Hi, I’m Matt.  Yeah, another Matt.  I’m not sure who keeps hiring all these guys named Matt, but I promise I’ll have a chat with Management about that.  In the meantime let me distract you from awkward introductions with this:

Wasn’t that awesome?  It’s been burning its way across the internet for a few days now.  Here’s some links to some interesting details about the production.

What you just watched is a bit like an audition tape to direct the next Mortal Kombat movie.  The director, Kevin Tancharoen, of the 2009 remake of Fame (and the luminous, visionary director behind The Pussycat Dolls Presents: The Search for the Next Doll) is bringing us his idea of how he would make a new Mortal Kombat movie.

To me the most interesting part of all this is not the fact that this was done for $7500, or that real actors and film crew donated their time, or that it’s got a gritty, slasher-flick aesthetic to it.  Those things are all awesome, but the part that blows me away is that this was essentially an audition tape.  Actually more than an audition tape it’s a shot across Warner Brothers’ proverbial bow.  This guy is saying to them:  “THIS is what Mortal Kombat is.  What now, bitches?”

On a gamer level, which is actually my so-called area of expertise and what I will generally be focusing my blog entries around, this short really works for me.  The main thing that bugged me about the previous Mortal Kombat films is that they ignore the fact that those games are bloody, gory, over-the-top violent.  Sure they worked in all the catch phrases, a fireball or two, but where was Goro ripping a guy’s arms off like a pissed off Wookie?  Where was Reptile spitting his face dissolving acid into some dude’s face?

But will a studio really have the balls to make a Hard R video game flick?  If so I really hope this is the one they’ll try it on.  Clearly the guy knows how to work with a limited budget and he shot this whole thing in two days.  Imagine what he could do with a month and $20 million?

I think we all know why video games don’t generally work well as films.   As works of interactive media they don’t usually translate especially well into a passive film format.  And the writers, wanting to put their own mark on the franchise always manage to completely rewrite the entire story to the point where those who played the game barely recognize it.  The end result: we end up with movies like Doom where clearly the writer was thinking, “Yeah, demons from hell has already been done, so we’ll go with evil monster viruses instead.  Oh and Sarge is the bad guy. ”

But Mortal Kombat has the kind of minimalistic framework that is appealing to writers and stands a chance at working on the big screen.  There’s a tournament.  There are these archetypal characters with tiny bits of back-story.  There’s fighting.  There’s lots and lots of blood.   But that’s it.  It’s not quite a blank canvas, but it’s not one that’s so fleshed out that the writers and directors and actors feel so trapped by what has come before that they feel the need to throw it all away and go a new (usually crappier) direction.

It’s a bit like writing poetry according to a prescribed form.  Something about being required to use certain syllabic patterns, rhyming schemes and line counts is actually easier and often produces a better result than simply writing in blank verse.

As long as you stay true to those thin shreds of story and have lots of awesome action, the gamers are going to be happy.  And because they are free of the restrictions of a dense, heavily developed plot, the writer and director can produce a work that actually works as a film whether you’ve played the game before or not.

Mortal Kombat Rebirth is exactly the kind of movie I wanted the first time around.  True to the basic essence of the characters and setting but fleshed out and realistic.   I’m not holding my breath that Warner Brothers will actually have the stones to produce something like this, but it renews my hope that a good video game movie adaption IS possible and maybe someday we’ll get to see one.  In the meantime you can find me watching Super Mario Bros. and crying into my beer.