Branching off from what I normally do, I'm going to talk about a miniseries I managed to catch via the Youtube page of Machinima. You may have heard of it, the title is Mortal Kombat: Legacy. This idea was actually derived from the short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, and showed promise for a re-imagined live-action piece, something that hasn't been done since New Line Cinema's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in 1997 (around the time Midway was still active, who had the MK label). While Warner Bros. and affiliate New Line Cinema didn't back the film originally, supposedly, they gave Legacy's director, Kevin Tancharoen, the go-ahead to direct a larger feature in the future.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy has no linear story, and the episodes are more character specific at best, involving Sonya, Jax, Stryker, Cyrax, Sektor, and some others, roughly a fraction of the characters of the franchise, with some original characters involved, with one of the creators, Ed Boon, also taking part. Each episode deals with at least one of the characters involved, not branching into a set storyline like the two movies. It was also a more realistic approach to the MK universe, though in sense features the main story. The episodes were short however, given the little length allowed in a standard Youtube account. Despite this, a second season is proposed, production set to begin sometime next year, with possible inclusions of characters like Kabal and Goro (though details of the latter need to be sorted out.) It was said that as with the movies, it will carry on the plot of the 10th torunament as with the games, but they won't try to include every single Kombatant, something that MK: Annihilation attempted.
There are a total of 9 episodes, and despite the shortness of each, they'll be seeing a home release to DVD and Blu-Ray, though the episodes are still very much present under Machinima's Youtube page. The second season of this is trying to see an outlet for television, but little is known beyond this regarding the show's platform. Involved with this production are Warner Bros. and their subsidiary game company NetherRealm Studios (which was formerly WB Games Chicago, and before that Midway Games Chicago), who created the 2011 reboot game Mortal Kombat (still called MK9 by players.) For something done solely in US soil, this received high praise as a webseries.
In lieu of the original adaptions from the MK universe, it remains to be the better adaption of Mortal Kombat as to date, and scores 8 of 10 from me. Here's hoping that the rumored film, as well as the second season, lives up to the reception of Legacy's first season.
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