‘Mortal Kombat 2’ first look reveals Johnny Cage, Kitana, and Shao Kahn (exclusive)

The ending of 2021’s Mortal Kombat signaled the place the franchise would go subsequent: Hollywood. After a massacre between the champions of Earthrealm and Outworld, former MMA fighter Cole Younger (Lewis Tan), a descendant of Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), set out for Los Angeles to discover a new recruit to help within the battle forward — Johnny Cage.

A distinguished and eccentric character from the video video games, in addition to previous film diversifications, Johnny was solely teased in that first movie by way of a poster for his Citizen Cage flick. However now, The Boys star Karl City formally takes his place alongside different Earthrealm champions in Leisure Weekly‘s unique first have a look at the sequel, Mortal Kombat 2, coming to theaters and IMAX places 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.”

Similar to Tan’s Cole within the first Mortal Kombat, Boon says Johnny serves because the viewers’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. However 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 is not the one new character on the scene, both. Becoming a member of 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 (contemporary off his Shōgun Emmy wins) as Scorpion, EW may also reveal Adeline Rudolph (Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Netflix’s Resident Evil sequence) as fan-favorite (emphasis on “fan”) Kitana, in addition to Martyn Ford (Home of David, These About to Die) as Outworld overlord Shao Kahn.

As an added deal with for avid gamers, new movie-accurate skins of those characters, together with City’s Johnny, Rudolph’s Kitana, and Ford’s Shao Kahn, are coming to the Mortal Kombat 1 online game later this 12 months.

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Within the film, these figures are all right here for the primary occasion, the one followers have been ready to see realized on display screen. The primary movie noticed the Outworld sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han) and his forces try to wipe out Earth’s champions earlier than the massive Mortal Kombat event between fighters from completely different realms. That event is now formally right here within the sequel, and the stakes could not be greater. If Earthrealm loses its tenth consecutive event in opposition to Outworld, then Shao Kahn will invade Earth and take over.

“They keep score throughout the movie,” Boon reveals of the event. “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.”

Talking of twists…On the solid listing confirmed for Mortal Kombat 2, which additionally consists of Damon Herriman (Higher Man) as Netherrealm demon Quan Chi, are the returning Josh Lawson and Max Huang, despite the fact that their characters, Kano and Kung Lao, died within the earlier film. “I can say Josh Lawson doesn’t play Kano’s twin,” Boon teases. He factors to present Mortal Kombat lore from the video video games that make it doable 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 additionally refuses to die in Mortal Kombat 2, although it will not 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 aspects relate to the clear targets McQuoid had coming into the making of the sequel. For one, the group wished to extend the variety of feminine characters. So alongside McNamee’s Sonya Blade and Rudolph’s Kitana, there’s additionally Tati Gabrielle (The Final of Us season 2) as Jade, Ana Thu Nguyen (NCIS: Sydney) as Queen Sindel, and a few undisclosed “other” characters who will make appearances, the filmmaker says. McQuoid and screenwriter Jeremy Slater additionally labored 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.”

A few of that includes 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.” A few of it additionally includes IMAX, which McQuoid says allowed them to “be bolder and swing harder.” The group took benefit of the big-screen format to supply audiences a novel expertise after they watch Mortal Kombat 2 in IMAX, particularly altering facet ratios to reinforce sure sequences.

“What I realized was go bigger, go bolder, don’t hold back, and really feed off the history of Mortal Kombat more,” McQuoid provides. “Just let it rip, and that’s what we’ve done.”