Some performers in martial arts films are already trained in martial arts. In a lot of cases they don't have any skill at all, and their fights are choreographed dances. In a few cases (The Matrix) the actors go through intensive training, but that's expensive and they don't usually bother.

You can usually tell when the actors are or are not trained. Those who really do know their stuff do the moves better. Their motions are more crisp; their forms are cleaner. The actors who are just dancing tend to look rather sloppy. It's usually pretty obvious. (Not invariably, though. Zhang Ziyi had no martial arts training before doing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I thought her fights were excellent. It perhaps helped that she was a very accomplished dancer.)

When David Carradine did the original Kung Fu series, when I was in college, he was just doing dances. But he got interested in martial arts and spent several years studying and got reasonably good, and his later martial arts sequences are noticeably different.

I have a weakness for the movie Mortal Kombat. As video game adaptations go, this particular one had less to work with than average. The game has only the barest of a story; there's a tournament, and the player's avatar competes in it and tries to win. That's pretty much it.

To make a movie out of it they needed a bit more than that. So they rather arbitrarily decided that Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage would be the heroes. Rayden got promoted to deity, as "guardian of the Earth". Shang Tsung became the enemy "boss". It's cheesy, but what makes it work for me is Linden Ashby's performance as Johnny Cage. (And Lambert chewing the scenery, which is always fun.) The Cage character is the source of a lot of comic relief, though the character is also a great fighter and never loses a fight in the film.

It's cheesy. It's a guilty pleasure. I would never claim that it is in any way excellent, but the budget was pretty large, and the special effects are about what they should be for a B-movie like this, and generally the fights are pretty good. But there's quite a wide variety of levels of experience in the martial arts among the performers.

Christopher Lambert doesn't have any experience with martial arts, but the Rayden character never fights. (Or not with his fists; he fights with special effects.) Bridgette Wilson (Sonya Blade) is cute and bouncy but has no martial arts experience at all, and her fights were the worst in the film. (She also gave the worst performance.) Talisa Soto (Kitana) also has no fighting experience, but she only had one fight and got trounced, so it wasn't a problem. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung) was also not well trained, but he did a moderately good job of faking it. (He might have studied some; I'm not clear on that.)

On the other hand, a lot of the actors have a great deal of experience in martial arts. Robin Shou (Liu Kang) has extensively studied a Chinese form called Wu Shu. Chris Casamassa (Scorpion) has a 7th degree black belt in Karate. François Petit (Sub-Zero) has multi-level black belts in four Japanese fighting forms, including a 7th degree black belt in Karate. Keith Cooke (Reptile) is a master of Karate and Wu Shu.

What I can't figure out is Linden Ashby. His bio on IMDB doesn't mention any martial arts training, but his fights are too good for me to believe he hasn't studied. I recall at least one spinning kick, and that's a really tough move to do well. His was fast and crisp. (Of course, I don't know how many takes they had to do.)

If, in fact, Ashby really didn't have any martial arts training then it makes one of the running gags in the film particularly funny. Johnny Cage is portrayed as a movie actor who does martial arts films and is portrayed by a hostile press as being a phony, though he isn't. "You can't fake those moves." But was Linden Ashby, the actor in this martial arts film who portrayed Johnny Cage, actually faking it?

UPDATE: By the way, I really do like the first Mortal Kombat film, but words cannot express just how utterly shitty the sequel was. The only thing about it that was any good was the lady who replaced Wilson as Sonya Blade. Not only was she better looking and a better actress, but her fights were a hell of a lot better. But everything else about the movie sucked more than you can possibly believe.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in People at 03:58 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
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