Mortal Kombat Movie Director Explains Reasoning For One Massive Change

The new movie is in theaters and out on HBO Max now, for all of your fatality needs. The movie introduces a number of iconic characters, is loaded with familiar special moves, and doesn’t skimp on the blood. However, there is one pretty significant departure from the fighting video game franchise’s history. There’s a reason for that, though, according to director Simon McQuoid.

Warning: The following contains spoilers from the new Mortal Kombat movie. If you’ve yet to watch it in theaters or on HBO Max, you should probably steer clear for now.

While we see a number of fights between a variety of characters–and several definitive winners–none of it takes place in the actual Mortal Kombat tournament. After all, that’s the original point of Mortal Kombat, these fighters are battling to the death to become the tournament’s grand champion. And while the tournament is mentioned quite a bit in the movie, we don’t actually see it. Unlike the original Mortal Kombat film, all of the fighting in this new movie takes place before it can even start.

“We didn’t want to just do the same the movies again,” McQuoid told GameSpot. Just as important, though, the movie’s creative team wanted to reflect how the game franchise has changed over the years. “If you look at the way the games evolved, and the storylines within, it’s kind of moved away from that as well,” the director explained.

McQuoid continued, “We weren’t just recreating [the] original film, we weren’t recreating the first five years of its existence. We had to consider its entire history, coupled with the fact that when you have a tournament structure for a film, it really informs your structure, it becomes a very specific structural element within the script itself. And that then informs a rhythm within a film that we didn’t really feel like we wanted to be locked into. So if you look at both of those things, we needed to talk about it because it’s an essential part of what Mortal Kombat is, but we didn’t want to be locked into it.”

Of course, shying away from showing the actual tournament doesn’t actually hurt the film. After all, it’s loaded with fights to the death–and those deaths are particularly bloody and vicious.

For more on Mortal Kombat, don’t forget to check out . Then take a look at the best in the new film, as well as an with McQuoid.