Watch The New Mortal Kombat Movie’s First Footage
HBO Max has released the longest footage yet from their upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, including new looks at Sub-Zero and Sonya Blade.
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Every Warner Bros. film that comes out in 2021 will be coming to HBO Max the same day as they are released in theaters. Today, HBO Max has released a new trailer showing just how packed Warner Bros.’ upcoming slate of films is, and how many great films will soon be available in theaters and in the comfort of your home. Amongst all the films shown off, this new trailer also gives us the most extensive look at the new Mortal Kombat film that we’ve seen thus far.
It’s been over two decades since the last Mortal Kombat film, with 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Warner Bros. has been developing a new Mortal Kombat film for over a decade now, and the film will soon see the light of day on April 16, 2021. The film is directed by first-time director Simon McQuoid, and is being produced by James Wan, director of Saw, The Conjuring, Furious 7, and Aquaman.
Mortal Kombat centers around a new character named Cole Young (Lewis Tan) an MMA fighter who doesn’t know why Shang Tsung (Chin Han) is trying to track him down. Cole is unaware of his heritage, but he was born with a strange dragon marking. This marking allows him to enter the temple of Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), where Cole trains with warriors like Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Kung Lao (Max Huang), and Kano (Josh Lawson) in order to protect Earth from the enemies of the Outworld realm. As Cole and Earthrealm’s champions try to protect their world, Cole also starts to understand his legacy.
This new Mortal Kombat footage is relatively quick, considering the trailer is advertising sixteen films in 106 seconds. But it does give us some interesting images to get excited about this upcoming film. The first image has been seen in an earlier trailer, which shows Sub-Zero crafting a blade out of ice with his bare hands.
The second sequence is by far the longest in the trailer, showing a few different images. The first shows a warrior fighting two swordsmen. This looks to be part of Mortal Kombat’s 10-minute opening sequence, which Simon McQuoid has said is a battle between the Hanzo and Bi-Han clans, which sets up the origin of both Scorpion and Sub-Zero, long before these warriors gain their powers.
Right after this quick glimpse, we see four warriors on top of a mountain. While it’s not clear who these are, it looks to be from left-to-right, Kano, Liu Kang, Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), and Cole. We then see Sonya Blade in a room littered with newspapers and photos, where she says “It’s an invitation to Mortal Kombat, before pointing to what looks to be a relic of some kind, which looks like the font of the original video game.
The final clip from Mortal Kombat shows Sub-Zero gathering moisture in the air on what looks to be Earth. In his search for Cole, Shang Tsung sends Sub-Zero to Earth to find him, and this looks to be from that part of the film. It looks as though all of these scenes come from early on in the film, and there are plenty of characters from the game who have yet to make an appearance in video footage yet, such as Raiden, Jackson Briggs (Mehcad Brooks), Shang Tsung, Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), Kung Lao, and Mileena (Sisi Stringer).
Interestingly, the cast also lists Nitara (Elissa Cadwell) and Kabal (Nitara), both minor characters in the games. While Mortal Kombat looks to take place around the time of the early games, Kabal wasn’t introduced until Mortal Kombat 3, as a former associate of Kano, and Nitara, a winged vampire character, didn’t show up until 2002’s Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. It will be interesting to see what else this new film brings from the later games into this new origin story.
After 23 years of waiting, a new Mortal Kombat film is finally coming, as it is set to release in theaters and on HBO Max on April 16, 2021.
