Anyone into conspiracies is going to start coming up with a theory no doubt when it comes to the absence of Johnny Cage from the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie. Now, before anyone flies off the hook and says that this is an attack at white cis-gender males, let’s remember that Kano made the cut, so that wouldn’t really be true. But to go on without one of the core characters and then to explain it’s to pull away from focusing the story around a Caucasian character doesn’t help that assumption since to be serious, Cole Young, a new character, isn’t really a bad idea, but thinking that the 1995 movie ever centered around Johnny Cage, played by Linden Ashby at that time, is kind of funny really since it was Liu Kang’s story. The truth is that Johnny Cage was made into a bigger character in the video games, but he was also turned into a comic relief at one point. Not including him isn’t a huge problem for a lot of folks, but it does feel as though the movie could have included him for a little bit at least, long enough for a cameo or something, especially since his character was one of the original seven. The fact that Kano opposes Sonya and Jax appears to make it okay for him to stick around, but we’ll have to wait and see how big his part actually is, which will be interesting to see since if we’re really being fed the line that this movie is trying to focus on other cultures apart from those that Caucasians belong to, then the line in the trailer that ‘different cultures all over the world’ competed in Mortal Kombat is kind of meaningless at this point. It’s not bitterness you hear in my words, just irony.
Who knows, maybe Johnny will show up in a sequel if this movie turns out to be good enough and enough people are still alive at the end to make a sequel possible. Obviously there are plenty of fighters in the Mortal Kombat universe since listening to Ed Boon talk about it, there are plenty of characters, which means there is more than one movie could possibly hold. If Cole ends up becoming the lead character and usurps Liu Kang’s quest to win Mortal Kombat though it might cause a stir even if it takes the movie in an interesting direction. Right now though it does appear that Scorpion and Sub Zero’s old feud is going to be one of the big highlights of the movie, which should be a lot of fun since watching the two ninjas fight has always been a good time and an extremely impressive experience. It’s still going to feel odd without Johnny in the fight, but again, maybe there will be a sequel and that will finally include him since it will have been made clear that he’s not the main guy, which he never was when it came to the movies. Hey, we might have to keep reminding people of that until it sinks in since despite what he was in the games, in the movies he’s been a supporting character to the rest of them, not THE character that needed to be given all the attention. But to be honest, his fight with Goro in the first movie was kind of amusing since a lot of us that have played the game have no doubt used that low blow more than once since it’s so effective.
The upcoming movie does look as though it could be a lot of fun, and even if all we get of Johnny is a cameo it might be intriguing enough to make us think that he’ll be along eventually or that he was given his due and those making the movie called it good. Thinking that someone was removing a stereotype or making a statement is a good way to start thinking up conspiracy theories as to why such a thing would be done, and that’s just a headache waiting to happen. Johnny Cage is a character that initially isn’t really connected to anyone and, if we think about it, kind of stumbled his way into the tournament and just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Most people already know that he was based off of Jean Claude Van Damme and was kind of an amusing character since he had a list of moves that were lethal if one knew how to use them but weren’t exactly of the same caliber as a few of the other characters. In other words, if there are any expendable characters in this game, Johnny was bound to be one of them, but it’s enough to hope that he’ll be shown at some point.
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