Mortal Kombat Legends:
Battle of the Realms
review by Bobby Blakey
In 1995 the popular video game Mortal Kombat hit theaters bringing all the action and fun to epic life. Since then there have been numerous new takes including a not so great sequel, a pretty cool web series and the recent big screen reboot. In 2020 they debuted the animated feature Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge that did well enough to get an all-new sequel Mortal Kombat: Battle of the Realms, but does it bring the same blood and fists that the first delivered or will it fail to qualify for the tournament?
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms follows our team of heroes shortly after the evenst of the previous film who are besieged by the enemy forces of Shao Kahn – forcing Raiden and his group of warriors into a deal to compete in a final Mortal Kombat that will determine the fate of the realms. Now our heroes must travel to Outworld in order to defend Earthrealm and, simultaneously, Scorpion must find the ancient Kamidogu before it's used to resurrect the One Being – which would mean certain destruction of all things in the universe. Time is short and the stakes are high in this action-packed continuation of the Mortal Kombat journey.
This latest chapter features returning cast including Joel McHale, Jennifer Carpenter, Jordan Rodrigues, Patrick Seitz, Artt Butler, Robin Atkin Downes, Dave B. Mitchell, Ikè Amadi, Grey Griffin and Fred Tatasciore as well as new additions including Matthew Mercer as Stryker & Smoke; Bayardo De Murguia as Sub-Zero/Kuai Liang; Matt Yang King as Kung Lao; Paul Nakauchi as Lin Kuei Grandmaster; Emily O’Brien as Jade and Debra Wilson as D’Vorah.
The previous entry brought more blood than expected and fully embraced its R rating and this next chapter is no different. Once again it is a ton of fun and not only expands the universe created in the first film it takes things to a bigger level. They have evolved the characters and their relationships while making sure that both new and old characters are never sage. All the voice
casting works and does a great job bringing these fan favorites to violent animated life.
This one steps outside of the straight up tournament quite a bit, but that is kind of the only way to handle it given the length of time they are supposed to be waiting until the next one. I loved seeing so many new popular characters get in on the action and everyone their time to shine. The animated is good with the same character style and look although they did update some of the uniforms to keep the evolution moving on them. I think I still love the first one more, but that is likely because of the focus on Scorpion and Sub-Zero and they both still get time to kick some ass here.
This is such a fun and great direction to the property and I hope we keep getting more chapters, but if not this one does wrap up the two film saga pretty well. In addition to the new film this release offers up bonus content including commentary, gag reel and featurettes on bringing the next chapter of the famed tournament to animated life once again. Enter the tournament and grab your copy of Mortal Kombat: Battle of the Realms available now on Digital, 4K Ultra, Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Bros Home Entertainment.