I must admit that I quite enjoyed the first film. Not the best martial arts flick in the world, but by no means the worst. However, compared to this, its a damn masterpiece!
1) There are WAAAAAY too many characters. In the first, you had the four heroes (Cage, Sonya, Kang, and Raiden), and about five villains (Kahn, Kano, Sub-zero, Scorpion, and Goro). This meant that at least some amount of time could be spent building on characters. Thus, before we see Sub zero,Goro and scorpion fight, we know who they are , and their reputations. This doesnt happen with a single character in MK:A because it is too busy trying to throw as many characters from the games at you as possible that it often doesnt even have time to mention who they are (e.g. Smoke, Cyrax, Rain, Baraka, Mileena).
2) It's had a $30 million budget, yet seems to have spent on completely the wrong things. I would have much rather they had halved their SFX budget and hired a decent fight choreographer. Put it this way: Iron Monkey cost less than $4 (if I remember correctly) for the entire film, and there isnt a single fight in MK:A that comes close to the worst in that film, which leads on to the next point.
3) The direction is TERRIBLE!! Especially during the fights!!! Watch any decent fight sequence, and generally the cuts are kept to a minimum. It both makes the fight easier to follow, and shows off the skill of the participants more. Its rare in this film that any flow between moves occurs without cuts. During one move, there are actually about five cuts!! No cuts would have looked much better!!
4) Its hard to decide which is worse, the script, or the acting.
5) The SFX heavy final battle is perhaps the lamest thing I have ever seen.
There are people who will defend this film saying that "its just fun!", or "Its not meant to be deep and meaningful or anything". Which works for some films. And those films can be fun. Or not deep and meaningful, but still enjoyable. This isnt. Its bad. It hasnt got one redeeming feature that I can think of. Possibly the worst film. Ever.
