Mortal Kombat

Advertiser: Midway Home Entertainment Agency: DDB Needham, Dallas The Challenge: Get the latest version of the popular video game Mortal Kombat on Christmas wish lists. The Ads: In two television spots, actors portraying the antagonists in "Mortal Kombat: The Adventures of SubZero" prepare for battle. A voice-over invites you to "meet the root of our evil," as the shadowy image of the balding and scarred bad guy, QuanChi, appears.

It's no surprise that Warner Bros. has video games with "Batman" and "Middle Earth" in the titles coming out this year, since "The Dark Knight Rises" and "The Hobbit" are the studio's two biggest remaining movie releases of 2012. What is surprising is that the games have virtually nothing to do with the films beyond their titles. Stung by poor sales across the industry for video games closely tied to movies -- including Warner's own "Green Lantern" and "Happy Feet Two" last year -- Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is this year taking an entirely different approach.

"Warning: Contains small parts which pose a hazard for children under the age of 3." These are words you do not want to read as you are hastily wrapping your niece's Christmas present. I hadn't seen the fine print. All I saw was a great doll house with tiny furniture and a miniature family and a big light switch that turns on and off. Something I wished I had when I was a little girl. Little did I realize that 2-year-olds eat these things.

"The Dark Knight Rises" doesn't hit movie theaters for nine months, but Batman is at the heart of what may just be Warner Bros.' most important release of the fall. With the launch Tuesday of video game Arkham City, a sequel to 2009 hit Arkham Asylum that lets players control the Caped Crusader, the studio's Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment unit has one of the best-reviewed and most anticipated titles of the year. It's expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Rule No. 1 of fantasy movies: Box office rules. The mortal world was saved for a generation in 1995, when Liu Kang (Robin Shou) defeated the champion of the Outworld in "Mortal Kombat," the movie. Case closed. Now, everyone, back to the video game to train for the next battle in, say, 20 years. The portal between the Realm of Earth and the Outworld was closed with the solemn promise that things would remain hunky-dory for Liu and his friends. Not so fast, pathetic humans.

The martial-arts action film "Mortal Kombat" surprised industry observers by grabbing the top spot in the weekly box-office race with $23.3 million in ticket sales. "Everybody underestimated the pull on it," said John Krier, who heads Exhibitor Relations Co., a firm that tracks box office. New Line officials said the film sold out during Thursday night sneaks, and was helped by an aggressive ad campaign and the fact that the film is based on a video game that is popular with kids.

In the video game Mortal Kombat, an advanced player can guide characters to lop off an opponent's head or rip out a nemesis' spinal cord. In "Mortal Kombat--Live on Stage," the audience will have to be content with choreographed martial arts, gymnastics, techno-pop music, lasers, video and illusion. None of these, by the way, involves drawing blood.

In "Mortal Kombat," heroes and villains from the well-known martial-arts video game come together on a faraway, special-effects-heavy island to duke it out. Earth's only chance is if the good guys win. (Rated PG-13) Jackie Leighton, an 11-year-old from Garden Grove, thought there were a few hundred. His 9-year-old brother, Hayden, figured it was more like 6,000 or 7,000.

Taking a stand against excessive violence last fall, video game maker Nintendo of America brought out a toned-down version of the popular Mortal Kombat arcade game that did not depict bloodied or dismembered characters. What a difference a year makes. Mortal Kombat II, the sequel, arrives in stores today with "fatality moves" that allow players to slice and dice opponents.

Considering that they've made a career of bone-crushing punches, head-snapping kicks and flesh-rending death rays, Ed Boon and John Tobias are a couple of remarkably unassuming fellows. The twentysomething co-creators of the wildly successful Mortal Kombat video games do not brandish menacing metal claws, do not sprout deadly tentacles and do not teleport across their hotel room.

"Mortal Kombat" is fighting its way back onto the big screen, marking a rare delivery of material from a studio's own video game division to its sibling film unit. Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema unit is partnering with the Burbank studio's video game unit, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, to adapt for the big screen the tournament fighting series that debuted on video game consoles in 1992. New Line is aiming to produce the film next year and release it in 2013. Like several other media companies, including Walt Disney Co., Warner has frequently produced its own video games based on film properties, such as June's "Green Lantern.

Top 10 U.S. Video Games in May 2011 (publisher) L.A. Noire (Take-Two Interactive Software) Brink (Bethesda Softworks) Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Disney Interactive) Portal 2 (Electronic Arts) Mortal Kombat 2011 (Warner Bros. Interactive) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard) Zumba Fitness (Majesco) NBA 2K11 (Take-Two) Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft) Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (LucasArts) Source: NPD Group Inc.

Creditors of Midway Games Inc. are suing the Chicago company's board members and former majority owner Sumner Redstone, alleging that his sale of Midway was a "fraudulent transfer" that benefited the media mogul while pushing Midway into bankruptcy. The suit, filed Monday in federal Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, alleges that Redstone sold his 87% stake to investor Mark E. Thomas for a mere $100,000 so Redstone could register $700 million in tax losses and collect a "massive tax refund."

Ever since they were children, Steve Choi, Ethan Levy and Elaine Chan have been told by people who never met them that the great passion of their lives, the thing that captivated and moved them, was the enemy of intellect, emotionally damaging and quite possibly the end of civilization as we know it. Choi, Levy and Chan are gamers. That is, they play video games with serious devotion and intensity.

ED Boon is no softy. He may be a man in a polo shirt and comfortable shoes, clean-cut and pleasant. But he is also a fighter, a warrior, a brutal master of martial arts and something else he calls "drunken fighting," a woozy technique that includes the occasional eruption of vomit to knock opponents off-balance. That's not all. He finishes off his enemies by ripping out their spinal cords or even their intact skeletons.

I was annoyed to find in your article on "Tomb Raider" ("She's Game for the Adventure of Her Career," Jan. 21) that David Gritten lumped the 1995 hit movie "Mortal Kombat" in with the pack of other video game adaptations with the dismissive phrase " . . . it's hard to find moviegoers prepared to express affection for them." Modestly budgeted at $26 million, "MK" was the No. 1 movie in America for three straight weeks during the summer of '95, finished in the top 15 domestic grossers for the year, eventually accumulated $150 million and went on to be a video rental and sales champ for many weeks.

Here's how good Mortal Kombat II is: Put it in the ring with MKI, and the original gets carried out in a body bag. Yes, Mortal Kombat, which earned a place in the video game Hall of Fame (behind the lawn mower in my garage) both for general excellence and for pretty much single-handedly forcing the industry to implement a rating system, is history. Long live MKII! You remember Mortal Monday, when the first game was released. Well, Sept.

In all the hoopla and hollering about blood and gore in Mortal Kombat, something has been lost. Like the fact that it's a pretty good video game. Acclaim's Mortal Kombat has been lambasted because the Genesis version contains some rather grisly "finishing" moves in which combatants can remove vital organs and body parts from their defeated enemies.

Re "Hollywood Sells Kids on Violence, FTC Says," Sept. 11: I am the mother of three kids, 19, 17 and 15 years old. I remember vividly the first time I sailed a CD that my son had just purchased out the window of my car into a dumpster after hearing only the first few lines. I also remember when "Mortal Kombat" arrived in the stores and all the kids "had to have it" because it was so graphically bloody and violent. There are people making major profits off this stuff who say we, as parents, should be policing what our kids hear, play and see. It's real hard when that is the only thing they are offered and when we parents are so busy trying to make ends meet that we don't have the time to preview all of the industry's offerings.

Rule No. 1 of fantasy movies: Box office rules. The mortal world was saved for a generation in 1995, when Liu Kang (Robin Shou) defeated the champion of the Outworld in "Mortal Kombat," the movie. Case closed. Now, everyone, back to the video game to train for the next battle in, say, 20 years. The portal between the Realm of Earth and the Outworld was closed with the solemn promise that things would remain hunky-dory for Liu and his friends. Not so fast, pathetic humans.