How 'Mortal Kombat II' Got Things Right The Second Time Around

Mortal Kombat II opened in cinemas this week and looks poised to be the best installment in the franchise yet, garnering positive reviews from fans and critics alike. The 2021 reboot was good enough to get a sequel greenlit, but fans of the franchise had … thoughts. The cast and crew sat down to answer some questions, such as how the production team course-corrected to deliver a better story the second time around.

“Well, we didn't know what we didn't know in 2021,” producer Todd Garner explains, “it had been so long since a Mortal Kombat movie had been made that we made some assumptions of how to get into the story that the fans didn't need, ultimately.”

“What’s great about Mortal Kombat fans is they're incredibly vocal. They play the games religiously. They know all the canon. And so they were very vocal about, ‘hey, this is stuff we didn't love about the first movie.’ And so we all met, and so you have two decisions you can make. You can either ignore it, or you can take it in and learn from it and apply different rules and different logic to the second one, which we did.”

Garner and co-producer James Wan met with writer Jeremy Slater, whom Garner said had “a great take on the material.” The team went through Slater’s script and tried to right all the slight wrongs they’d made from the first film. “I was a child in the ‘90s,” says Slater, “I kind of was 13 when the original arcade machine came out and lost every week's allowance just pumping quarters into that machine. So I really tried to sort of write the movie that, you know, the 14-year-old me would have wanted to have walked out of the theater saying ‘that was the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life!’” Slater definitely hit the mark, but Filipino 14-year-olds are out of luck as the MTRCB slapped the film with an R-16 rating for its graphic violence.

Slater continues, “really make it a sort of love letter to these characters in this world that Ed Boon and NetherRealm [Studios] have created over the last 30 years and try to take everything that was great about the first movie, the fight choreography, the great casting, the costumes, the grounded reality of it and try to infuse it with some with a little bit more fun and make sure this was really delivering a sort of satisfying ride for the audience.”

Mortal Kombat co-creator and the film’s executive producer Ed Boon agrees, “It was surreal, you know, for the most part, a lot of people think of this as a game, but this really expands everything in all three dimensions. There's, you know, these characters that we thought of who are now represented by amazing actors who've just really brought a lot of their own kind of flair to it. To me, that's one of the most exciting things is seeing their interpretation of these characters. This is the coolest thing in the world.”

James Wan adds, “I would say that we definitely learned our lessons from the first one. And I do believe, you know, (that) Jeremy really did bring a lot of fun to this particular movie, to the script. And, you know, actually having Mortal Kombat!” Wan laughs, “the tournament was a big part of it. And so we felt like we wanted to really push in that direction this time around.”

With regards to Mortal Kombat II pushing in a certain direction, director Simon McQuoid, who also helmed the first film, says, “What I realized was we could really push everything and really take on that maximalist spirit that Mortal Kombat has, and I was really excited about the idea of doing that and sort of taking and really pushing everything much further to the limit. Also, I wanted to give the characters sort of greater journeys to go on, emotional journeys, and so really what I was trying to do was take the emotion and the heart in it and sort of have this very simple emotional, primal drivers and emotion story in it and then add this massive epic spectacle to it.”

One of the important lessons the team learned was to focus on fan favorites from the game, which makes the introduction of Johnny Cage a step in the right direction. “You know, two things were promised [at the end of the first film]. The tournament is coming, and Johnny Cage is going to be one of the fighters,” explains Slater. “I think traditionally, if you look at the way Johnny's been used in a lot of Mortal Kombat, he's kind of been the comic relief. He's kind of been the funny guy who stands in the background and throws out a few quips, but he's never really been the hero. He's never really been the focal point. And we sort of decided early on, no, let's really go on a journey with this guy. Let's center this story around him.”

“In order to do that, you have to sort of reinvent the character a little bit. You had to start him in a different place, where in some of the games, you know, he's the biggest movie star on the planet. And when you start a character from that spot, it doesn't leave them a lot of room to grow or evolve or achieve any sort of goals or dreams, versus starting Johnny from a little bit more of a vulnerable position. A guy who maybe had it all at one point and then lost it. And now he is sort of seeing it all slip through his fingers.”

Slater points out how Cage’s fall from grace, “just made him easier to relate to, made it a character that you could really sort of root for and fall in love with. So, once we sort of cracked that and then had the casting of Karl (Urban), obviously to bring him to life, Johnny was just a joy to write every single scene.”

But Cage is only one of two main characters in Mortal Kombat II, the other being Kitana (Adeline Rudolph). It was important to the team to bring on more female characters in a franchise with some of the most beloved female characters in the genre. “Going into the second one, I wanted to rebalance and up the female representation, and that's why Kitana, Sindel, and Jade are in this movie,” explains McQuoid. “So, Jess (McNamee, who plays Sonya Blade) was there on her own with all the dudes in the first one, and so that was really important to me and to everyone — there's a lot of really amazing female characters in Mortal Kombat. So, it was really a question of just bringing those in and sort of seeing what they had to offer and bringing their strength in as well. So, it was easy for me because it needed to be done.”

Mortal Kombat II is a true love letter to fans, and Boon can’t contain his excitement talking about it, nearly spoiling key moments as he praises the actors who worked on the film, “I like the one that [Liu Kang] did in the game. He brings his two gigantic dragons out, you know, shooting them out. At the end, well, I'm not going to spoil the whole thing, but [actor Ludi Lin] does this fantastic fatality move with these two dragons when he's fighting Shao Kahn. Awesome move. I love [Lin’s] performance in it. That means so much to me.”

Needless to say, Boon is a fanboy of his own creation, and he’s excited for fans to see the film, “Simon did something really clever — I shouldn't want to give it away — but if you see the IMAX version of the movie, and you're a fan of the games. You will go crazy when you see what's in there. But littered throughout the film are a hundred Easter eggs that are in the game. I think a lot of people are going to watch the film multiple times. I bet you there's going to be a list somewhere on Twitter or something like that. And that's to me, it's such a fan service to the people who are fans of the game.”

Slater agrees, “I'm excited for them to see all of it. I'm excited … they've been the most supportive fan base I've ever encountered, and I've worked for a lot of the big, you know, IP brands, whatever you want to call them. I've worked with a lot of the big fan bases. And Mortal Kombat, by far, has had the most passionate fans, but also the most supportive.”

“They just genuinely want a great Mortal Kombat movie, and they're rooting for us so much. So that sort of what was the driving inspiration for these guys every day on set, for me sitting in front of my computer, for Todd and James and all the work they've done, getting the movie to this point just to really deliver for the fans.” Mortal Kombat II certainly delivers, and fans of the 34-year old franchise and even casual moviegoers will find that it’s the perfect popcorn fare for the summer.

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