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Sequels are a chance to iterate, improve, and – in the case of Mortal Kombat – take advice from a passionate fanbase about ditching some of the less well-received aspects in favor of something that is truer to the franchise it's adapting.
"What was great about Mortal Kombat fans is they're incredibly vocal," producer Todd Garner said at a virtual press conference attended by GamesRadar+ and other press. "They play the games religiously. They know all the canon. So, they were very vocal about, 'Hey, this is stuff we didn't love about the first movie. You have two decisions you can make: You can either ignore it, or you can take it in and learn from it [then] apply different rules and different logic to the second one, which we did."
You only need a cursory glance at Reddit threads and fan forums to see that 2021's Mortal Kombat missed the mark among diehards. Fatalities and gore were definitely in, but with no tournament, uninspired fighting arenas, and an OC character in the shape of Lewis Tan's Cole Young, there was plenty that didn't quite feel like the authentic big-screen Mortal Kombat experience audiences were hoping for.
To that end, Garner convened with fellow producer James Wan and incoming writer Jeremy Slater (who had previously worked on Moon Knight) to massage out the kinks for Mortal Kombat 2.
"When we met with Jeremy, he had such a great take on the material, and he also had his opinions about what we had missed in the first movie," Garner recalls. "And so when he gave us the second script, we just made sure that we went through and tried to right all the slight wrongs we had made [in] the first one."
Mortal Kombat 2 hits cinemas on May 8.
For more, check out our guide to upcoming video game movies and our interview with Lewis Tan on why the first movie felt more like a "prequel" compared to this year's follow-up.
