MORTAL KOMBAT 2 Cast Gets Together in Behind the Scenes Photo
Mortal Kombat 2 has started shooting, and producer Todd Garner recently shared a first look at the film's cast in a behind-the-scenes photo. The group photo was taken a restaurant during a break in filming and it features returning cast members Ludi Lin (Liu. Kang), Mehcad Brooks (Jax Briggs), and Jessica McNamee (Sonya Blade).
The photo includes new cast members such as Karl Urban as Johnny Cage, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, and Ana Thu Ngyen as Queen Sindel.
I’m a huge fan of the Mortal Kombat franchise, and while I was hyped for that 2021 movie, it ended up being super disappointing. Simon McQuoid, who directed the last film, is back to helm the sequel, and the script comes from Jeremy Slater, who previously worked on Moon Knight and The Umbrella Academy. When previously talking about the sequel, Slater said:
"I feel like the gore in Mortal Kombat is awesome and it's part of what people come for, you always have to find that balance between fun gore and gross gore, right? Because there's times where you rip someone's heart off or the best kill in the first movie is Kung Lao's spinning hat just sort of slicing her in half and that's the perfect example of fun gore because it's disgusting, but everyone laughs at the same time, right? You want to make sure that everyone is sort of laughing at the sort of audacity of the gore and they're not sitting there sort of sickened by close ups of dripping entrails and visceral and things like that.
“There's a tongue in cheek aspect of Mortal Kombat in terms of the violence and in terms of the gore, there's a little bit of winking at the audience and saying like, ‘Yeah, we know this is ridiculous, but it's really fun and we're all in on the joke together.’ And when you find the right balance, I think that's where you get moments like that incredibly bloody first battle that opens the first movie with score with Hanzo sort of tearing through all the assassins or you get the hat gag or things like that. So we're looking at how do we emulate those gore moments from the first one that were really, really successful and got huge audience reactions and how do we give the audience even more this time around."
Mortal Kombat 2 has yet to set a release date. I’m not expecting much from the sequel, it shouldn’t be hard to make it better than the first movie, though. That first film in the franchise can be seen streaming on Max.