What They Say:
You just got CAGED! At least you did if you tuned in to last week’s episode. Episode three takes you on a “Behind the Music” style story of the man, the myth, the legend: Johnny Cage. You’re treated to the rise and fall of the world’s greatest action hero, going from the big screen and constant partying to cheesy television show pitches — one that even has him fighting against piracy and illegal downloading. Episode four looks to be divided into two parts and focuses on the sisters Kitana and Mileena, showing their growth into the brutal fighters that Mortal Kombat fans know, fear, and fantasize over until Mileena takes off her mask.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Jax, Sonya, and Kano saga seems to be over for the time being as we move onto… sigh… Johnny Cage in episode three. He’s not one of my favorites, and why should he be? He’s cocky, he’s an asshole, and he’s always in the Mortal Kombat tournaments for all the wrong reasons. Who cares about saving the world when you can get the press to stop calling you a fake? Not to mention that he can be a royal pain in the ass to fight in the games, and the whole time he smirks that smug grin as he smashes your face apart in order to replace it with an Oscar in the newest Mortal Kombat game. What a prick! But this episode not only made me a Cage fan, but it made me feel sorry for him.
This episode treats us to the Johnny Cage story, even showing clips of a young Cage fighting in martial arts tournaments. We get commentary from people who know him as we watch him go from a scrawny “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” to, well… CAGE! But like a lot of stars featured in these documentary specials, Johnny starts partying, clubbing, spending way too much money, and flubbing up his life until there’s no life left for him to have. Normally, in the games, Johnny Cage is only looking out for himself. This Johnny Cage is completely different. This Johnny Cage has paid for his wild actions and is now at the bottom of the celebrity barrel, desperately trying to scrape his way out. We see him meeting with producers, pitching ideas, and really trying to re-establish himself as an actor. But the producers are over it, saying that the action hero phase of media is dead — shows what they know, did they not watch the beefy orgasm that was “The Expendables?” Johnny keeps trying, giving them more gritty, cop drama like ideas, but the producers still say no. In fact, they had already planned on dropping Cage but didn’t bother telling him until after he sunk all of his money into pitch after pitch after pitch. Needless to say, Cage is pissed, but do you think these suits care? They have the nerve to actually steal Cage’s cop drama idea and pitch it to a hot little actress, they even keep the title, simply removing the “Cage” part of it. Johnny overhears this and proceeds to go nuts, beating the crap out of the slimy producer and saying my favorite line in the episode, “Still think this is fake?” This, of course, refers to the rumors of Cage’s fighting being fake, but as a longtime Mortal Kombat fan I thought that this was a nice touch. Why bother going to the tournament to prove it when you can just break the guy’s nose?
After completely annihilating the producer and the security guards, the world around Johnny freezes — literally. The lights snap off and a man approaches him, offering to make this all go away. We’re left to wonder who this mystery man is as the episode ends, but I’m guessing it’s Shang Tseng.
And hey, according to episode four, I’m right!
Episode four, part one, focuses on the sisters Kitana and Mileena. This is the first time we’re taken out of Earthrealm as we go back to the kingdom of Edenia. Mortal Kombat fans definitely know what this place is. This is the land that Kitana was from before the emperor Shao Kahn took over. For the first time we get to see the actual attack that led to the demise of this once peaceful kingdom. However, for some reason, half of this episode is animated while the other half is acted out. I’m not quite sure why they decided to do this; it reminds me of the animated part in “Kill Bill” when we got Oren’s backstory. But where “Kill Bill” had the entire flashback done in a very cool, stylish animated scene, this story is half and half as if it can’t make up it’s mind. When Baraka’s troops storm the castle it’s animated which, o.k., maybe it’s because they couldn’t get a thousand Baraka’s on screen. But then it’s even done in scenes where it’s only one character running through a forest. It almost feels like the creator discovered some new trick and wanted to try it out, only he tried it out in all the wrong places.
As the narration of the episode tells us, the warriors of Edenia lost ten Mortal Kombats, giving Shao Kahn access to their world. We see Baraka and his troops go in for the kill — and yes, the Tarkata look creepy and terrifying — while King Jerrod ponders what he should do. One of his men beg him to leave before it’s too late, but the king doesn’t want to leave his wife and baby behind. He rushes to save both Queen Sindel and their baby, Kitana, but Baraka catches them and kills the king — at least he believes he’s killed him, Shao Kahn confirms that it was an imposter. Shao Kahn takes Sindel and Kitana since he has grown sweet on the queen, but the queen feels nothing for him for obvious reasons. This makes Kahn paranoid about how Kitana will grow up to feel about him, so he orders Shang Tseng to create a copy of her.
And thus, Mileena is born — Tarkatan teeth and all.
This act worries Sindel about Kitana’s future, so she decides to kill herself and make sure that her soul is infused with her daughter’s soul. I assume this is to make sure Kitana doesn’t grow up actually believing Shao Kahn’s lies. The two sisters grow up and train together, but as Mileena grows up her Tarkatan blood starts to make her more and more unstable. She kills one of the guards and seems to enjoy the sadistic act, unfortunately, this part is animated and we don’t get to see this fatality done in live action form. Perhaps it was too bloody? Then again, we got to see Baraka brutally stab the fake King Jerrod through the throat with both blades so…
The episodes ends with the two sisters about to fight in front of Shao Kahn which is quite the horrible cliffhanger spot in my opinion. The entire episode we didn’t get to see any real combat, particularly with Kitana and Mileena, and just when we’re given the chance it cuts off. I suppose we’ll have to wait until next week.
In Summary:
I really enjoyed episode three. I really like that Johnny Cage is, well… human. He’s not the perfect movie star and he has many flaws, and when he gets screwed over you really want him to go off on those men. And he does. Ten fold. With nothing else to lose he just goes ballistic, taking out the security guards and getting a few good hits in on one of the producers. That’s just awesome. In every version of Johnny Cage, game or movie, he’s just the arrogant movie star with a couple of funny lines here and there. He’s supposed to be the human we can relate to the most since he’s usually the one wondering, “What the hell is going on?” Liu Kang tends to know about Lord Raiden and unearthly abilities, Sonya has a one track mind, and Jax is too busy trying to stop Sonya from doing something stupid. So that leaves us with Cage, but who can really relate to the millionaire movie star who thinks he’s all that and a canister of Pringles when, in reality, he’s annoying and selfish. This time, however, he was a sympathetic character who really wants to climb out of the gutter and back to the surface. And you really want him to succeed, and he just doesn’t, sinking all of his money into a hopeless endeavour. And most of us know what it feels like to be screwed over and wanting to just slug the guy in the face. Well Johnny does the punching for us and it feels good. Now I wonder what Shang Tseng is offering him to make it all go away — I’m guessing a one way ticket to Outworld for the Mortal Kombat tournament, but this time Johnny’s reasons are a bit more valid.
Episode four, part one was not one of my favorites, in fact, I daresay I enjoyed being CAGED better. This is disappointing because I am a fan of both Kitana and Mileena. I feel like they contrast against each other very well: the beautiful sister and the… urm… Mileena. It is interesting to finally see the Edenia story and finally see King Jerrod. In the games it’s usually just back story we’re told through either Kitana or Sindel. I’m still kind of lost on the animated sequences. If you’re going to do the animated flashback trick, use it for the whole flashback. This just felt inconsistent and, honestly, like a cop-out — particularly for Mileena. We know that the disfigured teeth can be done, Baraka wears them loud and proud and we even got a glimpse of them on baby Mileena, so why not use them to their full potential? That creepy feeling you’re supposed to get when Mileena is in a room just wasn’t there, especially since she doesn’t wear the mask and has a normal face in most of the episode except. I’m sorry, but if Baraka can run around being his horrific self then why can’t she? I hope that this lack of RAWR MILEENA is build up for part two of this episode, which is where the young sisters will fight each other.
There’s something about Shao Kahn that just doesn’t feel right. He’s not really intimidating, at all. It might be because Baraka is the one who does all the killing, or it might be because he looks like some normal evil king dude out of some Renaissance story, but he just doesn’t look threatening enough. Maybe it’s the lack of skull head gear, even the crappy second movie gave him the skull head gear. I know this is a prequel to Mortal Kombat, but I’ve always imagined the bad ass emperor as, well… a bad ass. This almost felt like a love story as, “Shao Kahn grew sweet on Queen Sindel,” and just… what? I want my diabolical killing machine, he should’ve been flinging guards across the room with Baraka, or something! He’s just too laid back, which — yes — in the games he mostly made Shang Tseng do the dirty work but when you saw him you just knew that he could jump from his chair, grab you by the neck, and snap it without even breaking a sweat. Even in the newest game when he walks towards you in the final battle there’s a feeling of dread, especially when you realize that he can take out over half of your health with one attack.
Hopefully both Shao Kahn and Mileena become the fearsome warriors fans have grown accustomed to as the series continues.
