Mortal Kombat II - The 'Haggard Old White Man' trope
What's the general consensus on 'Mortal Kombat II'?
It seems like this is just more of the same in current day 'cinema land'. They once again try to make a play on the now firmly entrenched trope of 'the washed out haggard old white man' in the case of Johnny Cage. It's not as bad as Indiana Jones and the Fem Wars Sequology, but it's similar to Dungeon & Dragons and Bladerunner 2049. In that the putative 'main character' eventually gets side-lined for female characters and the 'haggard old white man' is relegated to a supporting role.
They even tried to give his character an uplifting arc of re-finding his drive and self-worth, but it ultimately ends up fizzling out with him performing a flying 'meta'-kick against an enchanted medal, thereby finding his 'supernatural fighting power'. The spotlight gets narratively stolen by Kitana. Her storyline even ended up trumping Liu Kang's traditional character arc of defeating Shao Khan.
This is entirely in line with the skewed racial and gender politics of the original movie. Up is down and left is right. Funnily enough, they had to bring back Kano because his scene stealing machismo was infinitely more entertaining than anything feminist heroine Sonya could offer up.
As for the action scenes, most was just serviceable and performative. Going through the motions. It didn't revel in the cinematic gore and violence, like the original two movies and games did. Even the first movie in this series was better. Would it really have killed them if they let the audience marvel at some of the fatalities? Or give some pause to the creative use of a weapon?
At least they righted a wrong by taking out a certain unappealing character. As for 'Jade', she was unremarkable in every conceivable way.