Anyone else think Big Trouble in Little China every time you see this preview?
The 2021 big-budget release Mortal Kombat found the sweet spot that bridged the cool parts of the game and the expectations of modern action movie fans, a remake, reboot, and adaptation of a series of martial arts fantasy games going back to 1992. If you loved the 2021 movie you’re in luck. The sequel, Mortal Kombat II, looks like it could be even better, starring Karl Urban as Kitana and Ana Thu Nguyen as Sindel, with returning leads Jessica McNamee, Lewis Tan, Mehcad Brooks, Ludi Lin, Chin Han, Josh Lawson, Damon Herriman, and the great Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada.
Bones, one to beam up? Complete with the unforgettable game music, here’s a look at the next trailer for Mortal Kombat II:
In case you missed it, here’s the previous trailer:
And here’s last year’s trailer for the movie (with a different release date):
At one level you know exactly what to expect when you watch a movie adapting a video game. Any film worth its production costs needs to bring general audiences into its fantasy world, the director and writers need to then re-build that world, establish heroes, fight battles, provide over-the-top action and effects, and the hero(es) must achieve some kind of goal. The stakes are high, often the fate of the entire world. And that rarely leaves room for character development. Past entries include Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, Warcraft, Monster Hunter, Prince of Persia, Rampage, Sonic the Hedgehog, and a slew of Pokémon movies, and they go back decades to the original concept film Tron, which had a video game at its center that players didn’t get to play until after the movie. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is in theaters now. Lesser rated entries include movies like Hitman, Max Payne, Doom, Street Fighter, and In the Name of the King.
The world of Mortal Kombat includes the type of dense lore like that behind Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed–it’s layered and near impossible to translate to a two-hour movie. It follows human warriors who carry a special tattoo that identifies them as able to compete at a galactic level with warriors of other realms. In the first movie the heroes of the tale are street fighter Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan from Wu Assassins, and Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, who has worked with “marked” warrior Jax Briggs (Supergirl’s Mehcad Brooks)–a cyborg–to research how to defend Earth from a sorcerer known to cheat at Mortal Kombat called Shang Tsung, played by Chin Han (Skyscraper, Captain America: The Winter Soldier). In a lair called Raiden’s Temple, the marked heroes learned their “arcana”–an exclusive superpower that will help them in battle. Simon McQuoid returns as director with a musical score by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049, Shazam!).
Look for Mortal Kombat II in theaters May 8, 2026.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
