Many of the best video game movies have been released over the last few yeas, including Simon McQuoid’s Mortal Kombat (which is streaming with a HBO Max subscription). Its sequel is nearly here, and folks might be surprised that a few characters who were killed off are still returning. Namely, Josh Lawson’s Kano and Max Huang’s Kung Lao. And writer Jeremy Slater explained exactly why that narrative choice was made.
The first Mortal Kombat‘s ending teased that Johnny Cage would be joining the fun, and Karl Urban is taking center stage as that beloved character in the sequel. He’ll be joined by new and returning characters… including a few that perished in the last film. During an interview with ComicBook, Slater explained why Kano and Kung Lao were revived, saying:
I think it’s the fun of Mortal Kombat, honestly, it’s, it’s like, you know… before I took the job, one of the things I was like, ‘You have to let me bring Kano back to life’, because Josh Lawson was my favorite thing about the first movie. I was like, ‘he’s the guy who understood the assignment, and that tone that he is hitting in this movie is the tone that I want this entire movie to have’. So I’m like, ‘I have to bring Kano back. I have to bring Kung Lao back. I’ve got to get that hat in a fight scene and, and play with it. It’s too much fun, and he’s too cool of a character.
Honestly, he’s not wrong. Josh Lawson was the biggest scene-stealer in the first movie as Kano, a character who sometimes pivots between good and bad. While he was killed by Sonya Blade during an epic battle, luckily Slater decided to bring the fan favorite character back to life. The same can also be said for Kung Lao, who had the gnarliest fatality in the 2021 flick. So there’s good reason to bring back both characters.
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Death isn’t necessarily permanent in the Mortal Kombat video games, so it’s not like Slater and company were breaking the franchise by bringing back certain characters. And given Kano and Kung Lao’s impact, he thought it was worth seeing both Lawson and Huang back for Mortal Kombat II. Having seen the movie early, I have to agree with his assessment; it wouldn’t have been the same sequel without them.
Without giving any spoilers away, Mortal Kombat II also contains a ton of major character deaths during its 116-minute runtime. And if a threequel is ordered by Warner Bros., it should be interesting to see which of these fighters stay dead and which are revived. With a necromancer like Quan-Chi part of the proceedings, it feels like just about anything could happen.
Mortal Kombat II will hit theaters on May 8th as part of the 2026 movie release list. Fingers crossed we get more movies, allowing even more fighters to hit the big screen, both new and old.
