Most of the Mortal Kombat 11 trailers we’ve enjoyed over the past couple of months have focused on fatalities—brain ejections, movie magic, whatever the hell you call this—but one of them was all about the story: A “temporal crisis” with an incomprehensible menagerie of characters running around (including two Johnny Cages) that was awfully hard to follow. Luckily, we’ve now got a new story trailer that helps clarify the situation somewhat. But that’s not why it’s great.
It’s great because, in case there was any doubt, it fully, unabashedly embraces the utter ridiculousness of Mortal Kombat on just about every possible level. 25 years ago we had Joe Lieberman bemoaning “blood splattering” while watching Kano defeat Sonya Blade in front of a congressional audience, and now we’ve got Johnny Cage slapping Johnny Cage’s glasses off while Jax makes a “me, myself, and I” joke, Kano gets a sacking for the ages, and Jacqui acknowledges that all of this is “seriously messed up.”
It’s not a knowing wink at the inherent silliness of Mortal Kombat but a flashing neon sign that says, “Yes, we know!” It’s still wildly violent, with decapitations, double eye-stabbings, and x-ray bonebreaking, but the fun is what really shines through: I honestly can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys but I don’t think that really matters, because everyone seems to be having a good time.
Mortal Kombat 11 comes out on April 23.