Lewis Tan’s Cole Young may have taken top billing in the credits and acted as both the audience surrogate and driving force behind the narrative, but Mortal Kombat opened and closed with a focus on the rivalry between Joe Taslim’s Sub-Zero and Hiroyuki Sanada’s Scorpion.
Admittedly, there weren’t any interactions amongst the video game icons between those two points, with Scorpion largely appearing as a vision drenched in hellfire spurring Cole on to embrace his destiny, but it was smart to ease new and old fans alike into the mythology by establishing a pair of iconic favorites right off the bat.
Taslim was undoubtedly one of the highlights of Mortal Kombat as he stalked the heroes throughout the movie, while Sanada’s screen time was a little lacking, but he still did more than enough to make an impression. And with it looking as though the sequel will focus on the titular tournament having omitted it the first time out, there’ll be an easy storytelling method to bring Sub-Zero and Scorpion together again.
On that note, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us HBO Max was developing a Justice League Dark show before it was announced – that a future Mortal Kombat sequel will indeed feature a rematch between Bi-Han and Hanzo Hasashi, which could either be a tournament bout or the latest chapter in their centuries-old feud.
Further details remain unclear, but it would certainly be a smart move to establish Scorpion vs. Sub-Zero as Mortal Kombat‘s legacy rivalry, especially when so few characters are guaranteed to make it out of each new installment alive, and the two actors bring the perfect blend of gravitas and badassery to their roles to keep fans invested.
