Mortal Kombat Producer on How the Avengers Influenced the Movie

At long last, the new Mortal Kombat movie is finally on its way. Fans have been excited to see if this new take on the classic IP can deliver on the hype created by the games, and the trailer makes it look as though this film finally does Mortal Kombat justice. A big reason behind the love for the trailer, aside from the hyper-violent tone, is the fact that many of the game’s popular characters made their way into the film. It’s hard to balance all of those characters at once, but the team behind Mortal Kombat actually looked to The Avengers and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as influences.

This isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat will resemble the PG-13 Marvel movies. That’s not at all what’s happening here. But during a visit to the set of Mortal Kombat, ComicBook.com heard from producer Todd Garner, and he explained that the creative team looked to the Avengers films as a way to correctly balance all of the characters. They started with a single character, Iron Man, as a way to introduce the rest of the iconic heroes.

“So we started from the premise of, what would Marvel do? How were the Avengers assembled? You sort of went, okay you started with one guy who was a point of access, Iron Man, and you kind of wandered into the Avengers. You didn’t just start with the Avengers,” Garner explained. So like you said, okay let’s start with, who would be that guy? There were a few ideas, but just hard, because they’re super specific. If you came in with The Tank it would be weird. So we just like, okay maybe we just start neutral and come into the movie. And then really set up a canvas where we can meet all of the characters that people love. You’re never going to get everybody’s favorite character. Because I always like to say to people like, ‘Who do you normally play on that?’ Yup, okay. Not in that movie.

“But we tried to really get the right characters in, and tried to be intelligent about, okay well are we just staring characters in, just to have them in the movie? Just so we can like placate people? Or do they really belong in the movie? And so that then became the weeding out presence.”

For Mortal Kombat, the way into the classic world is through a new character named Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan. It’s through Cole’s journey that we meet characters like Sonya Blade, Jax, Liu Kang, Kano, Raiden, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero.

Are you looking forward to the Mortal Kombat movie? What characters are you hoping to see in the film that were kept out of the trailer? Let us know in the comments!

Mortal Kombat arrives on HBO Max and in theaters on April 16th.