Mortal Kombat’s Lewis Tan Talks About His Character And How Brutal The Fatalies Are

Lewis Tan is known for roles in Wu Assassins, Deadpool 2, and Iron Fist. He’s also starring in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie as Cole Young.

In a recent interview with Variety, Tan talked about the character, who is not someone originally in the Mortal Kombat video games. Which, the movie is made out of.

“If you’re familiar with the game, you know that the game started with only a few characters, and now the game has expanded into a “Mortal Kombat” universe if you will, and there’s over 100 characters. So, in the movie, we wanted to introduce something new and at the same time — [to] give you all the heroes and villains that the fans have grown up with and have that nostalgic kind of connection to. Cole Young is an MMA fighter, just down on his luck — ex-champion, kind of helpless when we first meet him. And throughout the film, he expands into looking deeper into who he is and where he’s from. In the meantime, through Cole’s eyes, you get an experience of seeing the “Mortal Kombat” universe and meeting all the characters that the fans really love.”

Tan was then asked:

The past “Mortal Kombat” movies are beloved in their own ways, but they are a little, well, silly. Did that play into your initial hesitance?

Part of that is why it was fun, and part of that reason of the silly, campiness is why it was a cult classic and why it’s good, but then we can’t just copy that again. I think that Simon McQuoid [has an] approach to making it kind of grander and more powerful and darker with the fatalities and with the gore and with the blood that comes along with the game. We never saw that in the first movie. It’s kind of weird, because the video game is known for how violent it is. And then not to go too far overboard to where it’s just some B-movie slasher thing. We wanted to do it and do it well, and honor the legacy of the 20 years of this “Mortal Kombat” franchise and all the fans. I feel like we did that and more.

On top of talking about his own martial arts skills, Tan was asked about how brutal the kills in the movie are:

Yeah, they’re pretty gruesome. I walked on set one day and I didn’t know what was going on, and I accidentally walked into a post-fatality set and I felt pretty sick to my stomach. [Laughs.] I was like, “What the hell is this? What happened here?” It looked like somebody destroyed a buffet line, but there was no food.

For the full interview, check out Variety.

Tia Fabi

A girl with too many fandoms to count.