TV: Mortal Kombat Conquest

Released: 1998-1999

Directors: Various

Run Time – 970 Minutes

Episodes: 22

Seasons: 1

Cast:
Paolo Montalban: Kung Lao
Daniel Bernhardt: Siro
Kristanna Lokken: Taja
Jeffrey Meek: Lord Rayden/Shao Kahn
Bruce Locke: Shang Tsung
Tracy Douglas: Vorpax

Reviewing a TV show is a lot different than reviewing a movie.  A movie will generally take about 2 hours of my time, give or take a few minutes.  Then, I can work on my review and generally get it done in the same day, if I’m not distracted.  A TV series, on the other hand, requires more time and investment to absorb the whole thing.  A lot of the TV series during the 90s ran for about 20-25 episodes.  That’s about nearly half a year.  Some of the more well-known TV series were pretty decent hits during that time:  Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and its spin-off, Xena: The Warrior PrincessBabylon 5, Charmed, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.  That’s just to name a few, and those ones were pretty successful during their runs lasting about 5 or more seasons.  Unfortunately, there were some shows that were not as successful, such as The Crow: Stairway To Heaven, despite positive reviews.  The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr was another show that got canned after one season.  Sometimes, things just don’t work out.  If they wrap up the season properly, it’s fine.  Disappointing, but at least there’s some kind of closure.  There were a couple of shows that got ended on cliffhangers and I absolutely hate that.  The Crow was one that ended prematurely, as did Blade a few years back.  But the one show that I really enjoyed and followed completely was Mortal Kombat Conquest.  It was a show based on the video game of the same name, but had the visual aesthetic of the movies, which were also based on the game.  The way this show ended, really rubbed me the wrong way, but I’ll get to that later.

The show begins at the final battle of a Mortal Kombat tournament, a tournament that will determine the fate of Earthrealm(ours).  Kung Lao faces off against Shao Kahn’s sorcerer, Shang Tsung, and defeats him in combat.  Instead of killing Shang, Lao spares his life, winning the tournament.  After returning to Earth, Kung Lao is charged with training new fighters for the next tournament.  With the aid of the thunder god, Rayden, Kung Lao sets out with two new friends, ex-bodyguard Siro, and the lovely thief Taja.  For a TV series based on a video game, there’s surprisingly a great of story to be found here.  Each of the 22 episodes has it’s own little story which tends to be wrapped up pretty nicely by the time the episode is over.  The overall story is essentially Kung Lao’s struggle against his mortal enemies, Shang Tsung and the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn.  I’m not going to get into the stories of each episode as there is way too much to cover.  Mortal Kombat Conquest serves as a prequel to the live-action films, released in 1995 and 1997, respectively.  The show actually managed to get popular enough to last a full 22 episodes.  I don’t think it would have lasted half a season if it wasn’t for people who played the games didn’t tune in.  The show premiered on TNT in 1998, just as shows like Hercules and Xena were really hitting their stride.

From a technical standpoint, it was a mostly solid show.  The set designs were pretty interesting, even though they were relegated to a handful of locations.  The costume designs were bizarre to say the least.  For the women, being scantily clad was basically the norm as it was for most of the action shows that were on at the time, including the ones that I mentioned.  The show was clearly aimed at teenage boys, so seeing gorgeous women in almost nothing was probably one of the reasons why the show managed to stay on the air.  The show was modeled after the movies, so some of the costumes were clearly inspired by the theatrical productions.  For example: The costumes for Scorpion(the yellow ninja), Sub-Zero(blue ninja), and Reptile(green ninja) were clearly taken from the first movie.  My personal interest in the show was the characters, the fighting and the visual effects.  There’s clearly a lot of fan-service in the show, as various episodes feature characters from the games such as: Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Rain, Quan-Chi, Rayden, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, Reptile, and Noob Saibot.  The costumes for some of these characters were not that good.  Quan-Chi’s outfit looked like a very poor cosplay version of the character.  It was hideous.  And again, some of the women were basically wearing next to nothing.  The area in which Mortal Kombat Conquest excelled at was the fight sequences.  This is what drew me to the show.  The fight scenes were phenomenal.  While there was some use of wires in later episodes, it was mostly done without, and the stunt-work was incredible.  Featuring the talents of renowned stunt men J.J. Perry and Johnny Nguyen, the show delighted with high-flying acrobatics and insane martial arts moves.  Each episode featured a minimum of three fight sequences, so things were never boring.  One of the episodes that a lot of people consider to be the best was from an episode called, “The Serpent and The Ice.”  This particular episode featured a major fight between Scorpion and Sub-Zero, making it one of the most memorable fights of the show:

Is it cheesy?  Very.  The whole show is replete with unbelievably cheesy dialogue and mostly terrible acting.  I think that’s part of the charm, because the show seems to know that’s not the best out there, but runs with it.  I’ll be honest, it’s still a hell of a lot better than Mortal Kombat Annihilation.  As far as actors go, the show features the talents of Daniel Bernhardt, who is a fantastic martial artist in his own right.  He plays Siro, an exiled bodyguard.  Kung Lao is played by Paolo Mantalban(No relation to Ricardo, I’m afraid), who is NOT a martial artists, so the fight scenes you seem him in are mostly done by a stunt double.  Kristanna Lokken fares a bit better as the drop-dead gorgeous Taja.  The one actor that really pulled his weight though, was Jeffrey Meek.  He has the fortune of playing TWO characters in this show, Rayden and Shao Kahn.  While he does go over-the-top with Kahn, his portrayal of Rayden is probably the best I’ve seen.  As much as I loved Christopher Lambert in the role, Meek knocks it out of the park, portraying a character that is equal parts mentor and smart-ass.  He gets some of the best lines in the show.  Everybody else is pretty much disposable.  The visual effects are mostly a mixed bag, with some pretty heinous CG.  The show literally features sequences from the films.  There’s a shot that filmed for the first Mortal Kombat film at a monestary, which is constantly used.  A lot of the shots from the second film feel more appropriate here, because the visuals are not that good.  There’s also some very obvious blue-screen work.

While the show was goofy enough to begin with, it really started heading out to left field towards the end of its run.  One of the main problems with the show was when it introduced a new character, Kreeya, who was a queen from a different realm.  She would mate with the strongest warriors that a realm had to offer in order to produce an army of scantily clad women.  I….don’t really know where to go with that, to be truthful, except that it was very poorly thought out.  Those episodes were…..lame, except for some of the fight scenes, of course.  One of the more interesting episodes, though, was one where Quan-Chi had our three main heroes poisoned with a potion that let their inner demons take control.  It was the first episode to feature Quan-Chi.  The show definitely had some very interesting ideas and explored more of the mythology that the games introduced.

I mentioned earlier that the way the show ended bothered me.  It ended on a cliffhanger.  It’s not the first show to do that, nor was it the last.  It’s no less idiotic, though.  The final episode of the show featured Shao Kahn appearing to win, with all the main characters seemingly killed off.  That’s a great way to end a season, but not a show.  I did some research, and it was initially intended for Mortal Kombat: Conquest to have a second season to tie up all the loose ends that the final episode left behind.  The final two episodes were intended to be a dream sequence by Kung Lao, and that was going to be addressed in the second season.  It definitely felt like the final episode, “Vengeance,” was deliberately done that way to launch a follow-up season that never happened.  Why didn’t it happen?  One of the reasons that I read about was that the budget on the show was getting to be too much for Warner Bros. to pay for.  It was a great episode, but it left everybody wondering what was going to happen.  Some people that it was a great and different ending to a show, and I can definitely see that perspective.  However, the show was essentially billed as a prequel to the movies, so we know that Kung Lao would survive only to be killed by the four-armed Goro in the next tournament.  There’s plenty of fan-fiction out there that offered their own explanation for what happens next, but it’s really disappointing to see a show that I really enjoyed end on such a note.  If they had made a two-hour TV movie tying up those loose ends, in lieu of a second season, I would have been happy with that, but they didn’t.  Instead, we end up with a show that’s half-way completed.  There have been plenty of shows that suffered the same fate, and no show really deserves that regardless of its quality.

Mortal Kombat Conquest, while certainly cheesy as befitting some of the shows during the 90s, kept me hooked from beginning to end, and I have no problems watching at again.  I just really wished they didn’t end the show the way they did.  The production values were surprisingly decent for the time.  They were definitely better than Mortal Kombat Annihilation, that’s for sure.  The show has gotten mixed reviews all across the board, with some saying its a vile abomination.  I don’t think that’s fair, and while it’s definitely the same quality as the Machinima series, Mortal Kombat Legacy, I still think that Conquest is still a very entertaining diversion that deserved a second season.  The show is now available on DVD for about 10 bucks on Amazon, so it’s definitely worth checking out, just for the action scenes alone.  It doesn’t have any special features I’m afraid, but all 22 episodes are their in the original 4:3 format as it aired in 1998.  No commercials, so you can enjoy it at your leisure.  Overall, I’m giving the show a pretty solid 8.5/10.  Cheesy as hell, but still a lot of fun, and one of the few TV shows that I will watch to completion.

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