Mortal Kombat: Legacy Episode 1 Review

Click on the video above for a video review of the full Mortal Kombat Rebirth/Legacy webseries featuring LaughingMan, CineMax, and *STAR*

So it's been almost a week after the original release of the first episode of the long-anticipated hit web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a terrible procrastinator...), however, I still can't decide whether I liked the bloody thing or not! On one hand, it's quite a fascinating project with strong cast of actors, an interesting story and engrossing fight scenes, but, on the other, it's not fucking Rebirth!

Mortal Kombat: Legacy is by no means a failure, but it still has a long way to go if it ever hopes to achieve the same level of greatness as Rebirth

For those unaware, last year, on the 19th of April, the entire world became witness to a short eight minute fan film that would soon change history forever (not really, of course, but hush, I'm trying to set up an atmosphere here!) That film was Mortal Kombat: Rebirth - a bold new project by director Kevin Tancharoen that flabbergasted millions of viewers world wide by not only being the first genuinely good adaptation of everyone's beloved controversial fighting game series since the the original release of the first movie way back in 1995, but also by being a completely new, never before seen gritty and realistic take on the series that managed to transform something as unsophisticated and juvenile as Mortal Kombat into a complex story-driven psychological thriller/action film that managed to impress even such complete irredeemable cynics like myself (which is by no means an easy task, mind, so just imagine how freaking awesome Rebirth must've been to pull off something like that!) 

Needless to say, all of us Rebirth fans couldn't have been more enraptured when it was officially announced that our beloved short film would not only be adapted into a full-time live action series but also would be distributed through the 'Net (meaning that Kevin Tancharoen wouldn't have to worry about sponsors, ratings and all that other exasperating bullshit a creative and aspiring showrunner must go through to get his show up and running on TV), and so me and my pals here on Cheshire Cat Studios have basically spent the last couple of months breathlessly yammering and speculating about the future possibilities of the series, all in anticipation of the long-awaited debut of the first episode! The result? Meh...

Hey, don't look at me! It's not my problem your show didn't live up to its hype...

Oh, mind you, it was by no means bad! I mean, sure, some of the dialogue and acting was a bit cheesy, if not even a little bit forced, but at least the fight scenes were compelling enough and all the action was tense enough to make your gonads to self-explode, so what more do you want, right?

Wrong!

You see, the reason why I liked Rebirth so much was because of how it managed to masterfully mesh atmosphere and action, with the fight scenes (some really neat fight scenes, mind) being there to merely progress the story or elaborate on some of the aspects of the world of Mortal Kombat. Unfortunately, it seems like this time Kevin Tancharoen in his eternal wisdom decided to go the other way around with Legacy, so now it's basically Mrs. Story and Madame Atmosphere's turn to quietly sit in the corner, while Mr. Action and Lord Fight Scenes run around the place, beating the ever loving crap out of each other... This, of course, wouldn't have been that big of a problem if Legacy, as well as its predecessor Rebirth, wasn't positioned as a complex story-driven psychological thriller/action film!