With Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge now available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital (reviewed here) we thought it was time we shared with you something a little special.
Recently we were lucky enough to interview a very important member of the film’s cast, Patrick Seitz. Seitz plays none other than titular Scorpion in this ultra-cool, ultra-violent adaption of the long-running franchise and here’s what he had to say about returning to the role of Scorpion.
GYCO: Tell us a bit about where we find Scorpion at the beginning of MKL: Scorpion’s Revenge.
PS: We find him at a place which is a little atypical of the franchise overall. He’s got a wife and a child and they are alive and he seems relatively content with his life. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that idyllic scene is perhaps short lived.
What can Mortal Kombat fans expect from the film?
They can expect not only the characters behaving in the way they should, the characters, the themes and the tropes that they have come to expect from the franchise. It feels fresh for all of the familiar faces and familiar themes. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say they go to an island and there’s a fighting tournament as one might expect from Mortal Kombat. The fluidity of the animatation, the art style with games going photo real it’s kind of novel to look at something like this where the visuals are so stylised. I would not be lying to say it delivers on the violence that one would expect from a MK game or animated film. Yeah it’s the best of both worlds with enough novelty to go “oh yeah this isn’t a re-tread.”
How did you first hear about the project? Did you have any ideas, from voicing the character in previous games, about the potential for a wider narrative for Scorpion?
I auditioned for him and thankfully got tapped to play him again. I went in and a lot of it had a sense of “well hey you played Scorpion before and you know what he’s about. The situations might be new but definitely bring your knowledge of the character and the time you spent portraying him before to the table. Even though there are twists and turns people might not expect we are not reinventing the wheel we are not being precious. I got to record it at a studio I’ve worked at before with engineers I had worked with before and with a voice director – Wes Gleason – that I had worked with before so it was nice getting to explore this movie with a character I knew and keep a lot of what I knew.
Did having the backstory and arc for Scorpion in the script alter your approach to voicing the character?
I don’t know that it altered it but it definitely enriched it, I’m definitely one of those actors who loves getting hold of as much material as possible going in. I’m well aware from the acting side of the trap that you can load up on too much information and then go in and your take on the character or situation is different then what you’ve got in your head because of all the research. But this was about you know the character and exploring the specific beats from this film. It’s good going in knowing that you’re doing.
The film brilliantly recreates the brutal aesthetic from the games, were there any highlights from the script (or the games) you were excited to see brought to life in animation?
Oh man, so much of it was the fighting choreography in particular because my brain just doesn’t personally work that way. I can’t work out the choreography when it’s like this is their left leg, that’s my left leg and then I move my right leg. We recorded first without the visuals did the dialogue, did some of the big specific moments with the kombat inserts and came back later, things were already animated and we were able to chase the picture to give them exactly what they needed for the fights. There’s a fight sequence early on in the film, in the first 10mins, where reading on the page is one thing and then we got to see it play out in front of me and a lot of fighting happens in that two to three minutes and we got to the end of that run and I just looked through the glass and said “damn that’s intense” and there’s still another like and hour, an hour twenty to go so where do they go from here? It’s just magic to me.
If you could choose any other character in the Mortal Kombat franchise to voice, who would it be? And why?
Oh man! Probably someone like Johnny Cage because it’s just such a departure from Scorpion with his brooding danger and his violence. I mean you’ve got this guy with his name tattooed across his chest, wearing sunglasses and spending half his time walking around these tournaments looking for craft services. The acting side of things would be such a departure, I don’t think I’d do a good job of it but it would be a different day at the proverbial office than Scorpion and a lot of dark brooding characters.
We’re also talking Mortal Kombat Legends on the latest episode of the GYCO Podcast which you can listen to (or watch!) here. The full version of our interview with Patrick is also part of the podcast this week.
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