Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) - 2 questions

Question: I'm posting this as a question since I'm not sure, but everything I know about Ermac is that he is multiple people in one body, so he refers to himself as "we". In the movie right after Shao Kahn kills Rain, he refers to himself as "I". Is there a reason for this, or is this a mistake?

Answer: This could have been a mistake but then again it could have been one of the people inside of him just stepping up and saying it to keep Shao Khan from throwing them over with Rain.

Question: Is there any story as to why the overall quality of this production was much less than the first Mortal Kombat? For example, the computer-animated creatures and morph effects seemed much worse than the first movies, and certainly worse than any other movie of the year. Also, the costumes and sets were of a lower quality than the first movie. Everything seemed to be a step down from Mortal Kombat 1. You would think that the sequel would have a bigger budget, but it seemed just the opposite with this movie.

Answer: Mortal Kombat 2 was given a budget around the same as the first one probably indicating that New Line (makers of the film) were not convinced the film would not be as much an success as the original was. The buget of 30 million is not too high of a risk for a major film studio. The original was more built on the novelty of the video game and the interest of how it would translate to the screen so a sequel was always going to be tough. While it's hard to find out why the quality was unimpressive, this can just be more from different film crews from the first or just tougher f/x to try and create for the film in the time available. Take The Mummy Returns for example. The Scorpion King near the end looked far too computer generated. This was despite a massive budget and impressive CGI for both films.