Veteran Mortal Kombat fans not thrilled with this year’s feature-length reboot will soon have easy access to the cult-favorite original.
Starting next month, director Paul W. S. Anderson’s 1995 adaptation, which stars Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade respectively, will be taking up residence on Netflix for the foreseeable future. Given that the platform regularly rotates films in and out of availability for numerous reasons, there’s no telling how long the OG MK movie will be sticking around for, so we’d recommend getting your fill of Earthrealm’s war against Outworld as soon as possible.
While corny and technically aged by today’s standards, Anderson’s script is arguably much more loyal to NetherRealm’s source material than Simon McQuoid’s recent adaptation, a surprising realization in itself, considering the former would later go on to direct a six-part live-action Resident Evil series with only tenuous ties to Capcom’s video game franchise of the same name.
Regardless of preference, however, both versions of the story contain some excellently choreographed fight sequences and plenty of gore, though it’s the younger of the two to come out ahead in the latter department, having received an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association (MPA) prior to its release in theaters and on HBO Max. McQuoid, as well as producers James Wan and Todd Garner stated numerous times in interviews that the project skirted the boundary between R and NC-17, the latter of which would naturally have drastically affected ticket sales.
Mortal Kombat will be available on Netflix from July 1st and serves as the perfect appetizer for a newly-announced animated movie, Battle of the Realms, scheduled for release later this summer. See here for all the details.
