This is something that's been bothering me ever since Mortal Kombat really came into its own on 3D and I think in finally talking about it with people I figured out why.
A pre-emptive clarification to folks who aren't going to read my OP yet again that I understand Mortal Kombat is not to be taken seriously. The depravity of the violence is so physically impossible and so punctuated by visual and auditory gags at every turn that it all ceases to really be morally concerning. I mean hell, my mom played it back when her hands were good; who cares, right?
But even then ever since X-Ray moves came into the picture and the rendering of bone and blood got photorealistic I couldn't help but always cock my head and even cringe at the whole show. I'd habitually joke with friends at the character reveal trailers for 11 that "Alright, there has to be a limit." And I was wondering whether or not this was it. "Am I getting...old?!" Am I becoming the enemy I fought in my teens; an old fuddy-duddy with conservative sensibilities towards insensitive media?! Am I fated to be a product of my time?! Oh no!
But no, I don't think so (yet). While Ermac's intestinal Fatality in the last one makes me gag I don't really have this drive to censor Mortal Kombat. Indeed, I was mad when the DC crossover neutered it. I instead have a drive to fix it for the betterment of humanity. The problem?
The effects of the violence are inconsistent and it's confusing to me.
Yes, I expect my gore-fests to be held to the highest of standards. Don't you just throw any ol' murder spree at me.
Here's what I mean. The old Mortal Kombat games had a distinctive line between normal damage-dealing moves and the actual Fatalities. Every normal or special would either knock a character into the air, cause them to stumble backwards, stand there dizzy, or fall over spread eagle like a Home Alone character. Some blood would splatter too of course. Gotta have the blood. It didn't actually matter what the move was or whether weapons were involved. What mattered was the effect on the character. A stumble or a fall? Obviously not fatal.
Then, there was the Fatality. The victor approaches the victim and suddenly something different happens. They light on fire, or get decapitated, or they're plunged into a spike pit, or they blow up. It's something really flashy and different from the rest of the normal moves in part because of the effect on the body. Like...that fool is dead. Like... dead dead. Yeah, I know, an uppercut that sends you two stories upwards should in reality just decapitate you instead, but...their skin is gone. They're dead. Holy crap.
In short, old school Mortal Kombat was consistent, and it contextualized the violence better by having a distinct line between what was and wasn't fatal through the consequences on the characters.
Now? Who needs even that level of internal logical when you've got radical computer-generated imagery son! Let's send this spear through this character's eye and skull as a basic special in the middle of the fight! But then let's have a Fatality that...sends something through a character's eye and then...they die from it? Wait... what?
Why? What's the difference? Why did this flashy move not kill them but this one did?
There's this sort of Uncanny Valley-ness to the whole thing as a result and it doesn't work as well to me. Originally I thought it was because of the disparity between the realism of the gore and the impossibility of the moves themselves. Now, that kind of weirds me out too, not so much in a pearl-clutching sense but rather in the fact that I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about a head getting sliced up in midair being simultaneously framed like a Renaissance painting. It's confusing and weird.
But no, that's not it. I lean towards being able to allow violence in this manner, but I think it loses its kick, or even becomes stupid, when honestly the X-Ray moves are kind of the same thing?.... I mean, I lightly bruised my ribs before from capoeira practice and couldn't move easily. You zoom in with an X-Ray camera breaking literally all of the ribs in multiple places and expect me to believe the character is going to get up ready to keep going, especially when I know 30 seconds later that character is going to go through some sort of ridiculous set of moves and die from it that time?
New school Mortal Kombat has less consistency in regards to what will and won't kill the characters because it relegates flashy, cringe-inducing moves to both mid-game specials and game-ending Fatalities while using a more photorealistic visual style that naturally invites a higher bar of suspension of disbelief, thus causing a dissonance in how the violence is supposed to work within the universe.
My fix? Just... take out X-Ray moves I guess (will never happen). Or have the X-Ray moves actually gimp a player for a little bit (also will never happen, and will cause rage a la Smash Bros. tripping). Granted, this is all a topic about what is ultimately a little issue in the grand scheme. But yeah, I wrote all this to tell y'all Mortal Kombat finally became dumb to me. Not because it was ever particularly intelligent or high brow. But because, either due to technological limitations, conscious effort, or both, it had a set of rules for its violence that were more clearly defined than they are now simply because the developers are more in love with the ability to have higher graphical fidelity.
So yeah. Just had to get that one out.
Uh. I don't know how to end this, so uhm.... I'll just say Jax is the best!
A pre-emptive clarification to folks who aren't going to read my OP yet again that I understand Mortal Kombat is not to be taken seriously. The depravity of the violence is so physically impossible and so punctuated by visual and auditory gags at every turn that it all ceases to really be morally concerning. I mean hell, my mom played it back when her hands were good; who cares, right?
But even then ever since X-Ray moves came into the picture and the rendering of bone and blood got photorealistic I couldn't help but always cock my head and even cringe at the whole show. I'd habitually joke with friends at the character reveal trailers for 11 that "Alright, there has to be a limit." And I was wondering whether or not this was it. "Am I getting...old?!" Am I becoming the enemy I fought in my teens; an old fuddy-duddy with conservative sensibilities towards insensitive media?! Am I fated to be a product of my time?! Oh no!
But no, I don't think so (yet). While Ermac's intestinal Fatality in the last one makes me gag I don't really have this drive to censor Mortal Kombat. Indeed, I was mad when the DC crossover neutered it. I instead have a drive to fix it for the betterment of humanity. The problem?
The effects of the violence are inconsistent and it's confusing to me.
Yes, I expect my gore-fests to be held to the highest of standards. Don't you just throw any ol' murder spree at me.
Here's what I mean. The old Mortal Kombat games had a distinctive line between normal damage-dealing moves and the actual Fatalities. Every normal or special would either knock a character into the air, cause them to stumble backwards, stand there dizzy, or fall over spread eagle like a Home Alone character. Some blood would splatter too of course. Gotta have the blood. It didn't actually matter what the move was or whether weapons were involved. What mattered was the effect on the character. A stumble or a fall? Obviously not fatal.
Then, there was the Fatality. The victor approaches the victim and suddenly something different happens. They light on fire, or get decapitated, or they're plunged into a spike pit, or they blow up. It's something really flashy and different from the rest of the normal moves in part because of the effect on the body. Like...that fool is dead. Like... dead dead. Yeah, I know, an uppercut that sends you two stories upwards should in reality just decapitate you instead, but...their skin is gone. They're dead. Holy crap.
In short, old school Mortal Kombat was consistent, and it contextualized the violence better by having a distinct line between what was and wasn't fatal through the consequences on the characters.
Now? Who needs even that level of internal logical when you've got radical computer-generated imagery son! Let's send this spear through this character's eye and skull as a basic special in the middle of the fight! But then let's have a Fatality that...sends something through a character's eye and then...they die from it? Wait... what?
Why? What's the difference? Why did this flashy move not kill them but this one did?
There's this sort of Uncanny Valley-ness to the whole thing as a result and it doesn't work as well to me. Originally I thought it was because of the disparity between the realism of the gore and the impossibility of the moves themselves. Now, that kind of weirds me out too, not so much in a pearl-clutching sense but rather in the fact that I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about a head getting sliced up in midair being simultaneously framed like a Renaissance painting. It's confusing and weird.
But no, that's not it. I lean towards being able to allow violence in this manner, but I think it loses its kick, or even becomes stupid, when honestly the X-Ray moves are kind of the same thing?.... I mean, I lightly bruised my ribs before from capoeira practice and couldn't move easily. You zoom in with an X-Ray camera breaking literally all of the ribs in multiple places and expect me to believe the character is going to get up ready to keep going, especially when I know 30 seconds later that character is going to go through some sort of ridiculous set of moves and die from it that time?
New school Mortal Kombat has less consistency in regards to what will and won't kill the characters because it relegates flashy, cringe-inducing moves to both mid-game specials and game-ending Fatalities while using a more photorealistic visual style that naturally invites a higher bar of suspension of disbelief, thus causing a dissonance in how the violence is supposed to work within the universe.
My fix? Just... take out X-Ray moves I guess (will never happen). Or have the X-Ray moves actually gimp a player for a little bit (also will never happen, and will cause rage a la Smash Bros. tripping). Granted, this is all a topic about what is ultimately a little issue in the grand scheme. But yeah, I wrote all this to tell y'all Mortal Kombat finally became dumb to me. Not because it was ever particularly intelligent or high brow. But because, either due to technological limitations, conscious effort, or both, it had a set of rules for its violence that were more clearly defined than they are now simply because the developers are more in love with the ability to have higher graphical fidelity.
So yeah. Just had to get that one out.
Uh. I don't know how to end this, so uhm.... I'll just say Jax is the best!
