Mortal Kombat 2 Fixes The First Movie's Biggest Mistake In Style

Contains spoilers for "Mortal Kombat 2" 

"Mortal Kombat 2" is pretty faithful to the source material, an impressive feat since said source material is decades' worth of fighting games with a deep, occasionally rebooted lore. Because of this, the movie has one major problem: Its predecessor wasn't quite as strident. The 2021 "Mortal Kombat" movie introduced concepts like the Earthrealm champions' arcana superpowers, which the sequel keeps when it comes to Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) but doesn't draw too much attention to. However, there's another, more pressing issue: The man called Cole Young (Lewis Tan). 

Tan's non-canon protagonist from the first movie is a huge problem for "Mortal Kombat 2," which otherwise deals in characters from the video games. Cole is doubly the issue because "Mortal Kombat" made him so powerful that he can't believably be killed off by just anyone. The sequel comes up with an ingenious solution to this. "Mortal Kombat 2" simply puts Cole up against main antagonist Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) immediately after the latter has been made immortal by the Amulet of Shinnok. This means that Cole can put up the kind of fight you'd expect from a man who defeated Goro (voiced by Angus Sampson), and still come up short. 

It's difficult to describe just how well the decision to put the mightiest warrior of the first "Mortal Kombat" film against an utterly unkillable opponent works to someone who hasn't seen the fight. Cole, of course, is unaware of the fact that Shao Kahn is now immortal, but he fully recognizes that he's up against the Big Bad — and he doesn't as much as flinch. On the contrary, Cole puts up a fight for the ages. He even gains the upper hand at one point, delivering what by all rights should be a finishing blow, establishing himself as the better fighter out of the pair. 

Then, of course, Kahn heals from the damage and makes short work of Cole, but that's neither here nor there; we know that Cole is a dead man walking the second he enters this fight. Even so, the way "Mortal Kombat 2" allows him to actually look great and go out in a blaze of glory is a terrific move that avoids undermining the 2021 film. 

As Looper's pre-"Mortal Kombat 2" recap shows, Cole Young's role in the first "Mortal Kombat" movie is an important one. While it's pretty plain to see that he has no place in a version of this film series that wants to focus on the actual video game characters, it's nice to see that he gets to display his MVP levels of skill until the very end.