The Mortal Kombat reboot is looking every bit as exciting as Raiden’s timeline reset in Mortal Kombat 9. Just one look at the R-rated trailer already has Mortal Kombat fans praising the team behind it for the way it captures the ultraviolent nature of the games.
Despite that, the new Mortal Kombat movie can’t make room for everyone, as far too many characters have fought to death in the franchise’s video game world for the film to tell satisfying origin stories for all of them. Instead, director Simon McQuoid and company have chosen to focus on Mortal Kombat’s finest with Scorpion spearheading a group that includes the likes of Sub-Zero, Liu Kang and Sonya Blade, but leaving out its second noisiest fighter, Johnny Cage.
Johnny Cage was born as a sort of meme character, as Ed Boon and John Tobias conceived him to be a parody of 80s and 90s action movie star Jean Claude Van Damme, a parallel that’s easy to see when Johnathan “Johnny Cage” Carlton enters his first Mortal Kombat tournament in order to prove himself as every bit the fighter he appears to be in his movies. In fact, in every iteration, Johnny spends his first hours in Mortal Kombat believing the tournaments to be a very elaborate Hollywood production.
Perhaps that’s the reason why Boon and Tobias always meant for Johnny Cage to be Mortal Kombat’s comic relief, alongside Kano who actually does feature prominently in the trailer. And that was essentially Johnny’s thing, he was the Pepe Le Pew to Sonya, a guy with his name literally tattooed on his chest and whose signature move is the dirty yet hilarious “Nut Punch”.
Above all things, the early Johnny Cage is a shallow and immature bro from Los Angeles that -at first- isn’t fighting for Earthrealm like Sonya, Liu Kang, and Jax, Johnny’s fighting for himself. When considering all of this on top of the fact that Johnny Cage lacks the visual flair and superpowered fatalities that the rest of the cast all possess, he starts to become the most expendable of the bunch, at least on good guys’ side.
2021’s Mortal Kombat would appear to aim to take the franchise where insufficient technology and 90s cheesiness kept it from going in the first film. The trailer itself is much somber toned and swaps the old “Techno Syndrome” for an orchestral arrangement much more fitting to the seriousness the footage tries to deliver, overall a theme in which the early Johnny Cage would hardly fit in, especially when there’s already so much going related to the other characters.
Also, unlike the Mortal Kombat from the 90s, this new movie was developed after the franchise had fully processed that its true stars weren’t Liu Kang, Johnny, and Sonya, but instead Scorpion and Sub-Zero. This is obvious from how much screen time each of the characters get and is further boosted by early comments from McQuoid pointing to the Sub-Zero and Scorpion rivalry being a large part of the plot’s driving force.
Of course, all of this mostly applies to the old Johnny Cage as when the Mortal Kombat games got a story reboot from NetherRealm in 2011 the studio decided to give Johnny a little refresh. In the previous timeline, Johnny is eventually killed by Motaro before moving on to a convoluted life and death cycle that ultimately ends on the latter in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.
In Mortal Kombat X, Johnny Cage starts to mature significantly when compared to his previous incarnations and he also gets the superpowers to match his friends’ skills when it’s revealed that he comes from a mysterious “Mediterranean” bloodline of warriors. While the Mortal Kombat games’ own storytelling could use some work, this is what enables Johnny to use “green energized” attacks and power that he uses to defeat Shinnok. That’s right: fallen Elder God Shinnok is defeated by struggling actor Johnny Cage.
Things then take a turn for Johnny Cage as in the Mortal Kombat X Comics he and Sonya start a fling that suddenly gets way more serious when Sonya tells Johnny that she’s pregnant. They eventually get married, but the relationship falls apart due to Johnny considering Sonya constantly neglected her obligations to their daughter Cassie by putting work ahead of her so they get divorced.
So it only took 10 games in the series Mortal Kombat fans get to see a more serious, mature, and powerful version of Johnny Cage, and though his daughter Cassie is the one that saves him from Shinnok the next time they meet, fatherhood certainly makes the Johnny a more compelling character that can hold his own against anyone, despite his hair now graying and not sporting his signature shades. Eventually, Johnny and Sonya do make peace for the sake of Cassie’s psychological well-being and the family is on the best terms it’s ever been by the time Mortal Kombat 11 takes place.
With Kitana seemingly absent from the new Mortal Kombat movie, producers were never going to get rid of Sonya since she’s sort of the glue that puts together the whole Earthrealm heroes, aside from being the biggest female presence on-screen that really didn’t get to shine in the original Mortal Kombat. She’s the Special Forces agent that takes over when things aren’t going well for Jax Briggs (hint: they’re not, just ask Sub-Zero) and her story with Kano is just too good to pass on.
Lastly, Mortal Kombat is also introducing a new character in Cole Young, a newcomer that just like Johnny looks like the most human out of all the Earthrealm crew and whose origin story starts him off as a struggling MMA fighter. Though hardly identical, there might still be too many similarities between the two to be ignored, thus with cast opening running short for characters lacking any obvious superhuman traits, it was always going to be better for writers to go with a blank slate rather than being tied to Johnny Cage’s immature personality. At least if there are sequels, nut punches might still have a chance to make it to Hollywood.
Mortal Kombat is planned for release in theaters and on HBO Max starting April 16, 2021.
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