Mileena

Mileena
Mortal Kombat series character
File:MileenaRenderL.jpg Mileena in the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2011
First game	Mortal Kombat II (1993)

Mileena is a game character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.

Character

Mileena was brought to life by Shang Tsung using Tarkatan race's physiology to be a clone of Edenian Princess Kitana for the evil Emperor Shao Kahn. Mileena looks just like Kitana when her mask is on (especially since Kitana is also often wearing a mask), but when it is off, her true, flawed visage is exposed. She despises Kitana, and feels that it is her own right to rule Edenia as princess in her place. Her fondest wish is to kill her "sister", and claim her existence for her own. Something of an opportunist, Mileena will make use of any chance to seize power that comes within her grasp.

Storyline

Origins

After Shao Kahn conquered the realm of Edenia and merged it with Outworld, he decided he would keep the former king's young daughter Kitana alive and raise her as his own. Although Kitana grew up loyal to the emperor, Kahn feared if she should ever discover the truth about her past, she'd turn against him. Kahn then ordered Shang Tsung to create a more vicious and loyal clone of Kitana who would take her place, and Tsung combined Kitana's essence with a Tarkatan's to achieve this purpose. However, complications arose with the clone's creation and her face deformed into a hideous Tarkatan mouth. Rather than disposing of her, she was given the name Mileena and introduced as Kitana's supposedly lost twin sister. Instead of replacing Kitana as originally planned, Mileena would be used to watch Kitana and make sure she remained loyal to Kahn.

The "sisters" thus grew up together as Shao Kahn's personal assassins, even though Mileena secretly harbored a growing bitterness and jealousy towards Kitana, who Kahn favored over her. Also at some time during her life, Mileena became the secret ally of Tarkatan warrior Baraka. As Kahn feared, Kitana did finally discover the truth about her past and family. Although she continued to feign loyalty to Shao Kahn, she secretly plotted and waited for the right time to overthrow him. Shao Kahn begins to grow suspicious of Kitana and Mileena was ordered to watch over her sister.

Mortal Kombat II

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Mileena with Kung Lao, Baraka and Shang Tsung on the flyer for MKII

After finding out Kitana was indeed conspiring with the Earthrealm warriors during the events of Mortal Kombat II, Mileena was confronted by Kitana, who proved to be the superior fighter and killed her. Mileena's essence descended into the Netherealm, giving her even more reason to hate her sister.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

Damned to the Netherealm, Mileena found herself recruited by Shinnok. During Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Shao Kahn made an attempt to resurrect Mileena, and Shinnok saw this as an opportunity to spy on the events unfolding in Earthrealm, thus allowing Mileena to be brought back from the dead and granted the ability to read Kitana's thoughts. After Kahn was defeated, Mileena was summoned back to the Netherealm.

Mortal Kombat Gold

During Mortal Kombat Gold, Mileena assisted in Shinnok's invasion of Edenia. Seeing this as a chance to finally prove she is superior to Kitana, Mileena allowed her "sister" to escape Shinnok's dungeons. After Shinnok's defeat, Mileena came to Kitana to demand her share of reign over the realm. However, she was refused, and when the confrontation grew violent, she was captured by Kitana using a trapdoor in her throne room and locked away in dungeon.

Mortal Kombat: Deception

Mileena remained imprisoned for years, until the Dragon King, Onaga, returned during Mortal Kombat: Deception and began his own invasion of Edenia, during which she was freed from her prison by Baraka. Mileena joined Onaga, and was ordered to pose as Kitana in order to mislead the princess' armies while Onaga gathered his strength. She accepted, seeing this as a chance to gain some amount of revenge against Kitana. However, as Mileena began her titular deception, she also began to consider taking control of the armies for herself.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Mileena had seized Shao Kahn's fortress using the Edenian forces, all in the name of "peace". Though she did this still under the guise of Kitana, she had decided to continue her charade until the Edenian armies were corrupted enough to follow her under her true identity. Though at first confident that Outworld was hers to rule, Mileena soon discovered that Shao Kahn had mounted an offensive against the fortress to re-instate Kahn's rule over Outworld. Revealing her identity to Kahn, Mileena eventually surrendered to him. Shao Kahn then commanded her to capture Shujinko, who would be used as a bargaining chip in gaining Onaga as an ally, and Shujinko was quickly imprisoned after being defeated by Mileena personally. However, having tasted power for herself, she was no longer content with being a minion. Deciding that she is destined for greater things, and with Outworld out of her reach, Mileena set her sights on ruling Edenia instead.

In Mileena's ending in Armageddon, she defeats Blaze, causing herself and her "twin" Kitana to psychically fuse together for a moment. When they separate, Mileena finds that she has taken Kitana's facial features and become beautiful, while Kitana has been cursed with Mileena's Tarkatan teeth. Mileena is now able to take her "rightful" place as princess of Edenia. She rules in Kitana's place and locks her "sister" in the Edenian palace dungeon, where Kitana eventually goes insane. Kitana's ending is however very different and (judging from the story of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe) apparently canonical, but it does not say whatever happened to Mileena.

In June 2010 she was however announced to return in the next Mortal Kombat game, which is supposed to be a re-telling of the original MK trilogy.

Gameplay

According to GamePro ProStrategy Guide for Mortal Kombat II, while Jax was the best overall fighter in the game, Mileena's "massive adventage" over him made her number one: "With her rapid Sai-throwing ability, Teleport attacks, and deadly combos, this beautiful assassin lands atop our ratings." In their test Mileena players won most matches against all other characters, and especially against Jax, Reptile (ranked by the guide as the worst MKII fighter) and Shang Tsung.

Appearances outside of the games

File:Mileena movie2 2.jpg

Dana Hee as Mileena in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

Mileena appeared briefly in the film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, where she was played by Dana Hee, who was the stunt double for Talisa Soto (who played Kitana) and was only featured and defeated in one fight scene with Sonya Blade. Though she was never mentioned by name in the film, Mileena's name appears in the end credits. In a small nod in the film Book of Swords, a character of similarly dressed unnamed sai-wielding female ninja is played by Katalin Zamiar, who was Mileena and Kitana's motion capture actress in MKII.

Mileena also appeared in one episode of the television series Mortal Kombat: Conquest, in which she had no initial relation to Kitana and was here depicted as a repulsive-looking Outworld assassin sent by Shao Kahn to assassinate Kung Lao (whom she however develops feelings for), with a magic spell placed over her to give her Kitana's beautiful face, which she loved (for a second, he also called her his "new daughter"). As punishment for her taking too much time in her mission, Kahn allows her to keep her beauty with the exception of making her teeth more exaggerated and pointy; she then starts to wear her signature mask, which Kahn gives her before banishing her from his sight. She was portrayed by Megan Brown in both forms, and by Audie England in the form of Kitana.

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Mileena's unmasked face in the unreleased MK: Deception comic book

Mileena appeared as a minor recurring character in Malibu's Mortal Kombat comic books in 1995, following the release of Mortal Kombat II. Mileena first appeared in the Goro: Prince of Pain mini-series as part of a team lead by Kitana with orders to find the missing Goro in Outworld. She is shown having reservation as of Kitana's true loyalty (though she never speaks about it to anyone) and considers herself to be "Shao Kahn's true daughter". In the comics Mileena twice fights against Sonya Blade, losing both times. She was also featured in a one-shot special with Kitana entitled Kitana and Mileena: Sister Act, which explained their past: Mileena is shown in this comic as a creation ordered by Shao Kahn, though he revealed that he would never let her replace Kitana.

An action figure based on Mileena's MKII design was released in 1999. In 2004 she was also featured in a special edition of Playboy that spotlighted provocative video game characters (besides her, there were also Kurenai from Red Ninja, Nina Williams from Tekken, Rayne from BloodRayne and Tala from Darkwatch, among others). A promotional render of her, commonly known among fans as "Sexy Mileena" (an edited version of her alternative outfit concept art in which she was depicted with a great deal of both her breasts exposed, with only her sai covering her nipples from view) was created for this purpose. The image did not actually appear in Playboy (in which a fairly common render of her in her primary Mortal Kombat: Deception attire was published instead), it is however unlockable for viewing in the gallery mode of Deception.

Character development

Mileena was the first evil female character to appear in the series. In Kitana's Kombat Kard (character trading card) video for Deception, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon has described Kitana and Mileena as the female equivalents of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. In Mileena's card video, Ed Boon described Mileena as "Anti-Kitana" and revealed that her "sharp, nasty teeth" were not originally planned and were only drawn for her MKII "Man-Eater" Fatality. The character Li Mei, introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, shares many similarities with Mileena (who was not featured in this game), such as their use of sai, coloring, and even their similar-sounding names, but those two characters are unrelated otherwise.

Mileena was originally portrayed by Katalin Zamiar in Mortal Kombat II, and the original costume used for filming was blue (it was later altered digitally). Becky Gable took over the part for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, for which motion capture footage was filmed with a red outfit. In the later games no actors were used. In UMK3/MKT and MKG Mileena had white eyes with no pupils and irises, but in the later games she has brown eyes (and Tarkatan yellow eyes in the upcoming reboot game). Since Deception, her coloring was also changed from purple to pink and black. For this game, the designer Steve Beran "wanted to give Mileena an Arabic feel to her costume. The final version showed a lot more skin and her mask developed into more of a veil." In Deception, she boasted an alternate outfit that covers less skin than any Mortal Kombat outfit to date.

Reception

At the time of the release of MKII, The Miami Herald called Kitana and Mileena, "leggy ladies who wear masks", to be "an interesting step toward political correctness" as "a far cry from Little Miss Muffet", while Austin American-Statesman said they're "far nastier than that martial-artless aerobics instructor from the first game". In the book Interacting With Video, the "sisters" were held as an example of a "highly eroticized dragon lady" of video games, with Mileena's original "Man-Eater" fatality described as "a high powered kiss that evokes vagina dentata." For this reason she also shared the #7 place with Kitana on GamesRadar's list of "Top 7 Girls kissing girls" in 2006, and was featured in its 2008 article "Gaming's most repellent anti-babes": "we had two nigh-identical twins of svelte, slinky sex and gore. (...) But then Milly took off her mask and it all went wrong. Horribly, nightmarishly, ball-shrinkingly wrong." In 2009 GamePro ranked Mileena and Kitana as #11 in their list of the best palette-swapped video game characters, adding: "However, if you gauge Mileena's attractiveness simply based on the size of her baby-feeders, be ready for some disappointment when she removes her mask."

UGO Networks ranked Mileena #5 on their list of top 11 Mortal Kombat characters, citing her presence as an evil female player character as a rarity, as they were a taboo in video games at that time, while her brutal attacks, revealing outfits and slutty attitude made her a fan favorite. N4G had her #2 in the ranking of the sexiest MK series' female characters, commenting: "Mileena proves that women with disfigured faces can still be sexy". She was also included on IGN's 2008 list of "Top 50 Chicks Behaving Badly", and on Virgin Media's list of "game girls you wouldn't dare to date". In 2009 Chibi, vocalist of The Birthday Massacre, said she is planning to get a Mileena tattoo.

External links

• Mileena - The Mortal Kombat Wiki
• Mileena (video game character), Giant Bomb
• Mileena (Mortal Kombat), IGN