Mortal Kombat’s Heightened Violence Is Vital to Its Authenticity

Mortal Kombat producer Todd Garner reveals the film was always intended to be rated R to stay honest with the video game source material.

If there’s one thing that the Mortal Kombat franchise is known for, it’s the fighting game series’ penchant for gory violence as warriors from different worlds battle in a lethal martial arts tournament. As such, the filmmakers felt the more mature rating was the only realistic way to live up to the franchise’s expectation for bloody carnage while also employing a diverse cast to stay true to the source material, receiving full support from the studio.

While the original 1995 film adaptation and its 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation were both rated PG-13, producers Todd Garner and James Wan always saw their cinematic reboot as being rated R. “I just couldn’t see a world where this was PG-13, it just didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel authentic. The R rating, the diverse cast, hiring martial artists, telling the story in an authentic way all led to the decisions that we made,” Garner explained in a roundtable interview attended by CBR. “James and I talked about it and were like ‘It’s got to have an R rating, it’s Mortal Kombat!’ You see these fatalities in the game, it’s lightyears ahead of what we could do with the MPAA but this is the expectation that’s been built into the fanbase. It’s diverse world, there’s not that many white characters, so you’ve got to be true to the canon; you can’t shortchange the characters in terms of ethnicity and who they are. We started from that place, that was sort of an agreement in the beginning that we made that if we’re going to making this, let’s do it right and honestly or don’t do it.”

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While the film doesn’t pull its punches in terms of graphic on-screen violence, there was never any serious concern from the filmmakers that the movie would push the bar too far with the MPAA to receive an NC-17 rating. Garner noted this was because of the intent behind the violence depicted in the film and consciously not trying to push gore simply for the sake of being overly gruesome.

“There’s buckets of blood and there’s crazy shit that happens in this movie,” Garner confirmed. “We did everything we wanted and [the MPAA] didn’t push back because we didn’t set out to piss them off.”

Directed by Simon McQuoid and produced by James Wan, Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson “Jax” Bridges, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han and Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Matilda Kimber as Emily Young and Laura Brent as Allison Young. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max April 16.

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About The Author Sam Stone (6981 Articles Published)

Sam Stone is a 10th level pop culture guru living just outside of Washington, DC who knows an unreasonable amount about The Beatles. You can follow him on Twitter @samstoneshow and ask him about Nintendo, pop punk, and Star Trek.

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