FADE IN:

EXT. JAPANESE VILLAGE

A quaint little VILLAGE in FEUDAL JAPAN is attacked by a horde of masked NINJAS. JOE TASLIM, who you know is an ESPECIALLY BAD MOFO because you can see his FACE, invades the home of a WOMAN and her LITTLE BOY.

JOE TASLIM

You’re the family of my hated enemy, Hiroyuki Sanada. So instead of killing you with my mere sword, I will use my ICE POWERS to impale you both on an ICICLE!

(stabs them)

Which is functionally identical to stabbing you with a sword, I guess.

HIROYUKI SANADA arrives home to find JOE teabagging the FROZEN CORPSES of his FAMILY.

JOE TASLIM

Ha ha ha, suck it Hiroyuki! At last I have ended your bloodline, and the centuries-long mission for the Lin Kuei to hunt down and destroy the Shirai Ryu traitors is-

HIROYUKI SANADA

Oh God, you’re one of THOSE Mortal Kombat fans. SHUT UP, SKIP, NOBODY CARES, JUST MAKE THE ICE GUY BEAT UP THE HARPOON GUY ALREADY.

HIROYUKI ties a DAGGER to a ROPE and starts trying to hit JOE with it.

JOE TASLIM

Damnit, I have like a billion ice powers I could use to win the fight pretty much instantly, but I don’t want to blow them all in the first scene. Guess I’ll save all my actually useful moves for the climax, and for now just go with punching Hiroyuki in the face.

They FIGHT for a while, and finally JOE kills HIROYUKI and leaves. Then TADANOBU ASANO teleports in.

TADANOBU ASANO

(looking at piles of corpses)

Yeah, I think now is the perfect time for me and my immortal lightning god powers to intervene!

He enters HIROYUKI’S HOUSE and retrieves a BABY which had been SECRETLY STASHED there.

TADANOBU ASANO

And so Hiroyuki’s bloodline continues after all, since Joe never detected this additional child! Good thing this kid never cried while being stuck in a dark closet accompanied only by the sound of distant screams.

INT. MMA ARENA

Centuries later, MMA FIGHTER LEWIS TAN prepares for a FIGHT, assisted by his teenage daughter MATILDA KIMBER.

LEWIS TAN

That’s right everybody, it’s me, classic Mortal Kombat character...

(checks script)

“Cole Young”? Wait, who the hell is that? There’s like a million good-guy characters from Mortal Kombat, why are we making one up? Oh well, it is what it is. Come on sweetie, come watch your dad get beaten to a bloody pulp.

He goes and FIGHTS and LOSES.

MATILDA KIMBER

Dad, why do you always fight so recklessly? You would have won if only you’d shown control! And now that we’ve established the character flaw that you need to overcome in this movie, let’s never have you actually overcome it or indeed display it ever again.

They are approached by MEHCAD BROOKS.

MEHCAD BROOKS

I saw you fight just now, and couldn’t help but notice your very interesting tattoo.

LEWIS TAN

Oh that’s not a tattoo, it’s a birthmark. A birthmark that happens to be shaped exactly like an angry dragon face, framed by a perfect circle. Apparently I’ve never questioned this.

MEHCAD BROOKS

Well now would seem to be the appropriate time to show you that I have the exact same mark, and explain how your urgent help is needed to save the world, and that your life is in danger. But instead I figure I’ll wait and see if an interdimensional demon ninja tries to murder your entire family first.

Indeed, the next time LEWIS is hanging out with MATILDA and his wife LAURA BRENT, JOE shows up and starts hurling chunks of ICE at them!

LEWIS TAN

OH NO, RELATIVELY SMALL CHUNKS OF ICE! WHICH JUST SHATTER LIKE SNOWBALLS AND DON’T ACTUALLY SEEM VERY DANGEROUS AT ALL!! ...You know what, maybe he should have just brought a gun.

MEHCAD picks them up in his CAR and they SPEED OFF.

MEHCAD BROOKS

Lewis, you’re being hunted! You need to hide your family and go and find Jessica McNamee, who can give you important exposition! I could give you the same exposition right here and now, honestly it’s a really thin plot, but it wouldn’t be the same without the traditional Big Crazy Wall of Clues.

He deposits the FAMILY somewhere, then lures JOE into a BUILDING to FIGHT. He fires his SHOTGUN at JOE, but JOE FREEZES THE PELLETS as they leave the GUN.

JOE TASLIM

Ha, those projectiles designed to punch through walls and tear human beings in half are somehow easily stopped by a half-inch of ice crystals! And now that I’ve disarmed you, I think I’ll DISARM you!

He RIPS MEHCAD’S ARMS OFF and then tosses him over a THREE-STORY LEDGE.

JOE TASLIM

(dusting hands)

There! No need to check he’s dead, I figure there’s no way he survived that. Like, if it turns out he did, that would be a total steaming pile of BS.

(leaves)

INT. TRAILER

LEWIS goes and meets JESSICA McNAMEE at her CRAPPY WHITE-TRASH BUNGALOW.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

So here’s the exposition and crazy conspiracy wall you were promised. There’s a warlord from another dimension called Chin Han who something something something something, therefore semi-random fistfights have to happen.

LEWIS TAN

Er-

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Oh come on, that’s pretty much what it boils down to. That dragon mark you and Mehcad have identifies Earth’s champions for the tournament. He got his mark by killing some kind of demon thing that already had it, because the marks apparently work by The Santa Clause rules.

(points)

Tied up in the corner there you’ll find Josh Lawson, who also has a mark. He’s a grimy, hairy, hobo-looking Australian criminal who’ll be tagging along with the heroes making an endless string of wisecracks-

JOE TASLIM

So he’s Captain Boomerang?

JESSICA MCNAMEE

He’s pretty much exactly Captain Boomerang, yes.

JOSH LAWSON

G’day! My job in the movie is to yammer obnoxiously on and on and on until it starts to get admittedly kinda entertaining! And then to continue yammering on and on and on loooong after it stops being entertaining. I got my mark when I snuck up on a guy and slit his throat.

JOE TASLIM

Wait, so it doesn’t even have to be a proper fight? How loosely are we defining “kill” for this thing? Could a drunk driver become a champion of Earth by accidentally running me over with his car?

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Who knows, although I kinda want to see THAT movie now. At any rate, I don’t have a mark myself. I want to get one to earn the right to defend Earth. Which kind of gives me a better-defined sense of personal stakes in this movie than the main character, if you think about it.

At that moment, unbeknownst to them, a LIZARD MONSTER is sneaking into the trailer.

REPTILE

Heh heh, I completely have the drop on these guys. I’m perfectly invisible, I’ve got razor-sharp teeth and claws, and I can spit acid that cuts through solid steel, so obviously my best opening gambit is to TRIP THEM OVER

(does so)

HA HA LOOK THEY FELL DOWN A LITTLE

LEWIS, JESSICA, and JOSH fight the INVISIBLE MONSTER in a way that mostly looks like the SPECIAL EFFECTS TEAM haven’t gotten around to doing the CGI yet. Eventually they KILL IT, but not before setting fire to JESSICA’S CABIN.

JOSH LAWSON

Hey Jessica, guess what, before all your clues caught fire I looked at a couple of pieces of paper and was able to instantly figure out and memorize the location of Tadanobu’s temple. I’m gonna trek through the desert to go there and rob the joint, because I apparently think an old ninja dojo is bound to be overflowing with fancy loot or something?

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Er, well, in that case I’ll make an obviously fake offer of like a bajillion dollars if you show us how to get there!

LEWIS TAN

Oh yes, what an elegant way to have us all join forces to reach the temple. I guess “we’re all being hunted by the same superhuman murderers” wasn’t enough on its own.

INT. DESERT TEMPLE

After a journey through the desert, they reach a TEMPLE, where they meet LUDI LIN and MAX HUANG.

LUDI LIN

Thank the various god-like entities you’re here! We’re also champions, we’ve known about the impending tournament and potential interdimensional invasion all our lives and have been desperately hoping that more fighters would show up.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Then why haven’t you been out looking for them? Mehcad and I thought to do that, and we barely even know what the hell is going on!

MAX HUANG

Sure, we could have done that, but we thought our time would be better spent sitting around this empty building with our thumbs up our butts. Oh, but speaking of Mehcad...

It turns out that MEHCAD is IN THE TEMPLE SICK BAY.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Oh you have GOT to be kidding me. You had multiple limbs torn off and then fell several stories, smashing your face against every obstacle on your way down! How are you not dead?

MEHCAD BROOKS

It’s only a flesh wound! Besides, Tadanobu here was able to teleport me to safety in time.

LEWIS TAN

Well that’s good hey WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND, we just had to traverse a DESERT to get here, meanwhile there’s a GOD who could’ve just ZAPPED US HERE INSTANTANEOUSLY?!

TADANOBU ASANO

Well see the rules say that I can’t intervene in the tournament to help you. I mean, I can save Mehcad, and give you a building in which to train, and hand you a weapon which will guarantee you an easy victory in the final fight - really the rule is mostly that I’m not allowed to do anything that would end the movie too quickly.

LEWIS TAN

Fair enough. All right then, now that we’re all here let’s get training for the tournament! Are you guys going to show us some advanced martial arts techniques, or some kind of mystical elemental abilities or something?

LUDI LIN

Nah, we’re just gonna kick you in the face until your dragon marks give you random superpowers.

LEWIS TAN

...

LUDI LIN

It’s how this champion thing works! Once you’ve been branded, at some arbitrary time some kind of arbitrary personal breakthrough will make you get some arbitrary mutant ability. I got the power to shoot fire out of my hands, FWOOSH!

(juggles flames)

MAX HUANG

And I got... a dumb-looking metal lampshade I strap to my head, that I can throw at people.

(sighs deeply)

They start trying to trigger their SUPERPOWERS.

JOSH LAWSON

Hey look, I got a single laser eye! Which makes me exactly half as impressive as the most boring character in X-Men!

MEHCAD BROOKS

I got robot arms! Oh wait, that’s not a superpower, it’s just a regular mechanical prosthesis.

(bolt falls off robot arm)

A crappy one.

LEWIS TAN

I got kicked across the floor a bunch without achieving anything!

(bleeds)

JESSICA MCNAMEE

And I got to stand around being absolutely pointless. Shouldn’t I be out finding a monster to kill or something?

Suddenly WARLORD CHIN HAN storms in, accompanied by JOE and SISI STRINGER, who looks like she just ate a GRAPE JELLY DONUT really sloppily.

CHIN HAN

Wassup guys? Hey I was thinking, that whole tournament thing to determine whether I get to invade and conquer Earth is kind of a dumb idea for a movie, like a really really stupid premise. So what if instead we just come here and murder you guys? That way when the tournament’s supposed to start we can be all, “Whoops, the other team can’t come because they were all murdered, guess we win by default”.

LEWIS TAN

It feels like that should probably be against the rules.

CHIN HAN

Okay on the one hand yes it is, but on the other hand it seems like absolutely nobody is enforcing the rules? I mean we are NOT trying to hide what we’re doing here, seriously Joe tried to kill you in a public street and everything. So, yeah, put ’em up!

But the only thing TADANOBU puts UP is an ELECTRIC FORCE FIELD.

CHIN HAN

Ah, damnit! We’re thwarted, no way any of us can get to the other side of this!

SISI STRINGER

(raises hand)

I have teleportation powers if that’s any-

CHIN HAN

You win today, Tadanobu and friends! But we shall return!! Seriously we have to get out of our homeworld, have you seen that place? The entire planet looks like a big quarry. We don’t even have buildings as far as I can tell, it’s total BS.

The bad guys LEAVE.

TADANOBU ASANO

Damn, if these guys aren't even waiting for the tournament to start fighting us, we need our champions even more than ever! So to that end, Lewis? Go home. Your superpower hasn't shown up after a couple of days so please just give up and leave.

LEWIS TAN

Wait, what?! But Mehcad's power hasn't shown up either, and Jessica doesn't even have a mark, but you're not making either of them leave the safety of the force field with a cosmic bullseye still squarely on their backs! What gives?

TADANOBU ASANO

Lewis, haven't you ever wondered why you've had your mark your whole life?

LEWIS TAN

I dunno. Did I kill somebody when I was a baby?

TADANOBU ASANO

That'd be hilarious, but no. You inherited your mark from your centuries-dead ancestor, Hiroyuki.

LEWIS TAN

Oh! So unlike everybody else who earned their place by defeating superhuman beasts and warriors, I'm basically a trust fund kid who got in because his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather swung around a knife on a string once? Damn, I almost would've prefered to have gone the drunk-driver route.

TADANOBU ASANO

This whole time I've been hoping you'd show that you'd inherited your ancestor's skills. Although judging by the opening scene, he didn't have any superpowers either, so I don't know what the hell I was expecting. Anyway, the long and short of it is, piss off.

He teleports LEWIS home.

INT. CAVE

EVIL CYBORG DAMON HERRIMAN comes to talk to JOSH.

DAMON HERRIMAN

Psst. Hey. Remember me? I'm the guy whose throat you cut to get your mark.

JOSH LAWSON

And you didn't even die? I am no closer to understanding the rules to any of this.

DAMON HERRIMAN

Yes well, Chin Han has an offer for you. Join the evil team and disable the force field for us, and we'll pay you millions of dollars!

JOSH LAWSON

Hot damn, lots of money will be so useful once civilization has fallen and humanity has been enslaved by interdimensional armies! I'm in!

He shuts off the FORCE FIELD, and then CHIN HAN, JOE, SISI, and DAMON all invade the temple, along with BAT LADY WITH NO LINES MEL JARNSON and SOME DUDE WITH A BIG HAMMER NATHAN JONES.

CHIN HAN

Sheesh, really pulling out some third-tier nobodies by now. I guess this late in the movie we don't want to waste any of the popular characters. Except for one, that is...

EXT. REMOTE CABIN

LEWIS has returned to where he stashed his FAMILY, when suddenly FOUR-ARMED GIANT GORO SHOWS UP ON THE FRONT LAWN!

LEWIS TAN

What's this? Now that my family is in danger, my superpower is finally emerging! Weird that it didn't happen back when Joe was trying to snowball my family to death.

(grows armor)

Aha! My power is some kind of... string armor! That glows orange sometimes when it gets hit! And also it gets, like, sharp stick things on the arms under vague circumstances, and uhhh... okay yeah, I honestly don't have the faintest clue what I'm looking at here.

Nevertheless he's able to use the CONFUSING ARMOR to slice GORO into ribbons.

GORO

Ugh, is there ever going to be a Mortal Kombat movie where I don't go down like a punk?

(dies)

Then a TELEPORTATION THING opens up, and LEWIS enters it.

INT. VOID

LEWIS finds TADANOBU chilling with JESSICA, MEHCAD, LUDI and MAX in a vast white NOTHING.

TADANOBU

To protect you all for now, I've brought you here, to my void.

LEWIS TAN

Oh. Kinda disappointed that we don't all look like D'Arcy Carden right now. But check it out everybody, I got my superpower, whatever the hell it's supposed to be!

MEHCAD BROOKS

Me too! When the bad guys attacked Jessica got pinned down by a rock, so my terrible robot arms turned into awesome robot arms! ...Which of course means if I'd gotten good robot arms in the first place, my superpower could have been some other thing maybe, flight or telekinesis or I don't even know.

(sighs)

Dumb Johnny 5 piece of crap prosthetics...

LEWIS TAN

Anyway, I've figured out how to beat the bad guys. We'll use Tadanobu's teleportation powers to split them up, and fight them one on one!

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Wait, so after all we've done to get away from the lame tournament plot, now we're doing it anyway?

LEWIS TAN

Yeah, but all the fights will be happening at once and they're all over very quickly and easily! That way NOBODY'S happy!

TADANOBU zaps them away to their various ARENAS.

INT. TRAILER

JESSICA gets to fight JOSH.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Since you have a laser eye, and could kill me just by looking at me, I'm traveling under my floor and using clever trapdoors to pop up and stab at you, like the world's most lethal game of Whack-a-Mole!

JOSH LAWSON

What if I fired my laser INTO the floor, then?

JESSICA MCNAMEE

At no point will that ever enter your mind.

Eventually she manages to STAB HIM IN THE EYE with a GARDEN GNOME. His MARK transfers to her, and finally she becomes THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

EXT. BRIDGE

MEHCAD pairs off against NATHAN.

NATHAN JONES

Oof. Practically my first scene, and I'm in a fight to the death with one of the main characters. But it's okay, I might not have any characterization or backstory or anything, but I do have this big hammer!

(Mehcad throws away his hammer)

Uh... well I guess I still have this intact skull!

(Mehcad crushes his skull)

Well that was quick.

(dies)

INT. TEMPLE

LEWIS and LUDI are fighting against SISI and DAMON.

LEWIS TAN

Wait, we are? Well that's the whole "one-on-one" idea right out the window then, isn't it.

LUDI manages to defeat DAMON, but SISI has unhinged her jaw and is seemingly about to SWALLOW LEWIS WHOLE, when suddenly JESSICA shows up and blasts a LASER HOLE through SISI'S TORSO.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Aw yeah! Sure glad Tadanobu knew to teleport me back from the trailer, somehow.

LEWIS TAN

Hang on, did you achieve your superpower like one minute after getting your dragon mark?

JESSICA MCNAMEE

I sure did! Kinda undermines the whole second act of this movie, doesn't it?

Suddenly they hear a SCREAM from somewhere. They rush over and find CHIN HAN has seized MAX and is giving him a DEMENTOR'S KISS.

CHIN HAN

You jerk, you chopped Mel in half with your stupid razor hat. I was in love with her or something. Now I am filled with rage.

MAX HUANG

You are? That's really not coming across. It feels more like you're ticked off at me for taking the last slice of pizza.

CHIN HAN

No look, I'm sucking your soul right out of your body, see? This is white-hot vengeance right here.

MAX HUANG

(corpsifying)

IF YOU SAY SO, I JUST THINK YOU'RE KINDA UNDERSELLING IT IS ALLLLLL

LUDI LIN

No! Not Max!! My lifelong friend, my brother, oh how-

LEWIS TAN

Yeah yeah yeah, you're sad, can we forget about that forever? More important characters, ie me, have problems now. Joe has attacked my family!

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Oh no! He's killed them like he killed Hiroyuki's family at the beginning of the movie?

LEWIS TAN

You'd think so, but instead he just sort of ice-glued them to the wall? I suppose as the protagonist I just automatically get let off the hook.

He rushes to fight JOE.

LEWIS TAN

RIGHT! Time to show what this weird stringy armor thing can really DO!

He and JOE just sort of BEAT ON EACH OTHER for a while without the ARMOR seeming to do ANYTHING AT ALL.

LEWIS TAN

Ugh, piece of junk. Hey, where's that auto-plot-resolving MacGuffin Tadanobu handed me earlier, maybe it can win the fight for me.

He pulls out HIROYUKI'S OLD DAGGER THING, and it summons HIROYUKI'S GHOST, which hurls a HARPOON into JOE!

HIROYUKI SANADA

GET OVER HERE!!

(pause)

And yes, I said that line despite my character not knowing how to speak English, who gives a crap.

He yanks JOE over to him.

JOE TASLIM

Ulp, this ain't good! Fortunately it is now the climax. FULL SUITE OF ICE POWERS, ACTIVATE!

He stabs HIROYUKI with an ICE KNIFE then throws him through an ICE WALL then dodges his blows while leaving behind an ICE CLONE which, you know, coulda just dodged without bothering with the clone, but this way more IIICCCEEE.

HIROYUKI SANADA

(getting his ass kicked)

Damnit, this is kinda taking the wind out of my whole Unholy Revenge from Beyond the Veil of Death thing. Lewis, little help?

LEWIS TAN

Sorry great-etcetera-grampa, I've decided to leave the fight altogether to try and punch my family out of their ice cocoons.

(punches and punches and punches ice)

Geez, wish those stupid arm-blade things would activate right about now...

HIROYUKI SANADA

I hate to repeat myself, but will you please GET OVER HERE!!!

LEWIS TAN

FIIINE

LEWIS and HIROYUKI team up to give JOE a total BEATDOWN.

HIROYUKI SANADA

Okay then, we've got him on the ropes, time for a finishing move:

(breathes fire and turns Joe instantly into a charred corpse)

...Which, as it turns out, could have been the only move and saved us a lot of time.

Suddenly TADANOBU, JESSICA, MEHCAD and LUDI all burst in.

JESSICA MCNAMEE

Oh, are we too late to help fight the final boss? Sorry, traffic was a bitch.

Then CHIN HAN arrives, extremely ANGRY.

CHIN HAN

Oh big whoop, you killed all my guys. Well your ghost ringer has been dead for centuries, so what does death matter anyway! In fact I'm just gonna evaporate away all my guy's corpses so we can reuse them in the sequel, thus making everything completely unsatisfying, NYAH!

(leaves)

TADANOBU ASANO

I suppose that fits the source material: no matter how beaten, stabbed, harpooned, frozen, or sprayed with flesh-melting acid you get, you can always expect to get back to your feet for round two.

(reaches into cloak)

So in that spirit, who wants to see the sequel hook we got!

LEWIS TAN

Sure, I could go for more of this! It was still goofy as all get out with paper-thin characters and story, but now that we've actually got good fight choreography and special effects, this has been a pretty fun time! And best of all, we completely left out that annoying Hollywood douchebag character Johnny Cage!

TADANOBU ASANO

(hastily shoves hand back into cloak)

Well never mind then.

END.