The ending of 2021’s Mortal Kombat signaled where the franchise would go next: Hollywood. After a bloodbath between the champions of Earthrealm and Outworld, former MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a descendant of Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), set out for Los Angeles to find a new recruit to aid in the battle ahead — Johnny Cage.
A prominent and eccentric character from the video games, as well as past movie adaptations, Johnny was only teased in that first film through a poster for his Citizen Cage flick. But now, The Boys star Karl Urban officially takes his place alongside other Earthrealm champions in Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive first look at the sequel, Mortal Kombat 2, coming to theaters and IMAX locations on Oct. 24.
“You finally get to see Johnny Cage,” Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat co-creator and head of gaming developer NetherRealm Studios, tells EW. “His integration into the Mortal Kombat story and universe is a big part of what this movie explores. He’s a washed-up Hollywood guy thrown into this magical, ultra-violent thing. Karl, his depiction of Johnny Cage is different than our games in some ways. He’s adding his own flare to it, but I think it’ll feel fresh. There’s like a novelty factor in there.”
Just like Tan’s Cole in the first Mortal Kombat, Boon says Johnny serves as the audience’s lens into this new story. He calls the character’s introduction “ridiculously hilarious,” having incited “some of the biggest laughs” from the early screenings of Mortal Kombat 2. But director Simon McQuoid felt it was a balancing act to strike that tone. “We wanted a character that wasn’t just completely silly, comic book…It’s a character that could instantly go there and become too light and throwaway if we were to lean too much into the kind of cheese,” McQuoid remarks. “The casting of Karl Urban for that role allowed that character to have more depth.”
Johnny isn’t the only new character on the scene, either. Joining Mortal Kombat veterans like Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson “Jax” Briggs, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, and Sanada (fresh off his Shōgun Emmy wins) as Scorpion, EW can also reveal Adeline Rudolph (Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Netflix’s Resident Evil series) as fan-favorite (emphasis on “fan”) Kitana, as well as Martyn Ford (House of David, Those About to Die) as Outworld overlord Shao Kahn.
As an added treat for gamers, new movie-accurate skins of these characters, including Urban’s Johnny, Rudolph’s Kitana, and Ford’s Shao Kahn, are coming to the Mortal Kombat 1 video game later this year.
In the movie, these figures are all here for the main event, the one fans have been waiting to see realized on screen. The first film saw the Outworld sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Hang) and his forces attempt to wipe out Earth’s champions before the big Mortal Kombat tournament between fighters from different realms. That tournament is now officially here in the sequel, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. If Earthrealm loses its 10th consecutive tournament against Outworld, then Shao Kahn will invade Earth and take over.
“They keep score throughout the movie,” Boon reveals of the tournament. “There’s a visual representation of who is winning…. It’s not just a tournament for the sake of a tournament. There are huge consequences, so you really are keeping score. And there are a lot of twists in it that keep you on your toes.”
Speaking of twists…On the cast list confirmed for Mortal Kombat 2, which also includes Damon Herriman (Better Man) as Netherrealm demon Quan Chi, are the returning Josh Lawson and Max Huang, even though their characters, Kano and Kung Lao, died in the previous movie. “I can say Josh Lawson doesn’t play Kano’s twin,” Boon teases. He points to existing Mortal Kombat lore from the video games that make it possible for such a comeback. “We’ve killed a number of characters who are in Mortal Kombat 1 and our latest games,” he says. “So we deal with spirits and the NetherRealm and things like that. There are ways to bring dead characters back.”
The ages-long beef between Scorpion and Sub-Zero also refuses to die in Mortal Kombat 2, though it won’t be as central to the narrative. “He’s certainly making appearances that are significant and necessary for the progress of other storylines,” Boon prefaces of Sanada’s Hanzo Hasashi. “He plays a different role. He’s not part of the ‘Super Friends’ trying to defeat Shao Kahn, but his appearance is key and it is very essential for certain parts.”
All these facets relate to the clear goals McQuoid had coming into the making of the sequel. For one, the team wanted to increase the number of female characters. So alongside McNamee’s Sonya Blade and Rudolph’s Kitana, there’s also Tati Gabrielle (The Last of Us season 2) as Jade, Ana Thu Nguyen (NCIS: Sydney) as Queen Sindel, and some undisclosed “other” characters who will make appearances, the filmmaker says. McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater also worked to “maximize everything” with Mortal Kombat 2 — “just build on where we were and then make it significantly more intense, bigger in scale, bigger in variation, bigger across the board really as a cinematic experience.
Some of that involves the story itself; McQuoid confirms, “We go to lots of different realms, so that in itself gives the film a very distinct and varied visual approach.” Some of it also involves IMAX, which McQuoid says allowed them to “be bolder and swing harder.” The team took advantage of the big-screen format to offer audiences a unique experience when they watch Mortal Kombat 2 in IMAX, namely changing aspect ratios to enhance certain sequences.
“What I realized was go bigger, go bolder, don’t hold back, and really feed off the history of Mortal Kombat more,” McQuoid adds. “Just let it rip, and that’s what we’ve done.”
