(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
The new "Mortal Kombat 2" is now in theaters, and true to the franchise's violent and bloody roots, it doesn't shy away from a high body count. In a new interview with Variety, the film's sole screenwriter, Jeremy Slater, explained the reasoning and considerations behind the sequel's two biggest deaths: Liu Kang and Cole Young.
(Image: Lewis Tan's Instagram)
“Killing Cole Young was my pitch in a meeting,” Slater said in the interview. “They had brought in a bunch of writers to brainstorm because I wasn't on the sequel yet. It was someone else's problem. It's very easy to be the guy who comes in and goes, 'I'd kill that guy.' But it was a tricky one because I really like Lewis Tan. He's a good dude and a world-class martial artist. But the hard truth is, he was a studio note on the first movie. They wanted a POV character.”
(Image: Lewis Tan's Instagram)
Slater continued, “But for the fans, it was like, ‘This guy doesn’t belong here.’ It’s like if you’re watching an 'Avengers' movie with Iron Man and Captain America, and some random dude walks in. You’d be like, ‘He’s not an Avenger.’ Fans have waited 30 years to see these characters, and to have some guy they don’t know eating up screen time was a source of frustration.”
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
“However, I will say that in the world of 'Mortal Kombat,' death is not necessarily permanent,” Slater explained. “So while I don’t think you’ll ever see Cole Young again, that doesn’t mean you’ll never see Lewis Tan again. Even with some of the deaths that we were really agonizing over, we definitely have long-term plans for some of these characters. Some of these deaths are necessary because they’re setting up something that’s going to come down the road.”
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Slater then recalled his pitch: “My pitch in the room was that you need two shocking deaths in this movie. Cole’s death is a huge shock to the casual audience who bought a ticket to the first movie and expected him to be the hero again. But it’s not a surprise to the hardcore fans who have been clamoring online to kill this character. By that same token, Liu Kang’s death is not a surprise to the casual viewer, but it’s devastating to the hardcore fans, because in the games, he’s the one who beats Shao Kahn. A lot of those fans walked into the theater expecting him to be the one to emerge victorious.”
(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Slater then explained why Kitana was chosen to defeat Shao Kahn instead of Liu Kang: “We had also kind of written ourselves into a corner with Kitana’s backstory, where there was no one else who could believably kill Shao Kahn. She’s the one who has been wronged by him and has been waiting her entire life for revenge.”
“The question then becomes: Do we just have Liu Kang standing on the sidelines, which doesn’t feel very interesting, or do we try something shocking and unexpected?” Slater concluded. “We always planned on killing him in this one, but Ludi Lin gave such a great performance that we didn’t realize how much the casual audiences were going to love Liu Kang as well. We always knew we were going to bring him back in some capacity for a third movie, but we wound up tweaking his death a little bit to make it feel more like a choice on his part.”
via： Variety