Mortal Kombat 1 has launched to critical acclaim, with special praise for the outlandish story and its new gameplay systems. However, there’s one area of the game that has attracted criticism: Megan Fox’s performance as Nitara. This is the second time Mortal Kombat has gotten caught up in bad celebrity performance drama, with Mortal Kombat 11 facing similar criticism for Ronda Rousey’s lackluster performance as Sonya Blade.
However, Mortal Kombat is not the only series to run into this problem. Despite his massive success on Game of Thrones, actor Peter Dinklage received negative feedback for his performance as Ghost in Destiny, ultimately leading developer Bungie to replace all of his lines. And who can forget Matthew Perry phoned-in performance in Fallout: New Vegas, or Tobey Maguire’s in 2002’s Spider-Man?
This leads to the question: Why do games have celebrities in them when the chances of getting a rough performance out of them are so high? And why don’t games rely on actors who understand games better since they offer so much more to the culture? That’s exactly what Tam and Lucy discuss in this Spot On episode.
Spot On is GameSpot’s weekly news show in which managing editor Tamoor Hussain and senior producer Lucy James talk about the latest game news. Given the massive video game industry’s highly dynamic and never-ending news cycle, there’s always something to talk about. Unlike most news shows, Spot On will dive deep into a single topic instead of recapping all the news. Spot On airs each Friday.
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