The Mortal Kombat movie has gotten a new rating ahead of its premiere in theaters and on HBO Max this month. Directed by Simon McQuoid and described as a faithful adaptation to the video games, the new film had originally been given a hard R-rating for its bloody violence with the “fatalities” from the game series represented in the film.
Now, last-minute reshoots ordered by Warner Bros. have drastically altered what fans will see when Mortal Kombat premieres. Concerns that the film may have been too violent prompted a new creative direction to make the adaptation much more family-friendly, and as a result, all of the film’s fatality sequences have been removed.
In an effort to keep the Mortal Kombat movie in line with the games, reshoots will add new scenes to each of these sequences, but instead of fighting their opponents to the death, competitors will instead kill them with kindness by doing something very nice for the defeated fighter. This is a reference to the special “Friendships” that players can do in some of the video games.
“I understand that some MK fans will be disappointed that the violence had to go, but we feel that replacing the Fatalities with Friendships is still a fantastic way of acknowledging the source material,” director Simon McQuoid said of the new decision on the Bob Saget’s Here For You podcast.
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Some of the new scenes that have been digitally added into Mortal Kombat include Sub-Zero building a snowman for Scorpion, Liu Kang doing a disco dance for Mileena, and Kung Lao turning his hat into a train set to entertain the other fighters. McQuoid has also revealed that Kano is turned into a baby at some point in the movie as well, representing the “Babalities” from the video games.
For those preferring to see the original, ultra-violent, excessively bloody, and R-rated version of the film, the good news is that this article is entirely fictional. Mortal Kombat will premiere on April 23, 2021, in all its bloody gory. Happy April Fools’ Day!
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