I went to see this in the theater, all excited. I knew that Christopher Lambert was in it, I liked him from "Highlander" and "Fortress." I knew that it was going to have good fights. I also knew that movies based on video games suck. But, I figured, hey, two out of three ain't bad. Well, let me tell you, it is bad. Christopher Lambert must have had about 20 total minutes of screentime as electricity man "Rayden," and it was always to deliver some Yoda-esque line that was simply common sense stated in a confusing manner. Somewhere along the lines of, "Evil is bad. Killing is bad. Friends are good. Brush your teeth every day."

This are only a sample of the just plain ridiculous dialogue in this movie. An exchange between our hero, Lui Kang (a Jason Scott Lee wannabe) and the evil sorcerer dude went something like this:

Lui Kang: "You killed my brother. You will die."

Sorcerer: "No, it is you who will die."

It was good to see this in the theater, because now I know the power of several hundred people groaning in unison.

Another major problem I had was the general idiocy of each character. Especially Kane. He had this ludicrously fake red and silver plastic eye-patch on, and the movie makers decided that he should be Australian. It didn't work. Goro looked like what he was, an eighteen inch clay miniature done with stop motion. He sounded like David Letterman's ultimate dumb guy. They should have just renamed him "Kenny."

Jax had a two minute cameo helping out Ultimate Loner Woman. Then there's Johnny Cage, the bad martial arts actor. He is a smarmy jerk that just seems like he wants to cry, "I can act! Really, I can! Watch: 'To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler...' See?" Sub-Zero and Scorpion are just minions of the evil sorcerer dude and get killed rather quickly.

Supposedly all these people are the greatest fighters in the world. So who should be cast? What about Chow Yun Fat? Or Jackie Chan? Maybe Jean-Claude Van Damme? No? Well then, let's get an egotistical idiot actor, a Jason Scott Lee clone, a poor excuse of an Australian, a prissy hardcase cop, an electric highlander, and a bunch of extras that will die in the first five minutes that couldn't rip apart a Bounty paper towel. All right, let's start filming!

The story has serious issues. This tournament is all about whether the Earth will be conquered or not. The sorcerer dude holds a tournament with the goodguys, which is strange enough, but in one scene, he is seen on Earth before the fights begin. If he can come to earth, why does he have to have these fights? Why not just bring his minions and enslave humanity? Then there wouldn't be a movie. And we all know how horrible that would be.