Our Karl Urban Mortal Kombat 2 Scoop Confirmed
Karl Urban will play Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2.
Karl Urban has been starring in the bloody and gore-filled The Boys for years, and now our exclusive report that he’ll be in Mortal Kombat 2 has been confirmed by The Wrap. This is another flawless victory for our trusted and proven sources, and a win for fans, considering he’s joining the cast as Johnny Cage. The 2021 gritty reboot left out Cage, though he was heavily teased in a post-credit scene, leaving the audience salivating over the inevitable sequel.
Mortal Kombat, a reboot that cast aside the 1995 original and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was a massive hit for HBO Max after skipping a full theatrical run. Starring Jessica McNamee, Lewis Tan, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Max Huang, Chin Han, and Tadanobu Asano, classic characters from the original video game trilogy made it back onto the big screen, and now, thanks to the pitch-perfect casting of Karl Urban, Johnny Cage will join the well-received roster.
Let’s be honest about this casting as since Karl Urban is portraying Johnny Cage, he will be a pompous jerk. Cage, a Hollywood star famous for martial-art films, decided to enter the Mortal Kombat tournament and was played straight in the original film by Linden Ashby. Since then, the video game series has made the character a comedic foil to the super-serious Liu Kang, with the other heroes of Earth wondering how committed he really is to fighting.
Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid admitted he left Johnny Cage out of the film due to the size of the ensemble and how he’s such a force of nature as a character the whole movie would warp to be about him. Karl Urban’s success on the big screen has been limited, with his portrayal of Bones in the Star Trek reboots his most recognized role, since it’s hard to admit, but Dredd wasn’t a box office hit. Instead, the latest version of Cage sounds similar to Urban’s best character, William Butcher from The Boys.
In the blockbuster Amazons series, Karl Urban is gruff, world-weary, and considers himself to be the smartest, toughest man in the room, even when going up against Homelander. The constant swearing and willingness to get his hands dirty would translate perfectly to the egotistical Johnny Cage, providing both comic relief and the physicality necessary to make his fights believable. Adding Urban to the cast is a great way for Mortal Kombat 2 to avoid falling into the same pitfalls of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, losing the audience by adding too much of the Outworld and shifting the focus from Earth-based combat to Shao Khan’s demonic forces.
That might not be where Mortal Kombat 2 goes, but it will inevitably add more of the game’s canon to the big screen, though likely not the time travel of the latest trilogy. Karl Urban’s ability to brush off serious-sounding exposition with one quick quip will be invaluable in keeping audiences engaged as Raiden tries to explain what’s at stake if Earth’s defenders are to fall in battle. There’s no official release date for Mortal Kombat 2, which hasn’t even started production yet, so fans may have to wait until 2025 at the earliest for Urban’s return to the big screen.
