The opening episodes try to be gritty with moody lighting and an over-reliance on action clichés, slow motion debris, blood on the camera lens, extreme post-production colour correction, lens flare, etc; all that boring shit that teenagers love. It feels like a scene from a generic Xbox game. MK is based on a game series but it's a fantasy/mystical tinged fighting game, not a Splinter Cell bedroom infiltrator wank-fantasy. It may sound like I'm hating on this pretty bad, but I'm not. I just like to have a rant before I get to the good stuff. If it was a movie I'd judge it as such, but it wasn't, it was a series of Webisodes and as such I make allowances for the budget and format. In that respect, it triumphs.
It's shot in 2.35:1. The majority of the individual episodes focus upon just one or two characters. The film style changes to suit their background and given attributes. That po-faced forced realism of the beginning two-parter isn't representative of the series as a whole. It grows more diverse in how it presents people and places, eventually finding a balance between exposition and intrigue.
Anthologies are nearly always hit and miss, but happily MK:L has enough hit moments to recommended it to fans of the series. I liked it.
9 episodes, approx 10 minutes each.
3 Samurai don’t sing out of 5
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