Entry 73: "Holy Mortal Kombat, Batman!"

Yo!

Holy crap.

About this time last week, news was unleashed that former arcade pinball makers Midway Games (in another life....) have partnered up with Warner Bros. to put together the ninth (or sixteenth, depending on how you count) in their flagship fighting game series, Mortal Kombat.

...It will pick up right from where MK: Armageddon ended (oooookaaaayyyy)...

...It will feature destructible environments, spinal injuries....

...Superman...

...But no fatalities.

Behold! A teaser!




Here's the deal: MK co-creator Ed Boon has said the game will be released under the ESRB's standards for a "Teen" rating, which is required primarily because the good people of Detective Comics would be doing some serious balking at the mere thought of an interactive Batman property that actually hits "Mature." Despite the fact that the mere concept of Batman, from character type and background, to setting and methods of crime fighting weren't actually designed for a kids or teens audience in the first place. I dare say, that's a big reason the original '90s show was so hugely popular and influential, because that made it okay to take a decidedly adult character (Dark Knight Returns, anyone?) and make it kid-friendly. Not hurting things was the fact that being a rich everyman with unlimited resources and technology is a fantasy near and dear to most pre-teens anyway. Much more identifiable than an alien who draws unlimited power from the sun and can only be killed by pseudo-radioactive chunks of his home planet. Also maybe the "forbidden fruit" angle of being allowed somehow exposure to witness the exploits of such an intriguing character back in 1992 Saturday morning TV without the V-chip exploding, but not before its invention about seven years later.

Everyone knows Batman was conceived as an adult property, and DC's only stressing over a Teen rating because of the animation successes and that upcoming bat-series. That still doesn't really make it okay to mismatch a crossover game with a rating that won't do either side of it justice. That's like if 2K Games made the Family Guy game back in '06 with a Teen rating. They could get away with selling that game to younger gamers through won-over parents, but it would have been lobotomized of the essence of the raw obscenity and shock value of the show it's based on, losing the spirit of the property and thus sold less copies to the adults. Last time I checked, these companies wanted more money and attention from 18-35 year-olds, not predominantly unemployed 12-17s.

Generally, the rating reasons do overall make some small, scarce business sense on paper, but I suppose the onus is now on Midway to push it as far as possible to Mature without crossing the line. But again, without fatalities? Not even BABALITIES?!? I mean, the Bottom Line here is, this COULD, and should be the most important crossover event since Ryu met Kyo, just because of how opposite both properties are: One side's known for action-y stories, violence and critically divisive movies that were mainly meant to cater to the hardcore fans more than the mainstream, and the other's Detective Comics. Just don't mess it up fellas. We do NOT need another Mortal Kombat GOLD on our hands here.

Oh, and by the way, Midway... don't forget Dan Forden's "Toasty!" easter egg cameo in this game... It brings back memories.

...But that's just me.

MK vs DC is slated for release around thanksgiving, and... Well, just don't mess this up, Midway.

Later.

-D.

P.S. Ah... One more thing! The same press release stated that this game will be developed with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, which I suppose means we'll be getting our entire screens turning bright red as we get damage, and all the characters (except apparently Sub-Zero & Batman) will physically look like super-bulky astronauts with small heads, and no helmets (see exhibits 1, 2 & 3). Sure, Touchstone tried valiantly to make a good UE3 game in Turok, and Midway themselves did make Stranglehold last year... But neither of them were really as good as they should have been. Stranglehold came close (clearly Midway knows UE3 destructible environments), but... I still generally don't trust anyone other than Epic to make a UE3 game. Blame Gears.

Entry 72: "You Dirty Scrat!"

Yo!

If summer of 2007 wasn't enough proof, let it be known now that Hollywood will make a trilogy out of anything. Even though this was pretty successful the first couple times around. The Ice Age movies, for the uninitiated, are generally about a trio of prehistoric animals who together are better suited to be in their own food chain, rather than a miniature herd of sorts. A cynical loner mammoth, a hydrophobic saber-tooth tiger (naturally), and a sloth with a lisping problem that physically looks like a cross between a koala and a hammerhead shark. In a centaur-ey kind of way, I guess. Maybe BlueSky Studios got it right and that's how prehistoric sloths actually looked like in the OTHER "Land Before Time," I'm not sure. It's been a while since the last time I opened up a National Geographic. Oh, and since the last movie, you've also got two daredevil possum brothers (sorry... Opossum brothers... hard to tell) and their sister who's a mammoth (That's right... cesarean section). In any case, the third film in the Ice Age trilogy, "Dawn of the Dinosaurs", is now slated for release next July (that's 2009, not this one coming), and the first teaser was released yesterday. Here's the soon-to-be-a-dead-link YouTube version of that trailer, featuring yet again, that saber-toothed squirrel Scrat and the elusive acorn:



...And yet, despite the teaser, this film's IMDB MovieMeter is down 26 points from last week, just three weeks after the trailer premiered with the Horton movie (I demand a recount!!). Anyway, so in the first movie, everything is getting cold. Second movie's got kid-friendly global warming jokes. Third movie is as close to Jurassic Park 4 as we're gonna get for a while (wasn't production supposed to start back in '06??). Same production staff, same characters, same voices, new visuals. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. This film was also recently revealed to be the first BlueSky film (and I'm sure 20th Century Fox's as well) to be made entirely with the new digital 3-D CGI process (that means you'll be getting some fancy Real-D glasses for this) that was supposed to be pioneered with the cancelled, then uncancelled, then cancelled-again, then- re-uncancelled Pixar sequel Toy Story 3 (about five years overdue as it is, but who's counting... besides me). Also, how gorgeous will the DVD ads be: "BlueSky on Blu-ray! BlueSky on Blu-ray!"

Bottom Line: Despite my objections to most sequels, I have to ask, WHERE THE CRAP IS JURASSIC PARK 4?!? Come on, Universal! I know Rob Cohen's Mummy 3 project is at the forefront right now, but would it kill you guys to multitask? It's been in the works since 2002!! And by the way, there'd better be some sort of Arnold Vosloo cameo, at least on the DVD outtakes, I mean it's a Mummy movie for crying out loud! That's like trying to make an episode of Smallville without Kristin Kreuk or Michael Rosenbaum!

...Oh, wait, that happened? And the original showrunners left last week, too?

..........................

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! RUN! RUUUUUUNNNN!!! Verily, I say unto you, THESE ARE THE END TIMES!!!!!!!!!!

...But that's just me.

Later! I gotta finish my bucket list, quick!!

-D.