The Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short film was nothing short of awesome. I’m worried however that moving to the big screen, will take away all that did make it awesome.
- Image via Wikipedia
In case you missed it, a few days ago the most amazing short film emerged based on the re-imagination of the Mortal Kombat franchise. I think every MK fan in the world must have seen it by now so I won’t embed it again. However today I read this intereview from the guy who made it and it didn’t strike me as a great surprise to find out that the short film was made out of love for the MK theme and through the donation of time and equipment of people with similar vision.
The result was a short film made of pure awesome. Something which (for me at least) brings the vision for an MK movie to what it really should have been from the start. Gritty, Brutal and Horrific. Something truly made for adults and not children. The short film was created in order to sell the idea of an MK reboot to Warner Brothers and therefore make a whole movie and given the reaction it has received, there’s no reason to expect this will not go through.
However this also nicely fits in with what we’ve discovered bout human motivation which is that what humans do out of an interest to achieve a quality result and via self-management is always of higher quality than what is created in order to make money. This short film was created in exactly the same way. It’s director knew he was not getting paid for it. The people volunteering knew it as well. They had the right motivation and thus the result is excellent.
What will happen though when they try to translate this vision to the big screen? When their main drive will be profit and corporate management will take away much of the self-management of the staff in order to make the film sell more? What will happen when they make it PG-13 in order to tap into the teenage audience? When they start trying to just pile more and more special effects for the “Wow factor” that Holywood is so obsessed with. When the various IP pendlers intervene and try to get a cut (which is already happening).
Speaking of IP, this is also an excellent sampla of how such concepts prevent creativity rather than create it. The Director created something awesome out of the ideas that came before him. He didn’t do it to get a new piece of IP as the idea behind the laws would have you believe. He made it because we wanted to create something awesome. In this case, copyrights and trademarks are only going to delay and take money out of production rather than promote creativity. I.e. they will fulfill their classic role of delaying creativity.
But I digress.
I hope that I’m proven wrong and hopefully at least, the first film made out of this concept will be as awesome as the short trailer. The sequels, if The Matrix is anything to go by, will not be anywhere near as good anyway.
Είδωμεν…
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- Mortal Kombat – Rebirth (geeksaresexy.net)
- What is this badass Mortal Kombat video teasing? (destructoid.com)
- How The Mortal Kombat Short Was Made (And What Happens Next?) [Movies] (kotaku.com)
