Mortal Kombat is back on peoples brain. A new game has been released today, they released the Blu-Ray of the original film and of course, the new webseries that premiered on  the Machinima Channel on YouTube.

A little history to catch you up, back on June 8, 2010, a mysterious video on Youtube poped up.

“What was this?” was the general question people was asking online. Whatever it was, it became viral really quickly with little to no answer for a while on what it was.

The appeal was obvious, it looks like for the first time someone wanted to make a Mortal Kombat film that was as hard edged as the game itself. No Christopher Lambert laughing it up as Raiden, no bloodless TV show(or shows counting the crap cartoons). This looked like a hard R action film, and for the fans of the game, that got them excited.

It turns out that short film was a video/demo reel for director Kevin Tancharoen . The filmmaker, who’s only credits include dance videos AND the recent film version of Fame, wanted to prove he can do other genres so me made this, either hoping to make it a feature film version of it OR at least  show he can do other genres outside of dance and muscials.

My initial reaction on the video remains the same, it looks cool, the fight scene is great…but will this work? I worried that the extreme amount of reworking all the Mortal Kombat characters in a real world-ish setting would get old.

Thankfully, that’s actually not what we’re getting in this new webseries.

There are some people who are still confused with the webseries so let me get some of this stuff straighten up…

Here’s what to expect:

1. This is a anthology webseries. Many characters from the game will be the showcase, some of them will be the lead, some will just be supporting. No real official storyline that connects them together outside of them being in the Mortal Kombat universe (yet).

2. The real world take on the characters will not be used. Meaning Baraka is just going to be a freaky demon warrior, not the strange doctor-turned-mad-so-he-put-knifes-in-his-arms that showed up in the Rebirth short film.

3. The webseries will be all about the backstory of the characters. Episodes 1 and 2 are already out so you probably got that. The approach to this webseries is not too far away from Batman Begins or even Casino Royale…try to give some context reasoning behind the famous iconic elements of the game.

4. The series will NOT have Liu Kang or Kung Lao in it. Director Kevin Tancharoen has said that there are are already two feature films and a full tv show with those characters as the leads. He felt he wanted to showcase the other characters in the franchise first. Fair enough. If the series continues, THEN he will bring them back.

5. This is NOT a continuation of the short film. There are many elements from the short film that will carry over (the cast, the filmmaking style, the gore…) but the actual storyline of the short, Jax hiring Scorpion to enter the Mortal Kombat tournament, is not being used….as of now (still 7 episodes to go, so they may surprise us)

Be on the look out, because I plan on reviewing the first two episodes of the webseries here later today. I plan on making it a weekly column in which I will review each episode.

You know, it’s interesting. With all the really terrible video game movies today, the first Mortal Kombat film is still considered the only real watchable one. I don’t like the film as much as I used to, but I guess that’s true. Maybe this webseries will become the new benchmark on video game adaptations, but lets wait till the series is done before we go THAT far.