I'm not making a case for any particular character, but for the statement made by many that since Sub-Zero has been a major icon for all these years, he should be champion.

I love Subs, man. He's one of my favorite characters (5th to be exact, behind Quan Chi, Kitana, Bo' Rai Cho, and Mileena). I've always viewed him as a great asset to the MK story, as well as the franchise itself. However, I don't feel he is as grand as he used to be, especially now that the timeline in the story has shifted, and his legacy has come to an end (for now, at least).

I have come to notice other characters who either have begun a rise to greatness, like Ermac and Quan Chi, or have the potential to, like Tanya and Smoke. I'm not saying any of these characters - excluding Quan Chi, obviously - are better than Sub-Zero, but they one day could be.

As for this tournament, I do feel Sub-Zero has won enough in many aspects, and it is time for him to step aside. Nevertheless, he will always be one of my favorites.

Danell leyva... Omfgidied

I've only seen Angelina Jolie in Wanted, Salt, and Girl Interrupted. I thought she was fantastic in all three movies.

Now that you mention it, I do see the Lady Gaga comparison. Mainly because of the facial protrusions that she was sporting during her Born This Way publicity tour.

Alot of people, myself included, thought that the guy from 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale was a horrendous choice to play the Joker in The Dark Knight.

I only say that because while it might be hard to picture Jolie as Malificent, I'd still wait and see how she actually does. I can picture her in the role, but I can certainly understand why some might not.

I don't like Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, it just doesn't look or feel right to me.

I thought she did a great job.

Getting Kingdom Hearts 3D later in a couple hours

I'll give Jolie another chance to be liked with this movie. I just never liked her after watching Tomb Raider, and I don't really know why I don't like her. I've seen bits and pieces of Salt, always wanted to sit down and watch the movie. I'll take your word on how she's fantastic in it. I will admit, she's a phenomenal actress, I just... am not a fan of hers for some reason and I really don't know why that is. I don't really like too many female actresses, the ones that I do like, however, are all dead, such as Vivian Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Marylin Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn. I'm a sucker for old movies. Haha!

Granted that the picture of Gaga in this one and Maleficent show similarities, I just thought the way the article was written was that the ENTIRE appearance of Jolie's Maleficent was resembling too much of Gaga, not the actual character in Sleeping Beauty itself.

And I will say, I too wasn't a fan of hearing Hathaway being chosen for Catwoman, however, I thought that she did actually portray a great Catwoman in Batman. I thought it was a bit funny how they always panned the camera away from her face when doing some fancy kick, but she did do a great job.

Same here. I wasn't sure at all going in, but by the time the movie was over, I was convinced that she was perfect for the role.

I bought Orcs Must Die for two bucks on Steam during a sale and skipped out on the DLC when it was super cheap. Now I want the DLC, but it would cost more than what I payed for the actual game.

Irony: When Sub Zero wins MKO ultimate champion, he is still going to be made Scorpion's bitch every time you look at the MK9 menu.

Being sick means I've watched all of seasons 2 and 3 of Arrested Development within the last two days, and I might read Mockingjay tonight.

Big world catastrophic event happening right now

God help us

I'd play coop with anyone in this game I wanna buy this game pretty bad as well.

Every since I have became a brony, which I'll admit was kind of bandwagonish of me. I saw the brony love so I checked it out and fell in love. And I have received a lot of heat, but at the same time I have received a lot of love. And it kinda sounds weird but the show has kind of brought me in a state of happiness. And Bronies are some of the coolest people ever.

There actually was a Justice League film being made a few years back, to be released in 2011, as a follow up to the Wonder Woman movie that was also set to be released the same year.

However, for unknown reasons, both films were dropped.

Rapper Common was to play John Stewart, and Jessica Beil was to play Wonder Woman.

Interesting. I've always been a fan of the Justice League since it was on Cartoon Network. Always wanted to see some sort of movie from it.

And also Teen Titans. I really thought that the show was awesome, but did not appreciate the way the series ended. I thought that the season where they were focusing more on Raven and Trigon should have been the last season due to how crazy and insane the show got with its seriousness. I didn't really like how the last episode of the entire series was to make Beast Boy figure out if this girl he's seeing is really Terra since her stone statue was missing at her grave.

I thought it was too disappointing the way that series ended. And since I stopped watching Justice League after they did something new to the series, I stopped following... Sucks when your favorite shows end.

Currently downloading transformers Fall of Cybertron demo. I'm gonna have some fun.

I think the current period probably says interesting things about a lot of the times. For better or worse, 'change' in major mainstream media and entertainment was a fairly evident phenomenon by the middle of the last decade, influenced by a lot of forces, but arguably controlled and instigated by the ruling corporate art-as-product that brings us to the low threshold economy of current entertainment.

That change, in a lot of cases, was overseen and ushered in by the creative forces of a generation of fans of the previous, less massively available versions of these themes and styles of product. In that respect, you could probably say their mass availability and foothold in current market practises is as much about now as it is the incidental legacy of then.

Comic book superheroes have arguably been one of the biggest elements that brings us to the present model. Their prominence is rooted in the thirties, forties, sixties, and a throughline from the seventies to now. The business model is one of good, genuine ideas with an existing instal base, which helps sell in a more aggressive, accessible and self-sustaining way than other source materials that fueled Hollywood before. Generations of old fans rally around it, in some cases were key to creating it, and are then easily replaced upon success by generations born into it as established fact.

You could suppose we burn through time quicker now in media, which helps that turnover, too. Which is self-sustaining, at the moment. Like a zombie plague, the assumption of creative stroke is in play with every man, woman and child who sees a movie, reads about the source on the Wikipedia page, and is convinced of their overnight expertise and readiness to take up the mantle. More and more stick with it, feeding that presumption back into the corporate system in an eroding acid rain cycle.

If you track back through previous decades, the kinds of entertainment you're talking about had plenty of fans who probably would've gladly consumed the volume of material that's more readily available today. It just wasn't there. It wasn't as easy to make, as proven a concept, or in a system that pandered to the niche so readily. It was in an age where you had to prove yourself, or work hard to become one of the creators. There were barriers to entry that have quickly evaporated in the internet age of digicam lolcats and corporate funded market research. An age when the common man without any expertise wasn't really in the driver's seat.

The idea that the popular success of zombies or vampires could indicate the era of coinciding American political opinion is very fun, real or not. Arguments of social refraction are interesting, but come from a time when the system needed it to get projects that far. I don't think you'd ever say it was a factual measure, but at least the barriers of entry meant the ideas had to pass through enough filters and obstacles to actually say something about the world it was in. That doesn't exist anymore. Which is arguably why we have a steady stream of both zombies and vampires, more prevelant than ever. Fan culture, cheap entertainment, low bar.

Again, though. That's not to take away from what you're getting at, vis-a-vis culture through popular entertainment. It's just getting under the rug, at least in terms of quantity and contrast with the past, if not the actual diminished meaning of pop product.

I used to watch Teen Titans religiously when I was younger, Raven being my favorite character.

I stopped watching after the show got too bizzare, and began to lack structure and continuity. Everything got all confusing.

A shame it is, Teen Titans was a badass show.

Ah, I think that I get what you're driving at here. Perhaps it's a bit shortsighted of me to look at our modern age and only see one possible track (entertainment indicates culture) when there are obviously several factors that contribute to what currently constitutes that entertainment.

In the past, as you said, a lot of art and entertainment was a product of the culture and of the times that people lived in, and most importantly, it was more or less created BY that culture.

But perhaps nowadays, that symbolism and overall relationship might not be as much of a link due to who is now creating the entertainment and how quickly it's being produced and more or less forced on people until they stop buying it.

That's really interesting, and I honestly never thought about it that way! I mean, obviously one would have to consider the outlying factors of the times in which entertainment was created, but I can see how the corporatiziation of entertainment, (the constant need for music, movies and books to copy and cannibalize an idea that becomes popular until everyone's sick of it) could possibly detract from the idea that entertainment itself is the indication of the culture or even the times we live in.

If anything, it just goes to show that our society will consume until we're sick of something, which probably isn't all that different from the past, though perhaps that desire has increased over the last few decades? I'd be curious to see that study!

It also shows that in this day and age, we have a media and various facets of our entertainment industry and perhaps most importantly, the technology to gorge ourselves on everything we want until we move on to the next fad.

Perhaps that's what it indicates, rather than providing any indication of what these things we gorge ourselves on (ie vampires, zombies, reality TV, dystopian futures, violent fighting as sport etc) could mean.

After all, how can you define a culture when the tenants that used to be a possible measuring stick are no longer really created from the culture, but rather pressed upon them by suits in boardrooms or constantly thrown at you in rapid fire via the internet? Perhaps the latter might be a culture in and of itself, sure, but an indication of the culture at large? Not likely.

Thanks for giving me some food for thought, Mick! Much appreciated.

We've all got our favourites and (hopefully) a desire to see characters get better fleshed out and used in interesting ways, but you're kinda reiterating my point. In intent, naming a "Supreme Mortal Kombat Champion" wasn't supposed to be about giving some hopeful youngster their shot at the big time. It was about taking twenty years of characters, celebrating them all, and declaring the one, reigning best of them. The ultimate representative.

You'd expect a certain amount of topical influence and personal fandom to shape the order of things, but you'd also hope some sense of objectivity would be allowed to take hold. To the best of my knowledge, we've never done this before, with the full resources of the site behind a vote and the reflective position of a milestone anniversary. Certainly, if I'm still running the site in 2013, we'll make it an annual thing. This one was about the all-time, though. The SUPREME Champion. Not the dorky fetish, or short attention span, or the "hipster" second string alt pick, or whatever else.

Again, though. My original point was just about the absurdity of voting for a character for not being established as a twenty year icon with tangible credentials of a champ. There's a list of characters with good arguments for being held up in that esteem. Ermac may or may not be one of them. I'd rather hear that than a vote against a character based on their superior qualifications.

Raven was my favorite too. Besides the Trigon series, I always thought that their encounters with Mad Mod were always great.

I just wish that they include more in with other characters and such because Teen Titans had SO MANY CHARACTERS... But they were all getting featured towards the end which sucked. Jericho was shown I think only once and he was one of my other favorites in the comics. Being a mute and such, he was wickedly cool.

Sadly, they just didn't bother to show any new heroes, just the villains... which was getting annoying to constantly see Slade every time with that.

I don't even remember a lot of the show anymore, it's been so long.

I do remember the episodes about Raven's fate to destroy the world, Beast's powers being reduced to sound-making objects (which was hilarious), and Starfire being racially discriminated.

I also remember the episode about Cyborg's car, which was kinda depressing.