Scorpion was Johnny Cage's Greatest Fan

Who do you think would win in a fight, Johnny Cage or Scorpion? Dude, I don't know. This is a tough one. I can't even imagine. I can't even envision a situation in which these two combatants would fight. That's just too out there. That is, wow. So Torvald, hey, what movie are we talking about today? Dude, only one of my favorite movies of all time. Probably my favorite martial arts movie of all time. like almost hands down um it's gotta be 1995 epic masterpiece video game movie mortal combat that was my favorite movie for a long long time growing up it's so iconic like the characters and don't get me wrong i know they're pulling from the video games which are you know just as iconic but like seeing them on the big screen as a kid whoa it was mind-blowing and and we lived in a small town that didn't have a theater and i remember we actually drove all the way up to go to the theater to see it for my birthday it was so great it was like the best birthday ever

birthday present that's amazing scorpion in this movie he has i kid you not exactly five minutes of screen time yeah that's all and yet he makes such an impact man what an icon he's so cool dude no i mean he's like he's like boba fett you know like he just needs to stand there for a couple of seconds and everyone loves him maybe the less screen time was like better maybe that may be even cooler i don't know no but no i agree i think mortal combat properties are actually kind of leaning even more towards the scorpion sub-zero uh that's what everyone liked which is good yeah that's what everyone wants i mean like i got nothing against luke hang but like come on you know i like i like all the world combat characters even the newer characters like uh aaron black right like the old school characters you know sub-zero scorpion and and uh speaking of of old school in 1995 when this came out for halloween i dressed up as scorpion and you just and i dressed

up as zero our mom totally made us the costumes they were amazing we kept those around forever so first let's uh let's give you guys a primer what it's about who it includes um it was directed by paul ws anderson uh one of our favorite directors our favorite he did the event horizon um the resident evil franchise death race uh the the games and you know the property was created by ed boone john tobias so the movie i guess was written by someone named kevin droney who i'd never really heard of but i looked him up and you know what else he wrote what he wrote mortal combat the journey begins we loved that as kids too even as kids i think we kind of loved that one ironically the miniature animated spin-off accompaniments to the mortal combat movie it was basically an extended trailer or like you know trying to sell stuff it gives you a lot of fun backstory and i had some interesting cg graphics uh yeah even at the time is the right

word that good they were never good no like the those graphics were appalling but still cool so johnny cage in that movie for some reason is wearing like spiked wristbands like metal spiked wristbands which doesn't really fit his character lu kang does not have those and yet both of them can block baraka blades with their wrists it's like yeah also every single male character in that is shirtless well not only shirtless but have the exact same body like they just have different heads dude how many times can johnny cage like hold up his fists and crouch down and back away from a bunch of tarkatan warriors it's like the best animation ever um okay you know what else he wrote though uh kevin droney the writer of mortal kombat he wrote highlander yeah dude highlander It's great. One of the most interesting things that I find about the casting of this movie is that, like, this movie was so successful.

Like, it was really successful when it released. Rightfully so. Oh, yeah. It was amazing. It does not have a single big star in it. Like, Christopher Lambert is the biggest star in it. And he's arguably, at that time, he was a big star. At that time, sure. Yeah, he had been in Highlander. Like, our dad was super psyched to see him in that movie. Yeah, I love Christopher Lambert. But what's interesting is that, like, so Lyndon Ashby plays Johnny Cage. Johnny Cage, whose signature move is to do the splits and punch and is clearly based on Jean-Claude Van Damme, right? Right, yeah. They had actually offered the role to Jean-Claude Van Damme, but he decided to do Street Fighter instead, which I just find it interesting that Street Fighter came out around the same time, was loaded with stars, and just absolutely bombed. Whereas this had no stars whatsoever and was just, like, an amazing success.

Well, it might have been so successful because maybe it was cheaper than Street Fighter. I don't know. I don't know. They spent a lot of money on this movie. It turns out that Lyndon Ashby, I guess, wasn't even the second person to fill this role. It was offered to a lot of people, like even Tom Cruise or something. Oh, that would have been interesting. Yeah. And also, apparently, Tom Cruise tried to stop by the set when they were shooting Mortal Kombat because he was like a big fan or something. And their guy in charge of security was like so committed to his job that even knowing who Tom Cruise was, he wouldn't let him on the set because he wasn't supposed to be there. Dude, the dedication of that bodyguard rings true throughout this entire movie. So, OK, wait, so it's also got Robin Scho. That was Liu Kang. You might know him as Gobe from Beverly Hills Ninja. Amazing actor, amazing martial artist.

I only wish he was in more because I really like him. I think he's good. We mentioned Christopher Lambert from Highlander. He was Raiden in Mortal Kombat. And interestingly enough, that role was originally offered to Sean Connery. Oh, who was also from Highlander. Yeah. That would have been interesting. To them, it was actually like a cool reversal when they cast Christopher Lambert because they're like, he's usually the student, but now he's the master teaching the new fighters. It turned out good, though. I think he was a really good Raiden. Amazing Raiden. excellent but he wasn't asian and he probably should have been asian so white so white and that is one of the main criticisms of this movie is that you know raiden but like even from the original game they have always pronounced raiden wrong right it should be raiden but like no matter what this is kind of a you know americanized character well yeah i mean whatever i'm just

i'm glad that we got a good uh a good actor who gave an amazing performance um yeah i guess he Probably should have been Asian. We also had Keri Hiroyuki Tagawa. Yeah, a legend. The amazing, the legend, Keri Hiroyuki Tagawa, who played Shang Tsung, just knocked it out of the park. What a performance. Oh my goodness. He reprised the role for the DLC of Mortal Kombat 11. I don't even buy fighting games anymore in general. the fact that he was in it i was like oh gosh i think i'm gonna have to buy this game just so i can get that dlc it's even better than you expect yeah he just knocks the role out of the park he he makes he owns that role uh chris casamasa as scorpion and francois petit as sub-zero right and i i've heard that francois petit was the highest ranked martial artist on set dude he was actually very involved in a lot of this stuff like a lot of the planning of i think the stunts

and fight scenes and so that's actually one of the reasons why sub-zero doesn't get too much screen time is because he was often behind the camera he gets a lot more than scorpion yeah he gets more than scorpion that's true of all the bad guys sub-zero gets the most besides shang sung well goro gets a lot no no i mean usually he's off camera saying that was a good part yeah no but i mean then now it makes sense why uh shang sung paraded sub-zero out in front of everyone to ruin their meal he was such a good martial artist they had to show him off the producer also says that the guy he freezes and breaks that guy was also like an amazing martial artist and he didn't really get to show off very much no he just said like dude like as a kid i remember that guy being like total wimp because of his voice is wimpy but like that guy's ripped that guy's insane he cracks his spine just by stretching i know which isn't that impressive

listen to his voice you remember as being that boy yeah boy guy who gets frozen like all right what's the story of mortal kombat just in case you've never seen it or never heard of it um the story of mortal kombat the movie pretty closely follows the story of mortal kombat the game like the original one yeah this was a very faithful adaptation basically three fighters are chosen by raiden uh the god of thunder to represent earth realm and they're gathered by shang sung who represents outworld which is basically another dimension full of evil people right and right they're gonna represent earth realm in a tournament pitting these two domains against each other if outworld wins they can invade earth realm and kill everyone all you basically need to know is there's a tournament and the good guys have to win right i mean it's a pretty simple movie it's mostly just really cool and fun to watch before we get into my theory i

just want to be clear i know and understand the backstory of hanzo hasashi who is scorpion and bihan who is sub-zero and kuai liang who is the second sub-zero i know their backstory and i know it has nothing to do with johnny cage um the theory that i'm about to present is only relevant for the 1995 mortal kombat movie not for the games here's my theory johnny cage he's a huge actor he's adored and in some areas reviled but either way he's known across the globe he's a role model to a lot of people like art lean um the the man who he meets at the docks in hong kong and one of these people who knows him and adores him might have been scorpion i will say we don't ever meet anyone in this movie who is starstruck with him though right like even even art lean is kind of just like ah don't worry about it man you know it's true i i would say the maybe the director um right who was yelling for him to come back fun fact that director was going to be played

by steven spielberg who also apparently likes mortal combat but he there were scheduling issues and he couldn't do it so they cast a guy who they made look a lot like he did look like steven spielberg okay lots of people loved and idolized johnny cage or at least knew of him now one of these people may have been scorpion and scorpion at some point sought out his idol's autograph He got an autograph on a photo. He kept it as a keepsake, a reminder that he aspired to follow in Johnny's footsteps in training, fighting, being the best, right? So when Scorpion later found out that he was going to fight his idol, Johnny Cage, in the Mortal Kombat tournament, of course he took his precious autographed photo with him. And when he lost and exploded, that photograph flew out of his clothes and landed in a pile of viscera. And we, the audience, all get to see that Scorpion was, in fact, a super fan of Johnny Cage.

Not just a super fan, Johnny's greatest fan. So the theory is that Scorpion was a great fan of Johnny Cage. And I think that that's a bit of a stretch, but I can't wait to hear you prove it. can prove it all right some people have looked at this scene uh where that photograph falls in you know scorpion's remains and they say that johnny threw it at scorpion's body parts as like a mocking gesture you know kind of like making fun of him after the fight well it's supposed to be an easter egg like a callback to the fact that one of his friendship moves in the second game i think was that he would sign an autograph and give it to the other person well do we want to get this out of the way at the very beginning uh since you're talking about it i mean because because we we got it we got to look past this is that the producer of the film lawrence kasanoff has said and other people actually involved with the film have said that that is what this was

that it was supposed to be a joke like uh johnny cage signed an autograph and dropped it there and left which was never how i interpreted that scene in fact it wasn't until i think you mentioned it that i even thought that as a kid i always thought because because there's viscera explode like his handful like everything is just exploding in random yes of scorpion i always assumed that photo flew out of scorpion and as a kid i was like wow that's really cool like like scorpion must have known he was gonna fight johnny cage and he went out as a well in my mind i thought he was like because he's a ninja he must have like spied on him and like maybe got close to him to learn his moves and like maybe even got a got like a autograph from him to like study him before his fight you know i thought that was really cool because of course i love scorpion right so i'm gonna say screw whatever the you know the film crew says i don't think that could work for it to be like a mean sarcastic

move by johnny and i will explain why but first yeah it's important to note that this is a reference from mortal kombat 2 um johnny cage's friendship uh you know it's technically a fatality but it's a friendship um it was to sign a photo to my best fan cage but it's important to note that across all of the entire mortal combat universe friendships are always friendly yeah it's a way to spare your enemy right they're literally the winner doing something extremely kind or friendly or just putting on a show for the loser which is the opposite of what the series is known for right the series is known for blood and gore and death and killing friendships never include death they never follow a fatality the loser is never hurt in any way except for i think in moral combat trilogy um scorpion and sub-zero's friendship was to use a jack-in-the-box to scare away their opponent but they didn't hurt them right so yeah now in this movie johnny slices scorpion to pieces

and explodes him if this was done in a game it would be a fatality so this was not a friendship yeah yeah like he's not the kind of guy who kicks someone while they're down instead being the kind of guy who gets kicked while he's down through the entire movie right especially in the scene where scorpion is kicking him over and over while he's down uh johnny cage's signature move is punching someone in the crotch so i mean he's known for fighting dirty i'm not saying he wouldn't fight dirty but like let's look at the other people in the movie of everyone in this movie johnny is the most human main character he's not he's not an aggressive avenging psychopath like sonia blade right like pulling out her gun and shoving it in people's faces all the time he's not a revenge-seeking zealot like lu kang right like he's literally just there because he's a guy who wants to prove he's a good fighter i don't think he has it in him to like after this

fight as his opponent his opponent's body parts are plastered around the arena to snidely take out a photo sign it and throw it at his opponent's guts i mean i do think that johnny is a bit of a showboat obviously and i think that he's not above mocking someone but if that person is already dead and no one's watching i don't think he would do it when he's like in a weird hell dimension like how did he even get out of there i don't know he's got bigger things to worry about man scorpion is filled with lava johnny needs to get out of there man like there'd be lava on the floor furthermore johnny could not have had the photo he couldn't have had it on him it was a decent sized photo right like it's at least the size of like a grown man's hand it's in pristine condition there's not a fold or a wrinkle or a crease on this photo this is a photo that was treasured by its owner and johnny has no possible way of concealing such a photo on his person

unlike scorpion whose outfit would easily allow him to slip the photo safely and securely like under his big old belt or inside the outer yellow layer of his outfit or even under the black skin tight layer right johnny's wearing a button-down shirt and trousers he's got no place to hold a photo like this yeah and lawrence katsanov even concedes that point is that he's he's like yeah it's just a silly joke like it doesn't make any sense because where would johnny have that that photo right like no there's no place he could carry it where it wouldn't be folded you know so at the beginning of the movie first time we're introduced to johnny we can tell that johnny's big he's not just big like he's absolutely huge he's got the kind of star power that allows him to literally just ditch the set while filming the last scene of the movie leave the director groveling for him to come back and it doesn't even faze him right we got newspapers in china writing about him

you know whether it's good or bad is debatable but uh you know art lean recognizes him he's big right johnny is definitely big enough that wherever scorpion is he could have heard of johnny oh sure yeah absolutely scorpion and sub-zero they are fighting for outworld but they are from earth right? I can at least say pretty conclusively in the video game universe, Scorpion's clan, the Shirai Ryu, and Sub-Zero's clan, the Lin Kuei, are both on Earth. They are Earthlings. They're humans. They're not from Outworld. They're not Tarkatan warriors or from the sub-training realm of Shokan or something like that. So something I just want to note, this doesn't have anything to do with the theory, but I was always sad watching the movie, but also like impressed at how powerful Shang Tsung must be because like when Johnny walks off the set you know he meets his old master but it turns out to be Shang Tsung and this means that you know

since Shang Tsung can become him it means that he beat Johnny's old master which is kind of sad but also like he must be so powerful to beat Johnny's old master or this was the theory I was trying to work on but there's no evidence to support it it means that Shang Tsung was Johnny's master. Oh no, it was him all along. He beat Master Boyd a long time ago and he trained Johnny. Whoa. I mean, he certainly was good at impersonating Master Boyd. Now, wait, when he goes up to Master Boyd, so Master Boyd is reading a tabloid newspaper that is called the National Examiner, which is a clear parody of the National Enquirer. On the back of that magazine, there is a horoscope and one of the creatures on the horoscope is Scorpio. Perhaps this is foreshadowing that he will fight scorpion whoa dude you've done your research it's right across from johnny cage picture on the other side no i mean of course definitely like why else would they put

that in that scene they definitely it's not a real magazine they made it right yeah one of the other cool headlines i like on the national examiner is at the very top it says amazing 98.4 percent of all products made in ohio wow all of them ohio the manufacturing mega center of the world right and then of course the main headline is about johnny cage being a fake right this is how johnny ends up entering the tournament his old master convinces him too and it turns out that it was shang seng in disguise lu kang enters the tournament because he had a vision where his brother got murdered by shang seng and it turned out that it was true so he enters for revenge. Well and of course Liu Kang feels guilty about this because he was supposed to be training to be the chosen one and he left and so they started training his brother instead to be the one to fight Shang Tsung and that's why his brother died. Yeah and Sonya Blade she's in

it for similar reasons basically she feels like she got her partner her old partner killed by Kano the man she's hunting. Where's Kano? So she sees Kano enter this tournament and she's like all right I'm gonna join him sneaks onto the boat now I just want to call attention to how amazing this movie is it's so tight like we're 15 minutes in they establish all three main characters very quickly they all have motivations we care about them and they're already on the boat to the island they wasted no time no they did a good job I will say about the the the soundtrack that was one of the last things they did was the soundtrack for this film and they kept trying lots of different musics and none of them fit and finally they decided on this one that we got and dude techno fits really well it was so successful it went like platinum within two weeks of the movie's release the soundtrack or something like that it's an amazing soundtrack oh it's so good

I know like man I was actually as I watched this movie I was like I want to get that sample like that guy yelling and just uses everything like my phone my ringtone my sms alert okay so so as a kid i completely like understood the lu kang plot like what's going on here but it didn't quite dawn on me that like he had escaped from an awful cult that lives in like the rubble of an old temple and wears identical clothes and worships some old white dude and routinely sends kids into death matches for the good of the world. I never grasped that. I always kind of took it as like he left the old ways behind and became a city slicker, moving to America. But watching it again, I'm like, he escaped a cult. The white god that they worship does exist. He's an actual god, yeah. He doesn't seem to be particularly all-powerful. Why didn't you save my brother? Why didn't you? I love that answer because I was like, well, what are you going to say to that, Liu Kang?

Why didn't you? So Kano, I mean, many people know this. I don't know what I think about you, but Kano, such a good actor. Just perfect. He is the perfect Kano. Oh, yeah, I love Kano. No, he was so good that the creators of Mortal Kombat retconned Kano's character, who he was originally Japanese-American. That's why his name is Kano. And they were like, he's Australian now. He became Australian. he became that guy right well in every subsequent mortal combat game especially mortal combat 11 if you watch it the man playing kano is purposefully channeling the actor from the movie like he's trying so hard to be him he does a good job all right well okay so they're at the pier sonia she's a maniac like she just tackles johnny she's going around tackling dudes shoving guns in their faces and yelling at them asking where kano is johnny doesn't even know kano is like but boy does he take it in stride like he's like i don't know what you're talking about but i'm sure

i can help you find him he doesn't even think twice like what a star and and right after that why is luke hang antagonizing johnny he's like smile gives him a fake smile and says just another starstruck fan huh like why this man just had a gun in his face what that means though is that when Liu Kang threw his luggage into the ocean, he knew exactly who Johnny Cage was and how big of a star he was. Well, I was going to point that out. This proves that everyone here recognizes Johnny and did so instantly. Possibly not Sonya. Maybe Sonya didn't. You're right. But it's not a stretch to say everyone else recognizes him. Scorpion would have also recognized him. And if Scorpion likes fighting and being a fighter understood that Johnny Cage can actually fight, maybe he would have you know become his fan right yeah yeah so right after that Shang Tsung pops out and Sonia is not even surprised that Shang Tsung the owner of this random boat she snuck onto knows her by

name he comes out and says Sonia Blade and she's just like where's Kino yeah like what I would be a little more surprised in this situation and then Johnny comes to her rescue and is like hey be nice to the lady. She's just doing her job. One, Shang Tsung isn't being mean. Two, she doesn't need backup. She could radio for it. And three, how do you know this maniac with a gun is doing her job at all? She didn't introduce anything to imply that she's doing her job. She did not show him a badge or anything. So then Scorpion and Sub-Zero enter. Really, really good. The music starts up and they just open the door and just glide into the room. No, it's very good. This whole time, Scorpion's pupil-less eyes are locked on Johnny Cage from the instant the door opens. Yeah, he's definitely very focused on Johnny when he comes in. He's targeting Johnny. He knows who he wants to go for, right? And this shows that none of them were really assigned people to fight yet, presumably.

So Scorpion wanted to fight his idol. Why not, right? I guess, okay. So they didn't get to fight right there. Raiden comes in and stops them. Raiden says, your sideshow freaks attacked my fighters. They didn't. Yeah, they didn't. I mean, he did, like, if you think of that sneak in his hand as a weapon, he did brandish a weapon at them. Right, but so was Sonya. She brandished the weapon first. She points the gun right at Sub-Zero. And then Sub-Zero just disarms her instead of hurting her. So they get to the tournament. They have a banquet. Sub-Zero freezes a guy. They follow after Shang Tsung. they're right they they eavesdrop on them um i just want to mention after the eavesdrop on these guys and chang sung is like we are not alone and then points at them um they're running away then they try to follow katana right i just love always have always will love the scene where all of a sudden they're all following johnny and johnny says i know exactly where we're going katana went

this way i mean even as a kid like everything johnny says is just hilarious just filled with pure spider webs go that way there obviously nobody has gone that way for at least like several decades but the thing is it's like johnny clearly knows that too he must be doing this just for the dumb joke of it right yeah no i mean he says he can smell her perfume that's also clearly a dumb joke and then right before that when they just see randomly goro's shadow wandering around um you know he says to sonya hey you go in there find out what that was no i mean uh lyndon ashby he honestly has good comedic timing he delivers his lines very well but i love also that this hallway of spider webs that no one has ever used apparently in the history of this building also leads directly back to the hall that Goro was just in that they were running away from it's very good the the comedy is very tight in that scene let's just quickly talk about

that scene though when Kano is talking to Goro first of all Goro is just an amazing puppet I mean they had several versions of this puppet but man he's amazing and they would just do him CG now but actually having like Kano interacting with this real thing like that it's pretty menacing sticking its face in Kano's face and just like that thing is crazy man and like yeah it like they spent so much time on that I love how Kano is talking to Goro and he knows that he's talking to Goro and he's seen Goro and then Goro stands up and Kano looks at him as if he has never seen him before in his life. He is so shocked and terrified by this giant evil creature. And you gotta admit, Goro's freaking imposing. And what's interesting is that in this movie, they tried to sort of give more personality to characters who didn't necessarily at that time have a lot of personality. And one thing they tried to do with Goro was that he was supposed to be very pompous

and actually have a slight rivalry with Shang Tsung because of course Shang Tsung lost the tournament 500 years before and the only reason they've won nine tournaments is because Shang Tsung went and got Goro and he's like their champion now. So he's the reigning champion and I kind of do think you can detect sort of this hidden enmity between Shang Tsung and Goro whenever they speak. Who do you think would win in a fight, Goro or Shang Tsung? Because I got to go with Goro, like, hands down. Yeah, I kind of think Goro would win. No, Goro would rip Shang Tsung apart. What does Shang Tsung have to defend against Goro? I mean, we're talking about movie Shang Tsung. Like, of course, in the video games, Shang Tsung can turn into Goro. Right, yes. All right. So Liu Kang fights the lion man. Right, yeah. So the matches start, right? They actually start fighting in the tournament and Liu Kang fights some random, yeah, lion

man who wasn't even in the games. Why did they add this guy? Yeah, that's a little odd. They could have picked anyone. They could have picked, I don't know, Ermac or something. Yeah, I mean, I think possibly it might have been a budgetary constraint because a lot of the other characters require costumes and stuff like that. Well, yeah, and everyone has a power. Everyone in this movie has a power. This man's power is that he can roar. Right. That's all. And that's something that required no special effects. Exactly. Well, and I do know that all of Shang Tsung's like sort of ninja soldiers were originally going to be Tarkatan warriors like Baraka, but they didn't go with that idea. And I think it was probably budgetary to like, you have to attach blades to every single one of these people's arms. Don't you think that Shang Tsung sucking this living man's soul out and calling it a fatality was kind of cheap?

Shang Tsung, what are you doing? So the guy was beaten. This was your own fatality. When someone was beaten, you can't do a fatality. He knew Liu Kang wasn't going to. So he's like, I'll do one. If you're crazy enough to criticize this movie, which why would you criticize it? One of the criticisms that people said was like, well, you know, it's not bloody enough. it's not rated r it should be rated r and i'm like it's for kids right but i'm like dude man like like kids were the ones playing mortal kombat even though it was very bloody you who who is your target audience like this was our entire childhood comprised in like one movie you know like and we never never in a million years would have seen it if it was rated exactly like we wanted to see highlander so bad but it was raider and we would have loved highlander oh my goodness we would have loved highlander and like that movie it would well i mean they do chop off people's heads but

like how hard would you know you could have made that pg-13 like and we would have just yeah just just loved it anyway so but what was interesting was that the producer says that his reasoning for why like that fatality right there wasn't bloody was he was like in the world of video games bloody violence was really new and original and something that hadn't really been seen before mortal combat but in the world of film it had been done a lot because this was made in 1995 which of course was right after the 80s where gore was like the new big thing and he was like if we went really gory with this this would be just like friday the 13th and like they had seen so much gore that they wanted to try to be more creative and i'm sure someone did tell them make it pg-13 but like the producer himself was just saying like we wanted to find more creative ways to be just as brutal as the games but not gory and i will say that as a kid like the deaths in this movie did

seem very brutal to me like this seemed like a pretty hardcore movie even though it's never gory right it has no gore yeah zero gore in it and i i think that putting limitations on yourself sometimes leads to greatness right like forcing yourself to not choose the easy way of like it's brutal so it's gory right like but finding a way to show the brutality without using the gore that can lead to bringing out the best in a movie right certainly i think the first time we see blood in this movie is at the very end when when shang sun when his lip bleeds his lip bleeds it was the only blood in the whole movie and he was so surprised to see it and he was in a pg-13 movie i mean just just to go along with this the very next fight sonia versus kano that's a brutal fight yeah like everything about it is just oozing like brutality there's a really really big man gigantic knife he's huge he's imposing on her on purpose she's so tiny compared to i mean he's just like punching

her in the face and then she freaking breaks his neck as he begs for his life and like you know breaking someone's neck on camera is hard to do in a movie that's not rated r but they do it by just showing her while it happens. But it's just as effective as if you could see him. And as a kid, I remember that seeming pretty brutal to me. It is. So this is a good point to talk about just some alternate scenes. One deleted scene that didn't even get filmed, right? Like it was just a planned scene was that one of Shang Tsung's bodyguards was going to be Jade, you know, a fan favorite combatant from Mortal Kombat. And she was going to fight Sonya Blade and how it's described in the script or whatever is that they walk up to each other jade bows and as she's bowing sonia blade kicks her in the head and breaks her neck and that's the entire fight oh no that would have been so anticlimactic and great also like ruin sonia's character like while

someone is bowing like she breaks kano's neck after he's being a huge jerk dude she's american and she doesn't bow on courtesy. She doesn't wait to break people's necks. So I think, you know, good for them for not doing that scene. So now we're getting to the real meat of this movie. This is the big Johnny Cage versus Scorpion fight. And I would say, arguably, the fight of the movie. Like, this is the main event, in my opinion. Well, to me, I think the two greatest, like, in terms of just how impressive they are, the two greatest fights of this movie are the scorpion fight and the reptile fight like those two fights are just insane in how they're choreographed and and what's interesting is that those two scenes that are the best fight scenes the movies were actually choreographed by robin show oh well robin show is a great choreographer these two scenes in particular like set themselves

apart from the rest of the movie yeah they feel different they're such like fast-paced like brutal fights like I mean they're just they're non-stop and like and like reptiles fight is insane like the things they do and they're also both of them are really short and like we get those those those two scenes are like a universe unto themselves right like as a kid like those scenes took a long time right like that was like me just watching the whole movie was like those two scenes and just setting the tone in the scorpion scene of like johnny walking alone in this symmetrical forest Like, what's he even doing here? Everyone else is on the beach doing their fights. Scorpion is waiting for Johnny in this strange forest. But yeah, like, I mean, I went through this fight so many times as a kid. And I'm just like, man, like, like up until the point where Scorpion takes him to the other world and Johnny Cage, like, gets maybe one hit against him.

This is like flawless victory for Scorpion. Like, Johnny can't even touch this guy. Well, he does murder his snake by having it crash into a tree, which I hope those snakes grow back. Like, poor Scorpion, he might have just been, like, handicapped for life. And while he is played by Chris Casamasa, he is voiced by Ed Boon. As he always was in the games. Ed Boon is Scorpion's voice. He recorded some new lines for this one, like, get down here and welcome. Yeah, I'm going to go through these. So, first he says, get over here. And then they fight for a while. And then he pops out a snake and says, come here. And then, you know, Johnny is really lucky that Scorpion runs out of rope. Let me guess. Your argument is going to be, if you were the biggest fan of a star and you saw him, you'd be like, hey, you get over here. You'd say, get over here. Come here. And then Scorpion takes him home. Like, he takes Johnny into his own home.

He is very welcoming. And he says, welcome. right like he wants to show off his house to his idol you with the combatants are this nice and and and accommodating and and then he just starts kicking the absolute crap out of johnny like really just kicking and kicking him he just murderizes him and then when johnny like starts to leave he says get down here and why did johnny go up there what was he thinking that was a bad place to be anyway the fight culminates with them both on the ground scorpion rips off his face to show the skull he's gonna do his big fire breathing attack the fight ends with johnny cage grabbing like a spiked shield and just chopping scorpion to bits um chop scorpion's head in half scorpion explodes body parts fly everywhere and then landing in the exact same spot as a large amount of scorpion's body parts is a pristine signed photo of johnny cage to my greatest fan scorpion

kept it on him all this time it meant the world to him right and that is definitely what i always thought i i don't really see any way of proving that johnny cage had the photo and dropped it there it just doesn't make any sense he couldn't have had it and he wouldn't have done it totally and like i said the producer even said this was a joke and we weren't sure if we were going to keep it like where would johnny have this but he's cocky and arrogant and it's funny and it worked and we kept it. Then he said, we're really proud of that fight and we think it's the best thing in this movie. It is. They're right. It's such a good fight. Regardless of whether Scorpion had it or Johnny dropped it, the text confirms that Scorpion is his greatest fan, right? That's what it says. Johnny wouldn't lie. No, he wouldn't lie. He's a very truthful man. I will say in this fight, so like you were saying,

like Scorpion is absolutely wasting Johnny Cage. johnny gets like maybe two hits in on him right and it's really sad because as soon as scorpion takes off his face he becomes like exactly that's what i was gonna say next is is scorpion's fatal flaw is that he turns into an animatronic skull man who can't dodge or fight can't move yeah and if he had just thought that one through a scorpion would have won i love maybe maybe his real fatal flaw was that he just couldn't bear to murder his idol. He was frozen with, you know, the fear of what he would become. He's from Japan. And in Japan, they have a word for this. I forget what it is exactly, but you have your outside face and your inside face. You have the outside face that you show to the world. And the inside face was just your real true vulnerable self. And so he's showing his most vulnerable self to Johnny, the person who he loves. And he's just bearing his

full self to him and then of course that's why why he loses he couldn't do it he couldn't beat johnny this is a bit of a stretch no no this is completely true what you're saying well i mean maybe it was like scorpion was like i am just beating the absolute crap out of this guy like i really need to give him a break i'll give him a little handicap okay i'll just i'll stand still you know i won't move i'll just i'll just breathe fire at him that'll give him like a fighting chance right you know but it sure did wow wait no wait he's not even sacrificing himself here he's like i'm gonna give johnny the win right because scorpion knows he can come back he's already dead he's already dead he's a specter he'll just come back again man he always comes back i mean scorpion has no reason to fear death he lives in hell like he's he'll be back but also like dude how did johnny get out of there like where even is that place he got teleported there

like how did he get out of there man and this is evidence that scorpion maybe helped johnny get back because who can get out of hell only scorpion right like he's the only one who can willfully teleport there and back so he must have brought johnny back afterwards i guess his biggest fan i mean there's no other explanation like like what there's a door that just leads out no like scorpion someone who can teleport had to have teleported him back so as far as my theory goes that's about it for uh my evidence unfortunately because that's the end of scorpion that was his full five minutes of screen time um but we can keep talking about the rest of the movie next fight sub-zero i feel like this fight was uh in my opinion one of the biggest rip-offs of the movie because i'm a pretty big sub-zero fan scorpion was my guy and sub-zero was yours back in the day i mean i like them both i'm not not a weirdo but um no i i really like sub-zero in the

games in this movie and like his big thing in this fight is that he's so stupid that he thinks he can just make like a growing dome of cold around him right and just like kind of watches Liu Kang swing around a bucket of water a few times and then throw it at him and also there are few bad guys in this film who are built up so much as Sub-Zero like they really built him up like he breaks that guy at the banquet like why else is that there but to show like you know this guy is insane and so you're expecting a really good fight and then Liu Kang I mean I guess he is so powerful that Liu Kang can only win through trickery but right well and I was gonna say like geez Raiden and Kitana are just cheating the crap out of this tournament right like Kitana used her whole fight to help her opponent and basically tell him how to beat Sub-Zero and then Raiden put the water there the producer even acknowledges that he's like yeah this is kind of cheating but

But, like, you know, I think Raiden probably rationalized this as, like, they might want a drink. He certainly took a drink after putting the water down. But, like, how little faith did Raiden and Katana have in Liu Kang that neither one thought he could beat Sub-Zero, right? Well, I mean, he couldn't have, though. Like, honestly, if he hadn't had water, what's he going to do? Sub-Zero just became an ever-expanding dome of freezingness. Like, it was a pretty good attack if Liu Kang hadn't had water. But I really like Sub-Zero's stance. I love that he's not a really tall guy, but also his stance puts him at half the height of Robin's show. So after the Sub-Zero fight, there's a big montage where Goro kills everyone. I always liked Art Lean, even though he's not in the movie very much. He just comes off as a nice, friendly guy. So I kind of think they did a good job, despite the fact that he has next to no screen time.

You kind of feel for the guy. And you even feel like he's friends with him, even though they like basically never talk to him. All right, Lean, he's Williams from Enter the Dragon. I know, yeah, he totally is. We'll talk about Enter the Dragon in a minute. He's the nice, charismatic guy who gets killed to make you feel bad and make you hate the bad guys. That's his job. So yeah, Goro's really, you know, laying it thick on them, how powerful he is. And Raiden has to give them motivational speech about punching him in the balls. And Johnny then goes and makes a deal with Shang Tsung that I guess the deal is I, Johnny, get to challenge a specific fighter. And then you, Shang Tsung, get to challenge a specific fighter. So we got to talk about the Goro fight with Johnny. Yeah, OK, dude, like this is a really good fight. It's one of my favorite fights in the movie, even though it's a smaller fight.

I just love how much they built up Goro. We know he's huge. Like, he's a big, big, mean fighter who's won, like, nine tournaments in a row. And Johnny just absolutely mops the floor with him. Gets 100% a flawless victory against freaking Goro. And in the games, you know, in the Mortal Kombat games, there's always, like, the pre-ending fight where you fight some big monster and then the actual ending fight where you fight the main bad guy. And the pre-ending fight with the big monster is always a million times harder than the actual ending fight. any attack from goro can be a fatality any attack is a fatality according to mortal combat the journey begins if you want to beat goro in mortal combat 1 you pretty much have to flawless victory him like he it's crazy how hard he is at least last time i played it when you were a little kid maybe i was kind of young but no i mean johnny cage destroys goro goro doesn't even get a hit

on him and there's no acknowledgement from shang sung no announcement of a flawless victory you know after he called goro's fight against art a flawless victory when it clearly wasn't art was punching him all over i was so mad i was like geez johnny is dude he beat the two toughest fighters in the entire movie yeah and i do know that they were going to have a bigger fight between johnny and goro but like the puppet was just very hard for them to actually do fights with so dude um don't you just love the poetic justice that you learn only if you watched mortal combat the journey dude i was just gonna talk about this goro he fought his brother you know because they were arguing over i know no it's genius it's genius it's they are paying off a backstory that no one even knew about but they're doing it intentionally yeah definitely because that video didn't release until after the movie came out in theaters right like that was to go along with like the vhs release

What we're referencing is it's an animated video called Mortal Kombat The Journey Begins. It's weird. Half of the video is like cartoon animation, like 2D. And the other half is like interspersed throughout the video are these 3D fight scenes. It's kind of odd since at that point the Mortal Kombat games weren't 3D. But one of the 3D fight scenes is a fight between Goro and his older brother. Goro's older brother wants to give tribute to their dad. And Goro wants to give the same tribute to their dad. and so they fight over this tribute and goro ends up dangling off of a cliff goro's older brother went and got the tribute and goro's like hey that'd be a cool thing to give my dad i'll fight you for it right goro's brother is just like a stand-up dude who's like you know totally entertaining his brother's stupidness forgot that his society hates stand-up dudes right exactly so yeah goro's dangling from a cliffside and his brother decides to be nice and helps him up

because Goro's like, just save me. I'll let you have the tribute. And he's like, oh, okay, great. I can get my brother and make my dad happy. Win-win. No, no, no, no. Goro immediately grabs his brother and flings him off the cliff. So now his brother's dangling by just one hand. And he says, Goro, please save me. You can have the tribute. And Goro says, no, and stomps on his foot and his brother falls. And that's the story of how Goro's brother died. So Johnny Cage beating Goro in exactly the manner in which he murdered his brother is just poetic justice. It's genius. They're paying off a backstory that they knew about. That didn't exist. Right, yeah. But like, what commitment? And they really were committed to really the backstory of their characters and the mythology of Mortal Kombat in this. Yeah, but don't you think that maybe they wrote the Goro and his brother story based on the movie?

No, man, no, man. These guys were genius, pure genius. Well, I mean, it was the same screenwriter. You said it yourself. I'm sure he had written backstories. But he probably wrote the movie and then he was thinking about it. He's like, hey, I could have Goro do something like that before. That would be a good callback, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's sort of a retroactive payoff. Either way, it's genius. But what's also great about that scene is that it is also an amazing payoff and end to Johnny Cage's arc. What started as a joke of, this is where you fall down, is his most badass moment in the entire movie. This is where you fall down. Oh, it's so good. And, oh, we cannot let this fight slide by us without commending Goro's voice actor's performance. When he snatches Johnny Cage's sunglasses, he laughs about them, crushes them, and then...

oh as a kid i always tried to imitate that that laugh and then that perfect oh after and i just can't get it right like the the voice actor just does it so perfectly amazing fight it brings johnny's entire character to a head like you said that it finishes his arc in just the perfect way yeah and honestly i think he has one of the better arcs in the in the movie right like He wanted to prove that he is a great martial artist. He's a freaking great martial artist. Johnny is actually the true champion of Mortal Kombat. I agree. I was going to ask you about this, but I agree. Clearly, he beat the reigning champion, Goro. He's the one who won. Like, sure, Shang Tsung can decide to fight if he wants to, but Shang Tsung didn't have to. Like, that could have been the end of the tournament. Right. Shang Tsung didn't want to fight. And, yeah, if he'd beaten Johnny, if Goro won, then that would have been it.

It's great that Johnny Cage's arc is just like, that he has to, like, he thinks he has such a smart, cool plan. His plan is literally punch the guy in the crotch and run away. Punch the balls and run away. What an awesome... It's a good plan. But, like, it actually, like, I mean, I'm laughing. Show me in the rule book where it says you can't punch your opponent's balls. But, like, you know, it's funny and it's kind of a joke. But at the same time, it actually is a really genius way of showing his arc. Like his whole thing was to show I'm the greatest fighter ever. Like he's showboating. He's he's all about the image. What does he have to do to win? He has to be a little weasel, right? Like he's got to punch the guy in the crotch and just run away. That final fight with Goro isn't in front of an audience. You know, no one knows that it happened. And like you said, no one commends him for it.

And he doesn't mind. No, he he got the the real recognition he needed was from within. He just needed to know that he was the best. I love Johnny. Oh, Johnny. But yeah, Shang Tsung decides that he wants to fight Sonya. He takes her into Outworld. Liu Kang and Johnny follow. And Liu Kang ends up fighting Reptile. Now, like you said, this fight is amazing. It's insane. It's noteworthy because I've never seen a fight like that in this movie, rarely even outside of this movie. It's so fast-paced. Like, it's so nonstop. Like, Reptile is just tearing into Liu Kang from the instant he bursts out of that statue, right? I mean, the statue becomes him. Yeah, and I want to say just a little bit about the brutality of the fight sequences. So, I forgot to mention this. In the Scorpion fight, Johnny Cage, like, the actor who played him, Lyndon Ashby, actually got, like, punched in the kidney and was, like, peeing blood afterward.

And the producer said he was, like, just eating painkillers like Skittles for a while after that because he was in so much pain from that like he was actually getting the crap beaten out of him in that fight and then in uh the reptile fight like luke hang broke three ribs when he gets like slammed into a wall and he just like got up and he was like said to the actor who was playing reptile he said okay because he was also choreographing the scene he was like okay we're gonna keep going just don't hit me on this side and so reptile had to hit him on the other side for the rest of that sequence and then he went and probably went to the hospital the difference here though is that luke kang he he came from like old school hong kong like right you know chinese filmmakers and those guys are tough as nails right well and that that was actually another bit of trivia from the scorpion fight scene is when scorpion does that flip down luke kang's crew which were a bunch of

old school like fight coordinators from hong kong were just like whoa like the american filmmakers put like a pad down for him to land on like you know if we get the shot we don't care what happens after the person lands i love how reptile starts out at this just insanely rapid tempo and you get the feeling through the fight that his strategy like it goes with the music yeah but his strategy is to be so fast and brutal that he will murder his opponent as quick as possible but he just doesn't have the energy to continue it right and lu kang's got the endurance and slowly gets the upper hand over reptile because he's not running out of energy and reptile you know he's all tired by the end like i mean kudos to reptile he didn't expect to be absorbed by a weird gargoyle no he came out swinging no but i i just i like the pageantry of that fight i like the the story they tell and the actor does an amazing job of just like fighting in a very animalistic like

snake-like way yeah it's a good scene and another reason the reptile fight is great is because they managed to perfectly adapt an aspect from the game that reptile is a surprise character despite the fact that reptile is in this whole film so he can't be a surprise but the way he becomes a fighter is just like out of nowhere it's so surprising right it's like that it was just the perfect adaptation of of how he shows up in the game even though of course in the game i gotta wonder like so there were a lot of those weird demon statues would they all do that if you pressed yourself up against their chest i don't know because some of them had little creatures inside them i i don't really understand those so we gotta say though robin show's hair is just glorious right it's amazing his hair dude his hair in this movie and in beverly hills ninja like his hair was just magnificent as a man with great hair so reptile fights over it's time for

the fight with Shang Tsung it's not the greatest fight but Shang Tsung saves it just by being such a good actor and delivering his lines like a maniac yeah um he's really good you can't run from me Shang I don't need to run which was in the trailers but I don't think in the movies I mean I remember the line but yeah I don't I don't think it's in the movie so I did like the part where they're having kind of this like he's talking to his dead brother and his dead brother's like I don't know trying to convince him to join him and his responses are like making knives come out of the ground I don't quite get what's going on but I like it I think it's it's sinister the choreography isn't as intense as some of the other fights but it is a very good end to Liu Kang's arc yeah it wraps up his arc very well it's sinister it really feels you know the stakes are high it feels like someone's gonna die here and then someone does

die right like Shang Tsung gets impaled on his own spikes so it's a good end and then that good end is followed by the greatest end when Liu Kang says let's go home and then they go home and then dude they get home and they're all happy and everyone's celebrating and yeah they're like so you expected us to win or something it's like didn't have a clue you humans are so unpredictable unbelievable and then shao khan bursts out of the temple and he's huge he's like a skyscraper are you gonna fight him in mortal kombi i've come for your souls what's johnny gonna do punch him in the balls i do nothing they're not gonna do anything and yet they're so ready to fight him all of them it's just immediate fighter poses and raiden i don't think so okay i don't know what they're gonna do they're so lucky he becomes just a regular actor for the sequel it's such a good ending they're just they're so ready to fight this monster like this is

not a doubt in their eyes they're unwavering this so about my theory about scorpion you might buy it you might not as far as i'm concerned there's no possible way for johnny to have had that photo there's no reason for him to have signed it and dropped it on the entrails of his opponent it just doesn't make any sense that photo has to have been in scorpion's clothes so scorpion must have been johnny's greatest fan as far as i'm concerned yeah now why does this matter like why do i care if you believe it dude this makes scorpion's character so much more human right like it gives him like an almost endearing super fan side right and ambitions beyond just like revenge it makes his fight with johnny cage both fulfilling and heart-wrenching because you know it makes johnny cage is not knowing that he just beheaded his greatest fan a tragedy but also i'm getting ajax vibes here it takes one of the greatest movies ever made and adds an entire hidden but

fully fleshed subplot and emotional arc for Scorpion. The guy who never had any emotions except for anger. I would say it is about as fully fleshed as Scorpion was when he died. No, no, no. Because now he gets to come face to face with his idol and that's how he dies. Yeah. Well, I mean I like it. I like it. Like I said, I always, you know, I was a little disappointed when people said Johnny Cage just dropped that photo. I was like, what? And especially when like the producer confirmed it. I was like, no, it was supposed to be that Scorpion had it like that adds more depth to his character so i do like it that's all i wanted to hear do we want to talk about enter the dragon we can't get around the fact that some heretics have claimed that this movie is nothing but a third rate ripoff of bruce lee's enter the dragon well our dad after we watched mortal kombat he told us about enter the dragon this is a pre-internet age right

so he wasn't looking up fan theories or anything like he recognized it immediately he was like yeah this this movie takes a lot of inspiration from enter the dragon and then he showed us enter the dragon which i'm like why would you show your kids enter the dragon that's like yeah i mean it's not the goriest movie but it's not for kids it's not for kids though like people are getting their necks broken left and right like bruce lee is just constantly killing people well and they when they kill williams right and that part never sat well with me as a kid like after we watched like dad showed it to us like that part haunted me a little where it's just like oh you just killed off this like really likable cool character and then he's a cool like in a really brutal way like and you drop his body into like the ocean or whatever well like and he dies like in all these girls are just like laughing as he dies it's like really sad yeah it's it's an interesting film but

it is very different from mortal kombat there are certainly similarities right what are the similarities evil guy holding a tournament on his own personal island well i hate to break it to you but that was all literally taken like word for word from mortal combat the game like i mean if anything ripped off into the dragon it was mortal combat the game because read the manual for the original game it says the evil shang sung is holding a tournament on his island there are certainly some similarities with the characters of williams and art lean and how they are kind of both killed off to tug at your heartstrings and how the main white character who is roper in enter the dragon is named played by john saxon who is the dad in nightmare on elm street he kind of makes friends with williams on the docks which of course is what what johnny cage does with art lean on the docks that's true there's the similarity of goro being this huge big guy who can beat anyone

and the main bad guy, Han, has like this big buff guy who looks like someone else's head was transplanted onto his body. Yeah, I agree. Like when I first saw him, I was like, is that CGI? He has like the wimpiest head and then he takes off his shirt and you're just like, oh, whoa. He's huge. This guy is massive. And the fact that like they kind of build him up like no one can beat him and you think, oh, maybe Bruce Lee's going to fight him but then randomly Roper, John Saxon fights him and wins And he wins by playing a little dirty, by biting his leg. And he definitely doesn't flawless victory, I'm like Johnny Cage did. Roper is an interesting character. He mainly just seems to like losing money. I mean, I think his thing is that he likes scams, right? Yeah, yeah. So him and Williams, their scamming the fight was like so obvious. It was so obvious, but also... They were not good at it. I haven't watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies, but like, I really liked Roper and Williams.

Like, this could have been a buddy film about them. like bruce lee is always just so mean and he's constantly murdering people that it's hard for me to root for him even though i know he's on the right side but to his credit bruce lee in this movie never accepts one of the prostitutes or that i mean that's putting it nicely they're sex slaves right yeah they're whereas roper and williams both kind of accept these sex slaves without batting an eye and maybe they don't know they're sex slaves maybe they think they're prostitutes but even that it's you know kind of makes me not like their characters very much but they're there are fun characters and they have these little bets going okay so the one big thing of just like the lead choreographer from mortal combat his name is pat e johnson he was an actor in enter the dragon and also i think helped with some of the stunts though he wasn't credited for

that that's cool probably if there are some similarities it might come from the fact that their choreographer and much of mortal combat was choreography had worked on enter the dragon But then also the producer Lawrence Kasanoff said that when he was pitching this idea around, he was pitching it as Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. Oh, well. Which is exactly what this film is, right? That's kind of what it is, kind of. You know, like, I mean, like, it's got the big, like, kind of over-the-top feel of Star Wars, tons of mythology, a lot of the kind of melodrama, you know, the really over-the-top bad guy. And then it's also got a lot of similar plot points and maybe even characters and fights to Enter the Dragon. But it's certainly not a ripoff. I don't know if anyone's ever seriously claiming that. Both are great movies, and Mortal Kombat is a great movie that certainly took some inspiration from Enter the Dragon.

I think we can agree on that. All right. Well, thanks for listening. This has been The Popcorn Isn't Real with me, Torvald, my brother, Leif Ehrich. I just want to remind you that we always put a link to the movie in the description. So make sure you click that link. Watch the movie. It's an amazing movie. I guarantee you won't regret it. Music for this episode was provided by Christine. If you like our podcast, you can always like, review, or subscribe on whatever platform you get your podcasts. And, of course, you can follow us on Twitter at Popcorn Isn't Real. No apostrophe. Just at Popcorn Isn't Real. All right. See you guys later. Bye.

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