At one point, this months Halloween-friendly horror offerings were meant to be balanced by another blood-soaked release, the highly anticipated upcoming video game adaptation Mortal Kombat II. Its premiere was pushed eight months in favor of a more promising box office window, which was a disappointment at the time, but has allowed even more fans to join in on the anticipation. Franchise co-creator Ed Boon’s latest round of hype-filled praise certainly doesn’t hurt anything, either.
In fact, Boon’s comments are now bouncing around inside my head and helping to stoke my already stockpiled excitement for the upcoming 2026 movie. Speaking with ScreenRant, the game programmer was asked how the sequel raises its predecessor’s bar for action sequences, and nothing about his answer sounded even minutely hesitant or unsure. Boon is all-in on Mortal Kombat II being a superior sequel, saying:
I think it at least doubles the number of fights. It's crazy how intense it is in terms of the volume of action that is in this movie. And the fights, what I love about them is they're supernatural combined with martial arts, so you always see crazy, over-the-top things.
It's not like 2021's Mortal Kombat was a slouch when it came to on-screen fights, even if a lot of the surrounding story was hit or miss. So to hear that there will be at least twice the number of fights is wild, and implies these actors went through the wringer to bring those sequences to life. Because as Boon put it, even though this franchise is championed for bringing a realistic-looking and bloody veneer to fighting games, many of the moves they're known for are patently impossible in real life.
It would have been easy for someone directing a live-action adaptation to tone down the supernatural elements in order to make it easier and cheaper to film, but that wouldn't be a true MK movie at all. Boon continued, speaking to that point:
These characters are doing things that are clearly impossible, but they're a lot of fun to watch. That's pretty much what the video game is. The video game is this hyperrealistic version of fighting, and it translates great into this film.
Even though it might seem on paper like adapting a narrative-lite fighting game would present fewer issues than telling an extremely dense story, that just puts even more pressure on the cast and choreographers to make all the fighting as visually intriguing as possible. And sure, Boon is somewhat biased going into this having been part of the franchise for so many years, but that could just as easily have turned him against the project if it didn't align with his wishes. But he's seen the finished film and loved it.
As seen in the heavily watched first trailer, Karl Urban's Johnny Cage is entering the story with ample bravado and badassery, and he'll be forced to go face to face with other warriors of the Earthrealm in an effort to thwart the rise in power of the dangerous threat Shao Khan. There's not much plotline to latch onto that isn't "fighting," which speaks well for how much action we can expect to see. Hopefully the first round of this tournament isn't themed around board games.
Screenwriter Jeremy Slater couldn't help himself and went further with boasting about how great Mortal Kombat II is, saying:
I've already gotten in trouble once today for over-hyping this movie, but with that said, if this movie had come out this year, it would've been the best action movie of this year. The fact that it's coming out next year, it's just going to be the best action movie of next year. That's what a phenomenal job Simon and his cast did. The movie's just fucking awesome.
I don't need Scorpion to drag me to the theater via spear through the torso, as I'll already be going voluntarily when Mortal Kombat II debuts in theaters on May 8, 2026.
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