It's 2026 And I Just Watched 1995's Mortal Kombat For The First Time – These Are My Honest Thoughts

Until I started working at /Film, I fancied myself a bit of a cinephile — and then we started doing a series about watching popular movies for the first time ever, and I realized I was a straight-up fraud. It took me until 2025 to watch "Jurassic Park" (I loved it, so please don't yell at me) and the original "Avatar," and in 2026, I sat down and thoroughly enjoyed Tony Scott's "Man on Fire" and the 1999 version of "The Mummy." What I'm saying is that, thus far, I've been really spoiled. Then I was asked to watch the 1995 version of "Mortal Kombat" and wondered if I was being cosmically punished.

In the interest of full disclosure, my biggest exposure to "Mortal Kombat" as a concept is that my pediatric dentist's office inexplicably had a "Mortal Kombat" arcade game in the waiting room (?!?) that I played a lot. (Sort of funny, I guess, to kick in some opponent's pixelated teeth before you go get yours cleaned.) Honestly, I'm not sure I knew there was a "Mortal Kombat" movie that came out in 1995 until I was asked to watch it and write this.

I'm being a little bit dramatic here, but I think we can all agree that 1995's "Mortal Kombat" sucks pretty hard. It's campy in a way that's not always particularly fun or amusing, the acting is terrible, the special effects are worse, and the "plot" of the film, such as it is, makes little to no sense. I watched the "Mortal Kombat" movie from 1995 for the first time in 2026, and I now know what everybody else knows: it stinks.

If you gave me $20 to describe the intricacies of the plot of "Mortal Kombat," I'm not convinced I could do it — and I'm also not sure I could do it for a higher price. What I gathered is this: to prevent alien forces from invading the "Earthrealm" (which I guess is our ... galaxy???), a select group of fighters — Sonya Blade (Bridgette Nelson), Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), and Liu Kang (Robin Shou) — are sent to fight people from the "Outworld." (Liu's also on some revenge mission about his brother, who is either dead or without a soul.) Insofar as the rest of the movie goes, it sure seems like our core three just beat the ever-loving crap out of enemies and make it through a tournament that's literally called Mortal Kombat.

Now, I do realize that I'm declaring, here on Al Gore's internet, that I had trouble understanding the plot of the 1995 schlockfest "Mortal Kombat." I also am comfortable admitting that, because the plot makes absolutely no sense and is trying to create a layered and enthralling viewing experience that the movie either can't or won't provide when push comes to shove (literally). Director Paul W.S. Anderson (not to be confused with Oscar winner and living legend Paul Thomas Anderson) is sort of known for his campy and bizarre projects like this and, say, "Event Horizon," so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I do, however, have some notes.

Part of the reason I'm so baffled that there was a "Mortal Kombat" arcade game in my dentist's waiting room as a kid is that the game is wildly and unabashedly violent, and honestly? I would have rather watched a version of "Mortal Kombat" on screen directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino. While I did get a little nostalgic over the movie's 1990s sensibility and its ridiculous prosthetics and costumes — the monster Goro, played physically by Tom Woodruff Jr. and voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, has torso arms, which sort of rocks — I wanted it to just really lean in and be a bloodbath. Show me the kind of wild, unrestrained violence the "Mortal Kombat" game is known for ... and to that end, make it animated.

Animation for adults is relatively commonplace in 2026 — though it's more common on the small screen in projects like "BoJack Horseman" — and I think a super-gory, hyper-violent "Mortal Kombat" movie would be extremely fun in animated form. Honestly, I'd like it quite a lot better than whatever this is ... and some of my coworkers here at /Film told me that the sequel is even worse. In any case, you can watch the 1995 version of "Mortal Kombat" on HBO Max, and the reboot series, which continues with "Mortal Kombat II" on May 8, is still going strong since it launched in 2021.