In a world that is already filled with unique characters, Kung Lao is likely one of the more iconic characters that appears within Mortal Kombat. Within the video game series, and even the past films, Kung always boasted a very distinct fighting style thanks in part to the bladed hat that he wields as a weapon. When it comes to the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie reboot, actor Max Huang who is playing the role of Kung Lao this time around has now shared what he was looking to bring to the character when it comes to fighting.
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During a visit to the set of Mortal Kombat that ComicBook.com attended, Huang was asked about his own fighting style that he is accustomed to and how he had to adapt it in order to play Kung Lao. Huang explained that his own background in martial arts stems from the Wushu style. “I started with Wushu, and I went to competitions and became a professional Wushu athlete representing the German national team,” Huang explained.
While Huang might have been most familiar with Wushu, though, Kung Lao is historically a fighter that uses Wing Chun techniques. As such, Huang said that he had to actually retrain a bit to learn the style, although it was already a fighting art that he was pretty familiar with. “Actually, it’s funny because the first martial arts I started to train was Wing Chun,” he said. “So I did that for about a year of intensive training and yeah, it helped a lot. And then we have a great martial arts instructor also, Nino, who also trained parts of the other cast. So I picked up some stuff from him and I think, yeah, it will work out well.”
The fact that those creating this new iteration of Mortal Kombat on the big screen cast so many actors that are familiar with so many fighting styles definitely adds quite a bit of authenticity to the film. In fact, producer Todd Garner went as far as to say that the fight scenes and the actors that they chose for the movie are the things that makes him most excited as a whole about the project.
Mortal Kombat is set to release next month on April 16th and will be arriving at the same time both in theaters and on HBO Max.
