Simon McQuoid Interview Mortal Kombat

Simon McQuoid Interview: Mortal Kombat

We interview Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid about new protagonist Cole Young, his approach to the layered franchise mythology, and more.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

Mortal Kombat is the long-awaited live-action adaptation of the massively beloved video game, finally out on April 16. Director Simon McQuoid has already been getting rave reviews for his grounded depiction of the lore from early reactions, despite this being his feature film debut.

McQuoid spoke with Screen Rant about how he approached his vision for the story, the function that newcomer Cole Young (Lewis Tan) serves, and which classic character didn’t make the cut.

Simon, for a debut feature film, this is a hell of a way to make a splash. There’s a ton of online speculation about the new character, Cole Young. Can you tell me why he is the audience’s eyes in this film?

Simon McQuaid: That part of it, the new audience’s eyes, was a very important part of it. We knew we needed a device and idea to bring audiences through this very rich, layered, detailed canon that is Mortal Kombat. But we didn’t want him just to be completely new; we wanted him to have a connection and really be built out of what the key ingredients are within Mortal Kombat. It’s fighting, so he’s an MMA fighter.

And then his connection through the film is built, and his arcana and everything is built out of pieces and elements and ingredients from his lineage and so forth. It’s really about creating someone who felt new but somehow belonged. That was sort of attempted alchemy at what we were creating there. Lewis did a fantastic job; he did a great job.

See also  10 Best Episodes Of The Last Kingdom According To IMDb

The mythology of Mortal Kombat has been wildly complicated, but this film really brings it all together and takes it pretty seriously. Can you talk to me about why such a grounded approach was taken for this reboot?

Simon McQuoid: I felt that in a video game – and the guys at Netherrealm have done such an amazing job at evolving and always building upon it; where they’ve got the game to now is incredible. But when you’re inside a video game, there’s a lot of stuff you can get away with because it’s not real right. Not only the level of art, but also just the way someone’s costume might be or the way someone jumps, or the superpowers. But when you bring that into reality, you can get into bad Halloween party real quick.

So, I wanted to make sure it felt incredibly deep and rich and layered and textured and weighty and elemental to counterbalance the potential to tip into that sort of land. Also, my belief is that if you make something that an audience believes, then they will go on the ride with you. Tonally, I was looking to build something that is totally unreal, but make it feel real so that you as an audience member really like the ride.

I’ve always loved the films, whatever genre they might be, [that] take me into a world and I really believe that. It pluses out the experience for me as an audience member, so that is really what I’m searching for, and that’s why there’s so many layers and details. I was just pushing the costume designer every day that we need more layers and we need more texture. It became a running gag with Cappi: “I suppose you want more detail.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’d be kind of nice.”

See also  Iron Man Correctly Predicted Captain America’s Endgame Fate

Because once you get those lenses in and you put the characters in that detail in front of the lenses, it all starts to cohesively join together. Really, it was all about elevating the characters and the feel of it.

I think one of the most brilliant moves for this film was to get Greg Russell, who actually ranked in the top 50 Mortal Kombat players and top 15 in the United States on Xbox, as a screenwriter. Were there any characters in his first iteration of the story that didn’t fit for timing or story purposes?

Simon McQuoid: Greg’s; he really knows his [stuff], and he’s done an amazing job on this on this film. And he’s a great guy.

There’s only one character that was early on who went by the wayside, just simply because they weren’t moving the story forward. The scene they were inside of was really expensive and not really helping in any way, and that was Rain. By just judging, you have to balance the pros and the cons. It wasn’t that anyone didn’t like him, it was just that how he was being brought about in that particular moment was just not buying enough bang for the buck.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/mortal-kombat-2021-movie-simon-mcquoid-interview/

Movies -