Mortal Kombat Konquest: The Worst ReKuest Ever

Let me just say, I'm considering taking requests off the table after this one. This is bad. Really bad. Bad enough that it took me around eight months to sit through 22 episodes. I had to mentally prepare myself (with liquor) before each one just to be able to sit through them. And even with that, I had to pause quite often just so I could keep my rage in check.

First of all, out of respect for the franchise, something which this show has none of, I'm going to call it Mortal Kombat Konquest. Yes with a K in Konquest because that's the way Mortal Kombat works. It's a slap in the face not to spell it that way. Any fan will tell you that. But enough about the grammar. Let's get on with it.

Note: I don't expect anyone reading this review to actually watch this shitfest, so I'm going to totally throw the no spoilers rule out the window, mostly for comedic purposes.

Konquest is a prequel to everything we've seen in the games. For the most part it's the tale of Kung Lao's ancestor Kung Lao (confusing much?) who defeated Shang Tsung (yes, that Shang Tsung) in Mortal Kombat. Once Lao spares Tsung's life, Shao Khan imprisons Tsung in a place called the cobalt mines.

Herein lies the first real problem of this show; the fact that the plot occurs 500 years before the games happen mean that most of the characters we know and love haven't been born yet, thus limiting your cast list and making your shitty ass writers come up with bland nobody characters to fill out something that isn't meant to be any more that a pointless character backstory.

The cast consists entirely of b-movie actors, and they make that quite obvious. Their performances are pretty bad. Not the worst I've seen, but pretty bad. I'd say somewhere in between bad porn parodies and The Room.

Once I finished the overly bloated pilot episode I realized that the show's format was quite familiar to me... A villain in a far away place sends 'powerful' enemies to hour hero's location to attempt and defeat him. At first the hero struggles, and then he finds a way to overcome, learning some moral or ethical lesson along the way. In other words, I'm watching the fucking Power Rangers.

I just want you to picture it; a room full of TV executives at TNT in the 90's pitching the idea of an adult oriented version of the Power Rangers based on a successful video game franchise. On paper, it actually sounds like something I'd sit down and watch. But what we got is one of the biggest loads of crap  I've ever seen. And honestly, once you finish the season you can actually see the story that they were going for, and as a whole, it's not terrible... But the production is just so bad that nothing can make up for it.

For starters, the sets are horrendous. Generic no name places that never give the viewer a clue of what's going on. These places could be anywhere on the planet. This really messes with the viewer's head, because in the MK universe everyone has a background that helps you relate to them. You know where they come from, and it's an essential part of knowing what to expect from their character.

Speaking of characters, Kung Lao can't just go around doing shit by himself. That might just be too interesting. So he gets crappy companions. We get Taja, a former thief who for little or no reason whatsoever decides to aid Kung Lao in his preparation for the battle to save the Earth. And the we have Siro, without a doubt the most annoying character I've has the displeasure of watching. Siro is there for the sole reason of making Kung Lao look good. He gets his ass kicked, and then Kung Lao saves his ass. This happens at least once an episode. Then we have the thunder god Raiden, who instead of being wise and powerful is a snarky asshole who shows up whenever he feels like it. Raiden is totally useless as a character and for the most part is just there for name value, and he pretty much fails at that too.

On the villains side of things we obviously have Shang Tsung, who might just be the most bearable character on the show. He tends to overact a bit, but that seems to be the norm on this show. He is joined in the cobalt mines by Vorpax, the only original character to show some progression during the story. And of course we have Shao Khan, who much like in the games does very little up until the end, where he gives the viewer the most satisfying moment in the whole show. And by that I mean that he totally kills off just about every character.

The enemies for the most part are totally misused. Konquest makes the huge mistake of throwing out the biggest characters right from the start. By that I mean that both Scorpion and Sub-Zero are defeated by the second episode of the show. I understand trying to get quick ratings, but this is absurd. Major character like Rain, Reptile, Smoke and Noob Saibot get thrown around like nobodies, and they usually get defeated in one episode just because they needed a fight scene. This is probably due to the short list of characters that were around 500 years before the actual story. It feels like they didn't really think the plot through, and they probably didn't.

But my biggest gripe is without a doubt the music. Remember the horrible yet slightly catchy techno theme from the movies? Of course you do. One of the reasons it almost kinda worked was that we only had to hear it once or twice in a 90 minute movie. On Konquest we get a shittier copy of it, not catchy at all and we hear it every six minutes. The worst part is that it's used no matter what. A scene comes to mind where Siro is hobbling around after he got his ass kicked (not surprising), a scene that's supposed to be somewhat saddening, and the whole time we get shitty upbeat techno music, which makes no sense even for this show.

The worst part is how often the show seems to contradict itself. If Kung Lao beat Shang Tsung to become Mortal Kombat champion in the opening moments of the pilot episode, it means he is the strongest mortal warrior there is. If so, why does he constantly get his ass handed to him by other fighters throughout the series? Why does he need Siro's help to defeat Sub-Zero, Reptile, Rain, Noob Saibot, and a handful of meaningless fighters. It just makes no sense, you discredit your own sorylines.

Thankfully, this crap got cancelled after the first season wrapped filming. I assume it happened once Ted Turner realized that no matter how much hype WCW Nitro gave this steaming pile of garbage everyone was going to change the channel as soon as they got their wrestling fix. To my joy, the show ends by putting all those annoying characters out of their misery when Shao Khan has them all killed. But of course, even this doesn't make sense because even Shang Tsung who is supposed to live on to fight Liu Kang in 500 years gets killed off. The only surviving character ends is Raiden who ends the show at Khan's mercy. While the ending is slightly interesting, it doesn't make me want to watch more... Please no more.

I'm glad to be done with this. It took me forever. And finally and mercifully, it's over. I do not, I repeat, do not recommend you watch this under any circumstances.

1.5/10

'Falling Skies' Premier Review

I have to admit, I was fairly excited about this premiere. I've always been a fan of sci-fi shows and anytime we get a new one, I'm excited about the possibilities. To me, sci-fi has always been about just that, possibilities. This show though, had absolutely none of that excitement and sense of wonderment at seeing something different and interesting. TNT has been promoting the hell out of this new show but instead of an interesting and wonderful new show, what we got instead was a rehash of every single alien invasion/post apocalyptic show ever.

It stars Noah Wyle as Professor Tom Mason who is so obviously the good guy that he bleeds rainbows and ponies. He is the father of three, one little kid, another older one that fights alongside him and a middle one that has been 'harnessed' by the aliens (its some sort of mind control thing that the aliens stick to the kids spinal cords and if taken out, they die). There's Moon Bloodgood as Dr. Anne Glass, she is a strong independent woman that speaks for the civilians that the resistance protects. Will Patton is the military veteran who is very tough and will do what he has to do to protect everyone but in the end is just a softie trying to make the tough decisions. The other host of characters are so pathetically cliched that you feel like you can see the rails that move the cardboard cut-outs.

There are probably two characters that interested me the most and show that the show does have some potential. First is the 13 year old Jimmy (Dylan Authors). This kid is taken on missions with the rest of the cast like he was a soldier. This can bring some conflict as we saw on the first episode, but after it happened, they didn't touch on it at all. I'm interested to know why there's only a couple of women fighting and they have 13 year olds with automatic rifles. The second character would be Sarah Carter's Margaret. She is the only one where we actually hear some back story on and the only one I ended up caring about. There is a big problem with this premiere in that it never really wants us to connect to any of the characters.

The biggest problem with the premiere to me was the story. How many times has the outlaw leader holding friends hostage for ransom has been done before? I don't dare count. Other than your run of the mill father looking for son, aliens trying to kill humans, humans trying to survive, this episode has nothing else. It's worse than bland.

There are some ideas that interest me and could do for an interesting series. First, the whole mind/body control thing. Why would the aliens want to control kids? I don't know, but I'm interested in that. Also, one of the characters (the teacher) tells Wyle's character that normally humans always think of their robots as human-like and that it was interesting that the aliens has many appendages and their robots had only two. I hope they didn't just tell me that only to forget it in the future. Also, I have to admit that it was creative to explain what happened through the drawings of the little kids.

There's a lot of work to be done in the next few episodes. The series has potential, but in this cut-throat tv life, you don't get many chances. We'll see what happens. As far as premier's go, though, this one was bland, weak and underwhelming.

"Darn it! How am I supposed to kick alien ass when I left my balls in my man-purse?"

3 out of 10