“Mortal Kombat II”: Karl Urban Reveals It’s His Hardest Role to Date
Karl Urban has recently revealed that stepping into the shoes of the iconic Johnny Cage for “Mortal Kombat II” pushed him to his absolute physical limits. The highly anticipated sequel to the 2021 hit sees the New Zealand actor taking on the mantle of the fan-favorite character—a washed-up action star with an ego as big as his roundhouse kick.
Karl Urban: From “The Boys” to “Mortal Kombat II”
For the star, the transition from Billy Butcher’s brute force to Johnny Cage’s precise martial arts style was anything but simple. Coming off the fourth season of Amazon’s gritty satire “The Boys,” where his character Billy Butcher was sidelined with a cancer storyline, the actor felt surprisingly restless.
He wasn’t battered and bruised like usual; he was itching for a fight. Fate, it seems, had a sense of humor. A week after telling his agent he needed something with “heavy-action content,” the script for Mortal Kombat II landed on his desk. Be careful what you wish for.
The Physical Demands of Johnny Cage
Unlike the raw, street-fighting brawls of “The Boys,” the world of “Mortal Kombat” demands a level of technical perfection that Karl Urban hadn’t encountered before. To prepare, the actor didn’t just hit the gym. He immersed himself in the culture of competitive martial arts, attending karate tournaments to understand the discipline and upbringing that would have shaped a character like Johnny Cage in his youth.
He said on EW, “I asked for a heavy-action content movie, and for my sins, they gave me one. It was the most challenging role that I’ve ever undertaken in my career. It’s the martial arts. The form and the style of martial arts is so specific, and the choreography, at times, is so definitive in its movement, and there’s a precision of execution for it to look good. It was a huge challenge.”
A Character in Decline
The “Mortal Kombat II” version of Johnny Cage isn’t the prime superstar some might expect. Director Simon McQuoid introduces him as a fading Hollywood relic, grinding through the convention circuit and clinging to past glories from the era of Van Damme and Stallone. This narrative arc provides a fascinating layer to the action. When Lord Raiden recruits him to join Earthrealm’s champions, Johnny is rusty.
He’s out of practice. This lack of “match fitness” becomes a key plot point, particularly in a teased showdown with the deadly Kitana. Urban notes that Johnny is “sloppy” in these early fights, lacking the connectivity and flow of a true warrior. This allowed the production to lean into physical comedy, channeling the spirit of Jackie Chan—where high-stakes danger meets frantic improvisation. It’s a delicate balance of humor and peril that aims to humanize the larger-than-life character.
When asked what Johnny Cage would do if he were to attend the New York Comic Con 2025, The Pop Verse reported Karl Urban saying, “In the film, we shot a sequence where Johnny Cage is attending a comic con, and nobody is in his line, and nobody knows who Johnny Cage is. So, at the point that we find Johnny Cage in our story, the world has forgotten him, and he’s a down-and-out former martial arts action movie star.”
He added, “And that’s really the starting point for Johnny Cage in this movie. Which is a fun place to start him, and through the course of the film, we get to see him transform into a champion of Earth Realm, as he’s involuntarily drawn into the world of ‘Mortal Kombat’.
Final Thoughts
Urban joins a returning cast that includes Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, and Mehcad Brooks as Jax, along with new faces like Tati Gabrielle and Adeline Rudolph. The sequel promises to raise the stakes as the champions face off against the looming threat of Shao Kahn. For fans, the addition of Johnny Cage is the missing piece of the puzzle.
