Stephen Thompson

He is a washed-up action star, which gives you a chance to kind of set the film's vibe in that, like, silly direct-to-video early 90s cop...

Steven Seagal.

Steven Seagal.

Yeah.

Like, so it's, it's kind of like having its cake and eating it too, where it's like commenting on these silly movies while being a silly movie.

For me, it was constantly straddling the line of like, is this corny on purpose?

When I say the gore is like Final Destination, there are some grisly kills in this movie.

Right.

Spare me the emotional beats.

A film like this is never going to get the emotional beats right.

But I think it is very, very smart that they –

leaven this film with a certain amount of silliness and that they leaven this film with a few jokes.

And I think the jokes are a little, I don't know if it was punched up at some point, but I think the jokes surrounding Johnny Cage generally work so much better than the extremely serious kind of stentorian dialogue about the fate of the universe.

And so like, if anything, they could have gone a little silliness.

But when you talk about who's the star of this story, the star of the story, honestly, is the like little scorecard in the sky.

Crocker.

The star of the story is there, is fighting.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Because really, he's just a guy.