It’s safe to say Megan Fox isn’t exactly pleasing gamers with her voice acting in Mortal Kombat 1, as more snippets of her voice in the game make their way online after her initial reveal on Sept. 6.
Fox is a divisive actress, to say the least, with some praising her performance in the likes of the cult horror classic Jennifer’s Body, and others panning her roles in big-budget Hollywood flicks such as Transformers. One of her most recent roles takes her into the world of Mortal Kombat, the beloved fighting game franchise that has captured the hearts of gamers around the world for decades thanks to its intense, bloody gore and fun fighting mechanics.
Fox takes on the role of the vampiric character Nitara. She is both the voice and the face model for Nitara, though oddly she doesn’t provide the screams and the grunts of the character (a big part of a character’s vocals in fighting games since they are being knocked around so much). Instead, well-known video game voice actress Cristina Vee provides these aspects of Nitara’s vocal work.
Despite not fully encapsulating Nitara in this way, Megan does seem like a pretty good fit for the character. Nitara is a vampire who must feed on blood to survive—as we all know is the norm for vampires—but who also has a specific, gothic look to her. Fox is known for her somewhat unconventional nature in regard to blood, which is such a weird thing for me to type.
It gets weirder though, as this relationship with blood was emphasized by Fox’s claims that when she got engaged to musician Machine Gun Kelly, they drank each other’s blood as part of a ritual. It’s all very vampiresque, which is pretty much the perfect vibe for Nitara. That being said, Fox has not been very well received for her role thanks to some more-than-questionable voice lines of her as Nitara going viral.
Twitter/ X user @itszaeok posted a small but very telling compilation of some of Megan’s lines as Nitara in the game—and they are bad. Really bad. The delivery is bad, the energy is bad, it is all just terrible. The first clip that we see in this compilation is of a standoff between Nitara and Johnny Cage. This line is particularly cringeworthy, as Fox screeches in Johnny’s face in a far from intimidating voice “don’t I scare you in the least?” No Nitara. No, you do not.
The rest of her lines are as low energy as you can get. To be frank, it sort of sounds like Megan doesn’t really want to be in the recording booth at all. This begs the question, why would you even agree to a role like this if you didn’t want to portray the character in all her frightening, blood-lusting glory?
The cynic in me says that she probably took the job for the money. This might be the case, but this role could have been a great chance for Megan to show off her voice-acting chops. The character is a great fit for her and she had some fun lines to work with. Instead, she meanders through the dialogue sounding like she is doing nothing more than simply reading off the page in front of her without actually caring about how to say it or why she is saying it. That is pretty critical, seeing as Mortal Kombat isn’t a franchise known for stellar narratives or dialogue, but when you become part of such an iconic series, you should really be giving it your all to do the character justice while also providing the best possible performance for the fans.
It isn’t too bad of a situation, though, because at least Fox’s performance has given the Mortal Kombat kommunity (see what I did there) something to chuckle about. I have heard some Nitara lines that don’t even sound too terrible, but when her performance is bad, oh boy, it’s bad.
No matter what you think of Megan Fox’s role as Nitara in Mortal Kombat 1, I think we can all agree that no, we are not scared of her in the least.
