1 out of 5

Directed by: Joseph Francis

This bizarre little animated oddity had the gall to be packaged as a standalone (with an MK film making-of feature) back in the day; it’s tolerable for its what-the-hell-is-this nature as an extra on a bluray, nowadays, but I can’t imagine paying for it on its own.

While some of the scripting – a prequel to the movie, expositing some background on Goro and Shang Tsung before a ten minute abortive battle sequence – is acceptable, and some known voice actors signed up (Jim Cummings, Jeff Bennett, Jennifer Hale…), anything that’s not MK lore is just “let me explain why your are on screen at the moment” and the animation is… just unbelievable.  In a bad way.  Caught in the early CG fever of the 90s, and likely vibing off of that this was a video game franchise, The Journey Beings overlays hand-drawn characters (of 70s TV quality) on flat-ass, huge-textured computer backgrounds, occasionally pausing for flashes of battles that are like slowed down, lowest-poly-possible Virtua Fighter clips.  I’m trying to flash back to 1995 to remember if this would’ve looked cool, but man, I really don’t think so.  Worse still is when whatever limited funds ran dry, leading to the ten minute (out of 40) fight scene that hilariously reuses animations over, and over, and over, then in the slow mo and over, and over again, with stock sword clanging, wooping sounds.  Sometimes the cells are reversed, because different angles are exciting.

Get hyped for the movie, y’all!