From Superhero to Superstar: Karl Urban Becomes Johnny Cage

The actor for Mortal Kombat’s bombastic, martial-arts-movie-star character Johnny Cage has now been officially revealed. That’s right: Karl Urban is the guy. He shows off the sweat-smeared swagger that he knows and fans have come to love in this new trailer for Mortal Kombat II, which Urban plays as a more “meta” take on the franchise’s most-beloved, enduring fan-favorite character. It’s a big swing for the saga and a still-larger step forward on Warner Bros.’ long-shot bet to revive the cult video game series as a consistently successful screen franchise.

Urban, who has been playing The Boys mercenary and faux-sociopath Billy Butcher for years on the hit Amazon series, will no doubt attract attention from his legion of fans who are excited to see more of his action-heavy and genre-blending work (see also: Star Trek, Dredd, Jane Doe) but, beyond that, he has exactly the kind of physicality and star wattage that is needed for playing a character who gets a lot of lines that are knowingly wacky and still giving them the weight and energy that they need.

(Urban also already has experience in the Mortal Kombat franchise, having had a non-speaking role in the 2021 reboot, which served as the first appearance of Cage’s eventual successor Cole Young, who is played in the series by Lewis Tan.)

But it is worth noting that this new version of Johnny Cage is going to be a bit different from the one we’ve seen, and heard about, in the comics and games. Sure, he’s still good at throwing punches, and Urban has plenty of swagger to his delivery of the character, but while Cage has been best known from the games as the cocky, cool-as-sin peak-career action star, the version that Urban is playing in Mortal Kombat II is a more self-aware (and also “washed-up”) take on the character that is very much in keeping with the franchise’s current, increasingly-meta approach.

The new trailer is a direct follow-up to a fake teaser trailer for Uncaged Fury, the fictional 1990s Johnny Cage movie that Warner Bros. also released yesterday. The VHS-quality fake trailer plays up Cage’s in-universe filmography, complete with silly action set pieces and improbably-violent martial arts moves. (In-character end credits mention other Cage films, like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.)

Mortal Kombat II is not just a sequel to the reboot film of the same name from 2021, it’s also a direct sequel to the 1995 Mortal Kombat, which first introduced Shang Tsung (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), Raiden, Sonya Blade and ended with the big surprise reveal that Johnny Cage (who had not yet been seen or introduced in the live-action series, but of course) would be coming next.

The 2021 reboot film was directed by Simon McQuoid, and it was a middling-reviewed, moderately well-performing film that got a follow-up greenlit at Warner Bros. not just because of the involvement of that same director but because of the presence 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 actor for Johnny Cage now locked, Mortal Kombat II is the fourth-ever live-action Mortal Kombat movie and the first since the original film from 1995, which will turn 30 years old later this year.

The original live-action Mortal Kombat was well-reviewed and underperformed, but with time has since achieved a status as a campy cult classic (we’d see that word again with both of these trailers). The long, unbreakable grasp of iconicity on Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s portrayal of Shang Tsung in that movie is a testament to how beloved that movie still is.

The follow-up to the first Mortal Kombat, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was not well-liked and failed at the box office after which the series would vanish from theaters. Its publisher Midway would soon after file for bankruptcy. Warner Bros. would then 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,” says 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 first, will feature the franchise’s signature R-rated gore, fantastical stakes and brutally realistic violence.

Fans will likely bet that Mortal Kombat II is going to hew closer to the DNA of the games that made the Mortal Kombat series so special than the previous reboot did, and given the casting of one of its most-beloved characters as the film’s marquee star, we wouldn’t bet against that.

Mortal Kombat II does not yet have an official release date, but the sequel is in active production.