Cage Meets Kombat: Urban Headlines New Mortal Kombat Film

Karl Urban is taking a break from The Boys‘ Butcher character to join Mortal Kombat II. The New Zealand actor will play the brash martial arts film star Johnny Cage, one of the popular player-characters in the decades-long-running video game franchise. Mortal Kombat II is a sequel to Warner Bros.’s 2021 reboot of the series and will be the fourth live-action film in the franchise since 1995’s Mortal Kombat.

The release of the trailer was a nice play on marketing: It was released just one day after Warner Bros. released a fake in-universe trailer for a fake ’90s action film, Uncaged Fury, starring Johnny Cage. The faux trailer also made cheeky nods to other faux Cage filmographies, such as Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.

2025 also happens to be the 30th anniversary of the first live-action Mortal Kombat, a film that has since become a cult favorite despite critical panning at the time of its release and a box office hit. Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa’s Shang Tsung, for many fans, is the quintessential version of that character. The sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, however, was a critical and box office disaster, and the game publisher Midway filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

After Warner Bros. bought the rights to the series, the studio hired Simon McQuoid to direct a reboot over 20 years after the original. The 2021 Mortal Kombat introduced Lewis Tan as Cole Young, a mixed martial artist who gets caught up in the war over Earthrealm. Reviews of the film were mixed, but the film performed well enough to get a sequel greenlit, again with McQuoid directing. As with the first live-action Mortal Kombat, the video game, the first film ended with Cole Young going to Los Angeles to track down Johnny Cage, setting up Mortal Kombat II.

Old Favorites, New Characters, and a Wry, Self-Aware Johnny Cage

The new Mortal Kombat II synopsis teases viewers that they are expected to have seen the previous film. In this one, the champions (now joined by Cage) take their all-out, no-holds-barred war to Shao Kahn in an attempt to prevent the ruthless emperor of Outworld from conquering Earthrealm, with the entire realm’s survival at stake.

Lewis Tan (Cole Young), Jessica McNamee (Sonya Blade), Joe Taslim (Bi-Han/Noob Saibot, also known as Sub-Zero), Tadanobu Asano (Lord Raiden), Josh Lawson (Kano), Ludi Lin (Liu Kang), Mehcad Brooks (Jax Briggs), Chin Han (Shang Tsung), Hiroyuki Sanada (Scorpion), and Max Huang (Kung Lao) will reprise their roles as fans of the game.

The new fighters include Adeline Rudolph (Kitana), Tati Gabrielle (Jade), Damon Herriman (Kabal, who voiced the character in the previous film) as Quan Chi, Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn, CJ Bloomfield as Baraka, Desmond Chiam as King Jerrod, and Ana Thu Nguyen as Queen Sindel.

The trailer begins with a cheeky yet very self-aware introduction to Cage, who in the film appears to be more jaded. The scene opens with him at a local dive bar, where a fan approaches him and starts gushing about how much he loved Citizen Cage as a kid, even saying they should do a reboot of the character. Cage replies that nobody wants that, though, because films like his died out in the 1990s.

Lord Raiden and Sonya Blade then show up and tell Cage that he has been chosen to fight. He jokingly replies, “Put on a show right here,” but soon enough Raiden and Sonya return to whisk Cage away to some otherworldly coliseum for a “fighting tournament to the death.” His response: “F— that.”

Cage points out he has no powers and instead insists, “I’m just incredibly handsome,” but finally concedes and joins the tournament when Raiden and Sonya tell him the fate of Earthrealm is at stake. He does, however, make it clear that he doesn’t want any of his enemies to hurt his face. After that, the trailer checks all the right boxes for Mortal Kombat fans: blood, a bigger-than-life and highly stylized fight and combat, the signature special finishing moves, and the signature lines (like, of course, Scorpion’s “Get over here!”).

The first Mortal Kombat tried its best to find a serious tone, so the self-aware winking at the ridiculousness of the source material seems to work in this film’s favor and make it a film that should satisfy the fans. How far beyond that audience it can reach is yet to be seen, but Mortal Kombat II is most certainly not afraid to embrace the truly insane level of violence that has come to define it.

Mortal Kombat II will be released in theaters on October 24, 2025.