Looking at the latest Mortal Kombat movie it’s fair to say that it wasn’t entirely centered on one character as it tried to stretch out and include other characters that people actually knew something about, but Cole Young, the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi, aka Scorpion, was kind of a disappointment. Had the movie focused instead on the actual feud between the Lin Kuei and the Shirai Ryu it might have been easier to accept and less likely that it would be facing the kind of criticism it has since its release. One glaring omission, at least until the end of the movie, was the character of Johnny Cage, and it’s one that had a lot of people wondering what in the hell the director was thinking since Cage is one of the founding players of the game that made any of this possible, and it was assumed that the movie would feature him in some way, even if he was given a cameo. Instead, he wasn’t even mentioned until near the end of the movie when a poster was seen with his name on it after Cole had announced that he was moving on to find someone, which a lot of people are taking to mean he’s off to find Johnny Cage, whose importance in the franchise has maintained and even grown over the years since apparently it’s been deduced that he’s descended from a warrior race that once produced fighters for the gods. That has been used to explain his shadow kick and his ability to toss balls of energy at his opponents, but it’s also why he’s been able to take on such powerful beings as Shinnok without being crushed with a few powerful blows. That alone is a reason why Johnny Cage should be given his own arc and his own movie or TV series.
Explaining his past and his heritage could go a long way to shedding the oafish characterization that Johnny has been seen to give off way too often, and it could even explain why he uses his humor as a shield to confront the world around him from time to time. It’s as much of a weapon as it is a shield to be fair since Cage has grown as a character just as much as anyone, even if he’s still been given the same kind of attitude over the years, which is that of a cocky movie star that a lot of people think is a joke until they see him in action. To be fair, Cage is kind of a goofball character that was fashioned after Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, but at the same time he’s one of the founding characters and, more than that, he’s been one of the more important characters for a while when it comes to the games since he’s a mainstay that’s been there for so long that seeing past his ridiculous attitude has become pretty easy since he’s already showed that he’s much more than what he was made to be. The fact that he and Sonya actually hooked up for a while and had Cassie is a development that made a lot of people stop and stare for a moment, but it’s still another facet of his character that could possibly be used to show that he’s grown over the years. It could even be that a solo series or movie with Cage could lead into the next MK movie, which would be pretty cool really since it would give a chance for continuity and an expanded storyline that might help to bring things back into line.
Let’s not mince words, the movie that just came out wasn’t horrible, but it was definitely not what people were hoping for since between the use of Cole and the arcana and a few other things, the story ended up suffering a bit in order to serve some strange vision that once again didn’t really follow the storyline as it’s been in the games. There was definite recognition of the storyline, but with various omissions and additions, it became something that was definitely better than Annihilation. It was also kind of on the same level as the original movie since not only did it kill several main characters and then make it clear that ‘death is a portal’ meaning that the characters will likely be back, but it established that it doesn’t really care that much about the overall storyline. Hopefully a Cage movie, or series, if it ever came to be, would help to bridge the gap to the next movie, where one can only guess that more characters would be incoming and would be a part of another convoluted tale that will kill off key characters and end up keeping some of the weakest ones ‘just because’. There’s plenty of faith in what’s to come, but it won’t last that long unless the next movie can really blow our minds.
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