Whether it was the $500 sunglasses, the cockiness, or the one-liners—though I’m pretty sure it was the sunglasses—Johnny Cage was the epitome of cool to a certain age of movie-watcher in the mid-’90s. This viewer was of a specific and discerning variety too; the kind who was old enough to have played Mortal Kombat II at the arcade or a friend’s house, but perhaps still too young to let their parents know they wanted the game for Christmas—or to buy a PG-13 ticket on their own for the 1995 movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Nonetheless, when they did get to see the movie (either in theaters because of a cool older brother or on VHS in the glory days of Blockbuster Video clerks’ apathy), one thing was obvious: Johnny Cage was the g*****n best. Played in the original film by Linden Ashby as a bit like if Jean-Claude Van Damme had an American accent (an irony since Van Damme passed on Mortal Kombat in favor of the Street Fighter movie), Johnny Cage had the kind of slick ‘90s arrogance that was perceived as cool in the era after Top Gun and Point Break as opposed to gross or problematic.
Which is an irony now since Karl Urban and Mortal Kombat II are leaning into that ’90s nostalgia pretty heavily after trying to eschew it in the 2021 reboot film this sequel follows up. In the new trailer, Urban—a cult fan favorite for roles in The Boys, Dredd, and Star Trek (among others)—plays a rebooted Johnny. Urban’s Cage has a lot of the familiar swagger of Ashby’s but also a lot more age and grit, with it suggested that this Johnny was also a ‘90s movie star whose glory days are far behind him.
Furthermore, it would appear that Urban’s Johnny is less in the Van Damme mold than he is Tom Cruise, as hinted by a poster for a fictional Cage movie seen in the trailer. It’s titled Uncaged Fury, but the poster is unmistakably modeled after the original poster and VHS cover of the first Mission: Impossible movie directed by Brian De Palma and starring Cruise way back in ’96. It is likely no coincidence that Mortal Kombat II is echoing that in the same year Cruise is still able to star in the seventh sequel to Mission: Impossible at the age of 63.
