05-04-2026, 08:19 AM
From i09
Quote:Mortal Kombat II
Speaking with Comic Book, Mortal Kombat II screenwriter Jeremy Slater discussed why (though not how) Kano and Kung Lao are back for the sequel despite being killed in the first movie.
Quote:I think it’s the fun of Mortal Kombat, honestly, it’s, it’s like, you know… before I took the job, one of the things I was like, ‘You have to let me bring Kano back to life’, because Josh Lawson was my favorite thing about the first movie. I was like, ‘he’s the guy who understood the assignment, and that tone that he is hitting in this movie is the tone that I want this entire movie to have’. So I’m like, ‘I have to bring Kano back. I have to bring Kung Lao back. I’ve got to get that hat in a fight scene and, and play with it. It’s too much fun, and he’s too cool of a character.
It’s my job to figure out how do we get some of them back in, but maybe how do we get them back in, in ways that the audience is not necessarily expecting. How do we use those deaths as a jumping-off point to tell interesting stories for some of these characters or to take them on new journeys? How do we use something that could be a liability—the sort of the resurrections—and make that a strength in this universe that, yes, there are, there are ways to bring people back, but sometimes there are consequences to those ways, or sometimes it’s not as, as clear cut or as simple as you may hope? So, that’s always the goal. We have a lot of toys in the toy box, and the audience wants to see their favorite characters, so how do we balance the weight? We still want it to hurt when you lose them. We still want the audience to be upset in those moments when your favorite character gets taken out. But at the end of the day, we do always have that sort of escape hatch built into the franchise because they’ve been killing people and bringing them back to life for 34 years now.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm