Hollywood doesn't bother with medium budget films like Evolution anymore. Turbokid is daft but fun, but I only watch BBC4 docos about the history of the envolope usually so I'm not a good one to ask.
Someone on Facebook mentioned The Final Girls earlier today. That might fit your needs. Otherwise, I recommend you remove your "past ~10 years" requirement and check out the 1994 Street Fighter film. It's criminally underrated. It's like Flash Gordon.
>>23669 I always recommend this to people who are complaining they don't have anything to watch, as it will make you giggle.
They clearly had input at some point from someone who either worked for a game dev or another software engineering company, because it's far too self aware to be coincidence.
>>23661 >Mortal Kombat (2021) is a perfectly decent martial arts film with winks to fans of the franchise thrown in.
I had a ridiculously good time watching this. This is the kind of film eleven-year-old me would have wanted to make, playing the whole thing totally straight and treating it as a proper martial arts film.
>>23674 It's already out in America on HBO Max. It should be released here in a couple of weeks but I don't think it has been announced where you can (legally) watch it.
I may have made this post a little bit too soon. I hate to blow it for anyone that likes this stupid series as much as I do, but I really wish the entire film were like the first scene. Genuinely, the first scene is like a different film, almost classy. I strongly suspect that's where most of the thought went -- kind of wish I'd just stopped watching there.
I don't know how they managed this, but I honestly prefer the structure of the 1995 film. The 1995 one had loads of locations, interesting set pieces, setups and payoffs. Fights occurred as the protagonists explored the other world. In this one, many characters are sort of introduced out of nowhere, and are often killed just as quickly as they arrive. Raiden has deus ex machina powers, which is fine, but then uses a contradictory set of rules about when he uses them, which reeks of lazy writing.
Finally, a few obvious points: Cole is a bland audience insert character, the "superpowers" didn't need to be explained (it's a fantasy martial arts film, it's okay to let some things be a mystery), the cheesy 90s quippy lines are mostly just replaced with equally embarrassing swearing/mumbly quippy lines, and the 1995 animatronic Goro looked cooler.
A few positives, the casting in the 2021 film is far, far better for the most part. Everyone looks the part, I just wish they'd spent another year working on the script so that it didn't end with Raiden sending everyone to different locations to have simultaneous fights. The gore is fine as well, if you're into that kind of thing.
To close out this sweaty nerd post, here's the best fight from the 1995 film, set to bouncing techno as it should be:
>>23678 I watch both those films for the first timer today, the 1995 film I found very charming, better than I would have thought the problems are glaringly obvious but I over looked them because of the charm.
The new film was duller in every respect other than as you say the first scene. It is a film about a martial arts tournament where no martial arts tournament ever takes place.
>>23679 The 1995 film is one of my favourites, but that list also includes Big Trouble in Little China and Starship Troopers so make of that what you will.
>>23679 >It is a film about a martial arts tournament where no martial arts tournament ever takes place.
I think you hit the nail on the head, there.
They also missed a trick with the Cole character. Even a bit of lip service could have given the film a fun theme about contrasting modern rough-and-tumble MMA with ancient and mysterious martial arts. Instead he just sort of blithely accepts everything.
The superpowered melee was too Marvel-esque, things become so much less interesting for me when people turn into darting CGI figures.
Not to keep banging the drum, but that first scene was just the perfect balance. Really well co-ordinated martial arts and stuntwork, wonderfully shot, inventive with props, with just a touch of mysticism and strange supernatural powers on top.
Bi-Han was also effectively the main villain, and it was amazing. Why not keep Shang Tsung as a shadowy sorcerer pulling the strings behind the scenes? Why don't we just capture glimpses of an old wizened man becoming younger as he feeds off the souls of fallen combatants? Have Bi-Han bring his assassinated victims to something that looks like the crypt keeper? It's a film for Christ's sake, we're meant to fear the Big Bad, be creative, don't just have him stand there like a lemon behind walls of electricity.
Yeah, he's vulgar and gives the film a lot of personality. His winking to the audience gets a bit tiresome at points ("u wot m8 u shoot fire out of ur hands???") but the actor gets the spirit of the character perfectly. Even better than the 1995 one, I'd say.
