Ben Lindbergh

But I quite enjoyed Kitana as an addition, you know, just for the fighting, for the character design, for like actually lending a motivation to this other than just, well, we have to not lose so that Earth can't be conquered.

That was good.

That kind of served as a spine of this movie, a spine that maybe gets ripped out after a fatality.

Yeah, Katana's good.

And one of your faves, Baraka, makes his debut in this film as well and is also excellent.

And I think that's maybe the best of Johnny Cage when there's kind of this bromance between Baraka and Johnny Cage.

And Baraka fights Johnny Cage and then learns to idolize him and venerate him.

And those are some of the funniest non-Kano scenes, at least in this movie.

Yes.

And I love that this movie, you know, it has these sort of the trappings of this like high fantasy genre.

serious lore, but then constantly pokes fun at itself and gets silly and stupid.

And I love that there's a contrast in the cast, too, where you have these wisecracking characters, and then you have a couple of the stars of Shogun, much as you did in the first film.

You get Hiroyuki Sanada and Tadanobu Asano,

And they're reprising their roles here as Scorpion and Raiden, respectively.

And they're bringing like this very serious, dignified, we were in Shogun, we're like really respected actors and acting that way.

And the fact that you have that vibe that's sharing the screen with like Johnny Cage and Kano is...

I love that just kind of like the high and low, you know, it's like elevating these sort of sophomoric material, but then also kind of poking fun at itself, like not getting too big for its britches.

I just, I love that contrast, you know, of super serious Raiden and just like everyone else who is arrayed around Raiden.

Yeah.

And some characters are like cracking jokes and some are like super serious and some are comic relief.