Cole Young? More like Cole Yawn! Biggest mistake of the movie.
Sure, they wanted to have a reason why Scorpion can suddenly return from Hell after being dead for centuries. So they make a super-duper great offensive fighter who... sucks at offense. And defense. And ground work. And he is supposed to have such great resolve... then immediately taps out. He is also a total loser in life, who fights for a couple of hundred bucks because he knows nobody is showing up to watch him fight, because all he does is lose. Oh, and tonfa suck.
Jax's actor does a fairly good job emotionally, but the role as written was pretty lame. Sonya is a wannabe who tags along right up until the end, where she earns her mark and then immediately masters her arcana while everyone else struggles. Kung Lao actor looked like he was so out of place and confused. Liu Kang was cool enough, but was given nothing much to do because we have to concentrate on Cole for some reason. Scorpion kicked ass as he should. Raiden was written inconsistently, so he both can and cannot meddle like Schrödinger's Lightning God with bad eye CG. Shang Sung had not a lot of presence. Sub-Zero was expertly cast and also kicked ass. Kano was a riot, and Mileena was... present.
Can we also rename the movie to MK: Prelude or something? It is just strange to often reference the tournament, and then have everyone fight to death before the start of the tournament. I guess they wanted to avoid the 1990's movies, where the tournament is won and now they must fight again in a brand-new bullshit tournament because of bad losers. Next time we can have all the pallet-swapped cyborgs though, so OK.
It wasn't terrible, but the movie is a letdown. Weak characters are a major failing, but the worse sin was throwing in a new character that is pretty terrible throughout the entire film. Probably will watch it again some day, but it is inferior to the campy versions from decades ago in most meaningful ways.