When Mortal Kombat arrived in theaters in April of 2021, it was among the first films to prove there was significant demand coming out of the pandemic for a return to moviegoing culture. Based on the iconic ’90s fighting game co-created by Ed Boon, creative director of the Mortal Kombat series, the relaunched franchise marked the first R-rated live-action incarnation of the video game. The combination of mythic lore and operatic gore brought audiences back to the big screen for a number one opening and total worldwide gross of over $84 million despite releasing day-and-date.
Director/producer Simon McQuoid now returns to the arena for the next chapter, bringing the same attention to tone and detail that defined his feature debut. Mortal Kombat II, written by Jeremy Slater (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), promises unexplored battlegrounds, the long-awaited tournament, and high-stakes matchups like Liu Kang versus Shao Kahn, while introducing fan favorites Johnny Cage, Baraka, and Kitana. Fan anticipation for the follow-up is fierce, fueled by a red-band trailer that racked up over 100 million views in its first 24 hours. As the Warner Bros. release recharges for another round on May 8, Boxoffice Pro goes head-to-head with director/producer Simon McQuoid to learn more about crafting a flawless victory.
Now that the sequel is here, what has returning to this universe and developing another chapter been like for you?
Well, it’s been great fun. That’s the first thing I should say. It was a really lovely place to be, where we could build on the platform we’d started. There are so many elements to the Mortal Kombat world, whether its characters or powers or even the tonal range within the actual property itself. It’s gory, it’s comedic, and there’s a lot going on. I wanted to take a real, detailed assessment of everything that was in there and bring in a bit more of what made Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat—and always put it through this lens of telling a story that is massive in cinematic scale.
That was always the task: to bring something that is a video game but ask, “How can this story feel bigger? How can I move an audience and have a thoroughly entertaining experience at the cinema using those elements and properties, of which there are many to work with?” It was really assessing what worked and what didn’t work with the first one and seeing where I’ve made mistakes and where I could be better and amplifying all the good stuff. That’s been a really wonderful experience.
What did you take away from your feature debut that’s been leveled up here?
I think the reason the opening worked so well was that there was a very clear purpose and intent for what that setup and story were. It allowed us to apply the right execution on top of that. What I learned was to keep that intent going all the way through the second film as much as we could, executionally and tonally, but also understanding that it’s because of how that opening was written. It allowed us to build very cleanly, very strongly, and with great purpose. I thought, “Okay, well, I’ve got to take that. I’ve got to learn from that. Let’s apply it to the whole film.” That was my hope.
Your idea of imagining that there is a series of novels that the video games and universe were spawned from is a great approach to bringing a video game franchise to the screen.
As I started having conversations with all my crew, I started to think about how I could cleanly and clearly get across my tonal intent so that they knew what sort of film we were making. That’s a big part of what I try to do, and what all directors do, which is to clearly communicate. It’s all about communicating with the team that you’ve assembled and having them do their best work.
It was really part of that conversation. “Okay, think of it like this. Imagine there is a series of novels that were written long before the video game. The game was one thing out of it. Some other movies were done, and this is the new movie out of those things.” It was just trying to get people who are arriving on the film to get the tonal lens for everything in a shorthand way.
That really helps set the tone, because you can’t directly recreate that one-to-one experience of playing a video game, but you can immerse audiences in a rich story within this universe.
I also wanted to get people out of the mindset of the way the video game is played and the way you interact with it. I was trying to let everyone know that there is actually enough backstory that [co-creator] Ed [Boon] and his team have written over the years to fill novels. If you’ve just arrived at this and only know a little bit about it, then there’s a lot more to it. Ed has done an incredible job of digging deeper and deeper into lore. That really matters to him. I was just trying to take a bit of what he’d already done so much of.
Reflecting back on the experience of bringing that first film to theater owners and to audiences, what stands out for you?
I felt very lucky. All through the pandemic, we were in post[-production] on the film. We’d shot it just before and then were in post. It was a great relief and a great joy to be releasing a film in theaters. We all felt this sort of tremendous, “Wow, aren’t we lucky that we’re able to be one of the first things in theaters?” It was just this celebration. It’s okay to be all together and have fun together. That was a really lovely feeling.
You’ve talked about finding a constant calibration to ensure that every character feels respected and has a clear storytelling purpose. Johnny Cage joins other fighters in Mortal Kombat II—how has that balance continued and evolved?
It dawned on me early on that every person that’s coming to watch this film [has a favorite character.] A percentage of people coming to this film really care about Sonya. They care about the others, but she’s their favorite. A lot of people coming to this movie really care about Jax. Everyone has to be treated as a priority and has to be respected. No one can be forgotten or set aside. Everyone has to have a really strong purpose and intent. Every character. That doesn’t always necessarily mean they have to have equal screen time; it was just treating them with respect, and there are lots of different ways to do that.
That remained, and I tried to continue to amp that up: see where it works, where it didn’t work so well in the first one, and try to be better at giving every character their moment. It is very much a calibration. That’s what I was constantly doing during all parts of the process. All these things add up to always trying to make the characters feel like the most important part of the whole story.
The role of Johnny Cage was such an anticipated casting among fans. What was it like bringing Karl Urban in?
Johnny’s character in the games is very broad and very comedic. He’s one of the very strong elements that make up the DNA strands of what Mortal Kombat is. When a character is in a video game, there’s a slightly different interplay between the player and watcher. There’s a thing that goes on in the audience’s brain that’s like, “Well, it’s not real.” It can be a bit broader; it can be a bit wilder; it can be gory; all these things. When you bring that into reality, you’ve got to apply a bit of thought around how that character is going to play as a human.
The process of finding who would play Johnny was really about who’s going to be able to handle being true to that beloved character but also an actor who understands where the humor lies, where to hold that back, and where to bring other facets of a truthful human performance … to give an audience some more facets to Johnny, rather than this sort of one note.
Karl was so perfect because he’s done some incredibly varied roles over his career. This is the guy that plays the Russian killer in a Bourne film in a very serious, measured, controlled, thoughtful way, but he’s also Bones in Star Trek. That performance he gave as Bones, I really loved, because it could have gone very broad, but Karl has a very good understanding of comedy. He has a great inbuilt rhythm to deliver that really well. It never gets super broad, but it’s really funny. The tone stayed anchored. I think that was critical, and I think he’s done an amazing job with that. It was not simple, and I think he’s done it incredibly well.
This universe comes to life on the big screen through a focus on staying grounded by incorporating tangible effects, using practical lighting, and capturing as much as you can in-camera. How has that focus continued or grown in scope for this chapter?
I wanted to go into new realms that aren’t necessarily Earth-based. It made it a little harder, but I wanted to push outward in scale and travel to these different places. I wanted our characters to go through them and encounter them. Everything’s built on my desire to have an audience believe how it looks and how it feels, the actions and the impulses of the characters, and what is being said. It all adds up. There has to be a sense of connection, and it has to be earthed in some way so that it doesn’t just fly away.
The Tarkatan village, for example. Baraka was possibly the hardest character to envisage through that lens because of what he is in the video game. We had to answer what his teeth were going to look like. I wanted the Tarkatan village to feel very tribal, like there was a hierarchy to this tribe and that there was a society there. I always looked for ways to give the audience those layers of information, all while driving the story and building the drama. One of my favorite moments and shots in the film is when our heroes arrive in the Tarkatan village. I always want to give every character a good reveal; that always matters to me. How are we going to reveal this revered character? I thought, “Let’s introduce them by having a little Tarkatan girl and her mother.” By virtue of that, you’re getting a sense that there are a lot of them that live here. The little Tarkatan girl runs through this isolated middle of town and goes up into Baraka’s hut. We get to see the village, and then we also get to have a nice reveal of Baraka. That was my purpose, to have it feel like it was real, so that the audience could believe.
We had those conversations with production and costume design; everything was always with that intent of making the audience believe in this very unreal place, like NetherRealm or the Blue Portal. Blue Portal is part of wanting to get a feeling of nostalgia but also a feeling of freshness and newness. Where Liu Kang and Kung Lao fight is actually based on the Sega Genesis version of the Blue Portal level in the game. I wanted to represent many different versions of the game. There’s a lot to work with. With that one, I was like, “Okay, let’s take the Sega Genesis version and make it this beautiful, cinematic, Imax-loving, expensive version of that level and have that kind of ultimate fight happen there.”
As you bring that nostalgia to audiences, how does this one perhaps feel different, knowing audiences will be able to see it on the biggest screens possible?
There’s so much going on with Mortal Kombat that I wanted the connection to the characters to be very human and very simple, almost primal, impulses. Johnny’s story, Kitana’s story, Jade’s story, and even Shao Kahn—you understand on a human level. It allows the pure emotional connection to what they’re going through to be very clean. Then we cloak it all in the wonder and the scale of what Mortal Kombat can give us. That was the intent of the blueprint. For people to be able to go and see the massive Imax version of this play out is exciting to me. We put some fun things in the Imax version that aren’t in the theatrical release. It was lovely working with those guys at Imax; they’re fantastic to work with.
Do you have a favorite memory of going to the cinema and seeing something epic on the big screen?
I have many movie memories as a child, but I think possibly the one that stays with me the most is when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the cinema. That completely enthralled me. One of the things that I’m always thinking about, and I think it’s the thing that I’m drawn to, is the tone: how an audience feels the tone. That was the one thing that I really felt from that film. I couldn’t believe how strong and fully saturated in that tone I felt. I remember seeing The Sting as well. I was very young when I saw that, but it really stayed with me. I look back now, and it’s actually the tone of it—how the elements all come together to give you that feeling. I love that about movies.
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