Greg Russo was just a teenager when he convinced his mother to buy it The deadly beating for Sega Genesis. It was 1993 and she had to drive him to the local K-Mart in South Jersey to pick up a copy. Once he had it in his hands, he felt he had escaped with something bad. Russo was aware of the controversy surrounding him The deadly beating at the moment; how terrible and violent it must have been. His mother, not so much.
“After that, he was active all day,” Russo said. “I am just joking with her nowadays. I say to myself, “Hey, Mom, maybe I cheated on you, but look, I wrote the movie.” ”
Russo is the screenwriter The deadly beating, the film will be released in cinemas and streaming services on April 23. He put together a story with the role of the new debut of the series Cole Young and a cast of iconic characters, wrote dozens of bloody battle scenes and mortals, and sprinkled a lot of jokes and drama, all while relying on the long his personal history with the franchise.
And for Russo, it’s definitely personal.
FREDERIC J. BROWN through Getty Images
“I grew up loving him,” he said. “I was going to the archway after school. It was like an escape for me. I grew up in a divorced household, so it was important for me to go out and be my own person. And for me it was the arcade. ”
In the early 1990s, The deadly beating it became the center of an intense congressional debate about pop culture violence. The game celebrated gore with an eye and a grin, with photorealistic characters drawing pixelated blood as they gutted each other in horrible, often hilarious ways. Until 1994, The deadly beating was partly to blame for the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, which still retains the black-and-white ratings of today’s video games.
But for Russo and many others early The deadly beating fans, the game was purely fun and fantasy. He would play that Sega Genesis at home, but when he needed an escape, he would visit The deadly beating arcade closet at Barkley Bowling Lane.
“It was just me and a bunch of kids and we felt like our little safety net,” he said. “And The deadly beating it was the throne we all held. So she took this real personal place for me, and my love for her just came out of that experience, really. ”
Mortal Kombat was the throne we all gathered.
Barkley no longer exists, like many other bowling centers across the country. However, Mortal Kombat resisted. The series has produced dozens of video games over several generations of consoles and a handful of movies, most of them worthy of murder.
Russo made sure to add ease to the new scenario, but not enough to eliminate the dramatic momentum. As the first seven minutes of the film demonstrate, it presents fiery tensions, which explode into bloody violence, and they do not shy away from mass murder, even when it involves children. But, of course, there is humor. It wouldn’t be Mortal Kombat without it.
“Mortal Kombat – you know, their deaths are crazy,” Russo said. “I find new ways to rip faces every day, and that’s ridiculously wonderful. I give them a lot of credit. But for a film, we certainly wanted to make sure that the balance is felt, that it is not felt above and does not enter a stupid territory. ”
There is a rhythm in Mortal Kombat games – enter a new character, throw him into a fight; enter a new character; throw them into a fight – and Russo’s goal was to infuse the film with similar rhythms.
Warner Bros. Entertainment
“If you start with a little crowded, Avengers“Well, it’s way too much,” he said. “You will get lost trying to understand who everyone is. So it allows our audience to slowly adjust to the world of Mortal Kombat as we slowly bring it to them. And then we have the creativity – I thought it was just a lot of fun, because I thought you unlocked the characters as you went through the movie, kind of like in a classic game mode. ”
Russo did not stop playing video games once Barkley Bowling Lane was closed. He recently admitted Polygon that it has an Xbox Live Gamerscore of “like 1.5 million”, which places it among the top 50 Xbox players in the world and the top 15 in the US. I’m working on The deadly beating it was more than a fantastic opportunity for him. For the most part, it’s familiar.
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