Washed-Up or Legendary? Karl Urban Takes on Johnny Cage

Karl Urban has officially been confirmed as the actor who will be portraying Mortal Kombat’s ostentatious martial arts movie star Johnny Cage. Urban flexes his own good, solid-chunk grit-and-sweat swagger once again in the new trailer for Mortal Kombat II, though this time around he’s being a bit more “meta” as one of the franchise’s most-popular fan-favorite characters. It’s a seismic shift for the saga, and an even bigger step forward for Warner Bros.’s long-shot attempt to revitalize the cult video game series as a successful screen franchise.

Urban, who’s been playing mercenary and faux-sociopath Billy Butcher on the Amazon hit series The Boys, will no doubt be a big pull for viewers of his who like his action-heavy, genre-blending work (Star Trek, Dredd, Jane Doe), but he also has exactly the right kind of physicality and star power to bring to a character that has a lot of lines that are self-knowingly wacky, and still give them the weight and oomph that they need.

(Urban has also been in the Mortal Kombat franchise before, in the non-speaking role of himself in the 2021 reboot, the first appearance of Cage’s eventual successor Cole Young, who is played by Lewis Tan.)

But this new take on the character is going to be a bit different from the version of Johnny Cage that we’ve seen and heard about in the comics and games. Yes, he still knows how to throw some punches, and Urban has plenty of swagger in his delivery of the character.

But while Cage is most familiar to players of the games as the arrogant, polished, peak-career action star, the version that Urban will be portraying in Mortal Kombat II is a self-aware (and also, “washed-up”) take on the character that’s very much in keeping with the franchise’s current, increasingly-meta direction.

The new trailer follows a faux teaser trailer for Uncaged Fury, the Johnny Cage character’s 1990s movie-within-the-franchise that Warner Bros. released yesterday as part of its rollout. The VHS-quality movie trailer plays up Cage’s in-universe action filmography, complete with outlandish action set pieces and improbably powerful martial arts moves. The in-character end credits list other Cage films in the same vein, like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.

Mortal Kombat II is, in addition to being a sequel to the reboot film of the same name from 2021, also a direct sequel to the 1995 Mortal Kombat, which introduced Shang Tsung (portrayed by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), Raiden, Sonya Blade, and more, and ended with the big surprise twist reveal that Johnny Cage (who had not yet been shown or introduced in the live-action series at that point) would be the subject of the next film.

The 2021 reboot was directed by Simon McQuoid and, while it was met with middling reviews, it performed just well enough that Warner Bros. greenlit a follow-up not just because of the involvement of that same director, but also 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 film 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 in place, Mortal Kombat II is now the fourth-ever live-action Mortal Kombat movie, and the first since the original film from 1995, which will be 30 years old this year.

The first live-action Mortal Kombat was a well-reviewed film that underperformed in theaters, but with time has since attained the status of being a campy cult classic (we’d see that word again with both trailers). The long, intractable grasp of iconicity on Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s performance of Shang Tsung in that movie is a testament to how beloved the film still is today.

The sequel to the first Mortal Kombat, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was neither well-liked nor did it do well at the box office, and after that, the series largely disappeared from theaters. Its publisher, Midway, would not long after file for bankruptcy. Warner Bros. would eventually 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,” reads the official synopsis of 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 its predecessor, will once again feature the franchise’s signature R-rated gore, fantastical stakes, and brutally realistic violence.

Fans can expect Mortal Kombat II is likely to hew closer to the DNA of the games that made the Mortal Kombat series such a special property than the previous reboot did, given the casting of one of its most-beloved characters as its marquee star.

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