Mortal Kombat II Is the Rare Sequel That Understands Why the First One Worked

Mortal Kombat II opens with a fight sequence that lasts eleven minutes and refuses to cut away from its own consequences. That establishes the contract: this is a film that takes the violence seriously, even when the mythology around it is deliberately ridiculous.

The sequel corrects the first film's tendency to apologize for its source material. It commits. The result is incoherent in the second act and genuinely exciting in the third, which puts it well above most franchise entries.