MAJOR SPOILERS for Mortal Kombat II. By the very nature of the premise, it’s no surprise that the recently released Mortal Kombat II features many characters experiencing violent deaths, but one of those deaths was heavily influenced by fan reaction.
Mortal Kombat II Writer on Major Death
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Mortal Kombat II screenwriter Jeremy Slater explains why Cole Young (Lewis Tan) was killed off in the sequel, despite being the lead character of the first movie.
“The idea was very much we need some deaths that are going to shock everybody,” Slater said. “I love Lewis Tan. I think Lewis is the best, but Cole was a character that the hardcore fans did not respond to in the first movie, and they were very vocal about that, and very vocal about calling for his head. So Cole was a great example of a character where killing him would shock the casual fans, the people who are not terminally online and just went to see the movie and enjoyed it. It’s going to be a really shocking moment for them, but the hardcore fans are expecting him to die.“
I’m pretty ignorant about Mortal Kombat, but even I knew fans weren’t overly pleased with Cole Young’s character in the first movie. Why create a new lead when so many classic characters exist in the video game franchise?
In a separate interview with THR, Slater said he just wasn’t interested in continuing Young’s story for the sequel. “One of my approaches to this was saying, ‘Look, the joy of playing Mortal Kombat is every time you put a quarter in the machine, you select a different character for a wildly different experience,’” Slater said. “I wasn’t interested in continuing the storyline of Cole Young from the first movie. It’s not necessarily admitting that mistakes were made. But we did say, ‘Let’s look at what the first movie did right and double down on those areas. Let’s also look at the areas where that movie failed to connect so we can steer clear and pivot in other directions.“
What We Thought
Our own Chris Bumbray found the sequel to be better than the last one, but there’s still room for improvement. “While Mortal Kombat II isn’t quite the knockout follow-up some of us might have been hoping for, it does improve on the last film, and is night and day compared to the last time we got a Mortal Kombat II in theaters,” he wrote. “Karl Urban gets a great showcase here, and even if you can’t help but feel the action could have been a bit more memorable, I had a fun time watching it.” You can check out the rest of his review right here, and be sure to let us know what you thought of the film as well!
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