#MORTAL KOMBAT REALMS CHARACTERS MOVIE#
#MORTAL KOMBAT REALMS CHARACTERS SERIES#

Sounds pretty par for the course with Mortal Kombat.

Taking place in the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 universe, the heroes we see in the intro have come together to defend Earthrealm from invading Outworld forces. And yes, as the title of this piece says, Ron Perlman is, in fact, Kurtis Stryker. Frickin’ Leonardo from the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies is Liu Kang (Brian Tochi). You might be wondering, “Is that Clancy Brown as Raiden?” The answer is yes. It’s just another part of Mortal Kombat’s history, one that’s fun to talk about. “Don’t you miss being a woman,” she asks Kitana, at one point, because GIRL EPISODE or something, I guess.Īctually, there’s a lot about this cartoon that’s kinda mindboggling.Īnd I love it in a heartfelt “so bad, so cheesy, so astonishing that it’s laughably amazing” kinda way. Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm had no fatalities AND after-school special level messages that ranged from, “I was the fattest kid in school” insecurities with Jax, to Sonya lamenting not feeling like a woman because she was stuck fighting all the time with a bunch of men.

#MORTAL KOMBAT REALMS CHARACTERS MOVIE#

I don’t just mean that in a “they took out fatalities” kinda way, that was what the 90s movie did and I still have a soft spot for it. You can kinda see it with Street Fighter, after all, Chun-Li canonically works for Interpol, Guile is a part of the US Air Force, and Ryu and Ken trained under the same master.Īs an, again, child-friendly Saturday morning cartoon? Street Fighter was now a codename for a secret task force while Mortal Kombat added Defenders of the Realm to hone in on the “teamwork” aspect that, honestly, a LOT of 90s cartoons held onto. What makes these two cartoons interesting to me is how they BOTH operated on the basis of their game characters working as a team. What we sometimes fail to mention is the surge of networks coming up with animation blocks to show that, hey, they also had cool cartoons for the kids to watch.Įnter the USA Network’s Action Extreme Team, home of the American Street Fighter cartoon and Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. While this piece isn’t about Street Fighter, I think it’s worth checking out its intro so you know exactly what we’re getting into here.ĭon’t worry. When we talk about 90s cartoons we often site animated darlings like Batman the Animated Series, Gargoyles, THE Aladdin cartoon that Disney+ needs to go ahead and put on their streaming service, and the boom of anime that hit like Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon.

There’s also a 90s live-action television series, but that’s not as hard to believe as Jax giving the God of Thunder sass by calling him girlfriend.

#MORTAL KOMBAT REALMS CHARACTERS SERIES#

Now Mortal Kombat is a series made up of video games, movies, comics, toys, and, believe it or not, a child-friendly Saturday morning cartoon series that I watched the hell out of back in the day. It’s hard to believe that something so monumental to pop culture was, once upon a time, being made as a space-filler between releases (check out my interview with Joshua Tsui about his Midway Games documentary Insert Coin for more details). What started out as my 9-year-old self staring down at a Sega Genesis controller in shock because “Oh my GOD did I just rip out that dude’s ENTIRE HEART” has not only become a significant part of video gaming but a well-loved franchise in my household. With the new Mortal Kombat movie hitting theaters and HBO Max tomorrow, I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic about the series as a whole.

Mortal kombat realms characters