Liu Kang

And that game franchise has continued up until today, but the first movie was released in 1995, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who also made movies like Event Horizon and the, uh, early Resident Evil films.

The Mortal Kombat movie mostly follows the originally pretty thin plot of the game, which concerns a magical martial arts tournament ruled over by an evil sorcerer named Shang Tsung, in which human fighters with names like Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage must, uh, they, they must win in order to defend humankind and Earth from an interdimensional menace, a, a sort of evil emperor from a place called Outworld, which is like another dimension.

The movie fleshes out this plot with some clumsy yet enjoyable character development, and also I don't think I really mentioned this much last time, but I was thinking in between recording these two episodes about how the film significantly modifies and specifically lightens the tone established by the early video games.

I think later games in the series had more irony.

Yeah.

Uh, but he's saying, "Your brother's soul is mine.

You will be next." Who is you? Well, it is Liu Kang.

So Liu Kang, we meet him next.

We probably go with...

Are you doing Kung Lao or Liu Kang?

Which one, bro? None of us want Kung Lao, so you got that.

That's all you.

Kung Lao.

You just want that hat.

Liu Kang.

We've already got a guy with a fuck-ass hat.

What?

The guy from, uh, Liu Kang, Liu Kang from the original Mortal Kombat movie is in Dead or Alive.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

There's barely any story.

It's just kind of lore that we just get through little tidbits.

But here they really flesh it out, like Liu Kang winning the first tournament, Liu Kang winning the second tournament, and the invasion of, uh, Shao Kahn the third.

They flesh it out massively here, but with huge, and I mean huge changes.

Okay.

Ninja guy, like Liu Kang.

A Hollywood guy.

Johnny Cage, right? There was a guy whose name was Baraka.

And whenever they weren't on screen, I literally found myself thinking, okay, when are we getting back to Katana and Jade? So ultimately, I'd say they're two of the characters where this film gets the ingredients right, but perhaps it doesn't give the audience quite enough of the...

finished meal to use a food and a analogy but i was i was pleased regardless but yes i'm like let's give them more because this is clearly hitana's story so let's get to some of our other heroes who get more screen time because we have tons but some get killed off very quickly others don't really get much to do so we have of course our new addition mr carl urban as johnny cage Jessica McNamee reprising her role as Sonya, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, and Josh Lawson returning as Kano.

So what did you make of Our Heroes of Earthrealm, Keith, among these Kano?

I mean, you know me.

Granted, Johnny Cage has a lot less swearing and less is subjective considering his dialogue through most of the movie.

But again, I know we went off topic here, kids, but there was a method to that madness.

The fact of the matter is, without him, I don't think this would have worked quite as well because the rest of the characters, Sonya, Liu Kang...

Jax, all of them.

I was happy to have a new Mortal Kombat.

Of course I wanted it to be focused on Liu Kang or even Johnny Cage.

But that's not what I got.

I got a flat six.

all those good as Kung Lao though

yeah if you go along to Mortal Kombat 2, 3, 4 and then along to Deception and Deadly Alliance you're going to get used to rotating main characters and it's not always Liu Kang Liu Kang Johnny Cage yeah Johnny Cage is your new main character Liu Kang and Kung Lao both were in the last movie And neither one of them were the main character.

Again, like you said, choices were made in that movie, but it was still entertaining.

But there's some awesome sets.

That's part of our hero cast.

And by this point, the chemistry is down pat.

They were a better team to me than the Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage that we got in the original movie.

Johnny Cage! Johnny Cage!