- calendar_today September 3, 2025
Mortal Kombat Celebrates 30 Years with Karl Urban as Cage
Karl Urban is hanging up his The Boys character’s Butcher coat in favor of a pair of cool shades for his next role as a video game icon. The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek actor will be playing Johnny Cage, the egotistical martial arts movie star and favorite of many fans of the long-running game series, in the action film Mortal Kombat II. It will be a follow-up to Warner Bros.’ 2021 reboot of the same name and the fourth live-action film in the series since the original movie came out in 1995.
But the timing of the release of the Mortal Kombat II trailer is no accident. It was released just one day after Warner Bros. released an entirely fake in-universe trailer for Uncaged Fury, a cheaply made ’90s-style action movie “starring” Johnny Cage. The spoof movie trailer teases Cage’s other in-universe “filmography,” with made-up titles like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.
2025 will also be the 30th anniversary of the first live-action Mortal Kombat, a movie that was a flop critically but a hit at the box office and eventually developed a cult following. Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa’s performance as sorcerer Shang Tsung is considered by many fans to be the best portrayal to date. Its sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was released in 1997 and did not fare nearly so well, tanking critically and at the box office. Midway, the game’s publisher, went bankrupt not long after its release.
Warner Bros. later acquired the rights to the franchise, and the studio hired Simon McQuoid to direct a reboot over two decades after the original film. That reboot was released in 2021 and follows the story of Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, an MMA fighter who becomes enmeshed in the battle for Earthrealm. The film received mixed reviews but was a moderate box office success, enough that a sequel was greenlit, again with McQuoid in the director’s chair. The first movie ended with Cole Young setting out for Los Angeles to recruit Johnny Cage, so the sequel picks up with the events surrounding Cage’s fight.
The trailer for Mortal Kombat II does little to explain the situation for those who have not seen the first movie. The film’s synopsis makes no bones about the fact that fans will need to have seen its predecessor before the start of Mortal Kombat II. This time around, the champions, now with Cage among them, take part in an all-out, no-holds-barred fight to try and prevent Shao Kahn from conquering Earthrealm. There’s no way to go back to Earthrealm after this battle, and the consequences of failure are clear.
Returning Cast Members, Iconic Faces, and a Ranting Cage
The film casts a number of the same performers from the 2021 film in the same roles. Lewis Tan will once again be Cole Young, Jessica McNamee will reprise her role as Sonya Blade, Joe Taslim will play Bi-Han/Noob Saibot (a.k.a. Sub-Zero), Tadanobu Asano is once again Lord Raiden, Josh Lawson returns as Kano, Ludi Lin will be Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks will play Jax Briggs, Chin Han is back as Shang Tsung, Hiroyuki Sanada will be Scorpion, and Max Huang is once again Kung Lao.
New fighters include Adeline Rudolph as Kitana, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, Damon Herrima, who voiced Kabal in the first film, now plays Quan Chi, Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn, CJ Bloomfield as Baraka, Desmond Chiam as King Jerrod, and Ana Thu Nguyen as Queen Sindel.
The trailer for Mortal Kombat II’s self-aware moment is right there at the beginning. In the film’s first scene, Cage is approached by a fan at the bar and recognized. “I loved Citizen Cage as a kid,” the fan tells Cage. “They should do a reboot!” Cage responds, bitterly, that nobody wants that because his kind of movies died in the ’90s.
In swoops Lord Raiden and Sonya Blade, ending Cage’s verbal tirade to ask, “You have been chosen to fight.” At first, Cage isn’t interested, laughing off the two who continue to approach him before they end up whisking him away into an otherworldly gladiatorial arena, one in which the entire match is described as a “fighting tournament to the death.” As one might imagine, Cage is less than thrilled. “F— that,” he says.
Cage grumbles at his lack of any superpowers, making sure to tell Raiden, “I’m just incredibly handsome,” but immediately changes his mind when told the entire fate of Earthrealm hangs in the balance. He does, however, demand that no one hit his face as he continues to battle. The trailer for Mortal Kombat II plays out exactly as the franchise’s fans would expect, with blood-drenched, slowed-down sword and fist fights, signature finishing moves, and over-the-top catchphrases, including, of course, Scorpion’s “Get over here!”
It’s hard to say how much broader appeal the film will have beyond its die-hard fan base, but the movie does seem to know exactly what it is and isn’t trying to be. Mortal Kombat II will be released in theaters on October 24, 2025.
