Mortal Kombat 2, directed by Simon McQuoid, is set to hit theaters this October. The previous movie from 2021 ended with three big reasons to stick around for the sequel. First, as the film was itself a “Surf Dracula” narrative, we were finally going to get to that pesky fighting tournament instead of just talking about it. Second, we would see the franchise’s iconic villain Shao Kahn in action. Most importantly, we were promised Johnny Cage as a cliffhanger. Actor to be determined.
That’s kind of crazy, really. Johnny Cage has been around Mortal Kombat since the very first game. Hell, he was the first character conceptualized due to the original game’s intent to be a fighting game adaptation of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Bloodsport. Despite being one of the original seven characters, Johnny Cage eventually got swept under the rug of the Mortal Kombat franchise, only to really step it up when the games started to truly hit their stride. Here’s the full story of Mortal Kombat’s A-lister.
Hollywood Classic
Introduced in 1992’s Mortal Kombat, Johnny Cage was just one of many martial artist pastiches from Sonya Blade being Cynthia Rothrock to Liu Kang being Bruce Lee. Despite his status as an egotistical movie star with the ability to throw green laser balls, Johnny was somehow the most down-to-earth character on the roster. Among the supernatural ninjas, four-armed monsters, and criminal cyborgs, there was an actor who didn’t seem to really understand what was going on. Somehow, Johnny Cage was our everyman. Or close enough to one.
Daniel Pesina portrayed Cage and added just enough personality. The early games were very limited, what with the singular win poses and lack of special animations. Even though Cage’s decapitation uppercut Fatality is one of the least inventive in the game, he at least became memorable by using his JCVD DNA to do a split and punch his opponents in the nards.
Pesina returned as Cage in Mortal Kombat II, and other than a way nicer sprite, there wasn’t too much flavor added. He had the iconic Friendship move where he signs his autograph, and there’s that sweet versus screen image where he’s standing in front of the Hollywood sign with a cheesy jacket and shit-eating grin, but there wasn’t much more to him. Even his ending was going back to the well of, “He made a movie based on his adventure.”
Then in 1995, the first Mortal Kombat movie was released, and our has-been actor truly became a household name. Linden Ashby portrayed Cage, getting the most out of his role without being the actual protagonist. Cage got to be the comic relief, romantic lead (the first real instance of the franchise pairing him with the super serious Sonya), badass slayer of both Scorpion and Goro, and most importantly, the POV character. Like a more colorful version of Roper from Enter the Dragon, Johnny Cage felt truly realized.
It’s a shame, because Midway would want us to forget about him around its release date.
Yesterday’s News
Shortly after Mortal Kombat II became a hit, Daniel Pesina was unhappy with his royalties and wanted Midway to grant him more scratch. This did not go well for him and Pesina got kicked to the curb. While he had also played the male ninjas in the first two games, there was no challenge in recasting these masked men. Recasting Johnny Cage wouldn’t be impossible, but there was no rush for it.
There was especially no rush after Pesina got a quick buck by dressing up as Cage to do a magazine advertisement for forgettable Mortal Kombat rip-off Bloodstorm. The narrative of the ad was that Johnny Cage himself was switching teams to promote this footnote of a fighter.
Mortal Kombat 3 was released in 1995 and not only was Cage not referenced in the materials at all, but he wasn’t even the most notable exception. Scorpion, Kitana, Mileena, Raiden, and Baraka failed to make the cut. Now we had new characters, including action cop Kurtis Stryker, a roundabout way to replace the kind of relatable hero Cage was meant to represent. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 came out later in the year, adding a bunch of ninjas, but no sign of Cage. Well, other than his headstone in one of the backgrounds.
Cage finally returned a year later in the home release Mortal Kombat Trilogy, this time portrayed by Chris Alexander. Alexander didn’t bring back the split punch for this installment, but he was wearing sunglasses mid-fight. And seriously, that’s what many of us wanted all along. The man needs to be as hammy as possible. Despite his usual cocky attitude and jokey persona, the resurrected Johnny Cage ended up having the most serious and solemn of endings in the game, bravely going into battle, knowing that win or lose, he would die at the end of the adventure.
Speaking of recast Johnny Cages dying, Mortal Kombat Annihilation hit theaters in 1997. Linden Ashby didn’t return, so they got Chris Conrad to get about thirty seconds of screentime before being killed off by Shao Kahn. Honestly, peacing out of that movie so early was a mercy.
Johnny Cage returned in further Mortal Kombat games, such as Mortal Kombat 4, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. While a welcome presence, he just didn’t add much other than being there for a laugh. They kept going back to the well of having his endings deal with him making movies based on the Mortal Kombat lore, which made it surprising when Armageddon’s ending had him become so powerful that he disregarded his previous behavior and embraced spiritual enlightenment.
The problems of the early games remained. While the mythology of the series had a great aesthetic and the Fatalities had personality, the characters themselves had little to show off. The only time these games had real cutscenes was in Mortal Kombat 4, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, a.k.a. three of the most unpopular games in the series. The only time Cage was truly realized was a movie from years earlier that was better than it had any right to be.
The Comeback Kid
Midway/NetherRealm Studios started to get more expressive with their storytelling, starting with Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. Cage had an amusing supporting role in there, where he even got credit for killing Goro again. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was the first game to introduce what would be known as NetherRealm’s modern trademark: a cinematic story mode stretching several hours in the form of lengthy cutscenes, occasionally broken up by gameplay.
Cage wasn’t in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, as he was written out in the prelude comic. Again, it was an act of mercy, but we were absolutely cheated out of a Johnny Cage vs. Booster Gold showdown. Regardless, Johnny Cage would appear in the next four Mortal Kombat games and would be the playable character in the opening chapter in three of the four. As the “normal” guy, we needed him to introduce us to this insane and violent reality we were all getting into.
2011’s Mortal Kombat (called Mortal Kombat 9 by fans for simplicity’s sake) had Cage played by Jeff Pilson, bass player for Dokken, meaning that Pilson has gone toe-to-toe with Freddy Krueger on two separate occasions. Through a convoluted time travel spell, the game acted as a new take on the original Mortal Kombat installments, retelling the story with more expression and detail, but also narrative interference that altered the timeline. Cage only stood out so much, but what’s important is that he was one of the very few heroes to come out of the adventure alive.
See, ever since Mortal Kombat 4, the series had grown tired of Liu Kang being the generic protagonist. After killing him off, they experimented with different main heroes like a vengeful Kung Lao, the gullible Shujinko, the adjectiveless Taven, and so on. This new revision of the Mortal Kombat mythos had Liu Kang become bitter, die, then turn into a demon in the afterlife. All the while, this created a cliffhanger where we were getting a new version of Mortal Kombat 4’s storyline, but without Liu Kang there to save the world.
Mortal Kombat X opened with a curveball that nobody saw coming: Johnny Cage was secretly the “Chosen One” all along, at least for this part of the story. The previous game threw in some random lore about him being a descendent of a sect of warrior cultists trying to engineer a bloodline of god killers, and this was all paid off by revealing that his cool, green, glowing powers were a genetic weapon to stop series villain and evil god Shinnok. Finally, after all this time, Cage felt important.
This continued with the game jumping forward a generation and focusing on Johnny and Sonya’s daughter Cassie Cage, who inherits the same power. While still jokey, Johnny became the wise mentor character and felt more three-dimensional. He had developed so much that in the following game, upon meeting his younger self via more time travel shenanigans, he was disgusted at what an utter douchebag he used to be.
On top of all of this, these games were really bringing in all the extra personality. Johnny Cage’s Fatalities were now over-the-top and filled with Hollywood jokes. Every possible match-up came with 3-6 different pre-fight conversations, really letting Johnny’s new and permanent voice actor Andrew Bowen go to town with so much charm and smarm. He became the guy that every villain wanted to dismember and every hero reluctantly put up with because they respected him. He was THE stand-out character of the NetherRealm Studios era of Mortal Kombat games.
This momentum shifted into the animated Mortal Kombat Legends movies, with Johnny Cage being featured in three of the four, cast perfectly as Joel McHale. This culminated in his own solo movie, Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, which was dripping with ‘80s style and gave us the posthumous role of Gilbert Gottfried as a demonic Hollywood agent.
And that brings us back to 2021’s Mortal Kombat movie. Cage was missing, his disappearance explained by a producer, “He has a very big personality, right? He needs his own space. It’s very hard to just throw him in a movie.” Hence, saving him for the sequel.
In fact, it’s one of the movie’s main problems that works to Cage’s advantage. Mortal Kombat introduced a brand-new, original POV character via Cole Young and despite Lewis Tan’s best efforts, he felt weak and a detriment to the rest of the movie. Many fans are hoping that Cole will get the same treatment that Cage did back in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Tan was brutally killed off within minutes in Deadpool 2 and people seemed to enjoy that one, right?
Now we’re set to see Karl Urban take up the role, his own middle-aged action hero status seemingly adding to the washed-up nature of the unlikely hero. Much of the movie’s potential success rides on his shoulders, hopefully delivering on a role where you want to see him get punched in the face almost as much as you want to see him punch others.
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From https://www.denofgeek.com/games/johnny-cage-history-mortal-kombat-a-list/
