Mortal Kombat Writer Explains Why Rain Was Cut From The Reboot

For a franchise boasting more than 90 playable characters across 15 games and almost three decades of worldbuilding to draw from, pleasing all corners of the Mortal Kombat fandom with a single movie was never going to be possible or even practical.

That being the case, crew members knew from an early stage that cuts and omissions would be a necessary component of creating a coherent first installment for the live-action reboot and then expanding the series’ scope with future entries, should an initial film prove successful enough. While Warner Bros. has yet to confirm any such sequel, early signs are promising, with director Simon McQuoid’s feature-length debut proving to be wildly popular on HBO Max.

If we’re to assume that Cole Young and his fellow Earthrealm allies will return, though, who will they be facing off against? Joe Taslim’s Sub-Zero being reborn as fan favorite Noob Saibot is essentially a shoo-in at this point, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg according to writer Greg Russo.

Speaking to ComicBook.com in a recent interview, he says that several combatants were cut during the production process for myriad reasons, with Rain being one such individual specifically named as having been dropped from the final draft. Russo reveals that the purple-robed warrior, an Edenian the same as Kitana and Sindel, was present in the script prior to his joining the project but later discarded.

I was lobbying to remove [Rain] because I felt that he wasn’t… I inherited that, and I felt like he wasn’t done justice. And whenever I inherited or saw anything that I didn’t think was right for the fans, I was like, ‘Let’s get that the hell out of there.’

Fortunately, despite Rain’s inclusion making little sense for this year’s outing, he has every chance of appearing down the line as Russo envisioned his adaptation of the source material as a trilogy. Combine that with the possibility of various spinoffs (Taslim has already voiced his support for a Sub-Zero prequel) and there’s potentially no limit to how deep Warner Bros. could go.

While we await more news on the future of Mortal Kombat in the realm of cinema, let us know in the usual place below which character you’d love to see depicted on screen!