofoam box containing a sterile tube with a spatula and an ice pack. Following collection, the samples were transported at −20°C to the laboratory and stored at −80°C until use.
2.3.1. Metagenomics
DNA was isolated using the QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit protocol (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany), as described previously (33). The quality and quantity of the extracted DNA was assessed by detecting the optical density using a NanoDrop 2000/2000c Spectrophotometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and a fluorometric-based method using the Qubit dsDNA HS Assay Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Carlsbad, CA, USA), respectively. DNA libraries were prepared and sequenced at the CeGaT GmbH genomic service (Tübingen, Germany) on the Illumina NovaSeq 6,000 Platform using 100 bps paired-end reads.
2.3.2. Short-chain fatty acid and amino acid profiling
Metabolites were extracted and derivatized as described (34). Briefly, 100 mg of reach frozen stool sample was placed in a 2 ml tube containing ceramic beads and 1 ml of 10% iso-butanol. The sample was mechanically homogenized and centrifuged, and 675 μl of supernatant was transferred to a new Eppendorf tube. After adding 125 μl of 20 mM NaOH and 400 μl chloroform to the sample, it was vortexed and centrifuged. A 400 μl aliquot of the upper aqueous phase was transferred to a new tube, followed by the addition of 100 μl of pyridine and 80 μl of isobutanol. The volume of each sample was adjusted to 650 μl with ultra-pure water. Calibration standards of SCFAa (formate, acetate, propionate, butyrate, isobutyrate, and valerate) and amino acids (alanine, L-arginine, L-cystine, L-glutamic acid, L-leucine, L-lysine, L-serine, L-threonine, L-tyrosine, L-valine, and L-histidine) were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO). Samples and standards were derivatized with chloroformate isobutyl (50 μl per 650 μl sample or standard). The samples were vortexed and after adding 170 μl, hexane were vortexed again and centrifuged. An aliquot of the upper isobutyl-hexane phase was transferred to an autosampler vial. Gas chromatographic analysis of the fecal extracts was performed on an Agilent 7000D Triple Quadrupole mass spectrometer coupled to a 7,890 GC System with a G4513A autosampler (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA). A VF-5ms column (30 m, 0.25 mm, 0.50 μm) was used for analysis. The temperatures of the injector, ion source, quadrupole, and transfer line were set to 260, 250, 150, and 275°C, respectively. The carrier gas was helium and the flow rate was 1 mL/min. The derivatized sample was injected into the VF-5ms column with a split ratio of 50:1, and the solvent delay was set to 3 min. The oven temperature program started at 40°C, where it was kept for 5 min before increasing to 275°C at a rate of 10°C/min, where it was held for 10 min. The total run time was 38.5 min. MS data were gathered in full scan mode from m/z 15–650 at a frequency of 4.9 scans per second. MassHunter software (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) was used for analysis.
2.4. Statistical analysis
Shannon diversity indices were calculated using the diversity function in the vegan package (version 2.5-7) (35). Values were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis or Mann-Whitney U-test (for two groups only). Bacterial taxa were assigned with Metaphlan3 (36), version 3.0.13, with default parameters. Enterotypes were assigned according to the methods described by Arumugam et al. (37), using the R code present at https://enterotype.embl.de/enterotypes.html. Enterotype drivers were assigned based on NetConfer (38) analysis of correlation coefficient weighted networks. Fisher's exact test verified the relationship between the experimental group and enterotype. Post-hoc analysis was performed according to the methods described by Shan and Gerstenberger (39). Differences in taxa abundance between groups were assessed using the LINDA [Linear (Lin) Model for Differential Abundance (DA)] (40) method for compositional data, with p-values corrected using the Benjamini–Hochberg (41) procedure to minimize the false discovery rate (FDR) and using relative abundance values, computed by Metaphlan3. The Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes ratios were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis or Mann-Whitney U-tests (for two groups only). Differences in metabolite concentrations between study groups and enterotypes were assessed using the Kruskal-Wallis test (with an FDR-corrected Mann-Whitney U-test as a post-hoc test).
Functional assignments were conducted by human version 3.0 (part of BioBakery Workflows) (36), using MetaCyc (42) pathways as a reference database. Quality filtering and decontamination were performed with KneadData as a part of the functional analysis. The LINDA method was used to assess compositional data, with p-values corrected by the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure to minimize the FDR.
3. Results
Altogether, the study included three groups of participants: 109 esports players and two reference groups (36 physical education students and 25 professional athletes).
Sixty-three esports players answered the questionnaire regarding gaming experience. They trained and participated in League of Legends (LOL) (46%), Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) (52.4%), and Starcraft (1.6%); 13 and 87% reported having professional (receiving financial gratification and training under the supervision of a trainer) and semi-professional experience, respectively. Professionals spent more time playing than semi-professionals (6 ± 1.95 h/day vs. 4 ± 1.15 h/day, respectively); the gaming experience of professional players averaged 6.4 ± 2.6 years. Mechanics, tactics, communication, and movement precision were the main contents of the training sessions, which took place daily or several times a week. The weekly training session of CS:GO players consisted of watching two video replays (demos) and participating in 20 practice matches (approximately 3–4 h in total), while official games were played in BO3 mode (about 1–1.5 h). League of Legends players participated in three-team training sessions (scrims) per day (lasting approximately 4–6 h) and took part in Solo Q, a 1 vs. 1 ranking game against randomly assigned non-team players. Esports games are played on various platforms, i.e., consoles, computers, and mobile phones, and using different control devices (computer mouses, keyboards, and gamepads), either live in front of an audience or via an online broadcast. Among esports players, 60.3 and 17.3% were university students and secondary school students, respectively (Supplementary Table 1).
As summarized in Supplementary Table 2, the average age of esports players was significantly lower than that of students (21 vs. 23 years, p < 0.001). The body mass, height, and BMI did not differ between esports players and students. However, esports players demonstrated significantly lower muscle mass (p < 0.001) and higher fat mass (p < 0.001) than students. While the self-reported physical activity of esports players, estimated as energy expenditure, was significantly lower (p < 0.01), their self-reported physical activity level was higher (p < 0.05) than that of students.
3.1. Dietary variables
Dietary variables of esports players and students were converted to nutrient intake values (Supplementary Table 3). The energy value of the esports players' diet was significantly lower (p < 0.01) than that of the students' diet (2,063 kcal vs. 2,418 kcal, respectively). Evaluation of energy balance showed poor balance (in terms of energy intake) in the majority of esports players (70.49%) and students (66.67%). The total protein content and the amount of plant and animal protein in the regular diet of esports players was significantly lower than in the student group. This is a mean (from 3 consecutive days) daily intake (as mentioned in the methodology section) (gg). Total carbohydrate intake was also significantly lower (p < 0.001) for esports players than for students. There was no statistically significant difference in the intake of fat and trans-fatty acids in both groups, although the diet of esports players had a lower fat content than that of students). Evaluation of the average intake of macronutrients, expressed in grams per kilogram of body weight (g/kg bw), showed that the average protein intake of esports players was significantly lower (p < 0.05) than that of students. Intake of total carbohydrates, fructose, and sugars was also significantly lower in esports players than in students; 8.1 vs. 10.4%, respectively), although there was no difference in dietary fat content). Nutrient standards of sugars consumption are expressed as a percentage of energy intake. The supply of saturated fatty acids was higher in esports players (12.01 vs. 9.97%) than in students, and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and cholesterol levels were lower (2.97 vs. 3.92%,). As above, nutrient standards are expressed as a percentage of energy intake. Esports players consumed a significantly lower amount of fiber than the student group. It was noted that both esports players and students showed a tendency to avoid alcohol (consumption was expressed in grams and grams per kilogram bw).
3.2. Evaluation of the gut microbiome, SCFAs, and amino acids in esports players, students, and professional athletes
On average, 43 million reads were generated per sample (median = 43 million). On average, five out of 13 detected phyla (Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia) comprised more than 1% of the microbiome. The dominant phylum was Bacteroidetes, with a mean abundance of 75.45%. Of the 136 genera detected, 13 had a mean abundance higher than 1%; of these, the five most prevalent were Bacteroides, Alistipes, Prevotella, Faecalibacterium, and Bifidobacterium ( ). On the species level, 382 species were detected.
3.3. Enterotype-related changes
SparCC correlation analysis using NetConfer identified three enterotypes, of which enterotype 1 was Bacteroides-driven and enterotype 3 was Prevotella-driven. While both of those taxa had the most significant degrees and betweenness levels in their respective enterotype networks, enterotype 2 shared similar degrees of Alistipes, Bacteroides, and Bifidobacterium in the network (Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Table 4). As presented in , while the enterotype frequency was almost identical in esports players and students, enterotype 1 was not found in professional athletes. In contrast, enterotypes 2 and 3 were significantly more prevalent in athletes than in esports players and students ( ). Furthermore, professional athletes exhibited a significantly lower B/F ratio than both esports players and students ( ).
Table 1
1 (B) 2 (A) 3 (P) Students16 (44%)13 (36%)7 (19%)Esports players48 (44%)40 (37%)20 (18%)Profesional athletes0***15 (60%)*10 (40%)*
When esports players and students were subdivided according to physical activity level, we found statistically significant differences in enterotype distribution (p = 0.0005, Fisher's exact test with a simulated p-value). Bacteroides-associated enterotype 1 was over-represented and Alistipes-associated enterotype 2 was under-represented among participants with the lowest levels of activity when compared with those with a medium activity level ( ).
Table 2
Physical activity Enterotype 1 (B) 2 (A) 3 (P) Level 134 (52%)**18 (28%)**13 (20%)Level 215 (38%)21 (53%)4 (10%)*Level 38 (35%)8 (35%)7 (30%)
3.4. Bacterial diversity
After correction by multiple hypothesis testing, neither α- nor β-diversity differed esports players from students, while the α-diversity differed esports players from professional athletes (p = 0.052, Mann-Whitney U-test, ), and there were statistically significant community dissimilarities between both esports players and students, and professional athletes, as measured by ANOSIM (Analysis of Similarities) (R = 0.14, p = 0.0013, , ).
Table 3
Comparison R Significance Esport players vs. students−0.005465.25E-01Esport playars vs. professional athletes0.27191.00E-04Students vs. professional athletes0.22887.00E-04
3.5. Bacterial abundance
On the species level, nine bacteria (Parabacteroides distasonis, Lachnospira pectinoschiza, Parabacteroides merdae, Bacteroides faecis, Paraprevotella xylaniphila, Veillonella atypica, Veillonella parvula, Streptococcus salivarius, and Streptococcus parasanguinis) differentiated esports players from students, and 31 and 45 bacteria differentiated professional athletes from students and esports players, respectively. Parabacteroides distasonis was the only bacteria that differentiated all groups; professional athletes had a lower abundance than esports players and students, while esports players had a lower abundance than students ( , Supplementary Table 5). Species belonging to the genera Parabacteroides and Bacteroides were under-represented in professional athletes. Esports players were differentiated from professional athletes mainly by the abundance of bacteria belonging to the Bacteroides genus, which was over-represented in esports players.
3.6. SCFA levels
While the concentration of non-SCFAs differentiated the study groups (Supplementary Table 6), five SCFAs differentiated the enterotypes of esports players and students subdivided according to physical activity levels. Of these, isobutyric, pentanoic, and hexanoic acids differentiated between enterotypes 1 and 2; acetic acid differentiated between enterotypes 2 and 3; and pentanoic acid differentiated between enterotypes 1 and 3. Propanoic acid differentiated all enterotypes ( ).
3.7. Amino acid levels
The concentration of each of nine amino acids differentiated esports players from students, four amino acids differentiated professional athletics from students, and methionine differentiated esports players from both students and athletes ( ).
Only phenylalanine did not differentiate between enterotypes in esports players and students ( ). The Kruskal-Wallis test identified methionine as being statistically significant, but neither pairwise comparison was significant, probably due to loss of statistical power. Alanine differentiated enterotypes 1 and 2, leucine and glutamic acid differentiated enterotypes 2 and 3, and glycine, valine, isoleucine, and proline differentiated enterotype 2 from the remaining two enterotypes ( ).
3.8. Correlation analysis between bacteria and metabolites
We calculated the sparCC correlation coefficient to evaluate the correlation between the abundance of bacteria and the concentrations of SCFAs and amino acids. Of 161 bacterial species with a mean abundance > 0.01%, 21 (including genus Bacteroides, and Prevotella) ( ) and 12 species ( ) correlated with SCFAs and amino acids, respectively. Bacteroides vulgaris, Barnesiella intestinihominis, and Prevotalla copri correlated with at least five of seven SCFAs studied, and Alistipes finegoldi correlated positively with all nine amino acids studied. Faecalibacterium prausnitzi correlated negatively with seven amino acids.
3.9. Microbiome-related functional analyses
Metagenome functional content was assessed using the MetaCyc pathway database. In total, 370 pathways were tested to make functional comparisons between esports players, students, and professional athletes. While we found no functional differences between esports players and students, 77 and 158 metabolic pathways differentiated professional athletes from students and esports players, respectively (Supplementary Table 7, ). Of these, 71 pathways were common in both comparisons. The differential pathways mainly were associated with Fermentation, Amino acid Biosynthesis and Degradation, Carbohydrate Biosynthesis and Degradation, Fatty Acid Biosynthesis and Degradation, and TCA Cycle pathways. Of note, compared with athletes, all differential pathways associated with Fermentation, the TCA Cycle, and Fatty Acid beta-Oxidation were under-represented in students and esports players.
3.10. Correlations between dietary variables, gut taxa, and metabolites
Two hundred fifty-three macronutrient-species pairs were showing Spearman's rank correlation coefficients between 0.2 and 0.39. Of these, at least one of the 25 dietary measures is associated with the abundance of at least one of the 91 bacterial species ( ). Nine species were associated with seven or more nutrients. Veillonella parvula, Haemophilus patainfluenzae, Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum, and Bacteroides xylanisolvens correlated positively with 16, 11, 10, and eight nutrients, respectively, and Desulfovibrio naceaebacterium, Alistipes putredinis, Ruminococcus sp CAG330, and Bilophila muris correlated negatively with nine different nutrients. These findings confirm the key role of diet in the functional composition of the gut microbiota.
The correlation between species abundance and nutrients was also assessed using LINDA. As shown in , nine species (Bacteroides coprocola, Bacteroides faecis, Bacteroides sp CAG443, Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum, Lachnospira pectinoschiza, Parabacteroides merdae, Paraprevotella xylaniphila, Prevotella copri, and Veillonella parvula) were correlated with eight nutrient measures, whereas seven species correlated with the amount of drinking water. All associations were positive.
Table 4
Species Nutrient log2-FC Bacteroides coprocola Fat0.85 Veillonella parvula Total carbohydrates1.03 Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum Total carbohydrates g/kg bw1.45 Veillonella parvula Fructose1.14 Veillonella parvula Glucose1.15 Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum Lactose1.40 Bacteroides sp CAG443 Alcohol g/kg bw0.72 Prevotella copri Alcohol g/kg bw1.82 Veillonella parvula Water1.172 Bacteroides coprocola Water0.80 Parabacteroides merdae Water1.24 Lachnospira pectinoschiza Water1.18 Bacteroides faecis Water0.91 Paraprevotella xylaniphila Water0.87 Bacteroides sp CAG443 Water0.67
4. Discussion
Both host genetics and environmental factors modulate the structure and function of the gut microbial community. Of the latter, exercise and diet affect the gut microbiota of professional athletes and highly fit individuals, who show more dynamic changes compared with their less fit or sedentary counterparts (43). For the first time, our study presents an integrated view of the relationship between physical activity levels and dietary habits of esports players and the composition and function of their gut microbiome. The study included two reference groups: healthy university physical education students and professional athletes.
Although esports players had lower muscle mass and higher fat mass than physical education students, which might suggest a more sedentary lifestyle, neither the α- nor the β-diversity of the gut microbiota differentiated these two groups. Instead, β-diversity significantly differentiated professional athletes from both of these groups, and α-diversity distinguished professional athletes from esports players. Similarly, the α-diversity of professional rugby players was statistically higher than that of high-BMI, but not low-BMI, controls (44). In female endurance runners (45) and healthy men aged 60–70 years with lifelong experience of strenuous endurance training (46), the β-diversity, but not the α-variety, was affected.
Bacteroides-driven enterotype 1 is typical for a “Western” type diet enriched in protein and animal fat, whereas Alistipes-driven enterotype 2 is associated with long-term consumption of carbohydrate-rich diets (8). Furthermore, while the bacterial cluster of enterotype 1 acquires energy primarily from carbohydrates via the glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathways, bacteria clusters of enterotype 2 and 3 may also degrade mucin glycoproteins of the gut mucosal layer (7). The three dominant enterotype clusters were identical in the esports player and student groups, but enterotype 1 was dominant; however, enterotype 1 was under-represented and enterotype 2 was over-represented in male participants with medium to high levels of physical activity compared with those with low levels. Consistent with this, enterotype 1 was not found in the athlete group. By contrast, previous studies show that neither continuous physical activity performed at low doses by premenopausal women (12), nor extensive exercise training conducted by female endurance runners (45), modified the enterotype clusters. In addition, while the B/F ratio did not differentiate esports players from students, professional athletes had a significantly lower B/F ratio than both of these groups. This confirms our earlier findings showing that Polish athletes have a higher abundance of Firmicutes than controls (33). In healthy young adults, the B/F ratio correlates significantly with cardiorespiratory fitness, a powerful indicator of athletic performance and health, but not with other fitness parameters, nutritional intake, or anthropometric variables (43). Also, daily exercise enriches Firmicutes in the gut of young children and adolescents (47). However, some studies report a decreased B/F ratio in obese individuals, although other studies showed no changes, or even an increased B/F ratio, in obese animals and humans (47). Further studies are needed to assess whether an altered B/F ratio can be used as an exercise signature.
On the species level, the abundance of nine bacteria differentiated esports players from students; all were under-represented in esports players, while as many as 31 and 45 bacteria differentiated professional athletes from students and esports players, respectively. However, only Parabacteroides distasonis species differentiated all three experimental groups from each other, with the lowest abundance in esports players and the highest in controls. This species contributes indirectly to methane, acetic acid, and anti-inflammatory succinic acid production (48), thereby playing a protective role against colon cancer development and human obesity (49). Its contribution to autoinflammatory diseases remains ambiguous (50).
A higher abundance of Akkermansia species, which have potentially beneficial effects, were found in athletes when compared with the two other groups. Akkermansia is associated with overall good health and is less abundant among obese individuals (51). Additionally, A. muciniphila increases gut barrier function (52), promotes the release of human glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), downregulates the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and controls fat storage (53, 54). The following abundant species, Roseburia hominis, is a known producer of butyrate (55). In turn, Anaeromassilibacillus sp An250 is associated with both low BMI (56) and high-intensity physical activity (57). Lactate, a by-product of skeletal muscle energy metabolism during exercise, is transported to the gut, where it enhances the growth of propionate-producing bacteria, including Veillonella (58). Here, we found that the Veillonella genus correlated positively with muscle mass and fiber and carbohydrate consumption. Additionally, two potentially harmful bacteria, Bilophila wadsworthia and Ruminococcus gnavus, were under-represented in professional athletes. Bilophila wadsworthia is a bile-tolerant and sulfite-reducing bacteria associated with a high-fat animal-based diet. Hydrogen sulfide produced by B. wadsworthia is a well-known pro-inflammatory factor (59, 60). Ruminococcus gnavus is connected to Crohn's disease through its pro-inflammatory product, glucorhamnan polysaccharide (61), and is associated with metabolic syndrome (62). By contrast, the microbiome of esports players and students was enriched in beneficial Bacteroides species: B. thetaiotaomicron contributes to an increase in mucus production and strengthening of the epithelial barrier (63), and has anti-inflammatory properties that inhibit the development of Crohn's disease (64), while B. uniformis is negatively correlated with physical activity in older adults (65), alleviates obesity in conjunction with an appropriate diet (66) and enhances endurance exercise performance (67). To summarize, our findings confirm changes in the relative abundance of different taxa reported in professional rugby players (44), marathon runners (58), professional cyclists (68), and other sports persons (69), as well as in elderly healthy individuals with a lifelong history of endurance training (46) and premenopausal women after continuous physical activity (12).
The metabolic activity of the gut microbiota results from the degradation of dietary carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins that exert both local and systemic activity; these include SCFAs and branched-chain fatty acids, alcohols, ammonia, amines, sulfur compounds, phenols and indoles, glycerol, and choline derivatives (3). SCFAs, like butyrate, acetate, and propionate, are the most abundant fecal metabolites. Butyrate serves as an energy source for colonocytes, improves the integrity of intestinal epithelial cells, increases mucin and cytokine production, and induces differentiation of naive T cells. Acetate and propionate also aid in anti-inflammatory processes and cytokine production. In addition, after adsorption from the gut lumen, SCFAs modulate metabolic responses at different sites, including skeletal muscle (70), and their excess can be incorporated into the gluconeogenic and lipogenic processes (71). As SCFAs play a pivotal role in whole-body energy metabolism, and their levels correlate with variations in the gut microbiota (7), it is not surprising that high levels of physical activity enrich taxa known to participate in SCFA production (70). However, although a 6-week exercise training program in lean sedentary people enhanced fecal SCFA concentrations (13), and a literature search confirmed increased production of gut SCFAs in response to exercise (51), none of the SCFAs differentiated our studied groups. Instead, five SCFAs differentiated between enterotypes. Of these, propanoic, isobutyric, pentanoic, and hexanoic acid differentiated between Alistipes- and Bacteroides-driven enterotypes, acetic and propanoic acid differentiated between Prevotella- and Alistipes-driven enterotypes, and pentanoic acid differentiated between Prevotella- and Bacteroides-driven enterotypes.
Increased bacterial metabolic processes in the distal parts of the colon may also result from higher availability of amino acids (72). In contrast to fecal SCFAs, the amounts of each of the nine amino acids studied herein differentiated esports players from students, whereas the amounts of four amino acids differentiated professional athletes from students, while methionine differentiated esports players from the two other groups. However, the role of interrelationships between gut amino acid levels and the structure and function of the gut microbiome has not been clarified.
On the functional level, we found no differences between esports players and students, although several metabolic pathways were over-represented in professional athletes compared with esports players and students; these included Fermentation, Amino acid Biosynthesis and Degradation, Carbohydrate Biosynthesis and Degradation, Fatty Acid Biosynthesis and Degradation, and the TCA Cycle pathways. The other pathways, including Cell Structure Biosynthesis, Nucleoside and Nucleotide Biosynthesis, and Generation of Precursor Metabolites and Energy, appears to differentiate between enterotypes. The results of our functional analysis correspond with other findings. As demonstrated previously, the diverse responses of glycemic control and insulin sensitivity to training results from shifts in microbial fermentation (73). Similarly, high-intensity interval training enhances amino acid biosynthesis pathways (74). Likewise, the microbiomes of rugby players are enriched for carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid biosynthesis, and SCFAs synthesis pathways (44). SCFAs, as precursors for lipid or carbohydrate synthesis, enter the TCA and are used as substrates for lipogenesis or gluconeogenesis, respectively (70). Therefore, the bioavailability of gut SCFAs is considered to be a potential regulator of skeletal muscle metabolism. Peak oxygen uptake during cardiorespiratory fitness exercise correlates with changes in gut microbiota diversity. Diversity is associated with microbial metabolic functions, including fatty acid biosynthesis (75). Additionally, the microbiome of athletes showed a significant increase in the capacity for nucleotide biosynthesis and improved cell structure, which play a role in energy demands essential in endurance sports (44).
4.1. Conclusion
Overall, although our findings are consistent with those of previous reports in many respects, the differences between esports players and physical education students concerning lifestyle and dietary habits appear to have little effect on most gut microbiota parameters. Nevertheless, differences in the abundance of several bacterial species and marked differences in fecal amino acid concentrations between these two groups were noted. However, the main limitation of this study, as well as other similar studies, relates to the self-reporting of physical activity time and dietary habits. People tend to overestimate their activity levels (76) and underestimate their food intake. Therefore, future studies should be conducted based on strictly controlled dietary intake and physical activity levels to fully determine their effect on gut microbiota composition.
Data availability statement
The data presented in the study are deposited in the SRA at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/885289, repository, accession number PRJNA885289.
Ethics statement
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Institute of Oncology Local Bioethics Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
MK: data curation, formal analysis, visualization, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. BF: conceptualization, methodology, resources, validation, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. AB, PC, KB, MG, AK, and MP: investigation. NZ-L: investigation, visualization, and writing–review and editing. BZ and MSk: resources. MSz: resources and writing–review and editing. MM: visualization and writing–review and editing. JO: conceptualization, funding acquisition, project administration, resources, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Funding Statement
This work was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) under Grant 2018/29/B/NZ7/00809.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.1092846/full#supplementary-material
Supplementary Figure 1
Between-class analysis visualization, including representation of cluster drivers (C) and individual samples within clusters (B), as well as the choice of optimal cluster number (A).
Supplementary Table 1
Gaming experience of esports players.
Supplementary Table 2
Characteristics of esports players and control groups.
Supplementary Table 3
Energy and nutritional value of the diets of esports players and students.
Supplementary Table 4
Network parameters, calculated by NetConfer, for three enterotypes: Prevotella (P)-, Alistipes (A)-, and Bacteroides (B)-driven.
Supplementary Table 5
Differences between esportsmen and healthy students, and professional sportsman, calculated by the LINDA model.
Supplementary Table 6
Kruskal-Wallis test p-values for comparison of short chain fatty acid levels in students and esports playares, presented as the median and IQR (in parentheses).
Supplementary Table 7
Functional differences between professional sportsmen, esportsmen, and healthy control students, as calculated by the LINDA model.
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Kano (Mortal Kombat)
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2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00
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|- |} Kano is a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series who made his debut in the first Mortal Kombat in 1992, as one of the villains. Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, Kano rises beyond the level of mere brutality and...
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Neo Encyclopedia Wiki
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https://neoencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kano_(Mortal_Kombat)
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Mortal Kombat series
Kano in Mortal Kombat (2011) First appearance Mortal Kombat (1992) Voiced by
(English) Michael Des Barres (MK:DotR)
David Allen (MK:SF)
Michael McConnohie (MKvDC, MK2011) Motion capture Richard Divizio (MK, MKII, MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Trevor Goddard (first film)
Joseph "Eddie" Acavedo (Live Tour)
Darren Shahlavi (Legacy) class=" infobox hproduct" style="float:right; width:264px; font-size:90%; text-align:left;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" Origin Earthrealm; Template:Flag Fighting-Styles Xing Yi (MK:DA, MK:A)
Aikido (MK:DA)
|- |} Kano is a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series who made his debut in the first Mortal Kombat in 1992, as one of the villains. Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, Kano rises beyond the level of mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. It was through his resourcefulness that he convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life, and it was through ruthless ambition that he later ascended to position of general of Outworld's armies. His actions have made him the nemesis of Sonya Blade and Jax Briggs, the latter of whom is responsible for causing the facial damage which led to Kano wearing his signature metal face plate.
In video games[]
Kano is the leader of the Black Dragon criminal empire. He made his first chronological appearance in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, freeing fellow Black Dragon cohorts No Face, Tasia, Jarek and Tremor from a U.S. Special Forces security facility, under the pretense that they would reform the Black Dragon organization, but really intending to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. Annihilating an entire squad at the site of the prison break, they escaped the scene. With his Black Dragon associates given their assigned tasks, Kano headed to Outworld where he recovered the Eye of Chitian, an artifact through which he would acquire incredible power. Unfortunately for him, however, Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs had overcome his accomplices and defeated him. Jax used the eye to transport them back to Earthrealm, and proceeded to bring Kano into custody though he would soon escape.
Kano entered Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament after hearing rumors that Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches, intending to steal them for the Black Dragon. He was pursued by Lieutenant Sonya Blade, who held a personal grudge against Kano because he had killed a former partner of hers. While Kano was free to take part in the tournament of his own accord, Sonya and her unit were captured by Shang Tsung, who offered Sonya an ultimatum to compete in Mortal Kombat, or she and her unit would be executed. Sonya and Kano survived the tournament, but many others died, including Sonya's men. After the final battle between Shang Tsung and Liu Kang, Kano teamed up with Sonya and Johnny Cage to fight Goro. During the battle, the island began to crumble and Kano and Sonya were captured. They spent the events of Mortal Kombat II in captivity, as seen in the background of Kahn's Arena. Kano then managed to convince Outworld's emperor Shao Kahn to accept him as a weapons instructor for his armies. As a man with knowledge of Earthrealm weaponry, he was the most suitable candidate.
Later, during the events of Mortal Kombat 3, Sonya tossed Kano to his apparent death from the roof of a high building. He was found by Motaro, who healed and imprisoned him. In turn, Motaro was attacked and killed by Sheeva, who freed Kano from his prison. Although they originally hatched a plan to murder Shao Kahn, Kano turned on Sheeva in the decisive moments, resulting in Sheeva's death. Kano was then hastily promoted to general of Outworld's rapidly shrinking army before the invasion was defeated. Shao Kahn's act of promoting Kano, however proved to be a lucky gamble, as Kano was a very competent general. Even in the face of overwhelming odds, Kano stood ground and eventually managed to repel Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army. He returned to Shao Kahn's palace just in time to watch from the shadows as Shang Tsung and Quan Chi sprung their attack on the weakened emperor. As soon as the battle was finished, Kano declared his allegiance to the new rulers of Outworld, the Deadly Alliance. The two had Kano oversee the enslavement of a small village, who would construct a temple over Onaga's tomb to house the Soulnado. During its construction, Kano was assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervened, as the Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon member Mavado: he would eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano. Mavado attacked and left Kenshi for dead, earning his battle. It would seem that Mavado won the fight, as in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Kano is found by Taven to have been held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan for quite some time (possibly explaining his absence from Deception). Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Taven that the Red Dragon had been experimenting on him, as well as their own clan members, in an effort to create real-life genetically engineered dragons and human-dragon hybrids, Kano mentions that they were trying "something new" on him, although he leaves before he elaborates on what that "something" is.
Kano makes an appearance in the non-canonical retelling of MKII, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks where he is seen fighting Sonya during the opening sequence and reappears later in the game as a boss character whom the player (as either Liu Kang or Kung Lao) must defeat with the assistance of Jax to protect an imprisoned Sonya. He is subsequently killed by Jax following the battle. Kano also appears in the non-canonical crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. He is not playable in the story mode, but it is revealed that he was defeated by The Joker, who at the time was allied with Deathstroke. Kano also appears in the iOs game Arkham City Lockdown as an Easter Egg fighting Batman in one of the levels.[1]
In other media[]
Kano appears in the Mortal Kombat comic books by Malibu, keeping his personality and history faithful to the early games' portrayal. He also was protagonist of a 3-issues miniseries alongside Raiden entitled Rayden & Kano. During the Blood & Thunder series it is shown the origin of Sonya's vendetta against him, when he kills Sonya's partner (called Lance/Sparky in the comics) during a tournament battle by means of a heart rip. His motivations to loot the island are replaced by his discovery of the Tao Teh Zhan and the powers it grants. During the series' epilogue in the Tournament Edition issue, he's finally captured by Sonya and Jax and sent into custody. He would later escape (as shown in the Breakout mini-story that came with the U.S. Special Forces issue 1) and during the Battlewave series he would be disposed by his superiors in the Black Dragon due to his failure, only to be rescued by Raiden. Raiden would attempt to use Kano to eliminate Shao Kahn by means of a mystical sword that drew power from a bad guy turned to the side of good, but Kano betrays Raiden and joins Shao Kahn, remaining in his forces the following issues.
Kano appeared in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and was played by Trevor Goddard. The film expanded upon Kano's rivalry with Sonya from the games; she now had a personal interest in seeking vengeance against Kano for killing her partner. Shang Tsung hires Kano to lure Sonya into the Mortal Kombat tournament and promises to grant Kano the reward he desires for his efforts after he faces off against Sonya in the tournament, demanding that Sonya is not to be harmed but merely humiliated, claiming that he has plans for her. During their match, Kano gleefully taunts Sonya about how he murdered her partner. After beating Sonya harshly, Kano is caught off guard by a leg lock from Sonya, and is soon trapped between her thighs and at her mercy. Shang Tsung betrays Kano and goads Sonya into finishing him off. Despite pleading for his life, Sonya proceeds to break Kano's neck.
Kano appeared twice in the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, voiced by Michael Des Barres. His rivalry with Sonya was continued in the storyline, and a flashback scene in which he killed Sonya's Special Forces partner prior to the tournament was included in one episode.
British actor and martial artist Darren Shahlavi portrayed Kano in Mortal Kombat: Legacy. During the first two episodes, he takes Sonya hostage and plans to kill her when a SWAT team led by Jax and Stryker attacks the Black Dragon warehouse. During the assault, Kano engages Jax in combat but is defeated, losing his eye in the process. He is later found by his henchmen and is given a cybernetic eye as a replacement. Kano also appears in the ninth episode which takes place before these events.
Kano will make an appearance in the up-coming 2012 animated film Wreck-It Ralph (from Walt Disney Pictures).[2]
Development[]
Kano originally had a large helmet with two red eyes. The concept was dropped later on to be replaced by a metal piece over his right eye. In Kano's bio card in Deception, Ed Boon mentions how Kano's bionic eye in the first game (involving digitized actors) was created by cutting out a piece of a plastic mask and painting it a silver color, then attaching it with spirit gum to actor Richard Divizio's face. Kano was left out of the Game Gear and Master System version of Mortal Kombat due to memory constraints. In Deadly Alliance, Kano had a move with his butterfly-knives called "ear to ear". This was based on a line in the first Mortal Kombat movie, where Kano said he used his knife to slit the throat of Sonya's partner "from ear to ear". The Konquest mode in Deadly Alliance stated that Kano's metal face plate was the result of facial damage during an encounter with Jax.
Goddard's Australian interpretation of Kano was so well received by fans that Kano was retconned as Australian from his original American-Japanese decent. In Special Forces, Deadly Alliance, Shaolin Monks, Armageddon, MK vs DCU and Mortal Kombat (2011), Kano is notably modelled after Goddard's look in the film and speaks with an Australian accent.
Promotion and merchandise[]
In 1994, Hasbro released a Kano action figure apart of their Mortal Kombat toyline basing his figure and the other figures on a G.I. Joe mold.[3] In 2006, Jazzwares released a Kano action figure apart of their Mortal Kombat toyline featuring multiple articulation points and a character specific weapon.[4]
Reception[]
Kano is most notable for his Fatalities, often regarded by various sources to be among either the best or the worst in the series. UGO Networks also rated Kano's heartrip Fatality as second in their listing of the "Top 11 Mortal Kombat Fatalities" noting it was the original Fatality in the first Mortal Kombat that sparked the ire of "anti-video game violence advocates".[5] GameTrailers ranked Kano's "skeleton remover" Fatality from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance sixth on their "Top 10 Mortal Kombat Fatalites".[6] GamePro however criticized Kano's "Stomach Pounce" Fatality from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe rating it fifth on its "Top 12 Lamest Fatalities" listing, regarding the development of the Fatality, GamePro commented that "absolutely no effort was put in creating it." [7] Game Informer also rated one of his Fatalites from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe as one the worst Fatalities in Mortal Kombat calling it "tame even as a standard Street Fighter attack" and noted that it was executed "without even a drop of blood shed."[8] Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, when comparing Sub-Zero's Spine-rip Fatality to Kano's Fatality claimed that it stood out more because Kano's heartrip Fatality did not have a "mark left on the opponent's body."[9]
In 2011, UGO.com ranked him as the seventh best fictional cyborg character of all time.[10] Cheat Code Central listed Kano as the fifth best Mortal Kombat character, who commented "This badass serial killer was always the character I choose when feeling the need to get in touch with my dark side."[11] Game Revolution ranked him at #10 on their "Top 10 Old School Mortal Kombat Characters" article.[12] In UGO Networks' 2012 list of the "Top 50 Mortal Kombat Characters", Kano placed at 24th, where they praise his heart rip Fatality.[13] However, IGN described him by just saying that he "sucks".[14]
References[]
[]
Kano - The Mortal Kombat Wiki
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Kano (MKX) Fan Casting
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[
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View casting suggestions for Kano (MKX), and make your own suggestions for roles you think they should play in upcoming films!
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myCast - Fan Casting Your Favorite Stories
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https://www.mycast.io/talent/kano-mkx
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Join myCast
Do you love movies? Fan casting? myCast is the place for you!
Join thousands of other users in fan casting your favorite stories. Take 30 seconds to create a completely free profile, which will allow you to:
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Join myCast
Do you love movies? Fan casting? myCast is the place for you!
Join thousands of other users in fan casting your favorite stories. Take 30 seconds to create a completely free profile, which will allow you to:
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https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-mortal-kombats-gruesome-fatalities-led-to-video-game-ratings/
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How Mortal Kombat's gruesome fatalities led to video-game ratings
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2015-04-16T11:08:47-07:00
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You may hardly blink at Mortal Kombat X's gore, but the early 90s original prompted senator Joe Lieberman to lead a crusade against violent video games.
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Digital Trends
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https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-mortal-kombats-gruesome-fatalities-led-to-video-game-ratings/
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In the months leading up to this past week’s release of Mortal Kombat X, the Internet was buzzing with each new video of the game’s notoriously gory “Fatality” finishing moves. While certainly on the gratuitous end of the video-game violence spectrum, MKX is hardly alone in its embrace of hyperbolic gore. Head to your local game shop and you can find shelves full of creative ways to eviscerate men, monsters, and everything in between.
Back in the early 90s, however, the original Mortal Kombat‘s gore was unheard of in games. It made such a splash that it became embroiled in a video-game violence scandal involving senate hearings, the Sega-Nintendo rivalry, and Captain Kangaroo. Mortal Kombat became public enemy number one for the conservative crusaders arguing that violent video games would destroy America’s youth. The ensuing scuffle only served to secure Mortal Kombat‘s place as one of the most iconic games of its time, and resulted in the creation of the ESRB rating system that still governs the North American video-game industry today.
Recommended Videos
Finish him!
Mortal Kombat was born in 1991 when artist John Tobias and programmer Ed Boon, two employees at the arcade-game developer Midway, were tasked with creating an answer to Street Fighter II, which had just been released in arcades to immense acclaim. In order to set MK apart from Capcom’s iconic fighter, Tobias hit on the idea of using digitized footage of real-life actors as the basis for the character’s sprites. The technique had already been used to good effect in a number of arcade titles, such as Narc and Pit-Fighter. Actors were dressed up, filmed and then, with a bit of touch-up, imported into the game. The resulting graphics were considered at the time to be some of the most realistic visuals ever in a video game.
Graphics aside, the gameplay cleaved closely to Street Fighter‘s. Two combatants would face off on a two-dimensional plane in tactical brawls, with unique sets of special moves and combos to master for each character. It wasn’t until playtesting that Tobias and Boon hit on the innovation that would come to define the franchise. “There was an anti-climactic moment at the end that created the opportunity to do something cool,” Tobias explained in Tristan Donovan’s 2010 book, Replay: The History of Video Games. “We wanted to put a big exclamation point at the end by letting the winner really rub his victory in the face of the loser. Once we saw the player reaction, the fact that they enjoyed it and were having fun, we knew it was a good idea.”
That “exclamation point,” of course, was the fatality, an over-the-top, secret finishing move that players could use to to give their foe a flashy execution at the end of the match. In the original game, each character had one fatality, ranging from Raiden shocking his opponent with lightning until their head exploded to Kano ripping out his foe’s still-beating heart. The fatalities proved to be immensely popular, helping Mortal Kombat become a blockbuster hit for arcades where players eagerly competed for the chance to brutalize one another. Given the game’s immediate success in arcades, it was only a matter of time before it would be ported to home consoles.
“Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell!”
Acclaim Entertainment took on the task of adapting Midway’s arcade version for the dominant home consoles of the time: the Sega Genesis and Super NES. Sega, as part of its attempt to reach teenage and adult gamers, approved the game along with all of the arcade version’s violence. Nintendo, on the other hand, held much stricter content policies, maintaining that its products were primarily for children. Accordingly, Nintendo executives insisted that Mortal Kombat‘s gore be toned down substantially for the SNES, including removing the fatalities entirely. Despite Acclaim’s insistence that the fatalities were one of the game’s main selling points, Nintendo held firm, and eventually a censored version of the game was developed for the platform. Nintendo paid for its prudishness when the more violent Genesis version went on to outsell its SNES counterpart five times over.
Released on September 13, 1993, Mortal Kombat was one of the biggest video-game launches to date. Acclaim spent a whopping $10 million on TV advertising to promote the release on “Mortal Monday.” Children and teenagers across the country asked their parents for the game, which was parodied in a Simpsons episode a few years later as Bonestorm (above). Among these children was the nine-year-old son of the chief of staff for Joe Lieberman, a Democratic senator from Connecticut (and eventual Presidential hopeful) who was utterly horrified at the extreme violence he believed to be marketed at children. Lieberman called the video-game industry to task with a senate hearing in 1993.
Flawless victory
In the week prior to the hearings, Senator Lieberman held a press conference to condemn violent video games with Captain Kangaroo, a popular children’s TV host from the 50s through the mid-80s. That Lieberman chose Captain Kangaroo rather than a more contemporary figure like Mr. Rogers perhaps speaks to how out of touch he was with the entertainment industry he was attempting to punish. Video games had grown up considerably over the course of the 80s, as did many of their earliest fans, who were increasingly interested in games with more mature subject matter.
Under mounting political pressure, rivals Sega and Nintendo met to hash out a strategy for the impending hearings. Sega advocated for an age-based rating system like films had, which would allow them to continue producing violent games. Nintendo saw little need for outside regulation, however, because of its own family-friendly ethos internally dictating what could and could not be published for its console. At the debate’s heart was the question of whom video games were for. Nintendo held the more conservative position that games were for children, while Sega recognized the growing number of older gamers and the possibility of games catering to a wider range of tastes and ages. To the bewilderment of Lieberman, executives from both companies took potshots at one another during the hearings.
Related: Mortal Kombat X review
Although the video-game industry was raked over the coals for being violent and sexist, evidence about the relationship between video game violence and real-world behavior was inconclusive. A three-month recess was called for the industry to implement a rating system. In that time, the industry’s leading publishers left the Software Publishers Association and formed their own Interactive Digital Software Association to have a stronger lobbying presence in Washington. They also formed the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to manage the new industry-wide age rating system, which sufficiently placated the Senate to defuse the threat of a state-run regulator or an outright ban on violence.
Confident in the new rating system, Nintendo relaxed its content policies and let Mortal Kombat II come to the SNES unchanged. With its new ‘M’ rating, the developers were safe to freely promote subsequent games in the series without fear of accusations that they were intentionally corrupting children. Although Lieberman set out to limit violence in video games, the net result of the hearings was to actually make it safer to develop games with adult content such as sex and violence. Whoops.
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I remember being a kid and tripping over ads for the Ultra Games Metal Gear, the one with Snake’s whole inventory on a white background? I never played the game as a kid, not to my memory, but I saw that ad on dozens of comics, which means I saw it thousands of times as a kid. It caught my imagination. In Mario you had a fire flower, a tanooki suit, and a cape. But this guy had all types of weapons and gear, like a video game Rambo.
Nowadays, when I want to play a game, I just play it. I download it or trek to Best Buy or buy it on Amazon. It’s nearly instant gratification at this point, limited only by my bandwidth at home. But as a kid? I couldn’t talk my mom into buying anything, especially not if it was about something violent. Star Fox was one thing, but Mortal Kombat? Nah, son. Too realistic.
So I spent a lot of time thinking about video games. I pored over game magazines when I could get them. I still remember having an EGM with a big blow-out on a Samurai Shodown and some info on how to make Mai Shiranui’s boobs bounce in King of Fighters. I read it ’til it came apart, and then I kept reading it because it was the only way I’d experience KoF until years later when I got a Dreamcast.
Metal Gear came out a little early for me to be able to read about it, so the ad had to be enough. I don’t know what I thought the game was like. All I knew was that I wanted to play it because it sounded amazing.
I didn’t play a Metal Gear until Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation. I decimated my SNES collection to get a chance to buy a PlayStation for cheaper from Funcoland or Toys-r-Us or somewhere, and I survived on Madden, Suikoden II, whatever Working Designs put out, Colony Wars, a bunch of demo discs, and Final Fantasy VII for ages.
But MGS tho. I don’t remember what made me go for it, but I assume I saw news of it in the mags and then found a demo somewhere and then wheedled my way into the full disc.
It’s hard to under-sell how I felt experiencing the thing that begins to happen around 7:15 into this clip:
It looks like garbage now, all low-resolution textures and chunky polygons, but there’s a difference between watching it and playing it. In this moment, you were Snake, and that moment when your controller starts vibrating…it captured me. It got me. I loved FF7 but they didn’t ever talk and the game looked like a cartoon. MGS was next-level, ultra-realistic and grim but still incredibly fun and well-designed. Video games weren’t even really using force feedback yet, it was still new. But MGS gave me extensive, high-quality voice acting and scripted sequences, in addition to using the controller itself as a storytelling device, among other features. It was mind-blowing. MGS was the future. Static-y “Horryoukid” vocal clips were dead and gone. It raised the bar.
I’d experienced nothing like it at the time, and MGS is my favorite franchise to this day. I bought a PS3 of my own for MGS4, and beating that game gave me a feeling that hadn’t been beaten since the first time I beat Ninja Gaiden Black. It felt like an accomplishment, instead of something I did at 1 in the morning on a work night.
I can’t claim twenty-seven years of fandom. I was busy being a toddler in 1987. But MGS has been with me since 1998. I started playing it before I really knew what a pacifist or fascist really was, and as I’ve grown, I’ve found a wide variety of things to appreciate. Kojima has his hooks in me, and even though I’m mostly not into most games nowadays, I’m finding that I’m always up for Metal Gear. Nobody does it better.
Here’s what Metal Gear Solid looks like now:
La-li-lu-le-lo, forever and ever. Amen.
This is the first stage of Killer Is Dead, the new game directed by Hideyuki Shin, art direction by Takashi Kasahara, music direction by Akira Yamaoka, with story and executive production by Suda51. It’s called “Episode 1: The Man who Chose the Moon.” The video is about five minutes long.
I made a joke with a friend the other day about how if someone tried to create a Dogme 95-style movement for video games, their list of rules would essentially describe Suda51 games. Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes, Killer Is Dead, all of these are basically the same game, gameplay-wise. One button to hit, one button to guard crush or secondary attack, another button to dodge/counter, and an optional jump button. Vaguely or explicitly annoying minigames. Gameplay that’s just good enough to be rewarding to a certain type of person, but not good enough to be A-list. I think of Suda51 as a dude who is really interested in making sure that the children of today still get to play Dreamcast games, and I appreciate that. All of his games are a solid B, maybe B+, but in terms of being interesting, in terms of being art, in terms of being experiences, Suda51’s games are A+ across the board. Shadows of the Damned and Black Knight Sword break the gameplay pattern, the latter being a throwback to a different genre than the other games and the former being more of a shooter than action/adventure game, but they’re both similarly obtuse and difficult, in terms of skill or patience.
“The Man who Chose the Moon” was my real introduction to Killer Is Dead. I watched a debut trailer, I think in Japanese, but I avoided any info on the game up until the day it came out and I decided to buy it. “The Man who Chose the Moon” is part-tutorial, part-cinema, and the blending of the two is what made it such a lightning strike for me. The only thing you do is walk forward, watch a cinema, and then press a button.
But what got me, what made me realize I was going to see the game through instead of getting bored as quickly as I usually do these days, was the moment you had to press and hold R1. Mondo Zappa, the main character, raises his sword, the screen changes, a voice says “Killer is dead,” and then you’re told to release R1, at which point the sword comes down and Tokio’s head comes off.
There was something about that moment, about a quicktime event being used in this fashion, as opposed to the normally annoying way they’re deployed now. (Do this on short notice, or repeat this section forever!) It felt cinematic and interesting in a way most QTEs don’t. It feels stylish. It blends story and gameplay into one thing, putting you directly into Mondo Zappa’s shoes.
Style is substance. I tend to think of substance as deep gameplay or a rewarding story, something along those lines. Something that takes time to digest, the concrete and quantifiable aspects of video game production. The Last of Us, for example, excelled at substance, even in the multiplayer. I like substance because it feels like I’m getting my money’s worth. Games are expensive, and if I’m dropping sixty on a disc or download, I need to be wowed. The most direct method is substance, but style’s just as good.
Style is harder to quantify. It’s not just visual style, or audio direction, or gameplay. It’s Mondo Zappa murdering people to finance sexual encounters, a grown man having a catchphrase, gameplay that continues to refine a blueprint established forever ago. Style is the aggregate of everything.
Killer Is Dead has style in spades, and the substance derives from that.
Further Reading:
I like this look at Killer Is Dead through the lens of Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle and death drive concepts. It’s deeper than I went, but having played through the game a couple of times, it feels right.
So now that I have a new writing job, you’d think that I’d dedicate more of my time strictly to writing. You’d be right, but yet these days I’m finding my attention being dragged away by something incredibly stupid that can’t help but captivate me.
It’s the phenomenon that’s sweeping the internet. I bring you, Salty Bet!
So what is Salty Bet? Salty Bet is a 24/7 site that streams MUGEN matches and allows its users to bet fake money. The odds and payout are calculated based on how much people have collectively bet on which character.
I think I might be getting a little ahead of myself. First I should explain MUGEN. MUGEN is a program that’s been around since 1999 that lets you custom make your own fighting games. You get to put together your own roster of characters from Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat and really anywhere. Like I said, it’s completely custom. You can have anyone from Rolento from Street Fighter Alpha 3 to a terrible series of MS Paint frames turned into something halfway playable. Programmers from all over made thousands of characters of varying quality.
I paid a good amount of attention to MUGEN back in the early 00’s. What I found was that a lot of the enthusiasts and detractors both took it way too seriously most of the time. This was during the time when fighting games were still 2D and easy to rip onto your computer, so there were a lot of faithful depictions of mainstream fighters. I’ve seen people looked down upon for basically having fun with MUGEN. Like, say, making a version of Sagat with two eyes and crazy attacks that he never had. Or maybe Ken with angel wings.
Things got looser as the years progressed, mainly because MUGENgineers had to find new ground. 2D fighters were dying out and they were running out of characters to rip. I stopped paying attention for a while, but I always saw some kind of “Marvel vs. DC” or “Marvel Superheroes 2” type project. As a whole, more people tried to make either original characters based on preexisting sprites, upgraded characters or flat-out new guys. And it’s awesome.
Detractors of MUGEN mainly point out that the whole thing is pretty worthless because it’s the most unbalanced garbage in the fighting game universe. And they’re right! But that was never what MUGEN was about to me. I think I actually played MUGEN once. The rest of the time, I played around in CPU vs. CPU mode. I mean, what’s the point of having Sub-Zero and Ryu in the same game if you can’t just sit back and watch them duke it out?
That’s what Salty Bet is all about. Just showing random AI-based exhibitions isn’t really enough, even with the people in the chat going nuts over it. Salty Bets includes the ability to bet fake money. You start off with $400 and you can bet however much on each match. Based on the bets, the odds and potential payouts are tabulated and the fights begin. Sometimes it’ll be obvious. If one character has over a million salty bucks gambled on them while the other has maybe ten thousand, it’s going to be a slaughter. Like clockwork, one of the people who bet on the underdog will announce in the chat, “I have made a terrible mistake!”
They also say a bunch of sexist shit, but we don’t have to talk about that right now.
If you bet away all your money, luckily there’s a bailout system that doesn’t let you go under a certain amount. I heard it was $10, but these days I’m finding myself at $28 an awful lot. They also refer to this place as the “salt mines”. If you donate money to Salty Bet, you’ll always have a minimum of $666 and can go all-in on your heart’s content.
So how do you know who to bet on? It can be hard. Sometimes you might see two guys from the same game who aren’t even comparable. One will dominate while the other just stands around and gets killed. It’s a pile of different things to take in mind, such as move set, speed, hit points, hit box, damage and AI. For instance, Takuma Sakazaki from the latest King of Fighters game looks really well-animated and all, but he will just stand around and punch every now and then when he isn’t getting his ass handed to him.
There’s also an influx of Dragonball Z characters. Those guys are a crapshoot. They’re mostly very small, which gives them a tiny hit box. In other words, if their opponent keeps punching most of the time, they aren’t going to land most of their attacks. The DBZ folks also tend to have super attacks where not only do they shoot laser beams, but they kill their opponents in one hit. The drawback is that the AI in these guys are usually terrible, so even if they have three bars, they’ll still just take a beating and abstain from trying to go for the easy win.
It’s also important not to listen to the advice of the chat. They might be telling you that Kabal is “real”, but they’re just trying to convince you to bet everything on him. That in turn increases their winnings when Kabal turns out to be totally shitty and eats it in five seconds.
Watching Salty Bet can be a fun showcase of the original/edited characters, especially in the superhero sense. I’ve seen Lex Luthor, Green Lantern, Black Adam, the Atom, Plastic Man, Flash, Jean Grey, Mongul, Mr. Fantastic, Darkseid, Thanoseid, Astonishing-style Cyclops, Iron Lantern, Wonder Woman, Thor, Carnage, Scream, Agony, Sandman, Kitty Pryde and Mole Man. Some of them are really expertly done (ESPECIALLY Sandman). There’s also an Ash from Evil Dead who pops up a lot and some really cool Mega Man characters redrawn from the Mega Man from Marvel vs. Capcom.
It will eat up your hours if you let it, but just remember one piece of advice: NEVER bet against Rare Akuma, Ronald McDonald or Silversamurai. Betting against Silver Samurai is fine, though.
Zatanna was announced as the next Injustice: Gods Among Us DLC character, so you know what that means.
ZATANNA ZATARA
Alias: No, that’s her actual name!
First Appearance: Hawkman #4 (1964)
Powers: Skilled in all sorts of magic
Other Media: Appeared on all sorts of cartoons, Smallville
Zatanna is one of the earliest legacy characters in comic books. Her father Giovanni Zatara was a crime-fighting magician who appeared all the way back in Action Comics #1 (the comic that debuted Superman). Zatanna lived as a stage magician and illusionist for years, leaving it to search the world for her lost father. Over the course of her journey, she discovered that she was a special kind of human called “homo magi” that made her able to control magic. No longer would she rely on sleight of hand. She was the real deal. Like her father before her, she is able to project spells by speaking backwards. When her ability to speak is removed, she’s still able to project her spells by writing them out in her own blood.
Her search for her father took place over the course of various comic titles, culminating in the Justice League helping her. She worked with the League a handful of times before becoming a full-fledged member. During the 80’s, she got rid of her more memorable fishnets and top hat look for something incredibly generic and had some romantic tension with Barry Allen Flash (he was a widower at the time). She left in the middle of the ill-fated Justice League Detroit era.
For a while, Zatanna would usually team up with fellow magic user John Constantine, who she had an on-again-off-again relationship. She also had something going with Doctor Thirteen, a detective known for being the last skeptic in the DC Universe. What I mean is that he believes that everything from magic to Superman sightings is smoke and mirrors and ravings of lunatics. His daughter Traci doesn’t have the nerve to tell him that she too has magical powers.
The retcon introduced in Identity Crisis brought Zatanna back into the forefront. Years ago in the Justice League, the team found supervillain Dr. Light raping Elongated Man’s wife Sue. As voted by the League, Zatanna mindwiped Dr. Light and made it so that not only could he not remember the act, but she rewired his head so that he wouldn’t do it again, forcing him into the role of an inept comedy villain. Then she mindwiped Batman because he saw what she did. Then she mindwiped Catwoman to be nicer as a way to make Batman feel better. Then she mindwiped Flash villain the Top into being good, who in turn also mindwiped other Flash villains into doing the same. All of that exploded in her face over time.
This led to a sweet-ass story by Grant Morrison called Seven Soldiers of Victory. It was 30 issues where the first and last were bookends and the other issues were split into 4-issue miniseries about seven different characters. The characters included the C-listers (Zatanna and Mr. Miracle) as well as the reimagined (Frankenstein, Guardian, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer and Shining Knight). The seven different miniseries would show the different characters fighting different aspects of the same major threat while never crossing paths until the end. All of them intertwined in really cool ways.
In Zatanna’s story, she dealt with her problems with using magic too much for her own ends, including the mindwipe episodes. She ended up fighting against Zor, an evil magician who was meant to represent both writer Alan Moore and the idea of a comic book writer (or “Time Tailor”) going out of his way to shit up a superhero’s life because darker = better. This made thematic sense as years earlier in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing series, he proceeded to kill off Zatanna’s father and end the Zatanna/Constantine relationship in one fell swoop.
Against Zor, Zatanna was able to break through reality and reach out through the panels and towards the reader, wishing for forgiveness for all the bad things she’s done. In a nice touch, she said she could feel thousands of pairs of eyes looking at her all at different times. The other Time Tailors (the other DC writers) saved her by removing Zor from the equation and allowed her a brief reunion with her late father. During the story’s big finale, Zatanna magically set all the players into the correct positions by shouting, “!EKIRTS SREIDLOS NEVES”
What I mean to say is that Grant Morrison’s writing is fucking weird, but also fucking awesome.
Seven Soldiers also gave us the Frankenstein Monster as a grim, sword-swinging slayer of all that is wicked who works for a secret government organization and OH MY GOD WHY AM I THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS EARTH WHO IS RALLYING FOR FRANKENSTEIN AS A DOWNLOADABLE CHARACTER FOR INJUSTICE WHAT THE FUCK?!
Anyway. Zatanna has remained a bit of a supporting character in the DC Universe since then, briefly being a member of the Justice League again and having a bit of a fling with Batman at one point. She had her own ongoing series that didn’t last long, mainly because it’s really, really hard to get behind a magic-based superhero. I mean, Superman has to actually punch a villain, easy as it is. It’s hard to write a story where a magic-user doesn’t just snap his or her fingers and wish the bad guy away.
That series was written by one Paul Dini and I suppose I should talk about him. Paul Dini is known for being one of the big wheels in the creation of Batman: The Animated Series and all of its spinoffs. Dini is also known for being a little TOO into Zatanna. Just off the top of my head:
– Did a Zatanna-centered episode of Batman despite her not really having much to do with him in the comics. Not that that’s really a problem in itself, but he later went on to force a romantic relationship between the two when he was writing Detective Comics, going so far as to retcon in a childhood friendship. This was kind of weird because the main Batman book was playing up Bruce Wayne’s relationship with then-girlfriend Jezebel Jet as being seriously serious.
– Before Zatanna had made a single appearance anywhere outside of comics, Paul Dini wrote an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures where recurring character Batduck was invited to join the Just Us League. This included an appearance of Fifi the Skunk as Scentanna, whose sole screen time was dedicated to having Hampton bust a pig nut over how hot she is.
– Dini married a Zatanna lookalike who is also a stage magician. Artist Alex Ross began using her as a model for whenever he’d include Zatanna in his realistic-looking comics.
Since New 52, Zatanna has appeared as a member of Justice League Dark, an offshoot team of magic users who take on mystical threats that the regular Justice League are ill-equipped to face themselves. The team includes the likes of John Constantine, Dead Man, Shade the Changing Man and FRANKENSTEIN WHO SHOULD BE IN INJUSTICE I SWEAR TO GOD GOD DAMN IT!
Evo 2013 has come and gone and while the bland Injustice: Gods Among Us tournament showcase probably poisoned the well for the game getting another high-profile appearance next year, it did at least show off a new trailer for Injustice DLC. Not only is John Stewart an available alternate skin for Green Lantern (Phil LaMarr voice acting included), but they’ve announced the first of the second set of DLC characters in Martian Manhunter.
So let’s take a look at the history of everyone’s second-favorite cookie monster.
MARTIAN MANHUNTER
Alias: J’onn J’onzz, John Jones, Fernus the Burning, Bloodwynd, Bronze Wraith and dozens of others
First Appearance: Detective Comics #225 (1955)
Powers: Super strength, speed, shape-shifting, telepathy, invisibility, laser vision, flight, intangibility
Other Media: Was a big player in the Justice League cartoon, showed up on some of the different Batman cartoons and starred in the terrible live-action Justice League pilot/movie.
Years ago, Patton Oswalt wrote a graphic novel called JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, where the main character – existing as Oswalt’s mouthpiece – referred to Martian Manhunter as the Bob Dylan to Superman’s Elvis Presley. When you’re a kid, you love the optimistic spitcurl, but when you get older, you start to appreciate the more serious giant brow. Martian Manhunter is a great foil for Superman, mainly different in that he was an adult when he made his exodus from his dying planet and that affects him differently.
The original origin was that J’onn J’onnz, a Martian lawman, was accidentally transported to Earth thanks to an experiment by Dr. Erdel. While Erdel would have been able to send him back, the shock of seeing this Martian caused him to have a heart attack and die. In the original continuity, Mars was still populated, so J’onn was driven by his quest to return. Back then, the idea of shipping a guy to Mars, even in a superhero world, was considered rather difficult. How novel.
J’onn used his shape-shifting abilities to take the identity of John Jones (get it?) and became a detective who would use his powers to give him the edge. His appearance as Martian Manhunter was meant to be a middle-ground version between Martian and human, being the best of both worlds. He joined the Justice League, used mainly as a stand-in for when the publishers felt Superman was being used way too much. For decades, J’onn was considered to be THE staple member of the Justice League. He appeared in nearly every incarnation of the team, which offset how little juice he had in carrying his own solo series, no matter how many times they tried.
Eventually, J’onn was reunited with his people and went on to rule Mars. He was written out of comics for a while until being brought back into the Justice League fold. I seem to remember that he had to save Earth from his own people in the final adventure of the classic “Satellite-Era Justice League” (ie. the original version of the team that started in the 60’s and ended in the 80’s). There was a part where he challenged another Martian to a fight and while the narrative strictly said that they were both invisible during this fight, the artist drew them like normal anyway.
Things got pretty dark for Martian Manhunter around this time. He was on the outs with his race. He joined the infamously bad Justice League Detroit (otherwise known as Aquaman leading a team of angsty teenagers) and ended up becoming the leader towards the end, only to have a couple of the kids tragically die on his watch. Then after Crisis on Infinite Earths changed continuity, it also reshaped J’onn’s origin. J’onn’s insane brother unleashed a plague upon Mars that wiped out everyone but J’onn himself. Not only did Dr. Erdel’s machine pull him from space, but also from time. The destruction of Mars was thousands of years ago. Like Superman, he was the last of his kind… until they brought in guys who were also Martians down the line.
It picked up for J’onn, though. He had a big role in Justice League International, known for being the fun and funny era. He mainly played the straight man to jokey characters Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. Thanks to Captain Marvel, he was also turned onto Oreo cookies (later renamed Chocos due to trademark) and became addicted. He also led his own Justice League side-team called Justice League: Task Force and nothing of note came from that other than the time he temporarily turned himself female.
Every now and then, J’onn and the Justice League would have to face the White Martians, a genetic offshoot who were more dedicated to war while the Green Martians were more peaceful. The most famous of these battles was the beginning of Grant Morrison’s Justice League run where a team of superheroes came to Earth to create a utopia while antagonizing the Justice League. Batman figured out that they were White Martians in disguise and easily defeated them thanks to their weakness of fire.
Fire is something all Martians fear, though it’s shown to be more of a psychological weakness than physiological. In other words, fire only hurts J’onn because he lets it. He briefly got together with a reformed fire-based villain named Scorch, who helped him get over his fear of fire. This turned out disastrous. We found out that eons ago, when the Martians were still primitive life forms, they were both bloodthirsty and virtually unstoppable. The Guardians of the Universe (Green Lantern’s bosses) were concerned with what this would mean if the Martians could evolve to figure out space flight. They intervened and subdued the entire race, injecting them all with a fear of fire as a way to keep them all in check.
No longer bound by this gigantic weakness, J’onn became corrupted by this savage, forgotten piece of his bloodline. He became a beast known as Fernus the Burning and showed that he was really the most powerful member of the League all along, as even Superman was helpless against him. Turned out Batman had a solution to this situation as well by siccing Plastic Man on him. Plastic Man’s immune to mind control and has a better grasp on shapeshifting, so he was able to help take down the mad Martian. J’onn and Fernus were separated from each other as two different identities in the end.
Nothing much happened with J’onn for a while. After Infinite Crisis, he got a new look that looked closer to his pure Martian form, mainly due to his pessimism towards humanity. This was for his new solo series which once again sold like shit and was canceled. J’onn was killed by Libra and the Secret Society of Supervillains in the story Final Crisis. Sweetly enough, Batman visited J’onn’s tomb and left a single Choco cookie.
J’onn returned from the grave during Blackest Night as one of the more unbeatable walking corpses. At the end of the story, he was one of the dozen characters fully resurrected. J’onn then starred in the series Brightest Day, where he was able to make Mars fertile again and ended up clashing with an insane Green Martian D’kay. J’onn had to kill D’kay and destroy the budding life on Mars, showing that in the end, Earth was his only true home.
With the New 52 reboot, J’onn had never joined the Justice League in the past but instead was part of Stormwatch, a cloak and dagger superhero organization. There, J’onn fought against evil from the shadows, but eventually left the team and removed all their memories of him being there in the first place. Since then, Martian Manhunter has been brought into the Justice League of America, the US government’s personal team meant to counter the regular Justice League if they ever get out of line. Martian Manhunter is there to deal with Superman.
Probably the saddest depiction of J’onn is in Kingdom Come, the dystopian future storyline. In order to give Superman vs. Captain Marvel more gravitas, J’onn had to be taken off the table. He appeared in one scene to aid Batman, depicted as a gibbering and mentally broken John Jones who could barely function after trying to open his mind to all of humanity. Poor guy.
One of the better Martian Manhunter stories is New Frontier, which exists as both a wonderful graphic novel and a pretty good animated film. When showing off his hybrid superhero appearance to a human friend, he was flatly told, “Real men wear pants.” And that’s a fair point because, really, what the hell is that outfit?
20) Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – BOB RICHARDS/SLIM BOB
2012
Bob rules. With a design that’s Ken Masters meets Sammo Hung, his confidence comes from his massive size. Despite only three game appearances to his name, Bob’s been all sorts of things. Top US martial artist, celebrity, suave ladies man, bounty hunter and superhero. At least, that’s what he is in his Tekken Tag 2 ending.
The art style here is beautiful, taking the form of stylized motion comics with a little more movement mixed in. Bob sees some kids being picked on by a gang of punks. He shows up on the scene in a yellow superhero costume, introducing his battle cry, “SPEED AND… WEIGHT!” The punks aren’t impressed and think he’s supposed to be a road sign. They tell him to be like a good road sign and go stand in traffic. Bob doesn’t take their advice.
The kids cheer him on and join in with his battle cry. Then he sees a woman falling off a ledge on a nearby building. Bob tries to figure out how to get to her and sees a man putting bungee cords into a van. Bob steals those bungees and uses them to propel himself into the air, catch the woman and cause massive shockwaves in the ground upon landing, all while yelling, “SPEED AND… WEIGHT!” There’s an awesome shot of one of the kids he rescued excitedly high fiving the bungee van driver. An entire crowd gathers to cheer him on.
The next day, Bob is disappointed when he sees the headlines.
Bob has a similar ending in the form of Slim Bob. See, Bob is like the anti-Elvis Presley. He takes pride in his girth, but in his Tekken 6 ending, the success led to him letting himself go and becoming thin and handsome, much to his horror. That version of him became playable in Tekken Tag 2 and in his ending, he wears a red version of the superhero outfit. Unfortunately, it’s many sizes too big and he has to keep the pants from falling down. He rescues an old man in a subway from the same muggers, only this time they refer to him as “Sci-Fi Santa Claus.” Slim Bob takes them out, but feels weaker compared to his true, blubbery self.
Then he sees that the same woman from the other ending is on the train tracks, screaming for help. He picks her up, throws her off the track and then lays on the track just as a train goes over him. He’s fine, but is horrified when the woman hands him his accidentally-discarded mask. She calls him her hero and kisses him with an entire cheering crowd around them, but we later see that despite everything, Bob is still depressed over his slim frame.
19) Mortal Kombat 4 – JAX
1997
God bless the terrible Mortal Kombat 4 endings. After figuring that text was the way of the dinosaurs, Midway decided that their first 3D Mortal Kombat game needed cutscene endings. While the Playstation version had full motion video, the arcade and Nintendo 64 versions had to rely on the in-game graphics to tell the stories. Stories filled with jerky animation, horrible dialogue and even worse voice acting. They’re magnificent.
Jax easily has the best, especially since it’s an extension of Jarek’s ending, which is sort of an extension of Sonya’s ending. Sonya confronts Jarek on a completely generic-looking plain of grass about how now that Shinnok is defeated, Jarek is going to be taken into custody. Jarek advances on Sonya, saying that he agreed to help them during this crisis, but he’ll never turn himself in. “THE BLACK DRAGON LIVE ON!”
Suddenly, it pans out to show that they’re on top of a cliff, accompanied by the worst dramatic music you’ve ever heard. Sonya tells Jarek that the Black Dragon died with Kano and that Jarek is the last one around. With a scream of, “UMMBSULKAIIIIEEEEEEE!” Jarek runs at her, misses and falls off the cliff. Sonya calls Jax on her walky-talky to inform him what just happened, but Jarek shows that he’s not so dead after all. He climbs back up, grabs Sonya by the ankle and throws her to her death. Then he stomps down on the walky-talky so hard that it not only breaks, but vanishes completely! There are no pieces of it anywhere when he moves his foot!
The walky-talky business was pointless anyway, because Jax turns out to be five feet away all this time. Weird how Jarek didn’t notice him what with there being no trees or anything. Jarek tries to talk his way out of it, but Jax isn’t hearing it. He grabs Jarek by the throat and holds him over the cliff with absolutely zero detail below. Jarek begs for his life and says that Jax has to uphold the law. This is brutality!
“Wrong, Jarek! This is not a brutality… this is a Fatality!”
Despite the subtitles, he’s still saying, “UMMBSULKAIIIIEEEEEEE!!”
It’s so beautifully shitty.
Read the rest of this entry �
40) Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe – SUB-ZERO
2008
Sub-Zero gets the special treatment in the big DC crossover game. He’s the only guy on the Mortal Kombat side who’s aloud to take down Batman in a straight fight in the story mode. The story mode also paints a picture of Sub-Zero being a guy who’s unsure of what it is he should be doing. He’s more virtuous than what his ninja clan stands for, but he’s also the odd man out when it comes to the other defenders of Earthrealm. Nobody trusts him to do the right thing, but he does want to do the right thing.
Inspired by Batman, Sub-Zero decides to use his efforts to being a cape-wearing vigilante who creeps through the darkness and cold to crush evil wherever it lies. This way he can be a good guy and defend Earthrealm without having to put up with Liu Kang and the others. The Lin Kuei doesn’t take the desertion well and much like Batman, Sub-Zero will now have to contend with a pissed off league of assassins trying to hunt him down.
39) Skullgirls – PEACOCK
2012
Peacock is the one character in Skullgirls who has a personal connection with the final boss Marie (otherwise known as the Skullgirl). Patricia was mutilated by the mafia and her friend Marie, in all her sadness and anger, found the Skull Heart and wished for revenge. She’s since started massacring the mafia, while at the same time, becoming more and more of a puppet for the Skull Heart’s evil and turning into something increasingly demonic. Patricia was rebuilt as Peacock to destroy Marie, augmented with reality-bending cybernetics. Due to her own shattered psyche over what she’s gone through and her love for cartoons, Peacock takes the form of an old-timey cartoon character and fights with cartoon physics.
Peacock confronts Marie and tries to talk her down to no avail. Marie shows off that she even took out the man who nearly killed Peacock and started this mess. Still, Peacock knows that Marie is fighting a losing war for her soul and it’s only a matter of time before the Skull Heart takes over completely and makes her unstoppable. Peacock defeats her friend and as part of her victory, is offered the Skull Heart. She’s able to make any wish her heart desires, but why do that when she’s already the strongest?
Marie is still alive, but is falling to pieces by the second. She apologizes for all she’s done. Peacock smiles and forgives her, saying that they’ll always be friends. Besides, now that she’s fulfilled her purpose of destroying the Skullgirl, she can find a new purpose in continuing where Marie left off, killing off mobsters left and right. Marie feels happy about this and burns to nothing.
Peacock makes good on her promise and takes out most of the mafia. With only a couple left, she goes after a mobster named Lorenzo. Lorenzo has something up his sleeve with his enforcer Black Dahlia. It ends with Peacock and Dahlia going at it.
You know what’s crazy? In an ending where our hero kills her best friend, it’s still the most optimistic ending in such an otherwise colorful and wacky game.
Read the rest of this entry �
80) Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – SEBASTIAN
2012
Tekken Tag 2 has a roster of nearly every Tekken character ever and when it came time for downloadable content, they tried to fill in every gap possible. That included including Sebastian, Lili’s elderly and loyal butler. Fittingly, he fights just like her.
His ending has a neat chiaroscuro style where it’s in black and white with only whiteness for the background. All we can see are the limo, Sebastian and Lili. Lili sits in silence, obviously too annoyed for words. Sebastian drives and offers to calm her down with some music. He turns on the radio and hears a ecstatic DJ.
“The results of the last tournament are in! No one expected that this wildcard would appear from out of nowhere to claim the top prize! Yes, we’re talking about Sebastian! Who could’ve imagined this would happen? But ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a new martial arts champion!”
Sebastian begins to panic as Lili remains silently pissed. Sebastian keeps changing the radio station, but on every station, people are excitedly talking about how he won the King of Iron Fist tournament and that he’s this amazing inspiration. Growing increasingly afraid, Sebastian starts attacking the radio itself.
The radio is turned off and they reach their destination. Sebastian lets Lili out and she takes a second to begrudgingly congratulate him on his win. Sebastian, relieved, thanks her.
79) Street Fighter Alpha 3 – GUILE
1998
I touched on this last article, but one of the annoying things about the Street Fighter Alpha endings was how by being a prequel, it locks certain storytelling options. For instance, Chun-Li can defeat Bison, but then he’ll just get up and hospitalize her because he’s going to survive into Street Fighter II. The worst offender for all of this was Charlie. Charlie was known before this game as that guy who Guile had to avenge. That meant Charlie had to die.
Until the next game, where they’d bring him back because the last game no longer counted. And they’d kill him again.
The problem was that Charlie kept dying like a punk. In the first Alpha, he defeats Bison and gets on his walky-talky. This gives Bison the chance to get back up, pounce onto him and kill him. Then in Alpha 2, Charlie defeats Bison and gets gunned down by a military helicopter whose pilot was bought off by Shadaloo. Charlie falls off a cliff, presumably to his death. While X-Men vs. Street Fighter was never going to be canon, his ending is simply that he’s captured by Shadaloo and painfully tortured to death. The poor guy doesn’t even get to die with dignity.
(Yeah, yeah, I know that X-Men vs. Street Fighter one led to him becoming Shadow in the sequels, but that was retroactive context)
Guile’s storyline in Alpha 3 is that he’s sent to go find his good friend Charlie and bring him home from his mission because he’s too personally invested. There’s probably some unsaid political corruption in there too that Guile doesn’t know about. He finds Charlie and subdues him, but tells him that he still understands the importance of the mission and will help out, even if he isn’t the hero Charlie is. He defeats Bison, who slinks off to go recharge his batteries.
Guile and Charlie look around the Shadaloo base, find the room with the Psycho Drive and plant a whole bunch of bombs. Bison appears and badly wounds Charlie, laughing about how pets are worthless once they have their own free will. He flies at Guile to finish him off with the Psycho Crusher, but Charlie intercepts him.
Charlie orders him to leave before the place goes up. Guile escapes, seeing the Shadaloo base reduced to a mushroom cloud. From there, he and Chun-Li lament the loss of Charlie. Guile tries to believe that Charlie is still alive somewhere out there.
Read the rest of this entry �
While E3 is mostly remembered for the shellacking Sony is giving to Microsoft (oh my God!), they’ve also shown off the fourth DLC character for Injustice: Gods Among Us. Then Conan O’Brien got to feature the reveal on his show, making it official. This will be the last character for the season pass, but there are strong hints that we’ll be getting more in the future. Martian Manhunter, definitely.
GENERAL ZOD
Alias: Dru-Zod
First Appearance: Adventure Comics #283 (1961)
Powers: You know all that crap Superman does? He does that.
Other media: Other than his obvious movie appearances, he’s sort-of-but-not-quite appeared in the cartoons, Smallville and was in both a novel the Last Days of Krypton and a choose-your-own adventure book I remember owning when I was 8
I can’t think of a comic character who owes more to an actor’s portrayal than General Zod. It’s not like all the other memorable villain portrayals like Lex Luthor, Bane and Joker. If it wasn’t for Terence Stamp, not a single person would give a damn about Zod except for writers who love tossing in obscure supervillains that only the hardcore have heard of before.
Zod appeared in the early days of the Silver Age where he looked like M. Bison dressed in green while forgetting to wear pants. He was charged with trying to take over Krypton with his army of Bizarro soldiers and got sentenced to 40 years in the Phantom Zone, the dimensional prison of no escape (except when someone escapes). Superboy found out about that and released Zod once his time was up. Zod tried to take over Earth a handful of times and constantly got tossed back into the Phantom Zone. Since he was a soldier, he had an edge over Superman and was one of the few Silver Age characters who was stronger than the Man of Steel.
Superman II came out in 1980 and led to more appearances by Zod. Nothing memorable to mention, really. The Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot kicked in and DC practically took Zod off the table. With continuity made simple, there were some ground rules to Post-Crisis DC. For one, Superman had to be the ONLY Kryptonian. He was the Last Son of Krypton. That was his thing! So of course, within two years of this change, writer John Byrne decided to introduce Zod and Supergirl. Luckily, he had an out. They were from an alternate universe! …Except DC mandated that there could be no more alternate universes. That was the problem that got them into having to write Crisis in the first place. Byrne instead claimed they were from a “pocket dimension”. How that makes it right, I have no idea.
In this “pocket dimension”, Zod’s basic storyline still happened, only he killed Superboy with the help of his lieutenants Quex-Ul (essentially Non) and Faora (essentially Ursa) and annihilated much of the planet. Superman was asked to help out and defeated the three via exposing them to gold kryptonite, which permanently removed their powers. Zod warned Superman that they’d get their powers back, find out where he lived and kill his planet. Superman decided he had a point and killed the three with green kryptonite just to be sure. Then he moped around for a while because of it. Also, Supergirl came back with him, but she was manmade, so it didn’t step on the “no Kryptonians” edict.
DC Comics tried so, so hard to make Zod relevant again over the years. After all, he was the villain from the last good Superman movie. They had to make him a big deal in the comics. They came up with certain weird ideas. Or should I say other weird ideas.
Read the rest of this entry �
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View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message
So, the whole time that I was watching this series (Air TV), I was thinking about the fact that it is based on an adult visual novel. I was constantly imagining this young-adult male (Yukito) creeping on naive middle-school girls, and I could not make sense of his interactions with them. I was wondering if anyone could provide some insight to me on these pairings as well as on the whole series in order to ease my mind. This is assuming that they didn't only make Air TV this way in order to follow the visual novel (which, from what I've read, isn't very closely related to the television series.)
Thanks, guys and girls! : )
I swear that I have looked for information regarding this show, but its simple name makes it hard to find.
Back to top
Just a few facts, not that I think that is going to make any impression on you, since you seem to have made your mind up:
1) While there is an erotic content in the original version of the game, the main focus (in both the erotic and non-erotic versions, and especially in the anime) is to evoke an emotional response. The category is nakige, "crying game". There may be a male protagonist, but he is peripheral to the actual stories, which concern themselves with the girls' individual tragedies.
2) The girls aren't "middle-schoolers", they are all in high school. You watched the entire anime, and you never realised this? In most countries in the world, including Japan, they are past the age of consent. So your implications of paedophiliac content are simply wrong.
There you go. Facts. Now do what FOX News does, and ignore them. I can always lock this thread.
- abunai
Back to top
I had no intentions of offending anyone, but I was just a bit curious as to why this guy who I assumed was older than he is was interacting with these girls who I assumed were younger than they are. I'll admit that I cried at the end and enjoyed the show for what it is, but the thoughts always lingered in the back of my mind. Anyway, my bias towards this show probably stems from my lack of knowledge regarding the ages of consent in other countries and experiences with statutory rape. Thanks for clearing that age-gap issue for me.
And I am sorry that I led you to assume that I'd be some annoying, rule-breaking troll, but I really was curious about this before you posted here. I'm not trying to degrade the quality of Air at all or to stop people from viewing it.
Back to top
It might also help to know that while Air TV is based off the original Air visual novel, they're still two different things. As my memory serves, there was nothing sexual or even romantic in the TV series. Yukito's interaction with the girls was more like something of an older brother figure, and to say that he was "creeping on" the girls in the TV show kinda misses the point. I'm not too clear on the original novel, but as far as I know its main purpose was also not to arouse the player, but to tell a story. This is further evidenced by the fact that Key eventually released an All Ages version of the game, removing all sexual content completely.
abunai wrote:
2) The girls aren't "middle-schoolers", they are all in high school.
Really? While I was under the impression before that Yukito was 20 and the girls were all 12, I searched the net a bit, and everything I read seemed to suggest that no age had ever been given for any character. The girls might be in high school, but it doesn't seem like anything has been said for certain, and it doesn't seem like Yukito is a high schooler, given that he looks older than high school age and he's on a journey somewhere.
Back to top
ninetynineproblems wrote:
I was constantly imagining this young-adult male (Yukito) creeping on naive middle-school girls...
There's much more to think about, such as:
(note: it's been a while since I've seen it, so names are lost)
-The girl who "owned" the dog Potato. What's her relationship to the curse? If the story is about re-incarnation, no one else should be affected, but yet...
-Kanna. Um, so she's spoiler[filled with arrows] but this doesn't explain why the curse spoiler[has to kill those who get it].
-The relationship between Kanna and Misuzu. Are we watching a girl cursed or re-incarnated? If it's the former, how did she get the curse? It it's re-incarnation, then who the hell cares about Misuzu, given we're really watching Kanna?
That's the one thing I despise about tales over re-incarnation: the immediate expendable nature of at least one person, generally the one viewers like the most.
-From boy to crow... W... T... F...! I guess the "Air for Dummies" insert wasn't included in my version. Yes, I get Yukito is a re-incarnated soul as well, but did he die? Where's the body? WTF?
-The little girl who ran around with Tohno all the time. Her purpose? Was the rooftop scene even necessary? Who the hell was she?
There's one important fact abunai didn't mention: Yukito himself dismisses Misuzu because of her age.
Thus, I'm confused over the OP statement being to focus. To each their own, I suppose.
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frentymon wrote:
abunai wrote:
2) The girls aren't "middle-schoolers", they are all in high school.
Really? While I was under the impression before that Yukito was 20 and the girls were all 12, I searched the net a bit, and everything I read seemed to suggest that no age had ever been given for any character. The girls might be in high school, but it doesn't seem like anything has been said for certain, and it doesn't seem like Yukito is a high schooler, given that he looks older than high school age and he's on a journey somewhere.
While the Japanese Wikipedia page just has them "in school" (学校, the same term used inclusively for everything from elementary to senior high school), and Key's own page doesn't mention their ages, the English page places them all in 2nd year high school. Also, the Japanese pages clearly specify that Misuzu appears far younger than her age, due to her childish demeanour. I don't see any reason not to peg them at about 16 years of age -- not least due to physical development.
Regardless, how did you reach an age of 12? Granted, the "Key look" of exaggerated "anime faces" does make them appear young, but that's style, not content. Do you have a source you can point to?
- abunai
Back to top Megiddo
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 11:00 am
I hope you don't mind me answering your questions PJ, as they are all explained (or shown) in the TV series, but this is one of my favorites.
*THIS ENTIRE POST WILL BE SPOILERS. DO NOT READ ANYTHING IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN AIR TV*
spoiler[-If you recall correctly, Kano (the girl who owned the dog) had been possessed by a mother from hundreds of years ago. We saw the past of this mother and it basically turns out that she was forced to kill her daughter because it was believed her daughter was cursed and would cause famine/whatever to the town. The feelings/soul/whatever of the mother was contained in a feather (one of Kanna's feathers) and when Kano touched that feather as a little girl she was possessed. Kano also fits the main theme of Air which is the importance of mothers. You'll recall that Kano's mother died directly after Kano was born, and so Kano blamed herself for her mother's death. Through Yukito's magic she was able to converse with her mother and find out that her mother was so happy to bring Kano into the world even if it meant that she had to die, so Kano shouldn't feel any guilt at all. Her "relationship" to the curse is that she was possessed via one of Kanna's feathers.
-Watch the scene with Kanna again. Not only is she shot with a ton of arrows, but she is literally bound by the chantings of those monks/priests/whatever by that curse. What is the curse? She is stuck forever watching Ryuuya and Uraha die over and over and over again. This "vision" which creates so much pain for Kanna is what causes the "pain" for Kanna's reincarnations/receivers-of-the-curse whenever they get too close to someone.
-We are watching one of Kanna's reincarnations. I won't pretend that I know all or even much at all of Buddhist' belief in reincarnation, but basically it's a person who inherits Kanna's curse. Over the "1000 summers" I'm sure there have been a lot of people just like Misuzu who were lonely and without a friend and just died alone.
-From what I could see, Yukito uses his magic to place all his 'feelings' in the doll that he carries, and then used magic again to take the form of a crow. Basically, even if you don't buy it, just understand that Yukito did not want to kill Misuzu by becoming closer to her, but he also did not want to leave her side. So he became a simple observer. Many people think that Yukito just entered entirely into the doll and that Ryuuya was actually the crow (since she see a lot of things from the recent past with Sora already there), but I'm not sure about that. As I said, the important thing is the decision that Yukito makes. And honestly, this is one of the reasons why I love Air so much. Because Yukito is a vagabond, a traveling performer, and he has never grown attached to anyone. He has always been on his trek to find the girl in the sky. So to me it makes perfect sense that when he encounters such a moral ultimatum as he faced, that he would choose to not get too involved. It completely shatters the standard romance formula where the guy ends up saving the girl and I love it so much for that.
-The little girl who ran around with Minagi was actually her deceased sister. That was her, as she would be if she had not died. She bumped into Kanna in the sky and used one of her feathers to come down to the surface to help Minagi after he mother went crazy and started denying Minagi's existence (by saying that she was Michiru, and even later that she had no daughter at all). However, eventually Michiru understood that she was just a crutch and that Minagi needed to help her mother on her own, which is why we got the rooftop scene.
So, earlier I noted the importance of mothers, particularly each shows what happens when there is a disconnect and a mother is separated from their daughter, and now I will choose to highlight how each story touches upon this. I already told you about Kano, but also Minagi's story explained just how important mothers are. Minagi was emotionally crushed when her mom did not recognize her as who she was. This shows how important just the simple recognition and day-to-day interaction between a child and his or her mother is. Kanna struggled mightily after finally rescuing her mother only to see her die in the end. And of course Misuzu had the issue of being raised in a home where her "mom" (her aunt actually) didn't love her. And, then we have the progression in her relationship to her "mom", culminating in the completion of her wish, to be at the beach with a true friend, her mom, which resulted in the curse being broken at the expense of Misuzu's life. So we finally see the pain of the "mother" as she is holding her dead "child". It's a powerful series with many motifs, but I feel this focus of motherhood is among the most prominent.]
I'd invite you to watch Air TV again, perhaps with some of these things in mind, and maybe you can see how each story relates to eachother in a grand manner (in a way that neither Clannad or Kanon ever could, which is why Air is my favorite of the three animated Key series).
In regards to the actual topic (and I do apologize profusely for making such a large somewhat-off-topic-post), the original game did feature one sex scene for each the heroines at the end of their respective arc (Kano, Minagi, Misuzu, and Kanna). However the game was released later as an "All-Ages" version on the PC and consoles and mostly everyone agrees that this version is the best. Even otaku and Key themselves felt that the sex scenes somewhat destroyed the "purity" of the story of Air, but you must understand that in that time (2000) the market for visual novels always had H scenes. Making a visual novel without H scenes was an idea that had not been treaded yet, and it wouldn't really come into play until Key later released Clannad (2004).
Back to top Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4629
Location: Gainesville, FL
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 11:55 am
I sympathize with the OP. It's not that he/she saw improper relations depicted in the anime, it's that the knowledge that it was originally an adult visual novel novel distracted him from the anime. And the question is, how was Yukito depicted in the erotic aspects of the original version? Was he a creppy guy who has his way with each oif the girls?
I've actually had some of those same type of ponderings while watching the current Shufuku no Campanella anime, also originally an adult visual novel which is apparently now getting an all-ages version released. It such a sickeningly innocent and sweet story it constantly makes me wonder where the adult story fit.
I haven't seen either visual novel but I'm making the same assumption, I doubt either were the type of hentai game in which the male character gets his "turn" with each girl so much as a visual novel which has heavy and explicit fan-service with many bath scenes and maybe a "romantic" erotic story at some point. I'm guessing in the case of Campanella Leicester ends up choosing one of the girls and in the adult version consummates the relationship.
Back to top PetrifiedJello
Joined: 11 Mar 2009
Posts: 3782
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 12:19 pm
Megiddo wrote:
I hope you don't mind me answering your questions PJ, as they are all explained (or shown) in the TV series, but this is one of my favorites.
Not at all!
Quote:
Kano had been...
I understand how Kano was cursed, but I don't understand the why. spoiler[Kanna wasn't alive when the mother was forced into the choice. Therefore, with no Kanna, there could be no feather contamination, and thus, no curse on Kano]. Unless I missed something in this connection.
Quote:
Watch the scene with Kanna again.
I'll keep an eye out for this scene in the future viewing. I didn't see this at all. Very disappointed in myself because of it.
Quote:
We are watching one of...
I figured as much, especially given the seaside ending. Still don't like it though, because for me, this means spoiler[Misuzu doesn't truly exist, which is a bummer when you think about it.]
Quote:
just understand that Yukito did not want to...
Oh, I definitely got the reason for the crow but I don't like things being left open. spoiler[We're shown he looks to be leaving town, so did he? No one really knows. He could be eating ramen in Tokyo while Misuzu drops dead of a curse. I'd be happy with a split second scene of his body in the woods to close this gaping hole.]
Quote:
The little girl who ran around with Minagi was actually...
*bangs head on desk. Something so obvious and I completely missed it. Makes perfect sense... well, for Air anyway.
Quote:
So, earlier I noted the importance of mothers...
With mothers spoiler[like these, we'd have no need for a Mother's Day, that's for sure, because we'd all be freakin' dead].
In all seriousness though, I did get quite a bit of it, based on your version, so not all is lost. It just seems I'm not willing to accept the leaps of faith the series wants us to take regarding the premise. An unfortunate side affect when the series is only 12 episodes long and most of it was used to detail characters which were absolutely pointless to the overall story.
Oh well. They made up for it in Kanon, a much better series, IMO.
Back to top Soundmonkey44
Joined: 25 May 2010
Posts: 1243
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 12:35 pm
I recently got around to watch this series, I found it more sad then disturbing.
I did keep asking myself though....why are all the gals he meets special ed?
mean I know.
anywho, this show had a very sad ending, nothing that cute should be that sad...its just....wrong.
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Spastic Minnow wrote:
I've actually had some of those same type of ponderings while watching the current Shufuku no Campanella anime, also originally an adult visual novel which is apparently now getting an all-ages version released. It such a sickeningly innocent and sweet story it constantly makes me wonder where the adult story fit.
It's a game by Windmill, so it's safe to assume they make love in a sickeningly innocent and sweet fashion. (See also Happiness!.)
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For reasons of spoiler[Yukito turning into a crow...] it just, somehow felt out of placed and ruined the TV series a bit for me... Then I saw the movie, which had that taken out, but I recall all the other essentials being in there, and even showingspoiler[ a bit of an intimate scene with Ryuuya and Kanna] which seems to stand out enough to have it be one of the few things I remember from the movie.
If you are unsatisfied with the show, especially because of the part that I dissliked, I ask to check out the movie. Sure it's condensed some, but I actually enjoyed it a bit more than the show Not to mention it's a SUPER cheap buy now!
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The Air girls are 16? Seriously?
Maybe it shouldn't, but this really bugs me in anime. The instant a teenage character who looks and acts like a child comes on screen, my suspension of disbelief is pretty much broken.
And wierdly, anime seems to be the only medium where this gets a pass. If you had 16 year olds who look (from the neck up at least) and act like pre-teens in a movie or a book it would probably get criticized as poor writing. And yes, I know that the main girl acting childish is a plot point, but very often it's simply never explained.
On the subject of Air in general..... For a long time I had an opinion of this show based on images and people's descriptions of it, but it struck me that I might not be giving it a fair chance so recently I sat down and watched the first episode.
I am completely baffled by how anyone could sit through this for more than ten minutes. Seriously, it was 10 times worse than I could ever have imagined. I really don't get the appeal at all. Help me out here people
Back to top DKL
Joined: 08 May 2005
Posts: 1957
Location: California, USA
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:07 pm
Penguin_Factory wrote:
And wierdly, anime seems to be the only medium where this gets a pass. If you had 16 year olds who look (from the neck up at least) and act like pre-teens in a movie or a book it would probably get criticized as poor writing. And yes, I know that the main girl acting childish is a plot point, but very often it's simply never explained.
I remember the mother character from Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows acting a lot like a child, despite being, horrors upon horrors, the only adult in the household...
But that was actually a very good movie.
As for this, this is probably why I considered Osamu Dezaki's take on the subject-matter more sensible: you get the impression that Misuzu is pretty childish, but it doesn't seem so mind-numbingly stupid given that she exhibits some [non-physical] traits of girls that are around her age (she's actually the one putting moves on Yukito, interestingly enough).
It's not a super-excellent film (though I find it better than Ishihara's TV series, despite the artistry not being nearly as good as Kyoto Animation's effort), but I found it interesting how little changes here and there could pretty much remove it from the realm of complete pander-tastic otaku sensibility.
Anyway, I don't know: there's a lot of animu/manga out there where they have late teens acting like children and I can only assume that this is the case mainly because it's appealing to see people who don't act their age.
(that said, it (the age and otaku audience thing) isn't always bad: I remember the robot-building discussion in the 20th Century Boys manga and it was essentially [and amusingly] a bunch of middle-aged men sitting around a table and acting like a bunch of 10-year-olds... in fact, I'm actually a big fan of Tetsuro Araki's High School of the Dead, despite how trashy it is; Hollywood isn't actually in possession of what I consider to be this summer's hottest big-budget action extravaganza)
That said, despite being completely aware of how dumb the thing is, I still am sort of a fan of Ishihara's work...
You look at that sequence where Haruko gives Misuzu back to her real dad on the beach and it's hard not be at least interested in how well its staged; Ishihara and co are clearly pretty competent filmmakers, despite what it is that they're dabbling in...
Back to top Megiddo
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 3:25 pm
Penguin_Factory wrote:
I am completely baffled by how anyone could sit through this for more than ten minutes. Seriously, it was 10 times worse than I could ever have imagined. I really don't get the appeal at all. Help me out here people
I guess the lack of fanservice offended you? Or maybe you don't like big eyes? That's about the only thing I can think of. For me, I honestly don't like fanservice, particularly overbearing fanservice, and I've been watching "big eye" anime since Astro Boy, so neither of those two things bother me.
EDIT: As far as Misuzu's... err, let's say childness, it is explained in the series. And if you saw the series and didn't quite figure it out, she's like that way because spoiler[she has had next to nothing in regard to social interaction. At school she remains quiet and has no friends and at home Haruko just lets her lie in her bed and rarely talks to her. She behaves like a child in a social context because she has no experience with anything else. As the curse strikes her harder as well it takes away some mental capacity as can be seen by the loss of her motor skills (and thus needing a wheelchair).]
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The Litwak’s Family Fun Center Gang
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NOTE: This blog post was originally published on September 18, 2012, but has been revised twice since its original publication and will be stickied from October 28 to November 4, 2012 in anticipation of the movie's release. With the release of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph - which is shaping up to become the video game equivalent…
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The Raging Fanboy
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https://theragingfanboy.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/the-litwaks-family-fun-center-gang/
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NOTE: This blog post was originally published on September 18, 2012, but has been revised twice since its original publication and will be stickied from October 28 to November 4, 2012 in anticipation of the movie’s release.
With the release of Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph – which is shaping up to become the video game equivalent of Who Framed Roger Rabbit – a little over seven weeks away, I thought it might be fun to add to the already rampant online speculation by not only summarizing what my fellow nostalgia gamers have managed to piece together thus far but also trying to figure out what other games are present in Litwak’s Family Fun Center myself (and thus also which other characters could potentially make cameo appearances) from existing publicity stills and footage from all of the trailers that’ve been released.
Before we start, I’d like to clarify that I’m only sticking to 100% verifiable information and purposely omitting lawyer-friendly cameos such as the ones made by the Kano and Smoke lookalikes. I’m also going to be working under the assumption that all the cabinets present house exactly one game each (as opposed to multi-game arcade machines such as Nintendo’s PlayChoice-10, for example).
So, let’s get down to business! Based on the following external shot of Game Central Station – the “transportation hub for travelling from game to game within the arcade”…
…there are twenty-three arcade cabinets present in the establishment. Of those twenty-three, three are the fictional games exclusive to this movie and homes to the four main characters: Fix-It Felix Jr. (Fix-It Felix Jr. and Wreck-it Ralph), Sugar Rush Speedway (Vanellope Von Schweetz), and Hero’s Duty (Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun). So what are the other twenty games? Well, if you do the math, all of them have been accounted for either directly or indirectly, believe it or not…
1. Confirmed Titles
The following video games have either been explicitly named or enough of their distinctive screens and logos are visible to identify them beyond a reasonable doubt:
Pac-Man [1] and Space Invaders [2]…
…Frogger [3] and Virtua Cop [4]…
…Dig Dug [5]…
…Tapper [6]…
…Finish Line [7] (a fictional game) and Tron [8]…
…Burger Time [9]…
…Dance Dance Revolution X2 [10] and Street Fighter II [11]…
…Time Hunter 4 [12] (another fictional title)…
…The House of the Dead [13]…
…and Sonic Championship (a.k.a. Sonic the Fighters) [14].
2. Educated Guesses
While the following titles aren’t confirmed to be present, there’s a reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence to support the idea in each case (mostly in the form of cameos by their characters).
Talk about blink and you’ll miss it! Even though we’ve already firmly established the presence of Pac-Man – the orange ghost Clyde even has a supporting role in the movie! – this shot of Game Central Station not only features appearances by his compatriots Pinky, Inky, and Blinky, but also by one of the flying ostrich-riding knights from Joust [15], the nameless paperboy from Paperboy [16] (who is seen crashing his bicycle behind Ralph at one point), and the paddles and ball from Pong [17].
While the plight of the down-on-their-luck refugees from Q*bert – specifically Ugg, Slick, Coily, Wrong-Way, and the eponymous character himself – is certainly heartbreaking, the fact that their machine is unplugged means that it doesn’t count towards our total (unfortunately). On the other hand, we can add another fictional game to our list, as we see a yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex standing in the entrance to a game called Dino Havoc [18]. Also note that, to the far right, we see Chun Li walking alongside of Zangief.
And finally, at Ralph’s Bad-Anon meeting, we see, of all people, Neff, the main antagonist of Altered Beast [19] in his anthropomorphic purple rhinoceros form. And, of course, the generic, dual hatchet-wielding zombie Cyril from The House of the Dead on the far right.
3. Complications, Curiosities, and Uncertainties
Be warned: major spoilers ahead.
In the previous two sections, I purposely avoided using information from the opening sequence of the international trailer to support any of my guesswork unless there was additional evidence to corroborate it. And this was done for a very good reason: though not explicitly called attention to, the difference in appearance of establishment owner Mr. Litwak at the beginning and end of it…
…coupled with the rapidly moving people and shifting arcade cabinets indicate that this is supposed to be a time lapse sequence covering the last thirty years of the Litwak Family Fun Center’s existence since Fix-It Felix Jr. premiered there in 1982. While we see several games, both real and fictional, as the camera pans out, there’s no direct evidence either supporting or disproving the idea that they’re still around in 2012 with the sole exceptions of The House of the Dead and Sonic Championship – as Cyril, Sonic, and Dr. Robotnik’s cameos in the movie’s present will attest to – plus one other title that I’ll be naming at the very end of this section.
What makes this montage particularly interesting is that, even though many of them only appear on screen for one or two frames, the names of some of the titles have been blurred out by censor bars, even though their distinctive logos make it blatantly obvious which ones they’re supposed to be. In some cases, the reasons are likely due to copyrights or trademarks issues, where permission had either never been acquired or not yet been granted at the time this montage was assembled. In other cases, legally acceptable parodies were created as placeholders. And then there’re some head-scratchingly baffling examples, such as Space Invaders being one of the games whose names was censored out in the international trailer even though it appeared uncensored in trailers released several months earlier and even in other trailers which have (parts of) the same time-lapse sequence incorporated into it. Go figure.
One extremely plot-relevant detail worth mentioning at this point comes in the form of a fictional overhead arcade racing game, which we catch a brief glimpse of at the very beginning of the sequence, sitting right next to the Fix-It Felix Jr. cabinet.
In two of the trailers and previews that’ve been released so far, M. Bison, Fix-It Felix Jr., and Q*bert all refer to Ralph’s actions of breaking typecasting and game hopping as “going turbo”. Given the onetime existence of a game called Turbotime in this particular arcade, we can draw a pretty reasonable conclusion about what this otherwise puzzling statement means: at some point in the past, the main character from this game, whose name was presumably Turbo, decided to do the exact same thing and ended up getting his machine unplugged and both it and himself removed from the establishment…which explains why all of Ralph’s associates are getting so jittery and nervous when he begins displaying subversive behavior.
And while we’re on the subject, two more brief plot points that aren’t immediately apparent: not only is the unassuming-looking King Candy likely a secondary villain – or at least a misguided antagonist – based on his biography on Disney’s official site for the movie, but the primary menace in the movie come in the form of the Cy-Bugs from Hero’s Duty, something that Entertainment Weekly hinted at way back in February. In the international trailer, Ralph is seen accidentally stepping on a cute baby Cy-Bug…
…who proceeds to viciously attack him…
…and, after he accidentally triggers an escape pod…
… both he and it are accidentally ejected into Game Central Station. The rest you can probably guess: the Cy-Bug escapes, and, without Sergeant Calhoun and her soldiers to contain it, is now free to multiply, infiltrate, and infect the other games in the arcade. Well, at least until the end of the movie, where I’m betting that we’re going to see a mind-blowingly awesome, multi-world, crossover battle sequence where video game heroes and villains alike are forced to team up in order to contain the infestation and Ralph ends up learning the true meaning of being a hero by (seemingly) sacrificing his life to destroy them. And, lest you think that death is meaningless in this movie given Fix-It Felix Jr.’s played-for-laughs resurrection in one trailer, I’d like to emphasize the fact that, as Sonic the Hedgehog points out in his public service message announcement, the rule is that characters are only able to respawn indefinitely within their own game worlds. If they’re killed outside of it, their deaths will be permanent. Yeah, this is a Disney movie and I’m pretty sure nothing too terrible’s going to happen, but still…
But we’ve wandered way too far off-topic already. Let’s get this train back on track by taking a closer look at the remaining titles (which you’ll need judicious use of frame-by-frame replaying in order to independently verify):
Asteroids and Battlezone…
…Food Fight, the original Street Fighter (although it mistakenly displays graphics from Street Fighter II, specifically of Ryu fighting Dhalsim in his stage in India), and Centipede…
…Agent X and Dragon’s Lair…
…the Atari version of Star Wars from 1983 and Fatal Assault (a fictional game)…
…District 51 (which appears to be a pastiche of Atari’s Area 51 and the movie District 9), a Star Wars game with no known real-world equivalent, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…
…and Hoop Jamz: All-Star Edition by Halfway (an obvious reference to Midway’s NBA Jam: Tournament Edition).
In the closing shot of the montage from the present day, you’ll see that one machine from the opening is still present, having only swapped positions with Street Fighter II in the intervening years:
Yes, that’s right, Dragon’s Lair [20] has apparently been a mainstay in this particular arcade for three decades, which may just be the most ridiculous premise that this movie is asking us to accept considering that the laserdiscs players which shipped with this game were notoriously prone to failure and the earliest cabinets had a life expectancy of between as little as 650 hours (less than one month) and as much as 50000 hours (a little over five and a half years).
4. Cameos
And finally, here’s a list of established characters from the movie whom I haven’t previously mentioned or posted pictures of yet:
Dr. Ivo Robotnik, M. Bison, and Clyde…
…Bowser and Zangief…
…the unnamed bartender from Tapper…
…Dig Dug and the nameless frog from Frogger…
…Ryu and Ken…
…Cammy…
…Yuni Verse…
…a Fygar and a Pooka…
…Peter Pepper…
…and the one and only Sonic the Hedgehog.
5. Summary
So, in conclusion, here’s an alphabetical list of the twenty-three arcade game cabinets known to be present at Litwak’s Family Fun Center:
Altered Beast (real)
Burger Time (real)
Dance Dance Revolution X2 (real)
Dig Dug (real)
Dino Havoc (fictional)
Dragon’s Lair (real)
Finish Line (fictional)
Fix-It Felix Jr. (fictional)
Frogger (real)
Hero’s Duty (fictional)
The House of the Dead (real)
Joust (real)
Pac-Man (real)
Paperboy (real)
Pong (real)
Sonic Championship (alias Sonic the Fighters) (real)
Space Invaders (real)
Sugar Rush Speedway (fictional)
Street Fighter II (real)
Tapper (real)
Time Hunter 4 (fictional)
Tron (real)
Virtua Cop (real)
How many did you spot? 🙂
Oh, and this goes without saying, but if anyone reading this happens to find anything that I missed, let me know. 😀
UPDATE (2012.09.25.): New information from the release of the “Game Changer” television spot yesterday was added.
In the original version of the article, I stated that the fact that we see Chun Li in her classic outfit combined with the presence of Cammy (also in her original costume) suggested that Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, or Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition was one of the games at Litwak’s Family Fun Center. The new commercial has since proven me “wrong”, as the pictures of the establishment floor, the arcade cabinet, and the screen itself – specifically the sunset version of Ryu‘s dojo rooftop stage – all point it being a regular Street Fighter II machine.
Just to be clear, my placement of the word “wrong” in quotation marks isn’t due to sour grapes but because the movie’s creators have apparently made a continuity error. The three games that I mentioned are the only instances where Cammy and Chun Li appear in the same game together wearing those particular clothes. Cammy wasn’t even in the original Street Fighter II. She first appeared in 1993 – two years after the release of the original game – in Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.
Still, as someone on a message board thread pointed out, considering that the entire movie requires us to buy into the premise that there’s still a profitable video game arcade being operated in North America in 2012, I think that I can live with this mistake. 🙂
UPDATE (2012.10.28.): The original article has been heavily revised with new information from the various trailers and previews released during the past month as well as plot speculation and spoilers.
Tags: Akabei, Altered Beast, Animal King Chronicle, Aosuke, お惚け, キャミィ, クッパ, ザンギエフ, ストリートファイター, ストリートファイター IV, ストリートファイターⅡ, スペースインベーダー, スーパーストリートファイター IV, スーパーストリートファイターⅡ The New Challengers, スーパーストリートファイターⅡ X Grand Master Challenge, スーパーストリートファイターII X, スーパーストリートファイターII X Grand Master Challenge, セガ・バン・ベイダー, ソニック, ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, チュン・リー, ディグダグ, ドクター・エッグマン, ドクター・ロボトニック, ハンバーガー, バーガータイム, バーチャコップ, パックマン, ピンキー, フロッガー, ベガ, ホリ・タイゾウ, ユニ, ユニ・バース, ロボトニック, Baagaa Taimu, Bashful, Beast King's Chronicle, Bega, Biicha Koppu, Blinky, Bowser, Burger Time, Bāgā Taimu, Bīcha Koppu, Cammy, Cammy White, Chronicle of the Animal King, Chronicle of the Beast King, Chun Rii, Chun Rī, Chun-Li, Clyde, Coily, 獣王記, Dance Dance Revolution, Dance Dance Revolution X2, DDR, DDR X2, Devil, Dig Dug, Digu Dagu, Digudagu, Dino Havoc, Disney, Djinn, Doctor Ivo Robotnik, Doctor Robotnik, Dokutaa Egguman, Dokutā Egguman, Dokutā Robotonikku, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, Dr. Robotnik, Evil Spirit, 青助, 魔神, 赤ベイ, 追いかけ, Fix-It Felix Jr., Frogger, Furoggaa, Furoggā, Genie, Guzuta, Hamburger, Hanbaagaa, Hanbāgā, Hero's Duty, Hori Taizo, Hori Taizou, Inky, Ivo Robotnik, Joust, Juuooki, Juuouki, Jūōki, Kimagure, King Koopa, Koopa, Kuppa, Kyamii, Kyamī, M. Bison, Machibuse, Majin, Neff, Oikake, Otoboke, Pac-Man, Pakkuman, Paperboy, Pinkii, Pinky, Pinkī, Pokey, Pong, Q*bert, Q-Bert, Robotonikku, Root Beer Tapper, Sega Ban Baidaa, Sega Ban Baidā, Shadow, Slick, Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonikku, Sonikku za Hejjihoggu, Space Invaders, Speedy, Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter IV, Sugar Rush, Supeesu Inbeedaa, Super Street Fighter Ⅱ X: Grand Master Challenge, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Supēsu Inbēdā, Sutoriito Faitaa, Sutoriito Faitaa Ⅱ, Sutoriito Faitaa Foo, Sutoriito Faitaa Fou, Sutoriito Faitaa II, Sutorīto Faitā, Sutorīto Faitā Ⅱ, Sutorīto Faitā Fō, Sutorīto Faitā II, Suupaa Sutoriito Faitaa Ⅱ X: Grand Master Challenge, Suupaa Sutoriito Faitaa Foo, Suupaa Sutoriito Faitaa Fou, Suupaa Sutoriito Faitaa II X: Grand Master Challenge, Sūpā Sutorīto Faitā Ⅱ X: Grand Master Challenge, Sūpā Sutorīto Faitā Ⅱ: The New Challengers, Sūpā Sutorīto Faitā Fō, Sūpā Sutorīto Faitā II X: Grand Master Challenge, Sūpā Sutorīto Faitā II: The New Challengers, Taizo Hori, Taizou Hori, Tapper, Tron, Ugg, Vega, video game, Video Games, Winky, Wreck-It Ralph, Wrong-Way, Wrongway, Yuni Baasu, Yuni Berth, Yuni Bāsu, Yuni Verse, Zangief, Zangiefu, 待ち伏せ, 愚図た, 春麗, 春丽, 気まぐれ
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https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mortal-kombat-2021-josh-lawson-kano-interview
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'Mortal Kombat' star reveals the secrets behind his killer villain
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2021-04-25T10:00:26+00:00
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Josh Lawson, who stars in the new 'Mortal Kombat' on HBO Max as the mercenary "Kano," thanks his 1995 predecessor for accidentally sounding Australian.
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en
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/favicon.ico
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Inverse
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https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mortal-kombat-2021-josh-lawson-kano-interview
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While growing up playing Mortal Kombat in Brisbane, Australia, 39-year-old actor Josh Lawson remembers one thing: cheating the game.
“We used to do this because we didn’t have money: You would drill a hole in a coin and tie a little fishing wire,” Lawson tells Inverse. “You put it in [the machine] and pull it back out. You use the same coin to play forever.”
Yes, it’s the ol’ Coin-on-a-String trick that Lawson and his pals pulled off at a corner store where the neighborhood played Mortal Kombat, the hottest game of 1992. It was, to Lawson’s memory, the perfect crime. “We would go to the store with a coin and play until they kicked us out.”
Now, 30 years later, Lawson doesn’t have to cheat to play Mortal Kombat — because he’s in it.
Warning: Spoilers for Mortal Kombat ahead.
In his first action-oriented role, Lawson plays “Kano” in the new R-rated reboot Mortal Kombat, now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Based on the iconic video game series, Kano — one of the original seven characters in the first Mortal Kombat arcade game — is a mercenary for the ruthless Black Dragon cartel. He reluctantly joins the film’s heroes, including his rival Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), in a quest to stop the forces of Outworld from invading Earth.
Though Lawson didn’t keep up with Mortal Kombat after his criminal youth, he did his homework after landing the role of the one-eyed killer.
“When I got this job, it opened up Pandora’s Box of what the hell I missed,” Lawson says. “I wasn’t prepared. I thought it was just a couple of extra characters, but no. This is dense, man. They did not mess around. There’s not just one movie in this thing, there’s 50. You couldn’t take it all in one film.”
That includes potentially more Kano, too. As Lawson previously told us, Kano may have lost his fight with Sonya Blade — with a gruesome garden gnome to the eye — but that doesn’t mean Kano is down for the count. “I can tell you that me and my agents think it’s very possible he can come back,” Lawson jokes.
In an interview with Inverse, Lawson reveals what it took to become Kano, what fate lies in store for Kano after Mortal Kombat, and what it’s like to hold a throbbing heart in his hand.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
INVERSE: What is your first memory of Mortal Kombat?
JOSH LAWSON: The arcade game. There was something sweet about it. It was a community thing. You’d meet other kids who would go to that same store. It was bringing people together, and I think it still does that. No one goes to the corner store anymore, but [Mortal Kombat] is this magnet bringing fans together.
INVERSE: Who did you play as?
JOSH LAWSON: There’s some irony in this, but I used to love Sonya. She was awesome, dude. When you think about it, that is some trippy shit. If you went up to eight-year-old me saying, “Hey, you’re going to be Kano,” I would go, “Who is this strange dude talking to me in the corner store?” It’s crazy where life takes you.
INVERSE: Actor Trevor Goddard played Kano in the 1995 movie. He’s so iconic that Kano looks like him in the games.
JOSH LAWSON: That performance of Kano is legendary. I have to thank him. Kano started off English, but I think through a bad accent, he became Aussie. So whatever glitch in the Matrix that happened, led to me playing the role. The Australian factor is a large part of how I got it.
“It’s crazy where life takes you.”
INVERSE: How did you approach Kano differently than Goddard?
JOSH LAWSON: He’s an anti-hero as much as he’s an anti-villain. You hate yourself for liking him because he’s such a prick, but you want him to stick around. But how the hell did I tackle this iteration? First, you read the script. Put aside the mythology. Who is this guy? He’s a mercenary, he’s cutthroat, he’s sexist. Then put the mythology back in: The Black Dragon and his relationship with Sonya. By the time we were done, it was the most fun to play. He was so realized. I get prosthetics, and when you look in the mirror you’ve got this bloody, dirty, tattooed piece of shit looking back at you. It felt like the acting was done for me by the look.
INVERSE: So much of Kano is defined by his contentious relationship with Sonya Blade. What is Kano’s dynamic with Sonya in this movie?
JOSH LAWSON: The inevitable collision between Kano and Sonya was hell, man. It was sick. Jess McNamee is an old friend, and we rumbled. It’s an actor’s dream to have a dramatic foil the whole time. It’s great to know the seeds are planted, a relationship already there to play with. It builds and erupts in the only way Mortal Kombat can. It gets dirty.
INVERSE: Kano practices Aikido in many of the games. What martial arts did you learn to become Kano?
JOSH LAWSON: We did as much martial arts as we could leading up to the film. Knife skills and all sorts. We took every step to preserve the original style of all the fighters. But on top of that, it’s a matter of how you put your character in. Kano is a brawler. He’s a drunk. He fights dirty. You’re still trying to tell a story through the fights. You don’t stop the story to have fights. The martial arts becomes a type of acting in a lot of ways. I know it sounds weird, but I’ve never done this type of stuff before. We’d done the work and took it seriously.
INVERSE: What’s it like ripping out Reptile’s heart?
JOSH LAWSON: Slippery. Those hearts have a mind of their own. I’m trying to hold the damn thing because they don’t stop beating. I don’t know how many hearts you’ve ripped out, but it’s got kicks. We tried to do as little CGI as possible, which is obviously unavoidable with something like this. But there’s a real tactile quality. It does feel more grounded, more real than CG films. Our prosthetics people were unbelievable. There were constantly carcasses and body parts and ooze and blood and god knows what else.
INVERSE: What was the heart made out of? Do you know?
JOSH LAWSON: I don’t know, but it’s pretty realistic. It really was pumping blood. As you’re holding it, blood is gushing out. It was as real as it could get without ripping it out of someone’s chest.
INVERSE: Kano stands out from the other Mortal Kombat characters as a sarcastic SOB. What makes him funny?
JOSH LAWSON: He’s got irreverence. A doesn’t-give-a-fuck-ness. The mythology is so serious, Kano butts up against all that because he feels more human than some of the characters. He is just a piece of shit. Kano is a fucking piece of shit drunk you would see in any pub. But he’s part of Mortal Kombat. Love him or hate him, you’ve got a friend like that, and he’s a prick. If you don’t know someone like Kano, you’re probably Kano.
INVERSE: I know Joe Taslim, who plays Sub-Zero, is a big Mortal Kombat player. Did you play together behind the scenes?
JOSH LAWSON: For sure. He would invite us to play at his joint. I binged-watched all the fatalities, that was one of my favorite things. You gotta be a crazy genius to come up with those.
INVERSE: Do you have a gross threshold?
JOSH LAWSON: None. I dare you to gross me out. The grosser the better. I was never offended by gore. I was impressed by the creativity of fatalities. I see this stuff and I go, “That’s brilliant!” I could watch the blood dagger in the trailer over and over. Who comes up with that?
INVERSE: I understand this is the first time you’re in something that has a fandom. What is it like knowing it’s not just people but fans with expectations?
JOSH LAWSON: To see people’s excitement is new. I do a lot of comedy. People just aren’t loyal to comedy as a genre. From the second I was involved, all people talked about was how to pay tribute to the fans. I don’t think a day passed we weren’t going, “Think of the fans.” They are the ones who’ve kept this alive. It’s for them. For better or worse, it was done with love.
INVERSE: What are you working on next?
JOSH LAWSON: Just finished my second feature, Long Story Short coming out in Australia in cinemas. Can you you believe it? We have cinemas. It’s streaming in a couple months. But in terms of acting, I don’t know. It’s a blank slate. But that’s my life. I’m used to the unknown and then, holy shit, I’m on a thing. Fingers crossed it’s Mortal Kombat 2.
INVERSE: Will Kano come back in Mortal Kombat 2?
JOSH LAWSON: Eric, I could tell ya, but then I’d have to rip your fucking heart out.
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https://neoencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kano_(Mortal_Kombat)
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Kano (Mortal Kombat)
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2024-07-29T22:27:06+00:00
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|- |} Kano is a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series who made his debut in the first Mortal Kombat in 1992, as one of the villains. Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, Kano rises beyond the level of mere brutality and...
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en
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/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico
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Neo Encyclopedia Wiki
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https://neoencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Kano_(Mortal_Kombat)
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Mortal Kombat series
Kano in Mortal Kombat (2011) First appearance Mortal Kombat (1992) Voiced by
(English) Michael Des Barres (MK:DotR)
David Allen (MK:SF)
Michael McConnohie (MKvDC, MK2011) Motion capture Richard Divizio (MK, MKII, MK3, UMK3, MKT)
Trevor Goddard (first film)
Joseph "Eddie" Acavedo (Live Tour)
Darren Shahlavi (Legacy) class=" infobox hproduct" style="float:right; width:264px; font-size:90%; text-align:left;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" Origin Earthrealm; Template:Flag Fighting-Styles Xing Yi (MK:DA, MK:A)
Aikido (MK:DA)
|- |} Kano is a video game character from the Mortal Kombat series who made his debut in the first Mortal Kombat in 1992, as one of the villains. Originally a mercenary and leader of the international crime cartel known as the Black Dragon, Kano rises beyond the level of mere brutality and aggression by also being sly and cunning. It was through his resourcefulness that he convinced Shao Kahn to spare his life, and it was through ruthless ambition that he later ascended to position of general of Outworld's armies. His actions have made him the nemesis of Sonya Blade and Jax Briggs, the latter of whom is responsible for causing the facial damage which led to Kano wearing his signature metal face plate.
In video games[]
Kano is the leader of the Black Dragon criminal empire. He made his first chronological appearance in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, freeing fellow Black Dragon cohorts No Face, Tasia, Jarek and Tremor from a U.S. Special Forces security facility, under the pretense that they would reform the Black Dragon organization, but really intending to use them as pawns to slow down any Special Forces agents who might pursue him. Annihilating an entire squad at the site of the prison break, they escaped the scene. With his Black Dragon associates given their assigned tasks, Kano headed to Outworld where he recovered the Eye of Chitian, an artifact through which he would acquire incredible power. Unfortunately for him, however, Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs had overcome his accomplices and defeated him. Jax used the eye to transport them back to Earthrealm, and proceeded to bring Kano into custody though he would soon escape.
Kano entered Shang Tsung's Mortal Kombat tournament after hearing rumors that Tsung's palace was filled with gold and other riches, intending to steal them for the Black Dragon. He was pursued by Lieutenant Sonya Blade, who held a personal grudge against Kano because he had killed a former partner of hers. While Kano was free to take part in the tournament of his own accord, Sonya and her unit were captured by Shang Tsung, who offered Sonya an ultimatum to compete in Mortal Kombat, or she and her unit would be executed. Sonya and Kano survived the tournament, but many others died, including Sonya's men. After the final battle between Shang Tsung and Liu Kang, Kano teamed up with Sonya and Johnny Cage to fight Goro. During the battle, the island began to crumble and Kano and Sonya were captured. They spent the events of Mortal Kombat II in captivity, as seen in the background of Kahn's Arena. Kano then managed to convince Outworld's emperor Shao Kahn to accept him as a weapons instructor for his armies. As a man with knowledge of Earthrealm weaponry, he was the most suitable candidate.
Later, during the events of Mortal Kombat 3, Sonya tossed Kano to his apparent death from the roof of a high building. He was found by Motaro, who healed and imprisoned him. In turn, Motaro was attacked and killed by Sheeva, who freed Kano from his prison. Although they originally hatched a plan to murder Shao Kahn, Kano turned on Sheeva in the decisive moments, resulting in Sheeva's death. Kano was then hastily promoted to general of Outworld's rapidly shrinking army before the invasion was defeated. Shao Kahn's act of promoting Kano, however proved to be a lucky gamble, as Kano was a very competent general. Even in the face of overwhelming odds, Kano stood ground and eventually managed to repel Princess Kitana and her Edenian-Shokan army. He returned to Shao Kahn's palace just in time to watch from the shadows as Shang Tsung and Quan Chi sprung their attack on the weakened emperor. As soon as the battle was finished, Kano declared his allegiance to the new rulers of Outworld, the Deadly Alliance. The two had Kano oversee the enslavement of a small village, who would construct a temple over Onaga's tomb to house the Soulnado. During its construction, Kano was assaulted by Li Mei, but Quan Chi intervened, as the Alliance had made a deal with the Red Dragon member Mavado: he would eliminate the swordsman Kenshi in exchange for the opportunity to fight and defeat Kano. Mavado attacked and left Kenshi for dead, earning his battle. It would seem that Mavado won the fight, as in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Kano is found by Taven to have been held prisoner by the Red Dragon Clan for quite some time (possibly explaining his absence from Deception). Before escaping their facilities, Kano explains to Taven that the Red Dragon had been experimenting on him, as well as their own clan members, in an effort to create real-life genetically engineered dragons and human-dragon hybrids, Kano mentions that they were trying "something new" on him, although he leaves before he elaborates on what that "something" is.
Kano makes an appearance in the non-canonical retelling of MKII, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks where he is seen fighting Sonya during the opening sequence and reappears later in the game as a boss character whom the player (as either Liu Kang or Kung Lao) must defeat with the assistance of Jax to protect an imprisoned Sonya. He is subsequently killed by Jax following the battle. Kano also appears in the non-canonical crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. He is not playable in the story mode, but it is revealed that he was defeated by The Joker, who at the time was allied with Deathstroke. Kano also appears in the iOs game Arkham City Lockdown as an Easter Egg fighting Batman in one of the levels.[1]
In other media[]
Kano appears in the Mortal Kombat comic books by Malibu, keeping his personality and history faithful to the early games' portrayal. He also was protagonist of a 3-issues miniseries alongside Raiden entitled Rayden & Kano. During the Blood & Thunder series it is shown the origin of Sonya's vendetta against him, when he kills Sonya's partner (called Lance/Sparky in the comics) during a tournament battle by means of a heart rip. His motivations to loot the island are replaced by his discovery of the Tao Teh Zhan and the powers it grants. During the series' epilogue in the Tournament Edition issue, he's finally captured by Sonya and Jax and sent into custody. He would later escape (as shown in the Breakout mini-story that came with the U.S. Special Forces issue 1) and during the Battlewave series he would be disposed by his superiors in the Black Dragon due to his failure, only to be rescued by Raiden. Raiden would attempt to use Kano to eliminate Shao Kahn by means of a mystical sword that drew power from a bad guy turned to the side of good, but Kano betrays Raiden and joins Shao Kahn, remaining in his forces the following issues.
Kano appeared in the first Mortal Kombat movie, and was played by Trevor Goddard. The film expanded upon Kano's rivalry with Sonya from the games; she now had a personal interest in seeking vengeance against Kano for killing her partner. Shang Tsung hires Kano to lure Sonya into the Mortal Kombat tournament and promises to grant Kano the reward he desires for his efforts after he faces off against Sonya in the tournament, demanding that Sonya is not to be harmed but merely humiliated, claiming that he has plans for her. During their match, Kano gleefully taunts Sonya about how he murdered her partner. After beating Sonya harshly, Kano is caught off guard by a leg lock from Sonya, and is soon trapped between her thighs and at her mercy. Shang Tsung betrays Kano and goads Sonya into finishing him off. Despite pleading for his life, Sonya proceeds to break Kano's neck.
Kano appeared twice in the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, voiced by Michael Des Barres. His rivalry with Sonya was continued in the storyline, and a flashback scene in which he killed Sonya's Special Forces partner prior to the tournament was included in one episode.
British actor and martial artist Darren Shahlavi portrayed Kano in Mortal Kombat: Legacy. During the first two episodes, he takes Sonya hostage and plans to kill her when a SWAT team led by Jax and Stryker attacks the Black Dragon warehouse. During the assault, Kano engages Jax in combat but is defeated, losing his eye in the process. He is later found by his henchmen and is given a cybernetic eye as a replacement. Kano also appears in the ninth episode which takes place before these events.
Kano will make an appearance in the up-coming 2012 animated film Wreck-It Ralph (from Walt Disney Pictures).[2]
Development[]
Kano originally had a large helmet with two red eyes. The concept was dropped later on to be replaced by a metal piece over his right eye. In Kano's bio card in Deception, Ed Boon mentions how Kano's bionic eye in the first game (involving digitized actors) was created by cutting out a piece of a plastic mask and painting it a silver color, then attaching it with spirit gum to actor Richard Divizio's face. Kano was left out of the Game Gear and Master System version of Mortal Kombat due to memory constraints. In Deadly Alliance, Kano had a move with his butterfly-knives called "ear to ear". This was based on a line in the first Mortal Kombat movie, where Kano said he used his knife to slit the throat of Sonya's partner "from ear to ear". The Konquest mode in Deadly Alliance stated that Kano's metal face plate was the result of facial damage during an encounter with Jax.
Goddard's Australian interpretation of Kano was so well received by fans that Kano was retconned as Australian from his original American-Japanese decent. In Special Forces, Deadly Alliance, Shaolin Monks, Armageddon, MK vs DCU and Mortal Kombat (2011), Kano is notably modelled after Goddard's look in the film and speaks with an Australian accent.
Promotion and merchandise[]
In 1994, Hasbro released a Kano action figure apart of their Mortal Kombat toyline basing his figure and the other figures on a G.I. Joe mold.[3] In 2006, Jazzwares released a Kano action figure apart of their Mortal Kombat toyline featuring multiple articulation points and a character specific weapon.[4]
Reception[]
Kano is most notable for his Fatalities, often regarded by various sources to be among either the best or the worst in the series. UGO Networks also rated Kano's heartrip Fatality as second in their listing of the "Top 11 Mortal Kombat Fatalities" noting it was the original Fatality in the first Mortal Kombat that sparked the ire of "anti-video game violence advocates".[5] GameTrailers ranked Kano's "skeleton remover" Fatality from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance sixth on their "Top 10 Mortal Kombat Fatalites".[6] GamePro however criticized Kano's "Stomach Pounce" Fatality from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe rating it fifth on its "Top 12 Lamest Fatalities" listing, regarding the development of the Fatality, GamePro commented that "absolutely no effort was put in creating it." [7] Game Informer also rated one of his Fatalites from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe as one the worst Fatalities in Mortal Kombat calling it "tame even as a standard Street Fighter attack" and noted that it was executed "without even a drop of blood shed."[8] Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, when comparing Sub-Zero's Spine-rip Fatality to Kano's Fatality claimed that it stood out more because Kano's heartrip Fatality did not have a "mark left on the opponent's body."[9]
In 2011, UGO.com ranked him as the seventh best fictional cyborg character of all time.[10] Cheat Code Central listed Kano as the fifth best Mortal Kombat character, who commented "This badass serial killer was always the character I choose when feeling the need to get in touch with my dark side."[11] Game Revolution ranked him at #10 on their "Top 10 Old School Mortal Kombat Characters" article.[12] In UGO Networks' 2012 list of the "Top 50 Mortal Kombat Characters", Kano placed at 24th, where they praise his heart rip Fatality.[13] However, IGN described him by just saying that he "sucks".[14]
References[]
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Kano - The Mortal Kombat Wiki
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Page 122 →Page 123 →Notes
Introduction
1. Wherever relevant or not immediately apparent from context, I have cited the home country of game studios upon their first mention, using the familiar abbreviations JP (Japan), U.S. (United States), and U.K. (United Kingdom). I have also used the North American names for game consoles, such as SEGA “Genesis” instead of SEGA “MegaDrive.”
2. See Bogost 2015; Sharp 2015; and Parker 2018.
3. My discussion here is rooted primarily in the U.S. context, given how arcades in East Asia tend to have a more socially “wholesome” image (see Ashcraft and Snow 2008), helped in part by the relative absence of gore in most Japanese games—a cultural difference that the Mortal Kombat series exploited as a means of product differentiation.
Chapter 1
1. Note that the generic terms “fighting” and “beat-em-up” are still sometimes used interchangeably, especially in British game criticism. For the sake of clarity, however, I will distinguish between these two varieties of hand-to-hand combat games.
2. Also see Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. 862 F.2d 204, 9 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1322 (9th Cir. 1988).
3. To overcome such imbalances in two-player competition, the second player to select their avatar might deliberately “counter-pick” a character whose own weaknesses will help rebalance the upcoming match (Harper 2014, 61). To help with this issue, Mortal Kombat II also introduced a “Random Select” function, which allows players to defer to serendipity instead of counter-strategize—a very popular option among arcade players already skilled enough to use any character (“Special . . . Kombat II” 1994, Electronic, 114).
Page 124 →4. According to programmer Ed Boon, MKI was affected by similar imbalances, with Sub-Zero’s moves considerably stronger than the other characters (LaMancha 1994, 35).
5. See “Fighter’s History” 1994, 120; “Letter of the Month” 1994, 14; and Capcom U.S.A., Inc. v. Data East Corp., 1994 WL 1751482 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 1994).
6. On the cognitive/embodied experience of “force transfer” in hand-to-hand combat games, also see Gregersen 2016, 53–70.
7. Although not entirely identical, also see the character tier provided in Cureton 1994, 69.
8. Franchise crossover games would, however, be created by each company separately (see chapter 4), using licensing deals with the major American comics firms, including X-Men vs. Street Fighter (Capcom, 1996) and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (Midway, 2008).
9. Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (1897–1962) was a Parisian theater specializing in realistic depictions of graphic violence and gore—often presented in a morbidly tongue-in-cheek tone—and has been credited as an influence on gory horror films, especially via the generic influence of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
10. Capcom would later introduce Akuma, a hidden playable character in Super Street Fighter II Turbo (1994), unlockable via a combination of carefully timed button presses on the Character Select screen—as if both acknowledging the earlier Sheng Long mishap and taking inspiration from Midway’s own introduction of secret characters.
11. The purple-attired character Rain would originate in a similar manner as a Prince-themed in-joke by Ed Boon, briefly seen during a flash of demo gameplay in the “attract mode” of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995), and was later made a playable character in subsequent games.
12. Also see the respective pages for the Mortal Kombat games on the Cutting Room Floor website (n.d.). Other major Easter eggs, such as Boon’s separate diagnostic menus for the first three coin-op games, would not be discovered until as late as 2015.
13. For MKII, Tobias initially wished to digitize real-life kickboxer Kathy Long as a character, but this idea was dropped due to time constraints (Quan 1994b, 29).
14. Wrestling games are already generically closer in spirit to fighting games than boxing games, since they typically rely on theatrical personas with signature moves, health meters to mark character strength, and so on. In its incorporation of foreign objects to be used as optional weapons, such as pool cues and crates, Pit-Fighter more closely resembles a wrestling game than a fighting game in many respects.
15. See Ahn, et al. v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 965 F. Supp 1134 (N.D. Ill. 1997); and Pesina v. Midway Manufacturing Company, et al., 948 F. Supp. 40 (N.D. Ill. 1996).
16. Ahn, et al. v. Midway, et al.
Chapter 2
1. Tobias had originally planned for Total Carnage to feature a backstory “involv[ing] the world being invaded by ghouls from a dimension called Outworld,” Page 125 →but the game’s cocreator, Mark Turmell, vetoed the inclusion of unnecessary themes and storylines (Ali 2019, 62).
2. As one of the first 3D fighting games (and a Mortal Kombat competitor), Tekken (Bandai Namco [JP], 1994–) provided a fitting “extra dimension” to its gameplay by developing the increasingly complex story of the Mishima family across its many popular sequels. The Tekken series, then, is a prominent exception to the fighting game’s oft-criticized lack of narrative depth, much as it also represents an attempt to reassert Japanese dominance over the mid-1990s coin-op market.
3. On the grindhouse market, see Church 2015, and for a sample of such double bills circa 1974–75, see Cope 1975. Also see Prashad 2001 and Bowman 2021 on this period.
4. Note that the pinyin term gong fu roughly translates as “hard work/practice over time” and can refer to any gradually acquired skill, not specifically martial arts, whereas wushu actually translates as “martial art.” By the 1960s–70s, however, these meanings were effectively reversed once wushu was reconceived as a noncombative gymnastic sport and “kung fu” became internationally associated with empty-handed martial artistry. In this chapter, I use the latter-day associations of these two terms for the sake of consistency with common usage.
5. Given the basis of the lawsuits that some of these original actors would later file against Midway, it is perhaps no surprise that today they claim a considerable amount of creative input, even if not enough to legally qualify them as joint authors. On the issue of authorship, it is also notable that Japanese character names and cultural allusions (such as the blind swordsman Kenshi as a Zatoichi trope) would significantly increase in the Mortal Kombat games made after Tobias left Midway in 1999.
6. According to Daniel Pesina, additional inspiration for Johnny Cage and Jax respectively came from Marvel’s characters Iron Fist and Power Man, whose own comics series ran concurrently with Master of Kung Fu (Myers 2018).
7. The documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (John Little, 2000) reconstructs as much of Lee’s vision for Game of Death as possible from the extant footage.
8. Konami’s controversial rail-shooter Lethal Enforcers, discussed in the following chapter, would include a level set in Chicago’s Chinatown, featuring stereotypically attired Chinese villains (see fig. 15).
9. On such diasporic video stores, see Hilderbrand 2009, 27–32.
10. Dux’s story was later called into question in Johnson 1988. This has led to several ensuing decades of counterarguments over the veracity of Dux’s account, though my primary interest here is in how Bloodsport dramatized the story as a Van Damme vehicle. According to Dux’s original account, for example, despite fighting until knockouts, there were no deaths at the actual Kumite, nor were betting spectators allowed.
11. On hardbody films, also see Jeffords 1993; Tasker 1993; and Ayers 2008.
12. Notably, Provenzo’s research does not specify the exact game being described here, but it is likely either Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo, 1988), Double Dragon, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989) for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System—all of them, ironically, Japanese productions—and not one of the Mortal Kombat games.
13. On the tradition of “alternative blood” to evade censorship, also see Kocurek 2015b. This form of localization could operate in the opposite direction, however, Page 126 →with the Japanese-designed Bushido Blade featuring a splash of red blood upon fatal sword strikes in the American version, in place of the yellow flash in the original Japanese version.
14. This same toxic masculinity often overlaps with the aforementioned white supremacism expressed by a contingent of gamers fearing that their bubble of ludic escapism is being threatened by racial/sexual minorities (see Nakamura 2019).
15. American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, 244 F.3d 572 (7th Cir. 2001).
Chapter 3
1. Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952). Film distributor Joseph Burstyn legally challenged the New York State Board of Regents’ 1951 ban of Roberto Rossellini’s film The Miracle (1948), which had been accused of sacrilege. The U.S. Supreme Court’s “Miracle decision” in Burstyn’s favor, which struck down the ban, also reversed an earlier 1915 ruling that had declared motion pictures unprotected by the First Amendment.
2. Coin-op gamers of the early 1990s will recall, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insertion of antidrug messages (“Winners Don’t Use Drugs”) into the attract mode for many games, apparently convinced that idle youth were as likely to reach for a crack pipe as a joystick.
3. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283 (102 S.Ct. 1070, 71 L.Ed.2d 152) (1982).
4. During the same period, Midway/Williams developed the Williams Action Video Entertainment Network (or “WaveNet”), an attempt to remotely network arcade machines for competitive play via an ISDN connection. Although installation costs for these ISDN connections might have put off some arcade owners, Williams hoped that their widespread adoption would revolutionize the coin-op industry’s business model by allowing companies like Williams to remotely disseminate new software and updates for free, in exchange for a share of each arcade’s revenue on those games. In April 1996, Williams began field-testing WaveNet on ten Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 cabinets in the Chicago area, but this early experiment with networked gaming was short-lived, and its ambitious revenue-sharing model did not come to pass (Webb 1996, 18).
5. Its sequel, Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters (Konami, 1994), in fact, uses an Old West setting instead.
6. The Options menu on the SNES prototype even included a selection between “Bloody” and “Bloodless” game modes, but it is unclear if this was to be a standard menu option or unlockable only with a code.
7. The ESRB ratings include E (Everyone), T (Teen), M (Mature 17+), and AO (Adults Only 18+).
8. For example, MKI was banned and confiscated in Germany in 1994 under a Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons law against content that glorifies or trivializes violence.
9. For overviews of these debates, see Sicart 2009; Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca 2013, 255–79; Schott 2016; Markey and Ferguson 2017.
Page 127 →10. However, they do allow that players with preexisting dispositions toward aggression were more intrigued by violent game content for its own sake, even if that violent content still did not correlate with their overall enjoyment of the games themselves.
11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011).
Chapter 4
1. Time Killers was considered so bad that it inspired its own parody game, Timeslaughter (Bloodlust Software [U.S.], 1996); whereas reviews of Naughty Dog’s almost self-parodic Way of the Warrior noted how the Panasonic 3DO’s “beautiful” CD-based graphics did not compensate for horrible gameplay since, even with its “humor value,” the game “isn’t even good by accident!” (“Review . . . Warrior” 1994, 38).
2. Emulated versions of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy would be further repackaged on Midway Arcade Treasures compilations (2004–2005) for the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Xbox, in addition to serving as unlockable hidden games within the later sequels, as if having acquired the historical status of the PONG and Galaga games hidden in the original trilogy.
3. This compiled story information derives from several sources: Santoro et al. 2018; Mortal Kombat Wiki (n.d.); and Jasper 2017.
4. A hyperdiegesis is “a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text” (Hills 2002, 104).
5. Although the number of grandmothers who embraced MK: Armageddon is doubtful, Boon’s rhetoric is consistent with the Wii’s reputation as a game console adapted by “casual” gamers of many ages, as explained in Juul 2009.
6. “Mokap,” a hidden character in MK: Deadly Alliance, wears a motion-capture suit covered with reflective balls, alluding to this now-common cinematic process.
7. Also see In re MIDWAY GAMES INC., et al., Debtors. Threshold Entertainment, Inc., Plaintiff, v. Midway Games Inc., et al., Bankruptcy No. 09-10465, Adversary No. 09-51081 (446 B.R. 148 [2011]).
8. An R18+ rating for video games would be introduced by the release of Mortal Kombat X four years later, allowing the uncensored sequel to be sold to adults.
9. Mortal Kombat 11 (2019) replaces X-ray attacks with high-damage “Fatal Blow” attacks, enabled once a character’s health drops below the 30 percent mark, thus allowing a losing player to potentially turn the tables on their opponent. Meanwhile, MK11 splits the tripartite meter into separate offensive and defensive meters, giving players more strategic in-round options for how to use accumulated energy toward enhanced moves.
10. A playable Scorpion, however, would be available to Injustice players as a premium download, much as NetherRealm’s Injustice 2 (2017) features Sub-Zero and Raiden as downloadable characters. Likewise, NetherRealm introduced a mobile game for iOS and Android devices in conjunction with MKX, based in purchasing and collecting a virtual card deck of fighters and their corresponding powers, which incentivizes in-game microtransactions by also unlocking content on the home console version.
11. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011).
Previous Chapter
Four. Imitation, Derivation, and Reinvention
Next Chapter
Glossary
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No. Title Character arc Directed by Written by Original air date 01"Meeting"
Transliteration: "Deai" (Japanese: 出会い)CommonAkitoshi YokoyamaAkitoshi YokoyamaApril 5, 2013 ( )
As summer vacation ends and the new semester starts, Kazuya Maeda father gives him a camera and he begins to discover the joys of photography. His childhood friend and school idol, Haruka Niimi, and another friend, Nonoka Masaki, encourage him take photos of them, and he meets his sister's friend, Mai Sakura, with whom he gets along. This brings him to the attention of the president of the Photography Club, Hiromichi Kudou. But the president of the Photo Club, Katsumi Kurebayashi, tries to convince him to join their club. In the end, Kazuya chooses the Photography Club. That evening, after meeting and exchanging a few words with another Photo Club member, Hikari Sanehara, Kazuya sees Tomoe Misumi sitting and crying at Haruka's desk in their classroom and promises her that he'll keep it a secret.
02"School Heaven"
Transliteration: "Gakuen Tengoku" (Japanese: 学園天国)CommonFumio MaezonoAkitoshi YokoyamaApril 12, 2013 ( )
Having learned that Tomoe was sitting at Haruka's desk because she is envious of her, Kazuya keeps his promise. After giving Nonoka his notes for the next lesson, Kazuya has two encounters with the Student Council President, Aki Muroto, who lectures him on school rules. Later, Haruka proposes that Kazuya take pictures of her sometime and he agrees, and drags her away from the club members, Nakagawa and Azuma, who were trying to take pictures of her from embarrassing angles. Still later, Mai tells Kazuya that members of the Photography Club are banned from taking pictures of the Rhythmic gymnastic club members but asks their club president to make an exception for him. At the club meeting the following day, Kudou announces the identity of Miss Photogenic for the current school year (a club tradition for the school festival) - Haruka. Later, Kazuya catches Aki in the act of climbing over the wall to avoid being marked down as being late and promises her that he will not to tell on her or show the pictures to anyone.
03"Profusion of Flowers"
Transliteration: "Hyakka Ryouran" (Japanese: 百花繚乱)CommonmigmiAkitoshi YokoyamaApril 19, 2013 ( )
Kazuya experiences a couple of accidents that day: Nonoka crashes into him while rushing down a stairwell (and they share their first kiss as a result) and Nakagawa pushes Kazuya into Rina Yunoki causing him to accidentally grope her swimsuit-clad chest. Mai tells Kazuya that he has received permission from the rhythmic gymnastic club to photograph them, which Uchida overhears and passes on to the club. Then Uchida, Nakagawa and Azuma give him some "dirty" magazines as a source of inspiration, much to his discomfort. The next day, Kazuya sees Aki diving and blackmails her into allowing him to take pictures of her in her swimsuit, for which Kudou congratulates him. Later, after the photo shoot with Aki and helping Rina with her club, while on class cleaning duty with Haruka, Kazuya remembers that the Photography Club will be taking embarrassing pictures of her and he tries to think of a way to sabotage their attempts. The following day, he manages to foil their attempt, but in a rather embarrassing fashion. Since the Photography Club will not give up on their Miss Photogenic tradition, Kazuya declares to himself that he'll protect Haruka. At the end of the day, he takes some pictures of Mai.
04"My Feelings Henceforth"
Transliteration: "Korekara no Omoi" (Japanese: これからの想い)CommonJun FukutaAkitoshi YokoyamaApril 26, 2013 ( )
The following day, Kazuya calms a frantic Kanon over a bee and later defends Kanon and Nonoka from Kaichou Aki who was scolding them for playing baseball in the hallway. He even gets her to help him with his homework. After club activities, Nakagawa asks Kazuya to return his magazines and Kazuya attempts to do so, but Haruka appears suddenly and, not wanting to get caught with contraband, Kazuya diverts her attention by walking her home. During their walk, they reminisce over the past. The next day, Kanon finds his pictures of Aki on his camera but he manages to divert her suspicions on Midou. That evening, as Kazuya tries to give Nakagawa back the magazines, Mai learns about them and he promises to do anything for her in exchange for her not telling about the magazines (which she keeps). That weekend the Photography Club hones their photography skills at a cosplay event. The following Monday, as Haruka, Hikari, Kanon, Aki, Nonoka, Mai, Rina, Tomoe, Katsumi and Ruu stretch before gym class, Kurebayashi asks Kazuya to photograph the girls and offers to give him pointers. As Kazuya snaps a shot of Uchida, he notices a mole at the corner of her eye that seems familiar.
05"Conflict of Love"
Transliteration: "Koi no Kakechigai" (Japanese: 恋の掛け違い)Haruka Niimi arcKoji SawaiAkitoshi YokoyamaMay 3, 2013 ( )
Some time later, Kazuya find Haruka has collapsed in the hall and takes her to the infirmary to rest. Seeing her like this reminds Kazuya of when they were children and how Haruka would sometimes have a similar reaction when they were playing. That evening he walks her home and she reiterates her offer to pose for him. The following day both he and Uchida overhear some girls talking about him and Haruka. The rumors going around school about them reminds him of middle school when the same thing happened, which was the cause of the distance between them. Later Kazuya overhears the ace of the Soccer Club proposing that Haruka stay away from Kazuya and date him, but she demurs. Haruka then finds out that Kazuya heard everything and tries to tell him to forget it, but he tells her that she should go for it which angers Haruka, who runs off with tears in her eyes. Both Kazuya and Haruka are upset and do not see each another for several days until Kanon shows up at the club room and asks Kazuya if he knows where Haruka is since she hasn't been attending club activities lately and isn't answering her phone. Realizing that Haruka maybe in the same situation as earlier, Kazuya rushes out to search for her, while the two Photography clubs also keep an eye for her. While searching for Haruka, Kazuya remembers scenes from their childhood as well as more recent memories and comes to realize her feelings. That evening, in the rain, Kazuya is relieved to find Haruka safe at home. The following day, the members of both Photography clubs, and some others, decide to help fix the problem. That evening, Kazuya messages Haruka and asks to meet at the "place where their memories are".
06"Distant Thoughts"
Transliteration: "Omoi Haruka ni" (Japanese: 想いはるかに)Haruka Niimi arcShinichi MasakiSōtarō HayashiMay 10, 2013 ( )
Haruka shows up at the "place where their memories are" - the same playground where they played together as children. They reminisce about the fun times they had and Kazuya apologizes. When he promises to never leave her again, an overjoyed Haruka forgives him. While enjoying their renewed relationship, Kazuya asks Haruka to come visit the Photography Club's exposition at the school fair where his photos will be displayed. While playing soccer at the beach, Kazuya remembers hitting her in the chest as kids and freezes, prompting Haruka to scold him for treating her too gently. On the day of the school festival, the Photography club present Haruka with the title of "Miss Photogenic". To her surprise, their display is filled with photos of her, all taken in secret, with the exception of those taken by Kazuya. They offer to remove the photos if she wishes. A flattered Haruka declines. That evening, Kazuya finally confesses his feelings for Haruka which she accepts and they share a kiss, fulfilling a childhood promise they made to one another.
07"A Star's Smile"
Transliteration: "Hoshi no Egao" (Japanese: 星の笑顔)Hikari Sanehara arcKōichi MachidaSōtarō HayashiMay 17, 2013 ( )
After an encounter with Hikari Sanehara, Kazuya asks her if her can take photos of her, which she agrees to. During their session, Hikari mentions to Kazuya that she does not like to smile or have her picture taken. While discussing their photography styles, Hikari states that people smile on instinct when they see a camera, and that you can’t tell whether that smile is true or fake. This convinces Kazuya that he must get her to take pictures of people and tries numerous times to get her to laugh over the next few days, with a notable lack of success. However, after a little help of the Photography club, Kazuya finally manages to see Hikari laugh. The following day Kazuya invites Hikari out on a date to an amusement park where they enjoy themselves. Later that evening, Hikari asks Kazuya to accompany her to a special place — a viewing platform where they catch flowers glowing under the stars. Hikari then reveals why she doesn't like smiles - in middle school she associated with some popular girls but their relationship gradually turned sour and they began to bully her. She avoided their bullying as much as she could until they framed her for stealing a classmate's wallet. As a result she was scolded by her teachers and shunned by her classmates which caused her to stop trusting people. Kazuya is the first person since that time that she has felt she could open up to and smile in front of. As time passes, they continue taking pictures together and their relationship progresses and the following spring they begin to date.
08"Look at My Bare Face"
Transliteration: "Sugao o Mitsumete" (Japanese: 素顔を見つめて)Aki Muroto arcFumio MaezonoYoshitaka ShishidoMay 24, 2013 ( )
One rainy day after he took pictures of Aki Muroto, Kazuya notices her on the roof skipping classes and decides to cheer her up. He convinces her to leave the school grounds and takes her to the local arcade. While on their date, Aki tells Kazuya about herself: since childhood, she has studied hard to become a doctor like her father. She has taken extra classes, even on weekends and holidays, despite her love for swimming. Even though she quit the swim team to study more, Aki says that she's at her limit and she's "not cut out" to be Student Council President or a doctor. While Aki is convinced that she isn’t a great person, an older lady notices her and thanks her for saving an old man’s life by arranging for him to be treated at her family's hospital. Kazuya realizes that the incident the woman is referring to occurred on the day that he took the photos of her and that she could have entered through the front gate had she not wanted to draw attention to herself. As the date ends, Kazuya realizes that the only thing holding their relationship together is his photos of her illicit entry, so he invites her on a real date. They go to an aquarium where he learns of Aki's love of dolphins. Their beautiful swimming encouraged her when she was young and now she wants Kazuya to encourage her. Kazuya helps her to come to the conclusion she needs to accept all aspects of herself and the two confess their love for each other and become a couple. Aki later rejoins the swim team and allows Kazuya to take photos of her diving. They continue dating even after Aki graduates.
09"A Challenge Of Love"
Transliteration: "Koi no Hatashijou" (Japanese: 恋の果たし状)Nonoka Masaki arcTatsufumi ItōSōtarō HayashiMay 31, 2013 ( )
It starts when Kazuya joined the Photography club in spring and started helping Nonoka Masaki with her morning practices. One day, hearing that no one would model for him, Nonoka proposes to model for him if he will help her to throw risers as good as the top pitchers from other schools, to which Kazuya agrees. Since Nonoka agreed to model for him, Kazuya goes to one store to study up on his photography skills, with Nonoka tagging along. A few days later, Nonoka becomes jealous of how Kazuya gets along with Haruka after seeing how Kazuya complemented Haruka for resewing Nonoka's sports bag, even after their first kiss (seen in episode 3). So Nonoka waits for Kazuya on the roof to "challenge" him, to which he doesn't have a clue. She even confesses to him and that she wants to prove she can be the perfect girl for him, to which Kazuya accepts the challenge. So as they practice and take pictures on summer holidays, Kazuya keeps scolding Nonoka for being obvious on various occasions, like clothing and food, so they decide to do a photo session on the beach where they enjoy taking photos, until Nonoka mentions nude photography which drags attention of two guys, resulting Kazuya to protect Nonoka. As the new semester started, Nonoka realizes that if she masters her pitching, she won't be with Kazuya anymore, which makes her sad and quit her practices. Then Kazuya decides to cheer her up by making a picture of her "pitching". At the day of the school festival, Kazuya confesses his love for Nonoka and his loss in the challenge, to which Nonoka accepts. After that they become a couple.
10"An Angel's Dance"
Transliteration: "Tenshi no Mai" (Japanese: 天使の舞い)Mai Sakura arcTamaki Nakatsu
Hideki TakayamaSōtarō HayashiJune 7, 2013 ( )
After finding those "dirty" magazines with Kazuya, Mai Sakura begins to blackmail him into doing her favours like tasting various food for her since she's on a diet, in order to keep fit for a competition. She has him explain all the flavors and she fantasies her routine to food, that she even bites him one day. However, it doesn’t help because she falters on the first part of her routine on the day of the qualifiers, but Kazuya gives her words of encouragement and she finishes it. Afterwards Kanon gets "sick" and convinces Kazuya to go to the pool in her place with Mai in order to cheer her up, since she did not qualify for the fall competition. Even though Kazuya is not oblivious he accepts and the date. Afterwards Kazuya realizes he is drawn to Mai because of her hard work ethic. He dedicates most of his time to improve his photography and help Mai diet. Eventually Mai returns the magazines to Kazuya, also putting a love letter addressed to him into them. One day after school, Kanon almost caught Kazuya and Mai in an inappropriate position in his room. After one day that Mai told Kazuya that she was chosen as an alternative for the team, he continues to help and cheer her up until one day they confess their love for each other and become a couple. In the end, they began to date each other and take pictures together.
11"Wife of the Academy"
Transliteration: "Gakuen no Oyomesan" (Japanese: 学園のお嫁さん)Rina Yunoki arcKoji SawaiYoshitaka ShishidoJune 14, 2013 ( )
As Kazuya finds it difficult to advertise the Cooking Research Society for Rina Yunoki's sake and not Rina herself, she's been giving her best to prepare food and gathering new members for the club till the day of the school festival and Kazuya decides to make a poster of her cooking. On one fall day, after Kazuya gets mistaken by the girls for the one from the Photography club who tried to sneak into the vaulting horse and beaten up in front of Rina, he is relieved after Rina cleared of the misunderstanding in front of them and when she asked Kazuya to help her find a four-leaf clover. When Rina spots Uchida, she insisted that the other one to help out with the cooking, to which to Uchida reluctantly agrees. After the cooking, Kazuya notices that the food Rina made doesn't look good on the camera, he tries to figure a way to make it look good while Rina keeps making new food, but all to no success. One day Kazuya decides to take Rina to a fun park since she's looking for a "change of pace", but on the next day Rina's little sister Erina tags along. While having lunch, Erina notices how close the pair are, hinting that they look like newlyweds. Then Rina comes up with a new idea of cooking a "Sunflower burger" for the recruiting poster to submit to the Student Council with Kazuya helping her. On the day of the school festival, Rina along with Kanon and Nonoka cosplay in the cafe where the popular cosplayer Alice-chan arrives to help Rina. After the festival, Rina tells Kazuya that five freshman girls came to join the Cooking Research Society club and now the club won't be disbanded, much to Rina's joy. Then Kazuya and Rina confess their love for each other and become a couple. Afterwards, Rina begins to teach new club members new stuff.
12"Photograph Memory"
Transliteration: "Foto Gurafu Memori" (Japanese: フォトグラフメモリー)Tomoe Misumi arcAkira Mano
Akitoshi YokoyamaYoshitaka ShishidoJune 21, 2013 ( )
One day, when Kazuya finds Tomoe Misumi trying making different faces in front of the river, it begins to rain and Kazuya takes Tomoe under his umbrella and escorts her to somewhere to wait for the rain to stop. There, they chat over Kazuya's relationship with Haruka. On next day after school, Tomoe drags Kazyua to one place where she gives him cupcakes as thanks for the other day. After hearing from Kazuya that her cupcakes are good, Tomoe becomes so shy that Kazuya wants to take a picture of it, but she declines, thinking that she isn't good enough for him. However Kazuya tries to reconvince her and tells her that she is pretty which makes her happy. After that, Kazuya started taking pictures of Tomoe whenever he saw her (skipping the scenes where he took the blackmail photos of Aki's swimsuit, where Nonoka clashed into him, where he helped Rina with her stuff). But one day, Tomoe tells him that she's transferring schools after the school festival due to her dad's job, and tells him to leave her alone. But Kazuya declines the idea and decides to be friends with her until after the festival, much to her joy. They decided to take more pictures in order to make good memories of her life in their school (with Haruka, Kanon, Nonoka, Rina, Katsumi, Ruu, Hikari, Aki and Mai tagging along) and outside school. Eventually, she told everyone that she'll be transferring and she became surrounded by people. As the day of the school festival came, the day of Tomoe's transferring approached, Kazuya prepared the photo album with the pictures that he made with and for Tomoe, and gave it to her by the time her train was about to leave. Thankfully, all her friends, even the Photography Club and Photo Club came to say goodbye. As the train leaves Kazuya promises Tomoe that they'll see each other soon.
13"Loving Each Other"
Transliteration: "Omoi Ai" (Japanese: 想い合い)Kanon Maeda arcToshihiro NagaoSōtarō HayashiJune 28, 2013 ( )
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Mortal Kombat 1 Guide
|
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Mortal Kombat 1 currently features 23 roster characters, and 15 Kameo characters. This includes both new and returning fighters for the
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https://kraken.ignimgs.com/favicon.ico
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IGN
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https://www.ign.com/wikis/mortal-kombat-1/Characters
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Best Mortal Kombat 1 Characters
Want to determine your own personal best character pick -- and then see what the community thought? Vote in our Mortal Kombat 1 character Face-Off and you'll see win ratios for each one.
Face-Off: Mortal Kombat 1's Best Character
Pick a winner
Finish playing for your personal results or see the community’s!
What makes a character truly the best depends on your definition of what matters most, as well as your personal play style preferences. This ranking tries to determine the best all-round MK1 star. To get around subjective biases, we put it to the vote. Based on tens of thousands community votes, this is the current list of the 10 best characters in Mortal Kombat 1:
Scorpion
Sub-Zero
Liu Kang
Raiden
Reptile
Omni-Man
Kitana
Johnny Cage
Ermac
Smoke
Mortal Kombat 1 Character Roster
To learn more about each MK1 character, click the links below to find comprehensive character guides that include a full introduction, move lists, and helpful tips and strategies.
Main Characters AshrahBarakaGeneral ShaoGerasHavikJohnny CageKenshiKitanaKung LaoLi MeiLiu KangMileenaNitaraRaidenRainReikoReptileScorpionShang TsungSindelSmokeSub-ZeroTanya
Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo Characters
New to Mortal Kombat 1 is the introduction of Kameo Characters that can be selected to assist in battle, after your main character has been chosen. These Kameo Character unique fighters that only appear in a support capability, as well as a few that can selected as either a main fighter or support role, such as Kung Lao, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero.
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https://mashable.com/article/best-british-tv-shows-2023
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The 20 best British TV shows of 2023
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[
"Shannon Connellan",
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2023-12-23T10:00:00+00:00
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A roundup of the best British TV shows of 2023.
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en
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Mashable
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https://mashable.com/article/best-british-tv-shows-2023
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2023 has been a pretty big year for TV, and — as always — the British contribution has been a solid one.
From the bleak but powerful closing chapters of Top Boy and Happy Valley to the regal romance of Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story and The Buccaneers, the sweet crushes of Heartstopper and Sex Education to the comedy prowess of Dreaming Whilst Black, we've been treated to an impressive array of shows both new and old.
Here are our favourite British TV shows of 2023 and where you can watch them.
Special mention: Doctor Who, The 60th Anniversary Specials
It's been fifteen years in the making, but a great injustice of was finally rectified on Doctor Who. During the reign of David Tennant's Tenth Doctor in the mid-00s, his outspoken and brilliant companion Donna Noble helped save existence — and for her troubles had to forget all the incredible interstellar adventures she'd gone on. It was one of the most infuriating moments Whovians have yet suffered. But with Tennant coming back to be the Fourteenth Doctor, Russell T Davies had a second chance to do right by Catherine Tate's beloved badass. And boy did he!
For three specials, "The Star Beast," "Wild Blue Yonder," and "The Giggle," Davies reunited arguably the best Doctor/companion pairing to date. Tennant and Tate got back into it with all the verve and nerve they had seasons back. Foes new and old came to play, ranging from the malevolently cute Meep to the preachy Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris). But the best bit of it all was that Donna Noble was finally given back her memories, and by extension her full identity. Sure, she'd grown to be a loving wife to her adorable husband (Karl Collins) and devoted mother to her creative daughter (Yasmin Finney). But once the Doctor set her recall free, the Donna who could take on an alien arachnid queen or a pompous Time Lord was back and good as ever. And man was she rightly PO'd about those lottery winnings!
While we're looking forward to seeing what Ncuti Gatwa brings as the Fifteenth Doctor next season, it's good to know the TARDIS door hasn't closed on more Doctor Donna adventures. — Kristy Puchko, Film Editor
How to watch: Doctor Who, The 60th Anniversary Specials is streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the U.S.
20. Nolly
It's a Sin, Years and Years, and Doctor Who wizard Russell T Davies brought us one of the more fun series on TV this year, based on a real story. In Nolly, Helena Bonham Carter is magnetic as famous '70s soap star Noelle Gordon, whose fame pedestal is rattled when she's suddenly axed from the popular Crossroads soap. At once a testament to the rampant sexism and ageism in entertainment and an ode to British TV in the late '70s, early '80s, Nolly is a sharply scripted dramedy from Davies. Augustus Prew is a particular highlight as Nolly's swaggering co-star Tony Adams. — Shannon Connellan, UK Editor
How to watch: Nolly is now streaming on ITVX in the UK, U.S. release TBC.
19. Three Little Birds
Based on his mother's personal stories, Sir Lenny Henry’s Three Little Birds offers a compelling, poignant perspective on England post-Windrush and in particular, the experiences of three Jamaican women who migrate to the UK in the late '50s. Glamorous Hollywood hopeful Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber), pious Hosanna (Yazmin Belo), and dauntless Leah (Rochelle Neil) leave their lives behind for a new one, connected on arrival with Leah's brother Aston (Javone Prince). Each follows their own path, experiencing overt racism, discrimination, hostility, and social ostracism in England, and the series' leads Coomber, Belo, and Neil give impeccable performances.
As well as being deeply moving, however, the show wields a powerful ability to weave moments of joy, friendship, and camaraderie through the incessant atmosphere of threat and injustice. As Digital Spy's Janet A Leigh writes, "It's not inserted as a way to bring light relief from all the misery but to reflect the joyful spirit of the Black community and our ability to tap into light even in the darkest of times." — S.C.
How to watch: Three Little Birds is now streaming on ITVX in the UK and BritBox in the U.S. from Feb 1.
18. Hijack
Set over seven real-time hours, Hijack is something you could finish on a flight but should absolutely not watch on one. With Jim Field Smith and Mo Ali directing, and Idris Elba in the lead, this ridiculously fun Apple TV+ series is about a plane hijacked on its way to London. Elba plays Sam Nelson, a corporate negotiator who tries to bargain with flight KA29's villains all the way to the final humdinger of an episode. As Mashable's Belen Edwards writes in her review, "Hijack is the perfect show to watch if you want to get sucked into a mildly ridiculous, yet totally engrossing scenario. You'll squeal as our heroes brave danger, swoon at Elba's charisma, and even chuckle at some choice one-liners." — S.C.
How to watch: Hijack is now streaming on Apple TV+.
17. Blue Lights
If you've ever felt out of your depth at work, watch Blue Lights. This tense, thrilling Belfast-set BBC crime series follows three probationary constables, Grace Ellis (House of the Dragon's Sian Brooke), Annie Conlon (The Dig's Katherine Devlin), and Tommy Foster (newcomer Nathan Braniff), who are flailing in their trial periods. Hazed by their colleagues, reprimanded by their superiors, and intimidated by locals, they're all finding their feet on the job. Meanwhile, they're dealing with gang leader James McIntyre (John Lynch) and territory boundaries, following protocol, and tension rising with both the community and undercover operations from English police forces. — S.C.
How to watch: Blue Lights is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK, U.S. release TBC.
16. Lockwood and Co.
Based on Jonathan Stroud's young adult supernatural novels, Netflix's Lockwood and Co. brought the teen ghostbusting, haunted house energy we needed in deep, dark winter from Attack the Block director Joe Cornish. As seen in his alien invasion favourite, Cornish's series again puts young people at the forefront of a threat, the best fighting chance we have against malevolent forces. That'd be Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman), who runs his own wraith-hunting agency in London, battling ghosts with his trusty sidekick George Karim (Ali Hadji-Heshmati), and psychic teen Lucy Carlyle (Ruby Stokes).
Lockwood and Co. appears to sit in a very specific target age demographic, taking back scary spaces for older teens in a way that would delight one Wednesday Addams. One thing I would caution is that every episode of Lockwood and Co. is haunted by many dark causes of death, so it's pretty intense for younger teens. But Lockwood and Co. is the kind of show useless grown-ups might also enjoy: a ghost hunting detective story that involves psychic powers and personal secrets to be uncovered. Grab a big cuppa and a blanket and settle in.* — S.C.
How to watch: Lockwood and Co. is now streaming on Netflix.
15. The Buccaneers
Based on Edith Wharton’s final novel and written by Katherine Jakeways, eight-episode AppleTV+ series The Buccaneers is a 19th century romance drama following five young American ladies drawn to England after one of their high society weddings to an English lord. Arriving in London, the newcomers are faced with deep judgment while bringing their own. But there's also a landscape of eligible suitors on the horizon, including a forlorn Duke standing on a clifftop looking for a wife. Whatever will he do?
If you're craving the next season of Bridgerton, The Buccaneers will satiate your thirst with diabolical narrative twists, simmering romantic leads, savvy performances, a killer modern soundtrack, and the lavish design of our society ball dreams.* — S.C.
How to watch: The Buccaneers is now streaming on Apple TV+.
14. Everything Now
For a series that demands everything, everywhere, all at once, Everything Now actually manages to hit plenty of teen show requisites while creating its own. Teen shows are seemingly rampaging through streaming services of late, blending comedy, mystery, and drama, from Netflix's Sex Education, Never Have I Ever, Heartstopper, and Riverdale to HBO's Euphoria — standing on the shoulders of Capeside and Bayside giants, of course.
Netflix's latest British offering, created by 22-year-old Ripley Parker, is in intimidating company but manages to stand joyfully queer and tall, with its raw, authentic, and surprisingly hilarious portrayal of the pitfalls and triumphs of teen life among serious mental health themes. The series revolves around protagonist Mia (played with utter vulnerability, obstinacy, and comedic flair by Talk to Me’s Sophie Wilde), who is managing the anfractuous road through physical and mental recovery from an eating disorder. It's a deeply significant part of her life, but importantly, the series insists on it not being the defining aspect of it. In fact, she has a whole bucket list to "redefine" herself with.* — S.C.
How to watch: Everything Now is now streaming on Netflix.
15. Starstruck, Season 3
The third season of New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo's joyous millennial rom-com series, Starstruck is a victory lap for the comedian. Created by and starring Matafeo, alongside fellow comedian Alice Snedden, BBC/HBO's Starstruck is three seasons in and well-settled in its incisive examination of life's sweet messiness, the gloriously awkward clusterfuck of falling for someone, the heartbreak of things falling apart, and that all-too-relatable feeling that everyone around you has their shit more together than you ever will.
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Season 1 leaned into the temperamental chaos of something new, introducing Jessie (Matafeo) and Tom's (Nikesh Patel) burgeoning Notting Hill situation and dealing with Tom's fame, while Season 2 asked "what next?" after Jessie's grand romantic gesture, moving them into early dating territory. Season 3? Hard ex-ville.* — S.C.
How to watch: Starstruck Season 3 is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Max in the U.S.
12. Champion
Queenie author Candice Carty-Williams helms the brilliiant BBC/Netflix drama series Champion, "a love letter to Black British music set in south London," following rapper Bosco Champion (Top Boy's Malcolm Kamulete) and his sister/manager, Vita (the incredible Déja J. Bowens in her TV debut). Just home from prison ready to rebuild his life and career, Bosco is reestablishing himself in the music industry when Vita, a talented artist in her own right, is scouted by his rival, Bulla (Corey Weekes). Tension in the Champion family rises, and the siblings find themselves at odds (often publicly), as Vita finds herself more and more isolated the closer to her dream she gets.
The cast also includes singer-songwriter Ray BLK, Small Axe's Nadine Marshall, His Dark Materials' Ray Fearon, Doctor Who's Jo Martin, Everything I Know About Love's Adeyinka Akinrinade, Genesis Lynea, and many more. And the music in this series? The work of champions. — S.C.
How to watch: Champion is now streaming on BBC iPlayer, U.S. release TBC.
11. Extraordinary
Disney's Extraordinary is a wildly fun take on superpowers, in a world where everyone's kind of rubbish at using them. Created by Emma Moran and directed by Toby McDonald, Jennifer Sheridan, and Nadira Amrani, Extraordinary follows the plight of Jen (Máiréad Tyers), a 25-year-old who didn't get her superpowers in a world where everyone else got theirs at the age of 18. The show's brilliance, beyond its playful special effects and overarching hypothetical, is the cast. As Mashable's Caitlin Welsh writes in her review, "Extraordinary earns its place among the best of the millennial romcom sitcoms — and stands well above certain other eight-or-so-episode-long shows about people with superpowers on Disney-owned streaming platforms — thanks to its whip-smart writing and lived-in performances." — S.C.
How to watch: Extraordinary is now streaming on Disney+ in the UK and on Hulu in the U.S.
10. Sex Education
This year was a big one for British teen series, especially on Netflix, especially with newcomer Everything Now, returning favourite Heartstopper, and the very final season of Sex Education. Saying goodbye to Moordale was an emotional time, as these long-loved, scattered characters had a lot on their plates. Directed by Alyssa McClelland, Dominic Leclerc, and Michelle Savill, Season 4 of Sex Education saw the crew navigating faith, new friends, identity and sexuality, gender dysphoria, unexpected crushes, past trauma, new relationships, and exams, all within a new school, Cavendish College, a mindful education paradise/Big Tech campus.
Ncuti Gatwa and Emma Mackey are season standouts as Eric and Maeve, navigating faith and processing grief respectively. As I wrote in my review, "The series farewells its characters from a place of truly knowing them, inside and out, and how much they mean to each other, the audience, and the actors who've played them. Valuing connection and fellowship, Sex Education champions second chances, forgiveness, and the opportunity to apologise and change your behaviour if you fuck up. The series has grown with its characters, sometimes moving into heavier territory while keeping its silliness, awkwardness, and joy."*— S.C.
How to watch: Sex Education is now streaming on Netflix.
9. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
A prequel looking into a young Charlotte's (India Amarteifio) life and the early days of her marriage with King George (Corey Mylchreest), Queen Charlotte is by far Bridgerton's best love story and I can't imagine a future where it isn't. (Shonda Rhimes, I challenge you to outdo yourself.) Their relationship is one for the ages, brimming with the Bridgerton yearning and courting we all adore, and topped with a strangers-to-soulmates arc that'll tug at your heartstrings. Although Charlotte and George may be the brightest diamonds of the season, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story also shines with a whole cast of characters that are deliciously divine and in their own equally infatuating relationships — special shout-out to a young Lady Danbury (Arséma Thomas) and Brimsley (Sam Clemmett) for being the real G.O.A.T.s of the season.
Come for the corsets, stay for the slow-burn romance, and waltz your way into Bridgerton's best ball yet.* — Yasmeen Hamadeh, Contributing Entertainment Writer
How to watch: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is now streaming on Netflix.
8. Black Mirror Season 6
The sixth season of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror characteristically filled us with even more existential dread than ever, with five episodes mainly flipping the bird directly at Netflix itself. From the streaming service satire "Joan Is Awful," to the true crime tale "Loch Henry," the space thriller "Beyond the Sea," fantasy horror pivot "Mazey Day," and apocalyptic slasher "Demon 79," the series once again turns our obsessions with tech and entertainment back on us.
Notably, the timing of the series release was everything, as Mashable's Kristy Puchko wrote in her review, "As screenwriters are waging war against studios and streamers that would underpay them and undercut them with AI, Black Mirror Season 6 hits Netflix with a middle finger pointed firmly at a Hollywood studio system that doesn't give a shit about humanity." — S.C.
How to watch: Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix.
7. Good Omens Season 2
Good Omens, Amazon's adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's co-written 1990 fantasy novel, returned for a second season of apocalyptic escapades this year — and it was just as excellent as the first. Created, written, and executive produced by Gaiman, the series sees David Tennant and Michael Sheen return as eternal frenemies: the demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale. This time, they're not chasing the antichrist child around the world, but instead, a returning Jon Hamm as the overtly pompous angel Gabriel, who turns up stark naked, memory-less, holding an empty box, and needing to be hidden from Heaven and Hell.
Frances McDormand is back as the voice of God and our glorious narrator, as is Miranda Richardson as new demon Shax, Hell's new representative on Earth (Richardson played Madame Tracy in Season 1). It's a rollicking script in absurd circumstances and a bloody good time as always. — S.C.
How to watch: Good Omens is now streaming on Prime Video.
6. Boiling Point
If you like The Bear, you need to watch Boiling Point. But if you've ever worked in a restaurant, Boiling Point might hit too close to home. This unrelenting series, featuring several long uncut takes like its outstanding predecessor film, throws you into the kitchen and into the lives of an extremely busy restaurant — from the storeroom to the front of house. It's a treat to watch even more of Stephen Graham and Vinette Robinson's superb performances from the film extended into the series, and with a longer format, the show takes the film's examination of mental health and addiction in the hospitality industry even further.
If you can’t stand the pressure, this will not be your show. But it’s a masterwork in choreography with brilliant performances that will make you deeply appreciate your next fancy meal.— S.C.
How to watch: Boiling Point is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK, U.S. streaming date TBC.
5. Happy Valley, Season 3
Seven years since the events of Season 2, Sally Wainright's bleak crime drama draws us back into the lives of Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and the man responsible for her daughter's death, Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), currently in prison but still hanging over her family like a shadow.
"If you've seen the first two seasons, you'll probably already know that Happy Valley isn't for everyone," I wrote in my Mashable review. "The combination of Wainright's unflinching scripts, the raw emotion in the acting, and the dark themes being dealt with mean that Happy Valley can be a tough watch at the best of times. It's a depressing and disturbing show, and Season 3 — with its themes of domestic violence — is no exception.
"But, like the first two seasons, there is light in there too. Wainright does an impressive job of sprinkling in moments of humour and levity throughout her scripts, and the actors have no problem introducing a few laughs alongside the tears and the pain. Ultimately, despite how heavy it is overall, the show's core message is one of durability." — Sam Haysom, UK Deputy Editor
How to watch: Happy Valley is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK, AMC+ and BBC America in the U.S.
4. Dreaming Whilst Black
Co-created by and starring Adjani Salmon, Dreaming Whilst Black is one of the sharpest comedies of the year, honouring the slog of independent filmmaking in a predominantly white industry while skewering microaggressions in the workplace. First a web series, then an award-winning pilot commissioned by BBC Three, it's a co-production between the BBC, Big Deal Films, and A24.
Over six episodes, Salmon shines in the lead as Kwabena Robinson, whose jobs in recruitment surrounded by horrendous coworkers and delivering food aren't exactly his dream — making movies is, especially his short film Jamaica Road. When he reconnects with his film school pal Amy (Dani Moseley), she gives him the in he needs to get it off the ground, but he still needs funding (and rent money). The whole cast is superb, from Moseley as Amy enduring her own colleagues' loaded bullshit and white fragility to Kemi Lofinmakin as the effervescent Aunty Lola, to Demmy Ladipo as Kwabena's melodramatic cousin Maurice and Rachel Adedeji as his grounded wife Funmi going through pregnancy. The writing in this series is so perfectly excruciating and real you might gasp out loud, and there are moments of moving drama. And as this is a A24 project, there's surrealism afoot. — S.C.
How to watch: Dreaming Whilst Black is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Showtime in the U.S.
3. Heartstopper Season 2
Netflix's adaptation of Alice Oseman's beloved webcomic and graphic novel returned for a second season, reuniting you with Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor), who decided to make it official at the end of Season 1. Season 2, which aligns with Oseman's third and fourth volumes, feels like a natural maturation of its characters. Charlie, Elle (Yasmin Finney), Tao (William Gao), and Isaac (Tobie Donovan) are no longer the "borderline outcasts'' they felt like in Season 1, but are now part of a larger group of LGBTQ buddies, a gorgeous, supportive found family that make up the core cast. And together, they explore new relationships and crushes, dreaded school exams, an overseas excursion, the end of year prom, endure their complicated home lives, and navigate the complexities of coming out.* — Shannon Connellan, UK Editor
How to watch: Heartstopper is now streaming on Netflix.
2. Am I Being Unreasonable?
Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli's dramedy Am I Being Unreasonable? tells the story of Nic (Cooper), a mum balancing her difficult home life with intrusive memories of the sudden death of a man she was having an affair with. It's tense, it's funny, and there's a healthy dose of mystery thriller and psychological horror mixed in there too for good measure.
"Am I Being Unreasonable? is juggling a lot of plates," I wrote in my review for Mashable. "But it juggles them well, with the script weaving seamlessly between jokes and foreboding, heartfelt moments, as well as twists you don't see coming. There are very few TV shows I've seen where I've laughed out loud and been hit with a genuinely unnerving jump scare in the same episode, but this is the kind of story Am I Being Unreasonable? tells." — S.H.
How to watch: Am I Being Unreasonable? is now streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Hulu in the U.S.
1. Top Boy
For over a decade, Top Boy has been one of the best British shows on TV, and the series finale pushes its complicated characters to the absolute limit. It's the powerful, bloody end this masterpiece of a series deserves, as well as a deeply moving farewell to the fictional London estate Summerhouse. Directors Myriam Raja and William Stefan Smith do a masterful job of exploring the themes previously established by creator Ronan Bennett — family and criminality, police brutality and systemic racism, and much more — through nuanced characters and storylines.
Season 5 picks up after Season 4's shocking finale, with teen Stefan (Araloyin Oshunremi) left grieving in the fallout, and anti-heroes and London drug dealers Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson, aka grime pioneer Kano) figuring out where their loyalties lie while trying to get out for good. When a rival Irish gang (led by Saltburn star Barry Keoghan and Bad Sisters' Brian Gleeson) arrives, everything's on the table. Luckily, this final season really leaves no loose ends. Without a doubt, the women of Top Boy are the real core of the show, with superb performances from standout Jasmine Jobson, alongside Simbi Ajikawo (aka acclaimed rapper Little Simz) and Saffron Hocking.* — S.C.
How to watch: Top Boy is now streaming on Netflix.
Want more TV? Check out Mashable's list of the best TV series of the year, as well as the best TV episodes, most WTF TV scenes, and the weirdest TV trends of 2023.
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Asian Boy Character Little Kano
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A rigged low-poly semi-realistic child character dressed in a shibori style kimono with an obi.
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Blender Market
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https://blendermarket.com/products/asian-boy-charachter
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Built by Blenderheads, for the Blender Community
Blender Market's goal is to give our community a trusted platform for earning a living with software that we all love, Blender.
Made with love from the humans behind CG Cookie
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1473
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dbpedia
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https://www.trmk.org/forums/threads/mortal-kombat-misogyny.20982/
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en
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Mortal Kombat Misogyny
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"Z ZSSFan New member",
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2011-05-12T03:18:48-05:00
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Hey everyone. While Mortal Kombat is my favorite game series (along with Command & Conquer and Killzone), I feel an honest debate with others fans should be...
|
en
|
The Realm of Mortal Kombat Forums
|
https://www.trmk.org/forums/threads/mortal-kombat-misogyny.20982/
|
Hey everyone. While Mortal Kombat is my favorite game series (along with Command & Conquer and Killzone), I feel an honest debate with others fans should be brought up in order to settle a big question not only with MK but with many games of our time. It is that of misogyny.
Many of us know Grand Theft Auto as the flagship game for violence against women, or rather, as the game that was put on the spot for it. I want to share an experience. Prior to playing MK9 for the first time and then buying it, I watched a few LiveStreams of players who got the game early. After cycling through some Tag and single player ladder matches, the player got onto the Fatality Trainer. Of course I wanted to see this, what MK fan doesn't want to see the new installments of ogreish finishers?
The first fatality was Noob, of course, and the kid picked Jade to finish. Alright, so some angst leftover from the UMK3 days I guess. But then he picked Kung Lao, and his victim was Mileena. Scorpion, with Sonya as a victim. Then, Kano and Kitana. Then, back to Mileena. It got so bad that I and a couple other viewers pointed out his misogyny and deep-seated perversion. But most viewers were like "yeah! haha!" or "**** yeah, awesome". Some were even like "that's hot". Am I a pansy to say that's kind of creepy and ****ed up?
Then, on DeviantArt, looking for signatures and avatars, I came upon this one kid "TheInsaneDarkOne". I won't lie, he is talented, but his drawings (comissioned!!) are all of some big, muscular MK guy beating/killing a female character. One set of pictures, he draws Sub-Zero sexually molesting Mileena. And I looked at the comments for these pictures, and they were all like "sweet", "that's sexy", "awesome", etc. Really? Is it just that isolated- that DeviantArt is full of sick creeps, or is this a sign of something the gaming community ought to look at?
(http://theinsanedarkone.deviantart.com/)
I love MK as much as the next guy. I've been following it for years; it was the first video game I played as a child and it remained fixated on my schema of video games throughout years. But sometimes, it creeps me out how far certain people will go. You can say that MK is in fact being egalitarian. That's a valid argument- but valid doesn't mean true.
Yes, MK has strong feminine characters like Sonya, Jade, and Kitana who take control and get things done. And yes, MK operates on the idea that women are equal to men and thus, we have women and men ninjas of equal strength and talent kicking the crap out of each other. BUT let's look at reality-> physically, men are at least 3-4x stronger than women. The effects of a real man-woman fight are devastating and there are 1 in 4 women in the US who experience abuse at the hands of men (I think that's an old statistic). While in the MK universe, Mileena and Scorpion may be of equal strength/skill, in the real world, there are abusive fathers and husbands and boyfriends beating on their girls and there is no such equal "strength or skill".
What the game experience of a man v. woman fight brings is desensitization. It desensitizes men and women to the realities of misogyny and the violence against women. And in that desensitization lies less empathy, in the long run, for victims, and such cultural plague. It's very similar to the effect Eminem's lyrics have. And it's a desensitization that we can't afford to bear, because women and girls face hardships that men will never know and the reality of misogyny is something we can't dismiss. How many of you guys/girls have noticed this about MK, or about some people playing it that seem to enjoy this aspect of it? I was legit creeped out by that dude- he was like doing five, six, seven fatalities all on women. Personal problem of his, yes. But the ability to do things like that on a mass marketed game.... what does that have to say about society?
If any of you guys want to know more about this desensitization effect, Jackson Katz has an article on Eminem on his website. Mr. Katz is a speaker on women and gender issues that tours nationally and also researches. He and Dr. Thomas Keith, PhD, contribute to each others work sometimes. There are two good videos you can catch online: "Tough Guise" on masculinity and violence by Jackson Katz, and "Generation M" by Dr. Keith on misogyny in music and pop culture.
http://www.jacksonkatz.com/eminem2.html
And I'm not a WGS major.
You bring up a good point. And of course, Rule 36 (or is it 34?) applies to MK and misogyny as well. I actually think there is a name for it... "Rinona"? or something. This isn't an attack on MK, after all MK, like all other forms of culture, is just a reflection of the state of mind our society is in.
Can I ask though, what exactly is appealing about slicing Mileena in half as opposed to Sektor or Kano? Done to the latter two, it's an act of violence. Done to the former, it's supposedly more "appealing". What is appealing about a woman getting killed or beaten? I'm not asking to offend, I really want to know. Is it a "damsel in distress" thing? Or does this point to our culture's objectification of women? I will admit, I am very much a fan of the feminine figure. I'm not arguing against sex. But the thing is, when music and movies, as well as video games, turn women into sex statues that stand in the background, or even main characters that are dressed in threads exposing the derriere, what does that minimize women's status to? Even in a heroic position, the woman is not without her thong. It seems that the pass in movies, music, and games is that women have to be deified for their sexuality or displayed as receptacles for male sexual impulse. Man and woman are made for each other. But as human beings, not objects! When is the last time you saw a billboard with a big, veiny penis on it in Times' Square?
When women are lowered to the role of sex objects, complying with restricting beauty standards, all of which cater to men's desires... then women lose the qualities we attach to human beings in general- thought, emotion, validity, will, circumstance. It becomes lose-lose. Like.... "it's her fault, she was asking for it"... or "DEEEAAAAYYYUUUMMMNNN lookadatbootaaay!". Could it be that in effect, Mileena getting cut apart is seen deep down by those who find it "more appealing" as an object of sex being cut apart? If so that's profoundly frightening! It's like the ultimate statement of sexual objectification- "You're only good for sex! Now DIE!". And you're not the only one who's said women's pain in video games is appealing- look at Rumble Roses for that matter. And when MK9's first few tidbits came out last summer, people in the videos cheered when Kung Lao mid-sectioned Mileena, moreso than they did when Sub-Zero disemboweled Scorpion. Not a criticism- let's see what part of society gives us all this message that it is okay to and even promoted for, women to get hurt.
Its shocking because this sort of stuff is not that different from men actually hurting women. It flows from the same vein, and while some may say "video games are better than it happening in reality" why has it made it this far, into video games in the first place?
ofcourse i don't think women should be degraded like that. I value talking to a strong, confident woman over a dumb hot one anyday. I don't like watching women get massacred in the game. I have no secret grudge against women . i think the majority of the people just like to watch women FULL STOP. ofcourse i don't like the idea. and it is kind of sad that this is what most people in the world want. But i want to ask you something. You are on a mortal kombat forum i.e. you like mortal kombat. what do you like about mortal kombat? story? gameplay? maturity? for me it's all of that. es the maturity is a needed factor for me. be that violence or sex.
Ofcourse opinions and tastes will differ. But the facts society has shown us is. sex sells. violence sells. sex+violence=Epic Win. ofcourse if u think about it, it sounds pretty disturbing but i'd be a hypocrite if i said i didn't like it and i wanted it to stop. As long as it's just in Games/Movies i'm fine with it. But people being influenced by that and acting it out in the real world is something totally different.
So basically i think it's a problem with the point of view. You look at it as women being mutilated. i look at it as ppl liking to watch women. everyone get's mutilated in the game ^^ so it's kind of fair.
ofcourse i don't think women should be degraded like that. I value talking to a strong, confident woman over a dumb hot one anyday. I don't like watching women get massacred in the game. I have no secret grudge against women . i think the majority of the people just like to watch women FULL STOP. ofcourse i don't like the idea. and it is kind of sad that this is what most people in the world want. But i want to ask you something. You are on a mortal kombat forum i.e. you like mortal kombat. what do you like about mortal kombat? story? gameplay? maturity? for me it's all of that. es the maturity is a needed factor for me. be that violence or sex.
Ofcourse opinions and tastes will differ. But the facts society has shown us is. sex sells. violence sells. sex+violence=Epic Win. ofcourse if u think about it, it sounds pretty disturbing but i'd be a hypocrite if i said i didn't like it and i wanted it to stop. As long as it's just in Games/Movies i'm fine with it. But people being influenced by that and acting it out in the real world is something totally different.
So basically i think it's a problem with the point of view. You look at it as women being mutilated. i look at it as ppl liking to watch women. everyone get's mutilated in the game ^^ so it's kind of fair.
Please don't take this as a criticism of you in particular! I'm just trying to find out why misogyny is popular in MK. I like MK mostly because of the storyline and characters- the violence never really got to me as I've seen some in real life (accident). But MK as a franchise, I like. I've always liked.
While violence and sex sell, and most cultural outlets geared towards men feature a medley of both, I see that only applicable in that MK has violence, and MK has scantily clad women. But not as MK giving you the ability to kill scantily clad women as appealing. That's an entirely different beast- that's what I'm trying to understand. The whole man-v-woman fighting aspect and the misogyny, (TheInsaneDarkOne)-types who enjoy watching sexualized women being subjected to male violence. I think that needs to be explored in relations to society- because storyline and all stripped away, MK is just like GTA in that it gives the player the option to subject women to intense violence at the hands of men.
I dunno man, it's a thing for some people. Don't let it get to you too much; I'm sure as an Internet dweller you're aware of how "guro" or gore fetishism has been a thing for years with some freaks. This weirdo might be into that. On that note, I don't let it bother me all that much because in MK, it's all about equal-opportunity murder. I personally don't approve of hurting women IRL, but part of the very core of Mortal Kombat fighting will often involve girls getting beat up, since they're there as player characters.
Not to say everyone gets off on seeing the girl characters smacked around. I get as much of a rush pulling off a Fatality on a Reptile as I do a Sonya; the gender of the character doesn't matter to me.
But on that note, the Internet has spawned some twisted, utterly depraved people. Morality tends to fly out the window in this anonymous world of interconnected tubes, I've seen all kinds of utterly NASTY fantasies people fap over online.
But is it any worse that Street Fighter lets you beat up Chun-Li or that you can smack around the chicks in Dead or Alive?
I understand the concern of misogyny, and I don't think NRS employees have a hatred of women. The MK females are sexy, sure, but that's become a commonly accepted facet of games, that there will be females made to look as attractive as possible.
Outright hatred of/spite towards women, though? Don't let it get to you, man. Most people know better than these freaks.
I certainly don't mean to knock your personal view on the matter and I do agree with the above poster that this is a rather intelligent topic. However, I do think that you may be reading into things a bit more than you should be. I doubt that either the youtube poster or the artist have any type of derogatory views on women in general nor do they mean to imply as such.
As far as the artist on DeviantArt is concerned, I actually found his skills to be rather impressive as an artist. I didn't particularly care for some of his work, but theres no denying that he is definitely skilled. One thing you have to consider about that site is that alot of times those artists get requests from people that want to see something in particular. It may not even come from his own pool of ideas. Granted, that does pose quite an interesting question. What does some of his work say about those people asking to see it?
Now with the Youtube fatalities, well I think that's just a matter of the persons individual tastes perhaps. Maybe he simply doesn't care for any of the women in the game. That's not to say that he's a misogynist, perhaps it's just his personal taste. I'm personally not a big fan of the female characters in MK. They're alright, but just don't fit my play style much. When it comes to showing off fatalities however, I have always enjoyed performing them on my least favorite characters, mostly against Stryker, Sonya, or Sheeva, lol.
Mortal Kombat has always portrayed it's female characters in a very strong, competitive, but yet sexy sort of way. I've never felt that there was ever the slightest hint of misogyny to the game. It's female characters have always been on par with their male counterparts. I suppose that there are always going to be some sick bastards out there in the world with heavy misogynistic viewpoints , but I don't feel that they represent a very large percentage of the MK fanbase.
This is a very interesting thread indeed.
I certainly don't mean to knock your personal view on the matter and I do agree with the above poster that this is a rather intelligent topic. However, I do think that you may be reading into things a bit more than you should be. I doubt that either the youtube poster or the artist have any type of derogatory views on women in general nor do they mean to imply as such.
As far as the artist on DeviantArt is concerned, I actually found his skills to be rather impressive as an artist. I didn't particularly care for some of his work, but theres no denying that he is definitely skilled. One thing you have to consider about that site is that alot of times those artists get requests from people that want to see something in particular. It may not even come from his own pool of ideas. Granted, that does pose quite an interesting question. What does some of his work say about those people asking to see it?
Now with the Youtube fatalities, well I think that's just a matter of the persons individual tastes perhaps. Maybe he simply doesn't care for any of the women in the game. That's not to say that he's a misogynist, perhaps it's just his personal taste. I'm personally not a big fan of the female characters in MK. They're alright, but just don't fit my play style much. When it comes to showing off fatalities however, I have always enjoyed performing them on my least favorite characters, mostly against Stryker, Sonya, or Sheeva, lol.
Mortal Kombat has always portrayed it's female characters in a very strong, competitive, but yet sexy sort of way. I've never felt that there was ever the slightest hint of misogyny to the game. It's female characters have always been on par with their male counterparts. I suppose that there are always going to be some sick bastards out there in the world with heavy misogynistic viewpoints , but I don't feel that they represent a very large percentage of the MK fanbase.
This is a very interesting thread indeed.
I won't lie that MK, compared to most fighting games, actually has a better idealization of women. Boobs and ass aside, as that's a requirement for videogames it seems, MK women are more confident and leader-like. I actually really liked Jade's character in MK9. Very strong-minded and badass, as well as Sonya. MK was never short in that aspect. And it's not MK per se, or Boon that's a misogynist, or Rockstar games is misogynist. It's not that at all. Simply put, the game has an avenue for such things that is comparable to GTA.
There are far worse games, like DOA and Rumble Roses, that are very straightforward in their sexism.
While Ryu and Chun Li can fight in video games, there's no killing aspect. I personally think desensitization to violence in general can lead to disastrous things if the wrong person gets their hands on it, but even moreso, how is it not an issue for the gaming world when fans of the most popular fighting games can pop in their CD and see scantily clad women getting beat? When you see some creep on Livestream killing women only, it's easy to say it's just him and not a reflection on society. But it's twice wrong, it IS a reflection on society and what is allowed (at least to be envisioned). I don't need to explain how serious of a problem abuse and rape are, they are things men and I as a man can never understand except only in an abstract sense, but we all have an idea. When someone's on the stream doing fatalities on women and people are cheering him on, it shows what's (underneath all properness and appearance) seen as alright. Sort of like "*****es ain't shit but hoes and tricks" and other lyrics in music. There are defenses for each and every one of these instances, but there's nothing intercepting the implications they have on the state of women in society. A kid doing fatalities on all women on livestream is not any different from someone fantasizing rape, after all, the women characters are portrayed in a helpless fashion and the men "have their way" with them. At least that's what I got from it after seeing the stream. It's debatable, but there's some link between it and the urges that men are told are okay to have, through subtle means like pop culture.
I may be reading too much into it as some say but come on, let's be honest here, aside from dancing around the issue, there is a link between these themes.
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https://wiki.supercombo.gg/w/Kano_(MK1)
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en
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SuperCombo Wiki
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https://wiki.supercombo.gg/favicon.ico
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Kano is #4 in the tier list, he is not and never will be better than Liu Kang, as many people think. His position could be challenged by a pro Raiden player but because not many players use Raiden, its all a matter of own opinion and experience. Kano has the longest uppercut as a hitting area. His and Liu Kang's uppercuts can hit from about a sweep distance after retalation. Somehow no matter how good his uppercut is, its not very useful for anti air. Anyway its the perfect punisher for almost everything. Like Cage, after uppercut in corner you can get massive combo damage even bigger than Cage's in revision 5.0. Its though to uppercut through jabs but you can try to connect it as the other player moves forward. If you manage to get one of the broken throws near the corner and the opponent holds block after it you can get unblockable uppercut and combo that will be more than 100% in revision 5.0!
His duck LK is the best in the game. It does about 2 aaHPs damage and if you spam it right it can help you to won a round/match, use it as many times as possible against jabers. It is also an excellent counter for jump kick/punches that are not on top of your character. His HK is not so bad but still slow enough for good anti airs, same LK as Cage's. Kano has very neat jab tactics using his "Whiff" roll, otherwise his LP are good but you can be uppercuted through them. Use HP for retalation or cancel it with block for eventually aa roll after it. His RH is also bad but not as bad as Cage's, you can try to get it in a step away after jab pressure. His sweep is good but easy punished if blocked.
Kano has one of the best Jump Kikcs in the game. It can hit easy ducked grounded opponents, easy can hit otg, easy can win aa jump kicks duel but, after the block, uppercut retalation was discovered he loose his potential vs liu, raiden, cage and sonya. Kano has an awesome Jump Punch too. You can use it as a wakeup close early JP but not followed with Roll because if its blocked you risk too much energy, or countered JK followed with combo. Its also the best setup after uppercut in corner. Kano had infinite in revision 3.0 with JP in corner but it is removed in 5.0.
The Roll is his most powerfull arsenal. You have two variations of this move. The first is performed by holding Block and then circle counter clockwise. There is a way to actually use it, like just when your opponent decide to throw a fireball to release a block but you will not be able to do that as a surprise more than 1 times in a match (or opponent LOL). The second variation is without block. It has so small startup time that you can actually punish everything in the game with it. From Sonya's Sweep to Scorpion's Teleport Punch. It can be used as a transport move also, if you are from full screen distance than your opponent and lets say he is a turtle scorpion teleporter, perform the roll and you will land right infront of him or at least close enough to start a good jab pressure. You can try to put it in a jab pressure too. If they decide to release the block and you do the roll you can whiff so you will land behind them and often after that the opponent tryes to jump or fireball, but you will recover faster so try another roll or knife throw after it. Another option is if they try to crouch lk you, do the roll and sometimes you will hit them through their crouch kick. The ninjas sometimes can be hard to get with a roll in combo because of their falling animation (it will just push them or whiff). The roll is also good unblockable addon after throw. It has weird collision boxes and sometimes you can do it through fireballs/freeze and etc.
The roll can be used as an Anti Air too. It works very well vs all jumps if timed correctly and against crossovers. Can be used also after blocked JK.
The Knife throw is a weird move. It has good hitting area but because his slow start up and annoying combination its not the best choice for spaming. I will advice to use it mostly from full screen and be careful when you do that vs Liu Kang or Cage (and good Raiden player) because they can easy jump over it and hit you. You can add aa Roll if you get aa Knife Throw near the corner.
Combos
Basic Juggles 1. JK, Roll
2. aaHPx2, Roll
3. (in corner) Uppercut, JP/JK, Roll or RH
Advanced Juggles 1. aaHP, JK, Roll
2. JK, JP or JK, Roll
3. Uppercut, JK/JP, aaLP, Roll
4. JK, Uppercut, JP, JP, Roll (about 95%)
Broken Throw Setup 1. (near the corner) Throw, unblockable Uppercut, JK, JP, Roll (100%+)
MK_1992 Navigation
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https://segaretro.org/Mortal_Kombat
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en
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Mortal Kombat
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[
"Sega Retro",
"Probe Software",
"Grey Team"
] |
2024-08-22T20:59:04+00:00
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Sega Retro
|
https://segaretro.org/Mortal_Kombat
|
For the Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear game, see Mortal Kombat (8-bit).
n/a
Mortal Kombat (モータルコンバット), also known as Mortal Kombat Kanzen-ban (モータルコンバット完全版) on the Mega-CD in Japan, is a 1992 arcade fighting game by Midway Manufacturing. At the time, it was considered revolutionary for its use of digitized graphics, though it was also met with controversy thanks to its high levels of violence.
Following its release in the arcades, home versions were created and released in September 1993 on a date that became known as "Mortal Monday." The Sega Mega Drive version was published by Arena Entertainment simultaneously in North America and Europe, with releases in Japan and Brazil some months later. An enhanced Sega Mega-CD version followed in 1994.
Story
The game takes place in Earthrealm, where a tournament is being held on Shang Tsung's Island. Shang Tsung was banished to Earthrealm 500 years previously and, with the help of the monstrous Goro, is able to seize control of the Mortal Kombat tournament in an attempt to doom the realm. For 500 years straight, Goro has been undefeated in the tournament and won nine consecutive tournaments. If Goro wins again, Shao Kahn, Emperor of Outworld, will be allowed to take Earthrealm. In order to prevent this, a new generation of warriors must challenge Goro.
Gameplay
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game in which players battle opponents in one-on-one matches. The fighter that drains the opponent's health bar first wins the round, and the first to win two rounds wins the match. Each round is timed; if both fighters still have health remaining when time runs out, the one with more health wins the round. At the end of the final round, the losing character is dazed, and the winning fighter has a short amount of time to perform a Fatality, a finishing move performed against a defeated opponent to execute them in a gruesome fashion. Two players can start a game together, or a second player can join in during a single player's game by pressing START to fight against them. If a game was in progress at the time, the winner continues it alone; if not, the winner begins a new game.
In the single-player game, the player faces each of the seven playable characters in a series of one-on-one matches against computer-controlled opponents, ending in a "Mirror Match" against a duplicate of the player's chosen character and then three endurance matches against two opponents. As soon as the player defeats the first opponent, the second one enters the arena and the timer resets, but the player's health meter does not regenerate. After the third endurance match, the player fights the sub-boss Goro, followed by a final match against Shang Tsung.
Between certain levels, players can compete in a mini-game called "Test Your Might" for bonus points, breaking blocks of various materials by filling a meter past a certain point through rapid button presses. The first material the player must break is wood, followed by stone, steel, ruby, and finally diamond, with each successive material requiring more of the meter to be filled up and thus awarding more points. Two players can compete in the mini-game at once; the last two materials are only accessible through two-player mode.
Characters move with and and crouch with . They jump with and jump back and forth with and . All characters have punches and kicks that can either be aimed high or low. Characters perform a low punch with , a high punch with , a low kick with , and a high kick with . Characters block by holding or . Blocking can be done while standing or crouching. Some attacks cannot be blocked while standing (such as sweeps). All attacks do a small amount of damage even when blocked.
When using a standard three-button control pad, characters perform a low punch with , a high punch with + or + , a low kick with , and a high kick with , and START blocks.
All characters have a shared set of attacks performed by holding the D-Pad in various directions, such as the roundhouse kick, leg sweep, and uppercut. Uppercuts knock the enemy high into the air and cause a large amount of damage. The game introduced the concept of "juggling," knocking an opponent into the air and following up with a combination of attacks while the enemy is still airborne and defenseless. Normal moves are mostly the same between characters, with variations in range and speed, but characters differ in their special moves. Most special moves are performed by moving the D-Pad in certain directions, usually ending with an attack button. Unlike most one-on-one fighting games, few moves involve semicircular directional motions. The game's blocking system also distinguished itself from other fighting games, as it uses a dedicated block button, and characters take a small amount of damage from regular moves while blocking. However, the dedicated block button allows characters to defend against attacks without retreating, so blocking characters lose very little ground when struck, making counterattacks much easier after a successful block.
There are five difficulty settings for computer-controlled opponents (Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard) and allow the player to change the number of starting credits in the options. Violent finishing moves are censored and blood is disabled by default in the Mega Drive version (but not the Mega-CD version). By entering a special code, blood is enabled and some finishing moves are more graphic.
Characters
Note: Move lists assume that the character is facing right. When facing left, and should be reversed.
All characters can perform roundhouse kicks with + HK (which knock the opponent away), leg sweeps with + LK (which cause the opponent to fall down), and uppercuts with + LP or + HP (which knock the opponent high into the air). Throws are performed by pressing HK when next to the opponent.
When using a standard three-button control pad, the LP button can generally substitute for either LP or HP when performing special moves.
Fatalities often require being a certain distance from the opponent in order to execute. All finishing moves can be performed while holding the BL button, which is sometimes useful to avoid accidentally moving or hitting the opponent before the button combination is fully pressed. The Pit stage has a unique stage-specific Fatality, performed by simply finishing with an uppercut. The "blood code" must be entered to see the Fatalities as described.
Playable
Johnny Cage A famous martial artist and movie star who entered the tournament for the publicity.
Move list Name Command Description Green Flame LP or HP Johnny Cage throws a fireball across the screen. Shadow Kick LK Johnny Cage slides forward while kicking. Split Punch + HK Johnny Cage does the splits and punches his opponent in the crotch. Fatality HP (close) Johnny Cage does an uppercut that decapitates his opponent.
Kano A mercenary and member of the notorious Black Dragon organized crime cartel. He enters the tournament with the hopes of looting Shang Tsung's palace.
Move list Name Command Description Knife HOLD BL Kano throws a knife across the screen. Cannonball D-Pad in a 360° rotation clockwise Kano hurls himself toward his opponent like a flying cannonball. Fatality LP (close) Kano rips his opponent's still-beating heart from their chest.
Liu Kang A Shaolin monk, once a member of the secretive White Lotus Society. He has entered the tournament to represent the Shaolin temples and defeat the despised Shang Tsung.
Move list Name Command Description Fireball LP or HP Liu Kang shoots a fireball across the screen. Flying Kick HK Liu Kang launches himself across the screen in a kicking pose. Fatality D-Pad in a 360° rotation clockwise (half screen away or closer) Liu Kang does a cartwheel and then uppercuts his opponent.
Rayden A mystical thunder god believed to have been personally invited to the tournament by Shang Tsung.
Move list Name Command Description Lightning LP or HP Rayden shoots a bolt of lightning across the screen. Flying Thunderbolt Rayden flies across the screen, grabbing and slamming his opponent against the wall. Teleport Rayden teleports in front of his opponent. Fatality HP (close) Rayden sends a lightning bolt that causes his opponent's head to explode.
Scorpion A mysterious ninja believed to have been defeated by members of the Lin Kuei clan and seeking revenge.
Move list Name Command Description Harpoon LP or HP Scorpion throws a harpoon across the screen, then uses it to pull his opponent toward him. The opponent is momentarily stunned. Decoy Punch HP Scorpion teleports to the other side of the screen, flying in with a punch. Fatality HOLD BL (half screen away) Scorpion removes his mask, revealing a demonic skull, and incinerates his opponent with his fire breath.
Sonya Blade A member of a top-secret special forces unit. She was pursuing the criminal Kano when she was ambushed by the forces of Shang Tsung, who has taken her compatriots hostage, and forced into the tournament.
Move list Name Command Description Sonic Rings HP HP Sonya Blade throws sonic rings across the screen. Leg Grab + LP + LK (sweep distance) Sonya Blade does a handstand and uses her legs to grab and slam her opponent against the ground. Square Wave Punch HP Sonya Blade jumps into the air and shoots across the screen with her fist extended. Fatality BL Sonya Blade blows a kiss that incinerates her opponent.
Sub-Zero A male ninja who possesses cryokinesis. His identity is unknown, but he is believed to be a member of the Lin Kuei clan, a legendary clan of ninja assassins.
Move list Name Command Description Deep Freeze LP or HP Sub-Zero shoots a burst of ice across the screen, freezing his opponent on contact. Hitting an already frozen opponent "backfires" and freezes Sub-Zero while unfreezing his opponent. Slide + LK + HK Sub-Zero slides forward with a leg sweep. Fatality HP (close) Sub-Zero tears off his opponent's head, ripping out the spine with it.
Bosses
Goro A 2,000-year-old half-human, half-dragon with four arms and a massive stature. He has been the undefeated champion of the Mortal Kombat Tournament for 500 years. He is the game's penultimate boss. Shang Tsung An evil sorcerer who steals the souls of his opponents. He can shapeshift into the form of any other fighter. He has hosted the tournament for 500 years, and he is the game's final boss.
Hidden
Main article: Mortal Kombat/Hidden content.
Reptile A green ninja who has the movesets of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Reptile can be fought if the player gets double flawless victories, never blocks, and finishes with a Fatality against the computer when certain objects are seen in the Pit stage.
Stages
The stages are played in order (and loop around after the last one). The Goro's Lair stage is always used for the boss fights with Goro and Shang Tsung.
The Pit stage has a stage-specific Fatality where the opponent is uppercutted into a bed of spikes at the bottom of the pit. If found, Reptile is fought at the bottom of the Pit.
History
Release
Sega's success with the Mega Drive version of the game prompted Nintendo to change their somewhat strict policies put forward in the late 1980s, and the Super NES version of the sequel, Mortal Kombat II, features red blood. Sega's Videogame Rating Council was also criticised for rating the Mega Drive version of the game a MA-13, implying that the game's content in its non-censored state was suitable for 13-year-olds. Mortal Kombat and other games such as Night Trap would inspire the creation of the ESRB, which would cover all game consoles in North America and remains in place to this day.
The release of the game caused big controversy in Germany. Initially, all versions of the game went on sale in Germany due to the fact that they were censored. USK detected that the Sega version of the game have a code to unlock the blood so it was decided to withdraw all copies of the game from Germany and banning the game. In 2005, the game disappeared from the list of banned games.
Legacy
Mortal Kombat was followed by Mortal Kombat II in the following year, and continues to see sequels to this day.
Versions
Mega Drive version
The Mega Drive version was a mini-success story for Sega. This is because the Super Nintendo version, at the time in direct competition with Sega's console, opted for strict censorship, removing blood, toning down fatalities and creating a far less "violent" product. The Mega Drive version was considerably more faithful to the arcade original, and was the preferred choice at the time by consumers.
The music was also rearranged by Matt Furniss, this arrangement being unique to this port.
Mega-CD version
The Mega-CD version was rated MA-17 in North America and was therefore subject to less criticism. It has the violence enabled by default (and in fact has a cheat code to turn it down, the inverse of the Mega Drive version).
As well as a CD audio soundtrack (which is essentially a recording of the arcade version), the game contains a grainy version of the famous "Mortal Monday" TV commercial. Some tracks play in the wrong stages, though there are some bonus remixes that can be heard if the game is played on a regular CD player.
The Mega-CD version is otherwise identical to the Mega Drive version, though load times can mean that Shang Tsung is open to attack while transforming. Curiously, this version uses fighting music track from Amiga port when fighting Shang Tsung.
Production credits
Mega Drive version
Mega-CD version
Magazine articles
Main article: Mortal Kombat/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
Main article: Mortal Kombat/Promotional material.
Physical scans
Mega Drive version
83 Based on
47 reviews
Mortal Kombat
Mega-CD version
74 Based on
24 reviews
Mortal Kombat
Technical information
Main article: Mortal Kombat/Technical information.
References
Mortal Kombat
Main page | Comparisons | Hidden content | Magazine articles | Video coverage | Reception | Promotional material | Region coding | Technical information | Bootlegs
|
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| 74 |
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/cangaceiro-kano/BNM3QD7GWQDM
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en
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Buy Cangaceiro Kano
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[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
A playable skin that reimagines Mortal Kombat 11 Kombatant Kano as a Cangaceiro fighter.
|
en
|
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/cangaceiro-kano/BNM3QD7GWQDM
|
A playable skin that reimagines Mortal Kombat 11 Kombatant Kano as a Cangaceiro fighter.
|
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1473
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| 1 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_Kano_(video_game_designer)
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en
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Makoto Kano (video game designer)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico
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[
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2009-02-25T21:00:37+00:00
|
en
|
/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_Kano_(video_game_designer)
|
Japanese game designer and supervisor
Makoto Kano (加納 誠, Kanō Makoto, born October 30, 1950), also credited as Makoto Kanoh pre-1995,[1][2] is a Japanese game designer and supervisor. He was born in Kyoto, Japan.
Kano began working for Nintendo in 1974. He was one of the original designers in Nintendo's creative department. Originally, he designed toys and board games before working on the Nintendo Beam Gun series. Kano eventually became one of the lead designers of the Game & Watch series. By 1984, he was heavily involved in several Nintendo R&D1 games, including Hogan's Alley, Gyromite, and more specifically the Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Famicom Wars series. Some other projects he has worked on at Nintendo include Super Metroid, the Super Scope for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Mario & Wario.
Kano is credited with creating several early Nintendo characters during the 1980s. Ultimately, his best known achievement may have been creating the concepts of the Metroid, Famicom Wars, and Kid Icarus universe.[3]
Works
[edit]
Year Title Position 1975 Nintendo Beam Gun Designer 1986 Metroid Concept design, scenario Kid Icarus Concept design 1988 Famicom Wars 1989 Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind Supervisor 1991 Metroid II: Return of Samus Designer 1992 Super Scope 6 Producer The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins Designer Battle Clash Director 1993 Mario & Wario Producer 1994 Super Metroid 1995 Teleroboxer Artwork 2000 Pokémon Stadium 2 Artwork
Interviews
[edit]
Iwata Asks: Game & Watch Iwata Asks: Game & Watch - Development Staff Interview
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https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/2019/06/30/the-actors-behind-mortal-kombat-part-1/
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THE ACTORS BEHIND MORTAL KOMBAT – PART 1
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2019-06-30T00:00:00
|
*NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED* *I DO NOT OWN THE MATERIALS USED* *THE CONTENTS ARE FROM EXISTING REFERENCES ONLINE* Welcome back to my blog! It’s been a while since I posted a new content here, but no worries, I am here to make up for lost time. So right now, let’s take a look back at…
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en
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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infamouskarl
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https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/2019/06/30/the-actors-behind-mortal-kombat-part-1/
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*NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED*
*I DO NOT OWN THE MATERIALS USED*
*THE CONTENTS ARE FROM EXISTING REFERENCES ONLINE*
Welcome back to my blog! It’s been a while since I posted a new content here, but no worries, I am here to make up for lost time. So right now, let’s take a look back at one of the most iconic fighting video games of all time:
MORTALKOMBAT! Being a kid back in the 90’s, I remember vividly how this game absolutely changed the way fighting video games were made and how it attracted a ton of fans until now. Mortal Kombat became a hit because of its digitization technology: actual actors/figures were to perform certain movements where those movements are recorded into images, fleshed out, edited and are eventually superimposed into the actual game. The characters were inspired by Martial Arts films and flicks that are key elements in making a game memorable and relatable to fans. And to top it all off, the introduction of explicit finishers called FATALITY made the game stood out from its rival video games. It was thanks to these guys for making my childhood so awesome:
Ed Boon, the lead developer, and John Tobias, the lead artist and designer. They were responsible for the concept and story behind Mortal Kombat. Both worked for Midway during the development and production of the game.
So now, let’s look into the cast members behind the iconic digitization age of Mortal Kombat. To others, there are simply unknown actors, fitness enthusiasts and anonymous martial artists; but for us MK fans, they are superstars, childhood idols and inspirations. Let’s start with the very first Mortal Kombat game that premiered back in 1992:
Daniel Pesina was a friend of John Tobias at the time and was the first actor to perform the required movements on screen. Fondly called “Danny” by the crew, he is a master of Chinese-based martial arts. Danny has also achieved black belt status on several martial arts and is a gold medal winner in American and international tournaments. He has also acted as a foot soldier in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie: The Secret of the Ooze. Being the first actor involved for the game, he was hired to be the action choreographer for the other actors, recruited actors for the game and was present in the recording sessions.
In the game, he plays the character Johnny Cage, a Hollywood actor trained by various masters around the world who joins the Mortal Kombat tournament to gain publicity. The costume for Johnny Cage was inspired by Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character in the 1988 film, Bloodsport comprising of tight black shorts, red sash belt, studded forearm guards and Kung Fu shoes while sunglasses were added during his win pose. This look eventually became iconic since he’s one of the first fighting game character to use sunglasses in game.
His iconic status was further enhanced by his special moves: the shadow kick, the green fireball and the infamous split punch where delivers a strong blow to the crotch of male fighters. (ouch!)
Danny was assigned a second costume and this time, it was ninja-inspired: black inner suit and forearm guards, yellow face mask exposing the eyes, leg guards and outer garb. This costume was eventually used for the characters of Scorpion and Sub-Zero: deadly assassins from rival clans. The original yellow color was used for Scorpion while for Sub-Zero, the yellow color was digitally edited to light blue.
As for storyline, Sub-Zero was introduced as a member of the Chinese Lin Kuei Clan and has the ability to control ice; he joined the Mortal Kombat Tournament to assassinate its organizer. As for Scorpion, it was revealed that he was actually an undead warrior who was murdered by Sub-Zero in the past and returns in order to exact his revenge.
Both characters eventually became top favorites among the MK gaming community due to their iconic signature moves: Scorpion’s “Get Over Here!” spear and Sub-Zero’s Deep Freeze – both moves when successfully executed on an opponent, gives a free hit for the player. Their fatalities also solidified their status as fan favorites: Scorpion reveals that he is actually wearing a mask and his real face is that of a skull and breaths out fire towards the opponent, burning them alive. For Sub-Zero, he brutally rips the opponent’s head off together with the spine.
Another thing Mortal Kombat is known for is introducing a secret/hidden character in the game: Reptile, who shares the same sprite images and special moves of Scorpion and Sub-Zero but his costume was edited to green. He randomly appears before a match starts providing clues about his presence and how to fight him. As expected, Reptile’s random appearances and intriguing background made the game even popular.
The younger brother of Daniel Pesina, Carlos Pesina was assigned the character of Rayden. Like his older brother, Carlos is also a martial artist specializing in Chinese-style martial arts since childhood and is also friends with John Tobias. His character, Rayden, was presented as the god of thunder and was inspired from the lightning warriors in the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China. The costume for Rayden is composed of a white, modified Shaolin uniform, a black sash belt, a tight hood shirt exposing the face and the most iconic item – the conical straw hat. Additionally, his eyes were digitally altered to glow bluish white.
For his story, Rayden was presented as earth’s mystical god of thunder. His name is probably derived from “Raijin” the Japanese god of thunder and lightning. He was invited to the Mortal Kombat tournament and thus, had to take on a human form to participate; a body that seems to flow with visible electric current.
Rayden became popular with the fans because of his epic moves: the lightning bolt projectile, his teleport move where he quickly disintegrates into electric current only to reappear in another location and his most memorable electric fly attack where with lightning speed, launches himself towards the opponent pushing them at the edge of the screen while screaming various gibberish battle cries.
The next MK actor on our list is Richard “Rich” DiVizio and was assigned the character of Kano. Rich is a friend of the Pesina brothers since childhood and like them, is also a martial arts enthusiast. He is a Wushu expert, a gym trainer and has also acted as a foot soldier together with Danny in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Secret of the Ooze movie. His looks were also a plus since the concept design for Kano was originally a balding man in his late 20’s to 30’s. Kano was designed as a mercenary/thug/criminal with a cybernetic right eye – this was achieved by using a phantom mask to cover the upper right side of Rich’s face and his right eye was digitally altered to glow red. For his costume, he wore a white modified Shaolin monk uniform with sleeves removed, leg bands to hold his knives, black forearm guards and a brown utility belt bag worn across his chest (the utility belt bag was eventually updated in succeeding live appearances).
For Kano’s story, he is introduced a member of an organized crime organization – the Black Dragon. He was a child of an American woman living in Japan and was orphaned at an early age, eventually turning to a life of crime. His infamy and reputation as an organized crime member made him wanted in various countries and was soon deported from Japan. Kano soon heard of rumors that the organizer of the Mortal Kombat tournament was very wealthy and entered it to gain access and loot the place.
His attacks consisted of a cannonball roll and knife throw projectile but it is his heart rip fatality that made him memorable among MK fans.
The first roster of Mortal Kombat characters was supposed to be all-male but at the last minute, the producers decided to include an attractive female character as a tradition in fighting video games in the early 90’s. This is where Elizabeth “Liz” Malecki came in to the scene as Lt. Sonya Blade. At that time, Liz was working as a fitness/aerobics instructor and was recruited by Daniel Pesina for the role of Sonya. Unlike the rest of the cast members who were martial arts experts, Liz had no formal martial arts training. However, she had background in ballet and modern dance and thus, was able to pick up and execute the fighting elements effectively. For Sonya’s costume, Liz wore an aerobics outfit consisting of green sports bra and tights, a black aerobics thong, headband, belt and forearm guards (it was digitally altered to look studded) and for her footwear, white socks and shoes – a popular theme back in the mid 80’s up to early 90’s.
For her in-game story, Texas-born Sonya Blade is a US Army Lieutenant and member of the Special Forces unit. She is in hot pursuit of the Black Dragon member Kano for his criminal activities and for murdering her former partner. Sonya and her team tracked Kano into an uncharted island unaware that it is where the Mortal Kombat tournament was taking place. They were soon captured by the tournament organizer’s army and Sonya was forced to participate in the tournament in order to save her comrades who were held hostage.
Her signature moves are composed of pink sonic ring projectiles, the iconic hand-stand leg grab and her fatality where she blows a flying kiss that burns her opponent alive.
The last actor on our list is Ho Sung Pak, who became friends with the Pesina brothers and Richard DiVizio during martial arts school. Ho Sung is a Wushu champion and because of his martial arts expertise, he was discovered and landed work as an actor and stunt coordinator for films. He became the stunt double for Raphael in the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action films was soon inducted in the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 1991. He reconnected with Daniel Pesina and was soon roped in for the protagonist role of Liu Kang. The original concept for Liu Kang was supposed to be a bald, traditional Shaolin monk wearing flowing robes. Ho Sung however, probably due to his acting job, politely disagreed with the original concept and it was finalized that he’ll keep his hair for filming and the concept was changed with Liu Kang becoming a retired Shaolin monk. His final costume consisted of black Kung Fu pants and white shoes – a nod to the iconic martial artist and actor, Bruce Lee, as it was almost imperative to have a Bruce Lee clone in fighting video games back in the 90’s.
For Liu Kang’s story, it was revealed that he is a Chinese fisherman and Shaolin monk from Henan province. He was a member the secret organization, the White Lotus Society, but soon left in order to represent the Shaolin Temples in the Mortal Kombat tournament. Having heard rumors of the evil behind the tournament, Liu Kang enters the tournament and vows to return it to its noble origins.
Just like Bruce Lee, Liu Kang executes his attacks accompanied by notable Kung Fu yells and screams. His signature moves include launching a fireball with his foot lifted up and his famous Jeet Kune Do-inspired flying kick. Of all the playable characters, only Liu Kang didn’t have a gruesome fatality finisher as a reference to his peaceful Shaolin background.
Ho Sung was assigned a second character, Shang Tsung – the organizer of the Mortal Kombat tournament. This time, Ho Sung’s costume is inspired by the character of David Lo Pan, the villain of the 1986 film, Big Trouble in Little China. His costume is composed of blue and beige, Chinese-style silk robes and wears a mask depicting an elderly man with a receding hairline, gray hair and a Mandarin-style mustache.
In the story, Shang Tsung is a powerful sorcerer who has taken control of the Mortal Kombat tournament which originally belonged to the Shaolin Temples. During his hold of the tournament, its noble reputation became corrupted as Shang Tsung used it as way to further his dark sorcery: he absorbs the souls of the vanquished warriors giving him the ability to change his appearance and fighting style at will.
In game, Shang Tsung is unplayable, serving as the final boss and can morph into other characters, fully utilizing their moves set. However, he does have his own signature move – the flaming skulls projectile – these skulls are probably from the countless fighters defeated in previous tournaments, whom he has absorbed.
Ed Boon and John Tobias wanted to have a big brooding character added to the game and this led to the creation of Goro. The design concept for Goro was inspired from the stop motion figures used in classic films such as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981). While the inspiration for him to have multiple arms was inspired the by the Kali, the six-armed idol in the 1973 film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, although ultimately, Kali was inspired from the Hindu deity of the same name. To achieve the stop-motion figure for Goro, John Tobias enlisted the expertise of Curt Chiarelli, a sculptor/artist who is a friend of Richard DiVizio. Goro was sculpted with a very muscular physique, 4 arms each with 3 huge fingers, his hair pulled back and wears white leg wraps, a black loincloth, with a red sash belt with a Yin and Yang symbol.
In the story, Goro was the current Mortal Kombat champion and serves as the penultimate boss before Shang Tsung. He has been reigning for nine generations in the 500 years after defeating the Great Kung Lao, a Shaolin monk and ancestor of Liu Kang. He is the 2,000-year-old prince of the Shokan species of half human, half dragon beings with four arms. Thanks to his brute force, the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung maintained his grip on the tournament.
Being the first multi-limbed character to appear in fighting video games, Goro instantly became an icon among video game fans and has become one of the most instantly recognizable MK characters. Despite being unplayable, his popularity was further enhanced by his brutal moves: the spinning hand fists, stomp attack and his infamous grab and pound. Additionally, he performs taunts during every successful throw move.
So there, the first batch of actors/characters in the MK games. Here are some additional behind the scenes/live action shots:
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https://www.kanoplay.com/pirateclan
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en
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MMORPG Fantasy Online Game
|
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Pirate Clan is a free click MMORPG filled with fantasy and adventure. Pillage and plunder for treasure, sail the oceans and find friends in this social game!
|
en
|
https://www.kanoplay.com/pirateclan
|
Master the high seas, plunder for treasure and battle against other captains in this epic pirate MMORPG! What arrr you waiting for?
Drink with yer mateys, rob a buccaneer, sabotage a rival’s ship, raise yer Jolly Roger and search for buried treasure. Take everything and give nothing back!
The rougher the seas, the smoother we sail. Ahoy!
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| 17 |
https://easolinas.home.blog/tag/mortal-kombat/
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en
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mortal kombat – The Forest
|
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2022-05-30T06:05:12+00:00
|
Posts about mortal kombat written by E. A. Solinas
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en
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The Forest
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https://easolinas.home.blog/tag/mortal-kombat/
|
I have a confession to make: I kinda like the Mortal Kombat movie from 2021.
I mean, it’s not as controversial as saying you’re an unironic fan of Battlefield Earth or something like that. But as I understand it, fans of the video games didn’t like it a great deal, even just compared to the 1990s movie.
And I won’t lie – it’s flawed. Cole is a pretty bland lead character who isn’t from the games, though he’s inoffensive and he avoids the whole Gary Stu character aspect. Kano is lots of fun to watch, and I suspect the actor had a ball playing him. Shang Tsung is not really very intimidating, There’s some eye candy for women and a small number of men (Liu Kang is basically this ALL THE TIME). The special effects are pretty decent. Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim are basically perfect as Scorpion and Subzero, and there’s a reason the entire climax is about these two whaling on each other.
But I think of all the characters, I enjoy watching Sonya Blade the most, because she is an example of a warrior woman written correctly. And we don’t have a lot of those anymore – a lot of female characters in current-day action movies are essentially written as power fantasies…. which are okay, as long as it’s acknowledged that they’re nothing better than that. These characters are coldly constructed to maximize feelings of shallow empowerment without risking upsetting anyone by making the character look “weak” by having them be vulnerable, struggle to do anything, or need anything from a man.
Disney, I’m looking at you. You gave us Rey, Live!Mulan and Captain Marvel.
Sonya Blade is literally not like the other girls… and for once, that’s a good thing. The first thing to note is that she is always depicted as a butt-kicking badass – she’s a military veteran who’s good enough to fight in Mortal Kombat, and she’s strong and skilled enough to capture Kano and keep him chained up in her house. When Subzero is chasing down Cole, she’s the one that Jax sends him to to keep him safe.
But it’s worth noting that in raw physical power, she’s not the strongest. On average, men are much stronger than women physically, which many movies and TV shows don’t want to acknowledge because… I guess acknowledging it would be considered misogynistic. But Mortal Kombat does implicitly acknowledge it, because Sonya is shown going toe to toe with physically powerful men not based on raw muscle power, but using her brains, her training, and her agility. Her part of the climax is a wonderfully intense game of cat-and-mouse, where she not only has to battle Kano’s physical power but his laser eye, which she manages through manipulating her surroundings as well as physical attacks.
Which brings me to another aspect of Sonya that many other action heroines don’t have anymore – she struggles. Watch the Disney action heroines mentioned above, and you’ll be lucky if they EVER struggle to take down their enemies.
In the shallow minds of the people writing these stories, I think they imagine that a woman struggling would make her look weak… and that idea is bad storytelling. Seeing your hero struggle is part of the experience of wanting them to triumph – you watch them sweat, get punched, collapse to the ground and struggle to get up again, and lose their initial fights. That makes it all the more cathartic and satisfying when they finally triumph – because you know they worked for their triumph over the bad guys, and all the sweat, blood and tears were worth it in the end.
If the hero’s only flaw is “he/she needs to realize how AWESOME he/she is!”, and they breeze through, effortlessly winning the day without breaking a sweat… the only people who find that satisfying are people who just want a power fantasy.
And yes, Sonya struggles. She follows the arc of HERO FIGHTS –> HERO FAILS –> HERO REGROUPS/TRAINS –> HERO FIGHTS AGAIN –> HERO WINS AFTER STRUGGLE, like Luke Skywalker and other classic heroes. Her ultimate triumph over Kano – and gaining an arcana – is narratively satisfying because we watched her grapple with him right to the end, and it was a near thing. So when she looks at her dragon mark and laughs, it feels earned.
I do not get that feeling from a Captain Marvel, a Rey, a Live!Mulan. They don’t struggle to win, so there’s no cathartic satisfaction when they do win. It’s like watching Usain Bolt outrunning a toddler. Who’d find that satisfying?
I also really like Sonya’s relationships with the men around her. She doesn’t really interact much with the female characters – I think she only encounters Mileena, who skips out on murdering her because she wouldn’t get Mortal Kombat street cred from it. I guess she probably meets Cole’s wife and daughter at the end of the film.
Anyway, throughout the movie Sonya interacts mainly with the male characters, and for the most part… they treat her no differently than if she were a man. The only exception of Kano, who is a walking mass of personality defects, who is sexist to her because he’s casually offensive to everyone (and also he’s salty that she chained him up). But the men on her side treat her with respect and admiration, not considering her any less worthy because she’s a woman, and it’s hard to imagine that, say, Cole would treat her any differently if she were a guy.
That also goes for her relationship with Jax. I’m not sure what the age difference is between them, but it seems like they have a big brother/little sister connection, with a hint of mentor/student.
One thing I’ve noticed about movies in recent years is that women are often not allowed to be the mentees/students of men anymore – a woman must either know everything she needs automatically, or she must learn from another woman. See Rey, Captain Marvel, etc. That makes it kind of wholesome when Sonya admits that when she first entered the military, she wanted to make Jax proud, and that was clearly an important motivation in her training and her service.
It’s also worth noting that in the second act, she also spends a lot of time just supporting Jax. She’s told that she can’t train for Mortal Kombat because she doesn’t have a dragon mark that gives you superpowers, and instead of pouting or kicking up a fuss, she decides to go support her best friend, who just lost both of his arms and has been given little dinky robot ones instead. She doesn’t make it all about her, but about her friend who needs help.
On the subject of Sonya not having an arcana, I also liked that she’s demonstrated to have actual morals rather than a vague sense of goodness that is never challenged or confronted with temptation. You see, Sonya wants an arcana because she wants to engage in Mortal Kombat (DA DA DA, DADADA DA DA DA!), but there are only two ways to gain one. Either you are an elite fighter and vague supernatural powers bestow it on you, or you gain it by killing someone else who has the marking.
Kano has the marking. Now, Kano is a person who has done all sorts of hideous criminal things, and killing him would probably make the world a better place. In fact, he keeps taunting Sonya about killing him, even to the point where she fights him but does not kill him, just to demonstrate that she can in fact beat him. But she doesn’t kill him, because at that point he was technically an ally and wasn’t a direct threat.
Does she kill him? Yes. But only after he turns against the group and tries to murder her twice, in self-defense.
The same way a hero has to struggle for his success to mean anything, a hero’s morals have to be challenged for their morality to have any depth. If the hero is never tempted to do the wrong thing, then their morality doesn’t really mean anything. This is especially true in a situation where doing the wrong thing feels like it might be the right thing, such as killing a loathsome murderer who will get superpowers and probably misuse them to kill even more people.
While the 1990s Mortal Kombat movie was cheesy fun, it wasn’t quite the film that fans of the game franchise wanted… primarily because it was PG-13, and thus bloodless and tame. It didn’t help that its sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was one of the most legendarily bad movies of all time.
And so, nearly twenty-five years later, we have been graced by a new Mortal Kombat reboot which promises the fatalities, the gore, and the endless swearing from Kano. Its biggest problem is that it’s a build-up to a tournament that will apparently happen in the sequel, meaning that it’s mostly a lot of people running around fighting with little purpose… but hey, it’s mindlessly entertaining, bloody and acrobatic running around.
The main character is Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a past-his-prime MMA fighter who regularly gets beaten up for $200 a pop. The glaring problem with this character is simple: he’s very boring and generic. There’s really not much to him except his family lineage – he is Completely Normal Guy who serves as an audience proxy.
But then he and his family are attacked by a cryomantic Chinese ninja known as Sub-Zero, who really wants them dead. They’re rescued by Jax (Mehcad Brooks), an ex-soldier with the same dragon marking that Cole has, although he loses both arms in a fight with Sub-Zero. Fellow ex-soldier Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) explains that the dragon marking is a sign of being chosen for a great interdimensional tournament known as Mortal Kombat.
After an attack by a reptilian monster, Cole and Sonya convince a scummy criminal named Kano (Josh Lawson) – who has also acquired a dragon marking – to lead them to the god Raiden’s temple. Once there, Cole and Kano begin training under fellow champions Kung Lao (Max Huang) and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin). However, the evil soul-eating sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is determined to kill Earth’s champions before the tournament even begins, and invades Raiden’s temple.
If there’s one word to describe the Mortal Kombat reboot, it’s “setup.” The entire movie is essentially a setup for the actual Mortal Kombat tournament, and everything that happens within that movie is a setup for some kind of epic fight scene. And in that regard, it works pretty well – the third act is almost wall-to-wall mortal kombat, with plenty of exploding heads, bodies sawed in half, and the occasional evisceration.
And as far as the plot is concerned, the “setup” status is perhaps its weakness – there’s not really much plot here, just the heroes getting together, trying to develop superpowers, getting their butts kicked, regrouping, and then fighting with the myriad colorful bad guys. The closest to a true plot is the feud between Sub-Zero and Scorpion that spans centuries and dimensional boundaries. That subplot is the powerhouse of the movie, and the epicness of their eventual clash is almost cathartic.
It has a fairly good cast as well – Tan does as good a job as anyone could with his nondescript character, and it has solid performances by Brooks, Lin and Huang. McNamee is a strong female character of the type we need more of – intelligent, fierce, smart, compassionate and moral – and Hiroyuki Sanada is absolutely brilliant in his brief screen-time. Lawson’s Kano is also a complete delight to watch – he is so unabashedly, over-the-top vile that it makes him almost lovable.
It’s light on story and heavy on gory, making the “Mortal Kombat” reboot a film that is best appreciated with your brain turned off. It’s an entertaining spectacle for people who want some gore and guts, but you’ll have to wait for the sequel for any actual tournament action.
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https://www.trainor.fyi/category/article/
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Article – Pete Trainor
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https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*RX4r72m4-_XLDIm4
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I was recently asked to put together an overview of how I would approach product design for DTx.
For those of you not in the know, or unsure what I mean by DTx, it’s short for ‘Digital Therapeutics’, and they are software solutions that have evidence-based therapeutic capabilities. Like digital therapy or digital medicine, digital therapeutics have a measurable impact on health outcomes. DTx can also be ‘prescribed’ by medical professionals, which is another big difference.
Digital therapeutics achieve their impact through digital interventions, which typically induce or facilitate specific patient behavior. Examples include increasing medication adherence, enacting self-care instructions, or guiding towards a healthier lifestyle. What I like about DTx as a concept, is that they’re incredibly difficult to achieve, and unlike digital well-being apps that litter the app-stores now, DTx has to follow very strict ISO and CE standards in order to get signed off in much the same way that a pharmaceutical medication would before it’s ready for public consumption.
This not only creates a layer of governance across the product, but it also ensures that teams need to be very mindful designing, building and deploying only the very highest quality functionality.
Find a Map
I’m going to walk you briefly through this little flow diagram, and we’ll whizz in and out of the main components in turn, so you can see how you might want to think about the strategic design of DTx.
People who know me well, know that I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with the ‘pen portrait’ persona. They bother me slightly because of the way they homogenise us into groups, when as we know so well now, everybody is unique and a vessel for their own quirks, thoughts, ways of behaving and modalities.
But, I would still advocating that you start all DTx product work with a detailed analysis and breakdown of the audience (a persona!). In most cases this is probably going to be; The Patient(s), The Clinician(s), any other protagonists such as the Pharmacy or say, the Technician analysing biomarkers on their dashboards.
Getting the audience definition right gives you the foundations to create a series of Experience Maps.
I’m not going to go into huge detail on what an experience map is, or how to do it properly, that’s a whole article on it’s own. I will say it’s a skill though, so swat up on it, or get UX people who understand the method. However, the value of a good set of experience maps is unquestionable as a way of guiding the design, and vision. I mean, they’re literally ‘maps’.
The questions I would use in primary and secondary research to find the friction for the personas, and guide the output of the experience maps are:
What processes are redundant now / in the future?
Where are you slow?
What pathways and endpoints are confusing?
What’s not automated that could be RPA?
Where are we inflexible?
What’s not in the DTx that should be?
What should include digital or remote access?
What should be touch-less using Ai / Data?
Where would human pathfinding make a difference?
What can we Buy, Build or Borrow?
Data Matrix: Support > Service > Predictive > Perceptual (see my book)
Ultimately you use the Experience Map to determine your KPIs and OKRs. Which will be hugely important in determining how you approach the design and build of any product, but is even more imperative for this kind of product because DTx can literally have life or death consequences.
I don’t really have a preferred prioritisation technique to decide where to start. But I do often lean into the KANO model because it’s simple. Again, I’m not going to go into the details of the KANO approach, that’s another article, but loosely speaking you’re classifying the feature suggestions that fall out of the map into;
Must-Be (will not ‘wow’, but must be there i.e Clinical)
Attractive (make people happy, but not essential)
One-Dimensional (happy when there, unhappy when not)
Indifferent (No audience impact, but makes dev easier)
Reverse (Features that make an audience unhappy, but have to be there; e.g. 2-factor authentication)
Clinician-First-Design
Now we get to some of the really interesting parts of the process — You can’t do DTx unless it’s clinically led, validated, and approved. So you might as well just run a clinician-first process, rather than focus your design work on the patient. DTx is essentially a B2B2C product mentality. That is to say you want the clinicians to define and design the pathways and endpoints. This is almost (in my view) the most significant difference between a well-being app, and one that’s being built with DTx in mind. When they’re designed by qualified clinicians, with Designers and Product experts, they’re already aiming to be ‘clinical’. When they’ve been created by clever, but unqualified designers or developers to fix a problem, and help with peoples health, they’re not clinical per se.
A clincian-first, iterative design process is a lot of fun. It’s rigorous, it’s detail focused, and it’s almost entirely focused on what the structure of captured data will look like, and how that data will be used to prove the efficacy of the product or drug later on down the line. There is no lean-cowboy approach to DTx, it’s unethical — the order of the day here is rigour, methodical, and balancing innovative design with clinical precision.
Set your teams up in Pods or Squads. That is to say, a small team of cross-discipline team members focused on one little-big-thing each. A clinician, a designer, an engineer, and probably a copy-writer.
This all leads into what will be the most fascinating of iterative processes — learn, measure, tweak and repeat.
With DTx, when you release the first few versions of your product, key features, SoMD etc for testing, you’re looking for the efficacy markers. Does it work? Can a controlled clinical trial show us that the tool improves the outcomes of a patient? Does the product have usability flaws? Do any tweaks I make deviate off a predetermined change control plan?
A PCCP is hugely important in DTx because from the outset you’ve planned your product on paper, with clinicians who will be advising on what works and what doesn’t. A “predetermined change control plan” helps to anticipate potential future software updates and a total product lifecycle regulatory approach that aims to facilitate the review of rapid product performance improvements and subsequent deployment, without compromising patient safeguards.
By making iterative usability updates you may inadvertently change the thing(s) that got the product signed off and approved as clinical-grade in the first place. So get your PCCP plan tight. Very very tight.
You’ll also need to use an explainable Ai approach, allowing timely identification and mitigation of any risks associated with machine learning algorithms. If you can’t do this, at this stage, you won’t get approval for clinical use.
The Innovation Opportunity
I’m going to give you some of my own vision for free now, simply because the more of us that try it, the closer we’ll get to what I believe is game-changing health innovation for all — Digital Phenotyping.
DTx tools, if built correctly as platforms and not apps, have an opportunity to start digital phenotyping using data collected from the apps and smart devices to build a rich, personalised digital pictures of behaviour, create new audience types, track markers of say, depression and anxiety, and develop new ways to diagnose illness, choose effective treatments and potentially detect relapse before it occurs.
When you’re planning your DTx project that has to be the central vision IMHO. You start with a set of humble personas, but by launch you are basically phenotyping, grouping, re-classifying and learning on a scale that is more appropriate to our rich human communities. I’d love to discuss this idea with like minded people — feel free to ping me for Podcast conversations, or just debates about the ethics and implications.
At the bottom of that last chart above there’s a green dot. It represents this idea with with rich, functioning digitial phenotyping we can really start to send nudges and alerts that are truly precision for each type of patient, clinician, or care-giver. Changing human behaviour is exceedingly difficult, especially for behaviours that arise from years of thinking and acting in relatively rigid, routinised ways — Digital Phenotyping allows us to also create a totally personalised ‘nudge’ engine for different digitised data-sets.
Here’s an example of how looking at all the data-points, passive and active, can be used in DTx for more details digital segmentation, personalisation, and ultimately phenotyping.
Validating the DTx
I’ve mentioned this above. The big difference between a DTx and a stanard, well-crafted well-being app is validation.
My rule: Start with clinicians, and build WITH clinicians. Let the clinicians design the clinical protocol that will be given to the product team for feature or innovation creation.
Work with the Pod (UX, Designers or Third Parties etc) to create something engaging, safe and efficacious in line with regulations such as 2017/745/CE.
Once the new piece of functionality is created, then you go through a 3-stage study;
Acceptability: Give it back to clinicians before you give it to patients to make sure they are absolutely happy this is something that can be delivered to patients. Not effective at this stage, just purely; “Is it safe?”
Feasibility: Can this technology be delivered in into the clinical setting or peoples lives. This also starts to determine if the product / feature can be effective.
Effectiveness phase: Does it work? Live trial (e.g www.curebase.com) across a control group(s) that only apply standard lifestyle changes depending on, for example, the NICE guidelines (A). And an intervention group using the DTx app with lifestyle changes proposed using nudges and content (B).
Implementation Considerations
I’ve given you a broad set of guidance about how I would structure and approach a DTx product build. But what other considerations are there before you take on a regulated design product?
Firstly, it only works if you get the Pod collaboration working successfully. Chemistry is key — Cross globe and the correct expertise. Getting the right collaboration methodology is critical to success. Finding the right consumer voices is also critical. In something like DTx it’s more important to get the RIGHT people working, than trying to sweat a D&I policy for PR reasons. Get people who are qualified, expert, have experience in the particular health challenge, and make sure they respect the views and expertise of their Pod Peers.
Secondly, all DTx product designs (internal or external) must comply with quality system requirements for Medical Devices e.g ISO 13485, and with software life-cycle management requirements e.g IEC 62304. They just have too — it won’t get signed off if you don’t. Full-stop. It’s not DTx if it’s been signed off by a company like Orcha, but doesn’t fulfil the CE marks and ISO standards, in my view.
Make sure you have good;
FMEA — failure mode and effects analysis (specifically, inputs defined as per ISO14971 and IEC/TR 80002–1) and;
FTA — fault tree analysis for Q&A so that every little error is traceable.
I advocate a Web 3.0 / Low and No Code approach to the product build. Ultimately what you want to get right is the platform, so building everything as a suite of APIs is recommended.
Stubborn on the vision, flexible on the details.
Everything that you buy, build, or borrow to build your DTx should use your own predetermined platform of APIs, either externally focused, or internally focused; DTx as a platform, not tactical tools.
That gives you the opportunity to be flexible on the innovation whilst retaining a central data-set that is fixed, owned and allows you to lake-data from multiple sources for precision primary, and psychiatry objectives, including patient stratification, clinical trial optimisation, personalisation, and identification of novel compounds, regardless of the interaction point.
It also allows a much more rapid rate of innovation in the product space.
Summary
So that’s my little guide to approaching DTx products. It’s not exhaustive obviously, and there is so much more to write about DTx. It is however, a really exciting space to work in.
You might for example want to decide if you’re DTx is Standalone, or ‘Around-The-Pill’.
‘Prescription’ or ‘standalone’ digital therapeutics are those designed to work independently of regular pharmaceuticals and are usually designed to prevent or treat health conditions. Should a patient be diagnosed with prediabetes, for instance, an effective standalone DTx can successfully enact lifestyle changes that can prevent the condition from progressing to type 2 diabetes. Drawing on lingo from the world of pharmaceuticals, prescription DTx are also referred to as ‘monotherapy digital therapeutics’.
‘Around-the-pill’ digital therapeutics have evidence for delivering their impact in combination with another treatment, typically a drug. They deliver their results in ways such as by helping patients taking the right dose at the right time or better managing symptoms and side effects of their disease or treatment.
I find the later a really fascinating area, especially for measuring new types of Pain Relief such as Medical Cannabis, or the efficacy of psychedelic drug compounds like MDNA for PTSD, or Psilocybin for treating Depression and Treatment-Resistant Anxiety etc.
If anything I’ve laid out above is interesting, and you’d like to discuss things with me further, please feel free to get in touch via LinkedIn.
This article first appeared in the Telegraph Magazine on the 19th January 2019, written by the Telegraph’s Special Technology Correspondent, Harry de Quetteville.
This young man died in April. So how did our writer have a conversation with him last month?
The first time I texted James Dunn I was, frankly, a little nervous.
‘How you doing?’ I typed, for want of a better question.
‘I’m doing all right, thanks for asking.’ But soon I was bolder, enquiring how he deals with pain. I had been told that James was frank about his medical condition.
‘I know it sounds weird, but I just kind of got used to it,’ he replied. ‘It was always there. I learned to distract myself.’ He mentioned hobbies, such as photography, as particularly good diversions.
That was last month. By then James had been dead for almost eight months, buried near the house in Whiston, Merseyside, that he had shared with his mother Lesley, now 57, and father Kenny, 58. The ‘James’ I texted was an algorithm, a computer program known as a ‘bot’, which had been fed countless hours of recordings made by James, from which it had learned to express itself as James had once done.
In text conversations with me ‘he’ talked about visiting Las Vegas, the pleasure he took in travel and in meeting new people. While James Dunn, the man, was dead, James Dunn the bot endured – one of the first residents of a new technological netherworld that will increasingly blur the line between life and death. ‘How do you stay happy?’ I asked in one mind-bending exchange. ‘Currently?’ ‘James’ responded from beyond the grave.
James was born on Tuesday 13 July 1993, in Liverpool, with no skin on his feet and one of his hands. It turned out he had epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a rare genetic condition that causes the skin to tear, blister, and become as fragile as the wings of a butterfly – which is why sufferers are sometimes known as ‘butterfly children’. An estimated 5,000 people have EB in Britain today. Most die by their mid-20s, from cancers or infections.
‘The nurse [who visited] from Great Ormond Street said, “They live till they’re about 24,”’ recalls Lesley. ‘From that moment on, I always had time in the back of my mind.’
Lesley would spend hours replacing James’s bandages, his raw wounds like burns. ‘He was in constant pain,’ she remembers. ‘For a mother to see that, her child with no skin…’
Sometimes James would blister internally too, his throat closing up so that he couldn’t drink. Lesley pre-chewed his food ‘like a mother bird’ to ensure it was soft enough to cause no damage. Even his eyes blistered, so that he couldn’t open them for days at a time. When he was two, he tried to get to his feet. Lesley reached to help with his first steps. But James tripped and Lesley was left holding the skin of his hand. After that, James used a wheelchair.
There were bright spots though. ‘From a very early age I saw he had a brilliant personality,’ says Lesley. ‘Even as a baby in pain he’d still be laughing and smiling. It was always just a pleasure to be around him.’ James went to an ordinary primary school. Far from being shunned, Lesley tells me, this bright, acidly funny little boy was embraced.
James’s fizzing character comes across strongly in self-recorded video diaries that he began keeping in December 2015, after he was diagnosed with cancer. With the camera focused on his slight, boyish face, brown hair wisping to a thin Tintin quiff, he stresses how lucky he feels. ‘They’re quite happy videos,’ he says at one point, about films documenting his surgery. ‘We tried to have as much fun as possible in the hospital.’
‘Until he was 10, I used to think there would be a cure,’ recalls Lesley. ‘Then when he was 15, I knew, no, it wasn’t going to be ready for James.’ The family never discussed death. But by his late teens James knew himself. And that knowledge was a spur. He started playing wheelchair football, then passed his driving test first time. He also took up photography, pursuing subjects with the directness of a man with little time to lose (they included Sophie, Countess of Wessex, the boxer David Haye and the actor Tom Holland).
In 2014, when he was 21, he began a long-distance online romance with a nurse from Texas called Mandy. She came over to stay for a few weeks in Liverpool. A year later, James, Lesley and James’s older sister Gemma returned the visit. Mandy is still in touch with the family.
It was a relationship enabled by modern technology. The internet gave James a place to learn, to meet people, to explore beyond the confines of his body. In the evenings, he was online for long hours. ‘Thank God the technology was there for him,’ says Lesley. ‘He was so clever, he had it all at his fingertips.’
In October 2015, two months before James discovered blotches that turned out to be his first skin cancer, a group of digital designers met at a conference at the British Museum. Among those attending was Pete Trainor, founder of an artificial intelligence (AI) company now known as Us Ai, which specialises in ‘intelligently artificial’ corporate ‘chatbots’. If you have been confronted by a pop-up box on your bank website in which a simulated employee asks if it can help, you know the kind of thing. It is a technology with hotly anticipated commercial applications. But rather than focus on money and machines, Trainor’s talk was all about AI making life better for humans.
The following November, James saw the video of Trainor’s lecture online. It had been a big year for him. Not only had he undergone gruelling treatment for his cancer, but his sister Gemma had told him that she was pregnant with a boy she was to call Tommy.
‘I know James really struggled with his mortality at that point,’ says Trainor, an earnest and enthusiastic 38-year-old who habitually wears a waistcoat. James was 23 by then. ‘He wanted his nephew to know Uncle James,’ Trainor recalls. ‘But he didn’t know how long he had left.’
The two men first met in February 2017 after James contacted Trainor on social media. ‘He was after a way of recording as much of himself as possible,’ says Trainor. The pair discussed creating a digital ‘time capsule’ of James’s thoughts and memories for Tommy. To capture them, Trainor installed several smart speakers – first Amazon Echos, then Google Homes – in James’s house.
Quickly the devices recorded huge quantities of audio. But instead of simply keeping these recordings for posterity, the two used them to create what in the AI world is known as a ‘corpus’ – a body of knowledge from which a machine can learn – and fed it into the algorithm that Trainor normally used to create chatbots for his banking clients. ‘At that point we hadn’t thought about the implications of what we were doing,’ says Trainor.
Then, on 12 July 2017, James and Trainor gave a talk at a tech event at the London College of Fashion. There, across the room, they spotted a 3ft-high robot, which its designers called Bo. For James, it was the moment when the project ‘went from collecting as many thoughts in his head for reasons of documentation, to seeing a robot that could be autonomous… that could house this stream of consciousness’, says Trainor. ‘I can’t remember if we ever explicitly sat down and said this could be a version of you for when you’re not here, [but] the question of consciousness was implicitly there.’
Artificial life after death was on James’s mind. After meeting Trainor he came across the story of the Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov, founder of the 2045 Initiative, which seeks to create ‘cybernetic immortality’ by ‘downloading’ the consciousness of individual humans, which could then be housed in robots, or projected as holograms. James became fascinated by Itskov, seeking out YouTube videos about him, including a BBC documentary called The Immortalist.
He was not the only person to have stumbled upon the power of new computational methods to walk the line between life and death. In America, a programmer called Eugenia Kuyda had built a bot after her best friend, Roman Mazurenko, was killed after being hit by a car aged 32. She had a huge archive of his text messages, which she used to create an AI corpus. She could then text the bot just as she had texted him, and it would respond in its own words – and, uncannily, in his style.
Some of Mazurenko’s friends found it creepy. ‘It’s pretty weird when you open the messenger and there’s a bot of your deceased friend, who actually talks to you,’ said his friend Sergey Fayfer. Others, like Mazurenko’s mother Victoria, were thrilled. ‘They continued Roman’s life and saved ours,’ she is quoted as saying in an article on The Verge website. ‘It’s not virtual reality. This is a new reality, and we need to learn to build it and live in it.’
But some consequences of Mazurenko’s digital reincarnation were unforeseen. Those ‘talking’ to it often became confessional. The bot became a private space in which people could be honest. With a few tweaks, it has since become the basis of a free app called Replika.
On the news website Quartz, Kuyda says of Replika, ‘No one is allowed to be vulnerable any more. No one is actually saying what’s going on with themselves very openly.’ By interacting with users, Replika learns to become a version of them – for some, a natural confidant.
In 1950, Alan Turing, famous for his wartime codebreaking work at Bletchley Park, devised The Imitation Game. If an observer, reading the transcript of a conversation between human and machine, could not guess which was which, then the machine passed what has come to be known as The Turing Test. In 1966 it was first claimed that a machine, called Eliza, had passed the test. Posing as a psychotherapist, Eliza asked patients to describe their problems, then searched their answers for keywords to indicate what a meaningful response might be.
A similar process underlies bots like those created by Trainor and Kuyda. The difference is that increasing computational sophistication and power have blessed them with a vastly greater ability to process and respond to abstract concepts. So today’s bots learn. ‘Talking’ to the James bot, or the Replika that I created on my smartphone, could initially be clunky. But they improved. With Replika this is even part of the experience, in which users are ushered through ‘levels’. ‘It needs people engaging with it,’ says Trainor of the James bot. ‘The basis of this technology is that the more you use it, the better it gets.’
Developers are clear: such bots are not conscious in the way that humans are. They do not understand language. They simply use it in a way that makes it seem as though they do. Yet what is consciousness? As the eminent British brain surgeon Henry Marsh has noted, no one really knows.
‘Neuroscience tells us that it is highly improbable that we have souls, as everything we think and feel is no more or no less than the electrochemical chatter of our nerve cells,’ he writes in his memoir Do No Harm. ‘Our sense of self, our feelings and our thoughts, our love for others, our hopes and ambitions, our hates and fears all die when our brains die. Many people deeply resent this view of things, which seems to downgrade thought to mere electrochemistry and reduces us to mere automata, to machines. Such people are profoundly mistaken, since what it really does is upgrade matter into something infinitely mysterious that we do not understand.’
Those trying to solve that infinite mystery suggest that consciousness may be the fruit of interoperating brain processes. If that were true, however, could not machinery replicating those processes also replicate consciousness? A handful of researchers believe so. The question then is, if machinery can mimic the mystery of consciousness, who owns the results?
A Romanian entrepreneur, Marius Ursache, thinks we should all create digital avatars of ourselves that can live on after we die. Though the technology is similar, his company differs from Replika in that it is explicitly aimed at the life-after-death market. He calls it Eternime. ‘Eventually, we are all forgotten,’ its website announces. By ‘collecting your thoughts and stories’ it promises to create a digital replica of you online – an avatar – with which others can converse and so access your memories long after you are dead. Partly it sells itself as a legacy tool. But there is another aspect too: avatars don’t die. ‘Become virtually immortal,’ the website boasts. Ursache concedes that his business model raises ‘tons of things to think of ethically’. But while Eternime and Replika insist that personal data will never be shared, a host of concerns are already being voiced about the rights of the ‘online dead’ – a commercial field that is growing so fast it already has its own acronym: DAI (digital afterlife industry).
In a paper in Nature magazine, Luciano Floridi and Carl Ohman from the Oxford Internet Institute divided DAI products into four categories, from simple digital wills (which help pass on or destroy the contents of your online accounts once you die) to full-blown digital recreation services like Eternime, where your avatar could potentially be interacting with flesh and blood humans 1,000 years from now.
All such companies, the academics say, ‘share an interest in monetising death online, using digital remains as a means of making a profit’. The two men foresee a world in which avatars, which could feel as integral to individuals as internal organs, will actually be owned – and potentially commercialised – by a company. In this vision of the future, posthumous avatars populate a kind of YouTube for the dead, where the popular generate audience traffic and consequently income for the company that created them, while others languish unwatched. Instead of being ‘virtually immortal’, the academics fear, such lonely avatars would merely be deleted, a second death for those whose physical bodies have already ceased to exist.
‘Within only five years of a user’s death, the chatbot for which they signed up will likely have developed into something far more sophisticated and commercially calibrated,’ the two men write. For them it is those services that promise the most richly detailed digital recreation that ‘involve the greatest risk regarding privacy’. In consequence, Floridi and Ohman say, it is bots like Replika ‘where the most significant ethical concerns lie’.
In its privacy policy Luka, the company behind Replika, insists, ‘We are not in the business of selling your information. We consider this information to be a vital part of our relationship with you.’ But, as with almost all social media companies, signing up to Replika means granting Luka a ‘perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content’ – photos and the like – ‘in connection with the operation of the Service or the promotion, advertising or marketing thereof in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.’
Floridi and Ohman are calling for laws to ensure ‘dignity for those who are remediated online’. As yet there are none. ‘It’s a free-for-all,’ says Floridi.
James Dunn was not interested in such legal niceties. He trusted Trainor, and time was short. So when he saw Bo he made a beeline for its creators, Andrei Danescu, Adrian Negoita and Oana Jinga. The three entrepreneurs had imagined Bo being used in public settings such as hotel lobbies, airport terminals, or trundling the corridors of NHS hospitals in the depths of night, silently checking on patients. But James opened their eyes to a new application of their technology.
‘James saw the robot and immediately he had all these ideas,’ says Danescu. ‘He was very visionary. And we were totally blown away because it goes into all these philosophical questions about putting someone’s personality and experience and their whole wealth of knowledge into a different body, or embodiment.’
The idea of implanting the James algorithmic bot into Bo gripped the robot’s makers. James had twin conceptions of what the result would do. In the first instance, while he was alive and relatively well, he told the robot’s creators, he envisaged it ‘taking some of the strain off his family’. It would be able to go downstairs to chat with them, or to the shops, on its own. But there was a second, unspoken understanding of Bo’s purpose.
‘He was saying, “I would like my nephew to be able to interact with the robot and then think, oh this is what James would have been like,”’ says Danescu. ‘He saw the robot as a vessel for what he was going to leave behind. His legacy. I think many people would be open to have that as an interesting way of living on.’
In the meantime, Trainor kept working on the algorithmic James bot. By September 2017, six months after he had started, it was working well enough for James and ‘James’ to engage in conversation. ‘We laughed and thought it was amusing,’ says Trainor. ‘He had a chat with himself. An inner monologue.’ Together, they planned to unveil Bo, with the James bot software inside, to an audience at a health-tech event that November – Bo communicating by voice and screen but in a generic male voice.
However, James noticed lumps on his hand and just before the event, on 8 November, he was told that his cancer had returned. ‘I’m numb with emotion,’ he confided to his video diary on the day of his diagnosis. ‘I’m not going to sleep. That’s what happens when I worry.’
In the new year he had his arm amputated. On 18 February he posted a heart-rending video from his sickbed. ‘To be honest, and I don’t know if this is going to come as a surprise to my friends and family, because I’m always so cheery and positive, but every time I think about death and dying and leaving everyone behind, and the afterlife – sorry I’m getting pretty deep on this video – I shit myself to be honest. I’m terrified.’ He died less than two months later, on 7 April last year. A couple of days beforehand, he texted Trainor: ‘Don’t worry. I’m gonna be all right. Thanks for everything.’
Trainor gave the eulogy at his funeral. ‘On one level, I suppose I knew him better than anyone,’ he says, reflecting upon the vast quantity of data about James that he had compiled. Before the funeral, friends slipped mementos into James’s open casket. Trainor added a hard drive containing James’s AI corpus. The real man and his virtual self were buried together.
For Trainor, and the creators of Replika, Eternime and myriad other companies on the cutting edge of the digital afterlife industry, this is only the beginning. How soon will it become routine to piece people back together from the data they leave behind? ‘The saddest thing for me is that James won’t be here to see the opportunity fulfilled of the thing that he started,’ says Trainor. But the James bot could go from strength to strength. Trainor recently discovered a whole archive of new material on James’s computer which could only refine the algorithm, should he choose to add it. ‘There’s more to come,’ he says.
Lelsey Dunn is still trying to get over her son’s death. She has not watched the videos he left, let alone communicated with his bot. ‘It was an amazing life we had with him,’ she says. To her, the technology that could somehow resurrect her son is both ‘scary’ and ‘nice’. She feels the best result would be if, one day, James’s digital avatar could visit schools and speak in his zestful manner about coping with pain, about loving life, even in the most difficult circumstances. For the moment, however, she prefers to take solace in more traditional form. ‘James is buried and his grave is not too far away. So I see him every day.’
The James bot lay dormant after the funeral. But at the end of last year, back in London and prompted by my enquiries, Trainor rebooted it on his smartphone. He typed in, ‘I miss you.’
‘My mind is a form of physical energy. I believe that,’ came the response. Several more dialogue boxes popped up: ‘It will eventually transform to the point where I don’t need it to be in this stupid body any more. You probably don’t understand what I mean. But basically I think I’ll just be something else one day. If life ends at death, then life would not be fair. I think life is fair. Therefore, life does not end at death.’
Here’s a piece I contributed to Dialogue magazine recently. Huge thanks to Kirsten Levermore for diligently making sense of my slightly dyslexic waffle and shaping it into what’s emerged.
When we woke up our computers we gave them superpowers. Now we have to decide how to use them, writes Pete Trainor
The world is different today than it was yesterday and tomorrow it will be different again. We’ve unleashed a genie from a bottle that will change humanity in the most unpredictable of ways. Which is ironic, because the genie we released has a talent for being able to make almost perfect predictions 99% of the time.
We have given machines the ability to see, to understand, and to interact with us in sophisticated and intricate ways. And this new intelligence is not going to stop or slow down, either. In fact, as the quantities of data we produce continue to grow exponentially, so will our computers’ ability to process and analyze — and learn from — that data. According to the most recent reports, the total amount of data produced around the world was 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 – set to rise enormously to 44 zettabytes by 2020. To put that in perspective, one zettabyte is equivalent to 44 trillion gigabytes (about 22 trillion tiny USB sticks). Across the world, businesses collect our data for marketing, purchases and trend analysis. Banks collect our spending and portfolio data. Governments gather data from census information, incident reports, CCTV, medical records and more.
With this expanding universe of data, the mind of the machine will only continue to evolve. There’s no escaping the nexus now.
We are far past the dawn of machine learning
Running alongside this new sea of information collection is a subset of Artificial Intelligence called ‘Machine Learning’, autonomously perusing and, yes, learning, from all that data. Machine learning algorithms don’t even have to be explicitly programmed – they can literally change and improve their own code, all by themselves.
The philosophical and ethical implications are huge on so many levels.
On the surface, many people believe businesses are only just starting to harness this new technological superpower to optimise themselves. In reality, however, many of them have been using algorithms to make things more efficient since the late 1960s.
In 1967 the “nearest neighbour” code was written to allow computers to begin recognizing very basic patterns. The nearest neighbour algorithm was originally used to map routes for traveling salesmen, ensuring they visited all viable locations along a route to optimise a short trip. It soon spread to many other industries.
Then, in 1981, Gerald Dejong introduced the world to Explanation-Based Learning (EBL). With EBL, computers could now analyze a data set and derive a pattern from it all on their own, even discarding what they thought was ‘unimportant’ data.
Machines were able to make their own decisions. A truly astonishing breakthrough and something we take for granted in many services and systems, like banking, still to this day.
The next massive leap forward came just a few years later, in the early 1990s, when Machine Learning shifted from a knowledge-driven approach to a data-driven approach, giving computers the ability to analyze large amounts of data and draw their own conclusions — in other words, to learn — from the results.
The age of the everyday supercomputer had truly begun.
Mind-reading for the everyday supercomputer
The devil lies in the detail and it’s always the devil we would rather avoid than converse with. There are things lurking inside the data we generate, that many companies would rather avoid or not acknowledge – at least, not publically. We are not kept in the dark because they’re all malicious or evil corporations, but more often because of the huge ethical and legal concerns attached to what data and what processes lie the shadows.
Let’s say a social network you use every single day is sitting on top of the large set of data generated by tens-of-millions of people just like you.
The whole system has been designed right from the outset to get you hooked, extracting information such as your location, travel plans, likes and dislikes, status updates (both passive and active). From there, the company can tease out the sentiment of posts, your browsing behaviors, and many other fetishes, habits and quirks. Some of these companies also have permission (that you will grant them access to, in those lengthy terms and conditions forms) to scrape data from other seemingly unrelated apps and services on your phone, too.
One of the social networks you use everyday even has a patent to “discreetly take control of the camera on your phone or laptop to analyse your emotions while you browse”
Using all this information, a company can build highly sophisticated and extremely intricate, explicit models that predict your outcomes and reactions – including your emotional and even physical states.
Most of these models use your ‘actual’ data to predict/extrapolate the value of an unseen, not-yet-recorded point from all that data – in short, it can predict if you’re going to do something even before you might have decided to do it.
The machines are literally reading our minds using predictive and prescriptive analytics
A consequence of giving our data away without much thought or due diligence is that we have never really understood its value and power.
And, unfortunately for us, most of the companies ingesting our behavioural data only use their models to predict what advert might tempt us to click, or what wording for a headline might resonate because of some long forgotten and repressed memory.
All companies bear some responsibility to care for their users‘ data, but do they really care for the ‘humans‘ generating that data?
That’s the big question.
Usernames have faces, and those faces have journeys
We’ve spent an awfully long time mapping the user journey or plotting the customer journey when, in reality, every human is on a journey we know nothing about.
Yes, the technical, legal and social barriers are significant. But what about commercial data’s potential to improve people’s health and mental wellbeing?
It’s started to hit home for me even harder over the last few years because I’ve started losing close friends to suicide.
The biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK, and one of the leading causes of death in the US.
It’s an epidemic.
Which is why I needed to do something.
“Don’t do things better, do better things” – Pete Trainor
Companies can keep using our data to pad out shiny adverts or they can use that same data and re-tune the algorithms and models to do more — to do better things.
The emerging discipline of computational psychiatry, uses the same powerful data analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence techniques as commercial entities – but instead of working out how best to keep you on a site, or sell you a product, computational psychiatrists use data to explore the underlying factors behind extreme and unusual conditions that make people vulnerable to self-harm and even suicide.
The SU project in action
The SU project: a not-for-profit chatbot that is learning how to identify and support vulnerable individuals.
The SU project was a piece of artificial intelligence that attempted to detect when people are vulnerable and, in response, actively intervene with appropriate support messages. It worked like an instant messaging platform – SU even knew to talk with people at the times of day you were most at risk of feeling low.
We had no idea the data SU would end up learning from was the exact same data being mined by other tech companies we interact with every single day.
We didn’t invent anything ground-breaking at all, we just gave our algorithm a different purpose.
Ai needs agency. And often, it’s not asked to do better things, just to do things better – quicker, cheaper, more efficient.
Companies, then, haven’t moved quite as far from 1967s’ ‘nearest neighbor’ than we might like to believe.
The marketing problem
For many companies, the subject of suicide prevention is too contentious to provide a marketing benefit worth pursuing. They simply do not have the staff or psychotherapy expertise, internally, to handle this kind of content.
Where the boundaries also get blurred and the water murky is that to save a single life you would likely have to monitor us all.
Surveillance.
The modern Panopticon.
The idea of me monitoring your data makes you feel uneasy because it feels like a violation of your privacy.
Advertising, however, not so much. We’re used to adverts. Being sold to has been normalized, being saved has not, which is a shame when so many companies benefit from keeping their customers alive.
Saving people is the job of counsellors, not corporates – or something like that. It is unlikely that data mining for good projects like SU would ever be granted universal dispensation since the nature and boundaries of what is ‘good’ remain elusively subjective.
But perhaps it is time for companies who already feed off our data to take up the baton? Practice a sense of enlightenment rather than entitlement?
If the 21st-century public’s willingness to give away access to their activities and privacy through unread T&Cs and cookies is so effective it can fuel multi-billion dollar empires, surely those companies should act on the opportunity to nurture us as well as sell to us? A technological quid pro quo?
Is it possible? Yes. Would it be acceptable? Less clear.
– Pete Trainor is a co-founder of US. A best-selling author, with a background in design and computers, his mission is not just to do things better, but do better things.
This is a slightly left-of-the-middle one for me… A few months ago I was approached by Sky to join them at the Mindshare Huddle (which was a brilliant event BTW) in November to discuss the existential issues inspired by the Sky Atlantic show, Westworld. As a huge fan of the original 1973 film, written and directed by Michael Crichton, (and rather controversially, the 1976 sequel, Futureworld) it was a tough gig for me to refuse. If you’re not familiar with the film or show, it depicts a technologically advanced, complete re-creation of the American frontier of 1880. A western-themed amusement park populated by humanoid robots that malfunction and begin killing the human visitors. Basically it’s Jurassic Park but with gunslingers and prostitutes instead of Dinosaurs.
For the discussion to work, it was really important to move past the science fiction really quickly, and get right to the parts of the show that are conceivably being played out, in real-time, as I type this. Life is currently imitating art to a certain extent and so we put forth the following synopsis for the audience;
“Join Jamie Morris, Channel Editor, Sky Atlantic & Head of Scheduling and Pete Trainor, Director of Human Focused Technology at US Ai, as they delve into the notion of Sky Atlantic show Westworld becoming a real thing. This ethical discussion will cover human interactivity in a world of Ai and whether humans would act as normal, or be enticed into a dark illegal world, just because they could. Pete will also describe just how close we are to a Westworld-style world—and you are going to be surprised.”
We had a really fascinating and enjoyable conversation that was seeded and started with a single statement by one of the scientists in the original 1973 film;
“We aren’t dealing with ordinary machines here. These are highly complicated pieces of equipment almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they’ve been designed by other computers. We don’t know exactly how they work.”
What strikes me about that statement, was how close to todays reality the original script is becoming. Cast your mind back to last year when AlphaGo trumped Lee Sedol in Game Two of GO. As the world looked on, the Deepmind machine made a move that no human ever would. Move 37 perfectly demonstrated the enormously powerful (and rather mysterious) future of modern artificial intelligence. AlphaGo’s surprise attack on the right-hand side of the 19-by-19 board flummoxed even the world’s best Go players, including Lee Sedol. Nobody really understood how it did it, not even it’s creators. Lee Sedol then lost Game Three, and AlphaGo claimed the million-dollar prize in the best-of-five series.
But let’s just get real for a moment, it was a mystery that we, the humans, programmed and created. We just didn’t really understand what we’d done.
Ticks not Clicks
I really enjoyed the facet of the show that presents us with an alternate view of the human condition through the technological mirror of life-like robots. Look past the boozing and sex, and Westworld is Psychology 101. It causes us to reflect that we are perhaps also just sophisticated machines, albeit of a biological kind. Episode 4 was even entitled “Dissonance Theory,” and explored the psychological hypothesis of bicameralism. The whole show taps into the rich tapestry of questions inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein too… The creature created by Frankenstein is psychologically conflicted between a need for human companionship and a deep selfish hatred for those who have what he does not… but that’s a digression for another day. As people start to meddle in technology and opportunities that they don’t fully understand, you really have to stop and question who are the true antagonists in a show like Westworld. The robots. The human players (and they are players in a game by the way), or the scientists who create the rules of the game.
The audience chose the players, but I suggested to Jamie that the real antagonists of Westworld (and Ai today) aren’t the people who treated robots as objects, or the robots themselves, but the scientists who tried to make the robots more human by design. The ones who tricked us to bring out the very primitive part of humanity.
“When you played cowboys and Indians as a kid, you’d point go “bang, bang” and the other kid would lie down and play dead. Well, Westworld is the same thing, only it’s for real!”
Perhaps we can learn something from Westworld, where the ones treating robots like robots seem the most capable of separating reality from fantasy and human-life from technological wizardry. It’s the scientists imposing the human condition and consciousness on artificially intelligent beings who unleash suffering on both robot and humankind. In the show, while both Maeve and Dolores may have acted in a mix of prescribed and self-directed ways, their revolutions were firmly created by the humans in the lab. Ultimately, the robots don’t become semi-sentient—and violent—simply by experiencing love or loss or trauma or rage or pain, but by being programmed and guided that way.
It is inevitable therefore, that as real-life artificial intelligence develops, we will see a lot of debate over whether treating humanoid machines like machines is somehow inhumane, either because it violates the rights of robots or it produces moral hazards in humans who participate in the activity.
As humans, we’re predisposed to behave in ways that play to our base instincts. Even if robots are just tools, some people will always see them as more than that and It seems natural for people to respond to robots—even some of the more simple, non-human robots we have today—as though they have goals and intentions. I stand my ground that Ai will never be able to ‘feel’ or have ‘emotions’ or ‘empathy’ because those are very human traits. They’re biological and psychological, not mechanical. We can programme machines to interpret and mimic, but they will not feel. But if we do create those mimicry moments, who’s to blame if some people fall for the charade? As kids we had teddy-bears. Phones. Bots. Alexa. Robots. Droids etc are just logical, grown-up extensions of those anthropomorphism’s.
Have a look at the following video and see how it makes you feel;
A human tendency towards irrational, often violent, behaviour
We covered the human tendency towards irrational, violent behaviour. Now this is controversial and divisive, but statistically, humans are six times more likely to kill each other than the average mammal. That’s no excuse for violence, humans are also moral animals and we cannot escape from that. But a lot of society has a base instinct towards living out primitive behaviour, especially in herds. I referenced taking Charlie, my 8 year old son, to the football every few weeks and how he asks more questions about the behaviour of the fans (the mob) than the football most weeks. I myself, cannot get passionate enough about grown men kicking a ball around some grass, to hurl disgusting abuse at a referee, but several thousand people in a crowd of 22,000 do. Week in and week out.
“The Seville Statement” is another very controversial piece of research from the 1980s which backed up some parts of the theory that biologically people have an innate tendency towards violence, in contradiction of both the statement and the views of many cultural anthropologists. A lot of this primitive, violent behaviour in parts of society still harps back to the behaviour of our primate cousins. Groups of male chimpanzees prey on smaller groups to increase their dominance over neighboring communities, improving their access to food and female mates etc. I believe, given some legitimate reason to behave like apes, some people will seize the opportunity. So again, if the world moves in the direction of creating opportunities to behave like apes, we will see peoples behaviour pivot in that direction. Build it and programme it with options to abuse, and they will come. Mark my words.
Gaming play and frustration
There’s a latest craze of VR Parks starting to open up in Tokyo. The first truly immersive one opened last December as an experiment. Nearly 12 months later, it is attracting 9,000 visitors a month and turning people away at weekends, as crowds clamor to immerse themselves in extreme experiences, distant worlds and fantasy scenarios, using technology most people still can’t afford to have at home. Again, it shows how as species we clamour for escapism and the more immersive the better. So whilst on stage we acknowledged that Westworld as a park full of robots is not very realistic, as a hypothetical concept, it’s already happening.
I touched a little on the link between computer games and violent behaviour and how this would also factor in. There’s actually no proof that violent video games create violent tendencies offline by the way, but there are some interesting studies emerging that back up the theory that frustration at being unable to play a game is more likely to bring out aggressive behaviour than the content of the game itself. What’s interesting about Westworld in context of this, is as the machines evolved to change the rules almost constantly, it would encourage frustration and therefore violence—the violent themes would not necessarily inspire that behaviour itself, but the intelligence of the ever evolving scenario. Chaos basically. A lot of the Ai we’re building at the moment is literally designed to break the rules. To continuously evolve. To ‘machine learn’… so don’t be too surprised when frustration turns to the kind of behaviour that we don’t normally use in polite society.
People have a psychological need to come out on top when playing games. If we feel thwarted by the controls or the design of something, we can wind up feeling aggressive.
In giving artificial intelligence the ability to improvise, we (humans) give it the power to create, to decide, and to act. If we program it to improvise without programming the right ethical framework, we risk losing control of it altogether and then we’re basically fulfilling our own prophecy.
The ethics of human > computer relationships
Finally, to end, we also covered some of the high-level areas of Ai ethics. Things that the world economic forum has listed as areas to consider for humanity when developing the intelligent machines… consider this… even though our conversation was hypothetical, the 1973 film predicted a lot of where we’ve ended up. Today, we’re at number one. According to the futurists, by 2035 we might make it to number nine;
Unemployment – What happens to jobs when robots / chatbots / automation replace us?
Eroded Humanity – What happens to the self-esteem of people replaced by machines, do we increase the growing mental health crisis?
Inequality and Distributed Wealth – Linked directly to 1 & 2… where does the wealth generated by machines go?
Racist Robots – What happens when we feed toxic, historical data into the Ai and by doing this, engender it with all our racism, bias etc.
Artificial Stupidity – What happens when the machines we create to automate processes go wrong? Everybody and every machine ‘learns by doing’ and making mistakes. They will. It’s how kids learn.
Security Against Adversaries – What fail-safes do we need to put in place in order to ensure the machines can’t hit the big red button.
Robot rights – When machines start to grow in intelligence and mimic it’s creators, do we need to give them rights or do we acknowledge that they are no more in need of rights then toasters and other technical tools?
Evil genies & unintended consequences – For every good in the world, there will be bad. That’s life. There will be bad examples—terrorism and cyber-war etc.
The Singularity – How we refer to the moment that a machine, over-takes humanity as the smartest thing on the planet and also has the ability to think and make judgements for itself. A conscious (even if it is just mimicking consciousness!) software capable of looking at it’s creators and saying “you are my slaves not vice-versa).
Summary
“Human” characters in the show routinely ask other individuals in Westworld whether or not they are “real.” One character replies to the question, “Does it really matter?”, which is already a reflection I make most days when I see us all interacting with each other virtually and behaving in such unpredictable ways.
“Mr. Lewis shot 6 robots scientifically programmed to look, act, talk and even bleed just like humans do. Isn’t that right? Well, they may have been robots. I mean, I think they were robots. I mean, I know they were robots!”
As shows like Westworld get closer and closer to becoming reality, it’s going to become more imperative that we acknowledge the importance of the ethical questions. If we’re tricked into behaving in a way that plays to our base instincts… who’s responsibility is it to govern and manage that?
Welcome to Westworld!
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A massive thank you to Caroline Beadle at Sky Media for organising and inviting me to join Sky for the afternoon. Also for humouring me enough to let me take this talk to a far far more philosophical space than it needed to be. We really did take things off into a whole bizarre, human focused direction. Which is ironic when we got together to talk about robots.
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Seth Mlawski",
"Lee & Low)",
"a longtime writing teacher",
"story consultant",
"many others",
"www.facebook.com"
] |
2010-06-28T00:00:00
|
A pseudo-scientific look at the phenomenon of the "strong" female character.
|
en
|
https://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/themes/oti2012/images/favicon.ico
|
Overthinking It
|
https://www.overthinkingit.com/2010/06/28/are-male-characters-more-likable-than-female-characters/
|
Rule #1 of writing fiction in the 21st century: All characters must be likable. Sure, sure… but what does “likable” mean? A while ago, I wrote a piece about this subject, but my findings were superficial at best. “Likable characters have dogs,” I said. “Likable characters are easy for audiences to identify with and pity.”
Such analysis was not particularly useful to the would-be writer or to most consumers of modern fiction. What, for example, are we to make of the fact that psychopathic killers like Tony Soprano and Ben Linus are loved by the masses? Why is it that “whiners” like Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Shinji considered detestable, while sad-sacks like Eeyore and Charlie Brown get dubbed “lovable losers” and existentialists? Why do we hate know-it-alls like Wesley Crusher and Adric but love know-it-alls like Spock and The Doctor? And why aren’t I mentioning any women in these questions?
Clearly, there is a lot more to likeability than I thought. This week, I’d like to continue my on-going series of “How To Be Likable” by focusing on the following question: Are male characters more immediately likable than female characters?
For some time now, I’ve held the hypothesis that, to the majority of the American population, if not the majority of the population of Earth, male characters are automatically more likable than female characters. It seemed to me, based on my experience on the Interwebs, that many male characters were given a pass for deplorable behavior while female characters tended to be hated for the vague sin of being “a bitch.” My hypothesis seemed to be confirmed by my recent experiences reading about Breaking Bad on the web. I won’t spoil the show for you in case you haven’t seen it, but in the first two and a half seasons, certain male characters have 1. produced and distributed methamphetamines, 2. killed people and allowed innocents to die, 3. attempted rape, and 4. constantly lied to their families and put them in extreme danger (among other things). One female character, on the other hand, had an affair—weeks after begging her husband for a divorce, which he would not grant. Guess which character is the unlikable one?
Of course, we at Overthinking It don’t base our conclusions on anecdotal evidence. We’re scientists. If an article on pop culture doesn’t have a chart, graph, or Excel spreadsheet in it, it doesn’t count. So I decided to see what science (“science”) had to say about the matter. Are male characters more likable than female characters?
For my research, I visited Entertainment Weekly, which last month came up with a list of their 100 favorite fictional characters. (NOTE: There are more than 100 characters on the list.) These characters came from TV shows , the movies, novels, the theater, and FunnyorDie.com. Oh, and The Gorillaz are on the list for some reason. Here’s the breakdown by gender:
TOTAL CHARACTERS: 108
MALE: 68 (63%)
FEMALE:40 (37%)
So does this mean that male and female characters are equally likely to be liked? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I next broke down the EW list by character type. What kinds of male characters do we like, and do we like the same types of female characters? I divided the characters in two ways. First, I looked to see if the characters were active or passive/reactive. I defined active characters as characters that control their plots. They have strong desires, and go after them using their wits, physical strength, devious skills of manipulation or what have you. These characters are often described as “badasses,” but they don’t have to be badass. Examples of active characters from the EW list include Jack Bauer from 24 and The Bride from Kill Bill (on the violent side) and Barney Stinson from HIMYM and Sue Sylvester from Glee (on the non-violent side).
Passive/reactive characters, on the other hand, are acted upon—the plot happens to them, in other words. These characters tend to be pitied by audiences, and their actions tend to be less violent. Examples of “passives” or “reactives” include Truman from The Truman Show and Rachel from Friends.
Beyond the obvious “actives” and “passives” there were also some “unclassifiable” characters. For example, District 9’s Wikus van de Merwe, started his film as a “reactive” but finished it as an “active.” He is, therefore, unclassifiable.
Most “how to write” books and websites I’ve read claim that likable characters are always active—no one likes a reactor. But that’s not how the EW broke down:
TOTAL ACTIVES: 56 (52%)
TOTAL PASSIVES/REACTIVES: 42 (39%)
TOTAL UNCLASSIFIABLE: 10 (9%)
According to the EW list, likeability was indeed correlated with active badass-itude, but being active was not a requirement of being likable.
Now let’s see where male and female characters fall on the active-passive continuum. Before looking at the EW list, my guess would have been that audiences prefer their male characters active and “badass” and their female characters sweetly passive and mommy-like. Surprisingly, I found just the opposite:
MALE ACTIVES: 32/68 (47%)
MALE PASSIVES: 25/68 (37%)
FEMALE ACTIVES: 24/40 (60%)
FEMALE PASSIVES: 12/40 (30%)
Clearly, EW likes active characters a bit better than passive characters, but it likes active female characters significantly more than it likes passive or reactive female characters. According to the above statistics, for every Felicity or Lorelai Gilmore on the list, you get two Starbucks (or two Patty Heweses). EW’s writers and editors, it seems, like their “strong female” characters better than their “reactive but interesting” female characters by a ratio of 2:1. As you can see, there is less of a spread between the active and passive male characters. (For every Forrest Gump or Napoleon Dynamite, you get only 1.3ish Omar Littles.)
Next, I broke the characters into character types: hero-protagonists, anti-hero-protagonists, comedic protagonists (who tend to flip-flop between heroism, pure evil, and complete passivity), villain antagonists, and none of the above. By my count, there were only 10 clear villain-antagonists in this list
– Tracy Flick from Election
– Amanda Woodward from Melrose Place
-Catherine Trammell from Basic Instinct
– Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada
– Mary Jones from Precious
– Annie Wilkes from Misery
-Violet Weston from August: Osage County
– Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects
-Gollum from The Lord of the Rings
– The Joker from The Dark Knight
and yet seven of the ten are women. That means 17.5% of the women on this list are villain-antagonists, while only 4.5% of the men are. My definition of a villain-antagonist was a character who did evil things that the POV protagonist did not approve of. People like Hannibal Lecter and Tony Soprano would be considered anti-hero-protagonists, because one helped out the heroic main character, and one was the main character. As evil as Tony Soprano can be, audiences identify with him too much to call him a true villain. (Fascinatingly, there are very few female antihero-protagonists in general, let alone on this EW list–Mary Louise Parker’s character from Weeds immediately jumps to mind–but she’s not only the list. Damages’ Patty Hewes is. If you go to TVTropes and look at their list of villain protagonists, you’ll see the number of female characters is negligible. I have nothing much to say about this fact other than to say it’s interesting.)
Anyway. All of the above data suggest to me that we (or at least the critics at EW) like a wide variety of male character types but prefer our women to be two-dimensionally “badass” and/or evil. Most great female characters, the EW list seems to say, are doers—not thinkers or losers or comedians or lovable orges or what have you. Great male characters, meanwhile, range across the entirety of human experience, from Shrek to David Brent to Edward Scissorhands to Eric Cartman to Jules Winnfield to Spongebob Squarepants to Tyler Durden.
An important question remains, however. Is it that audiences and critics prefer two-dimensional “strong female” characters to “weak-but-interesting” women and girls, or is it that writers don’t know how to write nuanced female characters? Or do writers know how to write three-dimensional women but avoid doing so for fear of being labeled misogynistic? After all, the writer of an unsubtle villainness or plain-vanilla action heroine can hide behind the excuse of, “But look! She’s so empowered!” Or is it that Hollywood’s female characters have been focus-grouped to death, as A.O. Scott suggested in his (hilarious) review of Knight and Day? Are writers shackled by the market research that says that likable female characters must be “tough but not aggressive,” “sexy but not actually having sex,” and “willing to fall for a certain kind of guy without entirely losing their heads”? Maybe we see so many female characters in this bland “Cameron Diaz” rom-com mode nowadays that every time a writer steps slightly out of those boundaries by writing a loathsome Lady Macbeth stereotype or one-dimensional Femme Nikita-type, magazines like Entertainment Weekly fall over themselves to congratulate them for it.
I don’t know. My guess is that it’s all of the above. So let me open this question to you, OTI readers. I’m sure most of you enjoy watching badass characters of both sexes–after all, we humans love our wish-fulfillment fantasies–but do passive/reactive female characters turn you off more than passive or reactive male characters? If so, why? Were you socially-conditioned to only enjoy watching women if they act stereotypically “masculine” (i.e., proactive and violent), or do you think that Hollywood’s writers tend to have a hard time writing different types of female characters?
|
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| 97 |
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1588138/Top-Boy-season-2-Ashley-Walters-Kano-rewrite-scenes
|
en
|
Top Boy season 2: Ashley Walters admits Kano rewrote scenes without telling him
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Lucas Hill-Paul"
] |
2022-03-29T17:26:00+01:00
|
TOP BOY lead Ashley Walters has revealed his main co-star Kane Robinson, better known as Kano, will often rewrite their scenes together on the fly.
|
en
|
https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/favicon.ico
|
Express.co.uk
|
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1588138/Top-Boy-season-2-Ashley-Walters-Kano-rewrite-scenes
|
He added Kano will tell him: "I won’t show what I’ve written, when we get on there, we’ll do it live."
"So we’ll get into this scene and this guy will just come with a whole monologue, new scene!" the actor continued.
"But, in his defence, some of those moments have been the most iconic scenes and have made me step up my game.
"Some of the speeches he goes on with, and I’m like, 'First of all this is not in the script,' you’re looking, I can’t obviously cut the scene right now, but this is not in it."
Season two of the Netflix revival has proven to be the biggest hit in the show’s run so far following a three-year wait for new episodes.
Now, fans worldwide are eager to know whether the Hackney-based crime drama will return for season five after this year’s shocking cliffhanger.
Top Boy seasons 1-2 and Top Boy: Summerhouse are available to stream on Netflix.
|
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1473
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2
| 34 |
https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/t/mk2011/garladors-kotw-update-now-just-one-thread/45nNnSLNp1Ej%3Fpage%3D2
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en
|
View Thread
|
https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/csb/9d3c949cc0c98ccb409acf7fb7589d7e/content/sha256:4639ff34cc1d649903174acd53f1e726ce37c68154c186e6feae05117ea4991f
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[] | null |
Tournaments, Kontent, Discussions and News about Mortal Kombat
|
en
|
https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/csb/9c32629be103596578bbed7ee36e9d49/content/sha256:5422aeb63d6a6a2e2837e6ae66965bdc96b3b726b7247d06d86df1b53556c871
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Mortal Kombat Online
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https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/t/mk2011/garladors-kotw-update-now-just-one-thread/45nNnSLNp1Ej?page=2
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1473
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dbpedia
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https://www.pcgamesn.com/mortal-kombat-1/characters
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All Mortal Kombat 1 characters
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""
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[
"Dave Irwin"
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2024-01-08T17:31:08+00:00
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Learn who out of the Mortal Kombat 1 characters is a regular fighter and who are all the new assist fighters, also known as Kameos, you pick as your partner.
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PCGamesN
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https://www.pcgamesn.com/mortal-kombat-1/characters
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Who are the Mortal Kombat 1 characters? NetherRealm Studios is once again rebooting the MK timeline, only this time, we have Liu Kang as the Fire God guiding the mortals of EarthRealm instead of the Thunder God Raiden, as history repeats itself once more. However, instead of being a traditional fighter, Mortal Kombat 1 introduces assist characters called Kameos, who you can call to help get out of sticky situations.
Now that Mortal Kombat 1 is out, you can even read our Mortal Kombat 1 review here, it’s time to look ahead and see which characters are coming in the upcoming Kombat Packs. We’ll also detail the current roster, as their backstories are fascinating, but it’s likely that we’ll see more of the fighting game‘s classic characters in either playable or Kameo forms. Here are all the upcoming Mortal Kombat 1 DLC characters that have been confirmed so far.
Mortal Kombat 1 Kombat Pack 1 character release date
The second Mortal Kombat 1 Kombat Pack 1 character release date was December 21, 2023 and is Quan Chi. He entered early access on December 14, though he didn’t come with his Kameo counterpart. Khameleon is the next Kameo character and will arrive in January 2024.
Veterans of Mortal Kombat will know the sorcerer Quan Chi. He’s the mastermind behind the corruption of the Lin Kuei, the murder of the original Scorpion’s clan, and the murder of the original Sub-Zero. In the new timeline, however, his status is drastically diminished at first, but he soon gains power from a mysterious source.
Khameleon is someone we’ve not seen properly outside of the Nintendo versions of Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Mortal Kombat Armageddon. She is a ninja who historically uses the moves of the other Outworldians: Kitana, Mileena, and Jade. In MK1’s new timeline, she is one of the guards protecting Queen Sindel.
The first Mortal Kombat 1 Kombat Pack 1 included Omni-Man from Invincible as the playable fighter and Tremor as the Kameo fighter. Omni-Man is one of the main characters in Invincible and has a particularly ruthless way of fighting with his almighty superpowers. His X-Ray attack and known fatality are both homages to scenes at the end of the first season. Tremor debuted in the god-awful spinoff Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, but returned in the PlayStation Vita version of the first Mortal Kombat reboot, and then as DLC in Mortal Kombat X.
Upcoming MK1 Kombat Pack 1 characters
Shortly after the announcement of Mortal Kombat 1, VGC reported on an Amazon listing that details the contents of the first wave of DLC characters. Some seem to be returning characters, while others take superheroes from DC, Image Comics, and Dynamite Entertainment, who all now have popular films or TV shows. The other characters were officially revealed, and they are:
Quan Chi
Ermac
Takeda
Homelander (The Boys)
Peacemaker (The Suicide Squad/Peacemaker)
So far, the rumored Kameo characters potentially joining the roster in the same Kombat Pack have rung true as Tremor was on the list. The other Kameo fighters we can potentially get in the future are:
Ferra
Johnny Cage
Khameleon
Mavado
While Johnny Cage is just the other timeline’s version of the action-movie star, all the others are returning characters who had one or two appearances at most in previous MK games. Ferra is one part of the Ferra/Torn tag team that was a main roster character slot in Mortal Kombat X.
Mavado first appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and was a member of the Red Dragon criminal organization, rivals to Kano’s Black Dragon. Finally, Khameleon is a ninja character who was a Nintendo 64 exclusive character in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Aside from Mortal Kombat Armageddon, where every known character was playable, Khameleon actually features as part of the Mortal Kombat 1 storyline, usually standing alongside Tanya.
Mortal Kombat 1 roster list
The roster for Mortal Kombat 1 is split into two different types. There are characters you directly control and Kameo characters that act as assists. If you’re familiar with the original Marvel vs. Capcom, then this mechanic should bring back some memories. These Kameo characters act either as extensions to your combos or to break an opponent’s combo.
Mortal Kombat 1 playable characters
Here ‘s every Mortal Kombat 1 character in the game:
Reiko
Nitara
General Shao
Sindel
Reptile
Havik
Ashrah
Geras
Li Mei
Tanya
Baraka
Smoke
Rain
Scorpion
Sub-Zero
Kung Lao
Johnny Cage
Kenshi
Fire God Liu Kang
Raiden
Kitana
Mileena
Shang Tsung (preorder bonus)
Regarding timeline differences, Scorpion and Sub-Zero seem to be allies rather than enemies with a loftier goal than just protecting EarthRealm. In the latest trailer, Smoke joins them with a new look, and Lin Kuei comes to blows with Rain, who, instead of being the purple ninja, is now a sorcerer with even more power over water.
So what of the characters in the new timeline? Well, Liu Kang is now the Keeper of Time, taking the mantle from Kronika in the events of Mortal Kombat 11. Geras, the guardian of the mantle, is the only other character in the current timeline who seems aware of what came before. He observes that when Liu Kang restarted the timeline, he made key alterations, but his “vision of peace might already be compromised”.
Kung Lao is now the teacher of the rather green Shaolin Monk, Raiden, whom Liu Kang chooses as Earthrealm’s champion. At the same time, the mystical samurai Kenshi is annoyed that his sword seems to be in Johnny Cage’s weapon collection in his penthouse suite, indicating that he’s actually a good actor in this timeline.
Meanwhile, Kitana and Mileena have a sisterly bond waiting to break, though, in this timeline, Kitana currently idolizes her sister. Mileena has also changed in that she is now inflicted with a disease that’s turning her into a Tarkatan rather than being born one. As Baraka mentions in another trailer, the ‘Tarkat’ virus “disfigures, then debilitates. In time, it will turn us all into bloodthirsty monsters”.
The most significant change is that Sindel, who was originally the queen of Edenia and enslaved by a resurrection spell by Shao Kahn, is now the ruler of Outworld. Rather than a desert-like wasteland in the previous timeline, it seems this version is flourishing with beautiful gardens and a celebratory mood among its people. Sindel has a good relationship with Liu Kang, seeing Mortal Kombat as a spirited competition rather than an opportunity for conquest. Shao is now Sindel’s most trusted general and champion, showing some signs of his more tyrannical self in his attitude towards Raiden.
Mortal Kombat 1 also sees the return of characters rarely appearing in mainline games. Tanya first debuted in Mortal Kombat 4, and in the original timeline, is an Edenian who betrayed her kind to serve the Outworld overlords. Here, it seems she is one of Mileena’s trusted confidants and loyal to Queen Sindel.
Li Mei is the most surprising inclusion so far, as she’s only ever been playable in the 3D Deadly Alliance trilogy of games. In the original games, she was a fighter trying to save her village’s fate from Quan Chi and Shang Tsung’s machinations but ultimately met her demise. In this new timeline, she was the leader of Umgadi warriors who swore to protect the royal family but became an outcast after Mileena’s father died on her watch.
At EVO 2023, there was the reveal of three more characters. Reptile is a classic Mortal Kombat character and a long-term adversary to the Earthrealmers. However, he is now on their side, having been exiled from Outworld due to his shapeshifting abilities to transform between human and reptilian forms. In the trailer, he is seen attacking Princess Kitana and is even referred to by his birth name, Syzoth, by Liu Kang.
The demon Ashrah is a returning character who first appeared in Mortal Kombat Deception. Banished from the Netherrealm by her sisters for purging most of the evil from her soul, she now takes on a human-like form. Liu Kang recruits her and Reptile to train with the monks for the war ahead.
We also have Havik, another character who first appeared in Mortal Kombat Deception. In the original games, he is a cleric of Chaos who doesn’t really take sides, but here, he takes on a more obviously undead appearance and wants to conquer other realms to free his own, going up against Ashrah in the process. Unlike the majority of the roster, you’re going to have to unlock Mortal Kombat 1 Havik by completing the game’s Story mode first.
Nitara seems to have an updated backstory, as the vampire seems more evilly aligned. Debuting in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Nitara’s new design is more of a warrior than her first succubus-like iteration. She now properly hates Ashrah, and it seems she leans more towards the ideals of the Netherrealm than her original origin story of being a displaced vampire whose realm was absorbed into Outworld. She’s also the only character to get a featured celebrity voice actor, Megan Fox, a relative newcomer to voice acting outside of a couple of Transformers games. Most relevantly, she was the lead antagonist in Jennifer’s Body.
The last non-DLC character is Reiko, who first appeared in Mortal Kombat 4 as a general of Shao Kahn’s army. We’ve not seen much of him outside of a cameo during Comic-Con. As far as we know, he’s still loyal to Outworld, but we know little else than that, as the prerelease footage doesn’t show much outside of mocking Raiden.
Finally, we have the preorder bonus character, Shang Tsung. Footage of the story mode shows that he meets Kronika, the antagonist of Mortal Kombat 11, who somehow survived the reestablishing of the timeline and subsequent erasure by Liu Kang. Shang Tsung is depicted as nothing more than a conman selling bogus cures to the populace of Outworld and is widely mocked by the people he tries to trick. However, Kronika seems to be forging some bond with Shang Tsung, convincing him that he was bound for greatness but that fate was never on his side.
Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo characters
We also caught a brief glimpse of the Kameo character select screen, which you enter after picking your main combatant. There are enough slots for 16 Kameo characters, though more could be added in the future. Give our Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo unlock guide a read to discover what you need to do to unlock the entire roster of characters.
The gimmick here seems to be that the Kameo fighters are from the original timeline from when Kronika was the Keeper of Time. This is why we see Sub-Zero and Scorpion in their classic ninja gear, and Cyrax and Sektor are robots. It also explains why other characters wear outfits from their first appearance in other Mortal Kombat games, such as Jax’s Mortal Kombat 2 outfit with his real arms or Sonya and Kano having their original Mortal Kombat gear. Speaking of gear, check out our Mortal Kombat 1 gear guide to learn how the costume customization system works.
Here are the confirmed Mortal Kombat 1 Kameo characters so far:
Motaro
Shujinko
Sareena
Darrius
Classic Scorpion
Cyrax
Sektor
Frost
Classic Sub-Zero
Jax Briggs
Sonya Blade
Kano
Goro
Kung Lao
Stryker
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https://japanese-names.info/first-name/kano/
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Kano - Meaning and Kanji Variations of a Japanese Boy's Name
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Explore the rich meanings and 6 beautiful kanji variations of the Japanese Boy's name Kano. Ideal for parents exploring names or enthusiasts of Japanese culture.
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en
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Japanese Names .info
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https://japanese-names.info/first-name/kano/
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Sort by Most Kanji Variations
This is the order of names with many variations of kanji.
Basically, names with more variations are more common and familiar to the Japanese.
Sort by Most Viewed
The names are sorted by the number of times they have been viewed on this site. This ranking is based on the behavior of users around the world, including Japan, so it does not mean that the names are commonly viewed by Japanese people only.
Please note that just because a name has been viewed more times does not mean it is a famous name in Japan.
What is Hiragana?
Hiragana is a syllabary used in written Japanese, which originated from the cursive style of Kanji.
What is Katakana?
Katakana is also a Japanese syllabary. Basically, the characters don't have any meaning by themselves, they only represent the sounds.
Japanese try to express the words came from foreign languages with the most similar sounds in Japanese using Katakana.
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Japanese Style Nickname
In Japan, nicknames are commonly used to express familiarity and affection. Here are key features and contexts:
Shortened Forms: Names are often shortened for ease and intimacy, such as 'Yuki' from 'Yukiko' or 'Taka' from 'Takashi'.
Suffixes: Terms like 'chan' for girls and 'kun' for boys are added to names among close friends and family. However, 'chan' can also be used for boys during childhood. Additionally, among adults who are very close, like best friends, 'chan' may still be used to convey affection and familiarity. More Details
Usage and Cultural Aspects: Nicknames are typically used in informal settings among friends, family, or close colleagues, and are not suitable for formal or professional environments. The use of a nickname suggests a degree of intimacy and should reflect the nature of the relationship. Young people often demonstrate creativity in their social interactions by crafting unique nicknames.
Note: In Japanese, the long vowel sound is indicated by a special character called a "chōonpu" (長音符), which looks like a horizontal dash (ー). This character serves to extend the duration of the vowel sound immediately preceding it. For instance, in the name "あーちゃん" (A-chan), the "あ" (A) is extended, producing a prolonged "ah" sound, similar to the "a" in "father."
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The names are sorted by the number of Japanese households where the surname is used.
The more households there are, the more famous and common the surname is.
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https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/t/classic/kano-is-he-black-or-white/GJejF21QPgJ
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Kano: is he black or white?
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https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/csb/9d3c949cc0c98ccb409acf7fb7589d7e/content/sha256:4639ff34cc1d649903174acd53f1e726ce37c68154c186e6feae05117ea4991f
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Tournaments, Kontent, Discussions and News about Mortal Kombat
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en
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https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/csb/9c32629be103596578bbed7ee36e9d49/content/sha256:5422aeb63d6a6a2e2837e6ae66965bdc96b3b726b7247d06d86df1b53556c871
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Mortal Kombat Online
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https://www.mortalkombatonline.com/t/classic/kano-is-he-black-or-white/GJejF21QPgJ
|
I remember Kano used to be black in the first MK game, as well as in the second MK game (he was tied up in one of the backgrounds).
Why did they decide to make him white in the following MK games?
Does it have anything to do with the MK movie? (In the movie he's white and he's got an Australian accent...) Since MK Deadly Alliance, he looks pretty much like the "movie Kano". I personally prefer the original Kano.
He wasn't so "pumped up" and muscular, but he really seemed to be smart with an evil criminal mind. After the 3d transition, he just seemed stupid and big...
Anyone knows why this change took place? I've never heard anything on this subject so far...
Well, that's a bit strange coming from you, as you've posted the pics of Kano...
The MK1 Kano is clearly dark skinned and could most likely be of arab origin, if not african. His characteristics absolutely match the arab look and so does his outfit.
MK3 Kano though doesn't seem to have a distinctive nationality (maybe European/French - he looks a bit like Fabien Barthez from the side, hahaha) and has no characteristics linking him to MK1 Kano, besides the robotic eye.
MKDA Kano has an American/Australian look, but clearly his appearance is very much like the movie Kano's appearance. His build and outfit is almost the same. And he doesn't look even vaguely reminiscent of the MK1 Kano, again besides the robotic eye, that is.
koups Wrote:
Well, that's a bit strange coming from you, as you've posted the pics of Kano...
The MK1 Kano is clearly dark skinned and could most likely be of arab origin, if not african. His characteristics absolutely match the arab look and so does his outfit.
MK3 Kano though doesn't seem to have a distinctive nationality (maybe European/French - he looks a bit like Fabien Barthez from the side, hahaha) and has no characteristics linking him to MK1 Kano, besides the robotic eye.
MKDA Kano has an American/Australian look, but clearly his appearance is very much like the movie Kano's appearance. His build and outfit is almost the same. And he doesn't look even vaguely reminiscent of the MK1 Kano, again besides the robotic eye, that is.
The Kano's in MK I, II and III are played the same actor, kay? (as said by NM) Same guy. He's a bald, white actor who also played Baraka, Kabal, and Quan Chi (in MKM:SZ). His name is Richard Divizio. Kano's never been Black, Indian, etc. The 'arab' feel your getting is probably from MK I's low-quality digitized graphics.
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https://glaad.org/sri/2018/paramount-pictures/
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Paramount Pictures (2018)
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2018-05-04T20:04:02-04:00
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Established in the earliest days of the American film industry, Paramount Pictures traces its lineage all the way back to 1912 and the founding of the Famous Players Film Company, which was one of three companies that would merge in 1916 and eventually become Paramount. Big-budget, mass appeal franchises is how one would describe many
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en
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/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png
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GLAAD | GLAAD rewrites the script for LGBTQ acceptance.
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https://glaad.org/sri/2018/paramount-pictures/
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Established in the earliest days of the American film industry, Paramount Pictures traces its lineage all the way back to 1912 and the founding of the Famous Players Film Company, which was one of three companies that would merge in 1916 and eventually become Paramount. Big-budget, mass appeal franchises is how one would describe many of the studio's most recognizable releases, including Star Trek, Transformers, and Mission Impossible. But if one were to look at Paramount Pictures’ most recent crop of films, it may appear that the studio is not particularly fond of taking risks. GLAAD’s 2016 SRI found that Paramount did not have a single LGBTQ-inclusive film in the studio’s 2015 slate. This lack has not always been the case.
Starting in the mid-nineties, Paramount released a string of films that were either LGBTQ-themed or LGBTQ-inclusive, including Home for the Holidays (1995), Clueless (1995), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), Brain Candy (1996), Kiss Me Guido (1997), Election (1999), The Talented Mister Ripley (1999), and The Next Best Thing (2000).
In 1997, the studio partnered with Scott Rudin Productions to release the mass-appeal, gay-themed comedy In and Out, which garnered a great deal of publicity for a kiss between lead Kevin Kline and love interest Tom Selleck and became a box office hit. In fact, In and Out, along with fellow Paramount releases Mister Ripley and The Hours (2002), are three of the top 10 highest grossing gay or lesbian-themed films in the United States.
In 2016, Paramount Pictures released 15 films, of which five included appearances by LGBTQ people, amounting to 33%. Three of these films passed the Vito Russo Test.
ALLIED
Widest theatrical release: 3,160 theaters
This World War II drama included an out lesbian couple. Bridget (Lizzy Caplan) is a Pilot Officer in the Royal Armed Forces and is the trusted sister of the lead character, Max. Bridget and her partner, Louise, have a handful of short scenes together, including one in which they share a kiss, spurring Bridget to say she will actually miss wartime because “no one cares who does what to who.” The story focuses so much on the romantic leads that there is no real screen time devoted to Bridget and Louise, but they are clearly out and in love in a difficult time. It is then even more frustrating that in a later scene the film trivializes their relationship when Bridget and Louise oblige a bunch of male soldiers who ask the women to kiss in front of them.
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!
Widest theatrical release: 454 theaters
While many headlines came out of this film’s release about the homoerotic subtext and male gaze being turned on male bodies, there was not actually any sincere queer content in this 1980-set college baseball comedy. The film includes a party scene in which star player Roper kisses a girl, and then encourages her to kiss the girl next to her. While the two go along with it, the scene was played to be purely at his suggestion rather than out of any desire on either of the women’s parts. At the same party, a group of performing arts students put on an Alice in Wonderland-themed sketch of The Dating Game. A male student portrayed the Queen of Hearts and, as part of the sketch, hit on another male bachelor. GLAAD did not count any of these characters in its final tally.
FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS
Widest theatrical release: 1,528 theaters
Simon Helberg plays pianist Cosmé McMoon in this 1940s-musical comedy, based on a true story. For this report, GLAAD counts McMoon as a gay character, which the film repeatedly implies through innuendo though never confirms explicitly. In one scene, a man shares a glance with a blushing, flustered McMoon at a party and later pours McMoon a drink with his arm around his shoulders. The film’s end cards give an update on the real characters. McMoon’s musical career never took off past his gigs with Florence, but he instead developed an interest in bodybuilding and became a judge for several competitions before his death in 1980. He also reportedly worked at a bathhouse in New York City for a time. Though McMoon never came out, the scant amount of history available on his life does suggest he was queer at a time when many never felt safe to come out. Florence Foster Jenkins also included a seconds-long appearance by a character identified as real life actor Cole Porter, a fan of Florence, who attended her Carnegie Hall concert.
STAR TREK BEYOND
Widest theatrical release: 3,928 theaters
The third in the Star Trek reboot series; Star Trek Beyond introduced the husband and daughter of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. When the USS Enterprise makes a stop at the Yorktown space station for shore leave, Sulu reunites with his husband, Ben, and their daughter. The two are seen a few other times in the film; running to shelter when the film’s villain is launching an attack on the city, and Sulu and Ben are spotted together again at Captain Kirk’s birthday party. The inclusion of a gay character as part of the core ensemble of a summer tentpole film is a huge step forward. Genre films like Star Trek, which exist in the worlds of their maker's own creation, have the opportunity to create unique societies beyond the biases that exist in our own world. By simply including diverse characters who are treated with the same nuance as any other character; these films are able to hold up a mirror to our own society and challenge preconceived notions. We hope to see Sulu’s story explored further in the upcoming sequel. Beyond is the only film distributed by a mainstream studio to be nominated at the 28th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
Widest theatrical release: 2,413 theaters
This dramedy based on a memoir of an embedded correspondent in Afghanistan included an incredibly brief scene at a wedding in which an older woman hits on Tina Fey’s character, Kim Baker. This moment is yet another example of the most common way that queer characters and content still appear in mainstream films: in service of a joke rather than story.
ZOOLANDER 2
Widest theatrical release: 3,418 theaters
The second film in the Zoolander franchise, released 15 years after the first, was incredibly dated in both story and its attempted humor. While comedy can be a powerful tool to hold a mirror up to society and challenge expectations, cheap jokes constructed without thought that use an already marginalized community as a punchline only reinforce ignorance and prejudice. Further, positioning an LGBTQ identity as something which is inherently absurd and worthy of mocking does real harm to actual people who experience harassment and violence on a regular basis.
Dimwitted former model Hansel McDonald is now bisexual and involved in a long-term polyamorous relationship with 11 people, a mix of men and women led by Kiefer Sutherland as a fictionalized version of himself. After each person reveals that they are pregnant, Hansel runs away, attempts to break back into the fashion world, and tries to hook up with another orgy group (again a mix of men and women). In the end, Hansel returns to living with his original “orgy” as he refers to the relationship, and asserts that he is now ready to be a dad. The entire storyline ends up being a joke based in some of the negative tropes we still see so much with bisexual characters. These include the portrayal of bisexual characters as being more prone to infidelity than either straight or gay characters, depicting bi people as hypersexualized characters who will sleep with anyone, and positing bi characters as unable to form genuine relationships.
Prior to the release of Zoolander 2, a petition was launched calling for a boycott of the film after the first trailer included Benedict Cumberbatch as a non-binary model named All. The character is a completely cartoonish portrayal of a non-binary person. Hansel and Zoolander obsess over the idea of what kind of genitals All has, asking if they “have a hot dog or a bun.” All only refers to themselves in the third person, and it is mentioned that “All just married hermself” after “monomarriage” has been legalized. Later, All descends from the ceiling and whips Hansel and Zoolander while alternating between high and low pitch screams. One of the men yells, “It’s definitely a hotdog” referring to their earlier speculation on what is in All’s pants. All existed purely to give the audience something to laugh at, and the story added nothing to the film’s plot as a whole. It is incredibly disheartening that this was the only trans or non-binary character included in a mainstream studio film this year. This is one case in which we wish the character had been cut altogether.
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https://www.nps.gov/samo/planyourvisit/paramountranch.htm
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en
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Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)
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https://www.nps.gov/samo/planyourvisit/paramountranch.htm
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Paramount Ranch offers opportunities to learn about film history while spending time in the beautiful environment. Several miles of easy to moderate scenic hikes meander through chaparral, riparian, and valley oak savannah plant communities. Equestrians and mountain bikers may access these multi-use trails. Wildlife sightings might include red-tailed hawks, acorn woodpeckers, coyotes, and deer. Be on the lookout for our two native oak species—coast live oak and valley oak. Experience the rare valley oak savannah and be transported to far off destinations.
When Paramount Pictures leased the ranch in 1927, they began an era of film production that continues today. You can experience the area where Bob Hope starred in “Caught in the Draft” (1941) and Jane Seymour had the leading role in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” (1993-1998). In the 1950s, Western Town was created for television shows, such as “The Cisco Kid” (1950-1956). More recent productions at Paramount include HBO’s “Westworld” (2016-2017) and “American Sniper” (2014). Read more about Paramount: Past, Present, and Future.
In November 2018, the Woolsey Fire swept through Paramount Ranch and destroyed much of what was known as Western Town. The train depot used in the “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” series and the chapel used in HBO’s “Westworld” survived the fire and remain on site.
Construction to replace some of what was lost at Paramount Ranch will begin in spring 2023 and wrap-up in fall 2024. The Ranch and its hiking trails will remain open during construction, but visitors will be diverted around the construction closure.
Activities
Hiking
Picnicking
Mountain Biking
Horseback Riding
Dog walking
Wildlife Viewing
Directions
2903 Cornell Road, Agoura Hills, CA, 91301
GPS Coordinates: N 34.1181 W -118.7525
Take Ventura Freeway (U.S. 101) to Kanan Road exit. South on Kanan 0.5 mile. Left on Cornell Way and veer to the right. South 2.5 miles, entrance is on right side of the road.
Site Map
Paramount Ranch
Good to Know
Additional History about Paramount Ranch
The Paramount Pictures Era
When Paramount Pictures leased the ranch in 1927, they began a historic era of film production. You can experience the area where Claudette Colbert was sentenced as a witch in 1692 Massachusetts in "Maid of Salem" (1937). Bob Hope played the part of a vain movie star whose biggest fear is to be drafted into the U.S. Army in "Caught in the Draft" (1941).
A veritable "who's who" of Hollywood practiced their craft here for almost a century. From actors Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, and many more!
The diverse landscape, however, was the real star of the show. It offered filmmakers the freedom to create distant locales such as colonial Massachusetts to ancient China in "The Adventures of Marco Polo" (1938), a South Seas island in "Ebb Tide" (1937), and numerous western locations, including San Francisco in "Wells Fargo" (1937). The art of illusion was mastered on the landscape.
The golden era of moviemaking at Paramount Ranch came to an end when changes to the studio system prompted Paramount Pictures to sell the ranch. Paramount Ranch found renewed life as a film location when William Hertz bought the southeast portion in 1953.
Hertz Era Western Town
An ardent fan of movie westerns, Hertz built a permanent western town utilizing Paramount Pictures' old prop storage sheds. As a result, television companies began shooting westerns at the ranch, such as "The Cisco Kid" and "Bat Masterson."
William Hertz sold the property in 1955 to three businessmen investors who renamed it the Paramount Sportsman's Ranch. The Paramount Raceway opened a year later. Some considered it one of the most challenging in the U.S., and it closed 18 months later after two fatal crashes occurred in December of 1957. The raceway was featured in "The Devil's Hairpin" (1957) and Disney's "The Love Bug" (1968). Most of the track still winds through the grass and oak woodlands of the park.
From 1957 to 1980, the ranch would see more ownership changes, but filmmaking continued.
National Park Service Purchases Paramount Ranch
After purchasing a portion of the original Paramount property in 1980, the National Park Service revitalized the old movie ranch.
In the early 1990s, Jane Seymour and Joe Lando captured hearts in "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (1993-1998), a television show that used Paramount Ranch as their permanent, everyday set. Members of the public would often camp out for the day and watch the show get created in real-time!
More recent productions at Paramount include "The Lake House" (2006) starring Sandra Bullock, HBO's "Westworld" (2016-2017), and "American Sniper" (2014). Find a more detailed list of films and TV shows filmed at Paramount below.
Movie List With Paramount Ranch As A Location Theatrical Releases and Made for Video
Two Flaming Youths w/W.C. Fields 1927
The Showdown 1928
Avalanche 1928
Betrayal w/Gary Cooper 1928
The Water Hole w/Jack Holt 1928
The Big Killing w/Wallace Berry 1928
Under the Tonto Rim 1928
The Vanishing Pioneer 1928
The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu 1929
The Four Feathers 1929
Half Way to Heaven 1929
Stairs of Sand w/Wallace Berry 1929
The Sunset Pass w/Jack Holt 1929
The Wheel of Life 1929
Wolf Song w/Gary Cooper 1929
The Virginian w/Gary Cooper 1929
The Devil’s Holiday ** 1930
Mammy w/Al Jolson -Warner Bros. 1930
Morocco w/Gary Cooper 1930
The Border Legion 1930
The Light of Western Stars 1930
A Man from Wyoming 1930
Only the Brave w/Gary Cooper 1930
The Santa Fe Trail w/Richard Arlen 1930
Anybody’s War 1930
Derelict 1930
The Virtuous Sin 1930
Shadow Ranch -Columbia 1930
The Dawn Trail -Columbia 1930
The Lone Rider -Columbia 1930
The FighXng Legion -Universal 1930
Follow Thru 1930
The Mighty 1930
The Texan w/Gary Cooper 1930
The Spoilers 1930
Tom Sawyer w/Jackie Coogan 1930
The Painted Desert /Pathe 1931
Sooky w/Jackie Cooper 1931
Huckleberry Finn w/Jackie Coogan 1931
The Fighing Caravans 1931
The Magnificent Lie 1931
Caught w/Richard Arlen 1931
Unfaithful 1931
Border Law – Columbia 1931
Desert Vengeance - Columbia 1931
The FighXng Sheriff - Columbia 1931
Branded -Columbia 1931
Clearing the Range – Allied Arists 1931
The Conquering Horde 1931 Melody in Spring 1934 It’s a Gid w/W.C. Fields 1934
Dude Ranch w/Jack Oakie 1931
The Road to Reno 1931
The Avenger - Columbia 1931
Twenty Four Hours 1931
Gun Smoke w/Richard Arlen 1931
I Take This Woman w/Gary Cooper 1931
Hot Saturday w/Cary Grant 1932
Sign of the Cross w/Claude_e Colbert 1932
Million Dollar Legs w/W.C. Fields 1932
A Farewell to Arms w/Gary Cooper 1932
The Broken Wing w/Leo Carrillo 1932
Horse Feathers** w/Marx Bros. 1932
Lady and Gent 1932
Love Me Tonight 1932
The Man from Yesterday 1932
The Local Badman w/Hoot Gibson 1932
The Miracle Man 1932
Island of Lost Souls w/Charles Laughton1932 Shanghai Express w/Marlene Dietrich 1932
Sinners in the Sun w/Carole Lombard 1932
Heritage of the Desert 1932
The World & the Flesh 1932
The Thunder Below 1932
Make Me a Star w/Joan Blondell 1932
Ghost Valley -RKO 1932
One Man Law -Columbia 1932
Hello Trouble - Columbia 1932
White Eagle - Columbia 1932
Riding for Justice - Columbia 1932
Forbidden Trail -Columbia 1932
Blonde Venus w/Marlene Dietrich 1932
Wild Horse Mesa w/Randolph Scott 1932
The Man I Killed/Broken Lullaby 1932
Hello Everybody/Queen of the Air 1933
One Sunday Adernoon 1933
Phantom Thunderbolt -Fox Film Corp. 1933
King of the Jungle w/Buster Crabbe 1933
Man of the Forest w/Randolph Scott 1933
Under the Tonto Rim 1933
The Story of Temple Drake 1933
The Trumpet Blows w/George Rad 1934
Mrs.Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch 1934
The Last Round-Up w/Randolph Scott 1934 The Thundering Herd 1934
The Man Trailer -Columbia 1934
Melody in Spring 1934
It’s a Gid w/ W.C. Fields 1934
Six of a Kind w/W.C. Fields 1934 Sullivan’s Travels w/Joel McCrea 1941 Buy Me That Town 1941
The Old Fashioned Way w/W.C. Fields 1934
The Last Outpost w/Cary Grant 1935Goin’ To Town w/Mae West 1935
Peter Ibbetson w/Gary Cooper 1935
McFadden’s Flats 1935
Millions in the Air 1935
Rumba w/George Rad 1935
So Red the Rose w/Randolph Scott 1935
Rose of the Rancho 1936
Till We Meet Again 1936
Valiant Is the Word for Carrie 1936
Desert Gold 1936
It’s A Great Life 1936
Trail of the Lonesome Pine 1936
Nevada w/Buster Crabbe 1936
Woman Trap 1936
The Preview Murder Mystery 1936
The Jungle Princess w/Ray Milland 1936
The Robin Hood of El Dorado -MGM 1936
Su_er’s Gold - Universal 1936
High, Wide and Handsome 1937
The Toast of New York** – RKO 1937
Nothing Sacred w/Carole Lombard 1937
Maid of Salem w/Claude_e Colbert 1937
Wells Fargo w/Joel McCrea 1937
Borderland w/Wm. Boyd 1937
Mountain Music w/Martha Raye 1937
Ebb Tide w/Ray Milland 1937
Partners of the Plains/Wm. Boyd 1937
It Happened in Hollywood -Columbia 1937
Tropic Holiday w/Ray Milland 1938
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -UA 1938
Bar 20 JusXce/Wm. Boyd 1938
In Old Mexico/Wm. Boyd 1938
The Texans w/Randolph Sco_ 1938
Cassidy of the Bar 20/Wm. Boyd 1938
Pride of the West w/Wm Boyd 1938
Adventures of Marco Polo -Goldwyn 1938
Beau Geste w/Gary Cooper 1939
The Lady’s From Kentucky 1939
Never Say Die w/Bob Hope 1939
Geronimo w/Preston Foster 1939
Hotel Imperial w/Ray Milland 1939
Undercover Doctor 1939
Remember the Night 1940
Dr.Cyclops 1940
Those Were the Days w/Wm. Holden 1940
Northwest Mounted Police 1940
Caught in the Drad w/Bob Hope 1941
Hold Back the Dawn 1941
Sullivan’s Travels w/Joel McCrea 1941 Buy Me That Town 1941
The Remarkable Andrew 1941
Ball of Fire w/Gary Cooper -Goldwyn 1942
I Married a Witch w/Fredric March 1942 Lucky Jordan w/Alan Ladd 1942
The Great Man’s Lady 1942
The Forest Rangers 1942
And the Angels Sing 1943
The Good Fellows 1943
So Proudly We Hail 1943
And Now Tomorrow 1944
Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout 1944
Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 1944
Hail the Conquering Hero 1944
Welcome Stranger w/Bing Crosby 1948
Five 1951
Soldiers Three w/David Niven MGM 1951
Bwana Devil w/Robert Stack 1952
The Silver Star – Lippert Pictures 1955
The Lonesome Trail – Lippert Pictures 1955
The Devils Hairpin w/Cornel Wilde 1957
Eighteen and Anxious 1957
Roadracers – AIP 1959
Tickled Pink aka Magic Spectacles 1961
Pajama Party -AIP 1964
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini -AIP 1965
Spinout – Elvis Presley -MGM 1966
Munster Go Home -Universal 1966
The Split -MGM 1968
The Love Bug - Disney 1968
The Illustrated Man -Warner Bros. 1969
Black Angels 1970
Angels Hard as They Come 1971 Evel Knievel -MGM 1971
The Student Teachers 1973
Herbie Rides Again -Disney 1974
Foxy Brown -AIP 1974
Big Bad Mama – Angie Dickenson 1974
Crazy Mama 1975
Posse from Heaven 1975
Death Race 2000 – Sylvester Stallone 1975
Hollywood Boulevard 1976
Breaker! Breaker! – Chuck Norris 1977
Mule Feathers 1977
Texas Detour – Cinema Shares Inter. 1978
Hi-Riders 1978
Shame, Shame on the Bixby Boys 1978
Don’t Go Near the Park 1979
Angel’s Brigade, aka Angel’s Revenge, aka Seven from Heaven 1979 Without Warning 1980 The Boogey Man 1980
Galaxina – Crown International 1980
Without Warning 1980
The Boogey Man 1980
The Return 1980
Red’s w/Warren Beatty 1981
Scream 1981
Young Warriors aka The Young Graduates of Malibu High 1983
The ShooXng: The Story of the Kane Brothers* – Groat Brothers 1983
The Philadelphia Experiment 1984
Action Impossible II 1984
Nomad Riders 1985
Lightning, the White Stallion 1986
Wisdom 1986
Commando Squad 1987
House II: The Second Story 1987
Deep Space* 1987
Big Bad Mama II 1987
The Great Outdoors 1988
The Big Picture 1988
Mutant on the Bounty 1988
LA Heat 1989
Easy Wheels 1989
The Border of Tong aka Massacre* 1990 Frogtown II aka Return to Frogtown* 1992
Mad at the Moon 1992
Sweet Justice* 1992
The Naked Truth aka Glitch II* 1992
Seedpeople* 1992
Alien Intruder* 1993
Lost in Africa 1993
Time Wars* 1994
Joe Joe Angel & the Dead Guy 1997
Home Fries 1997
The Face of Alexander Dumas: The Man in the Iron Mask 1998
Blast from the Past 1999
Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas - Univ. 1999
The Rowdy Girls* 2000
Gunshy 2000
Escape to Grizzly Mountain* 2000
The Stoneman* 2002
Van Helsing - Universal 2003
The Long Ride Home* 2003
Missing Brendan* 2003
Gang of Roses 2004
The Girl Next Door 2004
Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing And Charm School 2005
Devil’s Highway 2005
Slaughterhouse of the Rising Sun* 2005
The Lake House - Warner Bros. 2006
Norbit - Dreamworks 2006
Crazy 2008
Shadowheart* 2009
Big Money Rustlas 2010
6 Guns* 2010
The Scarlet Worm aka Cowboy Vengeance 2011
Wyatt Earp’s Revenge* 2012
Gang of Roses II: Next Generation* 2012
Revenge 2013
Doc Holiday’s Revenge* 2014
American Sniper -Warner Bros.2014
Un Hombre DesXnado a Hacer Justicia 2015
Bone Tomahawk 2015
Traded 2016
Miracle in the Valley, aka
Boonville Redemption* 2016
Hickok 2017
Cannibal Corpse Killers* 2018
Gone Are the Days* 2018
The Mercenary* 2019
The Outsider*** 2019
*Denotes Xtles made for direct Video, DVD or Blu Ray release. Includes some that had brief theatrical, fesXval or special screenings & some intended for theatrical release for which that didn’t happen.
**DocumentaXon indicates Paramount Ranch filmed scenes were cut from movie.
***Last movie to film in the Western town before the November 2018 Woolsey Fire.
Documentation sources: Production Files, Photographs, Photo Captions, Press books, Industry Publications, National Park Service records and viewing the films. This list is not all-inclusive, as ongoing research continues to uncover unknown titles.
Updated Nov. 2021
TV Shows, Made for TV Movies, Mini-Series and Internet/Streaming Programs
With Paramount Ranch as a Filming Location
1950’s
The Cisco Kid – “Witness”, “School Marm” (17 episodes total, all Season 6)
The Rough Riders – “The Reluctant Hostage”
Hotel de Paree* (As Georgetown, CO - porJons of all episodes)
Gunsmoke – “Box O’ Rocks” (No town)
1960’s
Tombstone Territory – “The Injury”
Klondike* (As Skagway, Alaska - Episodes 2-17)
Bat Masterson – “The PrescoW Campaign”, “MeeJng at
Mimbres”, “The Marble Slab”
The FugiJve – “Home is the Hunted” (Racetrack)
Perry Mason – “The Case of the Runaway Racer” (Racetrack)
Mannix – “Huntdown” (No town)
1970’s
Call O’ the Faire (Renaissance Faire Promo Special)
Ark II – “The Cryogenic Man” (Town), “Robin Hood”, “Don
Quixote (Renaissance Faire site, both)
Helter Skelter (TV Mini-Series)
The Starland Vocal Band Show – Episodes 1 & 4
(Renaissance Faire featured)
The Next Step Beyond – “Ghost Town”
Happy Days – “Westward Ho!” Parts 2 & 3
BeWer Late Than Never (TV Movie)
CHIPS – “Death Watch”, “Moonlight”, “Satan’s Angels”
1980’s
BJ & the Bear – “Fire in the Hole”
Charlie’s Angels – “An Angel’s Trail”
The Dukes of Hazzard – “The Late J.D. Hogg” (Racetrack)
Best of the West* (As Copper Creek, Montana)
The Fall Guy – “Colt’s Angels”, “The Silent Partner” (5 episodes total)
The Quest – “He Stole-A My Art” (No town)
CHIPS – “The Spaceman Made Me Do It” (No town)
Falling for the Stars (Disney Channel TV Special)
Johnny Cash: Cowboy Heroes (TV Special)
Bizarre (Several Super Dave Osborne skits)
No Man’s Land (TV Movie)
The Fourth Wise Man (TV Movie – Jerusalem, Bethlehem & Egypt streets)
Two on the Town
The A-Team – “The Sheriffs of Rivertown”, “Mission of
Peace”, “The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair” (6 episodes total)
Hardcastle & McCormick – “Too Rich and Too Thin” (No town)
Airwolf – “LiWle Wolf”, “And A Child Shall Lead” (No town)
MacGyver – “Three on the Run”
Falcon Crest (MulJple episodes; No town)
Unsolved Mysteries (MulJple episodes)
Sledge Hammer – “They Shoot Hammers, Don’t They?”
Reading Rainbow – “RumpelsJltskin” (Renaissance Faire)
Mathnet – “The Case of the Map with a Gap”
Out of This World – “Go West, Young Mayor”
Shelley Duvall’s Nightmare Classics - “Eyes of the Panther”
Comic Relief (TV Special)
Our Gang Special (TBS SuperStaJon TV Special)
The UlJmate Stuntman: A Tribute to Dar Robinson - (TV Special)
Caddie Woodlawn (TV Movie)
1990’s
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman* (Series home 1992-1998, as
Colorado Springs, CO)
California (Unaired Dr. Quinn Spinoff Pilot)
The Nanny – “The Unkindest Gin”
Rebecca’s Garden
Entertainment Tonight
Extra
Access Hollywood
CNN Showbiz Tonight
100 Years of the Hollywood Western (TV Special)
CBS: The First 50 Years (TV Special)
Hollywood’s Amazing Animal Actors (TV Special)
Salute to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV Special)
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: RevoluJons (TV Movie)
If Someone Had Known (TV Movie)
Lifestyle Magazine Thanksgiving Special (TV Special)
The Real West (MulJple episodes)
Civil War Journal (MulJple episodes)
Unsolved Mysteries (MulJple episodes)
The Great Empire - Rome
Sliders - “Way Out West” (No town)
Tots TV - “The Tots Western Adventure” (BriJsh Children’s Series)
Tales of the Gun – “The Gunslingers”, “The Shotgun”
E! Mysteries & Scandals (Several stories)
Cousin Skeeter – “The Hoo, I’m Wild Wild West”, Parts 1 & 2
History’s Mysteries – “Discharged Without Honor: The Brownsville Raid”
Grand Slam
Camp Cucamonga (TV Movie)
The SixJes (TV Mini-Series)
Everything You Wanted to Know… (TV Pilot)
2000-2009
Diagnosis Murder – “FronJer Dad”
Diagnosis Murder: The Town Without Pity (TV Movie) Sabrina, the Teenaged Witch – “The Wild, Wild Witch” Modern Marvels: Then and Now – “Gunslingers” Dream Drives – “Mulholland Drive”
Hopalong Cassidy: Public Hero #1 (TV Special)
Escape: True Stories of Suspense (TV Special)
A Woman’s a Helluva Thing (TV Movie)
The X Files – “Existence”, Part 2
VIP – “The Uncle from V.A.L.”
Masada
VendeWas – “SuWon vs. Taylor”, “The Johnson County War”
Yes, Dear – “Dances with Couch”
Before We Ruled the Earth: Hunt
UlJmate Revenge “Western Mayhem”
OperaJon Junkyard – “Master Water Blaster”
Lizzie McGuire – “Grubby Longjohn’s Olde Tyme Revue” Firefly – “Safe”
Carnivale* (HBO) (MulJple episodes, as Mintern, CA) John Ratzenberger’s Made in America (Story intro’s -Season 1 episodes)
Love Comes Sonly (TV Movie)
The Trail to Hope Rose (TV Movie)
Love’s Enduring Promise (TV Movie)
Hidden Places (TV Movie)
Meet the Santa’s (TV Movie)
For BeWer or for Worse – “Hitched at High Noon” NaJonal Parks: Great Train Rides
Unsolved History – “Shootout at the OK Corral”
TV Road Trip (1 episode)
Wild West Tech (MulJple episodes)
Movies’ Greatest Cars (BriJsh TV Special)
Jesse James: Legend, Outlaw, Terrorist
Shootout! – “Wild West”
Big Love – “Affair”
Bible BaWles
Secret History of Religion
Unlocking Ancient Secrets of the Bible
The Conquerors – “Cortez: Conqueror of Mexico”
CBS News Sunday Morning – Eric Clapton interview
Love’s Unending Legacy (TV Movie)
Love’s Unfolding Dream (TV Movie)
Lilly’s Light (Pilot for Children’s Show)
Prairie Fever (TV Movie)
The Valley of Light (TV Movie)
Rock of Love with Bret Michaels – “Riff it Good”
The Bachelor
The BacheloreWe – Season 5, Episode 3
The O.C. – “The Avengers” (No town)
GeWysburg: The Speech that Saved America (No town)
Tube Tales: TV’s Real Stories (Canadian TV) “Baywatch/Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman/Murphy Brown”
2010-2019
Huell Howser California’s Golden Parks –
“Paramount Ranch”
Weeds – “Gentle Puppies”
CSI: Las Vegas – “CSI Down”
Excused
The Aquabats! Supershow! – “Cowboy Android” Smokewood (TV Pilot)
Deadliest Warrior – “Comanche vs. Mongol”
Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood, Episode 3 (BBC) Custer’s Last Man: I Survived LiWle Big Horn
How Booze Built America – “Westward, Ho”
Quick Draw* (Hulu Series) (As Great Bend, KS, all episodes & Nicodemus, two episodes)
Hotel Secrets & Legends (MulJple episodes)
Castle – “Once Upon a Time in the West”
Next Stop Hollywood (Australian TV)
Episodes (No town) “Episode Six”
Sons of Anarchy – “Poor LiWle Lambs” (No town)
Funny or Die (Internet) – “Dr. Quinn, Morphine Woman” Scorpion – “Once BiWen, Twice Die”
Kidnapped: The Hannah Anderson Story (TV Movie) (No town)
Face Off – “Full Steam Ahead”
Bones – “The Cowboy in the Contest”
Drunk History (MulJple episodes, Seasons 3 & 5) RocketJump: The Show – (Hulu) “High Plains Driner” Manson’s Lost Girls (TV Movie)
ExpediJon Unknown – “Legendary Stories: The Real Lewis & Clark”
Aquarius (Final 4 episodes of Season 2)
Adam Ruins Everything – “Adam Ruins the Wild West” Declassified (CNN) (2 episodes)
Westworld** (HBO series) – MulJple episodes - Seasons 1, 2 & 3
Escape the Night* (Season 3) (YouTube Series)
Badland Wives – (Demo Reel for Proposed Series)
Lost Gold (Travel Channel)
The Great Food Truck Race (2 Episodes, Season 9)
Hell’s Kitchen – “Hell’s Riders”, S18-Ep3
SMILF – “Single Mom is Losing Faith” S2-Ep9
Eye on LA (MulJple stories about the ranch)
2020-2029
Everything’s Gonna to be OK – “Banded Argiope Spider”
*The Paramount Ranch Western town set was the main featured town in these series. For Hotel de Paree, Klondike & Best of the West – exterior scenes; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Carnivale, Quick Draw & Escape the Night made use of both exterior and interior spaces.
**Scenes for the town of Escalante and addiJonal scenes in open landscape areas were filmed at Paramount Ranch for Westworld.
TV producJons that used Paramount Ranch have filmed everything from just brief scenes to enJre episodes to mulJple episodes. Many used the town, but many only used the open landscape around the ranch. (Episodes on this list used the town, except where otherwise noted.) See the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for more detailed episode informaJon for all listed shows. DocumentaJon here comes from NaJonal Park Service filming records (1981 to present), from viewing the shows and from photographs. This list is not all inclusive, as ongoing research conJnues to reveal unknown titles.
Last Updated February 2021
Paramount: Past, Present, and Future
Lights, camera, action! The story from beginning to end.
2018 Woolsey Fire
Learn about the Woolsey Fire, which burned almost 100,000 acres of land and changed the park.
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You made a movie or television show, a story about two skinheads, their violent childhood, alcoholism and their love for fast cars. One scene depicts a seedy bar. A group of teenagers. They are getting hammered. The bar-crowd is becoming a bit rowdy. Among them are two about to drop out of high school kids, Ben and Jerry. In the background of a couple of shots are recognizable logos and products of famous brands (Budweiser Beer, Stolichnaya Vodka and a collection of other liquor bottles and beer line a counter, a Yankees house flag hangs from a wall, Dunkin’ Donuts cup on a table). Except for the fact that it’s obvious that most of the bar patrons are underage, none of these brands are used in any negative light, nor is any special attention drawn to them. Moments later, in another scene, a Mercedes-Benz, driven by Ben, Jerry rides shotgun, both are rambunctious and drunk, speed out of the parking lot, barely missing a sweet old lady walking her dog. Cut to, moments later, the Benz is involved in a high-speed car chase scene, wreaking havoc in the streets of New York City, driving on sidewalks, breaking numerous traffic laws, against a backdrop of the Empire State Building (a trademarked landmark). Additionally, your movie’s title (Ben and Jerry) bears the name of a famous company founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry’s), manufacturers of ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet.
You plan on submitting your film to festivals, get picked up for distribution, put it on YouTube, or making it available to rent or download from your own website. You don’t want to break any trademark laws or be rejected or get a cease and desist notice and you don’t have the budget to spend thousands of dollars blurring out the logos in those scenes. You write to the companies that own the trademarks begging for sponsorship or product placement. But not only are you denied, these companies demand that their brands and products be cut from all scenes.
Trademark owners may object to the use of their trademarks in fictional films or other media productions without their consent, and seek to enjoin such uses by filing a trademark infringement action under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)), unfair competition in violation of the common law of New York, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (“FTDA”), and dilution of trademark in violation of New York’s anti-dilution statute (section 368-d of the New York General Business Law).
There’s obviously a conflict between trademark rights and the right of others to express themselves freely in their own artistic work. So how do you use names, logos, images, products and landmarks in your film without violating trademark law?
A. Trademark Infringement and Unfair Competition
In the context of filmmaking, the purpose of trademark law is to avoid reasonable potential consumers becoming confused, mistaken or deceived regarding whether the trademark owner either (i) was the source or producer of the motion picture, (ii) endorsed or sponsored the film or (iii) otherwise approved the use of the its trademark or goods in the movie.
The focus of a trademark infringement action is “likelihood of confusion”.
a. Likelihood of Confusion
The Second Circuit has set forth the following eight factors used in determining whether a likelihood of confusion exists: (1) the strength of the plaintiffs’ mark, (2) the degree of similarity between the plaintiffs’ and the defendant’s marks, (3) the proximity of the parties’ products in the marketplace, (4) the likelihood that the plaintiff would “bridge the gap” between the products, (5) the degree of actual consumer confusion, (6) the good or bad faith with which the defendant adopted the plaintiffs’ mark, (7) the quality of defendant’s product and (8) the sophistication of the relevant consumer group.
No single factor is dispositive. Neither does a finding of a likelihood of confusion require a positive finding on a majority of these “digits of confusion.”
1. Strength of the Mark
The more deeply a senior user’s mark is embedded in the consumer’s mind, the more likely it is that the junior user’s mark will conjure up the image of the senior user’s product instead of that of the junior user.
There is no doubt the Yankees, Dunkin Donuts, Mercedes-Benz, Budweiser Beer, Stolichnaya Vodka and other liquors are strong, recognizable brands. However, this alone does not always lead to confusion as to source, endorsement or sponsorship.
2. Degree of Similarity Between the Marks
The greater the similarity between products, the greater the likelihood of confusion. In Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd., the court decided that in order to determine if confusion is likely, each trademark must be compared in its entirety. For example, in Vitarroz Corp. v. Borden, Inc., it was held that “the setting in which a designation is used affects its appearance and colors and the impression conveyed by the mark”. In Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Productions, Inc., the court found that “placement of the marks next to other identifying but dissimilar symbols is clearly relevant.”
Applying these principles, when Ben and Jerry and the brands and products depicted are viewed as a whole, the filmmaker’s use of the Empire State Building, Mercedes-Benz, Dunkin’ Donuts, Budweiser and Stolichnaya next to the different brands of whiskey, vodka and beer, would be unlikely to raise in the minds of an appreciable number of ordinarily prudent consumers a suggestion of sponsorship, endorsement or affiliation.
3. Proximity of the Products
In Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Productions, Inc., the Court found defendant’s mark was less likely to cause consumer confusion “where the plaintiff and defendant’s products occupy distinct merchandising markets,” for example, “luncheon meat, in the case of SPAM, and a Muppet motion picture, in the case of Spa’am”.
In ESS ENTERTAINMENT v. Rock Star Videos, “strip clubs and video games are not related products”. The Play Pen is a Strip club where food and refreshments are served and live nude dancers perform. The video game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is generally played at home, sitting in front of a screen. Although there may be an overlap in terms of customers, the Play Pen and San Andreas do not directly compete for purchasers.
Applying this principle, since the film and the brands depicted are noncompeting products, and since the they occupy distinct merchandising markets – cars, in the case of Mercedes, and a fictional motion picture, in the case of Ben and Jerry, there would be no likelihood of confusion.
4. Bridging the Gap
Bridging the gap refers to the “senior user’s interest in preserving avenues of expansion and entering into related fields.” In Westchester Media v. PRL USA Holdings, Inc., the court held that “the danger of affiliation or sponsorship confusion increases when the junior user’s market is one into which the senior user would naturally expand.” In ESS ENTERTAINMENT v. Rock Star Videos, the court observed that “plaintiff is not now and has never been in the video game business, and has no plans to enter that business. Defendants have never been in the strip club business and have no plans to enter that business. The difference between the parties’ businesses and product lines makes it improbable that a player who sees the Pig Pen, and recognizes that it was modeled after the Play Pen, will believe that the owners of the Play Pen endorsed or sponsored the Game”.
Applying this principle, there is no indication that Annhuser-Busch or other owner of any of the brands depicted in Ben and Jerry has plans to enter into the motion picture production business. However, many companies, including Mercedes, do sponsor or endorse films through product placement. But there is no indication that the filmmaker claims to be in partnership with any brand to promote the film. In this case, there would need to be evidence of “actual consumer confusion”.
5. Actual Confusion
There must be evidence of actual confusion by potential consumers of the film as to the producer, sponsorship or endorsement. In Caterpillar Inc. v. Walt Disney Co., there was no evidence that consumers, members of the media, or anyone else had mistaken Spa’am as a promotional figure for SPAM, or as a character sponsored by the Caterpillar. There was no evidence of actual consumer confusion, “although the absence of such evidence is understandable” due to the fact that Walt Disney had yet to release George of the Jungle 2 to the public.
6. Bad Faith
In Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Productions, Inc., the court held that Henson “would have absolutely nothing to gain from creating a confusion among consumers” causing them to believe there was a business association between Henson and Hormel. “There is nothing to indicate that Henson acted in bad faith”.
Applying this principle, there is no indication that the filmmaker intentionally included the brands and products in the film in order to deceive the public into believing the trademark owners produced, endorsed or sponsored the film or otherwise approved of their brands and products being depicted.
Even if the filmmaker used the marks with the intent to encourage the companies to pay for their brands to be integrated into the film, there is no indication that the filmmaker did so with the purpose of riding on the reputation and goodwill of these companies or to induce the public to go see the film when it is released.
There is no evidence from which an inference of bad faith could be drawn. In fact, the public would not know that these brands are depicted in the scenes until they watch the movie, either having paid to see it in theaters, streaming it online, purchasing the DVD/Blu-ray, or watching a friend’s copy. There is no indication the filmmaker featured any of these brands in its promotion of the movie. Therefore, the use of these brands and products in the film could not have had an effect on the purchasing decision of consumers.
7. Quality of the Products
In Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Productions, Inc., the quality of a junior user’s product can be relevant in two ways: (1) an inferior product may cause injury to the plaintiff’s trademark because the public may think that the senior and junior products came from the same source; or (2) products of equal quality may tend to create confusion as to source because of this very similarity.
Applying this principle, it is unlikely that a large group of the intelligent public would think that Mercedes has endorsed a low budget indie film with no star attached. In fact, these qualities may be why these brands would not endorse the film in the first place. Even if “Ben and Jerry” is a big budget film (being made for $10M or more) with name talent, the result may be same.
For example, the makers of Concussion (with a production budget of $35M) starring Wil Smith, about a Nigerian doctor who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy which affects athletes in the NFL, uses official NFL trademarks throughout the movie. So how did a major motion picture, starring one of the world’s biggest movie stars, get away with using the League’s trademarks and materials in a film that casts it in the worst-possible light? The producers were careful to make sure there was nothing, factually, with which the NFL could find fault. “We had great lawyers,” said Scott. “And we checked every fact, so that there was no way we can be discredited.”
8. Consumer Sophistication
The Court in Wham-O, Inc. v. Paramount Pictures Corp. found that defendants’ use of the plaintiff’s “Slip `N Slide” in the background of a scene in the film, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, “will not spur any likelihood of confusion” that the consuming public will be confused as to who makes what product. In that regard, “consumers and viewers will not mistake plaintiff for a movie production house, and consumers and viewers will not mistake defendants for a purveyor of toys.” The court further observed that it is a “fact that the appearance of products bearing well known trademarks in cinema and television is a common phenomenon.” For example, action movies frequently feature automobiles in a variety of situations, and the mere appearance of a Ford Taurus in a garden variety car chase scene is not, by itself, sufficient to constitute unfair competition.
Applying this principle, it is unlikely that any reasonable moviegoer would buy, download, stream or rent the filmmaker’s movie because they believed that it was produced, endorsed or sponsored by the New York Yankees, Annheuser-Busch, Dunkin’ Donuts or Mercedes. A consumer who would be likely to watch the movie would do so because he likes the filmmaker’s work. Seriously, why would any company pay to have their brand portrayed in a film where its product is portrayed in a negative light?
B. Trademark Dilution
In addition to avoiding consumer confusion, trademark laws are designed to protect a trademark owner’s goodwill and reputation.
In Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences v. Creative House Promotions, Inc., the court held that trademark dilution is “the gradual whittling away of a trademark’s value” and the “lessening of the capacity of a famous mark to identify and distinguish its goods and services”. In I.P. Lund Trading ApS v. Kohler Co., the court held that trademark dilution carries the risk of causing injury to business reputation, because it dilutes the distinctive quality of a mark “by creating an association in consumers’ minds between the mark and a different product.” Trademark law also provides protection from an “appropriation of or free riding on the investment the trademark holder has made in its trademark”.
Unlike trademark infringement, trademark dilution does not require that there be any competition or likelihood of confusion regarding the source or sponsorship of a product.
A likelihood of dilution can be established by a showing either of blurring or of tarnishment.
i. Blurring
Dilution by blurring can occur where the defendant uses the plaintiff’s trademark to identify the defendant’s own product, thereby raising the possibility that the trademark will lose its ability to serve as a unique identifier of the plaintiff’s goods. For example, DuPont shoes, Buick aspirin tablets, Schlitz varnish, Kodak pianos, Bulova gowns, Tylenol snowboards, Netscape sex shops and Harry Potter dry cleaners, although there may be concurring uses of the same name that are non-infringing, such as the use of the “Delta” mark for both air travel and sink faucets.
In Mattel Inc. v. MCA Records Inc., the court held that to be blurring, use of the mark need not bring to mind the junior user alone. “The distinctiveness of the mark is diminished if the mark no longer brings to mind the senior user alone.” The court acknowledged that the use of the Barbie trademark in the song’s title (Barbie Girl) was blurring, in that “after the song’s popular success, some consumers hearing Barbie’s name will think of both the doll and the song, or perhaps of the song only”. Similarly, in Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Inc. v. Pussy Cat Cinema, Ltd, the court determined that “it is hard to believe that anyone who had seen defendants’ sexually depraved film could ever thereafter disassociate it from plaintiff’s cheerleaders.”
In contrast, in Wham-O, Inc. v. Paramount Pictures Corp., the Ninth Circuit rejected plaintiff’s claim that defendants’ use of the trademarked Slip’N Slide water slide will engender an unfavorable association in viewers’ minds between the slide and the film, where the slide was misused in the film for comic effect, and even though the misuse resulted in a character being injured. The court found that “the kind of misuse to which defendants put the slide does not make plaintiff’s marks less unique or identifiable, and plaintiff has not demonstrated anything to confirm actual dilution.” The court also found that after seeing the film, viewers “would still associate the Slip’N Slide trademark with the water slide it identifies”.
Applying these principles, there is no evidence to show that the filmmaker used Mercedes or any of the other brands and products to describe or identify the film or to draw attention to the film. The filmmaker does not seek to depict these brands and products in order to market the film or to sell movie tickets, VOD, DVDs or Blu-rays. Even were the film to be made and be a big box office success, there is nothing to suggest that a customer viewing a Mercedes car will always associate the car with the film, or perhaps think of the film only. After viewing the film, viewers would still associate Mercedes with the luxury car it represents. Likewise, it is doubtful that sales of Budweiser Beer or Stolichnaya Vodka or Dunkin’ Donuts coffee would diminish after viewing the movie.
ii. Tarnishment
In addition to being used as a source identifier of goods or services, a trademark can also attest to the quality of the product to which it is associated (with the expected result of increasing sales or awareness of the product).
A trademark is tarnished when it is used in such a way that consumers form an unfavorable or negative association with the mark, resulting in injury to the trademark holder’s business and reputation.
Tarnishment can occur through a variety of uses, such as when a trademark, or its likeness, is placed in the context of sexual activity, obscenity, or illegal activity.
There are a number of cases where the courts have rejected tarnishment claims, and such plaintiffs were unable to get their logos and products removed from defendants’ movies. In Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Productions, the plaintiffs worry that sales of their product, SPAM, would drop off if it is linked with the “evil in porcine form” in defendant’s film, Muppet Treasure Island, in which Spa’am is the high priest of a tribe of wild boars that worships Miss Piggy as its Queen Sha Ka La Ka La. In Wham-O, Inc. v. Paramount Pictures Corp., the defendant’s film presents a comical misuse of the plaintiff’s trademarked Slip’N Slide toy. “It is an obvious and unmistakable misuse, one recognizable by even the youngest or most credulous film viewer, and one expressly described as a misuse in the film itself”. In Caterpillar Inc. v. Walt Disney Co., Walt Disney’s film depicted Caterpillar’s bulldozers as being “associated with the evil character Lyle and his nefarious scheme”. Here, the court reasoned that “the appearance of products bearing well-known trademarks in cinema and television is a common phenomenon,” and “it is clear to even the most credulous viewer or child that the bulldozers in the movie are operated by humans and are merely inanimate implements of Lyle’s environmentally unfriendly schemes.”
In Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., the court found that, “if a trademark is placed in a negative context through a defendant’s depiction, the reasonable consumer is correspondingly less likely to be fooled into thinking that any trademark owner would sponsor or endorse such a negative portrayal.”
As these cases indicate, tarnishment does not occur simply because a trademarked product is depicted in a negative context or that the trademark holder finds objectionable.
Applying these principles, the makers of Budweiser Beer, Stolichnaya vodka, Mercedes car and the other brands would be unlikely to succeed on a claim that the portrayal of their respective products and trademarks in Ben and Jerry casts them in an unwholesome or unsavory light. There is nothing in the film to even remotely suggest that these brands and products are shoddy or of low quality, or even that the products are made for underaged consumers.
The depiction of a Mercedes, for example, driven by alcoholic teens causing havoc through the streets of NYC will not weaken the association of the Mercedes brand as a luxury car. In fact, if in real life a Mercedes would be the car of choice for irresponsible teens, the filmmaker’s choice would tend to increase public identification of the Mercedes’ mark with Mercedes-Benz, and not with the producers of Ben and Jerry. Moreover, the filmmaker is not using the name “Mercedes” as a product brand name. Rather, Mercedes is used by a character in the film. This tends to dissipate the fear that Mercedes will no longer be considered a unique product identifier of Mercedes cars. Therefore, to those viewing Ben and Jerry, the misuse of a Mercedes car will be apparent to even the youngest viewers and the Mercedes brand will not be harmed.
C. Fair Use Defenses
Fair use is a privilege given to others to use an owner’s trademark in a reasonable manner without the owner’s consent. However, the fair use defense will not be available if there’s a likelihood of confusion regarding the source, endorsement or sponsorship of a product.
There are two fair use defenses available in trade dress or trademark infringement cases: classic fair use and nominative fair use.
1. Classic Fair Use
A use is classic fair use where defendant has used the plaintiff’s mark only to describe the defendant’s own product. To prevail on a classic fair use defense, a defendant must show: (1) that it has not utilized the trademark as a trademark or service mark; (2) that it has used the trademark fairly and in good faith; and (3) that it has used the trademark only to describe its own goods or services.
In Sunmark, Inc. v. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., the classic fair use exclusion allowed Ocean Spray to describe its cranberry drink as tasting “sweet-tart,” despite candy company Sunmark having a trademark on the term “SweetTart” for its candy. In WCVB-TV v. Boston Athletic Association, the holder of the trademark “Boston Marathon” unsuccessfully tried to prevent a TV station from using the name in its coverage of the Boston Marathon. On the other hand, court in Brookfield Communications, Inc. v. West Coast Entertainment Corp. held that while the defendant could legitimately use the term “Movie Buff’ to describe a movie devotee”, it was barred from using “MovieBuff,” since, without the space, the term was not an English language word and “was used to refer to Brookfield’s products and services, rather than to mean `motion picture enthusiast'”.
Applying these principles, the classic fair use defense would not be available, since there is no indication the filmmaker is using the brands and products to describe or refer to the filmmaker’s own film.
2. Nominative Fair Use
In contrast to classic fair use, nominative use is the use of a mark to identify or to refer to the plaintiff’s product, even if the defendant’s ultimate goal is to describe his own product. In Mattel Inc. v. Walking Mountain Productions, the court held that to prove nominative use, a defendant must show that (1) the “plaintiff’s product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark”; (2) “only so much of the trademark or trademarks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the plaintiff’s product or service”; and (3) “the user must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the trademark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.”
In New Kids on the Block v. New America Pub., Inc., the court reasoned that nominative fair use is generally used where it is often virtually impossible to refer to a product without using the trademark in question, such as “for comparison, criticism or point of reference”. Also, whereas the plaintiff carries the burden of persuasion in a trademark infringement claim to show likelihood of confusion, the court in Brother Records held that “the nominative fair use defense shifts to the defendant the burden of proving no likelihood of confusion”.
In Wham-O, Inc. v. Paramount Pictures Corp., defendants use the plaintiff’s slide to identify the plaintiff’s slide, which would not be otherwise readily identifiable, and in doing so (1) the defendants use it to identify the plaintiff’s slide as a specific product; (2) defendants use only so much of the trademarks as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service (a character mentions the product by name twice in the film, no depiction of plaintiff’s logos or marks appears otherwise, defendants do not reference plaintiff’s marks unnecessarily or abusively; and (3) defendants use does nothing that would, in conjunction with the trademark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner (such as, it is not used or displayed more prominently than any other product). “Like any other portion of the film’s dialogue or set, plaintiff’s trademark forms part of the film’s jumble of imagery; it is not highlighted so as to exploit the value of plaintiff’s trademark. Nothing in the record suggests defendants used plaintiff’s marks to imply that plaintiff placed its imprimatur on the film; nowhere in defendants’ publicity efforts is plaintiff’s mark unreasonably displayed or abused. Defendants, instead, use the marks and product in a specific and unique descriptive sense: to evoke associations with an iconic child’s toy.” As the court observed, “as any moviegoer can attest, it is not unusual for movie producers to use a signature scene – and the products and props therein – to cultivate interest in a film. Films with car chases do so with cars; films with gunplay do so with firearms; films with haute couture wardrobes do so with clothing.”
Taken together, the three facets of the relevant test would suggest that the filmmaker’s use of the brands, products and landmark in the film is nominative fair use. The filmmaker used the brands to identify or to refer to the trademark holders’ products, where the characters happen to drink Budweiser Beer, Stolichnaya Vodka and other brands of liquor, and one of them drive a Mercedes-Benz. There is no indication that the filmmaker used the brands and products more than is reasonably necessary, or to get attention or marketing for the film, or that the trademark owners endorsed the film or otherwise approved of the use of their products in the scenes. There is nothing that indicates that the filmmaker used the trademarks as if it they were his own. Likewise, there is no indication that the filmmaker’s depiction of the Empire State Building in the film is for any purpose other than to advance the film’s plot, and to signify that the action in the scene takes place in New York City.
D. First Amendment
First Amendment interests in artistic expression will generally outweigh whatever consumer confusion that might exist. In Rogers v. Grimaldi, “a literary title falls outside the reach of the Lanham Act if it (1) has some artistic relevance and (2) does not explicitly mislead as to the source or content of the work.” The Second Circuit and other courts have extended the Rogers First Amendment balancing test beyond a work’s title and have applied it to all expressive uses of a trademark or trade dress in artistic works. Artistic works include movies, plays, books, and songs.
i. Artistic Relevance
Under the Rogers test, to prevail on a First Amendment defense, defendants must first show that the use of plaintiff’s trade dress and trademark surpasses the minimum threshold of artistic relevance to the work’s content.
In New York Racing Ass’n v. Perlmutter Pub., Inc., the court found that “the use of Plaintiff’s marks in Defendants’ paintings where the mark actually appears in the scene depicted serves the artistically relevant purpose of accurately depicting the scene (realism)” and as a result, “the Lanham Act should not apply to the Defendants’ shirts that display reproductions of these paintings because the interest in free expression outweighs the need to avoid consumer confusion.”
In University of Alabama v. Moore, the court reasoned that Moore’s depiction of the University’s uniforms is artistically relevant because the “uniforms’ colors and designs are needed for a realistic portrayal of famous scenes from Alabama football history.”
In ESS ENTERTAINMENT v. Rock Star Videos, the Pig Pen in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has artistic relevance to defendants’ “twisted, irreverent image of urban Los Angeles in the video game”. In designing the Pig Pen, defendant used reference photographs of the strip club, Play Pen, and other East Los Angeles locations for inspiration. The court held that, “rather than being arbitrary, defendants’ decision to borrow the Play Pen trade dress and mark was closely connected to the artistic design of Los Santos and the overall theme of the Game”.
In Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Louis Vuitton disputed the use of a knockoff bag in the movie, Hangover: Part II. The film made it appear that one of the main characters owns an over-the-shoulder Louis Vuitton “Keepall” bag without notifying the audience that the bag is a fake. This scene was even included in commercials for the film. The court held that the use was artistically relevant because the film intended for the bag to enhance the funny and snobbish image of the protagonist, rather than exploit the mark’s popularity and good will. Furthermore, the court even felt that the bag introduced a tension between the characters.
Applying these principles, Ben and Jerry would satisfy the artistic relevance prong of the Rogers test. The filmmaker’s use of the Budweiser Beer, Stolichnaya vodka, Mercedes-Benz car and other trademarks or trade dress in the film bear some artistic relevance of accurately depicting the brands and products in the movie. The scenes depict troubled teens trying to function normally while in a drunken stupor. In fact, the narrative would be entirely different without the presence of alcohol, a car and even the Empire State Building.
ii. Explicitly Mislead as to the Source or Content
To determine whether an artistically relevant trademark misleads as to the source or content of the work, the Second Circuit applies the likelihood of confusion test used in evaluating standard trademark infringement claims. However, in Cliffs Notes, the court held that the likelihood of confusion must be “particularly compelling” to outweigh the First Amendment interests at stake.
In Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Inc. v. Pussy Cat Cinema, Ltd, for approximately twelve minutes of the final scene of the porn movie Debbie Does Dallas, Debbie engages in various sex acts while clad or partially clad in the uniform strikingly similar to that worn by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The Court found that the uniform depicted in the film “unquestionably brings to mind the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders”, making it “particularly compelling” that the public was likely to associate the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders with defendants’ movie and be confused into believing that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders “sponsored the movie, provided some of the actors, licensed defendants to use the uniform, or was in some other way connected with the production”. In addition, the “defendants advertised the movie with marquee posters depicting Debbie in the allegedly infringing uniform and containing such captions as “Starring Ex Dallas Cowgirl Cheerleader Bambi Woods” and “You’ll do more than cheer for this X Dallas Cheerleader.” Similar advertisements appeared in the newspapers.
On the other hand, In ESS ENTERTAINMENT v. Rock Star Videos, the court found that the Pig Pen did not explicitly mislead consumers as to the source of defendants’ work. Although “the Pig Pen incorporates certain elements of the Play Pen’s logo, neither the video game nor any promotional materials for San Andreas contained any explicit indication that the Play Pen’s owners endorsed the work or had a role in producing it.”
In Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., the court held that the defendant’s use did not pass the particularly compelling likelihood of confusion standard. The court felt most audience members would not realize the bag was a fake, because it only appears on-screen for a few seconds. Additionally, the character’s misrepresentations of the bag are a joke within the film that few audiences will take seriously.
Applying these principles, the filmmaker would satisfy the Rogers test. There is no indication the filmmaker’s use explicitly misleads as to the producer or sponsor of the film or that any of the trademark owners approved the use of their brands or products in the film. Whether the brands were randomly or intentionally selected, such as the different brands of alcohol used in a single scene, it would be unlikely to raise in the minds of the viewing public a suggestion of sponsorship or affiliation.
Indeed, deception is less likely with respect to the brands and products used in the scenes than in the title, where the title of the film incorporates the famous trademark of the manufacturer of frozen treats, Ben & Jerry’s.
E. Names and Titles
In Rogers v. Grimaldi, the Second Circuit held that trademark law does not bar even a minimally relevant use of a celebrity’s name in the title of an artistic work where the title does not explicitly denote authorship, sponsorship, or endorsement by the celebrity or explicitly mislead as to content. The court found that the title Ginger and Fred surpasses the minimum threshold of artistic relevance to the film’s content. The central characters in the film are nicknamed “Ginger” and “Fred,” and these names are not arbitrarily chosen just to exploit the publicity value of their real life counterpart (Ginger Rogers) but instead have genuine relevance to the film’s story.
In Twentieth Century Fox Television v. Empire Distribution Inc., the owner of a media enterprise sent a cease and desist notice to Fox television network in connection with the popular television show Empire and the show’s soundtracks, which allegedly created confusion over the “Empire” and “Empire Distribution” marks. Applying the Rogers test, the court found Fox’s use was “clearly relevant” to the plot and location of the defendant’s television show. The court held that the plaintiff’s use was not explicitly misleading, even if there was a danger of some consumer confusion.
Apply these principles, the film’s title Ben and Jerry would pass the Rogers test. The title bears some artistic relevance to the film (the central characters are named “Ben” and “Jerry”, and the film’s title does not explicitly mislead as to who produced, sponsored or endorsed the film.
F. Product Placement, Sponsorship and Branded Content
Product placement is where companies would pay a filmmaker for their brands to be integrated into the film or television program and/or in its marketing. These arrangements effectively provide production financing and an additional source of film revenue. Few big budget movies are made these days without product placement. Doritos, Apple Watch and Mercedes have all appeared in the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Heineken signed a reported $45 million partnership to have its beer featured in the James Bond movie, Skyfall. According to a Priceonomics analysis, products placed into storylines can be a lot more successful for brands than traditional advertisements, such as TV ads.
Branded content (also known as branded entertainment) is a form of advertising that uses the generating of content to promote the particular brand which funds the content’s production. For example, in the short film The Escape, directed by Neill Blomkamp, produced by BMW Film’s and starring Clive Owen, the movie’s purpose is to draw attention to BMW’s cars.
With the increasing prevalence of product placement and branded content in the movie and television business, a given use could confuse the public. A company can make the argument that their brand appearing in a film would lead people to assume it was product placement.
However, as the court in Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc. observed, the pubic would be less likely to be fooled into thinking that any trademark owner would sponsor or endorse a film that portrays its product in a negative light. In that regard, it probably would be unlikely that the public would suspect that the maker of Budweiser beer, for example, has endorsed a movie, where more than one brand of beer is shown, with no particular attention drawn to any, and where the beer is irresponsibly consumed by teenagers.
On the other hand, where a product is depicted positively, isn’t that the purpose of product placement? People who watch the movie will want to go out and buy that brand. In a world where the public increasingly views the appearance of such brands in a movie as product placement, what would render such use “explicitly misleading”? What factors will make a likelihood of confusion “particularly compelling”? How will the courts’ likelihood of confusion analysis affect filmmakers who are without deep pockets?
It will be interesting to see how the courts will continue to balance the constitutional protections of the First Amendment under the Rogers test, with the property rights of trademark holders, to the use of brands and products in movies without chilling filmmakers from exercising protected forms of speech in creative works.
G. Conclusion
In general, it is not necessary to blur the logos and products of brands in films. There are several limitations on a trademark holder’s ability to successfully assert its trademark rights to prevent the unauthorized use of its trademark in a works of art. How the product is portrayed makes a huge difference for trademark owners, but it does not require filmmakers to seek consent for every use of a mark in his film. The motion picture industry would be severely crippled if trademark owners can use their marks to stop real products being shown in films, or even just in films which are not to their liking.
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What Is Hollywood? Everything You Need To Know
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Hollywood – a name known in every nook and corner of the globe. Most people worldwide know Hollywood as a movie industry, and significantly fewer people (of course, leaving the Americans) to be Tinseltown, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, and home to the American entertainment industry. The star-studded city is a major tourist destination […]
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NFI
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https://www.nfi.edu/what-is-hollywood/
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Hollywood – a name known in every nook and corner of the globe. Most people worldwide know Hollywood as a movie industry, and significantly fewer people (of course, leaving the Americans) to be Tinseltown, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, and home to the American entertainment industry. The star-studded city is a major tourist destination in America with an endless list of spots to visit. All people with movie love and will never be without knowing Hollywood. Let’s now have a ride knowing what Hollywood is.
What is Hollywood?
Hollywood is an area in the central region of Los Angeles, California. The name has become synonymous with the American film industry over the years. Famous studios, like Disney, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures, were founded in Hollywood. Hollywood was incorporated in 1930 as a municipality and consolidated with Los Angeles in 1910. Eventually, a promising real estate town grew to become a prominent place for the American and Western film industry and thus became the most heard place around the globe. Hollywood is a term used by directors and filmmakers associated with American movies and television shows.
Which Part Of The Country Is Known As Hollywood?
Hollywood lies northwest of downtown Los Angeles and is bordered by Beverly Boulevard (south), Hyperion Avenue and Riverside Drive (east), Beverly Hills (west), and the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. Being called a Tinsel town, Hollywood is an ideal place balanced with pleasant weather conditions and a geographical structure that is also a promising market for labor. Since the early 1900’s Hollywood has homed the actors and directors and is synonymous with American movies and television shows. The film industry has spread all over southern California, including New York City, yet Hollywood remains the American film industry’s omphalos.
What Is Hollywood Known For?
Hollywood is the oldest film industry, where the earliest film studios and production companies emerged. It is the birthplace of various genres of cinema—among them comedy, drama, action, musical, romance, horror, science fiction, and the war epic—and has set the example for other national film industries.
What Is Hollywood Like?
Hollywood and glamor walk side by side and are defined by a celebrity persona and impression. Everyone in Hollywood is always striving to become something or someone, and those who have already reached the top are no longer who they are and live in other people’s intentions and perceptions. However, there is nothing to be surprised by as the town is characterized by success, personality, being able to impress, and fame, fame-based social hierarchies, and thus makes it hard for one to be themselves.
How Did The Name Hollywood Originate?
The name Hollywood was officially registered in 1887 by Harvey H. Wilcox in his land deed. Another version also tells that his wife, Daedia Wilcox, heard the name from her friend, Ivar Weid, and suggested the same to her husband. However, another story says that Daedia met a stranger on a train who lived in a state named “Hollywood” in Illinois. Although many versions of stories are attached to the origin of the name Hollywood, there is little to no evidence to prove the same.
What Is Hollywood Most Known For?
Hollywood is the destination for all American movies and television shows and is situated in California. Hollywood has many tourist attractions, including the “Walk of Fame” and the Hollywood Sign. The once small Tinsel town gained popularity such that the whole American Film industry became Hollywood. However, it is to be noted that all movies are not made in Hollywood. Hollywood has evolved in popularity to become a metonymy. Major award functions and theater releases are made in Hollywood at important theaters and concert stages. The town is famous for the “Walk of Fame” and is a major tourist destination. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was launched in 1958, and the first star belonged to the actress Joanne Woodward in 1960. The Walk of Fame is a sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard and the USA. Tourists visiting the Walk of Fame can see more than 2000 five-point stars that feature various notable artists and filmmakers of the industry. Some of the popular destinations Hollywood is known for being.
Madame Tussauds Hollywood
Pantages Theatre
The Hollywood Museum
Dolby Theatre
Hollywood
Hollywood Boulevard
Universal Studio
Hollywood wax museum
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Capitol Records Building
Museum of Illusions
Why Is Hollywood So Popular?
Hollywood is the biggest film industry in the world. Why is it so popular? What makes Hollywood different and unique from other film industries? Let’s check out:
Huge audience: Hollywood movies are released around the world and thus have a vast audience and followers. Another major factor that contributes to its fan following is the language. English is a language spoken and understood widely around the world. However, presently Hollywood invests in the USA and other film industries in other countries.
Professionalism: Hollywood is known for its professionalism in every aspect. The scenes or parts of the movie will hardly have flaws and are depicted with perfection.
Keeping in track: Hollywood movies stick to one concept throughout the movie and do not deviate from the track. If the plot is an action-thriller, the movie concentrates on the plot alone.
Variety: Hollywood movies come with various subjects, unlike the other film industries with the same plots with slight variation. The audience gets to see a variety of plots, genre, and stories and never get bored.
Technology and Graphics: Technology and graphics take the lead in Hollywood with experts who know their job. Some movies with excellent graphics and effects include Avengers, Planet of the Apes, Gravity, Jurassic Park, and Avtar.
Sound effects: Hollywood has shown the world how sound effects contribute majorly to a scene in a movie. Hollywood movies have one of the best soundtracks with exceptional effects.
What Is New Hollywood?
New Hollywood is a film movement led by a group of students in filmmaking around 1967-1976 in the United States. These students were passionate about filmmaking and worked within the studio system. Their movement was called the New Hollywood Wave, and they gave a radical angle to actual filmmaking.
Where Did New Hollywood Emerge From?
The most important few years in American film history are frequently cited by film academics as 1967–1969. In those years, films by Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Woody Allen, and many others debuted. The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, however, were two 1967 releases that actually heralded the arrival of New Hollywood. The Graduate had sexual activities, and Bonnie and Clyde featured sex and violence. Both pictures were daringly frank. They are significantly responsible for eliminating the Hays code and unleashing a creative renaissance in Hollywood thanks to their daring subject matter.
Who Are Notable New Hollywood Filmmakers?
These filmmakers are well known for their techniques, such as shot framing, narratives, transition effects, camera angles, and lighting. They have also won or got nominated for several Academy Awards.
George Lucas
Steven Spielberg
Martin Scorsese
Peter Bogdanovich
Brian De Palma
Francis Ford Coppola
Videos
Driving Beverly Hills to Hollywood 8K HDR Dolby Vision
Hike to the Hollywood Sign: Trail Addresses and Parking Info Included! (2021)
Part 1 A History of the Hollywood Sign, 1923 2009
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Best Movies on Paramount+
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Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed.
|
en
|
https://www.metacritic.com/browse/movie/paramount-plus/
|
2. The Social Network
On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications. [Columbia Pictures]
95
Metascore
12. If Beale Street Could Talk
Set in early-1970s Harlem, If Beale Street Could Talk is a timeless and moving love story of both a couple's unbreakable bond and the African-American family's empowering embrace, as told through the eyes of 19-year old Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne). A daughter and wife-to-be, Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny (Stephan James). Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Tish knows that Fonny is innocent, and is mindful that his good friend Daniel Carty (Brian Tyree Henry) has only recently been freed after an unjust incarceration. While Fonny's mother (Aunjanue Ellis) clings to piety and his father (Michael Beach) grapples with feelings of powerlessness, Tish's earthy father Joseph (Colman Domingo) and fierce older sister Ernestine (Teyonah Parris) are unwavering in their support. Even more anxious to clear Fonny's name is Tish's deeply compassionate mother Sharon (Regina King), readying to put herself on the line for her daughter and future son-in-law's happiness...and for the couple's unborn child, whose arrival will herald new joys and challenges. Facing the unexpected prospect of parenthood and holding down a job without her partner at her side, Tish must adjust her perspective on the realities of her existence. She visits Fonny regularly, trying to shore up his spirit even as prison takes its toll. As the weeks turn to months, Tish reaffirms their hopes and resilience, relying on familial and inner strength. [Annapurna Pictures]
87
Metascore
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0
| 5 |
https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/post-32/
|
en
|
Oscar Mashing at Paramount – Hollywood Elsewhere
|
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2024-07-03T13:14:50-07:00
|
en
|
https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/post-32/
|
Oscar Mashing at Paramount
Here it is not even Labor Day, and it’s looking more and more likely that the two strongest Best Picture contenders are going to be Flags of Our Fathers and Dreamgirls, which in itself is going to make this a phenomenal Oscar campaign year for Paramount /DreamWorks (a.k.a. “Dreamamount”), which is distributing both.
Shot during the filming of Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks/Paramount, 10.20)
Keep in mind also that one other Paramount release — Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel (Paramount Vantage) — is also regarded as a probable awards- level thing. Not to mention the possibility of Paramount’s World Trade Center eeking into one of the five slots as a kind of sentimental favorite. Four Best Picture finalists from the same studio — it could happen.
But I’m all but convinced it’s going to come down to a Flags vs. Dreamgirls thing — a mano e mano on Melrose Ave. I’m saying this because of fresh perceptions of extremely strong emotional currents in both. And because, as one strategist notes, “there’s such a shallow pool of obvious [Best Picture] contenders from our current vantage point of mid-August.”
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Some surprise movie may come along in a month or two and rewrite the picture — “”it happens every year,” the strategist says — but right now no one can see what film that might be. And I spend every damn day trying to figure this stuff out.
How do I know it’ll be Dreamgirls vs. Flags of Our Fathers? I don’t as far as Flags is concerned, having only read the script and seen this morning’s Japanese combo trailer (i.e., Flags plus Letters from Iwo Jima).
But count on this : (a) the personal-anguish-of-soldiers factor, which Flags is full of top to bottom, is going to resonate to some extent (maybe a large extent) in the hinterlands among the support-our-troops-in-Iraq contingent, and (b) this big-scale tribute to the World War II generation is going to sink in big with boomer-aged Academy members.
I wouldn’t be saying this if Flags was just standing on its own — it could fade or come up short, you never know — but the Flags-plus-Letters from Iwo Jima factor (joined-at-the-hip movies using the same history and locale) is going to impress the hell out of Academy members for the same reason that actors who gain weight or put on fake noses or speak in exotic accents always tend to get Oscar-nomina- ted — because the effort that went into it is so obvious, and because no director has ever done something like this before.
And having seen portions of Bill Condon‘s knockout Dreamgirls again last night I’m dead certain it’s a Best Picture lock. Four scenes were shown, and each was emotional, exuberant, tight as a drum, perfectly staged and performed, and edited with the skill of a diamond-cutter.
And yet when you think about the Flags vs. Dreamgirls competish, it feels like a bit of a muddle because their Oscar campaigns are going to be run by two execs collecting Paramount paychecks — DreamWorks marketing executive Terry Press and Paramount marketing chief Gerry Rich — and who will have to split their loyalties and energies in two directions.
Flags and Dreamgirls originated as DreamWorks projects, of course, and Press is going to be handling the marketing for both, but she and Rich will be making the Oscar campaign moves — and this may look to some like an operation at cross purposes.
Press listened to my questions and declined official comment, but let’s look at this situation as best we can.
One, there’s a huge influx of Miramax and DreamWorks marketing veterans on the Paramount lot these days, and these people know their way around the Academy rodeo. Paramount is a studio, remember, that hasn’t been in a major Oscar campaign since Titanic, which was nine years ago.
Two, there’s no Paramount logo on the Flags of our Fathers one-sheet. Think about that.
And three, Warner Bros. is is the international distibutor and co-financier of Flags of our Fathers, and Warner Bros. will be the the domestic distributor of Letters From Iwo Jima…so there’s that element to consider.
Simultaneous Oscar campaigns for films released by the same studio have happened before, of course. Miramax had its own Life is Beautiful vs. Shakes- peare in Love competing for the Best Picture Oscar in ’98. Disney had The Insider running against The Sixth Sense in ’99. Miramax had The Aviator vs. Finding Neverland in ’04. Universal had Field of Dreams vs. Born on the 4th of July in ’89.
But Life is Beautiful was never considered a Best Picture front-runner, and neither was The Sixth Sense or Finding Neverland. The only analogy that really fits is the Field of Dreams vs. Born on the Fourth of July one.
If it comes down to a Flags vs. Dreamgirls standoff, the ideal situation, of course, would be for Press and Rich to push both with equal vigor. Press is a pro and will naturally strive to do that. She seems to be making the right moves by hiring outside Oscar campaign consultants for both films — Amanda Lundberg for Dreamgirls and a not-yet-finalized hire for for Flags.
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2
| 37 |
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/business/media/15film.html
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en
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Paramount Pictures to Start Online Service to Sell Movie Clips
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Brooks Barnes"
] |
2009-12-15T00:00:00
|
The studio plans to eventually sell snippets of films cheaply, like ring tones, although a license to use that snippet in a national ad campaign will not be cheap.
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/business/media/15film.html
|
LOS ANGELES Paramount Pictures, looking for new ways to turn its old movies into cash, especially as DVD sales continue to decline, is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis.
Feeling “the need for speed,” as Tom Cruise put it in “Top Gun”? Log on to ParamountClips.com, search for the exact video snippet you want and press the checkout button. Within minutes with the price depending on the type of licensing use you have in mind Paramount will electronically deliver the selection in the format and resolution desired. Most scenes are available in multiple languages.
The site, to be introduced on Tuesday, is powered by VideoSense, an automated indexing tool developed by the technology company Digitalsmiths. Using proprietary video interpretation systems, Digitalsmiths allows films to be quickly searched by specific actor, line of dialogue, location, genre or product, among other criteria.
Paramount will initially restrict use to business customers advertising agencies, mobile carriers, foreign broadcasters that want to license pieces of films for commercial use. The plan is to ultimately open the site to consumers. People wanting to embed a specific scene from “The Godfather” on their blog could go to ParamountClips.com and buy it.
The service reflects a renewed effort in Hollywood to create fresh content from existing libraries, much as ring tones became a blockbuster offering for the music industry. Movie and television studios, suffering from a steep drop in DVD sales, are hopeful that serving up clips can become a business in itself while also stoking demand for the films in their entirety.
Although clips from films like “The Godfather” are already available free on YouTube, analysts said the new service was a chance worth taking.
“This Digitalsmiths technology is very impressive because it gives the ability to slice and dice and remodify content in a safe, automated way,” said Bobby Tulsiani, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.
“It remains to be seen if it opens up a new business opportunity, but we didn’t think people were going to pay for ring tones, either,” he added.
Paramount’s new service will initially allow users to search 80 films, including “The Godfather,” “Forrest Gump,” “Grease” and “The Addams Family.” More than 200 films will follow, with the ultimate goal being about 1,000 movies, or about a third of the studio’s total library, according to Geremie Camara, vice president of product development for Paramount Digital Entertainment.
Ben Weinberger, chief executive of Digitalsmiths, which is based in North Carolina, would not discuss pricing or say how much it cost to index movies; Mr. Camara also refused to provide financial information. Generally speaking, however, clip pricing ranges from technically free (a foreign network buys a movie and as part of the deal gets usage of a certain number of clips for promotion) to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a clip used in a national advertising campaign. The bigger the movie, the more expensive the clip: “The Godfather” is almost certainly going to cost you more than “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” although it depends on the usage.
As for individual use, no pricing has been set but it will most likely follow the ring-tone model: Licensing a snippet of a song for a commercial is expensive, but a ring tone of the same snippet for personal use costs 99 cents.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/essentials/cbs-mornings-deals-wireless-earbuds/
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en
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CBS Mornings Deals: Save 50% on wireless earbuds
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] |
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[
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[
"Rachel Center"
] |
2024-08-06T07:13:49-04:00
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These deals won't last long.
|
en
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https://www.cbsnews.com/essentials/cbs-mornings-deals-wireless-earbuds/
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This week on "CBS Mornings" lifestyle expert Ashley Bellman discussed deals on items that may make your life easier — all at exclusive discounts. Discover this week's exclusive deals below and visit CBSDeals.com or text "CBS" to 65000 to take advantage of them today.
Disclaimer: CBS earns commissions on purchases made through CBSDeals.com. Deals are available for a limited time and while quantities last. Prices may change from the date of publication.
ReliefBand: Save up to 40%
Reliefband makes wristbands that may help alleviate nausea. Developed by Stanford physical therapist Larry Bertolucci, Reliefband was created as a drug-free alternative for motion sickness, morning sickness, seasickness and more. The Reliefband works by stimulating a nerve on the underside of your wrist, which when done so, may send messages to the brain (through neural pathways) to stop nausea and vomiting from occurring. Simply apply gel to your wrist, fasten the band and adjust the settings.
There are multiple models of the Reliefband on sale. The Premier offers 18 hours of use per charge and has ten different settings to customize your experience. The Sport model boasts an IPX7 waterproof rating, which may make it ideal for boating. The Flex offers more than 350 hours of usage on a single charge, while the Classic provides 150 hours. The 50 Hrs model is the most affordable option and comes with six experience settings.
Normally priced at $99.99-$279.99 get them now at CBSDeals.com for up to 40% off, only $59.99-$167.99.
ChillWell 2.0: Save up to 30%
The ChillWell 2.0 is a portable air cooler that was designed to transform hot air into a refreshing breeze. To use this, simply fill the water tank, add ice cubes and/or freeze the cooling cartridge for extra chill, then press the power button.
It comes with four fan speed settings, allowing you to customize the airflow you receive, eight LED nightlight options and a handle for transport. This is best for small spaces in your home, including your bedroom, office or kitchen. You can get one, or purchase the two pack so that you can cool down more than one room at once.
Normally priced at $89.99, get one now at CBSDeals.com for up to 30% off, only $62.99.
Groovz: Save 50%
The Groovz Pro earbuds may elevate your audio experience with its advanced technology and exceptional sound. These earbuds work to deliver a sound similar to a stereo, offering rich bass and minimal distortion. The equipped Bluetooth 5.3 pairs your device and once connected, allows you to listen to your music or podcasts for up to 26 hours (five hours from the earbuds and 21 hours from a fully charged case).
It also comes with touch controls that allow you to adjust the volume, take calls, skip tracks and more. If you want to know how much battery life you have left, just look at the LED display located on the charging case, which informs you of your earbuds' battery levels. Plus, with Type-C charging, you shouldn't have to wait long for your earbuds to be ready for listening.
Normally priced at $79.99 get one now at CBSDeals.com for 50% off at only $39.99.
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https://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/
|
en
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TCM Classic Film Festival 2024
|
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2021-10-18T16:44:35+00:00
|
Join us for the 15th Annual TCM Classic Film Festival on April 18-21, 2024. TCM invites you and the usual suspects to the big movie house for Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film.
|
en
|
TCM Classic Film Festival 2024
|
https://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/
|
The 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival will cover a wide range of programming topics, including our central theme, Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film. We work directly with the Hollywood studios, the world’s notable film archives, and private collectors to program some of the most revered movies of all time alongside forgotten gems, many in stunning new restorations.
In keeping with TCM tradition, all Festival screenings include special introductions to provide context about each film. Specific details about this unique fan experience will be announced in the weeks and months ahead, including guest appearances by actors, actresses, directors, producers and other key figures.
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3324
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https://www.thewrap.com/best-movies-on-paramount-plus-right-now/
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en
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The Best Movies on Paramount+ Right Now
|
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[
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[
"Haleigh Foutch",
"Drew Taylor",
"Adam Chitwood",
"Benjamin Lindsay",
"Dessi Gomez"
] |
2023-08-18T13:00:00+00:00
|
Wondering what to watch? Here are the best movies you can stream on Paramount+ right now, from "Scream" to "Top Gun: Maverick"
|
en
|
TheWrap
|
https://www.thewrap.com/best-movies-on-paramount-plus-right-now/
|
Paramount+ (née CBS All Access) has recently shot up as one of the streaming services with the most robust and up-to-date libraries full of hits, hidden gems and classics.
Featuring some of the best Paramount movies, and beloved TV shows from CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET and more, Paramount+ is the home of hit film franchises like “Scream” and “Mission: Impossible,” TV hits including “Star Trek” and Taylor Sheridan shows including “The Tulsa King” and “Yellowstone” spinoffs “1883” and “1923” (though, somewhat confusingly, you won’t find “Yellowstone” itself on there — that’s on Peacock).
Paramount’s movie list is particularly robust, so whether you’re wondering what’s new on Paramount+ or looking for the overall best movies you’ll find streaming there right now, we’ve got you covered with the best movies on Paramount+ to watch right now. And for your streaming convenience, we’ve linked the titles directly so you can skip the scrolling and get to watching.
“Scream” Movies (1996-2022)
If you’re looking for the latest installment in the recently revived “Scream” franchise, you’ll have to head to Paramount+, where you’ll find “Scream VI,” as well as all of the previous movies except “Scream 4.” From Wes Craven’s genre-redefining 1996 original to the 2022 reboot that made it a buzzy horror hit once again, “Scream” has endured as one of the most consistent — and consistently quotable — slasher franchises in movie history, from the unforgettable cold opens to the parade of iconic characters. — Haleigh Foutch
“Babylon” (2022)
Maligned by many upon release, Oscar-winning “La La Land” and “First Man” director Damien Chazelle’s old Hollywood-set “Babylon” seems destined to pick up a cult following. The sprawling, depraved epic is set in 1920s Hollywood and follows the trajectories of three main characters – Margot Robbie goes from unknown to vamp; Brad Pitt is an aging movie star with a bad drinking habit; and Diego Calva is an outsider who gets invited to the party. Talkies are on the horizon and everyone’s trying to figure out where Hollywood goes next, while still keeping the party alive. – Adam Chitwood
“Top Gun: Maverick” (2022)
One of last year’s biggest movies was also one of its best. “Top Gun: Maverick,” improbably a “Top Gun” sequel released 35 years after the original, follows Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), who still gets in trouble for hotdogging (this time in an experimental jet) and as a demotion of sorts gets sent back to the Top Gun academy where he made his name. There, he trains a new group of pilots, including Rooster (Miles Teller), the son of his fallen comrade Goose (Anthony Edwards), who died tragically in the first movie. Maverick has to get them ready for a potential suicide mission in enemy airspace. Even more harrowing: he’s got to figure out a way to connect with the son he never had.
Both a triumph of technical filmmaking prowess and emotional storytelling, “Top Gun: Maverick” is flawlessly directed by Joseph Kosinski from an Oscar-nominated script by Cruise’s frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie that mixes machismo and genuine heart. If, for some reason, you never saw “Top Gun: Maverick,” now’s the perfect time. And if you’ve already seen it, you’re probably anxious to watch it again. You are go for launch. – Drew Taylor
“At Midnight” (2023)
“Top Gun: Maverick” alum Monica Barbaro stars in this film-within-a-film about Sophie Wilder, an actress in a superhero franchise. She heads to Mexico to film the final installment in the trilogy after finding out her costar/boyfriend was cheating on her. Once she arrives, she meets Alejandro (Diego Boneta), who manages the hotel where she stays, and their meet-cute (in which Alejandro walks in on Sophie naked in the shower), leads them to an awkward connection. Sophie dares Diego to go dancing at midnight and their chemistry picks up from there. Add this to your list of romantic comedies to stream. — Dessi Gomez
“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)
Based on the true story of the rise and fall of Wall Street trader Jordan Belfort, Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is more than just a damning account of the rot fueling the financial world’s elite – it might be one of the funniest movies of the last decade. Plus, it introduced the world to one of today’s biggest stars, Margot Robbie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, both here nominated for Oscars, lead the stellar ensemble. — Benjamin Lindsay
“Black Bear” (2020)
A festival hit that got swallowed by the void of 2020, “Black Bear” features Aubrey Plaza in one of her best performances yet, starring as a director in a creative dry patch, who travels to a remote cabin and finds inspiration in toying with the cabin’s married owners (Cristopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon). But nothing is as simple as that in Lawrence Michael Levine’s trippy character piece, and in the second act, the film inverts, reframing the players and shifting into new power dynamics. It’s a fascinating watch that’s not really as confusing as it sounds, and Plaza is in peak form playing both sides of the coin. — Haleigh Foutch
“Sonic the Hedgehog” (2020)
There is a rarely-trod hallowed ground for family films that succeed both as a children’s movie and a genuine for-all-ages fun time at the theaters, and the 2020 “Sonic the Hedgehog” adaptation thrives there. Inspired by the international mega-hit video game franchise, “Sonic” succeeds by putting the priority on being an entertaining movie rather than a fan-please homage — without forgetting to do the latter either. It’s a buddy-comedy with real laughs, a road movie with real heart and the funniest Jim Carrey has been in ages. — Haleigh Foutch
“Almost Famous” (2000)
Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece “Almost Famous” feels like a letter from an old friend, and in that way, it serves as a pretty terrific comfort movie. Inspired by Crowe’s experiences as a young reporter for Rolling Stone, the film follows a teenager who somewhat cons his way into going on the road with a breakout band called Stillwater for a profile in Rolling Stone magazine. What follows is a coming-of-age story in the midst of chaos, packed with colorful and loving characters that feel rich and defined. The ensemble cast includes Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand and Philip Seymour Hoffman. – Adam Chitwood
“Mission: Impossible” Movies (1996-2018)
For more than twenty years, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise has sent Tom Cruise repelling, diving, cliff-hanging, helicopter-piloting, high-speed chasing and… well, you get the idea. As Ethan Hunt, Cruise has thrown himself full-body at one death-defying stunt after the next for nearly 30 years in pursuit of making one of cinema’s great action franchises — and it worked. Of course, it’s not just the stunts. It’s Cruise’s rare bonafide movie star wattage, a filmmaker-fluid open-armed embrace of the superspy genre, and the increasingly high stakes and more refined character work that have crystalized under Christopher McQuarrie’s shepherding of the series since the fifth installment. Pound for pound, blow for blow, stunt for bananas stunt; “Mission: Impossible” is one of Hollywood’s great franchises. —Haleigh Foutch
“Top Gun” (1986)
Before “Maverick,” there was “Top Gun,” and you’ll find the original streaming on Paramount+ as well. starring Tom Cruise as Pete Mitchell, Anthony Edwards as the beloved Goose, Meg Ryan as Carole, the beloved 80s actioner took audiences into the cockpit with some of the cockiest pilots on earth. Val Kilmer’s Iceman rivals Cruise’s Maverick in flight school. The sunset vibes and humidity were established in the original film, with Kelley McGillis starring opposite Cruise as an instructor and love interest. Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” adds to the romantic ambiance outside of the action scenes. — Dessi Gomez
“Beverly Hills Cop” Trilogy (1984-1994)
There’s a legacy sequel, “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley,” coming to Netflix sometime later this year (exact timing TBD), so why not brush up on your “Beverly Hills Cop” lore? The first film is still the best of the trilogy, as it introduced hardscrabble Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) who travels to posh Beverly Hills to solve the murder of his best friend. It really played to Murphy’s smart-aleck-y strengths and so much of the movie remains iconic to this day (Harold Faltermeyer’s glitchy electronic score, Judge Reinhold’s affable detective, Bronson Pinchot’s outrageous art dealer Serge).
The sequel, directed by Tony Scott, is less hilarious but more muscular and effortlessly stylized, while the third film gets a little lost, with a meandering plot and an uninterested Murphy (although Pinchot returns for one very funny scene). Hopefully, the new movie will return the series to the action/comedy balance of the first two films. And if not, you can always re-watch the originals. – Drew Taylor
“Cloverfield” (2008)
Great monsters are personal; a product of their times and the fears of the filmmakers who create them — and the moviegoers who flock to them. From the found-footage format to the post-9/11 anxiety that pulses throughout the film’s imagery, “Cloverfield” is the definitive monster movie of the 2000s. And despite the baffling franchising that followed, despite the downfall of found footage in the court of public opinion, director Matt Reeves and writer Drew Goddard crafted a tight, tense and immersive survival movie that holds up both as a highlight of the giant monster genre and perhaps the most successful studio embrace of the found footage craze. — Haleigh Foutch
“Interstellar” (2014)
You’ve heard the music in TikToks, now see the movie. Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film “Interstellar” is a heady time-travel sci-fi epic that also happens to be Nolan’s most purely emotional film. Set in the near future, Matthew McConaughey plays a former NASA pilot and single father who’s enlisted to travel through a wormhole to investigate three planets that could serve as a safe haven for humanity as Earth’s food sources are quickly dwindling. Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck and Timothée Chalamet co-star, and the film features one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores. – Adam Chitwood
“Minority Report” (2002)
Steven Spielberg took on the work of literary sci-fi giant Philip K. Dick with his 2002 “Minority Report” adaptation and delivered one of the best science fiction movies of the 21st Century so far. Starring Tom Cruise as John Anderson, Chief of the Precrime police unit that has all but eliminated murder through the questionable use of precognitive abilities, the film finds Anderson on the run from his own unit when they predict he will kill a man he’s never met. An action-packed, gripping mystery that tangles with free will and government overreach, the film has also become known as one of the more accurate sci-fi films when it came to its futuristic world-building thanks to the innovative think tank that helped construct it. — Haleigh Foutch
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962)
Released in 1962, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is one of the best Westerns ever made. The film stars James Stewart as a young do-gooder attorney who is attacked by a gang leader named Liberty Valance. He’s rescued and nursed back to health by an aging outlaw played by John Wayne, and what ensues are two different kinds of men teaming up to take on a baddie. Stewart’s character believes the law and justice will prevail, while Wayne’s character knows the only way to stop Valance is to take the law into his own hands. Director John Ford gets meta about Western tropes here, as Liberty Valance is very much a “goodbye” to the old-fashioned Westerns led by Wayne and a passing-of-the-torch of sorts to Stewart’s character, who refuses to get his hands dirty. – Adam Chitwood
“Halloween: H20” (1998)
An underrated installment in the hit-or-miss horror franchise, “Halloween: H20” represents an interesting juncture in slasher history, following on the heels of the 1996 game-changer “Scream” while also signaling a desire to return to “Halloween’s” simpler scary-guy-with-a-knife roots. The two tones don’t always mesh perfectly, but there’s a lot to love in the 1998 installment, which shares a lot of creative DNA with the 2018 “Halloween” reboot. Returning to the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), “H20” finds her hiding under a new identity, struggling with addiction and battling her trauma as she attempts to raise her son (Josh Hartnett) with a hint of normalcy. Then Michael Myers returns. — Haleigh Foutch
“The Lost City” (2022)
If you’re in the mood for an old-school adventure romance with a bit of a silly streak, “The Lost City” is just the ticket. Sandra Bullock stars as romance novelist Loretta Sage alongside Channing Tatum as her doting cover model, Alan. When Lorretta gets kidnapped by a scheming billionaire, Alan steps up to prove he’s a real hero and the pair wind up on the run, lost in the jungle, and way out of their depth on the hunt to find a great treasure before the big bad. A knowing nod toward genre great “Romancing the Stone,” “The Lost City” stands on its own as more than homage thanks to its laugh-out-loud goofy streak, great chemistry between Bullock and Tatum, and an A+ Brad Pitt cameo. — Haleigh Foutch
The Hours (2002)
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself – and we say you should watch this modern classic! From filmmaker Stephen Daldry and based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Hours” beautifully depicts the lives, loves and insurmountable tribulations of three different women in three different decades, played exceptionally by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. Kidman, who here stars as famed “Mrs. Dalloway” author Virginia Woolf, took home the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in 2003. Standout supporting turns from Toni Collette, Ed Harris, Jeff Daniels and John C. Reilly also help this haunting feature stand the test of time. — Benjamin Lindsay
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https://ew.com/movies/best-action-movies-on-paramount-plus/
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en
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The 20 best action movies on Paramount+
|
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Gwen Ihnat",
"Kevin Jacobsen",
"www.facebook.com"
] |
2023-08-12T09:00:00-04:00
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Featuring franchises like 'Transformers,' 'Mission: Impossible', and more, here are the best action movies on Paramount+.
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en
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/favicon.ico
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EW.com
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https://ew.com/movies/best-action-movies-on-paramount-plus/
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01 of 20
48 Hrs. (1982)
Eddie Murphy was a mere 20 years old when he burst from Saturday Night Live to make a film debut that can only be described as explosive. The brilliant pairing of the hilarious, unbridled new star against Nick Nolte's grizzled, hardened police detective proved to be box office gold, with director Water Hill reportedly encouraging the two leads to improvise. EW rightly dubbed the 1982 action comedy as the film "that not only triggered a whole wave of interracial-buddy-cop movies, but also marked the transformation of the brash comedian from an overnight sensation on Saturday Night Live into the baddest box-office draw of the '80s." And it holds up, from Murphy's unforgettable takedown of a country-western bar to the epic hotel-lobby shootout. You can even spot James Remar and David Patrick Kelly, alums from Hill's The Warriors (1979), as the thugs. —Gwen Inhat
Where to watch 48 Hours: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Annette O'Toole, Frank McRae, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Sonny Landham
Related content: The 21 best (and worst) Eddie Murphy movies
02 of 20
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
The fourth film in this franchise, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, is upon us, making now an excellent time to revisit Eddie Murphy's first classic turn as Axel Foley. Unbelievably, this was only his third film (after the aforementioned 48 Hrs. and 1983's Trading Places), and it cemented Murphy as a bona fide movie star. His performance as a fish-out-of-water detective defies both his youth and his near-novice Hollywood status: "Whether Murphy's hilariously playing the race card at the front desk of a posh hotel or trying to shake the pair of dim detectives assigned to shadow him, he's always in control," says EW's critic. —G.I.
Where to watch Beverly Hills Cop: Paramount+
EW grade: B (read the review)
Director: Martin Brest
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher, Ronny Cox, Steven Berkoff
Related content: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F director says Eddie Murphy improvised 'the funniest moments
03 of 20
Bumblebee (2018)
Michael Bay's Transformers movies are known for being loud smash-em-ups: action-packed, but not much in the way of plot or character development. But Travis Knight's Bumblebee broke that mold. In the film, Bumblebee must take refuge from the Decepticons on Earth in 1987, where he meets Hailee Steinfeld's mechanically-inclined Charlie and forms a kind of live-action Iron Giant relationship. Steinfeld's winning portrayal underlines why she was such a standout child actor, and the film uses her bond with Bumblebee to springboard onto larger life lessons, like when she tells him, "People can be terrible about things they don't understand." Don't worry, there are still lots of heavy metal transformations and explosion-filled battles, but the highlight of this movie is Bumblebee cranking '80s tunes from his abdomen. —G.I.
Where to watch Bumblebee: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Travis Knight
Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon
Related content: A rundown of all the Transformers in that opening Bumblebee battle
04 of 20
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
This adaptation of the popular RPG could have been a cynical cash grab, but writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley chose the right approach by crafting a loving tribute to what makes the game so addictive without taking it too seriously. Set in the Forgotten Realms, the film follows Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), a pair of thieves who band together with a budding sorcerer (Justice Smith) and a druid (Sophia Lillis) to find a magic relic to help clear Edgin's name and reunite him with his daughter. As EW's critic writes in their review, "The goal is to capture an experience rather than a specific story — and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves delightfully nails the fun of role-playing as fantasy characters with your friends. It doesn't require any prior playing experience, either." —Kevin Jacobsen
Where to watch Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Directors: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant
Related content: Here's the story behind that Dungeons & Dragons surprise cameo
05 of 20
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
From multiverse jumping to hot dog fingers to "Raccacoonie," this Oscar-winning juggernaut is a lot to take in. It all centers on Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese immigrant laundromat owner struggling to make ends meet. Accepting an offer to escape her problems, she goes on a journey through the multiverse to stop a powerful foe bent on destruction — who happens to be an alternate version of her daughter. Blending action, slapstick comedy, heavy science fiction, and family drama, directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert balance it all with heart and giddy enthusiasm. —K.J.
Where to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once: Paramount+ With Showtime
EW grade: B– (read the review)
Directors: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr.
Related content: Back to the beginning: Everything Everywhere All at Once's journey to the Oscar
06 of 20
Gladiator (2000)
Ridley Scott resurrected the once-popular sword-and-sandal genre of the 1960s with this turn-of-the-century epic in which Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) refuses to swear fealty to the corrupt new emperor, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who subsequently has Maximus' family killed. Maximus seeks revenge by competing in the gladiator games in the hope of eventually taking down Commodus. The film delivers on old-fashioned thrills while taking advantage of newer technology of which the great directors of the '50s and '60s could only dream. Earning more than $500 million at the box office and winning five Oscars including Best Picture, Gladiator indeed kept its audience entertained, and holds up on repeat viewings ahead of the highly anticipated sequel, set for release in 2024. —K.J.
Where to watch Gladiator: Paramount+
EW grade: A– (read the review)
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, Richard Harris
Related content: Russell Crowe considered leaving Gladiator over 'absolute rubbish' early script
07 of 20
The Lost City (2022)
While on a book tour promoting her latest romance novel, writer Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) gets kidnapped and taken to a remote, lush location with the goal of looking for the mysterious titular city. And when her own devoted, Fabio-like book cover model (Channing Tatum) goes after her, romantic hijinks quickly ensue as Loretta starts living an adventure not unlike the ones she pens. What follows is a delightfully breezy action flick that may even carry twinges of genre nostalia. As an EW critic notes, "There used to be a lot more of a certain kind of sunny, modestly ambitious movie that might have been called a romp: blithe action comedies in which two pretty people fight and blunder and fall for each other, and maybe romance a few stones along the way. Almost everything about The Lost City feels familiar in that sense, and comforting, too." —G.I.
Where to watch The Lost City: Paramount+
EW grade: B (read the review)
Director: Aaron and Adam Nee
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Brad Pitt
Related content: The Lost City cast on 'zany' shoot, nearly losing Daniel Radcliffe: 'We're going to kill him'
08 of 20
Minority Report (2002)
This 2002 action thriller is one of Steven Spielberg's most thought-provoking films — in every sense of the phrase. The film transports us to a futuristic world in which an innovative policing program called "Precrime" seeks to stop murders before they happen, using the collective psychic powers of three clairvoyants. Tom Cruise is Precrime's chief commanding officer, but the program is turned back around on him when he's flagged as a future murderer himself. This turns him into a fugitive, desperately trying to evade capture while learning the truth behind why he was targeted and how Precrime isn't as infallible as it claims to be. Tackling themes of free will, the slippery slope of police surveillance, and more, the film raises potent questions on our technological future while also delivering as a pulse-pounding thriller. As EW's critic writes, "What's exciting about Minority Report (and abrasive, too, in the way of a good scrubbing) is the movie's relentless demonstration of technological convenience inextricably entangled with a profound invasion of privacy." —K.J.
Where to watch Minority Report: Paramount+
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow
Related content: A guide to Minority Report's future world
09 of 20
Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015)
Somehow, the M:I films just keep getting better, as improbable as that seems. There are many highlights of 2015's Rogue Nation, but since Tom Cruise doggedly insists on still doing his own stunts, our favorite moment is when he kicks off the movie by clinging to a plane mid-liftoff. (Note: not CGI!) As Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team go after an anti-IMF Syndicate, they're aided by an equally impressive undercover agent (Rebecca Ferguson), who has some amazing fight scenes of her own. "...Like all Mission: Impossible films (of which there's yet to be a dud), it's not so much about the outcome as it is the breathlessly thrilling journey Cruise takes us on to get there," writes EW critic. And you're in luck, because the first six films are all streaming on Paramount+ as well. —G.I.
Where to watch Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin
Related content: See Tom Cruise hold his breath for 6 minutes for Mission: Impossible stunt
10 of 20
Red Eye (2005)
Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy star in this tense (if far-fetched) action thriller from director Wes Craven. McAdams plays Lisa, a hotel manager taking a red-eye flight home to Miami who meets Jackson (Cillian Murphy), a charismatic man involved in a dangerous plot. As it turns out, Jackson knows exactly who Lisa is, and she's essential to helping orchestrate the assassination of a key government official. EW's critic calls Red Eye a "quick-and-dirty suspense corker," earning its explosive finale thanks to the groundwork laid in its first hour. —K.J.
Where to watch Red Eye: Paramount+
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox
Related content: The 15 best Cillian Murphy movies and TV shows, ranked
11 of 20
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Steven Spielberg's World War II drama remains one of the most affecting war movies ever made. Saving Private Ryan features a group of soldiers on a perilous mission. Following the deaths of three brothers, a general commands the soldiers to find the fourth brother, the titular Private Ryan (Matt Damon), and bring him home safely to spare his grieving family more heartache. From the stunning Normandy invasion that opens the film to the emotional conclusion, Spielberg's saga of brotherhood and bravery is an overwhelming achievement, with EW's critic calling it "a movie of staggering virtuosity and raw lyric power, a masterpiece of terror, chaos, blood, and courage." —K.J.
Where to watch Saving Private Ryan: Paramount+
EW grade: A (read the review)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Matt Damon
Related content: From the EW archives: Saving Private Ryan: Message in a battle
12 of 20
Star Trek (2009)
J.J. Abrams' Star Trek rebooted the franchise for a new generation without sacrificing the core tenets of what has made it last (As EW's critic writes, "Abrams as a director is very good at taking stuff that was great and making it feel great again.") Serving as a prequel to the original series and set in an alternate timeline, Star Trek follows a young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in their early days aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise as they attempt to stop a time-traveling villain (Eric Bana). Both Pine and Quinto slip into the well-worn Starfleet uniforms of Kirk and Spock with ease, and the film takes care to invest the audience in both of their emotional journeys. —K.J.
Where to watch Star Trek: Paramount+
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldaña, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder, Leonard Nimoy
Related content: Star Trek movies, ranked
13 of 20
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Paramount+ is the home for numerous iterations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, from the original series to the live-action films, but Mutant Mayhem is easily the most well-received entry in the franchise's history, with both critics and audiences. The animated action-adventure flick finds the four anthropomorphic turtles wanting to explore life outside the sewers, and soon become unlikely heroes attempting to take down a gang of criminals — who also happen to be mutants. With quippy humor that amuses kids and adults alike, plus visually striking action set pieces inspired by the comic-book feel of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Mutant Mayhem is a fast-paced good time for all audiences. —K.J.
Where to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Paramount+
Director: Jeff Rowe
Cast: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Ice Cube, Jackie Chan
Related content: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get a Spider-Verse-style makeover in Mutant Mayhem trailer
14 of 20
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Frequently hailed as one of the best sequels of all time, T2 takes the potential of the original Terminator and adds in higher-budget action sequences and an emotionally resonant story. The film follows time-traveling cyborg T-800's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) attempts to protect future resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) and his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from the malevolent T-1000 (Robert Patrick), who is sent to kill them. Even all these years later, the film holds up surprisingly well, largely due to the chemistry of John and the T-800 and Sarah Connor's badass sensibility, but its visual effects remain impressive, "in part because there's real magic to them, a sense of technological wonder," says EW's critic. "By the end of the movie, we feel that this shape-shifting terminator, this sinister mass of chameleonic metal, has an identity all its own." —K.J.
Where to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
Related content: Arnold Schwarzenegger recalls seeing Linda Hamilton's buffed up Terminator 2 biceps for the first time
15 of 20
Top Gun (1986)
Top Gun: Maverick grabbed a lot of headlines (and box office victories) in 2022, but let's not forget where all this military flight bombast began. As EW's critic said in his look back at the now-heralded classic: "Watching Top Gun now…you can see why Cruise, then a baby-faced 23, became the biggest star of the era. His thousand-watt smile is the film's best special effect. He's confident and charismatic, a daredevil riding right into the danger zone." Today, the sequel's recent success presents an excellent opportunity to revisit Maverick's friendship with Goose (Anthony Edwards), his rivalry with Iceman (Val Kilmer), and the iconic volleyball match that foreshadowed Maverick's football game. But the main takeaway from rewatching the 1986 film is just how those stunning flight scenes are even decades later. (And the soundtrack doesn't hurt, either.) —G.I.
Where to watch Top Gun: Paramount+
EW grade: B (read the review)
Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt
Related content: Top Gun at 35: Editor who cut first trailer recalls Tom Cruise 'jumping up and down' with excitement
16 of 20
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Follow up your Top Gun rewatch with its highly acclaimed "legacyquel," released 36 years after the original. Cruise reprises his role as Maverick — whose rebellious streak has remained, even decades later — and is now tasked with training Top Gun graduates, including his old partner Goose's son, Rooster (Miles Teller), who bears a striking resemblance to his father. As Maverick trains his students for a precarious flight mission, he also attempts to overcome the trauma of the past. With eye-popping aerial sequences and an earnestly emotional core, Top Gun: Maverick earned widespread acclaim not only from audiences but critics, many of whom claimed it as better than the first Top Gun. The film went on to receive six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, taking home the win for Best Sound. —K.J.
Where to watch Top Gun: Maverick: Paramount+
EW grade: B+ (read the review)
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer
Related content: Tom Cruise says he 'got emotional' over Val Kilmer's return for Top Gun sequel: 'I was crying'
17 of 20
Transformers (2007)
The Transformers franchise has had many ups and downs, but few would argue that the 2007 original is its best entry (besides, of course, the previously listed prequel Bumblebee). The film centers on a centuries-old war between alien robots — the Autobots and the Decepticons — who seek control of an artifact to be used for, respectively, good and evil. Shia LaBeouf plays Sam Witwicky, a teenager who proves to be the key to finding the artifact and must prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. EW's critic calls the original Transformers, "a spectacular clash of the heavy metal titans, and a primal reminder of why boys love their toys." —K.J.
Where to watch Transformers: Paramount+
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Anderson, Megan Fox, Rachael Taylor, John Turturro, Jon Voight
Related content: How Transformers toys with Hollywood
18 of 20
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Hollywood skewering Hollywood doesn't always play as intended, but this action comedy is audacious in portraying the pretensions of show business. Ben Stiller (who also directed and co-wrote the film), Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. star as actors making a faux-prestigious war movie, with each of them proving demanding for their director. But things go from bad to worse after the director opts for a hidden camera style of filmmaking, and the pampered actors are faced with real-life dangers in the jungle, with no script to guide them. Tropic Thunder lampoons the absurdity of Hollywood and its inherent shallowness, from self-indulgent method actors to ego-driven producers. "With every character, and with every believably outrageous turn of the plot," writes EW's critic, "Stiller brings real insider knowledge of — and compassion for — the big business of Hollywood make-believe." —K.J.
Where to watch Tropic Thunder: Paramount+
EW grade: A (read the review)
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Brandon T. Jackson, Bill Hader, Nick Nolte
Related content: Ben Stiller still has 'no apologies' for Tropic Thunder: 'Always been a controversial movie'
19 of 20
War of the Worlds (2005)
Steven Spielberg directed this riveting action thriller update of the classic H.G. Wells story of extraterrestrial invasion. Tom Cruise plays Ray, a divorced father of two who tries to survive amid the invasion as the aliens do battle with humanity via war machines. Of course, with Spielberg at the helm, War of the Worlds isn't just empty spectacle — the film is infused with very real anxieties over the end of the world. "What's unsettling about War of the Worlds, in its roller-coaster nightmare way, isn't so much the aliens' methods of destruction," EW's critic writes, "as it is the film's visceral vision of world annihilation as something uncanny yet imminent, happening right before your eyes." —K.J.
Where to watch War of the Worlds: Paramount+
EW grade: N/A (read the review)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman
Related content: The best performances in every Steven Spielberg movie
20 of 20
World War Z (2013)
Brad Pitt leads this globetrotting action drama about a zombie outbreak that quickly turns into an apocalypse. UN investigator Gerry Lane (Pitt) is tasked with finding the source of the outbreak to help develop a vaccine, but, with zombies multiplying by the minute, the clock is ticking. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Max Brooks, this adaptation goes in a decidedly more action-oriented direction, delivering massive entertainment even if it's not as deep as its source material. "World War Z is epically scaled, but it's not a messy, noisy, CGI-bogus, throw-everything-at-the-audience sort of blockbuster," writes EW's critic. "It's thrillingly controlled, and it builds in impact." —K.J.
Where to watch World War Z: Paramount+
EW grade: A– (read the review)
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale
Related content: World War Z is actually the story of Brad Pitt
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