While I like the dive into Scorpian and Sub Zero's past, the point of Mortal Kombat is the tournament itself. There was talk and talk about the tournament and they used characters from (subjectively) the worst game in the series. I suspect it's to sequel bait for the next movie where they'll get more known characters but it was very disappointing to see Melina and Goro done in the first movie.
Also what the hell is Arcana? Did they really think coming up with an explanation for Kano's laser eye had to be inner magic? It's cybernetic! Really dumb.
And Cole was nice but he really, really had no reason to be there. I could have cared less for him and his family because most of the movie was the Kano show.
The writers seemed to have just skimmed the story too. Very predictable and bad righting. I wish they would have gone all the way crazy with the tournament instead of trying to take Mortal Kombat seriously.
Also gotta deduct points for no Mortal Kombat song during any fight. And the rendition they did doesn't count.
I gotta say the cast was really well done for positives and everyone did what they could with their role, some better than others, but still good effort on their part. All the characters were pretty well done on the CGI side, but it still looked very weird in some places like Raidens eyes.
Fight scenes were good but they really had to go hard or go home and they picked a middle road that was just okay.
All in all the movie gets a 2/10 for me.
The only reason I want to see the next one is to see who they pick for Jonny Cage and even then is a meandering hope they'll do it right.