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Mortal Kombat 2 writer Jeremy Slater has explained why the video game sequel dropped the first movie's divisive Arcana storyline.
"[It] was just something that the hardcore fans never responded to," he candidly told IGN in a new interview. "It kind of became our Midi-chlorians to some extent... explaining something that they didn't necessarily want an explanation for," Slater went on, drawing reference to the microscopic blood cells present in Force-sensitive characters in Star Wars.
Presumably as a nod to power-ups within video game contexts, it's established in Mortal Kombat (2021) that dragon-marked Earthrealm champions possess Arcana, an inner ability that can awakens during times of conflict to amplify their existing skills. For Lewis Tan's Cole Young, that looked like developing energy-absorbing armor, while Jax's arms got stronger and Kano found he could shoot a laser from his right eye.
If you kill a champion with Arcana, you take it for yourself. No such lore appears in the games.
"The goal coming in was that we don't need to contradict anything in that first movie, we don't need to retcon anything or say, 'Oh wait, actually that's not how it works,'" says Slater. "But we also don't need to double down on things that they're not enjoying," he added before confirming that "arcana" won't ever be explicitly mentioned in the franchise again.
Turns out Arcana wasn't the only thing missing from the movie, either. At one point, Slater had hoped to introduce geokinetic ninja Tremor in the action-packed flick – but eventually realized that they wouldn't be able to give him enough screen time to "sell him" as a character. "We realized we had Sindel already on the table, and she wasn't being used in an exciting enough way," he told GamesRadar+.
"So it was one of those smack-my-own-forehead moments of like, Tremor wasn't working because I wasn't able to devote enough time to sort of sell him as a character. Once we swapped [Tremor] out [for] Sindel, it immediately became more visceral, and there's just more skin in the game," he went on. "And Sindel's powers were so much fun that it felt like she belonged in that pit of spikes in a way that never felt right with Tremor."
Also starring Josh Lawson, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, and Karl Urban, Mortal Kombat 2 is in cinemas now. For more, read our Mortal Kombat 2 review or dive into our spoiler-filled Mortal Kombat 2 ending explained.
