‘Mortal Kombat II’ Producer Says First Film Benched Johnny Cage For Fear Audiences Wouldn’t “Buy An Arrogant Actor As The Lead”, Previously Blamed Absence On Concerns Regarding ‘White Savior’ Trope
Where once he cited their discomfort with the potential ‘white savior’ optics of Johnny Cage’s potential appearance in the first film, Mortal Kombat II producer Todd Garner now says the fan-favorite fighter was relegated to the sequel because the production crew was unsure just how well his character would sit with audiences.
Speaking to IGN in promotion of the sequel’s first trailer, Garner recalled how Cage’s absence from 2021’s Mortal Kombat stemmed from a general uncertainty regarding whether or not “the general audience would buy an arrogant actor as the lead of the first movie, or would [they find it] strange that it would be this arrogant actor in this basically martial arts movie?”
Or, as he more succinctly put it: “Did it feel weird?”
“For people who didn’t know the game and didn’t know the franchise, would it just feel like, ‘Wait, you have these guys with these superpowers that are doing incredible martial arts and this arrogant actor from the nineties? What is this?'” explained the producer. “It just felt like it was all over the place. So Liu [Kang]was used in the first movie as the sage, the teacher, the wise one, which he is, and we knew we had to ultimately get to Johnny Cage because he’s such a big presence in the franchise.”
As noted above, while not completely contradictory to the fact, Garner’s latest recollection notably fails to mention his previous claim that Cage’s dropping from Mortal Kombat‘s roster was partially based in a desire to avoid having the film end with ‘a white guy saving the day’.
“I feel like if I was getting to make a movie with a diverse cast, it felt weird to have a white actor, literally Johnny Cage, be the hero of the story,” Garner told Inverse during a 2024 interview regarding the decision to center the first film on original character Cole Young rather than Cage, additionally noting that these discussions purportedly took place “way before Black Lives Matter.”
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However, regardless of just which parts of Garner’s story are true, Cage will ultimately be making his Mortal Kombat franchise reboot debut in the upcoming sequel, wherein he’ll be portrayed by Dredd star Karl Urban.
“For me, the challenge, really, was to ground the character in a reality and to give him a backstory,” the actor told IGN. “And my research, apart from absorbing everything I could about Mortal Kombat and what had been done with Johnny Cage previously and what had been done with him in the games, was to then really formulate a backstory.
“Part of my research is I went along to a bunch of karate tournaments and looked at young kids coming through and just absorbing myself in the culture and imagining young Johnny before he was plucked out of that into movie stardom, what that was like. And I found that just a really wonderful and fascinating experience and a real eye-opener.
“Fans of Johnny Cage are going to be super delighted by the signature moves and all the nods and elements that we’ve worked so hard to infuse into the movie.”
At current, Mortal Kombat II is set to test its might on October 24th.
