Mortal Kombat has had a bit of a resurgence over the last decade since the reboot of the video game franchise in 2011 with Mortal Kombat, which literally rebooted the entire storyline from the events of the original Mortal Kombat in 1992 through Mortal Kombat: Armageddon in 2006. With this reboot and a huge return in popularity, it was only a matter of time till Hollywood came knocking at developer NetherRealm‘s door with a briefcase full of cash asking if they can also have a chance with this rebooted franchise by rebooting the movies made from it also.
Mortal Kombat, releasing on HBO Max on April 16, 2021, will see the directorial debut of Simon McQuoid teaming up with producer/director James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring, Annabelle & Aquaman) to see a new version of the hit video game come to life on the big screen. Luckily for us fighting game fans, today saw the release of the first trailer of the film to tease us with what is to come. You can check the trailer out yourself below.
The red-band trailer (above) goes for 2 minutes 30 seconds and is a Mortal Kombat fan’s dream. Every moment shown in the trailer has something that fans will be able to point out, right down to characters that we didn’t know about early on in production. However, we do get some hints at the story that Mortal Kombat is going forward with, that being the story of Cole Young (Lewis Tan – Deadpool 2‘s Shatterstar), an MMA fighter who, through having the Mortal Kombat dragon logo as a birthmark, is selected to join a group of warriors Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee – The Meg‘s Lori), Kano (Josh Lawson – Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues‘ Kench Allenby), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin – Power Rangers 2017 movie’s Zack/Black Ranger), Kung Lao (American Acting Debut – Stuntwork on Kingsman), and Jax (Mehcad Brooks – Supergirl‘s James Olsen) to fight on behalf of Earthrealm and its protector Raiden (Tadanobu Asano – Thor‘s Hogun) against not only the cold-blooded assassin Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim – The Raid‘s Sergeant Jaka), but also against a combination of Earthrealm, Netherrealm, and Outworld warriors lead by Shang Tsung (Ng Chin Han – 2017 Ghost in the Shell‘s Togusa), which include Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada – The Wolverine‘s Shingen Yashida), Goro, Mileena (Sisi Stringer – 2020 Children of the Corn‘s Tanika), Reptile, and more in the tournament called Mortal Kombat.
While things look straight forward for the Mortal Kombat movie, there are still many things that we at The Outerhaven are asking questions about just from what we’ve seen so far:
(We could do like other outlets and ask questions like “Where is Chun-Li?“, but we’re smarter than that)
- Where is Johnny Cage?
- Are the birthmarks on all the fighters or just Cole?
- Why is Cole even a character?
- Is Kano a good guy or a bad guy?
- Cast listing mentions Kabal and Nitara, but nothing in the trailer.
- Does Sub-Zero become Noob Saibot or Noob/Smoke?
Of course, we will get answers to those questions and a LOT of awesomely gory fight scenes when Mortal Kombat comes out on HBO Max on April 16, 2021.
Be sure to check back into The Outerhaven between now and April 16 as we will be publishing a lot of Mortal Kombat related articles in preparation for the movie’s release.
