Why Johnny Cage is the perfect protagonist for Mortal Kombat 2 (and the series as a whole)

After watching the trailer for Mortal Kombat 2, it certainly appears as if Karl Urban's Johnny Cage will be our protagonist. Cole Young, the protagonist from the 2021 film, features in two shots of the new trailer, one of which he's in the background of. So, random plot twist aside, I'm assuming JC is at least playing a major role, as he should have been from the first film.

To me, Johnny Cage has always been tied with Liu Kang as a protagonist for Mortal Kombat as a franchise. Scorpion and Sub-Zero are your poster boys, but the characters with the most potential have always been Johnny and Liu. Johnny especially feels perfectly designed for movie adaptations and it's not just because he used to be an actor.

Johnny Cage is a great lens for the audience. If you've never played Mortal Kombat before, you're in the same boat as Johnny when he first shows up, whether that's in the upcoming movie or the rebooted story of MK9 and then MK1. He's as baffled by the lizardmen, the dudes with swords sticking out of their forearms, and the lightning gods as you are. Johnny's ignorant, somewhat sarcastic perspective gives a writer a protagonist that can inform the audience about the world and lore through each new thing that they learn. You don't have to overwhelm a viewer or player with a Star Wars movie's worth of text explaining what the Mortal Kombat tournament is, what the politics of Outworld and Earthrealm are. Most of what you get is what Johnny sees, and the rest of it is a great mystery that gets unfolded as time goes on.

Johnny Cage is an ex-Hollywood star and an incredibly capable martial artist, but he's the closest thing to a normal dude that Mortal Kombat has. He doesn't have powers (aside from throwing green orbs in the game and some Aztec heritage he got in MKX), he's not trained by monks, and he sees the ridiculousness of the Mortal Kombat tournament for what it is. Johnny is charismatic, he's funny, and he's got a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, which lends itself very well to the Mortal Kombat series, which could easily fall into being too farcical if it always played itself super straight.

I'm not saying Johnny Cage is the quip-cracking saviour of Mortal Kombat, but his levity brings another sense of relatability to his character. The cocky shell of Johnny is a great way to introduce him, before you realise how fragile that shell is and the rock-bottom former Hollywood star is revealed. Johnny is an actor, so it doesn't really surprise anyone when his initial personality becomes an act. But, again this serves itself perfectly for a film's narrative, as it gives your character depth beyond the comic-relief guy. Johnny's highs and lows are all on him, and so you're going to want to root for him to do well. Without powers, too, he becomes an even greater underdog.

It baffled me when Johnny Cage was entirely absent from Mortal Kombat (2021), especially when I saw Cole Young essentially taking his place. A skilled martial artist who has no idea what a Mortal Kombat is, Cole has a lot of similarities in the introductory role he plays to the world, but without humour or depth, he feels very much like a blank wall. He then falls into dangerous self-insert closeness when it's revealed he's some distant relative of Scorpion and defeats Goro of all people.

This isn't a knock against Lewis Tan's performance, by the way. I think he did a great job, but there is a reason why Cole Young hasn't (yet) been brought into Mortal Kombat's game universe. He's a bland, regular action hero, in a setting where bland can never really be used to describe anything else. Johnny Cage adds that extra spice that you need. All the evidence for Johnny being a stronger character than Cole exists in the Mortal Kombat 2 trailer. His arc is built into him, he's fully formed and ready to be slotted into a story. Cole feels like he walked out of a Netflix action movie that you'd forget about midway through watching it, unfortunately. Who he is doesn't matter as much as what he is (a fighter, descendant of Scorpion), which means that you can't get an audience as attached to him.

As mentioned, Liu Kang also fits the role of Mortal Kombat's protagonist. The monk destined to defeat Shao Kahn. The man who trained his whole life for the Mortal Kombat tournament, he is a driven, and strong character. While a great fit for the games, though, I don't think Liu Kang is quite as transferable to a movie as Johnny Cage. Cage brings Mortal Kombat down to a more real, relatable level while allowing it to still have mystical powers and gory deaths, whereas Liu Kang takes the mysticism and throws it to the moon. He becomes a half-lightning half-fire god in Mortal Kombat 11 while controlling all of time. It's a wild ride, and yet I think it would leave a cinema full of people scratching their head rather than pumping their fist when Johnny Cage hits the splits and nut-punches somebody.

I'm not expecting Mortal Kombat 2 to win any Oscars if it puts Johnny Cage centre stage, but I do think that it can fulfil its potential as a raucously fun action movie with the goofy washed-up actor at its forefront. If the test previews are anything to go by, too, the filmmakers seem to have done a good job, and I'm hoping a large part of that is down to my man JC.