{"id":50366,"date":"2026-05-07T00:18:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=50366"},"modified":"2026-05-07T00:18:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:18:41","slug":"review-mortal-kombat-ii-movie-review-karl-urban-stars-in-brainless-outdated-action-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=50366","title":{"rendered":"Review | Mortal Kombat II movie review: Karl Urban stars in brainless, outdated action sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.i-scmp.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1280x720\/public\/d8\/images\/canvas\/2026\/05\/06\/d565f6d9-4d7e-4d77-afa7-83409a61f8c2_fb30ffe8.jpg?itok=tMmA8h-3&amp;v=1778051468\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\"><strong data-qa=\"ContentSchemaRender-defaultRenderMapFunctions-Component\" class=\"css-1mniedq ex3nmsa17\">2\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In <em data-qa=\"ContentSchemaRender-defaultRenderMapFunctions-Component\" class=\"css-1mniedq ex3nmsa15\">Mortal Kombat II<\/em>, action star turned reluctant hero Johnny Cage has a moment of self-reflection. Calling himself a dinosaur, he remarks that doing a bunch of karate poses \u201cwent out in the 90s\u201d.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">You may well feel the same about this latest take on the popular video game franchise, in which players fight to the (usually grisly) death. This tedium feels 30 years out of date.<\/p>\n<div datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1xdhyk6 ec74h0k0\">Following two little-liked movies that came out in the 1990s, the 2021 film <span data-qa=\"Component-Text\" class=\"css-0 ef9u0v00\"><em data-qa=\"ContentSchemaRender-defaultRenderMapFunctions-Component\" class=\"css-1mniedq ex3nmsa15\">Mortal Kombat<\/em><\/span> rebooted the franchise, with director Simon McQuoid steering it to a healthy US$84.4 million box office.<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">While the visual effects were naturally better than those of its predecessors, the laboured plot could not disguise the fact that it was little more than an excuse to spirit audiences from one ultra-violent duel to the next.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/lifestyle\/entertainment\/article\/3352583\/mortal-kombat-ii-movie-review-karl-urban-stars-brainless-outdated-action-sequel?utm_source=rss_feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2\/5 stars In Mortal Kombat II, action star turned reluctant hero Johnny Cage has a moment of self-reflection. Calling himself a dinosaur, he remarks that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[389,22153,21668,3153,3152,1543,14152,28,2506,4424,383],"class_list":["post-50366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-action","tag-brainless","tag-karl","tag-kombat","tag-mortal","tag-movie","tag-outdated","tag-review","tag-sequel","tag-stars","tag-urban","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}