Mortal Kombat (2021) review

Yet another big screen 'adaptation' of Boon and Tobias' video game Mortal Kombat (which came out in the early 90's and was a big part of 'arcade culture' at the time) that has evil dudes from the "Outworld" - which includes Shang Tsung (Chin Han), Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), Mileena (Sisi Stringer) and everyone's favorite four-armed brut Goro - trying to take over the Earth, which is protected by Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), Sonya (Jessica McNamee) and an MMA fighter named Cole (Lewis Tan).  Unlike role-playing games, fighting games don't have (or require) a ton of backstory, so I'll give the three credit screenwriters a tiny bit of credit for attempting to string together a plot, but all the special effects in the world still can't make this anything even half-decent: the dialogue is lifted from every other junky martial arts movie out there, and some of the transitions from scene to scene are just so incredibly lazy.  They do incorporate some of the stages, special attacks and "Fatalities" from the source so perhaps that's good enough for some....