Not Linden Ashby, who played Johnny Cage in the Mortal Kombat film. No, the guy in the viral Mortal Kombat film that recently popped up online.
The actor who was Johnny Cage in the viral clip is Matt Mullins. He’s not only an actor, but an accomplished martial artist. He’s a black belt in shorei-ryu karate. For the past 10 years, Mullins has been performing “Xtreme Martial Arts”, which he describes as a more visual style of the sport.
The Johnny Cage vs Baraka fight in the viral Mortal Kombat clip took ten hours to film, says Mullins. “Ten hours is really fast for all of the different elements that we were trying to capture,” he tells Kotaku. “There was a lot of rehearsal before hand to come up with this great sequence.”
But it’s during that fight in which the familiarity element set in. I’ve seen that guy toss a punch and get hit before.
“I have been doing mocap for the last 10 years and have worked on tons of different games,” adds Mullins. Like? Like the first Uncharted. He did all the running, jumping, shooting, punching and climbing for Uncharted protagonist Nathan Drake.
That’s right, Nathan Drake via Johnny Cage is fighting Baraka in this viral clip. And he gets his head lopped off.
Dunnowhathuh
Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 12:17 PMThat still doesn’t sit well with me, killing off Cage before the movie even starts.
Ben
Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 12:39 PMCage has been dead for more of the series then he hasn’t (He died before MK2 starts) hasn’t stoped him being in most of the games though.
desallis
Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 1:42 PMKnow what you mean it seemed a bit harsh at that point I realized it wasn’t a trailer but more of a “proof of concept demo” If they had the budget they would probably reshoot the whole thing when fleshing it into a fully plotted movie.
Sounds like they did it very quickly and cheaply, which doesn’t show through at all in the high quality result.
Neil Williams
Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 2:42 PMIt was actually only a pitch. If it does get picked up and turned into an actual movie, there’s no guarantee that it’ll play out in the same way, or even feature the same actors.
Besides, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation).