Karl Urban Brings Star Power and Swagger to Johnny Cage Role

Karl Urban is ready to trade his The Boys Butcher’s costume in for a pair of Aviators in Mortal Kombat II. The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek actor will portray cocky martial arts movie star Johnny Cage, a fan-favorite character in the long-running video game franchise. The Warner Bros. film is set to follow up 2021’s Mortal Kombat reboot and is the fourth live-action installment since 1995’s first Mortal Kombat.

Filmmakers released the trailer in a stroke of marketing genius, timed one day after Warner Bros. showed a fake in-universe trailer for Uncaged Fury, an 80s/90s style action extravaganza “starring” Johnny Cage. The trailer parodied Cage’s other not-so-real filmography with jokebusters like Cool Hand Cage, Hard to Cage, and Rebel Without a Cage.

2025 will also mark the 30th anniversary of the first live-action Mortal Kombat. Despite being a universally panned box office flop, the film’s pop culture edge and cast that included Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa as sorcerer Shang Tsung would go on to become a cult classic. Its direct sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was much more poorly received, a total bomb at the box office. The film’s leading game publisher at the time, Midway Games, filed for bankruptcy the same year.

When Warner Bros. would later acquire the rights, the studio assigned Simon McQuoid to direct more than two decades after the first movie’s theatrical release. That first film, simply titled Mortal Kombat, introduced audiences to Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, an MMA fighter who finds himself at the center of an interdimensional struggle for the Earthrealm. While the film received mixed reviews, it performed well enough for Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel, again with McQuoid set to return to direct. That first film ended with Cole Young on his way to Los Angeles to get the help of his real-life movie star idol, Johnny Cage.

New Players, Old Favorites, and a Snarky Johnny Cage

Mortal Kombat II doesn’t waste much time, with its official synopsis assuming fans are coming into the film having seen the first film. This time, the champions now expanded to include Cage, face off in an “all-out, no-holds-barred war to stop Shao Kahn from conquering the Earthrealm. The fate of Earthrealm itself is on the line.

Lewis Tan will return as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han/Noob Saibot (aka Sub-Zero), Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Josh Lawson as Kano, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Mehcad Brooks as Jax Briggs, Chin Han as Shang Tsung, Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion, and Max Huang as Kung Lao.

Mortal Kombat II also debuts several new fighters to the mix. Players include Adeline Rudolph as Kitana, Tati Gabrielle as Jade, Damon Herriman, who was the voice of Kabal in the 2021 film, is set to play Quan Chi, Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn, CJ Bloomfield as Baraka, Desmond Chiam as King Jerrod, and Ana Thu Nguyen as Queen Sindel.

The trailer opens with a comic and self-aware take on Cage. In a dive bar, Cage is approached by a fan who gushes, “I loved Citizen Cage as a kid,” after which he further jokes, “They should do a reboot!” Cage snaps back and immediately sets the tone for his character, deadpanning that “nobody wants that” because his kind of movies are dead and were over with in the 90s.

Lord Raiden and Sonya Blade arrive and snap Cage out of his pity-party slumming, telling him, “You have been chosen to fight.” Cage, already feeling sour about his deflated acting career at the outset, assumes Sonya and Raiden are just overzealous admirers until he’s whisked away into an otherworldly cage for an otherworldly “fighting tournament to the death.” He says flatly, “F— that” with no shortage of total reluctance to be there.

Johnny Cage points out he has no superpowers, insisting “I’m just incredibly handsome,” but quickly changes his tune when he learns Earthrealm is on the line. He does, however, demand that those who fight him leave his face alone. From there, the trailer provides everything Mortal Kombat fans would expect: brutal, comic book-style fighting, outlandish finishing moves, and franchise favorite one-liners like “Get over here!” from Scorpion.

As always with a Mortal Kombat film, the over-the-top violence paired with doses of self-aware humor should give fans of the series everything they want. Whether that translates to broad audiences will remain to be seen, but it’s at least the case that the sequel won’t be playing it any safer than it needs to.

Mortal Kombat II is set to open in theaters on October 24, 2025.