Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020) The Film Buff Review

In this raw and heartfelt episode of the AKAPAD The Film Buff Podcast, host Peter A. DeLuca (AKA Pad) opens up about a personal setback: missing the Broad Street Run due to a nagging foot injury and arthritis that forced him to halt his training. He reflects honestly on pushing through pain, the frustration of coming up short, and the very human side of “The Film Buff” we all know and love.

From there, Pad dives deep into one of the greatest American animated action series in recent years — the Mortal Kombat Legends animated films, spotlighting the incredible work of director and longtime animator Ethan Spaulding (known for his landmark contributions to Avatar: The Last Airbender).

Pad breaks down why Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020) is a masterpiece that redefined the franchise for a new generation. He explores:

• Scorpion’s tragic, heartbreaking origin story
• The seamless world-building and power system
• The jaw-dropping animation and fight choreography
• How the series elevates Scorpion from a mindless assassin to a deeply sympathetic hero

He also discusses the full quadrilogy (Battle of the Realms, Snow Blind, and Cage Match), why these films stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of the DC Animated Universe, and how they perfectly blend brutal Mortal Kombat violence with real emotional weight and lore.

Packed with enthusiasm, film-buff insight, and pure love for animation, this episode is a must-listen for any Mortal Kombat fan, animation enthusiast, or anyone who appreciates great storytelling.

Available now on HBO Max — perfect timing as Mortal Kombat 2 hits theaters soon!

🎙️ New episodes dropping soon covering the rest of the Legends series.

00:00:03
Camera speed, sound production, take one. Action. Ethan Spaulding, that’s that’s the guy today. Welcome back. It’s Sunday. We’re doing cartoons, the AKA Pad Bump Off podcast. That’s That’s what you’re tuning into. Little bit, I just I just wrote this tweet. Any of you guys, please follow me on Twitter at AKA Pad. Where Yeah, I usually kind of do things around my morning coffee. And today I posted my Broad Street Run bib, my my tracking number, my registration number that you wear on your chest.

00:00:42
And I should be running that race today, and I’m not. Now, I don’t want to say I aged out or got too old to to train. I was training, felt really good. Yeah, like maybe gaining the mileage or building up to a 10-mile run a little slower than what I expected, but I was running a couple days a week. And then the arthritis smacked and took over my foot. It just got to the point where any level of high-impact movement for more than 20-30 minutes was just I just couldn’t do it. So, I had to stop my run training

00:01:23
and begin my foot foot training, like foot rehab almost. And And this is a problem I’ve I’ve had with my foot for a couple years now. I broke my foot playing football and had three subsequent weekends where I was doing the same activity, and I don’t think I gave myself time to to maybe like heal or or calm down or whatever. But yeah, it’s a pervading foot issue caused by myself cuz I I Yeah. Jumping around like a wild monkey. >> [snorts] >> But talking to you guys, and I’m talking to you guys purposely

00:02:00
re-recording this episode just to tell you that story that the the Film Buff isn’t infallible. The Film Buff is a human being. And I wish I was out there. And it’s it’s just And maybe maybe I’m record re-recording this episode to document a little bit of of my state right now because I just I I just hate it. I hate not being out there. I hate coming short with a level of of training. With all of that, uh our boy here, Ethan Spaulding, if if we if we touch on his filmography, he’s a lifelong animator. Uh he’s one of

00:02:39
the premier directors that worked through the Avatar: The Last Airbender series. Avatar: The Last Airbender is arguably the greatest triumph of American animations. Uh yeah, we we have this we have Invincible. I just think for big broad Uh it’s not even the cool stuff. It’s just the characters and the the personalities and the human triumph of both of these series. It’s It’s just phenomenal. Uh Ethan, apart of that, storyboard artist, and then then he’s got a ton of other accolades that I really don’t want to

00:03:21
get into cuz we don’t got the time. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge, 2020. I remember this popping up on HBO Max within the the COVID years. And this is one of a series. Let me just go through There’s four animated films, all released within 3 years. And it is beyond me that this did not continue. Because these Here’s the wild thing. These get better and better as as you watch them. This is a four-movie set. Animation that’s equal. And And we spoke about this, the the DC

00:04:05
universe, the the Flashpoint, if you want to call it. We We did an episode on where essentially the DC Animated Universe goes from Flashpoint to Flashpoint and everything that’s in Yeah, ending with Darkseid War. And just the way how Darkseid War wraps up and all the other films that came before it, it’s one hell of a epic. It’s It’s probably the greatest single animation epic we’ve ever seen. And its counterpart, this Mortal Kombat epic, is is equal. 2020, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s

00:04:40
Revenge. Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, 2021. Mortal Kombat Legends: Snow Blind, 2022. Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match. That’s That’s our boy Johnny Cage, 2023. There in my view, enough energy, enough expertise, enough understanding of what makes Mortal Kombat work, what makes it so great, that you could have expanded this to a Sub-Zero movie. You could have expanded this to a Sonya Blade Jax movie or uh you know, her Black Ops or her Navy SEAL level team. You could have done more in Outworld.

00:05:23
You could have done Reptile. Now, like we love Reptile. Shao Kahn. Uh it it it goes on and on. What this movie does, it’s so interesting, and I I I think it’s it’s the biggest takeaway. It’s not the violence cuz the violence is absolutely spectacular. It’s not the fighting choreography. It’s not any of that. It’s not how we’re introduced to the world of Mortal Kombat. Uh we are Ethan dog walks us right into it, and it’s just if it flows, it feels natural. Uh the way a

00:06:04
lot of the information and and like the power structure, the power sets are just introduced and built on top of one another. Uh there’s very few anything that I can compare it to cuz I don’t think Yeah, like even even something like Dragon Ball Z can just get a little churning, little redundant with the power sets and the introduction to how things work, and there’s just shots and just frames in Dragon Ball Z where some of these characters are just yapping. What we have here is a perfect

00:06:39
introduction in the world of Mortal Kombat through the revelation that Scorpion is a tragic character. Now, in the movie that came out around this time, Mortal Kombat 2021, came out a year later. It opens with this opening. Now, that doesn’t say there hasn’t been a web series, right? Mortal Kombat Legacy. It touches on what we see in this movie. See, there’s been a little bit of this run to make Mortal Kombat as realistic as possible. That run ran all the way through with Legacy. And then what came out of that

00:07:23
tunnel was it’s got to be realistic, it’s got to be highly emotional. But we need the fantasy, and the fantasy just has to We we can really inject it with the fantasy part of it. So, we open with Scorpion and his rivalry with And I don’t want to butcher any of the names. I’m not going to try and do that. We’re just going to call this guy Scorpion. He has a human name. Excuse me. And he has a ri- rivalry with this ninja clan. So, in in the beginning of this movie, he his family, everything, his village,

00:08:05
everything gets killed, gets wiped out, including his son, including him, by Sub-Zero, and he is sent to hell. When he goes to hell, this is the beginning, AKA Pads. We have our title character in hell. And he tickles the fancy of the master of the underworld, which is Quan Chi. Amazingly, in the Mortal Kombat Conquest TV series that is a prequel to the other Mortal Kombat movie. >> [laughter] >> Mortal Kombat It’s such I The The This is part of the absolute fun of Mortal Kombat. The 1995 Mortal Kombat

00:08:52
movie has a prequel TV series that was syndicated called Mortal Kombat Conquest. That series ends with Quan Chi, who is the underworld. He is death. He is also, as a character, he is bored bored bored with his position. He takes Scorpion underneath his wing, develops Scorpion into the character that we love. The And then we get this shift. Scorpion becomes a mindless villain assassin previously in Mortal Kombat. Now, it doesn’t mean that the Scorpion character uh didn’t get additional background

00:09:37
because See, as the years that Mortal Kombat grew, right? Like And we say grew because the games through the different generation of consoles built on top of each other. And there hasn’t been much lore added or much detail added within some of the DC comics even though I think some of the DC comics do a good job. The Malibu comics. So, for years Mortal Kombat predominantly was a Liu Kang story. And then even within the context of the game, Liu Kang becomes hero, savior, and then he becomes villain.

00:10:23
Scorpion is the absolute opposite. He becomes absolute villain, deadly villain to a sympathetic hero. And what we get with this anime feature that is just expertly crafted by Eric Spalding is we redefine the entry and the mechanics of And what what when I say redefine, I mean the way we it’s laid out for us, just makes a little bit more sense. It just It just clicks. But we get this redefinition of the tournament, which is still a tournament. We get Scorpion as a heartbreaking character that we

00:11:12
root for. And then around it, we are I mean the whole Jax scene, Jax versus Goro scene in this movie. And I love watching the Jax scene in this movie and comparing it to the 2021 film cuz then we get we often talk about this where some of these properties, some of these franchises, some of these juggernauts last enough around us within the culture and the ideas get refined and sculpted and and it they they almost like become a bullet. And we saw this with Superman, we saw this with Batman. We see this We

00:11:54
saw this with the X-Men where year after year, month after month, we have new creators crafting the material, working on it. And then the next generation comes and they pick what worked and then they use it. They further concrete It’s It’s like a slow-drying concrete. And what we get in this series is one of the greatest adult animated anything. It’s bloody, it’s wild, it’s violent, it’s everything Mortal Kombat. It drives the viewer right into the essence of the lore. It gives us a character to care

00:12:33
about that you formerly never did care about. It makes you really feel sorry for Scorpion. I love the gotcha in the beginning cuz I can’t talk about the beginning of this one enough where I’m thinking the kid is Scorpion. Like And years went by between watching this AKA Pyros. I’m thinking, yeah, like the kid The kid’s going to grow up to be Scorpion. And no, no, the the father is Scorpion. It’s so freaking cool. AKA Pyros, I cannot recommend this enough. Mortal Kombat comes out in a

00:13:07
couple days and we’re going through the next couple weeks we’re going to touch on every single one of these movies. I I don’t care if it goes past the release of Mortal Kombat 2, which I believe is May 8th. So, it’s it’s only a few few days away, a couple a week away. Just say a week. Just say a film buff, it’s a week away. Wha- Why are you saying a couple or a few? With that, I want to give the rest of these films all the space that they need. They need discussion. It’s available right now on HBO Max. I

00:13:42
believe also might be I I There might be like Plexi might have some of them. But it’s on HBO Max. If you have to subscribe or or get that get get that free trial, it is worth it. HBO Max also has just about everything Mortal Kombat at this point. So, you can you can explore everything with me. The next one of these that we will discuss is Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms. I love you guys. This is a great feature. It’s one of the best animated films made by US of A. Let’s effing go. I love you

00:14:20
guys. Rock and roll. Okay, that’s a wrap. >> [applause]

[00:00:03]
The video opens with the host introducing himself as Ethan Spaulding and welcoming viewers to the AKA Pad Bump Off podcast, which focuses on cartoons and animation topics. He mentions sharing a recent tweet about his Broad Street Run bib number, highlighting his intention to run a race that day but explaining he ultimately could not participate due to foot problems.

[00:00:42]
Ethan describes his running training trajectory, noting he was preparing for a 10-mile race but suffered from arthritis in his foot, which forced him to stop training. He explains the difficulty he faced with high-impact activity lasting more than 20-30 minutes due to this condition.

• Key health issue: Arthritis in foot causing inability to continue running training.
• Training status before injury: Running a few times a week, building up mileage slowly.
• Impact: Had to switch focus from running to foot rehabilitation.

[00:01:23]
Further details reveal that Ethan’s foot issues stem from a previous injury: he broke his foot playing football and continued strenuous activities on it without sufficient rest, leading to chronic problems. He self-identifies as the cause of his injury due to his active and reckless behavior.

• Background injury: Broken foot from football.
• Cause of ongoing problem: Inadequate healing time and repeated stress.

[00:02:00]
Ethan emphasizes the human side of his persona (“The Film Buff”), reminding listeners that despite his knowledge and passion, he is fallible and currently frustrated by his inability to run. He states he is recording the episode partly to document his state of mind during this setback.

• Insight: Even experts and enthusiasts face personal challenges; vulnerability is acknowledged.

[00:02:39]
The conversation shifts to Ethan Spaulding’s professional background. He is introduced as a lifelong animator and a premier director known for his work on the iconic animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in American animation.

• Professional credentials:
• Director and storyboard artist
• Key contributor to Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Other notable works mentioned but not detailed here.

[00:03:21]
Attention moves to Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (2020), an animated film released on HBO Max during the COVID-19 pandemic. This film is the first in a series of four animated Mortal Kombat movies produced over three years.

• Critical observation: The series has improved with each sequel, yet the franchise was not expanded further despite its success.
• Comparison: The series is positioned as a peer to the DC Animated Universe films, such as the Flashpoint to Darkseid War saga, which is hailed as one of the greatest animation epics.

[00:04:40]
The host explains the depth and energy behind the Mortal Kombat animated films, praising their understanding of what makes the franchise work. He suggests potential for expanding the universe with films centered on other characters like Sub-Zero, Sonya Blade, Jax, or Reptile.

• Key strength: Authenticity in capturing Mortal Kombat’s essence.
• Opportunity: Unexplored characters and storylines for future expansion.

[00:05:23]
The core appeal of Scorpion’s Revenge is summarized as not merely its violence or fighting scenes, but its natural and fluid storytelling that eases viewers into the Mortal Kombat universe. The movie introduces power structures and character abilities progressively and organically, avoiding redundancy common in similar genre works like Dragon Ball Z.

• Narrative technique: Gradual, logical buildup of the world and character powers.
• Unique quality: Balanced exposition without overwhelming or repetitive dialogue.

[00:06:39]
The film redefines Scorpion as a tragic, sympathetic character rather than a one-dimensional villain. The story begins with the destruction of Scorpion’s family and village by Sub-Zero, resulting in Scorpion’s death and descent into hell.

• Plot premise:
• Scorpion’s backstory involves loss and revenge.
• His transformation is influenced by Quan Chi, the underworld’s master.

[00:07:23]
Quan Chi’s role is further elaborated, linking the lore to the Mortal Kombat Conquest TV series (a prequel to the original Mortal Kombat movie). The series ends with Quan Chi mentoring Scorpion, who evolves from a vengeful assassin to a complex character.

• Lore connection: Integration of TV series and films enriches character background.
• Character arc: Scorpion shifts from villain to tragic antihero.

[00:09:37]
The host discusses the evolution of Mortal Kombat’s storylines, comics, and games over time. Initially, the narrative centered on Liu Kang as the main hero and eventually villain, while Scorpion’s role inverted from villain to sympathetic protagonist.

• Franchise evolution:
• Liu Kang as central figure fluctuating between hero and villain.
• Scorpion’s transformation into a tragic hero.

[00:10:23]
Ethan Spaulding’s animated feature is praised for redefining the Mortal Kombat tournament and lore, presenting it in a clear and emotionally resonant way. The film effectively balances fantasy elements with emotional depth, making the characters and stakes more relatable.

• Achievement: Clear and compelling reintroduction of Mortal Kombat mythology.
• Emotional impact: Audience is drawn to care deeply about Scorpion.

[00:11:12]
A notable scene highlighted is the fight between Jax and Goro, which stands out for its execution and energy. The host compares this to the 2021 Mortal Kombat film, noting how franchises evolve over time as new creators refine and build upon previous works, similar to the development of Superman, Batman, and X-Men.

• Franchise maturation: Successive creators build on and improve the material.
• Animation quality: High-energy, engaging fight choreography and character moments.

[00:12:33]
The host expresses strong admiration for the film, calling it one of the greatest adult animated works in the U.S., emphasizing its bloody, wild, and faithful representation of Mortal Kombat lore. The film re-engages viewers emotionally, particularly through Scorpion’s tragic story.

• Summary judgment:
• Exceptional adult animation.
• Strong emotional core centered on a redefined protagonist.

[00:13:07]
He shares a personal anecdote about initially misunderstanding the identity of the child character at the start of the film, thinking the child would become Scorpion, but revealing that the father is actually Scorpion. This narrative twist is praised as very effective.

• Narrative twist: Misleading initial impression deepens emotional payoff.

[00:13:42]
Finally, the host recommends watching the film on HBO Max, where it and other Mortal Kombat content is available. He announces plans to discuss the other animated Mortal Kombat films over the coming weeks, including Battle of the Realms, and expresses excitement for the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2 movie release on May 8th.

• Availability: HBO Max is the main platform for viewing the series.
• Upcoming content: Detailed discussions planned for the full Mortal Kombat Legends film series.

[00:14:20]
The episode closes with the host affirming his enthusiasm for the Mortal Kombat animated films and encouraging viewers to engage with the content, calling it one of the best animated features made in the USA.

Key Insights and Conclusions

• Ethan Spaulding is a highly respected animator and director, notably for Avatar: The Last Airbender and the Mortal Kombat Legends animated series.
• The Mortal Kombat Legends film series (2020–2023) is critically acclaimed for its authenticity, storytelling, and character development, especially the portrayal of Scorpion as a tragic antihero.
• The series provides a natural introduction to Mortal Kombat lore, balancing fantasy with emotional depth in a way that surpasses many genre counterparts.
• Despite the success and potential, the franchise has not yet expanded further into other character-focused films, though there is clear opportunity.
• The films are available on HBO Max, where viewers can explore the full breadth of Mortal Kombat animated content.
• The host plans continued coverage of the series and anticipates the release of Mortal Kombat 2 in early May.

Timeline of Key Events Discussed

Keywords

• Ethan Spaulding
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Mortal Kombat Legends
• Scorpion’s Revenge
• Animation epic
• Adult animation
• Mortal Kombat lore
• Quan Chi
• HBO Max
• Animated feature films
• Character development
• Emotional storytelling

PETER A DELUCA AKAPD

AKAPAD is a versatile thinker known across Philadelphia, Europe, and even in the vast Multiverse as The Electic One. By day, he excels as an IT Mastermind, assisting individuals, both big and small, with a wide range of simple and complex solutions. In contrast, he is also a talented illustrator, a passionate comic book enthusiast, a creative content creator, and an active live streamer. Additionally, his podcast, “AKAPAD The Film Buff Podcast,” boasts an impressive catalog of over 500 episodes available on nearly every major platform.