Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms is the sequel to 2020’s Scorpion’s Revenge. These two animated films have put the series in a new light as they put familiar characters and franchise staples in a different medium. Senior Gaming Editor Michael Leri recently sat down with Jeremy Adams and Rick Morales, the screenwriter and producer, respectively, about adapting the franchise to 2D animation, the faithfulness it provides, how to kill certain important characters, where to go from here, and more. Just be warned that this interview contains spoilers.
Battle of the Realms is coming out just about a year and four months after Scorpion’s Revenge. This movie was only announced in June. That’s a pretty tight turnaround. So was this movie greenlit pretty soon after the first one? Can you talk about that process?
Jeremy Adams: We pretty much did them simultaneously. I think I turned in my first draft of Scorpion’s Revenge in early 2018. Animation takes quite a while. So I always knew there would be a second movie. We knew there would be two and that was going to be our chance to explore the Mortal Kombat universe. But as with anything, I had to keep that quiet. [laughs]
It was funny because as people talked about the first movie, they were like, “Wow, you nerfed Liu Kang!” And I was like, “You guys don’t even know!” [laughs]
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I literally tried to say it at the end of Scorpion’s Revenge so people would understand by saying his battle was not this, but something bigger. I really wanted to pay that off.
The way we thought about it in terms of story structure was the first one was kind of an on-ramp for cursory fans who know what Mortal Kombat is or for people who were not fans at all. It was like a primer for them. We started to introduce bigger elements from the Mortal Kombat mythology like Quan Chi and how he wanted to get the Kamidogu. For the second one, Rick Morales wanted to really go into the mythology because Dominic [Cianciolo], Ed [Boon], and the creative team at NetherRealm built this incredible expansive mythology and has this history and every character has this incredibly detailed backstory.
And we got this chance with the second movie to look at this crazy mythology that exists in Mortal Kombat and try to put a bunch of it in one movie. And I think we did an OK job. It’s like Elder Gods, Kamidogu, Kuai Liang, Sektor, Cyrax, and a ton of different ideas from different games and we put it all in one movie because we didn’t know if we would be able to revisit this. Hopefully it is palatable and people can leave going, “Oh, I thought Mortal Kombat was just about a tournament. I didn’t realize it was this whole giant world.”
Rick Morales: We knew early on that we were going to do two of these things. We didn’t really start on the second one until we were just about done with the first one. When we talked about the first movie, we discussed where it could go. Just generally speaking, we had an idea.
We knew really early on and that’s why we were able to do things at the end of the first one where we were talking about Liu Kang and saying that he failed and Raiden telling him about his destiny and all of that stuff. That was because we knew there was going to be a second one.
There are so many characters. How do you approach writing a story with such a large cast? Is it difficult?
Adams: It is. Somebody told me a long time ago that every character is somebody’s favorite. When you have a game that is explicitly about killing people, it’s like, “Ah man, this is going to make it hard for certain people.” I always feel bad. But I’m also a kid that grew up with Marvel comics so nobody dies forever, people! [laughs]
But with the mass amount of people involved and cutting between storylines, it’s a big task. But it is also really fun and for somebody that’s a writer. If it gets too boring over here, I can jump to any of the other storylines. [laughs] And I can see what’s going on there and then I can cut back.
I wanted to give everybody a little bit of an arc. Well, as much as I could. It’s a huge cast. You hit your main characters and then you try to do your other characters. I would love for this to be a massive success and that it could somehow translate for them wanting to do more Mortal Kombat movies that explored individual characters. Because there are a lot and they are really great. The creators that developed these games and the characters put a lot of thought into a lot of different characters and it would be fun to be able to explore those in a narrative form.
The movie follows a classic tournament setting as well as a side story with Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Why did you want to do that and how did you make them come together at the end?
Adams: Hanzo got his revenge at the end of the first, but Scorpion and Sub-Zero are such a huge component of the Mortal Kombat world that it would be weird to go, “Oh, we’re not going to have them in this movie.” It was also the fact that it was a really compelling story. The death of Bi-Han and how the brother wants revenge is great, but so is the element of him and Smoke and their clan being taken over. It was an interesting, cool story and I think we were just being greedy.
It was a cool thing to be able to cut away from so it’s not just the tournament, but this other thing as well. A big part I liked about it, too, was the fact that we had this tournament that was won and it’s over… but it’s not over because there is this bigger threat and the One Being. That’s where like you think Liu Kang had it under control here, but no and now we’re really going to see what he can do. It was an interesting way to amp up the stakes.
With games, live-action films, and animated movies all telling Mortal Kombat stories, where do you think these animated films sit in that pantheon?
Morales: I think it’s a little bit more faithful to the game. We’re making these rated R and ultra violent in a way that I don’t think even the live action stuff has gone for.
And also knowing what we can do in animation as far as the ability to make a quick sequel or whatever, it feels like we can expand the world a little bit more. To me, it’s about the faithfulness of this animation stuff with the franchise. I think that’s what we can do best here.
Yeah, because live-action films will have to use CG for most of the gory stuff where it’s all CG in an animated film.
Morales: Right or they won’t do it. Animation just allows for these characters to translate more naturally and faithfully visually. Like Stryker. He looks a certain way in this movie. He’s very faithful to his game appearance. That might not work so well in live action. You might have to change that a little bit. By virtue of the design aspects of it and what we can do here, we’re able to be more visually faithful than live action can.
It was a pretty big decision to “kill” Raiden. Can you talk me through that decision and why you thought that was important for the film?
Adams: A couple things. Let’s preface this by saying that anybody can come back at any time. I think it was really important that this movie in particular really delves into the relationship between Raiden and Liu Kang in a very intense way as father and son. This was the thing that really struck me as I was writing and I did a lot of exploring who Raiden was and why he was protecting Earthrealm. What’s his deal?
And his relationship with humanity and with this kind of adoptive son and how he talks about it. We begin to see that he’s in love with Earthrealm and I have an extensive backstory for him in my head. But in the context of this movie, I see him as seeing this kid and wanting, like a father, to do everything he can to maximize this kid’s life and destiny to the point of giving up his godhood in order to help as much as he possibly can. It’s out of protection. He’s the protector of Earthrealm.
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But we saw before he died, he’s expressing his love for Liu Kang. Like he’s his chosen one. And he trusts him so much that he’s willing to die over it. I think it’s pretty powerful. It really gave me a hook for Raiden as a character and a hook for Liu Kang as a character.
We all have these familial relationships where maybe our dads were too hard on us or we wish we had dads that were too hard on us. The sacrifice of willing to do that in order to set someone else up for success. I hope it plays because that was the thing that was going to help Liu Kang go the extra mile. You saw somebody who is willing to give their life for Earthrealm and now it’s up to you to carry that torch. As long as Raiden was going to be there, Liu Kang was never going to be able to step outside on his own in a way. I think it took that trauma for him to do it.
Morales: We wanted to get him involved in the tournament. He spent the whole first movie on the sidelines. And we got some hints at his power. He’s a god and the way that we treated him. I quite like the way that we treated him. And I liked this dynamic that we had with him and Shang Tsung as Shang Tsung was scared of Raiden. And he should be. Raiden is probably the most powerful force in that universe.
But in this film, stripping that away gave us the opportunity to get him involved in the action more. With that, it was all about us playing into Liu Kang’s storyline and the father-son aspect that they have and, in progressing Liu Kang as a character, it just made sense to us that he had to die. That was one of the earliest decisions that we made as far as who we wanted to kill off in this film.
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For Mortal Kombat, I think you need those deaths that are maybe unexpected but anyone is fair game. In the games, anyone can die. I want the feeling in these movies that you might think someone is safe, but not necessarily.
This movie melded both the classic tournament format with the bigger picture of the fate of the Realms. Where do you go from here?
Adams: That’s a very good question. One that they will hopefully pay me for. [laughs] There’s lots to do. I promise you that there is a lot to do. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Morales: I think there’s a world of possibilities. We told the stories that people are familiar with in these first two movies with a little bit of a twist and pushing them a little further in certain areas. From here on out, anything is fair game. This world has a whole host of possibilities. I think that is the exciting thing if there are to be more of these. Hopefully this one will do well and people will enjoy it and think it is a fun ride and want to go again. I would definitely love to work more in this world.
Mortal Kombat just lends itself to so many stories and even genres of film that you can do. I think the possibilities going forward are exciting. I don’t even think you need to necessarily be beholden to the games at this point. We’ve shown so much of that in these first two films that you could explore these characters in really unique ways.
The intro animatic is pretty unexpected and another riff on the classic WB logo sequence. The first film had Scorpion grabbing Daffy Duck while this one shows Shaggy from Scooby-Doo grabbing Scorpion. Was this at all a reference to the meme revolving putting Shaggy into Mortal Kombat 11?
Rick Morales: Yeah. Obviously, it was inspired by that meme and all that stuff. I thought that we had an opportunity here that I didn’t think we should pass up because I think Ed Boon squashed that and said Shaggy is not making it into Mortal Kombat. This was as close as you’ll probably ever get to that so we thought we would do some fan service here. And the people that understand that will get it and the other people that don’t will just think, “Wow, that’s really weird.” And that’s OK, too. [laughs]
He’s even got the green aura around him, too.
Morales: I am glad somebody got it. [laughs]