First Look at Producer James Wan's MORTAL KOMBAT Movie and New Story Details Revealed

Warner Bros. has shared our first look at its upcoming new Mortal Kombat film coming from producer James Wan and director Simon McQuoid. This movie has been a long time coming, and it’s supposed to be released in only a few months.

We don’t know much about the film, but today we have several photos to share with you featuring some of our favorite characters, and we also have some new details to share with you thanks to Entertainment Weekly.

The movie stars Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, Mehcad Brooks as Jax, Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Max Huang as Kung Lao, Josh Lawson as Kano, and Chin Han as Shang Tsung. And you’ll get a look at some of these characters in the images below.

When most fans think of the Mortal Kombat video game franchise, one of the things that come to mind is blood… there’s so much blood! This is a bloody and brutal fighting game and that blood will play a heavy part in the film. When talking about the blood aspect of the movie, McQuoid said:

"Blood represents family. Blood represents a connection. Blood represents who we are. Without getting too overcomplicated, what we did is use blood executionally."

It’s explained that this new version of Mortal Kombat is a “blood universe.” The director goes on to talk about the kind of detail that they brought to the film, using Hanzo Hasashi, a.k.a. Scorpion’s signature weapon, the kunai blade. “We did a bit of research and the kunai is actually an ancient Japanese gardening tool. So, one of the earliest shots in the movie is the kunai blade being used as a gardening tool by Hanzo's wife." That definitely brings some new meaning to the weapon and Scorpion character.

As far as the story, the film kicks off with “a crucial piece of lore from the original games: the blood feud between the clans of Hanzo and Bi-Han.” There’s a 10-minute opening sequence that is set in feudal Japan, “long before these fighters wielded supernatural abilities as Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and it ends in a pretty nasty hand-to-hand combat between the two.” It’s explained that “Hanzo's the leader of a ninja clan and he's strong, but also… at the beginning, he's a peaceful family man. It is like a family drama with excitingly brutal fighting.”

When talking about the kind of fight that we will see in this scene, the director says, “There are some great camera moves to give it a bit of dynamism, that make it really enjoyable. We needed it to be really elemental and really brutal. It's not a shiny film… I wanted the dirt and the grime to come through."

As far as Lewis Tan’s character goes, Cole Young is a whole new original character. When talking about his character, Tan says:

"When we first meet Cole, he's in a really bad spot. He's down on his luck. He's kind of a washed-up MMA fighter who used to be a champion, who used to believe in himself, who used to have a lot of hope in his career. And it's all gone down the drain. It's a very interesting place for a hero to start, and I think that, along the journey of Mortal Kombat and Cole discovering where he comes from, you're introduced to all these other iconic characters and elements that everybody loves so dearly."

It’s explained that Cole doesn’t know anything about his history or heritage, and he has a mysterious birthmark on his chest — in the shape of the Mortal Kombat symbol. This unique symbol will obviously tie into Cole’s journey when “the sinister sorcerer and emperor of the realm Outerworld, Shang Tsung, sends Sub-Zero, now with his cryomancy powers, to hunt him down.”

Coles journey leads him Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs, a special forces major also bears the same mark as Cole, and he urges him to seek out Sonya Blade. When he does, “she ferries him onward to the next leg of the journey, to the thunderous Elder God known as Lord Raiden, who grants sanctuary at his temple to all those with the mark.” It’s here where Cole meets several other characters from the Mortal Kombat universe including Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Kano. It’s here that they are training for a high-stakes tournament to defeat the invading enemies from Outerworld.

So, it seems like this character Cole is the heart of the story; we are seeing this world and story unfold through his eyes.

One of McQuoid’s goals during the creation of this movie was to make sure that everyone respected the Mortal Kombat “material, the lore of Mortal Kombat, the fans and the love they have for this.”

One thing is for sure, this Mortal Kombat movie will be rated R and when talking about why, the filmmaker said, "It's amount of blood, it's amount of red, it's interpretation of how you go about it. We had a lot of discussions about getting the balance right so there was gore and there was blood and there were fatalities. And there is gore, blood, and fatalities." When talking about the fatalities, Tan says:

"There are some crazy fatalities. We've picked a couple of iconic ones. There's a lot of really cool signature moves that you'll see, a lot of Easter eggs that we snuck into the film, but there are some really badass fatalities that I can't wait to see on the big screen. They're brutal, man. They, they don't hold back."

The film is scheduled to be released in theaters and on HBO Max on April 16th. Check out all of the photos below!