Mortal Kombat Legacy II

I have been meaning to get to this for awhile, but have neglected today’s entry in my backlog for far too long and with today being the release day of Mortal Kombat 11 on PS4, Xbox One & Switch it seems only appropriate for my long overdue blog for 2013’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy II (trailer). For those that may not recall, this is the web series from director Kevin Tancharoen. He initially made an unofficial independent Mortal Kombat: ReBirth short in 2010 and accidentally clicked the ‘public’ option on YouTube when he meant to initially show it to a few colleagues. It instantly went viral and lead to Kevin meeting with Midway and Warner Bros. bigwigs that landed him a gig for the first Legacy web series in 2011. The sequel hit in 2013 and instead of releasing as weekly episodes like before, Warner released them all at once.

Click here for my take on the first season of Legacy. It had mostly standalone origin story shorts while the sequel sees a more cohesive story play out, and watching all the episodes back-to-back in one 92 minute sitting has a more movie-like experience to it. In Legacy II we have more origin stories interspersed with scenes of the cKombatants arriving and encountering each other in Outworld. The signature character in the sequel season is Liu Kang (Brian Tee) who goes off the deep end after losing a loved one and goes on a terror in a couple of standout scenes in a intense karaoke bar duel and dominating Johnny Cage (Casper Van Dien) and Stryker (Eric Jacobus) in Outworld.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero are also featured periodically this season with their long clan rivalry being shown through flashbacks before ultimately coming to blows with a signature fatality to finish one off. In my childhood I ate up the MK lore for Scorpion (Ian Anthony Dale) and Sub-Zero (Eric Steinberg) in the arcade attract screen bios and even the ancient Blood & Thunder and Battlewave Malibu comics series. Seeing their fabled squabbles and history play out in live action was a delight! Kenshi (Dan Southworth) and Ermac (Kim Do Nguyen) have a fascinating origin tale that reveals how Kenshi’s trademark blindfold came to be and seeing them have their final confrontation had a convincing payoff.

The ninja sisters of Kitana (Samantha Jo) and Mileena (Michelle Lee) continue their off and on rivalry that comes to a boil after an encounter with Johnny Cage. There are several other smaller appearances from the extensive MK cast of memorable fighters, but I will round off the cast highlight by saying it was insanely wicked to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa return to the role of Shang Tsung after an 18 year absence from the character from the original MK film. Props to see WB Games bring Tagawa back again to use in the new Mortal Kombat 11 game too.

While you can pick and choose which episodes to watch at your own leisure from the web series, I highly recommend doing it in one sitting so that way Legacy II plays out like a whole movie. I like how they kept bouncing back and forth from origin story to modern day in Outworld and it brought back memories of how Lost did their flashbacks….just without the over-the-top gore brought on by MK’s signature fatalities. The choreography of the fights is more involved and gripping in the second season, and the special effects have more pop too with Ermac especially having some flashy attacks.

My only qualm is while the story on the back of the BluRay boasts how the tournament has begun and the early story beats here countdown the days until the tournament, once all the fighters are on the island Shang Tsung never declares any rules or have any official arenas for the fighters to officially square off in like they did in the film and in other fighting game movies like Tekken and Dead or Alive. Here characters kind of bump into each other and exchange awkward eye contact which is impetus enough for them to start battling until the death, which is ok I guess because it leads to some gruesome fights, but part of me cannot help but get the feeling that it comes off as tacky.

While the first Legacy BluRay had several behind-the-scenes bonus features, the second season BluRay has nothing aside from a trailer. The second season concludes saying the web series will return, but unfortunately that was not the case. Kevin Tancharoen was suppose to return to direct season three of Legacy and a reboot film, but left before filming begun to pursue other opportunities and we never heard officially of the web series and reboot film again. I would have loved a third Legacy season or reboot film, but I get a feeling it is not meant to be. Instead, the second season of Legacy and the story mode cinemas from the latest three Mortal Kombat games do an excellent job at holding us over. Speaking of which, happy Mortal Monday Mortal Kombat 11 Day everyone!

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
2016-17 TV Season Recap
2017-18 TV Season Recap
Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series
Baseball: A Ken Burns series
Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1
OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Roseanne – Seasons 1-9
Seinfeld Final Season
Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television
The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series
X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5