In this episode, the realm of Edenia is taken over by Shao Kahn and destroyed. After the king's death, Kahn marries the queen, Sindel, and becomes step father to Sindel's daughter, Kitana. Fearing she will grow to betray him, Kahn commands Shang Tsung to clone Kitana; he does so with Tarkatan blood. As the two girls grow up, they're trained by Shao Kahn as assassins, and Mileena struggles with her Tarkatan urges and rage.
The Good
Baraka. Surprisingly, my prediction has turned out to be false. Baraka is in fact a Tarkatan, and the general of the Tarkatan horde (with who we guessed as Reptile being an unnamed Tarkatan). While he's not game authentic, the character is still there. From different angles, you can see minimal change had been done to his appearance outside of his teeth, with more detail put on his face to show battle scars and tribal piercings. Our only real complaint is that he didn't growl, but we can get over that.
And he's worlds better than an overly-emotional plastic surgeon.
The animation. This short had a lot of Kill Bill-style animated shots illustrating the history of the conflict and in a few instances, serving as the background. It did get a bit overdone after a while, but it was a nice change of pace when it began.
Mileena. They stuck with the story. And while the baby has the mutilated mouth, the adult Mileena having a Glasgow smile is still kind of shoddy.
The Bad
Shao Kahn's hair. While Aleks Paunovic was a good pick for Shao Kahn, he still looks way too human. And that awkward hair style isn't helping things. Of course, Shao Kahn is without his trademark helmet, but even without it, he looked pretty monstrous regardless. Even Aleks himself thinks that Shao Kahn should at least be bald.
The Episode Length. Youtube is starting to become lax about video length. The producers of this series should keep that in mind, because while they are looking for suspense with their sudden endings, all they are getting is frustration because the episodes aren't that long to begin with. It's not a good sign, and it could very well start deterring a good number of people from following the series.
Summary
It's not the best Legacy short, but it provided some good eye candy. The review for part 2 should be a bit longer because unlike the Jax/Kano/Sonya episode, it seems like something significant might happen.
If you found something you liked or didn't like about the episode, comment below and tell us all about it.
Nice review. I more or less agree about Shao Kahn, but I'm not so sure it was his hair that set off his look. I think his entire wardrobe felt ill fitting.
ReplyDeleteI'm not against unmasking him (even though it would be nice to have at least one shot with the helmet), I realise that we need to see the guy act, but he does need to look more like he's an evil emperor. I'm not saying the basic look was bad, but there was just enough wrong with it for it to feel a bit flat.
Still, I thought it was a good episode overall. Better than Johnny Cage's (although I liked that episode too, it felt a bit flat at times).
i rendered your "review" invalid when you said Shao Kahn should "at lease be bald".
ReplyDeleteIf all you can talk about is the aesthetic designs of the characters, dont bother reviewing it as an "Episode Review".
All you talked about was the character designs and not the direction of the actual footage. Congrats, you have lowered my IQ
wow guy idk why your getting all butthurt. nothing happened in the episode. dude said a larger review was up when the story progressed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, dude, if you think aesthetic design isn't important, you don't know much about art, and if your IQ was lowered by it's *analysis* I have a feeling it wasn't very high to begin with. Probably tried too hard to keep up, and eventually collapsed.
ReplyDelete