Cage Comes Crashing In: Karl Urban Headlines MK II Trailer

It’s official: The Boys alum Karl Urban will ditch his leather coat from the superhero satire and step into the shades of Mortal Kombat’s Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat II.

The 2021 reboot left fans hungry for the sequel with an end-credits post-credit tease, and Urban’s Cage is confirmed to be in it after he was spotted on the film’s set back in September 2023. Now, Urban is showing off the character in the sequel’s first official trailer.

Urban is no stranger to franchise fare, playing a leather-coated Billyboy in The Boys and going undercover as Commander Spock in the Star Trek film series. In his first look as Cage, Urban is poised to shake things up in Mortal Kombat II as one of Earthrealm’s champions in the battle of good and evil to save their world.

The new film is the fourth live-action movie to be adapted from the games since 1995’s Mortal Kombat first opened in theaters. In a recent marketing stunt, Warner Bros. pitted an official trailer against a fake movie trailer.

The actual trailer was released for Mortal Kombat II, while the fake movie trailer Uncaged Fury was a deliberate cheesy spoof of cheesy action movies from the ’80s and ’90s. It dropped on the same day on Twitter as the official trailer with fake movie titles riffing on Cage’s fictional filmography like Cool Hand Cage, Come Blow With Me, and Rebel Without a Cage.

Mortal Kombat II, a direct sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat reboot, is set for theaters on Oct. 24, 2025. Not only will fans get to see the 30th anniversary of the first Mortal Kombat film, which critics trashed but has enjoyed a massive cult following, but also, the second installment of the reboot, in theaters. The first sequel to the rebooted Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, flopped in 1997, and the bad press contributed to the bankruptcy of game publisher Midway Games in the same year.

After 30 years, Warner Bros. rebooted the film series with Simon McQuoid’s Mortal Kombat in 2021, starring Lewis Tan as MMA fighter Cole Young. Young is whisked into a war between realms to save Earthrealm after the godlike being Raiden recruits him based on his skills and lineage. The first film ended with Young’s search for one of Earthrealm’s champions: Johnny Cage.

Familiar Faces & New Challengers

One of the three playable fighters in Mortal Kombat, Johnny Cage is not new to the action-packed universe. Cage has been playing the video game for more than 30 years.

Mortal Kombat II will find Earthrealm’s champions once again fighting to save their world from a new crop of villains. In addition to Cage, returning characters include Lewis Tan as Cole Young, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han/Noob Saibot, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Scorpion. New to the Mortal Kombat universe are Martyn Ford as Shao Kahn and Adeline Rudolph as Kitana.

Urban’s Cage finally debuts in the film’s new trailer, which was released Wednesday.

Fans get their first look at the character in a seedy-looking dive bar. An excited fan approaches him with an idea to reboot his movie Citizen Cage. “Nobody wants that,” Urban-Cage deadpans. Cage’s fed-up attitudes continue when Sonya Blade and Raiden walk in, recruiting him for a “tournament to the death.” Cage is skeptical and thinks it’s a “superfan” pulling a prank. When Sonya and Raiden assure him it’s not, Urban has one very good line of deadpan reply: “F— that.”

Cage, who has no powers, yells at Sonya and Raiden, “I’m just incredibly handsome,” before begrudgingly nodding and raising his hand to fight them. Cage has one rule though: “No touching the face.”

The trailer is what fans expect from the video game-turned-cult-classic: explosions, beatdowns, over-the-top fatalities, and recognizable quips like Scorpion’s “Get over here!”

Mortal Kombat II hits theaters on Oct. 24, 2025.