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Review of Mortal Kombat (George S. Clinton)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... only if you are a die-hard enthusiast of the video game and all its screen adaptations.

Avoid it... if you expect even a minimal level of structural intelligence in your film scores.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

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?"  FRISBEE

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 43:33

• 1. A Taste of Things to Come (1:19) • 2. Liu vs. Sub-Zero* (2:13) • 3. It Has Begun (1:56) • 4. The Garden* (1:16) • 5. Goro vs. Art* (3:10) • 6. Banquet* (1:11) • 7. Liu vs. Katana (1:35) • 8. Liu's Dream* (1:24) • 9. Liu vs. Reptile* (1:40) • 10. Stairway (0:43) • 11. Goro Goro* (0:41) • 12. Kidnapped (1:21) • 13. Zooom (0:17)

• 14. Johnny vs. Scorpion* (1:20) • 15. Hand and Shadow* (2:40) • 16. Scorpion and Sub-Zero (0:50) • 17. Soul Snatchin' (0:37) • 18. On the Beach (1:24) • 19. Johnny Cage* (1:06) • 20. Goro Chase* (1:27) • 21. Evening Bells (0:55) • 22. Monks (0:56) • 23. Friends (1:51) • 24. Flawless Victory* (6:23) • 25. Farewell (1:10) • 26. Kids (1:18)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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