The New ‘Mortal Kombat’ Won’t Make The Same PG-13 Mistake As The First Two Movies

Mortal Kombat is one of the most violent game franchises ever, so it’s never made much sense that the Mortal Kombat movies are both rated PG-13. 1995’s Mortal Kombat contains “non-stop martial arts action and some violence, while 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation also has “non-stop martial arts violence,” but nothing about the violence. “Some violence” and no violence is not enough violence when you’re making a movie based on this. The new Mortal Kombat movie will not make the same mistake.

The Motion Picture Association of America gave Mortal Kombat, the one coming to HBO Max, an R-rating for “strong bloody violence and language throughout, and some crude references.” The rating isn’t a surprise, considering how bloody the age-restricted trailer is and that there were “drums of blood” around the set, but it’s nice to know that director Simon McQuoid wasn’t joking when he called the movie “unapologetically brutal”:

“Some fights are big, some are small, but my main goal was to make the fights mean something. I wanted the fights to look and feel like they didn’t just sort of pop out of the story and then come back in. I didn’t want anything generic. I didn’t want anything that you could see in any action movie. The stunt team on this were just amazing, and they designed some pretty f*cking incredible things.”

McQuoid also said that “we spent a lot of time talking about blood and what it looks like,” as one does. Mortal Kombat premieres on HBO Max on April 16.