Uncaged Fury: Karl Urban Dives into Mortal Kombat Universe

Karl Urban has officially been confirmed to be playing Mortal Kombat’s musclebound, swaggering action movie star, Johnny Cage. In the latest trailer for Mortal Kombat II, Urban once again flexes his natural grit-and-sweat swagger, this time around in a more “meta” take on one of the iconic video game franchise’s most popular characters. It’s a major move for the saga, and an even bigger step forward in Warner Bros.’s long-shot attempt to revitalize the cult video game series into a successful screen franchise.

Urban, best known for playing mercenary and faux-sociopath Billy Butcher on the hit Amazon series The Boys, is no doubt going to be a big draw for fans of his action-heavy and genre-blending work (think Star Trek, Dredd, Jane Doe), but he also comes equipped with exactly the kind of physicality and star power required to play a character that gets a lot of knowingly wacky lines, and still give them the weight and the energy that they need. (Urban also has some experience with the Mortal Kombat franchise; he had a non-speaking role in the 2021 reboot, the film that introduced Cage’s eventual successor Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan.)

But this new version of Johnny Cage is also going to be a bit different from the one that we’ve seen and heard about in the comics and games. Sure, he still can throw down. And there’s plenty of swagger in Urban’s take on the character.

But while Cage is known best in the games as the peak-career, cocky, cool-as-hell action movie star, the version that Urban is playing in Mortal Kombat II is a more self-aware take on the character. He’s also “washed-up,” in keeping with the current and increasingly meta approach to the franchise.

This new trailer is a follow-up to a fake teaser trailer for Uncaged Fury, the fake 1990s Johnny Cage movie that Warner Bros. released yesterday. The VHS-quality fake trailer for the Cage-centric Uncaged Fury leans heavily into Cage’s in-universe filmography, complete with silly action set pieces and wildly implausible martial arts moves. End credits in character even mention other Cage films, like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.

In addition to being a sequel to the 2021 reboot film of the same name, Mortal Kombat II is also a direct sequel to the 1995 Mortal Kombat, which was the movie that first introduced Shang Tsung (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), Raiden, and Sonya Blade and which ended with the big surprise reveal that the next person to join the fight would be Johnny Cage (who, as you might recall, had not yet been seen or introduced in the live-action series).

Directed by Simon McQuoid, the 2021 reboot film was a middling-reviewed, moderately well-performing film that got a follow-up greenlit at Warner Bros., not just based on the involvement of that same director, but on the star power of Mortal Kombat’s most popular character, Sub-Zero, who, this time around, will be played by Joe Taslim. (Returnees from the previous movie include Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks as Jackson, and Jessica McNamee as Jax.)

With the casting of the actor to play Johnny Cage now confirmed, Mortal Kombat II is the fourth-ever live-action Mortal Kombat movie, and the first since the original film from 1995, which will be turning 30 years old this year. Mortal Kombat was well-reviewed and underperformed on release, but has since acquired the status of a campy cult classic (we saw that word again with both trailers). The long, unbreakable hold of iconicity on Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s performance as Shang Tsung in that movie is a testament to just how beloved it still is.

That sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was not well-liked by fans or successful at the box office, after which the series went on hiatus from the theaters. Its publisher, Midway, would soon file for bankruptcy. Warner Bros. would eventually buy the rights, and the road to this current Mortal Kombat reboot film has been a long one indeed.

“The mortal battle for Earthrealm’s survival is about to get a lot more personal,” reads the official synopsis for Mortal Kombat II. “The champions of Earthrealm are forced to come together – with the help of none other than Johnny Cage – to prevent Outworld’s evil Emperor Shao Kahn from completing his conquest of Earth in this ultraviolent sequel.” The film, like the previous reboot film, will feature the franchise’s signature R-rated gore, fantastical stakes, and brutally realistic violence.

Fans can be sure that Mortal Kombat II is going to be closer to the DNA of the games that made Mortal Kombat so special than the previous reboot was, if the casting of one of its most beloved characters as the marquee star is any indication.

A release date for Mortal Kombat II has yet to be officially announced, but the sequel is currently in active production.