There is a well-known “curse” that plagues movie adaptations of video games. Either because Hollywood didn’t understand video games, or because video games just didn’t have a story worth telling beyond the controller, movies based on games have long been doomed for the bargain DVD bin. The last few years have seen the curse broken in pretty okay blockbusters, like Rampage (2018), Tomb Raider (2018), Detective Pikachu (2019), and this year’s Sonic the Hedgehog. But the curse was actually broken long ago — in 1995.
Mortal Kombat, the kult klassic movie based on the red-hot arcade hit of the 1990s, remains one of the best movie adaptations of a video game even 25 years later. And it’s the movie you need to watch before it leaves Netflix on September 30.
In Mortal Kombat, three fighters — a Shaolin monk, a special forces agent, and a Hollywood action star — represent Earth in an…
