Mortal Kombat is renowned for its gory violence and signature fatalities, so it's a cinch that the upcoming movie adaptation is going to spill plenty of blood. However, with the fight sequences keeping much of the action in-camera and tightly choreographed, some of the blood seen on-screen is rendered in CG rather than applied through practical effects.
According to producer Todd Garner, while director Simon McQuoid wanted to make as much of the film practical as possible, the tricky nature of practical blood in the fight scenes led to a compromise to employ CG blood for some of the more complex set pieces.
"CGI blood is complicated because it's so easy and so good to use because it's very hard to get blood to do what you want it to do. You have 26 moves of [choreography] and the blood spatter just drips down like a ketchup pack," Garner explained in a roundtable interview attended by CBR. "Simon, his north star was practical, no CG; he wanted everything in camera which is why I was going to leave my family for five months and move to [the shooting location] in Adelaide, Australia. Everything was going to be real, we [went] into the middle of the Outback in 110 degree heat and fight the flies because that's what the movie requires. Fight choreography is going to be real, no wires, and as many moves of choreography that can be made in one shot with the camera moving."
Garner observed that creature effects like Goro similarly required extensive use of CG effects rather than rely on puppetry like the 1995 original film. With this in mind, the backgrounds avoided extensive CG rendering where possible while Goro himself played an integral but used sparingly because of the production costs involved in constantly animating the CG character.
Directed by Simon McQuoid and produced by James Wan, Mortal Kombat stars Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson "Jax" Bridges, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han and Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Sisi Stringer as Mileena, Matilda Kimber as Emily Young and Laura Brent as Allison Young. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max April 16.