There’s a lot of promising signs surrounding the latest reboot of the Mortal Kombat film series. It’s being produced by James Wan, fresh off the heels of Aquaman’s billion-dollar cume, it features a lot of excellent international and local talent, plus it began filming in Adelaide this month.
But there’s one thing that’s already dividing audiences, and that’s the reimagining of the classic Mortal Kombat dragon logo.
Enduring fans of the series might recognise this:
It’s the famous logo that dates back almost thirty years when the game originally released, beginning a decades-long run of videogames that helped popularise martial arts, blood and unadulterated brutality not seen before in the medium.
Recently, Lewis Tan, who has been cast in the film in an unknown role, shared an image of a filming slate on his Instagram. In the image, we got our first look at the film’s renewed logo which clearly shares ties with its predecessor.
The caption accompanying the image simply reads “first blood, it has begun”. As you can imagine, the Internet at large has had a lot to say about the change. Here’s a small sampling of the opinions held by users online.
“Digging the logo. Smart they’re doing something a bit different.”
“Seems like a wimpy way of portraying a dragon.”
“I dig it, better not touch that theme song, though.”
“Test your meh.”
“I like it, probably needed a redesign anyway.”
“Is nothing sacred?”
“In an age where the word “iconic” is thrown around so much it has become just about meaningless, I don’t understand why you’d change a logo that is actually iconic.”
“The dragon just ends up looking too thin.”
“I hate it, someone complain about it for me.”
As you can see, the echo chamber is alive and well with this one and I’m sure this mix of glee, indifference and displeasure will reverberate throughout the cosmos. There’s every chance the logo isn’t even final, it’s not likely that with the film in early production that it’d even be close to set in stone.
The uproar might force a redesign not unlike what we saw with Sonic’s film design earlier in the year, though time will tell on that front.
Mortal Kombat is currently expected to release March 5, 2021.