• Power Ballad opens in limited release May 29 and expands wide June 5, directed by John Carney (Once, Sing Street)
• Paul Rudd plays Rick Power, an American living in Dublin who leads a wedding band called the Bride and Groove; Nick Jonas plays Danny Wilson, a former boy bander making his solo debut
• The plot: Rick and Danny bond at a late-night jam session, Danny steals Rick’s chorus, the song becomes a hit, and Rick heads to Los Angeles for recognition — or revenge
• SXSW critics cheered the film’s feel-good comedy vibe; Mashable called it “a far echo” from Carney’s best work; Collider gave it an 8/10 in their summer preview
• Full cast: Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor, Peter McDonald, Sophie Vavasseur, Beth Fallon, Marcella Plunkett — and Jonas is heading straight from this to Camp Rock 3

The setup sounds like a pitch someone wrote on a napkin at a music industry party, and they probably did: Paul Rudd as a washed-up wedding singer, Nick Jonas as the untouchable pop prince who steals his song, and a road trip to Los Angeles for justice. Director John Carney — the man who made Once — is behind the camera.

Whether that combination delivers is the question critics can’t agree on. Power Ballad opens Thursday in limited release, with a wide expansion on June 5, and the conversation around it has been running hot since its SXSW premiere.

The Film

Rudd’s character, Rick Power, came to Dublin from America fifteen years ago on tour with his rock band. He met a woman, stayed, had a daughter, and gradually made peace with a quieter version of the dream. Now he fronts a wedding band called the Bride and Groove, playing covers at receptions and keeping his own songs mostly to himself.

One wedding gig changes everything. Rick and Danny Wilson (Jonas) end up in a late-night jam session that both men walk away from feeling genuinely good about — a rare moment of real connection between two musicians from completely different worlds. Then Danny releases a solo single. It’s built around a chorus Rick wrote and played for him that night. It’s a number one hit.

What Carney does with Rick’s reaction is the film’s most interesting move: he doesn’t make Rick furious. He makes him hopeful. Rick believes he just needs to find Danny, have a conversation, get his credit or his check. It’s only when Danny’s snarling manager, Mac Darling (Jack Reynor), starts actively blocking every approach that Rick and his chaotic best friend Sandy (Peter McDonald) pack their bags for Los Angeles.

Hollywood hijinks ensue, as Mashable put it — though not everyone found the hijinks particularly funny.

What Critics Are Saying

SXSW was warm. Collider, which got an exclusive first-look image ahead of release, gave the film an 8/10 and placed it firmly in Carney’s lineage of music-driven stories that find emotion in the gap between who people wanted to be and who they became. “A tale rooted in the disparity between the music of yesteryear and the music of today,” their preview noted, pointing to the broader dynamic between Rick’s analog sincerity and Danny’s polished pop machine.

Mashable was less convinced. Their review, which ran the same day as the film’s wide publicity push, called it “a warmly silly movie with a big heart, an appreciation of music, and a happy ending” — and then spent most of its word count explaining why that wasn’t quite enough. “Power Ballad itself never ignites, or even sizzles. Its flame is squelched before it begins.”

The core complaint: the film promises a real showdown between a busted has-been and a pop prince, and then backs away from anything that might actually sting. “For a film that is centered on someone who is undeniably angry, Power Ballad is weirdly toothless.”

The Nick Jonas Question

Here’s where things get genuinely interesting. According to Mashable, the film splits its lead actors cleanly down the middle — and not in the way the marketing suggests.

Rudd throws himself into the comedy. He is, as ever, the most committed guy in any room, and his physical work here is reportedly enthusiastic. The problem, per Mashable, is that his singing sounds processed — potentially autotune-enhanced — which undercuts the film’s entire argument about musical authenticity. A wedding singer who can’t convince you he’s actually singing is a real structural problem.

Jonas, meanwhile, flips that equation entirely. “Jonas can sing the hell out of these pop songs. But when it comes to the comedy, he’s as wooden as the acoustic guitar Danny gifts to Rick.”

It’s the kind of critical observation that lodges in your brain. Two actors, each strong in exactly the category where the other falls short, paired in a film that needs both of them to work at once.

The Carney Comparison

Power Ballad is the fourth time Carney has told a version of this story — music as the thing that connects people across distances they couldn’t otherwise cross — and the fourth time critics have measured it against the one that started everything.

Once came out in 2007. It cost almost nothing. It starred Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová as two musicians falling in love on the streets of Dublin, shot in early digital with a scrappiness that felt like a feature rather than a limitation. The soundtrack won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The film launched a real band and eventually a Broadway adaptation. “That movie felt like magic,” Mashable’s review noted, and the line lands not as nostalgia but as a measuring stick.

Sing Street in 2016 earned nearly the same affection. Both films had something Power Ballad, by most accounts, doesn’t quite find: the sense that no one but Carney could have made this exact movie, about these exact people, right now.

Begin Again, Flora and Son, and now Power Ballad are the other Carney films — the ones that are pleasant and musical and easy to watch, but that “lean into tedious Hollywood tropes about love and music,” as Mashable’s review put it. The SXSW crowd disagreed. The film is 98 minutes and ends happily. Audiences who turn up for Paul Rudd in a feel-good comedy will probably leave satisfied.

What’s Next for Nick Jonas

Collider’s piece noted something that reframes the entire Power Ballad release: Jonas is heading from this directly into Camp Rock 3. The detail adds an odd meta-layer to a film already about a former boy bander trying to prove he’s more than his past. Jonas is, in fact, a former boy bander trying to prove he’s more than his past. Whether that casting is irony or genius probably depends on how charitable you’re feeling toward the third act.

For what it’s worth, the full cast also includes Havana Rose Liu (Bottoms), Sophie Vavasseur (Flora and Son), Beth Fallon, and Marcella Plunkett as Rick’s wife — a group of actors that, on paper, should have had more room to breathe than the film apparently gave them.

Power Ballad opens May 29 in limited release. The wedding band plays on.

The post Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas’s Power Ballad Is in Theaters This Week — SXSW Loved It, Mashable Didn’t, and the Truth Is Somewhere in Between appeared first on Cream.

• Mortal Kombat II and The Devil Wears Prada 2 are both projected to earn $42 million domestically this opening weekend.
• Karl Urban stars as Johnny Cage and has been widely praised as the sequel’s biggest upgrade over the 2021 original.
• The film holds a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes — “Fresh,” and more than 10 points above the first film’s 55% score.
• Audience scores tell a different story than mixed critics: preview night viewers gave it a 90% positive rating.
• Mortal Kombat II is theaters-only for now, with no simultaneous streaming release.

It’s a full-on brawl at the multiplex this Mother’s Day weekend — and not just on screen. Mortal Kombat II opened May 8 swinging, but it’s immediately running into a surprisingly fierce opponent: The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is already two weeks deep and pulling in audiences who want something a little more Meryl and a little less fatality for their holiday outing. Both films are projected to earn around $42 million domestically this weekend, with Prada’s running total closing in on $141 million. It’s genuinely too close to call.

For Mortal Kombat II, the timing is everything. It’s a new release with the full force of opening-weekend momentum behind it, and it’s carrying serious fan anticipation. For the Prada sequel, Mother’s Day is practically a gift — a built-in reason for families to revisit Miranda Priestly one more time. Whoever blinks first loses the weekend.

Karl Urban Walks So Johnny Cage Can Fly

Whatever else critics are debating about the film, there’s near-universal agreement on one thing: Karl Urban was exactly the right call for Johnny Cage. The The Boys star plays the role as a gloriously washed-up ’90s action star — think Nicolas Cage energy crossed with Tom Cruise swagger — and his dry wit gives the film a levity it desperately needs between all the bloodshed. “It allows the film to have a bit of fun,” CBR noted in their review, adding that Cage’s contradiction — loud mouth, questionable skills, somehow one of Earthrealm’s best hopes — is “what makes Mortal Kombat II so enjoyable to watch.”

Urban himself has been openly enthusiastic about the project. “I’m so excited for you guys to see Mortal Kombat 2,” he said ahead of release. “I think it’s probably, to my mind, the best video game adaptation that’s gone to film yet. This one fires and fires in a really good way.”

There’s a fun early moment — a Big Trouble in Little China nod during Cage’s introduction — that even the film’s harshest critics admitted landed. One reviewer called it the only moment that genuinely made them smile. That’s something.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b24oG7qCwp4%3Fsi%3Dbzje6cMUV1xMpwSW

What’s Actually in the Movie

Director Simon McQuoid, returning from the 2021 original, opens with a flashback prologue set in the Kingdom of Edenia — a lush, idealistic realm that’s about to have a very bad day. The ruthlessly ambitious Emperor Shao Kahn, played by an imposing Martyn Ford, murders Kitana’s father, takes over her realm, and forces the young princess (Adeline Rudolph) into his army. It’s a strong setup, and Rudolph shows real promise in the role.

Then the film jumps 20 years to the present, where Johnny Cage enters the picture and becomes the de facto center of gravity for the story. Alongside him, the Earthrealm team reassembles: the quietly commanding Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), bionic vet Jax (Mehcad Brooks), his partner Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and a returning — though notably reduced — Cole Young (Lewis Tan). Franchise favorites Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim are back as Scorpion and the resurrected Bi-Han/Sub-Zero/Noob Saibot, and their sequences reportedly pushed the visual effects team to its limits. There’s also a cameo from Mortal Kombat franchise creator Ed Boon, a detail that’s gone over well with the fanbase. Josh Lawson’s Kano is back too, and apparently still hilarious even when a character is getting eviscerated in the same scene.

The film’s mission statement is pretty clear: honor the game, deliver the carnage, keep the popcorn moving. By that measure, most reviewers agree it succeeds. The fight sequences are brutal and relentless, the fatalities are creative enough to keep even genre veterans on their toes, and the visual effects — while occasionally uneven — are largely spectacular. McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater are sprinting through the lore of the first three games, which means the plot moves fast and character moments get squeezed. Whether that bothers you depends almost entirely on what you came for.

The Critics Are Split — But the Fans Are Loud

Mortal Kombat II has officially cleared the bar its predecessor couldn’t, landing at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes — “Fresh,” and a meaningful jump over the 2021 film’s 55% “Rotten” score. That said, the critical conversation is genuinely divided.

On the positive end, reviewers praised the film’s self-awareness, its willingness to lean into camp, and Urban’s performance as a genuine upgrade to the ensemble. One reviewer gave it a B, calling it “cinema’s version of fast food” — satisfying while it lasts, and clearly engineered for a third installment. Another called it “a reminder that sometimes movies are meant to simply give us a break from the world and bring us joy through all the chaos.”

On the other end, one of the more scathing takes argued the film feels less like a movie and more like “a supercut some fan has uploaded of a bunch of disparate, disconnected cut scenes.” That critic took particular issue with the film’s structure — Kitana set up as a protagonist in the prologue, then essentially sidelined when Cage takes over — and with the way side characters are introduced through clunky exposition dumps rather than actual storytelling. The harshest review called it “excruciatingly dull,” which feels like it might be written for a different audience than the one buying tickets.

Slater, for his part, had set high expectations before release — he told IGN that test screening audiences reacted the way he reacted to Avengers: Endgame. “They were cheering and jumping out of their seats,” he said. “Every joke is landing and they are loving it.” That quote has become something of a lightning rod in the critical conversation — a Rorschach test for whether you think this film delivers on its ambitions or just mistakes enthusiasm for craft.

The audience scores, though, are hard to argue with. Preview night viewers handed the film a 90% positive rating — the people who showed up opening night ready to love it left satisfied. That’s the core audience, and they got what they came for.

Mortal Kombat II is in theaters now. The Mother’s Day box office verdict drops Sunday — and at this point, both films deserve to win.

The post Mortal Kombat II vs. Devil Wears Prada 2: Box Office Showdown appeared first on Cream.

• The Sheep Detectives is now in theaters, starring Hugh Jackman with voices from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Chris O’Dowd, and Patrick Stewart.
• The film is adapted from Leonie Swann’s 2005 bestselling novel Three Bags Full and written by Chernobyl and The Last of Us creator Craig Mazin.
• Critics are raving — the film holds a 95–97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers calling it a genuine crowd-pleaser for all ages.
• Multiple critics and audience members report unexpectedly crying by the end, despite going in for a funny sheep movie.
• Directed by Kyle Balda (Minions), the PG-rated film runs 109 minutes and is produced by Amazon MGM Studios.

Nobody walked into The Sheep Detectives expecting to sob. And yet, here we are.

The new family mystery — which opened in theaters May 8 — follows a flock of unusually clever sheep who, after their beloved shepherd is found dead, decide to solve the murder themselves. On paper, it sounds like a charming novelty. In practice, critics and audiences are emerging from screenings genuinely teary-eyed, buzzing about one of the most disarmingly emotional family films in years. “Talking sheep solving a murder mystery and making me cry in the process was not on my 2026 bingo card,” wrote one reviewer. She was not alone.

Hugh Jackman plays George Hardy, a reclusive shepherd in the fictional English village of Denbrook who raises his flock purely for wool and treats every animal like family. His favorite nighttime ritual: reading murder mystery novels aloud to the sheep, not knowing — or perhaps not caring — whether they understand him. As it turns out, they understand every word. When George turns up dead one morning, poisoned by an unknown suspect, his flock realizes the bumbling local constable (Nicholas Braun, in what multiple critics are calling his best post-Succession role) isn’t going to crack the case. So they take matters into their own hooves.

Lily, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, leads the charge. She’s the sharpest sheep in the flock — George’s favorite, the one who always solved the mystery before he finished reading. Alongside her are Mopple (Chris O’Dowd), a Merino sheep with the unusual affliction of remembering everything, and Sebastian (Bryan Cranston), a brooding ram with a complicated backstory who was adopted into the flock by George after a hard life. Sir Ritchfield (Patrick Stewart), a pompous elder statesman of the flock, rounds out the inner circle, along with the extra-shaggy Wool-Eyes (Rhys Darby), pampered Cloud (Regina Hall), and a pair of battering-ram brothers, Reggie and Ronnie, both voiced by Brett Goldstein — a sly nod to the Kray twins that adults in the audience will clock immediately.

And then there’s the Winter Lamb.

Voiced by Tommy Birchall, the tiny misfit lamb — shunned by the flock for being born in the wrong season — is the film’s secret emotional weapon. Reviewers keep bringing him up unprompted. One called him “so cute I could cry just thinking about it.” He is, in many ways, the heart of the whole thing.

“Babe Meets Knives Out” — and That’s Actually Accurate

The film is adapted from Leonie Swann’s 2005 novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, a German bestseller that spent three and a half years on German charts and has been translated into 30 languages. Swann — who writes under a pseudonym and has never publicly disclosed her real name — was a doctoral student studying “the animal point of view in fiction” when she started writing what she thought was a short story. It became a novel. She never finished the dissertation.

The screenplay was written by Craig Mazin, the Emmy-winning creator of Chernobyl and The Last of Us — which, yes, is a jarring creative pivot. Mazin toned down the novel’s darker adult elements (the book includes drugs and suicide), changed the ending, and — in one of the more charming production details — consulted a book by Fred Rogers about how to talk to children about death while adapting the script for younger audiences. To help write about grief, he turned to Mister Rogers. That tells you something about the movie’s DNA.

Jackman himself described the pitch as “Babe meets Knives Out” — and having seen it, critics largely agree that’s not just marketing spin. “I would’ve played any character,” Jackman joked during press. “I would’ve played one of the sheep.”

For Louis-Dreyfus, the script was the thing. “When I first heard about it, I was like, ‘Come on, what?'” she admitted. “And then I read the script, and I completely fell in love and knew this was a project I had to be a part of just based on the material itself.” It’s not her first time voicing an animal — she’s played an ant in A Bug’s Life and a horse in Animal Farm — but Lily is something different: a sheep with a genuinely human emotional arc, learning what it costs to be a leader when you’re also questioning your own certainty.

O’Dowd, for his part, was thrilled by the upgrade. “I’ve played a cockroach before and a slug,” he said. “I feel like I really came up in the world… I’m a mammal now, baby.”

The Part Nobody Expected: The Crying

The film’s emotional core turns on memory — specifically, the flock’s ability to collectively will themselves to forget anything unpleasant. They’ve convinced themselves, for instance, that sheep don’t die; they turn into clouds. It’s a comforting fiction they maintain together. Only Mopple can’t do it. He remembers everything, and he’s been carrying it alone.

“My character, Mopple the sheep, is really the only one who remembers things, and that resonated with me,” O’Dowd said. “Not because I have a particularly great memory, but because we all curate our own lives in a way. We carry certain memories with us because we want to, and sometimes we hold onto things we’d probably rather forget. I think that’s a fascinating thing to explore.”

O’Dowd went to a screening with his own kids. “I was crying at the end of it,” he said. “It’s nice to be part of something that’s powerful enough to move you like that.”

Braun, whose Officer Tim grows from a hopelessly inept constable into something resembling a take-charge hero, had his own emotional reckoning with the film. Asked whether he’d erase bad memories from his own life if he could, he thought about it. “At the end of the day, it would make me a different guy. And so I just, I have to include it. I think that’s just part of being a person.”

Molly Gordon, who plays Rebecca — George’s previously unknown American daughter, who conveniently arrives in Denbrook the day of his death and stands to inherit a small fortune from a sheep medicine patent — put it most succinctly: “This movie has no right to make us cry in the way that it did.”

And Jackman connected personally to the film’s Winter Lamb storyline, admitting there were moments in his own childhood where he felt isolated despite growing up in a large family.

The Cast, the Suspects, and Emma Thompson

The human side of the mystery gives the sheep plenty to work with. Braun’s Officer Tim is the bumbling local constable who, to his credit, slowly notices that the neighborhood sheep might actually be helping him solve the case — and grows into it. Nicholas Galitzine plays Elliot, an ambitious young reporter who wandered into Denbrook to cover a “cultural festival” that barely existed and pivots, opportunistically, to the murder. Hong Chau is the local innkeeper with a mysterious past connection to George. Conleth Hill plays the local butcher, named Ham, who George despised. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is the town vicar, who was quietly accepting large cash payments from the deceased. Tosin Cole plays a neighboring shepherd with his own motive.

And then Emma Thompson arrives as Lydia Harbottle, George’s lawyer, stepping out of a black chauffeured limo to preside over the reading of the will — during which George’s own words drop a bombshell on everyone assembled. “Has any actor ever conveyed the sheer joy of acting with more brio?” wrote one critic. Gordon described Thompson with something close to reverence: “Emma Thompson is the most inspiring soul — so curious, giving, political, kind. If she were the queen or the president, the world would be in a very different place.”

The film’s single funniest gag, critics seem to agree, arrives before the opening credits even roll: the roaring MGM lion is replaced by a sheep’s baa. It’s a perfect one-second joke that sets the tone for everything that follows.

What the Critics Are Saying

The film currently holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Variety’s Guy Lodge writing that “there’s wisdom amid the silliness, as the story gently makes a case for the necessity of grief, mindfulness and mortal awareness… That’s more than you might expect from a film called The Sheep Detectives.” AV Club’s Tim Grierson praised it for “evoking the sunny spirit of classics like Babe while teaching important lessons about death and community.”

Not every critic is fully on board. The AP’s review called it “too gentle and strenuously poignant to turn its silly tale into all that much fun,” and the Wall Street Journal suggested it might play better on a couch than in a multiplex. A couple of critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rotten score, with one writing that “the combination of its stale execution and over-reliance on its woolly stars causes the film to stumble out of the barn.”

The more common response, though, is something closer to genuine surprise. The animation is photorealistic — the sheep are fully CGI, a technical achievement the filmmakers were meticulous about. Director Kyle Balda (making his live-action debut after helming three films in the Despicable Me and Minions universe) drove out to a sheep farm near his Oregon home the day he finished reading the script. “Very instantly I could see the behavior of the sheep, their different personalities,” he said. “I learned very quickly that there are more varieties of sheep than dogs.” The goal throughout was that the sheep in this world are sheep — not humans in disguise. They don’t drive cars. They’re afraid to cross the road. When they speak, humans hear only bleating.

There’s also a quietly pointed undercurrent to the whole mystery. The villain’s scheme involves the industrial consolidation of the farm — something small and local swallowed by something large and indifferent. O’Dowd noted the resonance: “In this time of mergers and this type of mass unemployment ahead of us, it’s important to remember to keep your food local if you can.” Louis-Dreyfus agreed: “Beware the commercialization of anything — and question it.” The film wears it lightly enough that you might miss it entirely. But it’s there.

Braun, for his part, predicted the film will shift how people think about sheep the way Toy Story made audiences look at their kids’ toys differently. “I don’t think people are going to be eating as much lamb after this,” he said.

The Sheep Detectives is rated PG and runs 109 minutes. It’s in theaters now.

The post ‘The Sheep Detectives’ Is the Family Film You Didn’t See Coming appeared first on Cream.

• Mortal Kombat II earned $5.2 million in Thursday preview screenings ahead of its full opening weekend
• The Warner Bros./New Line sequel is projected to open between $40M–$50M, potentially topping the box office
• Karl Urban stars as Johnny Cage alongside returning cast members Ludi Lin, Jessica McNamee, and Josh Lawson
• The film holds a 71% on Rotten Tomatoes — the highest critics’ score in franchise history
• Producer Todd Garner sparked buzz by calling out negative reviews on X, even as most critics gave the film a thumbs up

Mortal Kombat II is ready to fight. The Warner Bros. and New Line action sequel pulled in $5.2 million during Thursday night previews, setting up what could be a genuine box office battle this weekend against 20th Century Studios’ The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Projections have Mortal Kombat II opening somewhere between $40 million and $50 million — Warner Bros. is playing it conservative with an internal estimate of $35 million, but some forecasters believe it could push past $50 million on the strength of fan turnout and solid word-of-mouth. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is expected to pull $38 million to $42 million in its second weekend after a massive $77 million debut, buoyed by Mother’s Day audiences. Lionsgate’s Michael continues its blockbuster run in third place, projected for another $35 million to $40 million in its third weekend out.

For context: the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot opened to $23 million — and that was with a simultaneous HBO Max release in the middle of the pandemic. This sequel carries an $80 million budget (up from $55 million), more characters, more fatalities, and a whole lot more ambition. The film was originally slated for an October release before Warner Bros. pushed it to May, betting it could perform like a summer tentpole. That call looks smart right now.

Adding to the momentum: Mortal Kombat II is also releasing in China without any edits or modifications — a first for the franchise. “Mortal Kombat II is releasing in China with no cuts,” star Ludi Lin told Variety. “This is why it’s trending internationally, rather than just focusing on domestic.” That could push the global opening weekend close to $80 million.

What Critics Are Saying

The film currently holds a 71% on Rotten Tomatoes from 93 reviews — the highest score in the franchise’s theatrical history and the first fresh rating any Mortal Kombat movie has earned. For comparison: the beloved 1995 original sits at 44%, the notorious Mortal Kombat: Annihilation bottoms out at 4%, and the 2021 reboot managed 55%.

The praise is concentrated in a few areas. Karl Urban, fresh off his scene-stealing run on The Boys, gets consistent credit for grounding the movie’s chaos as Johnny Cage — a washed-up movie star recruited into an interdimensional death tournament. Reviewers note that Urban’s arc from burned-out egotist to reluctant hero gives the film an emotional anchor it badly needs, and that his dynamic with Josh Lawson’s resurrected Kano provides the movie’s most entertaining stretches. Lawson, who was already a highlight of the 2021 film, reportedly dials things up to eleven here — described by one critic as “too corrupt to be corrupted further” — and steals nearly every scene he’s in.

Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana also earns praise, with her backstory — watching her father King Jerrod lose his realm of Edenia to the villainous Shao Kahn as a child — providing the sequel’s emotional spine. CJ Bloomfield’s Baraka, brought to life through prosthetics and practical makeup, is called out as a standout among the film’s many fighters. And the fight choreography overall gets strong marks, particularly a mid-film showdown between Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and a resurrected Kung Lao (Max Huang) set against an ethereal blue portal that fans of the Sega Genesis games will immediately recognize.

Director Simon McQuoid, returning from the 2021 film, gets credit for giving the action room to breathe — wider shots instead of rapid-fire cuts, fighters with distinct styles, fatalities that reportedly drew cheers at screenings rather than groans.

The criticism, where it exists, tends to cluster around the same issues. Villain Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) is widely described as a one-note “final boss” whose immortality-granting MacGuffin amulet drains tension from the fight sequences. The script, written by Jeremy Slater, is called overstuffed — too many realms, too many rules, not enough internal logic. The tournament’s Elder Gods are repeatedly cited as a plot hole: if Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung are constantly cheating, why don’t they intervene? And fan favorites Hiroyuki Sanada (Scorpion) and Joe Taslim (Sub-Zero), who drove much of the 2021 film’s energy, are largely sidelined until the third act.

The Wall Street Journal called it “vulgar, violent, vacuous.” The Detroit News gave it a D+, arguing it lacks the cheesy charm of the original and that McQuoid can’t quite balance the film’s competing tones — the self-serious mythology stuff sitting awkwardly beside Cage and Kano’s irreverent banter. But the majority of critics land somewhere in the “entertaining enough” zone: a bloody, crowd-pleasing action movie that knows exactly what it is and mostly delivers on that promise.

The Producer Weighs In

Not everyone connected to the film was content to let the reviews speak for themselves. Producer Todd Garner took to X to call out the negative notices — even as the majority were positive. “Some of these reviews are cracking me up,” Garner wrote. “It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat. One reviewer was mad that a guy ‘had a laser eye!’ Why the [frick] do we still allow people that don’t have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.”

When followers pointed out that most of the reviews had actually been favorable, Garner clarified he was reacting to a handful of specific quotes. Still, the post drew some pushback — one commenter noted that Garner probably shouldn’t be “tossing any stones” about lore accuracy given that the films invented the character Cole Young and reportedly got key details about Kitana and Mileena wrong. The whole exchange was, to put it charitably, a very online moment for a movie that’s already winning.

The full cast includes Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Ludi Lin, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Tadanobu Asano, Chin Han, Damon Herriman, Max Huang, Hiroyuki Sanada, Joe Taslim, CJ Bloomfield, Ana Thu Nguyen, and Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn. Game co-creator Ed Boon also appears in a cameo as “Ed the Bartender.” The film is rated R, runs 116 minutes, and is playing in standard theaters and IMAX.

Whether Mortal Kombat II tops the weekend chart or gets edged out by The Devil Wears Prada 2, it’s already done something none of its predecessors managed: made critics and fans mostly agree. That’s a foundation the franchise hasn’t had before — and if a third film gets greenlit, it’ll be starting from a much stronger position than any previous Mortal Kombat movie ever did.

The post Mortal Kombat II Opens With $5.2M in Previews appeared first on Cream.