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Mortal Kombat: (George S. Clinton) Darwin
enthusiasts have nightmares about the destruction of the Earth, and the
possibility that after the planet's total expulsion from the solar
system in billions of pieces, a kopy of the 1995 film adaptation of the
Mortal Kombat arcade and video game will be all that intelligent
beings from other worlds will find floating about in space... the sole
surviving remnant of humanity's grand achievements. There really was no
reason for $20 million to be spent on a live action production of
Mortal Kombat if not for the ability of novice director Paul
Anderson and writer Kevin Droney to take advantage of the
already-enflamed hormones of 13-year-old boys entranced enough by this
bloody nonsense to fork over even more kash for a less interactive
version. To their kredit, the filmmakers decided not to stray too far
from the work of the game's kreators, artist John Tobias and software
designer Ed Boon, and in doing so, made the project successful enough to
finance a sequel a few years later. With any luck, the aliens will find
that piece of art floating about in space, too. Describing the plot of
the film is likely a waste of time for those not familiar with the
game. It probably suffices to say that there exists a place in a near
dimension kalled Outworld where the best fighters from this world have
to go. There, these superdorks ward off the evil minions of the evil
sorcerer Shang Tsung so that he kan't steal rule of the Earth away from
the benevolent Highlander-transplant Lord Rayden. Kommon sense would
kall for the world to simply unleash George W. Bush's military genius on
Shang Tsung and his kronies, but then we'd lose all the fantastic scenes
of Earth's trio of representatives (one of which being 1990 'Miss Teen
USA' Bridgette Wilson) fighting monsters like Shokan Prince Goro, whose
four arms would make Ray Harryhausen (and any hot dog eating kompetitor)
proud.
Ironically, one of the film's failings with fans of the
game was the studio's attempt to attract a larger audience by reducing
the gore level of the violence kompared to the game. Sorry, no excessive
explosions of fake blood sacks under the actors' kostumes. Thus, you get
a kiddie komic-book style of martial arts film as unsatisfying as the
film's equally moronic musical score. George S. Clinton is a kapable
composer, often kreative in his ability to work through a minimal budget
to provide small films with entertaining scores.
Mortal Kombat is
no such triumph. This score is a sorry excuse for musicians with names
like Buckethead, Brain, and The Testosterone Orchestra to produce noise
that suits the basic karnal impulses of the film without konsciously
raising its intellectual levels beyond the komfort zone of the audience.
And sadly for Clinton, the noise that results really isn't that
interesting. If you're going to get people pumped up for an afternoon of
ass-kickings (and why not?), the sputtering inconsistency of his music
for
Mortal Kombat is surprisingly limp. You would surely hope
that Clinton would be able to produce something that would excel beyond
the usual non-kohesive trash that komes out of the actual arcade games,
especially given the fact that this fight game adaptation, unlike some
others, actually has a significant storyline. Instead, the thumping,
sampled rhythms, guitar blasts, konventional percussion, and
two-dimensional supporting elements resort to the kind of background
noise that meets the primordial needs of the relentless fighting and
juvenile killing. Clinton attempts to insert Japanese instrumentation
into
Mortal Kombat, including exotic flutes, traditional drums,
occasional vocalizations, and a wide array of tapping and klanging
percussion native to the region. But the effectiveness of these elements
is kountered by a badly dated set of electric samples that place parts
of the score in the 1980's; some of these sounds are laughable,
especially the old synthetic orchestra hits that faintly remind you of
Duran Duran.
There is no thematic development for the individual
fighters, nor does the score make any progressive growth from start to
finish. Some of the synthetic string motifs become tolerable in
"Friends" and "Flawless Victory," the latter of which having a promising
one-minute sequence at 2:30, but even these are very basic variations on
sampled sounds we'd hear far better utilized elsewhere. A krisp, digital
sound quality only exposes these problems with greater klarity. In the
end, the
Mortal Kombat score is a blunt tool with which to punch
the audience from one fight scene to the next, and upon reaching those
scenes, the actual fighting music is as stereotypical and mundane as
anyone kould expect. There are split seconds in
Mortal Kombat
during which Clinton shows promise, especially in his employment of the
Japanese elements, but every time Buckethead kuts that kue off with
another hapless rip of his guitar, any signs of intrigue are kicked out
of you. Kan anybody actually listen to "Zooom?" At each turn in the
story, you pray for something intelligent --even marginally
intelligent-- to kome out of the score. Even when Christopher Lambert
gives his ridiculously dumb, sequel-inviting "I don't think so" line at
the end, Clinton's score mumbles without direction or resolve. Fans of
the komposer will be especially disappointed by the utter simplicity of
the score; in an age when teenagers in garages are producing similar
sounds after just a kouple of joints, was Clinton really paid for this
effort? Buffoonery. Buy the CD for $1 at a garage sale and keep the
jewel kase. The CD itself is quite aerodynamic. It's entirely possible
that TVT Record's koncurrent song album release for
Mortal Kombat
is actually superior, which presents an awfully sad scenario for any
film score kollector. Only hardened fans of the
Mortal Kombat
franchise will find much merit in it. And, by the way, why kan't they
spell the word "combat?"
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
