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Stop it, stop it, please. I beg you. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] This image right here is responsible for today's video. This official concept art for Goro is everything wrong with video game movies. I don't know why, but there's always some man in Hollywood that wants to change stuff, even though the game is already crazy popular with an existing audience. There's still always some guy up top that wants to change it, forgetting the game became popular because everyone loved the designs. That's how we got ugly Sonic. Some fool in Hollywood thought a cartoon-looking Hedgehog would never work, so they changed it, even though a cartoon Hedgehog had worked fine for decades. Another great example is Reptile. If you're wondering why he's a mini Godzilla in this film and instead of a green ninja, it's Hollywood's fault. The people in charge of changes like this need to disappear and never be allowed anywhere near video game movies.
But all right, today's video is all about terrible Mortal Kombat art, and I mean official art, by the way, not fan art. This stuff was seriously considered for the movie, or actually, I should say movies, because we'll be covering more than one in today's video. But I want to begin with Goro, since he inspired the entire video. First off, Goro does not run on four legs. If you want a centaur, that character already exists, and his name is Motaro. He was already in one movie, but adapted horribly that first time. So if you put him in the new movie and actually do him justice, then there you go, a four-legged monster character. But Goro is not a quadruped. In fact, his entire race of people, known as the Shokan, literally hate the Centaur. That's right, they got mad beef going back centuries, a literal war between these two species. They despise each other. Even if it was possible for Goro to run on four legs, which we've never seen that before, but even if he could, Goro would never do that because he hates the Centaur so much, and they're known for running on four legs. In other words, if Goro was a real person, he'd be disgusted by this concept art, because you made him similar to one of his sworn enemies, going back generations.
Does anybody else remember when Hollywood suggested the idea of adding super nerds to work on comic movies and stuff like that? But then Twitter pretended like that was a terrible idea and somehow crossing the line, because God forbid actual experts stop people with tons of money from ruining our favorite franchises. I, for one, think that's a brilliant idea: have super nerds on set, because they would stop nonsense like this from ever happening. Now, thankfully, Goro never became this monstrosity in the film and actually looks pretty faithful to the games, but still, the fact that this design was ever even considered is crazy to me. There's even 3D models of this, for Pete's sake, which means it almost got into the film. They were seriously considering this; it was way past the concept phase.
But okay, next up, let's talk Reptile. This character is known for being a green ninja, but sometimes he takes the mask off and reveals his lizard face. However, most of the time he's a regular ninja man because he's in disguise, and as a result, that's how fans know him, and they're the core audience for this film, so you might want to try pandering to them for this movie. Right, we had one game—all right, one game where Reptile was an actual Lizard Man—actually two; there were two games where Reptile was a literal lizard man. But guess what? Most people hated it, which is why in every other game Reptile spends most of his time as a ninja man, a green ninja man. No, this costume does not count because he's still mostly covered, so he's more ninja than lizard here. These two images are not comparable; they look nothing alike. And unlike Goro, our poor boy Reptile was not saved from Hollywood man; they turned our boy into a mini Godzilla instead. And if I had to guess why, it's because the Godzilla films were very popular at the time and received very well. So Hollywood, being creatively bankrupt like it is, thought, "Hey, we'll just put a lizard monster in this movie, and that'll get more butts in seats; more people will watch this movie because we got a Godzilla, too." At no point in this movie does Reptile do any martial arts whatsoever, nor does he do any of his iconic attacks from the games either. At one point, his acid saliva drips down, but I'm not counting that as an attack. In fact, I—I just realized they never even call him Reptile in this movie; they call him Sioth instead, which I don't think regular fans even know about that name. Sioth, for anyone not aware, is his secret identity; his code name is Reptile, but his real name is Sao, but only in recent games, I think, because NetherRealm invented that name. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's what happened.
In summary, this character looks nothing like Reptile, fights nothing like Reptile, and never even gets called Reptile. Real quick, think about how much money they wasted making this character look nothing like the games. All that CGI money down the drain just to make a character look nothing like the character. That right there is why Hollywood man needs to go and never be allowed anywhere near our video game movies. They spent all that money ruining a character that everybody already loved.
All right, let's talk about this character next. He was also designed for a Mortal Kombat movie, but thankfully it got canceled very early in development. And does anybody watching want to guess who this character is supposed to be? Can you tell me who this character is supposed to be? No? Well, how about I zoom out to give you a better look? The full image might give you a better idea of who this man is, but in case you still don't get it—and I forgive you for that, by the way—this is concept art for Sub-Zero. Yep, that's right. This gigantic man covered in cyber technology is supposed to be Sub-Zero. Never mind the fact that Sub-Zero is one of the few Lin Kuei members to escape the Cyber Initiative and therefore never actually become a cyborg, making this artwork incredibly ironic. Once again, I call upon the super fans on the movie set to stop this from happening ever again in the future, because this looks nothing like Sub-Zero. In fact, without the blue glow around his hands, I doubt most people would ever guess this is Sub-Zero. And listen, I'm no art expert, so I could be wrong about this, but I think a good rule of thumb when adapting a character is to make sure that people can tell who the character is, right, without you having to tell them. I mean, if you're taking a character from one medium into a movie and fans can't tell who that character is without somebody else on screen telling them the character's name, then I feel like you messed up. But again, I'm no expert.
Honestly, I could talk all day about this subject or make multiple videos on this topic to be sure, but for today's video I'll keep things a bit shorter and end with tiny arms Jax. Whose idea was this? Because it's hilarious and would be great for a Mortal Kombat parody movie, but that's not what this is. It's the official movie. And in case anybody watching this video has never seen the recent Mortal Kombat movie, this made it into the final film: we have baby arms Jax in the movie, which, once again, is hilarious. But guess how he gets these arms? Shaolin Monks, apparently. Yeah, for some reason the Shaolin Monks that work for Raiden know how to engineer cybernetic arms. I got no clue how or why that is; logically it just makes no sense to me. And yes, it's a Mortal Kombat movie, so you don't want to put too much real-world logic into the film; I understand that. But still, why would monks know how to make cyborg arms? You know what I mean? It's just confusing. But to make matters even worse, the games already explained where Jax got his cyborg arms from, and it's way more fitting than what the movie did. In the games, it's actually Jax himself who made these robotic arms, although originally they were just enhancements that you wore on top of your existing arms, because in the original games he never lost his arms. That's a NetherRealm invention, but even in those more recent games, Jax still designed the cyborg arms, so it feels fitting for him to wear them because they're his own design, his own invention, very similar to how Tony Stark built the Iron Man suit. Therefore, it's way cooler for him to fly around with it than some other random guy that just wears the suit for whatever reason. Hollywood just refuses to use the lore they've already been given for the films, and I've got no real clue why.
But to make matters even worse, I can't find more concept art for these movies, so I'm not sure if that's because they were just lost to time, or the film studios were lazy and didn't want to include them in some behind-the-scenes stuff, or if they know these designs are terrible and just burned them so no one could see them. All of the above is a possibility in my honest opinion, but I would have loved to see more of this movie art because it's just so terrible, but also a fantastic showcase of what happens when Hollywood experts think they know better than the game they're drawing inspiration from. They're making a movie based on the game because it's already super popular and has that core audience, and yet they have no faith in the product and just keep changing things from the games because they think regular movie audiences won't like it, which is a huge disconnect from reality if I'm being honest. Typically, most gamers are very similar to your average moviegoer, so you don't have to change anything; just take what's in the game and adapt it for the film, but don't make any extreme changes. That's all you got to do.
However, as you all know, I love making these videos interactive, so let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. How do you feel about video game movies and also this terrible Mortal Kombat concept art? I saw some people on the website claim they actually liked this Goro image, which is mind-blowing to me, and I'm wondering if all the angry comments got removed by the people who run the website, because I can't see most Mortal Kombat fans being on board with this idea. It just looks nothing like Goro and is also a big insult to our boy Motaro. So once again, let me know any and all of your thoughts in the comments down below, because, like I say in all my videos, I truly love reading each and every comment. So grab that keyboard and make your voices heard. If anybody watching knows where I can find any more of this concept art for the Mortal Kombat movie or even past movies, please let me know, because it's very fun to look at and talk about. Thanks so much for watching today's video, everyone, and I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, leave a like down below; it helps the channel out a ton. And keep that combo going by subscribing and ringing that bell so you never miss any future videos. Make sure to come back next time, and as always, stay underdogs. [Music]