- calendar_today September 3, 2025
Johnny Cage Rises from the Ashes in Mortal Kombat II
If you’ve been keeping track of his many upcoming projects, you might not have expected Karl Urban to join Mortal Kombat II next year as the character of Johnny Cage. After all, he’s still playing up his career pivot from sci-fi hero to crimefighting villain, debuting his hat-and-coat ensemble as The Boys‘ latest antagonist, The Butcher. But as the new trailer for Warner Bros.’s action sequel reveals, Urban will trade his bandanna for shades as the “hottest action star in the universe.”
Johnny Cage is a familiar presence to fans of the long-running video game series as an arrogant martial arts movie star. Mortal Kombat II is the sequel to Warner Bros.’s 2021 reboot and the fourth live-action film since the first Mortal Kombat debuted in 1995.
Even though the teaser trailer was released on July 18, the plot twist in the last minute of the trailer is less likely to spoil any details than the bizarre marketing stunt that preceded it. The trailer was released a day after Warner Bros. dropped an in-universe trailer for Uncaged Fury, an intentionally cheesy ’90s action movie “starring” Johnny Cage. That trailer, designed to mock Cage’s reputation as a B-movie has-been, ended with a fake-throwback look at some of his other fictional credits, including Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.
The live-action Mortal Kombat was released in 2025, the 30th anniversary of the first film, a critical flop that nonetheless was a box office success and a cult favorite, thanks in part to Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa’s performance as sorcerer Shang Tsung, which fans still hold up as the standard. The 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was an even bigger critical and commercial failure and, as it happens, also the last film the now-bankrupt Midway could put its logo on.
Decades later, Warner Bros. acquired the rights and hired Simon McQuoid to direct a reboot two decades after the original. The 2021 Mortal Kombat introduced Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, an MMA fighter unwittingly caught up in the fight for Earthrealm. Reviews were mixed for the reboot, but the box office was strong enough to guarantee the sequel we’re now looking at, again from McQuoid. That film ended with Young going to Los Angeles to recruit Johnny Cage.
The official synopsis for Mortal Kombat II doesn’t bother with any exposition for audiences who have followed the story from the previous film: When champions Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), and others are brought back to battle, now including Cage, they’re taking part in an all-out, no-holds-barred fight against Shao Kahn, to prevent the warlord from conquering Earthrealm.
It’s all hands on deck as the champions, now joined by Cage, go back into the arena for a fight to the death with the new contenders for Earthrealm’s protection. The fate of their world is in their hands, literally.
Many of the film’s major players return for the sequel: Lewis Tan (Cole Young), Jessica McNamee (Sonya Blade), Joe Taslim (Bi-Han/Noob Saibot, a.k.a. 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).
In addition to Urban as Johnny Cage, new fighters in Mortal Kombat II include Adeline Rudolph (Kitana), Tati Gabrielle (Jade), Damon Herriman (Kabal, in the last film), who takes on Quan Chi, Martyn Ford (Shao Kahn), CJ Bloomfield (Baraka), Desmond Chiam (King Jerrod), and Ana Thu Nguyen (Queen Sindel).
The Trailer: Cage to the World, “I Love You Mortal Kombat”
The new trailer introduces the overconfident Johnny Cage. We first meet him in a dive bar, where a kid approaches him and asks for an autograph. Cage complies, but the kid gushes, “I loved Citizen Cage as a kid. They should do a reboot!” Bitter at the state of his career, Cage retorts, “Nobody wants that, bro. That kind of movie died in the 9’90s.”
Just as Cage is about to throw one last taunt the fan’s way, he’s interrupted by Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), who appear out of nowhere. “You have been chosen to fight,” Raiden tells Cage. The actor thinks they’re just crazy fans, but then he’s whisked away to an otherworldly, tournament-style ring, where he’s told it’s a “fighting tournament to the death.” “F— that,” Cage says in response.
The champion points out that he has no powers and can’t block fire blasts or regenerate limbs, so no one is going to take him seriously. “I’m just incredibly handsome,” he quips. However, when he’s told he’s fighting for Earthrealm, he agrees to fight on one condition. He gets a promise that his opponents won’t “beat the s—” out of him. After all, he’s “worked hard” to look the way he does.
Of course, the trailer cuts to the theatrical releases of Mortal Kombat: what fans expect and deserve from a movie like this—over-the-top, blood-splattering combat, no-holds-barred finishing moves, and the trademark catchphrases, including “Get over here!” from Scorpion.
Judging from this trailer, Mortal Kombat II is going to deliver the violent, signature spectacle, while also leaning hard into its tongue-in-cheek humor for any newcomers that might check it out and aren’t fully on board. It’s going to be rough, but it’s also going to be Mortal Kombat, and that’s exactly what fans of the long-running video game franchise are going to want.
Mortal Kombat II arrives in theaters on October 24, 2025.
