A seemingly endless expanse of foreboding pitch-black dunes.

A buried temple concealed like a mirage under white sand.

An ancient Japanese forest, its vivid viridian soon stained with red.

The realms and arenas of Mortal Kombat demanded a setting that would tell a story as its characters did.

Though the fantasy elements of these places are brought to life with modern digital manipulation, the timeless landscapes that provided the base are all real, and all right here in South Australia.

“I felt really lucky that we were coming to places that felt very new and fresh,” says Simon McQuoid, director of the live-action adaptation of the long-running video game series.

It was announced on May 14, 2019, that a long-dormant film reboot of the Mortal Kombat franchise would be filmed at Adelaide Studios.

‘ROUND ONE. FIGHT.’

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains previously unreleased plot, character and location details from Mortal Kombat, but it won’t tell you who lives or dies.

It’s December 2019, and McQuoid has briefly stepped aside from a huge set built into a discreet western suburbs warehouse, close to the end of four months of shooting.

The filmmakers were fortunate enough to miss the outbreak of COVID-19 by mere weeks, with post-production continuing through 2020 towards a release date of April 15, 2021.

This Woodville sound stage gives the crew what they need for several large internal environments, but the remote corners of the state are where the action began.

“We’re shooting the Outworld in the bottom of this year’s coal mine in Leigh Creek – it’s going to blow your mind when you see that,” McQuoid says.
“It’s all on camera and the visual effects just add into that world, rather than doing the heavy lifting – and it’s not like I’m in a parking lot with green screens.”

‘TEST YOUR MIGHT’

The Mortal Kombat video games, over various instalments from 1992 to 2019, primarily feature two characters at a time, duelling on a linear, two-dimensional stage with dynamic backdrops.

The lore of this universe unfolded and evolved over the past three decades just as the gameplay did, but remained centred around a tournament that would decide the fate of Earthrealm, the game’s canon name of Earth.

Australian actor Jessica McNamee narrates this core story point as the live-action Sonya Blade, a blonde-haired military commander who’s been a playable character in most games.

“Throughout history, different cultures all over the world reference a great tournament of champions,” Sonya says.

The “realm” suffix implies several others exist besides Earth – notably the Outworld that takes place in Leigh Creek.

The filmmakers sought somewhere that could feel otherworldly, even alien in its appearance, without the need for a full digital environment.

It serves as a meeting point for two key villains; the sorcerer Shang Tsung (Singaporean actor Chin Han) and his assassin disciple Mileena (Brisbane-based newcomer Sisi Stringer).

‘YOUR SOUL IS MINE’

Chin Han is effusive towards the mood generated on the remote set.

“Leigh Creek was such an interesting place to shoot in, its reputation preceded it,” he says from the Adelaide set.

“I can’t say enough about the landscape, it’s stunning. It’s like prehistoric times, it’s got squashed earth and you don’t need to stir up any feelings within yourself when you have that kind of environment to shoot in.

“It looks so surreal that I would love for audiences to know that that was the actual place and not a matte painting or visual effect.”

His junior co-star Stringer, in her first major film appearance, fought the elements to deliver one of the key environment shots already seen in the trailer.

“It was a drone shot, I had to walk along a mountain range … it was cold and it was windy and there was dust and wind and it was treacherous … (but) any of the physical adversity didn’t matter because I was just having the best time,” Stringer says.

‘FLAWLESS VICTORY’

The terrain of Coober Pedy – the long views, even the colour of the sand – provided the perfect entranceway to the temple of Raiden – a thunder god and protector of Earthrealm.

Set in Mongolia, the scene was found a mere 850km north of Adelaide.

McQuoid says the initial setting continues to drive the aesthetic of the movie – even after moving on from that starting point.

“It was driven by location, we scouted Coober Pedy and looked through the mines – some of them were gigantic so it started we found the entrance to Raiden’s temple,” he says.

From there, the main characters make their way through the real tunnels – and emerge at the Woodville interior set, replete with stained glass slabs, bronze statues, electrical currents and copious amounts of sand and rock.

For the parts that they couldn’t film within their chosen environment, they brought it with them.

“All of the dirt in the temple is just truck loads from Coober Pedy,” says McQuoid. “We brought in, like, four ton trucks of dirt, so that’s actual Coober Pedy in there.”

‘GET OVER HERE’

Far to the south of these desert abodes was an unexpected find for the filmmakers – their window back through time into the Far East.

“Mount Crawford is the Japanese forest,” says production designer Naamon Marshall.

“You guys have a forestry service that raises pine trees of all things. I would never have imagined that.”

Perth-born McQuoid speaks highly of the Australian crew, but the international perspectives have been essential in finding these hidden gems.

The team cannot, however, use places that look too distinctively Australian.

“Naamon Marshall is – he won’t tell you this because he’s so humble – the guy that designed the Batbike from The Dark Knight,” McQuoid says.

“He comes into town with this fresh set of eyes and is starting to say ‘Ah this is great, this is great’ and we’re going ‘No, you can’t put Eucalyptus trees in, they aren’t exotic to us. They might be for you, but they’re not to us’.”

The Mount Crawford environment is briefly shown off in the trailer, as Hanzo Hasashi (Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada) fights off a group of assailants with a kunai knife attached to a rope. The chain kunai/spear is a signature weapon of Scorpion, the undead ninja who Sanada’s character becomes.

That moment, according to McQuoid, sets in motion the events of the film that occur generations later.

‘YOUR FATE IS DECIDED’

The historical grounding is intended to empower the present timeline with something its new lead feels strongly that the film is about.

“This film is about family and destiny, that’s the way I like to look at it,” says Lewis Tan.

Tan has just stepped over from a fresh take alongside McNamee’s Sonya, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Max Huang as Kung Lao and Mehcad Brooks as Jax Briggs.

Tan’s character Cole Young, a down-on-his-luck MMA fighter, is the newest part of the franchise and has also just appeared in a part of the universe never previously seen.

“You guys came on a crazy day. This trippy set we have going on here? The Void – never seen before but totally MK canon.”

He emphasises the pressure of developing a new hero from scratch, but has enough in his own back story to furnish Cole with relatable traits.

“The character of Cole not only is an audience’s eye into the film, but it is a very grounded kind of heartfelt story. I actually think I have one of the hardest jobs in a way because it’s a new character, but one of the easiest jobs because I’m just being truthful and honest in the moment.”

Cole is driven by his connection to his daughter Emily (Adelaide teenager Matilda Kimber), but as his dragon-shaped birthmark suggests, his lineage links him to great warriors of the past.

This new fighter is the key to bringing new audiences into the world, but each of the cast and crew stress the attention to detail in upholding existing lore for longtime players, many of whom are among them.

“We played all the fighting games, we were into martial arts when I was a kid, I started when I was five years old,” Tan says, “Of course we played all those games – still do.”

Same goes for Huang, who plays Kung Lao.

Underneath his distinctive broad-rimmed hat, he’s a softly spoken monk who lets his actions do the talking.

Huang is familiar with the games, enough that he knew he’d need to pull off some carefully crafted moves to fight with his signature headpiece.

“The hat was quite difficult at the beginning. But I did my own homework and I actually made a hat out of cardboard. I went back home and started to practice in my own free time and came up with some of the movements for Kung Lao, but luckily we have the game so there was a lot of things already there that I could work with.”

‘SUPERIOR SKILLS WILL TRIUMPH EVERY TIME’

A razor-edged hat belonging to a Shaolin monk is one of the numerous successes of the prop department, who continue the goal of minimising needless digitisation.

Prop builder Olivia Pulbrook wields an armoury full of fantastical yet realistic blades and blunt instruments, from the excessive (a giant hammer) to the bizarre (a garden gnome).

She describes the influences that manifest in the designs.

Kitana’s bladed fans reflect her dual lineage, with one side of “all skulls and evilness” and the other with beautiful sculptures.

Kabal’s hook swords have sculptures on the hilts that commemorate past kills.

Raiden’s staff has a dragon head which fits the staff holder in his temple.

The garden gnome is used by [spoiler] to [spoil] [spoiler], so 50 of them were designed.

The hammer belonging to Reiko, an evil general here portrayed by seven-foot-tall Australian bodybuilder Nathan Jones, was one of their trickiest props to complete.

“We didn’t want to go too big and make it funny, but didn’t want to go too small either because he’s meant to be very scary and intimidating,” Pulbrook says.

Pulbrook, and costume designer Cappi Ireland, are targeting realism as well as tradition.

Ireland says they wanted to veer away from the “shiny superhero look” with their choice of textiles such as silks and leathers.

“We’re imagining all the fans who played the games for years went along to this movie and they could see their characters more enlightened or in a more realish sort of way, as opposed to two-dimensional on the screen.”

Kung Lao’s aforementioned hat provided them another major challenge – making something that would maintain a recognisable silhouette but also enable movement, fighting and throwing.

“We realised why no one in the previous two movies had made that hat,” says Ireland.

“We wanted it to look like it had razor sharp blades made of metal and it’s decorated with Chinese dragons.”

As with each fight scene, the props themselves are built to tell a story.

The battle in Sengoku-era Japan (between Hasashi and Bi-Han, a rival assassin later known as Sub-Zero) is fought with early incarnations of the blades used in a present-day clash.

“We flash back to the 1500s where we wanted to show that (Bi-Han) hadn’t fully developed his weapons yet. So this is like the crude version, and then when we see him in current day he’s got this beautiful, like amazingly powerful ice sword.”

The same applies to Hasashi/Scorpion, with the aforementioned old kunai reworked for a modern look – and even a connection to Cole.

“It sort of developed over time but is recognisable as a similar object,” says Pulbrook.

“And then Cole again has got that same sort of pattern on his weapons … we just wanted to link them visually as distant relatives.”

These elements might each only get a few seconds of screen time, but they’re features that gamers are known to obsess over.

The crew hope to reward them for it by incorporating Easter eggs in production and maintaining iconic lines and moments.

‘FATALITY’

There’s been reams of copy covering the saga’s infamously extreme violence long before any film was announced.

Just over a decade ago, the Mortal Kombat games of the time couldn’t even be released in original form in South Australia, which lacked an R18+ rating for games as it did for films.

The movie makers set out with no doubts where their project would end up.

“It’s going to be R,” stresses producer Todd Garner.

“It can’t be (MA15+), it’ll be R. We’re not going to try to skirt it – you know what the game is, we know people love fatalities, so it’s not a mystery to us what the fans want but it’s also got to be in the bounds of cinema.”

As with the settings, they have some tricks up their sleeve for adding realism to characteristically unbelievable finishing moves.

Prosthetics expert Larry Van Duynhoven is in a grim-looking trailer, and keeps busy enhancing actors with monstrous features or crafting exquisite heads with only a single use.

“Yesterday was the headsplat, it went over twenty odd metres,” he says of his latest obliterated work.

Van Duynhoven wields silicone, fake blood, food thickeners and compressed nitrogen to create dramatic deaths on camera, but he says even then there may never be enough.

“There’s never enough, but look, they (film deaths) have got their moments, it’s a different take to what I think we’re all expecting.”

Characters with heavy prosthetic or makeup use spend hours in Van Duynhoven’s chair, as he balances the need to match recognisable game appearances with something practical for camera.

For Mileena, their job was to cast Stringer’s face with small mouth pieces “like side gills really”, before makeup, leading to a difference from the traditional jaw with enormous exposed fangs.

Stringer herself adds that there’s a lot going on with her appearance.

“There’s a lot of hardship when you’re created in an image of a beautiful princess but then you have this hideous mouth. There’s a lot to unpack there in that one.”

‘FINISH HIM’

All the people involved on the set this day paint a picture of a finished film that will wind up as bloody, intense and exhaustive as the process to make it.

But the characters aren’t simply controllable avatars or expendable pawns. McQuoid wants them to feel real, and for the audience’s connection to be real.

He says all the filming is driven by trying to make the people feel genuine.

“I want to really do justice for the fans … they have invested a lot of time and love into this film and these characters, and I think bringing them to life in a way that makes them feel for the first time human – that’s what I think is the most powerful thing.”