Did Mortal Kombat just pull a fatality on its own movie?

I've been a Mortal Kombat fan ever since I found out what the ESRB rating system was. It was brutal, gore-filled and pure joy. That makes me look like a sick freak but, I loved everything about Mortal Kombat until I watched the movies. And when I found out they were making a new movie, I had hope. Boy, was I wrong! 

It was boring. A waste of my time even, I would be better off doing nothing than watch that movie. I watch movies with high amounts of brutality for the only reason being to cringe at the blood and screams. Ok, that makes me sound creepy but, I don't care. But Mortal Kombat is more than just a brutal, blood-filled fighting game.

The games have a rich lore and a multitude of characters with vibrant personalities. The main heroes and villains have reasons to even fight in Mortal Kombat. But the movie diminishes them and opts to make them into chosen ones who are bound by "The Dragon" to fight for Earthrealm. None of them has any reason to fight against Outworld other than for the sake of protecting the realm.

The characters make Mortal Kombat what it is but the movie has trouble realising what the characters are and dumbs them down to their basic personality traits. Even some of the main characters are just boring to watch.

Some of them even ruined for me.

Let's start with the poster boys, Scorpion and Subzero, who as characters are kinda ruined and made a bit better respectively. Scorpion, whose death is a driving force in the movie, is barely in the movie appearing as a vision for quick flashes and has only two fight scenes, one at the beginning and one at the end. They gave Scorpion a little bit more than what the 1992 movie gave him but it isn't any better.

Subzero aka Bi Han is given more personality than he had in the games when he was Subzero and also his reasons for working with Shang Tsung and assassinating the Hasashi Clan are a bit more interesting than the normal ninja clan rivalry thing.

There are a lot of irrelevant characters in the movie who are major players in the games. Jax was boring, and I found nothing about him compelling throughout any scene he was in. Sonya was also a bit boring but she stayed true to her badass soldier nature. Kabal, Nitara, Mileena and Reiko are just there as fatality fodder.

Liu Kang who is generally the "main character" of the games is heavily diminished into this weird average kung fu master who serves as the guy who introduces magic to the rest of the characters. Kung Lao although without his cocky charm was given the best fatality in the movie but that was short-lived as he gets killed to serve as the reason for Liu Kang's short vengeance plotline.

Raiden felt nothing like a god as he never commanded the room and the same thing goes for Shang Tsung, who I felt was horribly miscast. Maybe that's cuz I liked Tagawa's performance better but Shang Tsung felt weak in this movie. Also, I liked Lambert's Raiden more than Asano's since he had a personality even though his laugh was weird.

There also some plot devices which I really just hate without reason. One of them is Arcana, which rationalises the special powers the characters have in the games. My argument to that is why? Why do the powers need to be rationalised? That is all. It makes Jax's mechanical arms into some unneeded magic-based power up.

There were multiple other ways to rationalise the MK universe but going with arcana just ruined it all for me.

Cole Young is one of the worst protagonists I have watched for more than an hour. He is boring as he is a blank slate most of the time and him being a movie-only character made things worse for me, personally, as he never excited me. He never goes through an arc in the movie and just exists to be a reason for Scorpion to have relevance in the whole story.

Fatalities are throughout the movie but there are only three that stick out as truly amazing and they are: Jax's Head Clap, Scorpion's Toasty! and the best fatality in the movie, Kung Lao's Hat Split. These were done with amazing gore VFX even though the blood looked fake. 

This might seem like a brutal barrage of bicycle kicks to the movie but in my opinion, the movie sucks as a whole. Like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (the movie), Mortal Kombat 2021 was a failure as they kinda ruined my favourite characters from all of gaming. And I hope they don't make 4 more of it. Please don't.

Pros:
Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasahi.
Bi Han by Joe Taslim.
Kano is a fun character for half the movie.