Surprise! Mortal Kombat's first trailer was supposed to drop at noon, but it looks like the schedule was moved up a bit since you can now see all two minutes and 30 gruesome seconds on HBO Max's YouTube channel.
And as expected from previous interviews with the director, actors, and basically anyone even remotely related to the film, Mortal Kombat is definitely earning its R-rating. You can tell when Jax gets his arms ripped off in the first 10 seconds of the trailer.
After that, we're given a good general overview of how the Mortal Kombat story is going to play out. Sonya and Jax are part of some weird military organization investigating people with supernatural powers and dragon-shaped birthmarks, along with references to an ancient "great tournament" known as Mortal Kombat.
Although Cole serves as the ignorant MMA fighter who has the whole Mortal Kombat situation explained to him, everyone else (including most of the audience) already knows exactly what's up. So the rest of the trailer focuses on the ninja rivalry between Sub-Zero and Scorpion. The first 10 minutes of the film is said to deal exclusively with the battle between the Shirai Ryu clan and Lin Kuei, resulting in Scorpion being murdered and then returning as a vengeful spirit.
It's in the last 30 seconds of the trailer that we get to see the culmination of that rivalry: a big fight between Sub-Zero and Scorpion. And yes, we get to hear Scorpion say his famous “get over here” line while tossing his chain and yanking his opponent through some metal bars.
There's also a long list of classic Mortal Kombat characters featured in the trailer, including Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sonya, Kano, Mileena, Shao Khan, Raiden, Shang Tsung, Goro, and what will almost certainly turn out to be Reptile, although it might just be some other reptile-human hybrid creature.
Mortal Kombat arrives in theatres and streams exclusively on HBO Max on April 16.