Mortal Kombat: Legacy Episode 1 Hits the Web

Posted by on April 13th, 2011   Filed under: Action, Games, Internet

Last summer a mysterious live action short featuring characters from the video game Mortal Kombat found its way online, leading to speculation that it might be an official promo for an upcoming Mortal Kombat feature film. It turns out that it was only a fan-made concept trailer… with the fan being Hollywood director Kevin Tancharoen (Fame). Fortunately for him, the online reception was so great that it convinced Warner Brothers to fund a 10-episode web series based on his initial video.

With the release of the new Mortal Kombat video game now less than a week away, the very first episode has debuted online courtesy of Machinima.com. The series is called Mortal Kombat: Legacy, and it once again stars Michael Jai White as Jax and Jeri Ryan as Sonya Blade, both of whom are on the trail of crime boss Kano (played by Darren Shahlavi). While there’s not as much fighting as you might expect in this first episode, their attempt to actually tell a story is not entirely unsuccessful. It does have its share of melodramatic moments, however. What do you think, could this series end up being better than the previous Mortal Kombat movies? Watch the first episode right now after the jump.



  • Derek McFarland

    Short but good. Don’t see why they didn’t just make a movie out of it. It would make a shit load of money. The episodes seem very gritty, and way more hardcore than the original film; which I enjoyed back when it came out, but now looks out dated. That Street Fighter reboot has nothing on the short, alone.

  • Captain N

    I’m mixed on this. It was far more cinematic then I expected it to be, but at times it seemed to border on cheesy. It felt like it was teetering back and forth between something that’d be on TNT or something that would be on SyFy. The shoot out was pretty underwhelming and cheesy at times, particularly with those shockwaves. At 10 minutes, I’ll likely watch the next episode, though I’m not exactly enraptured.

    With that said, I don’t understand the appeal of a gritty realistic take on Mortal Kombat. The idea is so rooted in the super natural, I feel that a large part of it’s identity is being taken away.

    Will they attempt to bring in the outer world (or whatever it’s called.) Characters like Goro? I suppose it could be interesting to see how they work those particular elements in a more realistic setting, if they so choose to use them.

  • Jonny Ashley

    I really like the idea of it, but where’s the fatalities? I was hoping they would get into the groove of things by the end of the first episode. I almost don’t see what the point of it is if it’s not going to resemble the game at all.

    After you stack up 10 11-minute episodes it will probably add up to a 2 hour movie, so maybe they’re building towards something…

  • Gil

    I never knew there was an actual story line to Mortal Kombat.

  • “What do you think, could this series end up being better than the previous Mortal Kombat movies?”

    Did you SEE “Annihilation”? I thought the first film was decent at the time, but that second one was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in a theater. Strangely enough, I also saw “Boogie Nights” in the theater that very same day, which went on to become probably my favorite movie of all time. Talk about keeping the balance, right?