ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match producer Rick Morales about the animated action movie. The producer discussed Johnny Cage’s persona and working with legendary actors in the latest Mortal Kombat film. The movie is now available on Blu-ray and 4K UHD.
“Action superstar Johnny Cage squares off against a sinister secret society that’s plotting a nefarious scheme,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “However, the brutal fight against the bloodthirsty warriors of the Netherrealm is just the beginning.”
Tyler Treese: I wanted to get your thoughts on Johnny Cage as a protagonist. Obviously, he’s one of the more popular characters, but he has a personality that could become grating if the shtick was a little too much. How was it, finding that balancing act is him as the leading man?
Rick Morales: I totally agree with you. I think that’s kind of part of his charm. He’s full of himself. He’s a narcissist, and he can be a jerk at times, but he’s not mean, right? So I think that as long as we’re playing him where, in the end, he’s heroic — maybe not for the right reasons, but there’s a heart, and there’s a genuine person there. Then I think we’re able to sort of let him hold that lead role pretty well.
Joel’s got such charisma in his performance that, just on his strength alone, he’d be able to carry it. But yeah, I think one of the reasons we made this film when we pursued making this film was because of the strength of Joel’s performance in the first and second film, where it’s like, “Man, I just want to spend more time with that character. I think he’s a lovable jerk.” [Laughs].
Definitely. We get to see some different shades of Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match, between him being anti-bullying and in this mentor role, which is really fun. He gets to say, “What would Johnny Cage do?” How great was adding that extra depth to this character that we’ve seen some really great glimpses of in the past films?
I think that was the whole point of doing this one is it’s a little bit more of a character exploration now. Johnny is the fun guy that you’d want to hang out with at the party. He’s also noble in that he’s loyal to a certain extent and, going into his past with the bullying and all that, you see where he came from, what he was dealing with and helps you see how he views the world. That was all interesting to me.
But I also like how he’s oblivious to some things around him. He says off-color things, and he says things that wouldn’t be said in polite society anymore. [Laughs]. One, it’s the ’80s, and he’s a product of that time. And two, he’s had great success and is a bit of a narcissist, so I just think he’s a fun character to write in that way.
As we’ve seen as these Mortal Kombat Legends movies go on is they become more character-based, from Snow Blind with Kenshi to this with Johnny Cage. What’s interesting is, within this framework, there’s still so much lore and different characters to explore and it allows you to do so many different types of movies. If these continue being successful, do you have ideas of where you’d like to see Mortal Kombat go next? It seems that the potential is almost limitless.
Oh, I think the potential is always there. We’ve made four films and I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of what this thing is. There’s any number of ways that you can go with it and be radically different than what we’ve done so far. I hope that happens. Jeremy and I have a ton of ideas of where we might like to go next.
But with Snow Blind and now Cage Match, I wanted to get to a simpler sort of storytelling for these films and settle in and focus on one or two characters in a little bit greater detail than we were able to on the first two films, because we had so many characters and we had so much plot that needed to happen. That was sort of what my desire for these films was — can we tell some more character centric stories and, also, do things that are a little bit different and outside of the norm for the franchise, and could we make those work? So we’ll see.
Cage Match features another great Gilbert Gottfried performance. Since he’s passed, that had to be mean a lot, that you got one of his final performances there, and it’s such a fun role for him. How great was having him involved in Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match?
Oh, it was wonderful. I mean, he’s a great and iconic voice, right? Everybody knows his voice straight away. It’s undeniable. Since we’re doing something in the ’80s timeframe and we’ve got Jennifer Grey playing Jennifer Grey … I can’t remember if it was Wes [Gleason], our voice director, that brought up Gilbert, but when he did, it was like, “Oh yeah, that’s so funny. That’s great.” Because it’s this foul-mouthed agent. Here you have the voice of Iago just dropping F-bomb after F-bomb. It’s just really funny. It was a pleasure to work with him.
You mentioned Jennifer Grey, and it doesn’t get more ’80s than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. How was it, getting her involved? She’s such a good sport to be playing herself here — that had to be so much fun to see her work with.
Oh my gosh, yeah. That was definitely a highlight of this whole process for me, getting to see her in the booth and work with her and recording the stuff. She was just so game for everything, you know? She was like, “Who do you want? You want Baby? Okay, yeah, you got it.” [Laugh]. She just went for it. It was great. Then we got to design her likeness in, uh, the sort of Patrick Nagel style that we were shooting for here. Gosh, it was just … that was a lot of fun. I mean, the idea that you’d have a Mortal Kombat movie starring Joel McHale, Jennifer Grey, and Gilbert Gottfried — it sounds absurd on paper. [Laughs]. I fully understand that, but boy, is it cool.
There’s a lot of great meta commentary in here and jokes about the film industry. How fun was it to throw that in there, especially with the 80s vibe?
It’s a dream come true for Jeremy and I, who grew up on this stuff, right? Every reference in here — Big Trouble in Little China and The Karate Kid and Rocky and all that stuff — it’s so ingrained in us. We’ve talked, even before we even started to conceive this film, about wanting to do stuff that was more ’80s and ’90s, as far as action films and things like that. Because Jeremy’s a huge ’80s and ’90s era action film guy. He’s constantly like, “Have you seen this one? Have you seen this one?” And I’m just like, “Oh my God, how do you find the time?” But yeah, so, so this was just such great fun, to be able to do this.
