Trivia: In the beginning of the movie, when Rayden 'shoots himself' against Kahn, he makes a strange cry, which is actually from the Mortal Kombat II games.
Trivia: Musetta Vander portrays Sindel, the mother of Kitana. In real life, Vander is only four years older than Talisa Soto, who plays Kitana.
Trivia: "Mortal Kombat" co-created Ed Boon has called "Annihilation" the worst thing to come out of the overall franchise.
Trivia: Originaly, Sheeva was meant to have a larger presence in the film, and was even going to have a two-on-one fight scene with Liu Kang and Raiden. Unfortunately, last minute budget cuts meant that most of her scenes had to be scrapped. This explains her limited screentime and rather abrupt, unceremonious death.
Trivia: According to producer Laurence Kasanoff, the version of the film released in theaters was not the intended final version, but rather a rough workprint cut. The visual effects weren't even close to being finished, and the film was meant to be re-edited to give it a more cohesive, deliberate pace and to fix some of the more noticeable errors. Kasanoff reportedly wanted to delay the film's release six months to properly finish it. However, executives at New Line simply shrugged and said "It's gonna be a hit regardless, so just release it as-is." To this day, Kasanoff considers the film incomplete.
Trivia: In addition to starring as Liu Kang, Robin Shou was also the fight choreographer for many of the battles. He was stretched so thin on-set due to performing this double-duty under a very tight schedule, that he actually barely appeared in several of his own fight sequences, often only filming closeups or specific stunts. A prime example is the Liu VS Baraka fight, in which much of the fight was actually performed by future movie-star Tony Jaa.
Trivia: Michael Jai White was initially cast as Jax, but dropped out of the film when he got the lead role in the comic-book movie "Spawn." However, White eventually ended up playing the role of Jax fourteen years later in the web-series "Mortal Kombat: Legacy."
Trivia: The film notoriously recast many of its main characters. Linden Ashby, who co-starred in the original as Johnny Cage, hated the script and refused to return - hence his character getting recast and unceremoniously killed off in the first scene. Bridgette Wilson, whom played Sonya Blade in the first film, similarly turned down the chance to reappear. Christopher Lambert, whom played Rayden in the original wanted to return, but was unable to free up enough time as he was working on another film.
Trivia: As unbelievable as it sounds given the almost ridiculous amount of characters in the movie, several other characters from the games were in the film in early cuts, but were removed from the finished film for timing and pacing reasons. This notably includes Quan Chi, one of the villains of the series, who was going to appear in the film in several scenes including the climax. His content was removed, but behind-the-scenes photos and videos of an actor in makeup for the role can be found online.
Trivia: Despite the poor critical and fan reception of this film, the continued popularity of the original "Mortal Kombat" movie led the producers to try and make a third film for nearly fifteen years, though the project was eventually shelved in favor of a theatrical reboot. A third film entitled "Mortal Kombat: Devastation" actually officially went into production in 2005, but had to be cancelled when Hurricane Katrina destroyed all of the film's sets in New Orleans.
Answer: Mortal Kombat 2 was given a budget around the same as the first one probably indicating that New Line (makers of the film) were not convinced the film would not be as much an success as the original was. The buget of 30 million is not too high of a risk for a major film studio. The original was more built on the novelty of the video game and the interest of how it would translate to the screen so a sequel was always going to be tough. While it's hard to find out why the quality was unimpressive, this can just be more from different film crews from the first or just tougher f/x to try and create for the film in the time available. Take The Mummy Returns for example. The Scorpion King near the end looked far too computer generated. This was despite a massive budget and impressive CGI for both films.
Lummie ★