Kano Wins
“Opening text speaks of a tournament that never happens because Mortal Kombat isn’t interested in coherence necessarily, so much as kooky fan service and surprisingly well choreographed brawls, settled when someone loses a body part in a blood shower. Those first acts power through thanks to the brashly offensive Kano (Josh Lawson) who never employs a verbal filter. He’s hilarious though, a masculine stereotype doomed to fail and the comeuppance is pure satisfaction.”
Read our full Mortal Kombat review for more
Video
A hefty HDR pass saves Mortal Kombat from a relatively mundane output. Upscaled, the resolution whimpers along, delivering softened imagery and moderate detail. It’s unspectacular in texture, and in that regard, a modest boost over the Blu-ray. However, highlights sport power, emboldening things like Raiden’s lightning or even modest screen elements like shop lights in the MMA gym. That difference is mammoth, and darker scenes like the Goro brawl reach impeccable, dense blacks.
A clean encode handles fast action without problems. Digital cinematography suffers little to absolutely no noise. Muted color avoids blooming primaries, staying reserved in palette choices. Color density draws notice though, hammering blues and golds spectacularly well. Flesh tones follow the tone and mood.
Audio
An absolutely pounding score is just one part of a mammoth Dolby Atmos track. Being set in a fantastical realm, punches and kicks land with an aural equivalent of cannon fire. Goro’s footsteps can compete against the brilliance of Warner’s Godzilla vs Kong, and that’s as high as praise goes for bass. Depth, power, and weight all hit reference grade, utilizing the lowest tones on the regular.
Intense discrete channel utilization pushes the fights around the soundstage. Reptile’s attack is dazzling stuff, the creature scurrying about a house. Attacks pass in every direction, the heights seeing use too. Nitara’s brief appearance later is just as great. Sub-Zero’s ice cracks all around, stereos vividly active, just like the rears. It’s generous, and a home theater spectacle.
Extras
Everything resides on the Blu-ray. Four deleted scenes first, totaling four minutes. A making-of charts the franchise history through the cast, then production, and runs 21-minutes. Key characters are explored for 16-minutes, generally in EPK form. Nine minutes explore the fight choreography. A showcase of easter eggs lasts four minutes. Seven scene breakdowns come together in 11-minutes.
Mortal Kombat (2021)
-
Video
-
Audio
-
Extras
Movie
While not memorable, Mortal Kombat successfully channels the videogame series and its violence, along with a movie-stealing performance by Josh Lawson.
User Review
( vote)The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 65 full resolution uncompressed 4K screen shots grabbed directly from the UHD:
Matt Paprocki
Matt Paprocki has critiqued home media and video games for 20 years across outlets like Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, Forbes, IGN, Playboy, Polygon, Ars, and others. His current passion project is the technically minded DoBlu.com. You can read Matt's body of work via his personal WordPress blog, and follow him on Twitter @Matt_Paprocki.