Last week, we chose to withhold full judgment until Mortal Kombat: Legacy's two-part episode focused on Kitana and Mileena reached its full conclusion. We are now ready to deliver that judgment. Someone deserves Johnny Cage's nut punch for these last two episodes.
First of all, we spend almost a minute with a recap of the last episode as if we had been punched in the head hard enough to forget it. This brings the total running time of the actual episode down somewhere around the five minute mark. When last we left... you know what? No. We're not recapping it for you. Twin ninja girls are killing people, and one is actually good person - though still murdering lots of people, and the other is evil because she has bad teeth. That's all the "plot" we're bothering with this time.
Kevin Tancharoen continues his bizarre choice of half-animation and half-live action film making with the second part of this episode, but it literally appears as if he couldn't be bothered to actually animate half of the sequences. On top of that, even when the animated sequences are supposed to be representing the same scene that we then cut away to live shots with, the characters are wearing vastly different outfits. Kitana and Mileena only sport their masks and hooker wear in sketch form, and then appear in relatively normal clothes literally a second later.
A graver sin is the portrayal of the girl's signature weapons, Mileena's sai and Kitana's bladed fans. In the animated sequences, these are used with great abandon. However, in the one shot that the real-life actresses actually get to hold these iconic weapons, Kitana is literally holding paper fan that can only have come from a street vendor on Harwin.
Come on, Tancharoen. You built Kano's cybernetic eye and most of Cyrax's cyborg body for the first two episodes. You couldn't give the poor girl a metal fan? She looks embarrassed to be there.
This episode has one, and only one, saving grace. Kitana and Mileena have an exhibition fight sequence for the pleasure of their adopted father Shao Khan. The girls, portrayed by Samantha Tjhia and Jolene Tran respectively, put on what actually may be the best and most brutal fight we've seen in the series. Here at last is some of the classic kung fu movie fighting that inspired the whole series in the first place.
And it is absolutely brutal. The girls pull no punches with each other, and you almost get the feeling the director told them only the winner would get paid. There are a few good spins and cartwheels for garnish, as well as one sweet air kick that looks like it came straight out of the game, but mostly it is two very good martial artists beating the absolute piss out of each other.
However, it is way too short. It's over almost as quickly as it begins since the fight's sole purpose is just to illustrate the fact that the girls don't really get along. It's important that we advance plot of a fighting game rather than actually fighting after all.
We apologize for the brief length of this review, but in all honesty we just don't have much to say about it that wasn't said in our review of the first part. Tancharoen is clearly using this switch-up of styles and vision to see how fans will react should he use it as the basis of the rumored theatrical release. To that we say, "Quit it." You started out by changing all the rules. Don't lose that.
Be sure to check out our reviews of previous episodes.
