As a teenager of the 1990s I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Mortal Kombat, despite its frequent ups and downs, so when the 2021 movie reboot was a bit of a letdown, I shrugged. No worries, there would be another one, almost certainly, and in a pre- world I could just turn to the excellence of for my absurd Earthrealm versus Outworld story beats and bloody violence.
Fast-forward to 2025 and, thanks to , we’ve now got our first proper look at Mortal Kombat 2, the movie sequel. According to the reported details, this movie picks up directly following the end of the last, where MMA fighter Cole Young, as played by Lewis Tan, set out for Los Angeles to find and recruit the wise-cracking Johnny Cage in order to help him and his group of Earthrealm-aligned fighters in the battle ahead against the invading warriors of Outworld.
And Cole indeed finds Cage, as following a , we’ve now got in-movie visual confirmation that the shades-loving film star is not only in Mortal Kombat 2 but he is being played by Karl Urban, he of The Boys, Dredd and The Lord of the Rings fame. In addition to Urban, we’ve also now got confirmation that the sequel will see fan favourite (cough, not sorry, cough) Kitana join the carnage, played by Adeline Rudolph of Netflix’s Resident Evil TV show fame. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat big bad Shao Kahn is also going to make an appearance, with the emperor of Outworld played by Martyn Ford.
My gut reaction to Karl Urban’s casting is that this is a good move. However, I think his casting is only half the battle towards Mortal Kombat 2 winning a flawless victory with critics, and at the box office.
Flawed victory!
The 2021 Mortal Kombat had some strong visual spectacle, as well as some decently choreographed fights, but was bogged down by generally underwhelming acting, a boring central hero character in Cole, and a glacial, takes-itself-too-seriously plot. When reviewing the original movie, my colleague Wes Fenlon , "It's a shame this film introduced an entirely new hero only for him to be this boring. They could've at least named him Kole. Mortal Kombat's script is doing only the bare minimum to make its fighters feel like people instead of stuntmen. In a better action movie, Cole's family would have enough screen time for us to get to know and care about them, but here they exist purely as motivation fodder. It's only been a couple hours and I've already forgotten their names."
That considered, you’d expect a very experienced actor such as Karl Urban, who has become a bit of a specialist in stacked, wise-cracking leading men, to inject Mortal Kombat 2 with a bit more heart, acting class and laughs. But, I dunno, so much will rely on what ammunition the script gives him, as well as just how much he's let off the leash to be the star of the movie. With no disrespect meant to Cole, when I buy my ticket for Mortal Kombat 2 I’m doing so for Cage, and not for the original movie’s bland, boring hero. I want Cage to be as central to this movie as Deadpool is to his movies, or at least have the fantastic one-liners as delivered by Billie Butcher in each episode of The Boys.
Because the truth is, just a load of fights, well-choreographed or not (although I think we can all agree we’d like to see some insane fights that channel action movie greats such as The Raid and Ong-Bak), is not enough to make a great movie. You need an engaging plot, characters who you believe in within the fiction of their world and, most of all, some laughs. The universe of Mortal Kombat is absolutely ludicrous, so while it’s fine to lean into the blood-filled fighting and the end-of-the-world overplot of Outworld invading Earthrealm, I need the script to embrace the fact that this is a movie based on one of the most crude, silly and referential fighting game series of all time.
According to comments by Mortal Kombat 2’s director, Simon McQuoid, this movie will "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". And, look, that’s great and all. I like the idea of McQuoid saying the movies will "be bolder and swing harder", with more locations and characters being brought in (Jade and Queen Sindel have been confirmed, among more unnamed others), but at the end of the day, I won’t enjoy sitting through a longer, bigger version of the original movie unless I’m carried along by improved characterisation from the wider cast, an engaging plot that isn’t just a series of fight-filled set pieces slapped together for fan service, and far more laughs, with Urban as Cage becoming the elite action-movie star we all know he is.