The Boys’ Karl Urban Steps Into the Ring as Johnny Cage

Karl Urban will be playing Mortal Kombat’s bombastic bad boy, Johnny Cage, in the game’s upcoming sequel film. In the trailer for Mortal Kombat II, Urban shows off his sassy self-aware swagger as he prepares to step into the action-film-star-in-a-video-game caricature role.

Urban, who fans may know from The Boys as Billy Butcher, is a notorious softie under that trench coat, but he really flexes his martial arts and sardonic muscles in the trailer for Mortal Kombat II. It’s a full-on transformation for the rugged and grounded actor, with shades (quite literally) more Batman grunts and sunnies splits than Butcher. And the trailer’s clear posturing points to a Mortal Kombat II with even more meta-mashing going on than its already fun-for-no-reason predecessor.

The real trailer drops on the heels of a faux trailer Warner Bros. released a day prior, which parodied 1990s-era action movies for Uncaged Fury, an in-universe Cage flick. The vintage VHS vibes and high-octane hilarity featured several references to Cage’s (fictional) cinematic history, with films like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage (the last title a jokey nod to the real star of this trailer) clogging up his filmography. These are some of the actor’s (Johnny Cage, that is) more recent film roles. It seems the Cage character in Mortal Kombat II will be more “in on the joke” and “past his prime” than the statuesque jock-hero many fans are used to.

Mortal Kombat II, directed by Simon McQuoid, is a sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat, which introduced Cage’s fellow Earthrealm defender, MMA fighter Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan. The first Mortal Kombat began with young Cole on the hunt for his biological father, and it ended with a neon grand slam as Cage suggested his own intentions to make the jump to live action in an almost-gratuitous movie-within-a-movie scene.

McQuoid’s reboot performed admirably at the box office and received a lukewarm critical response from the fans and critics of the gaming world. The general response was mixed, which is good enough for Warner Bros., and there was enough fan chatter about it to greenlight a sequel. Mortal Kombat II will once again be directed by McQuoid and boasts an impressive, game-savvy cast.

This will be the fourth Mortal Kombat movie to be made and the third to be made for live-action audiences. (Video game giant NetherRealm and Warner Bros. are also hard at work on a Mortal Kombat animated movie, set for a 2024 release.) The franchise is celebrating its 30th anniversary with the original Mortal Kombat turning 30 years old in 2023. The 1995 cult classic performed respectably at the box office, with weak critical response on its release, and became later embraced as a classic of trash camp. The cool and collected (cool-and-collectible) portrayal of the character Shang Tsung by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is a perennial fan favorite to this day.

The follow-up, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was a bit of a flop. The critic and audience response was chilly at best and unenthusiastic at worst, with the latter being more accurate. For some time, the official story of Mortal Kombat and its hulking, backlot-mangling champions, karate-chopping conquerors, and monochrome maces and mallets vanished from theaters. The film’s publisher, Midway, would file for bankruptcy a few years later, which would open the doors for Warner Bros. to buy the rights to the franchise in 2009 and reboot the series in 2021.

The real synopsis for Mortal Kombat II promises a sequel with even more on the line than the first film. The defenders of Earthrealm, including our newly cast fan-favorite, Cage, will have to unite and prepare to fight in single combat for the fate of their universe. There’s no shortage of big swings, blood-curdling injuries, and no-holds-barred combat in the gaming series or films, so fans will find all of their favorites represented here.

Karl Urban is a daredevil of the delightful and dangerous sort who can more than hold his own in the sort of extravagant, ultraviolent absurdity required of his character. Whether in the big, bewildering title roles like Fast Among the Furious or as an extended member of genre-defying juggernauts like The Boys, Urban is both buff and brash. He’s ready to go kick both some butt and knee.

In blending live-action high-octane action with tongue-in-cheek humor and its most well-known character, Warner Bros. has a good opportunity to right the ship for Mortal Kombat on film and embrace what makes the franchise special to its fans while also pointing a bemused finger at itself and its long and storied history in theaters and at-home entertainment. The game’s developers, NetherRealm, have a much more ambitious release strategy this time around.

Mortal Kombat II does not yet have a release date but is expected to arrive sometime in 2023.