Mortal Kombat Writer Struggled Deciding Which Characters To Include
Over the years, Mortal Kombat’s roster of characters has grown from its 10 original fighters in 1992 to well over 70 that has been introduced over the franchise’s 12 games. So since Mortal Kombat writer Greg Russo was tasked with developing a reboot based on the property (yes, it’s really happening!), choosing his players has been a struggle. In his words:
That is a challenge! Imagine if the MCU had just skipped the introductions and went right for the Avengers right away? Would it have been as successful? Would audiences have taken to the characters as fondly as they have for the past decade? For example, I don’t think I would have been as sympathetic to Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man. His exposition in Iron Man 1 & 2 were pivotal to the success of the franchise.
We’ve seen what happens when movies with too many awesome characters for filmmakers to play with can go awry. Just look at Justice League. Ok, there were tons of other factors involved in the production of the DCEU movie that threw it off its game but it certainly could have benefitted from previous introductions for Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg.
Greg Russo continued to ComicBook.com with these words:
So far, Indonesian actor and skilled martial artist Joe Taslim has been cast as Sub-Zero, and one might guess his adversary Scorpion will also take part in the big-screen tournament. Since the writer mentioned Shaolin monk Liu Kang and Sonya, maybe we’ll see them in the film adaptation as well?
It’s certainly good to hear the newcomer writer is aware of the downfalls of adapting Mortal Kombat. He also commented about how he felt the 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation failed due to its attempt to juggle so many characters that they ended up getting lost and felt thrown in without reason.
The James Wan-produced Mortal Kombat is currently in pre-production with a release date set for March 5, 2021, alongside Masters of the Universe. The movie will be directed by Simon McQuiod, who has done commercial work for video games such as Halo and Call of Duty but not yet helmed a feature film.
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Video game movie adaptations haven’t impressed audiences in the past, however Detective Pikachu recently impressed with a $431 million worldwide box office haul becoming the highest-grossing video game movie to date.
Which characters would you like to see in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie? Sound off in the comments below!
Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.