Mortal Kombat II takes a swing at cinema success with a heavyweight series behind it
This week Mortal Kombat II is hitting cinemas, and pugnacious gamers everywhere are rejoicing. Seeing as how it’s a movie based on a series of fighting videogames of high pedigree, it could hit pretty hard.
In fact, NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat games are the best-selling fighting videogame series (excluding crossovers). All told, the games have sold over 83 million copies since Mortal Kombat, the very first game, debuted in arcades in 1992.
Even with the more limited graphics of the 90s, Mortal Kombat was gory enough, with it’s famous “Fatality” finishing moves, that the public reaction raised concerns in North American halls of government. Pressure from the US Congress saw the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), to give age ratings to games in a similar way to films.
The ESRB still provides ratings for games in the USA and Canada to this very day, and Mortal Kombat is thus the first game to trigger the set-up of a software ratings board.
The series didn’t make the jump to home consoles until Mortal Kombat Trilogy, an upgraded version of 1995’s Mortal Kombat 3, came to the original PlayStation in 1996. Not including re-releases and ports to other platforms, there are 16 Mortal Kombat games, with the most recent main entry being Mortal Kombat 1 in 2023. It marked the second – yep, count ‘em, two – reboot of the series, after the confusingly named Mortal Kombat (2011) also wiped the fighting slate clean.
Because the series has been going so long, it counts the longest-serving videogame voice actor among its cast. Ed Boon (USA) is known to fans by his online moniker “noobde” (which is the incredibly secret code of his name spelled backwards), and he’s not only one of the creators and lead developers on the Mortal Kombat series, he’s also the voice of Scorpion.
Scorpion is one of the most popular characters in the series, and his guttural cry of “Get over here!”, provided by Boon, is one of the most iconic soundbites in all of gaming. Starting with the first Mortal Kombat, up to the release of Mortal Kombat 1, Boon has been playing Scorpion for over 31 years!
Scorpion’s rival in the series is Sub-Zero, another of the most popular characters. In fact, the Sub-Zero character has appeared in every single videogame in the series, and is the only Mortal Kombat character that does so. Both Sub-Zero (played by Joe Taslim) and Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada) make an appearance in new movie Mortal Kombat II.
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Mortal Kombat II sees many characters return from the previous movie, but some new faces are joining the cast as well. That includes Karl Urban as fan-favourite character Johnny Cage. The New Zealand actor is no stranger to film adaptations of games, having starred in the sci-fi splatfest Doom (USA, 2005).
He’s also no stranger to Guinness World Records! Urban was one of the cast of smash-hit TV show The Boys who we surprised with official record certificates at Comic Con last year. And, coincidentally, Mortal Kombat 1 had a crossover with The Boys, featuring Homelander as a playable character. It’s fate that Urban would end up in the MK movie.
Mortal Kombat II has some pretty popular peers, what with the success of both Super Mario films and A Minecraft Movie. If you want to learn more about Mortal Kombat, plus other fighting game series, and many more game facts besides, you can pre-order our own heavyweight hitter - the Gamer’s Edition 2027.