Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match (2023)

Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match (2023)

Starring: Joel McHale, Jennifer Grey, Dusan Brown, Grey DeLisle, Robin Atkin Downes, Zehra Fazal, Gilbert Gottfried, Kelly Hu, Matthew Yang King, Phil LaMarr
Director: Ethan Spaulding

The fourth (and so far, last) of the Mortal Kombat Legends series of animated movies serves as a prequel to Scorpion’s Revenge. In this case, the focus is on Johnny Cage, then a C-list actor in the 1980s who is trying to break into the mainstream. The resulting film feels like a character swap of the Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero game, with a dash of Brian Yuzna’s Society thrown in for good measure. It’s a fun 1980s throwback made a few years after 1980s nostalgia had more or less ended and given way to 1990s nostalgia.

Johnny Cage (still voiced by Joel McHale) is finishing up his work on Ninja Mime, which is supposed to be the project that will take him from Don ‘The Dragon” Wilson status to Jean-Claude Van Damme status. Despite a few arguments with the director revolving around Cage liking to substitute his own one-liners, the production is going smoothly until…now.

His producer, Brian Van Jones (“Mad TV’s” Phil LaMarr, who also voiced Samurai Jack), shows up to inform him that he has lost contact with his leading lady, Jennifer (Jennifer Grey, best known for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Since the last scenes involve her, they need her on set to finish Ninja Mime. And since Jennifer’s name is being used to market the film overseas, they can’t just film around her scenes.

So, Johnny Cage and his assistant, Chuck Golden (Dusan Brown, who did voice work on “Blaze and the Monster Machines”), take the former’s Porsche over to her mansion to check up on her. Instead of finding Jennifer, Cage stumbles upon a vicious kung fu duel between two women: Ashrah (Kelly Hu, of Cradle 2 the Grave) and Kia (Grey DeLisle, who had previously voiced Kitana). The women are fighting over some old scroll and Cage is quickly caught in the crossfire. The scuffle spirals out of control after the entire mansion blows up and becomes a bus-car-motorcycle chase on Muholland Drive. In the end, Cage ends up with the scroll while Kia’s body is splattered all over the windshield of a tour bus (“Damn pigeons!”).

Before taking the scroll to the police, Cage gets a call from his (very) foul-mouthed agent, David Doubledy (Gilbert Gottfried, in his final role before passing away). Doubledy offers him a script for a huge superhero movie to be directed by “The Big Guy” (most likely Steven Spielberg), but only in exchange for the scroll. The more Cage questions his agent’s motives, the more belligerent the potty-mouthed sleaze becomes. Finally, Doubledy transforms into a demon and attacks Cage, who manages to knock him out of a window and impale him on a fountain statue.

From this point on, Cage and his assistant head over to the Magical Mansion, a super-secret club for Hollywood elites. Doubledy had mentioned something about letting Cage join the club if he would give him the scroll, so Cage assumes that there is something about that place that may give them more context to what is written on it. Because Cage is both the hero and comic relief, we learn that he humiliated some magician some time before and has been kicked out of any venue remotely related to the profession. Thankfully for him, a mysterious brown-skinned beauty named Jataaka (Zehra Fazal, whose voice credits include “Young Justice” and “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League”) shows up and lets him in. She is doing a pretty good job of distracting him with her feminine wiles as she leads him deeper and deeper into the underground tunnels beneath the mansion.

But before she can completely win him over, Ashrah shows up and another kung fu fight breaks out. Cage initially thinks that Ashrah is the bad guy, but when Jataaka attacks him as well, he joins forces with the white-clad warrior woman to fight the sword-swinging seductress. Jataaka is actually holding her own against two opponents until Chuck shows up and rams a van into her. While Cage, Ashrah, and Chuck are discussing their joining forces and what their next move is, the missing Jennifer shows up in a helicopter and fires an RPG at them, with the concussive force knocking them all out. But immediate death is not on the docket for Johnny Cage…at least not yet…

So, the story of a race to summon (or impede the summoning of) the Mad God Shinnok was the plot of Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. That game also featured the characters Kia, Jataaka, and Sareena, which turns out to be the real identity of Jennifer. And like this film, the game ended with the main character departing for the Mortal Kombat—in other words, this movie ends where Scorpion’s Revenge begins. The main difference is the character swap, which places Johnny Cage in the lead role instead of Bi-Han, or Sub-Zero I.

Although I enjoy the resulting film when taken at face value, there is a problem inherent with this approach. It is the equivalent of trying to make a Die Hard prequel in which John McClane confronts terrorists any number of years before the whole Nakatomi incident: you cannot reconcile the character in the original film with a prequel version who has seen and experienced as much as he has. One of the strengths of Scorpion’s Revenge is the comic relief that stems from Johnny Cage not (initially) realizing that he is not on a movie set. But that character no longer makes sense if you find out that a decade or two earlier he had fought a murderous cult, demons, and an evil god in hand-to-hand combat.

Nor does it make sense that Cage is portrayed as being largely ineffectual in both Scorpion’s Revenge and Battle of the Realms when in this film, we learn that he has the potential for God-like powers. That is the sort of thing you reveal in a sequel, not a prequel. As a result, it would have been better if it were set in between the events of Battle of the Realms and Snow Blind. The jokes involving the advent of superhero movies would have felt more appropriate in that setting than in a faux-80s one. That said, one of the 1980s throwbacks I did enjoy was the flashback to Cage’s childhood, set to a song that is not, I repeat “not,” supposed to be a rip-off of “Eye of the Tiger.” No, not at all.

That said, Johnny Cage is still very entertaining when portrayed as a cocky, sometimes sleazy, overconfident asshole. His narration and goofy way of stumbling into situations that are way beyond his pay grade make him loveable, even when his cocksure attitude should make us the viewer look at him in the opposite way. Dusan Brown’s performance as Chuck Golden—later a Mortal Kombat character named Mokap—makes him a strong foil to Cage and the two work well with each other. The other characters are entertaining, even if they play the material straight—which is why Cage makes a great viewpoint character.

There is less action (and gore) here than in the other three movies. The story is structured a bit like a mystery, punctuated by action sequences in four or five scenes. Ashrah and Johnny Cage get involved with two fights with female enforcers from the Brotherhood of Shadow, both of which involve Cage mistaking Ashrah for an opponent. Those early fights are very heavy on the martial artistry, with some powers being used, but not as much as the other movies. And the fatalities are ultimately played for laughs. The finale takes up the last twenty minutes or so, and involves Ashrah fighting Sareena, Cage fighting Shinnok, and then Ashrah fighting an army of demons. This section has more gore and special moves than the previous scenes, but that’s fine, given the build-up.

Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match can be a lot of fun, but you really have to disassociate it from Scorpion’s Revenge. Unfortunately, that means that it fails as a prequel, even if it works as a standalone piece. If they were going to use Mortal Kombat Mythologies storyline, they should have either stuck with Bi-Han (who was underused in Scorpion’s Revenge) or set this after Battle of the Realms. After Cage’s humiliating defeat in that particular tournament, a redemption arc would have done nicely for his character.