A sequel to 2021’s gory, garish big-screen transfer of Mortal Kombat was an inevitability not just because of how the industry typically works and not just because video game IP is arguably hotter than ever right now but because of something far more crucial. While the film – the second attempt to bring the game to the big screen after a dodgy Christopher Lambert-led 1995 version - was a predictable string of fight scenes pieced together with what could generously be described as a plot, it pulled a major, and to some rather shocking, punch. For all of the fight scenes it did show, it stopped short of showing us those one would naturally expect, denying us an actual Mortal Kombat tournament.

It was all laboured scene-setting, one reason why it didn’t connect with many critics and fans, other than it also not being very good, another little problem. The film was part of Warner’s Christopher Nolan-alienating Covid year, when its slate was launched on both the big screen and HBO Max simultaneously, and while it did so-so theatrical numbers, it was the platform’s most-streamed movie of the year, beating out grander titles such as Dune. The sequel is receiving a splashier rollout but its predecessor’s outsized small-screen success wasn’t just a sign of that particular strange time but also of where fans might best enjoy these films: on TV late at night, where expectations are that much lower. Being treated like a premium format blockbuster does not do a film like Mortal Kombat II any favours, its junkiness less charming and more distracting, like a street fighter suddenly forced to go pay-per-view. While this one might actually be true to its title – there is a Mortal Kombat in Mortal Kombat II - there’s still nowhere near enough here to warrant an Imax screen.

It’s all entirely wafer-thin yet at times incoherently convoluted with guff about realms and amulets that might have worked as mere backdrop in the games – details one didn’t even need to know about to enjoy playing – that just doesn’t work as plot. This time around, with the fate of the world resting on the big tournament, the good guys (led by returning faces like Home and Away’s Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade and True Blood’s Mehcad Brooks as Jax) must recruit has-been action movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) to save the day. There’s something amusing on paper about a Jean-Claude Van Damme type suddenly having to prove themselves in the actual ring but the script, from Jeremy Slater – who was partly responsible for 2015’s cursed Fantastic Four rehash – just can’t find the humour in any of it. He can’t really find much of anything, the tone either full-tilt earnest or glibly self-aware with nothing in between, moments of awkwardly misfiring emotion (Kitana receiving her steel fan from Jade as a sign of their friendship – weep) running up against jokey movie-within-a-movie parodies of 80s action vehicles.

Not that any of that really matters to most on opening weekend who will primarily be seated for the thrill of the fight scenes, of which there might be many, but there’s something maddeningly unexciting about them, a two-hour tease of something that never clicks into place. The first film showcased a willingness to replicate the game’s brash mutilative gore – and there’s more of that here too (even if it’s less effectively nasty this time) – but the buildup to an impaling is never as involving as I wanted. Without the ability to play on offer, we’re left hoping that returning director Simon McQuoid can pull us in and make us feel it, our bodies jolting around with every jab, but the choreography is all so choppily handled and the stakes so meaningless (death is not the end in this game) that it’s increasingly hard to care all that much (I was not expecting to be quite so watch-checkingly bored).

The world around the fights is equally underwhelming – a variety of differently designed realms we’re being zapped around to and from – with McQuoid never successfully upgrading them from video game to cinema screen, a supposedly grand universe entirely devoid of immersion. It all has the distinctly cheap whiff of something that should have gone direct to the small screen – hammy acting, stilted dialogue, chintzy effects, tinny score, Halloween costumes – but without the raucous fun that should come with it. With Minecraft, Mario and Sonic still packing them in, expect another win for Warners at the box office, but this one is another lose for those of us still watching.

• Mortal Kombat II is out in Australian cinemas on 7 May and in the US and UK on 8 May