Now that he’s scored the job, filmmaker Kevin Tancharoen says he plans to bring the dark, gritty and more realistic tone he demonstrated in his “Mortal Kombat” short film and web series to the upcoming feature film reboot.
The director tells The Los Angeles Times that “my sensibilities lean more toward realism as opposed to the more mythological stuff that Mortal Kombat automatically has. You can expect more of that instinct in the feature version. It will be more realistic and gritty than the last two movies, but also a very big story.”
While the tone will drop the mystical, it will also ramp up the blood – “What took most people by surprise with my shorts, I think, is that you never would think of putting Mortal Kombat in a realistic setting. But I believe it’s a fighting game and it’s meant for that purpose… I want to do it rated R and all the discussions have been for it to be rated R. I want it to be bloody, but in a natural sense and not gratuitous, crazy spurting pools of blood. That takes it to a different level of camp.”
The story will be kept straightforward – It’s like a rule in video games that fighting games have to have extremely convoluted stories. It’s strange, because no one really cares. They just want good fighting mechanics… We’re very adamant that you don’t have to be a fan of the games to understand what’s happening in the movie. It will be an origin story that you can understand completely from the film. Over nine games, the mythology has gotten quite complicated.”
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