It’s often said as an excuse for less-than-great initial reviews that something isn’t made for critics, it’s made “for the fans.” But there is one franchise where that has been proven true twice now: Mortal Kombat, where Mortal Kombat 2 arrives this weekend and is looking to do pretty well at the box office.
This time around, Mortal Kombat 2 has avoided a “rotten” Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, a 65%, but that’s far below the “verified hot” 89% from audiences. It’s almost identical to the split for the original Mortal Kombat, 55% to 85%. The 1995 version…had both fans and critics agreeing it wasn’t great (44% and 58%).
Mortal Kombat 2 adds more key characters to the franchise, like Johnny Cage and Kitana, and less heavily (far less heavily) on original ones like Cole Young. It has kept the blood and gore and given fans the fights they wanted, while maintaining a coherent story. But some involved with the film are still taking shots at some of the negative critics. This was producer Todd Garner on Twitter this past week:
“Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat. One reviewer was mad that a guy ‘had a laser eye!’ Why the f*** do we still allow people that don’t have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.”
It’s a little odd that you’d bother posting this when critic reviews are overall positive and the movie is tracking well. And I also don’t think it’s the case that everyone who reviews a movie has to be a fan or intimately knowledgeable of the source material. I wouldn’t have needed Roger Ebert to have played every Sonic game to review those movies, for instance. Things still have to work…as movies. For some critics, this hasn’t. For most, especially fans, it has.
As it stands, Mortal Kombat 2 has already made $5.2 million in previews and may make $40-45 million this weekend, $80 million globally, according to some estimates, a very solid performance for a bloodbath of an R-rated feature. Those figures would double the domestic opening of the first movie, which grossed $23 million in its initial weekend and made only $84 million worldwide. If Mortal Kombat 2 is making $80 million globally its first weekend, you can see how it’s going to sail well past that, and if it got a sequel greenlit before, chances are it’ll happen again.
One interesting test coming up will be the more comedic, cartoony Street Fighter movie that has been friendly (sometimes less friendly) rivals with the Mortal Kombat krew ahead of this release. That film is out October 16, 2026, so it will be a while yet until we see how it compares. I predict it does pretty well. And I can already see Mortal Kombat 2 here is going to do great.
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