‘Mortal Kombat II’ Writer Talks Johnny Cage, Major Deaths, And Franchise Recalibration

The 2021 release of Simon McQuoid’s long-awaited Mortal Kombat adaptation wasn’t exactly a failure, but it was no flawless victory either.

For one thing, the film saw a muted gross ($84 million worldwide) as a result of Warner Bros.’ controversial day-and-date release strategy amidst the uncertainty of Covid-19. For another, longtime fans of the video game franchise known for its ostentatious roster of fighters and their ultra-violent finishing moves were not thrilled with the introduction of protagonist Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a character created specifically for the movie. There was also that minor detail of the titular tournament not even taking place throughout the nearly 2-hour runtime.

The sequel (green-lit in early 2022, with McQuoid signing on to return as director) would need to avoid those pitfalls if the burgeoning series wanted to inflict any kind of box office fatality.

Enter Jeremy Slater, known for his time as head writer on Marvel’s Moon Knight TV show, who pitched the studio on a sophomore installment sure to pull in viewers with the force of Scorpion wrenching an opponent with his kunai spear.

“A Mortal Kombat movie should never be boring,” he recently told me over Zoom. “It should never have any downtime. It should be a blast from start to finish.”

What really landed him the job was his proposal of “a tonal recalibration,” Slater explained. “It was saying, ‘Let’s look at what the first movie did well in terms of the violence, casting, amazing costumes, and fight choreography. Let’s double down on all of that.’ At the same time, I felt like we could do a better job of embracing the sense of humor, imagination, and absurdity of the games because the games are very funny. The fatalities are genuinely hilarious.”

He continued: “[I said], ‘We need to make these movies funnier. We need to make this more exciting and more satisfying for the audience.’ Really approach this…not like a theme park ride, but with that same sense of we want them to walk out of the theater with a giant smile on their face, no matter what.”

Warner Bros. offered him the gig about a half hour later and Slater “said yes immediately with [sub]zero hesitation.”

Based on the warmer critical reception and a strong opening weekend at the box office, it appears Slater irrefutably succeeded with Mortal Kombat II, which introduces fan favorite combatants Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), Katana (Adeline Rudolph), and Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) for the eponymous contest, whose outcome will decide the fate of Earthrealm.

Mortal Kombat II screenwriter talks video game sequel

***The following contains major spoilers for the film!***

Josh Weiss: I assume you grew up playing the games?

Jeremy Slater: Yeah. I was a child of the ’90s, so arcade machines, Super Nintendo and [Sega] Genesis, the ’95 movie, and the soundtrack. All of those hit at my formative years of 13 through 15. I was obsessed with the characters and mythology and designs. I can’t tell you how surreal it was to be there on set, having conversations with Baraka or taking pictures with Raiden. I’m surrounded by my childhood heroes on these giant, expansive, gorgeous sets. It was really one of those moments where I was like, “If I could go back in time and show this to my childhood self, he would never believe that’s how his life turned out.”

Weiss: The first movie was very much Cole Young’s story while the sequel focuses more on Johnny Cage. At what point did you decide this would be Johnny’s movie?

Slater: For me, Mortal Kombat has never been a series that’s just about one character, one fighter. I would always [choose] Raiden and Baraka as a kid, but my friends would always play Liu Kang or Katana. The idea of continuing one person’s story over all the movies didn’t hold a lot of appeal to me. Also, we knew we had a big [setup] at the end of the last movie, which promised two things: The tournament was coming and Johnny Cage was going to be an important part of that. I didn’t want to introduce Johnny and have him fulfill the role of comic relief that he gets slotted into very often, where he’s the guy in the background saying a few funny things, but it leaves all the emotional heavy lifting to the other characters. I knew that if we were going to get an actor of Karl Urban’s stature, it was going to have to be an interesting character on the page. He was going to have to have a real arc, and that just means screen time. The same thing was very true for Katana. She’s probably the co-lead of the movie and has the most emotional grounding in her story in terms of what was taken from her and what she’s trying to get back. We knew Johnny and Katana, were going to suck up a lot of real estate, and that was, by necessity, going to mean the other fighters were going to get less screen time. But for me, that’s the joy of an ensemble film like this; the focus can always shift to new characters. And all of our actors are so strong that they can all shoulder that burden when it’s their time in the spotlight.

Weiss: Going off that, what did you feel you had to get right when introducing fan favorites like Johnny and Katana?

Slater: The most important thing is for the fans to see the characters they love. That was pretty easy for Katana because her story was already very emotional and grounded in the tournament itself. Her story is directly relating to Shao Kahn who is the big bad of the tournament. For Johnny, it was a lot harder and required recalibrating the character. Our Johnny is older, he’s, weathered, he’s much less successful. He’s kind of the cocky Johnny Cage from the games if all of his dreams slipped through his fingers. He had a chance at greatness, a chance to prove himself, but never capitalized on it. Now the world has sort of left him behind.

We knew we were taking a risk with the recalibration, but I also knew it was the only way we were going to get the audience to root for him and care about him. It’s very hard to ask people to care about your lead character when he’s the most handsome, famous, and popular movie star on the planet. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for a character arc in a story like that. We knew we had to start him in this dark place, which some fans were not going to be on board with. So, it was very important to get Johnny’s sense of humor, his mannerisms, the way he cares about his friends—the elements that make his character Johnny Cage. We really needed to make sure we were being faithful to those [characteristics], even if we were fudging some elements of his backstory.

Weiss: Did you have anyone specific in mind for these roles while writing the script?

Slater: I didn’t. If I’m writing something for myself to direct, I very much have actors in mind for every single character. When I’m writing for other people, I find it’s much easier to have a sort of archetype in mind. I was kind of leaning into the Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, archetype [for Johnny]. A little bit of the weathered, tired badass whose dreams never quite worked out for him, but can handle himself in a pinch. It wasn’t that I was writing for Brad Pitt, but that I was keeping the Cliff Booth archetype in mind.

Weiss: What, in your opinion, is the key to making a good video game adaptation?

Slater: It’s not just fidelity, which is sort of the easy answer. Because it’s very easy to go down that rabbit hole where every decision you make is only for the hardcore fans. And it’s certainly important [to please them because] the hardcore fans are your greatest audience. They’re the ones who are showing up on day one to support you. They’re the ones sharing your trailer. They have to love the movie, but it also has to work for their plus ones. It has to work for their friends they’re dragging to the theater, or people who just saw a cool trailer on TV and said that looks like a fun night out. You have to satisfy both of those audiences at once and that means being very selective about which elements of the mythology you incorporate and which elements you’re either contradicting or just sidestepping entirely.

We don’t mention the word “Arcana” in this movie, and that’s a very deliberate choice, because the fans didn’t respond to that in the last movie. We set out and said, “We’re not going to contradict anything that happened in that last movie, but we’re also not going to double down on mistakes or things that fans weren’t responding to.” Every scene has to really be calibrated to say, “Is this what the fans want to see?” But also, “Do the casual fans in the audience understand what’s happening in this moment? Are they still invested? Are they still engaged?” You always have to be juggling those two polar extremes of the spectrum and making sure you’re landing somewhere in the middle.

Weiss: The film kills off Cole Young, Jax, and Liu Kang. How did you decide they’d be the ones to go?

Slater: It was very hard, but the reality of a fighting tournament to the death with multiple stages, you can’t arrive at that final round and have one bad guy and five heroes who have made it through unscathed. You know you’re going to have to kill some of your darlings along the way. For me, the goal in deciding who to kill was I wanted to have deaths that would surprise every single person in the audience, and that meant certain characters slotted very nicely into those roles. Cole Young is someone the hardcore fans did not respond to in the first movie. They really felt like he didn’t necessarily belong, even though I love Louis Tan as an actor. I love what he did with the role and I love working with him. The fans were just sort of calling for his death for the last several years. And so, we knew getting rid of Cole would be satisfying for those hardcore fans and would be really, really shocking for the casual viewers who had only seen the first movie and had no idea that Cole wasn’t from the games.

And the flip side is a character like Liu Kang. He might not mean as much to the casual fans, but the hardcore fans know that canonically, Liu Kang is the one who kills Shao Kahn. He’s the one who wins the tournament. They’re expecting him to ultimately be the victor here, so we knew that death would be really shocking for them. It’s trying to find a mixture of whose stories need to continue all the way to the end. Who do we have to keep alive until the final round and how can we afford to say goodbye to, knowing that a franchise like Mortal Kombat always has the ability to resurrect its fallen characters? We’re not necessarily saying goodbye forever to some of these characters and some of these actors.

Weiss: You do leave off on that note with the heroes setting out to reclaim their fallen comrades. Where do you see the franchise going in a third installment?

Slater: I can’t get into spoilers on where III is going because I’m still in the midst of writing it. Our marching orders for Mortal Kombat II was take everything that worked in the first one, double down, and make it even better. I think that’s going to hold true for III. We’ve been sitting on this movie for two years at this point. We knew we had something really special on our hands that we were really proud of. We believed the fans were going to like it, but it wasn’t until this last week, with premieres and preview screenings, that we’ve started to actually get honest fan reception and see how much they’re loving the film. It really gives us the enthusiasm to know we’re on the right track and that this tonal recalibration we pulled off is working for the audiences.

My expectation is that similar to this movie and similar to what Marvel and DC do, we’re not going to be directly adapting any specific storyline from any of the games. Instead, we’re going to be using them as inspiration and as a jumping off point to tell our own story with our own mythology, while still trying to make sure we are hitting all of those fan favorite moments and introducing the characters the audience is most excited to see. A big part of this movie was the fans were crying out for Johnny, Katana, and Shao Kahn—and we knew we had to deliver on all three. Baraka has always been my favorite Mortal Kombat character, so I knew I had to bring him to life. For III, we’re really taking a look at what the fans are asking to see. Who are the characters they really love who still haven’t shown up? Who are the villains that haven’t gotten their time in the spotlight yet? Those are going to be what drives the franchise in the future.

Weiss: Is there any character you wanted to include, but couldn’t fit into the story?

Slater: I think the only person who wound up getting cut was Tremor, the ninja with Earth-bending abilities. I always liked Tremor from the games and tried a few different versions of him, but it just didn’t quite work. One of the things we learned over the course of this, is that powers and characters that are CGI-based wind up being less fun to write and shoot, [as well as] less fun for the audience than fights like Liu Kang versus Kung Lao, which is just a pair of world-class martial artists really showing what they can do onscreen. Characters like Tremor, where it was much more about, “I’m going to generate earthquakes and throw big rocks at you,” is not as satisfying as watching two great fighters really go at it. That was a great learning lesson for the future, and probably a hint as to what sort of characters and storylines we’re going to be focusing on.

One of the things that really sets our franchise apart from a lot of other action movies, is that we actually have world-class martial artists and athletes playing some of these roles. In one of the fights, Kung Lao was scripted to have a 180 kick. [Ludi Lin] showed up on set and asked, “Can I do a 540 kick instead?” Everyone was kind of like, “Is that something a human being can actually do?” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, watch!” And he just does a 540 kick in the air, because he’s insane, and he’s incredible. We have these guys who are living special effects. Let’s give them the freedom and canvas where they can really show off just how special they are. I think that’s why things like the Blue Portal fight in Mortal Kombat II is the best fight in the entire movie. It’s the most satisfying because it’s not relying on the special effects. It’s relying on the actors, it’s relying on the characters.

Weiss: And you reached out to the game’s creators for input, right?

Slater: The creators were involved every step of the way. One of the mistakes we wanted to rectify from that first movie was not having NetherRealm Studios as creatively involved as they could have been. From the very beginning, we brought Ed Boon and his lead writer, Dominic [Cianciolo], on board. They were reading every draft of the script, they were giving feedback. You can go on Wikipedia and ask, “What are the most popular stages? What are the best finishing moves?”

But it’s so different to be able to go directly to the horse’s mouth, the guy who has been interacting with the fan base for 34 years, and say, “What is the one stage the fans have always asked to see in a movie? What are the finishing moves that would get the theater on their feet and screaming?” We always had this sort of cheat sheet available anytime we had questions about the lore and mythology. Ed and Dominic were the best creative partners you could ask for through the entire process. They were so supportive. I think they’re so proud of the movie and happy to see the fan base reacting the way it is. My dream is that they will be this creatively involved with every installment of Mortal Kombat going forward because they are the lifeblood of what we’re doing here.

Mortal Kombat II is now in theaters.